L. Neil Smith - North American Confederacy 02 (12 page)

“By Jefferson’s quili, what d’you think you’ve been eating since you arrived? Steak, sausage, milk, cheese, all with the distinctive inimitable flavor my genetic engineers predicted. I daresay they’ll be a Confederate mainstay within a decade.”

“Kinda luck I been havin’, I’ll be around t’see it. Olongo, y’got any idea how humiliatin’ this notion of yours strikes an Academy man?”
I
chewed my cigar an’ sulked.

“But
Bernie
—” Koko hopped down, took a step an’ grimaced, then slid a seven-inch knife from her belt an’ scraped the bare soles of her feet in disgust.

“Listen to her, clumsy though she be.” Olongo dodged a wadda unicorn extrusions flipped off the end of his niece’s baby bowie. “You’ve a valuable item stolen, and, I daresay, more unseemly acts committed in the process than we’ve witnessed in the last five years.”

I directed m’gaze at the hogleg on his hip. “Didn’t exactly figger muggin’ t’be
too
profitable, this necka the woods. But
a private detective?
Whatcha think this is, a paperback novel?

Givin’ the livestock a last proprietary nod, the President turned.
“This
detective, sir, is singularly qualified: unassailable integrity, an unquenchable passion for problemsolving. There was the curious matter of the libertine librarian, for example, or that peculiar ‘telephone clone’ debacle. But in any case, he’ll appreciate the spot you’re in. You see, he’s from
your
world, Bernie.”

Olongo stumped around the hovercraft to the driver’s side. Leanin’ in, he shook tentacles with the Yamaguchii lined up in the back, girnme a clasp that bulged m’fingertips, flipped some dashboard toggles, an’ stood back.

“Bon voyage,
my friends! The car’ll come back on its own—as I trust you’ll do someday yourselves!” He blew his nose on a blanket-sized kerchief.

Impellers roarin’, Koko hadda shout: “I’ll be in town day after tomorrow!” She waved; the Freenies answered with their eyestalks. The canopy slid shut, steerin’ wheel beside me tiltin’ of its own accord. The vehicle rose, trundled forward. I turned an’ waved as we whipped around a comer of the barn, drifted through a graveled curve, an
boomed!
through Olongo’s front gate.

The speedometer said 190, an’ it wasn’t in kilometers.

“Road Service!"

“Errrk!” This place was gonna be the deatha me yet. Before me, a translucent white panel’d suddenly become a brilliantly colored screen, displayin’ the animated image of a pretty girl. She wore a canvas duster an’, atop her nine-teenth-century hair-do, a drivin’ cap an’ goggles.

“Oh, dear!” Her cartoon eyebrows knitted cutely. “I didn’t mean to startle you! Your Laporte ETA is perfect for a - movie this afternoon. Would you like to see one?”

“Say, who’s drivin’ this thing?” I glanced trepidaciously at the movin’ pedals on the floor. Groundspeed was up t ’300!

She smiled, special effects twinklin’ in her eyes. “Well, er. ..”

“Bernie.”

“Bernie. Both your route-program
and
myself are generated by a Hodgson 66F computer in the Confederation Boulevard/Tomtinker Lane Intersective. I’d
love
to answer more questions, but there wouldn’t be time for the movie. Won’t you call me back”—she winked—“any old time?”

I cleared my throat. “I, er..

Her image faded, replaced by an enormous pistol pivotin’ slowly till its 3D muzzle pointed at the bridge of my nose. Didn’t fool
me.
I settled back.

Minutes later, with excited aliens watchin’ a rear-seat repeater, Mike Morrison, playin’ “Nasty Jim” Brannigan— security investigator for San Francisco’s Emperor Norton University—had singlehandedly stopped a “dataheist” on Montgomery Street. Still chewin’ the barbecued bagel he’d been havin’ for lunch, he leveled the biggest automatic I’ve ever seen at a slimy villain cowerin’ on the slidewalk amidst a heap of ill-gotten microcassettes.

“Listen up... Herbert. This here’s a .760 Kolibri, th’ System’s most powerful handgun, an’ it could blow yer head... right off.”

A powerful surge of
deja vu.
Funny, why did Morrison’s shabby tweed
serape
bring
orangutans
t’mind? Hadn’t met even
one
of them, so far.

He thumbed down the cocking-lever: “T’tell th’... truth, Herbert, in all... this excitement, I kinda fergot whether I fired twelve shots or... thirteen.”

The weasel-faced inside-man squirmed, glancing desperately around at the carnage already wreaked by that gigantic weapon.

“Tell me... Herbert,” Morrison’s cold, almost asiatic eyes narrowed as he put pressure on the trigger, “Do ya feel... lucky?”

As the film drew to a climax, Nasty Jim heavin’ his business-cards into the bay, our hovercraft rolled up t’626 Genet Place, residence an’ office of a real, live detective.

Edward William “Win” Bear was squat an’ heavy-set. Somethin’ like the grizzly Koko’d turned out not t’be. Big hands, no neck t’speak of, close-cropped hair, an’ ears the size of taxi-cab doors. Gray suit, brown shoes, white socks— “cop” written all over his ugly kisser.

I liked him.

He greeted me on the rubber-covered drive curvin’ up t’what coulda been a Swiss chalet designed by Frank Lloyd Wright. Most of the ground level was garage, but after introductions all around, we went upstairs half a floor, an’-while the investigator measured scotch for me, Kahlua for the Freenies, I stared out the wall-sized front window. This was s’posed t’be a densely populated neighborhood.
Looked
like a city park, the only other house in sight a big Spanish fortress replica, far away across a crabgrass-covered thoroughfare, adobe an’ wrought iron, just a touch smaller’n Versailles.

Bear handed me a drink. “I understand you’ve got a special problem, Captain. Olongo ’commed while you were on the road.” He mixed his own with milk. Yechh.

“That’s Bernie”—I peeled a cigar—“an’ ‘special’ ain’t the word. He tell you where I’m from?”

The detective motioned me to a couch backin’ on the window, took a seat across from me. His cloak, already wrinkled, caught on the grip of his heavy old-fashioned revolver. “Goddamn it, I’m
never
going to get the hang of—yeah, he told me. Not sure if I believe it, though. Life’s complicated enough already. There’s lots of ‘ordinary’ immigration these days. Hell, they’ve taken to calling this neighborhood the ‘U.S. of C.’ But a man from the future? Stretching things a little.”

Yawning slightly, I pointed to the Freenies, sittin’ on their highballs.

Bear grinned, shaking his head ruefully. “Okay, I’ll tell you what. My wife’s, well, out of circulation for a while.

And crime isn’t exactly a growth industry in Laporte, anyway. Olongo vouches for you. I’ll see what I can do.”

Out of circulation? Sounded ominous. Bear widened his Wallace Beery grin. “Sorry! I should remember how it felt when I first got here. Therapeutic electronarcosis—every year we take a two-week nap. It’s supposed to double life-expectancy, prevent cancer, and so on. I had
my
beauty-rest last month—been trying to work into phase with Clarissa—but it’ll be another cycle at least before we’re matched up. Meantime, I’m a carefree bachelor again—bored out of my fucking mind!”

I nodded, relieved. The Academy has lotsa life-extension techniques, some they even share with the public. But this was a new one on me, an’ tryin’ t’square bein’ three centuries into a past many ways ahead of my own era technologically ...

I shook my head t’clear it. “Well, I appreciate y’goin’ to the trouble. Say, is the President moonlightin’ as your press-agent, or do you really have ‘unassailable integrity’? Don’t think I ever run into one of them before.”

He scrutinized me closely. “In its most virulent form.” He sighed. “It’s a gift from God, and you know how
those
always turn out.”

“Well, I won’t hold it against you. What’ve I gotta do t’get started?”

Bear rose, both hands in his pockets bunchin’ up the cape behind him, an’ chomped down on the hawser he was smo-kin’. “The whole story, first, from the beginning. The object’s to recover your ship, maybe do something about the crooks who took it. I’ll ask nosy questions, over and over, until you’re sick of it. Need that drink freshened?”

Somethin’ disgraceful was happenin’ t’my capacity here. I declined, hand over glass. “Okay, you’re the detective: three years ago, the Academy tapped me for an archaeoastronomical mission t’Yamaguchi 523, that’s a GO-class star in—”

“Hold it!
What
academy? Also, was this three years ago, meaning 1990, or three years previous to 2285? And what, in heaven’s name, is archaeoastronomy?”

I fought down a gargantuan yawn. By fits an’ starts, he finally heard it all, listenin’ as he mushed back an’ forth around the livin’ room. Only really
good
pacer I’d run into so far.

While I struggled t’stay awake, he nodded, grunted, screwed up his forehead from time t’time, an’ stopped me for an occasional clarification.

By the time we were through, I was exhausted.

“Well,” he said at long last, “I guess that’ll do it for now. Bemie, do you realize how many Top Secrets you’ve told me? How’s your Academy going to feel about that?”

I fought t’keep my eyes open. “I reckon what they don’t know ain’t gonna hurt me.”

Bear grinned, wider an’ wider, till I thought he was gonna tear his head apart from the inside. He busted out laughin’ uncontrollably.

Shucks, I hadn’t thought it was
that
funny.

Then his face turned green, an’ posies blossomed from his ears.

10 Outa Condition

I
N THE SIXTIETH YEAR OF THE
C
OMMUNIST
R
EFOR
mation, a young disciple sat at the feet of his
guru,
a journeyman of the Erisian tradition, and asked, “What, then, Master,
is
the seemly manner for society to organize itself?"

Like the rest of the little coeducational band taking momentary refuge in a rubble-filled cellar, both wore Army field-greens, the Red Star picked away and replaced with a hand-fashioned Eye-of-Horus. They cleaned and oiled their captured Kalashnikovs, blued steel and plastic glinting in the candlelight which flickered at the mouth of an empty vodka bottle.

“Consider a flock of sheep
...”
replied their squad-leader, tucking his heels into the lotus position on the packing-crate where he sat. He'd just finished dismissing socialism, fascism, and democracy as things equal to one another. ".. .submissive, brainless, needing to be watched every minute, against predators, natural disaster, and its own stupidity, by the shepherd and his noble canine.”

The student-soldiers nodded, murmuring. Most were newly arrived from agricultural regions and understood. I squatted back against a crumblin wall, gettin’ it all down on a fingernail recorder. This was my eighteenth subjective week surveyin’ a crucial stretcha history, an'
/
was lookin' forward to the flesh-pots of decadent twenty-second century Oxnard when this was over.

"How much better-off the herd would be, ” continued the teacher, "did it consist of creatures like the estimable guard-dog: fierce, bright, capable of caring for itself
without
such ‘help’.
”

"But Master," protested the young questioner, "of what possible use would such a flock be to the shepherd?"

Fastening the flap of his holster and rising, the sergeant smiled. “I see, young
chela,
that you have grasped the lesson."

And in Moskva the following year, there
was
no hundredth anniversary of the Revolution.

"Bernie?"

“Nnnghmm?”

“Bernie,
please
wake up!”

Opening the eyes some sneak’d glued shut when I wasn’t lookin’, I saw Spin an’ Color still sittin’ with Bear, Charm on the floor, tuggin’ at m’pants leg. He swiveled his attention toward the detective.

“You see how it is with him, sir. It now becomes imperative that we..

The little dickens hesitated, rolled six inches closer to the investigator, then back.

“Mr. Bear, Bernie seems never to have taken in the...well, the
actuality
of our present whereabouts. In
him,
this is greatly disturbing.”

"Now jushta doggone shecond!"
Hell, even I heard the slur in my voice. I jumped up, an’, abruptly dizzy, hadda sit right down again. That was when I noticed I’d spilled my drink some time ago. Two whiskeys, or was it only one? An’
already
I was under th’ proverbial!

Bear, startled: “Mr. Ambassador, what, precisely, are you talking about?”

Charm assumed a professorial tone: “Kindly observe— forgive me, Lord—how
some... thing
seems to impair Bernie’s cognitive faculties whenever certain topics are approached ...”

The detective volunteered no reply. Charm continued from the floor, tryin’ his own purely figurative hand at pacin’ the carpet.

“Bernie,” he squeaked, an octave too high for the gravity of the subject-matter, “Lord, I realize it is presumptuous of me to speak thus—”

“I know, Charm, but I was too polite t’mention—”

“—Yet, all three of us have noticed that whenever the, er, practicalities of time-travel are discussed, you...
Bernie?"

“Zzzzzt—whazzat?” I shook my head groggily. “Ochskahrt’s orchids! Musta dozed off there, Your Ambassador-ation. What were you sayin’?”

If a Freenie coulda shrugged, Charm woulda. “A case in point, Mr. Bear. It appears to be some variety of psychological tampering. I fear that this is the source of many of our recent brushes with disaster, including Bernie’s near-fatal failure to maintenance his side-arm.”

“Well, that can be taken care of this afternoon.” Bear peered closely at me. I didn’t like it much.
“Conditioning,
is that what you’re thinking, Charm? Some kind of hypnosis?”