L. Neil Smith - North American Confederacy 02 (8 page)

I thought back over the past several highly-perplexing hours.

A rising moon had silvered the meadow; mingled hints of columbine and evergreen drifted on the breeze. The gorilla with the knapsack and pistol winked at me, squashing her concertina back together with a reedy moan and hooking its tiny brass latches. Suited me fine: “Lady of Spain” was never parta
my
Top 40. She put it on a rock, set paws on her hips, and regarded me and my three cowardly companions with critical amusement.

“Well, aren’t you going to invite me to sit down? And I’d appreciate it if you’d tuck that little gun away before one of us gets hurt.” Not waiting for the invitation, she plunked herself on the ground—’bout Richter Force 5, I estimated—beside the fire.

I bolstered the three-pound wedge of carbon steel I was
used
to thinking of as Jove’s Thunderbolt. “Beg your pardon, er, Miss. Bernard M. Gruenblum at your service.” I glared at the three miniature aliens concealing their pusillanimous selves behind me: “An’ these are my familiars, Color, Charm, and Chickenshii.” Charm peeked timidly around one of my knees, his eye twinkling in the firelight.

“I’m Koko Featherstone-Haugh,” the gorilla answered with a seated curtsy. She pronounced the last name “Fan-shaw,” spelling it for me. “In case you’re interested, this is rny Uncle Olongo’s ranch you’re trespassing on. Got anything to cook over that fire? I’m
famished!"

For the first time since I’d landed here, the night-time sky was clear. Flames threw Koko’s dancing shadow across the clearing. I sorted dully through the pine needles and gravel that’d accumulated in my pockets.

“Instant coffee, but nothin’ t’torture it in. We been kinda nibblin’ at it, the way a kid does Kool-Aid.” I shivered in the gathering mountain chill and turned my suit up another notch. “Tastes terrible.”

“I can imagine!” The ape grinned, a fearsome sight if ever I witnessed one. She hadn’t really been talking all this time, I suddenly noticed. Her voice seemed to issue from an instrument strapped around her left wrist. “I’ve got a little pan here somewhere,” she offered pleasantly, shrugging out of her knapsack, “and even some more coffee. Also instant. I’m afraid. You say your little friends like it, too?”

Now
here
was a scenario they hadn’t prepared us for in time-travel school:
kaffeeklatsching
politely with an affable, English-speaking female simian in the midst of a pine-scented jungle where there shoulda been a ticky-tacky metropolis of several million purely human folk. Gorillas of my acquaintance were little more than hairy robots, servants in a chronically labor-short economy, with electronic implants on their cortices, controlled just like a model airplane. Like the Yamaguchii when you take away their Folgers, they were liable to lapse back into sullen, unresponsive animalhood when the current was switched off.

Somethin’ surpassing strange was goin’ on here.

Koko probably agreed. I followed her significant glance toward the Freenies, looked back at her, and wiggled my eyebrows sheepishly. “Guess I sorta misplaced my flyin’ saucer, Ma’am.”

“Mr. Gruenblum,” she observed absently, levering an enormous metal skillet outa the pack and unfolding its handle with a
clank!,
“If you’re going to miss the point when I’m trying to be subtle—
who in Lysander's name
are
you people, and what are you doing on my uncle's ranch?"
She hadn’t
quite
gone for her bazooka; when you’re her size, it’d be gildin’ the lily.

“Uh, I’m gonna answer that question, Miss Featherstone-Haugh, but before I do, wouldya mind tellin’ me.. .what
year
this is?”

When travelin’ in the past, you’re ordinarily ill-advised t’tell the truth about yourself. The Academy frowns on it. Severely.

But I was up against something new here. From my pointa view, this was pret’near three hundred years ago. History is one thing I’m supposed t
’know
about—the backa my hand’s an unexplored frontier by comparison. But if this was 1993, it wasn’t any 1993 that I remembered.

She looked me over as if seeing me for the first time, gave the Freenies another inspection, then back t’me again, and my little green coverall. “Why it’s 217 A.L., of course.”

I took out m’last cigar, watched her unfold the pan’s collapsing legs, fill it from the nearby creek, and return to the fire. I added a few more twigs and branches, enjoyin’ the natural incense of sage an’ soft pine—but not much else that was happening.

What the hell did “a.l.” stand for? And who in
Ochs-kahrt’s
name was this Lysander? Only one I knew about was a Bronze Age channel swimmer. Her grouping
me
with the Freenies—“... you people...”—had sent a quiver down my spine. Could be she’d never
seen
a human bein’ before, an’ I was just as alien to her as they were.

What had she meant, her uncle was the President? President of what?

Wasn’t sure I wanted t’find out.

By now the water was boiling. Koko began sprinklin’ powdered pseudojava into it, the aroma filling my nostrils an’ makin’ the Freenies perk up suddenly, I found I’d forgotten to light my cigar.

“Uh, Miss Featherstone-Haugh-—Koko—I really wasn’t kidding about losing my flying saucer. I know it’s gonna be hard t’believe, but, well:
I’m from the Moon.
The little guys, here, are from Ganymede.”

I helped her share out the coffee into small metallic nesting cups and set those for Color, Charm, and Spin out in a row beside the fire. As usual, each critter settled himself over his container, covering it completely. Wheq they arose again, I knew, the coffee’d be gone. Kinda disgustin’ to the uninitiated. Put me in mind of a Yoga demonstration I’d been forced t’watch one time.

“The Moon?” Nothin’ seemed t’rattle Koko. She sipped her coffee, squinting at me through the steam and wrinkling her nose. “Do you know Admiral Mitchell?”

“Admiral who?” Again I reminded myself to light my cigar.

“William Lendrum Mitchell, Confederate Navy—retired, of course. He’s actually a friend of Uncle Olongo’s, but the only person I’ve ever met who lives up there.” She gazed out at the frozen stars, a dreamy inner focus to her big brown eyes. “Funny, I’ve been clear to the Asteroids— Ceres—-with my uncle, when I was little. But never to the Moon.”

Precisely at that moment, something gigantic and ellipsoid drifted overhead, deadly silent, ’bout a mile long, an’ movin’ poleward several hundred klicks an hour. Its sleek form was defined by rows on rows of brightly-colored windows.

“The dirigible
San Francisco Palace”—
Koko answered my wild stare—“bound for Calgary, Anchorage, and points north. Used to stop in Gallatinopolis, too, before they quit having Congress. Uncle Olongo says she was the first catalytic fusion airship ever—imagine
that,
and still in service after all these years!”

Somethin’ was definitely screwy here. Catalytic fusion hadn’t been commercially perfected till the middle of the twenty-first century—an’ dirigibles’d blasted themselves outa fashion in the 1930s. It was like watchin’ a New England whaler powered by a nuclear reactor.

Quit havin’ Congress?

I took a big gulpa coffee, gears whirlin’ around inside my head—an’ burnt the hell outa my tongue.

Never did summon up the moxie t’ask what a 114-year-old court-martialed Signal Corps general was doin’ retired from the
Navy
an’ livin’ on the Moon. Instead, I let Koko explain how she was really a city girl, gettin’ the most out of a welcome break from school.

“Recess was always my favorite subject, too,” I told her, pouring myself another cup. The Yamaguchians were back for seconds, too, each with his little container clutched greedily in a pair of slender green tentacles. I let Koko be mother an’ scratched around for a twig t’light my much-neglected cigar from. “I’m just passin’ through, m’self.”

She sighed tomadically, stirring coals. The flames leaped a foot higher and receded. “Dirty bad old school—it’s such a waste of time! I'd
so
much rather be here... or out
there."
She pointed skyward to an extra star I’d noticed where there shoulda been an empty orbital position. “But Uncle Olongo insists—”

“Yeah,” I commiserated. “The Powers-That-Be have a way of doin’ that.” I thrust the twig into the flames, moistening the end of my cigar in anticipation. There was silence for a while.

“Bemie?” Firelight danced in Koko’s eyes.

The end of the twig bubbled and began to char. “Yeah, kid?”

“Are you going to get into much trouble? I mean, for losing your flying saucer?”

It was a swell question. I almost felt guilty for havin’ brushed her off with half an explanation, but the Academy’s rules defend the existence of an entire universe, an’ they can’t be bent, even for a nice young lady—of whatever species-—sincerely concerned about my hide. Hell, for all I knew, this situation I was in might justa been
caused
by such a breach!

“Well,
my
particular Powers-That-Be have some rough-mannered ways of handlin’ lapses of discipline. ’Bout the
best
I can expect is that they’ll dock my pay for the next coupla eons. The worst...” Visions of the Ochskahrt Memorial Pylon rose before my bleary inner eye. “Kid, I don’t think y’wanna hear about it.”

She hesitated, building up her courage. “You can tell
me,
Bemie. You see, I already
know."

I frowned, confused. “Well, as some wiseacre once said, ‘T’know what y’know—an’ t’know what y’don’t know— is t
'know.”
I lifted the burning twig toward the end of my cigar. “Know
what,
kid?”

“That you’re a Time-Traveler.”

"WHAT?”
I dropped the twig an’ spent a few undignified moments hoppin’ around slappin’ at my lap. Even the Freenies swiveled their eyestalks an’ pointed on the young gorilla like a pack of huntin’ dogs.

Recovering the twig, I started to rev up my cigar again.

“Sure, Bemie. You’ve given yourself away a dozen times, you and your little friends. I may be just a kid, but I’m not stupid. I haven’t been to Ganymede, either, but I’ve got friends who have. There certainly aren’t any ‘Freenies’ there. Besides,
everybody
knows about Admiral Billy Mitchell, the Air Navy hero who helped us win The-War-Against-The-Czar.”

“OWCHi Sonofa—” While I’d been reelin’ in my jaw from where it’d fallen on the ground, the twig’d finally burned down to my fingers, givin’ me a broiled thumb t’match my parboiled tongue. Groucho, Harpo, an’ Karl trundled to me with affectionate concern, one of ’em spillin’ his coffee on my foot in the process.

I hardly noticed it.

“Look, Koko, what I do for a livin’s
s’posed
t’be a secret. Even if I survived the punishment for lettin’ on, all my descendants’d be bom with—”

I’d
almost
said, “... three balls and a purple goatee...” but thought better of it under the circumstances.

“—two heads an’ a permanent case of mange.”

“Some secret!” Koko snorted. “What possible explanation
could
there have been? But don’t worry, Bemie.
I
certainly won’t tell anybody — and neither will Uncle Olongo.” She hunched closer toward me, conspiratorial delight written all over her furry face. “Now that we’ve taken care of
that,
why don’t you tell me how you and your cute little friends managed to get stranded here. Maybe I can help!”

Charm emitted a delighted
peep!
and skittled around the fire to rub against her legs. The traitor.

Could loose lips get me
back
my ship? All I seemed t’be accomplishin’ by myself was incubatin’ a pneumonia culture. Somethin’ about this hairy, muscle-bound school-girl seemed to inspire more confidence than I’d ever felt in any
human
bein’. Maybe it was the ponderous delicacy v/ith which she carried her 400-kilo self. Maybe it was the kindly way she treated my tiny worshippers. Maybe it was the fact she’d already guessed all the “burn-before-reading” parts by herself, an’ the only way I was ever gonna get outa this predicament—or even find out where I was—was t’let her have the whole soap opera, Academy or not.

I’d like t’think that was the case: hardnosed decisionmaking in the face of insurmountable realities—an’ not that I was wet, cold, an’ hungry. Us Gruenblums was always made of sterner stuff. Whatever the reason, I sang like a bird.

Koko oohed and aahed in all the right places, grimacing over the murders of Merwin and his elderly colleague. She was interested in
Georgie,
fascinated with sixteenth century Japan.

“... Cromney’s invented a new form of fascism, an’ he can’t wait t’try it out.” I extracted the field-density equalizer, brushed off the mud and pocket vegetation, and held it up in the firelight. “But he ain’t goin’
anywhere
without this!”

She shook her head sadly. “Hamiltonians—Professor Cromney and his followers, I mean. That’s what they sound like. We’ve had a few like that, even here in the Confederacy. Don’t worry, Bemie. Uncle Olongo and the boys will help you find
Georgie
first thing in the morning.”

She yawned—a sight that woulda made Elmo Lincoln himself high-tail it for the tall pineys—an’ consulted the multipurpose thingummy on her wrist. “You know, it’s almost two o’clock in the morning!”

“Yaaahh,” I answered through a wide-open yawn of my own, “we want an early start tomorrow. Didn’t happen t’bring an extra bindle, didya?” I glanced at her King Kongsized rucksack; damn thing woulda done for a sleeping bag itself.

She blinked. “Why, no. I brought one for myself, just in case, and you’re perfectly welcome to it, if you really insist, because—”

“No, no, wouldn’t wanna inconvenience—”

"Because,
unless you actually enjoy freezing to death and having bugs crawl all over you..

She stood, grasped me by the wrist, and before I knew it, I was standing on my feet. Half dragging me across the clearing and up a little rise at the end, she pointed a proprietary digit down the hill.