Sliding Scales (3 page)

The two accused were not alone. They were flanked by several armed Vssey. Ordinarily, a simple crime like thievery
would be dealt with by local authorities and would not even involve the AAnn. But the theft had occurred at an AAnn scientific station and had involved AAnn property. Therefore, according to Vsseyan law, it was the right of the affronted to pronounce and carry out sentence.

The AAnn could have dismissed the charges entirely, or requested sociality counseling and treatment for the offenders, or simply ignored the case altogether. But the head of the station, having suffered from such thievery previously and tired of having to fill out the relevant reports, had chosen to make an example this time. The local Vssey had been left shocked by his decision, but with no choice except to follow the letter, if not the spirit, of the law.

Which was why secondary administrator Takuuna, brought over from his comfortable office in Skokosas, had been asked to personally carry out the sentence. Sharp-clawed devil, that station head Muurindi, he mused. Make an example of the thieves, but import someone else to deliver the punishment that had been decreed. That way all the local opprobrium would fall on Takuuna, giving the station head what he wanted but sparing him the anger of the locals.

Takuuna saw no way to manipulate the situation to his personal advantage. He could not turn down the request because fulfilling such requests from outlying AAnn communities and stations was part of his job. Perhaps, he thought, he was making too much of it. As soon as he had concluded the business he would climb back into his waiting aircar and zip back to Skokosas. It was just that he did not look forward to doing work that he could not turn to his benefit. As to the guilt or innocence of the two young Vssey he was about to kill, he gave not a thought. Like the doing of the killing itself, he did not really much care one way or the other.

The two Vssey certainly cared. It was evident in the way their eyestalks retracted flush against their wide, flattened heads and their rippling hearing organs lay almost flat against the upper, domed portion of their bodies. As Takuuna approached, the two sets of guards flanking the prisoners hopped off to opposite sides. Only one, unarmed and identified as an Elder by the disgusting flaking of his epidermis, advanced in slow, deliberate hops to intercept the oncoming AAnn. By way of cordial preliminaries, a couple of bubbles emerged from its mouth.

“I am Awn-Bween, senior judiciary of eastern TualSihb.” Several of the tentacles that lined the upper, dome-like part of the Elder's body extended themselves in the AAnn's direction. Takuuna took an indifferent swipe at them with one hand. There were no claws to make point-to-point contact with, and he did not much like the dry, wormy feel of Vsseyan appendages. His attention remained focused on the two cowering detainees.

“
Tsslk
—let uss get thiss business over with,” he hissed impatiently.

Like a large, upturned brown bowl, the Elder's upper body tilted in the administrator's direction. “If I may be permitte', administrator, I woul' like to point out that it be possible for you, as presiding official in this instance, to grant clemency to offenders.”

Pweetasst
, Takuuna thought angrily. As if his position wasn't sufficiently awkward already. The senior judiciary's associates looked on thoughtfully. As they did so, Takuuna experienced a powerful urge to slice through their eyeball stalks with a single swipe of one clawed hand.

A wayward thought, he admonished himself. These are allies. They support the Empire and therefore my work here. They are not thranx.

Such realities notwithstanding, he saw no reason to
commute a sentence that had already been handed down, and said so. The colorful tentacles that encircled the upper portion of Awn-Bween's body fluttered in the bright sunshine. His eyes dipped slightly, the stalks inclining toward the visitor.

“Then we await the carrying out of sentence. Though my companions an' I think it unduly harsh, as the offense was committe' against your property, it is your right to judge. We will not interfere.”

As if you could, Takuuna thought. Reaching down, he drew the pistol he always carried with him. An unarmed AAnn was a naked AAnn. The sidearm was floridly decorated, as befitted an official instrument of justice. It was also fully functional. As the senior judiciary and the others hopped clear, Takuuna raised the muzzle of the pistol. Since the Vssey possessed nothing like a central heart, there was no point in aiming anywhere at the thick stump of a lower body. But the brain was easily located. It lay in the center of the upper cap, between the eyes.

Two quick shots and it was all over. Though not a veteran soldier, at such close range even a youngster could have done the work efficiently. Small craters smoking from the apex of their rounded upper bodies, tentacles twitching violently, first one thief and then the other toppled over onto the smooth tile of the courtyard. Those curious AAnn who had been watching from a distance turned back to their work. A new group of Vssey came forward to remove the bodies. Since their tentacles were too weak for the purpose, they employed clever mechanical devices to lift the corpses into a waiting, self-propelled container.

Awn-Bween chose to walk Takuuna back to his temporary quarters. Feeling some slight sympathy for the Vssey official, who doubtless was charged with the task of informing the relatives of the recently deceased of their actual
demise, Takuuna slowed his walk to a crawl to enable the laboriously hopping judiciary to keep pace.

“Imperial justice is as swift as it is harsh.” The Vsseyan language was so liquid that it reminded Takuuna of an infant's contented hissing. The occasionally emitted punctuational bubbles only reinforced the impression.

“It workss,” Takuuna replied brusquely. “Had I been the one to have committed the sspecified offensse, againsst your property, you would have been granted the right to sshoot me.”

Except that your manipulative digits aren't strong enough to hold a proper weapon, he thought. A hovering naqueep materialized in front of him. It was smaller and more robustly built than a choluub, and rode the air by means of not one but three gas bladders. He could easily have killed it or sent it crashing to earth. Instead, he brushed it out of his path with a back sweep of his hand. It hooted querulously as it struggled to find a breeze on which to flee.

With waves of hands and tail he acknowledged the polite salutations of fellow AAnn as well as the occasional Vssey he knew from previous visits to this eastern Imperial outpost of Tual-Sihb. Exiting the courtyard, he found himself in the narrow avenue that ran parallel to the central administrative complex. Paid for by the government, his rooms were in the better of the town's two hotels. He was looking forward to a nice sand bath in the desiccated atmosphere of his quarters. Then a meal, a good sleep, and first thing in the morning it would be back to far more heavily urbanized Skokosas, where real work awaited him.

Awn-Bween bid him farewell outside the complex. “I myself have studie' a goo' deal of AAnn law. Though I disagree with some things, there is much in it to admire. I understan' what you say.”

“Truly,” Takuuna agreed indifferently. He could already
feel the heated imported sand against his skin, the delicious caress of fine silicaceous grains abrading dead scales and dirt from his body. “It must be ssaid that your people have been very ssensible and cooperative in allowing uss to establissh our few outpostss on your world.”

“I personally revere the Empire and look forwar' to the day when Jast is officially include' in it.” Tentacles rippled like a breaking wave by way of a farewell salute. “Not all are so enthusiastic, but many very much are.”

And the rest can be dealt with appropriately, as has been done elsewhere on other worlds, Takuuna knew. While it was not his place to measure or facilitate that eventual formal integration, he could see it coming. So could his fellow nye. Another world to swell the boundaries of the Empire. One more small expansion of Imperial space. Despite their physical handicaps and unpleasant appearance, the Vssey would be welcome. Outstanding engineers, builders, and artisans, they had a very real contribution to make. Though not noted as innovators, they were superb mimics, able to reproduce in their factories any device or apparatus that was presented to them. Given such promise, their displeasing physical appearance could be overlooked.

They parted amiably, AAnn administrator and Vsseyan judiciary. Gratefully, Takuuna resumed a more normal stride, his long, powerful legs carrying him past and around busy Vssey as if they were standing still. None envied him his forward velocity. They were quite comfortable proceeding at their own speed, one methodical hop at a time. Never having had legs, they did not miss them.

Only once did he have to slow, when a vast flock of low-drifting satubvwo blocked the street. Caught by a shifting, unusually strong breeze, they had been blown in and down. A change in the wind would carry them up and away easily, since no building in town was more than
two stories tall. Although they possessed an excellent sense of balance, like any monoped the Vssey lived in fear of falling—the more so because their small tentacles did not provide a means for easily returning themselves to an upright position. A Vssey who fell and was not equipped with a mechanical means for righting itself had to rely on the assistance of others in order to return to a vertical stance, or else look forward to perhaps an hour of hard struggle with both its tentacles and the bracing edge of its flexible dome.

So it was that Takuuna found himself fuming impotently at the swirling, confused, and incredibly dense flock of satubvwo that blocked the street in front of him. It was small consolation that the crowd of busy Vssey over which he towered by a head were equally frustrated. Despite the flock's density there was very little smell. Vertical travel allowed them to leave clinging dirt, vegetative matter, and individual waste products behind. Unlike the smaller, softer-voiced choluub, however, the satubvwo did make quite a lot of noise. With each one generating a steady wail from its conical mouth, the siren-like collective howl tended to overwhelm the polite murmuring of the Vssey.

Crowded together, the locals dealt with the situation in the traditional manner: they began to discuss it among themselves. Looking down at them, Takuuna marveled that they had ever been able to advance beyond the tribal stage. Nothing was done swiftly. Any action involving more than one Vssey required the attainment of consensus, usually arrived at after interminable discussion of every possible ramification of even the least confrontational issues. This inherent cultural trait, no doubt evolved from when the ancestral Vssey existed as fixed individuals incapable of movement, made for great philosophers and deep thinkers, for fine musicians and authors, but it was
no way to conquer the next hill, much less vast swaths of space. Those accomplishments were to remain the province of more active, energetic species, he knew, and of one in particular. Reaching for his sidearm, he prepared to yet again underline the reality of that conviction. But before he could do so, the conundrum of the airborne roadblock was resolved by the nature of Jast itself.

A large intruder came drifting down into the closely packed flock of satubvwo. That it was not a peaceful nocturnal herbivore like the choluub was made immediately apparent by the flock's rapid switch from confused wail to frantic whining. Seeing that the newcomer was a blohkbaa, Takuuna left his sidearm holstered. The local carnivore would soon have the flock cleared away.

Descended from active, hungry predators himself, it was always instructive to watch another carnivore feeding. Like the choluub and the satubvwo, the blohkbaa was kept airborne by a gas-filled sac attached to its back. The difference was that the carnivore's serpentine form was lined with not one, not three, but more than two dozen such sacs, arranged in double rows along its widely separated upper ridges. By venting or adding gas to these it gained far greater maneuverability than its harmless drifting relations, who traveled solely at the mercy of the wind and weather.

Its method of consumption was straightforward. Positioning itself beneath chosen prey, it extended a single flexible, sharply pointed tendril upward. Ignoring its quarry's frantic twitching and futile efforts to escape, it utilized this tool to puncture the prey's supporting gas sac. Deprived of lift, the quarry would immediately begin to sink downward—directly into the yawning orifice that occupied much of the blohkbaa's dorsal expanse.

In this efficient manner it proceeded to munch its way at a surprisingly rapid pace through at least a third of the
satubvwo flock. It completely ignored the busy Vssey who, relieved of the need to make a decision on how to deal with the temporary obstacle, used the steadily widening gap in the helpless flock to continue on their way up the street. Borne along on two highly capable limbs instead of one, Takuuna impatiently pushed his way to the front and soon outdistanced the crowd. Continuing back to his rooms he was forced to dodge numerous Vssey who were unable to hop out of his way. Unlike the roadblocking flock, however, this caused the administrator no undue distress. Having been assigned to Jast for several years, he was used to it by now. One could not allow oneself to become frustrated by individual pedestrians when their entire species was a constant source of frustration.

He did not dwell on the execution of the two Vsseyan thieves. He could not. He had paperwork to attend to.

Lwo-Dvuum eyed the gathering of friends glumly. Without a formal, pre-agreed-upon agenda, they could not properly be labeled conspirators. Without a declared manifesto, they could not be condemned as rebels. And without weapons, they could hardly be considered dangerous.

What they
could
do was talk and, perhaps more significantly, commiserate. It had not taken long for news of the execution of the two unfortunate young thieves in rural Tual-Sihb to reach metropolitan Skokosas. That the sentence had been carried out by a local AAnn administrator instead of by the Vssey themselves did not particularly concern the members of the group. What did trouble them, what had troubled them enough to bring them together in the first place, was that it had been done according to AAnn law that had been adapted for Vsseyan use.