So It Begins (46 page)

  “Little buddy,” whispered Rocky, “I’m thinkin’ we’d better get back to the
Roosevelt
. The captain’s gonna wanta know about this.”

  “He’s not going to want to know it,” answered Noodles, reaching for his bag o’juice, “but he needs to.”

  And with that, the swabbies returned to their borrowed shuttle craft, even as the Edilsoni picked up the admittedly catchy chorus of “Submit, Submit, just do it,” sending its singular message wafting out over their capital city in all directions.

  “So,” asked Rocky quietly, “just how much trouble are we in, captain?”

  “Vespucci,” sighed Valance, heavily, “you only did what you did for ship and homeworld, and you did good, so let’s just say you two have a bit of credit in reserve against your next knuckleheaded shenanigan—all right?”

  “Sweet deal, sir.”

  At that point the
Roosevelt
’s commanding officer moved into as high a gear as his hangover would permit. With confirmation of the true nature of Edilsoni communication in hand, as well as intelligence on how effective had been the Danierians singing and marching negotiation, he dismissed the two gobs while ordering a channel opened to Earth High Command at once. Quickly outlining his overwhelmingly insurmountable problem, his desperate honesty was rewarded with the worst type of military logic.

  Since his was the only ship in the area, the mission was still his. And, since he was the ranking officer, he and his diplomatic staff would simply have to dance and sing their way into the hearts of the planetary government and win the day. In the meantime, while Valance and his command staff were reduced to trying to form a not-completely-painful-to-listen-to barbershop quartet, Rocky and Noodles headed for the galley to wash down their planetside snacks with something a little more substantial than milk juice.

  “Listen,” said Noodles, after finishing his fourth tall and frosty mug of something-more-substantial, “you know, I wonder what the captain’s going to do.”

  “Not our concern,” answered his pal. “Hey, we’re heroes for once. Little tiny minor heroes, sure. But, considerin’ the esteem we’re usually held in around here, I’ll take it.”

  The machinist nodded, non-commitally. Rocky was right. The two of them had pushed their luck within the bounds of Navy regs to an extreme not seen since a drunken Admiral Chester William Nimitz had attempted to steer an aircraft carrier up the Venetian canals in search of a combination pizza parlor/chianti distributor/bordello he had been assured by Enrico Curuso was “really primo.” Still, it was not in the machinist’s internal make-up to simply allow nature to take its course. Running his finger around the inside of his mug to get the last delightful bits of foam, he licked up the delicious residue, then said;

  “So, you think the captain can handle things?”

  “Well, sure,” answered Rocky automatically. Draining his own mug, he added with an equal lack of thought, “the captain’s aces. Ain’t he got us outta every mess we ever got ourselves into? He don’t ever need any help—he’s always got the answer.”

  “Not to be contrary, Rock, but . . . if the captain didn’t ever need any help, then he wouldn’t need a crew.”

  It was not so much Noodles’ words, but the tone with which he delivered them that caught the gunnery officer’s attention. Squinting hard, as if that might instantly negate the effects of his own eight tall portions of more-substantial, Rocky finally answered;

  “You mean, you think the captain maybe can’t handle singin’ these guys into the Confederation?”

  “Do you remember his trying to teach Christmas carols to those kids back on Embri?” The gunner shuddered at the memory, his fingers unconsciously reaching up to his ears to see if they were bleeding.

  “So,” asked Rocky, fairly certain he knew the answer he would receive, “you’re sayin’ that ah . . . you want us to steal a shuttle on the same day we already stole one shuttle, and then use said shuttle to head back down to the planet so we can interfere with the most important mission the
Roosevelt
was ever given?”

  “Yeah—you want’a?”

  “Hey,” answered the gunner, grinning from ear to ear, “does the Buddha drink Mint Juleps?”

  “Isn’t that usually my line?”

  “Ahhhh, tell it to the board of inquiry.”

  “Oh yeah,” laughed Noodles. “Good thinking.”

  And, with no other pints of more-substantial in sight, the two swabbies got down to planning their course of action.

¨¨¨

  In all honesty, Captain Valance would never have believed it was possible for four people to sweat so intently. Indeed, the puddle growing around his feet, as well as those of the
Roosevelt
’s intelligence officer, her diplomatic attaché, and the ship’s doctor, was spreading with such vigor, it left the Edilsoni to wonder if the human contingent might not actually be melting. To be fair, the makeshift quartet had tried their darnest, calling upon the spirit of a thousand long-sung sea chanteys to aid them in their hour of desperation.

  Sadly, though, King Neptune had not seen fit to shower them with any such bounty. In fact, it had to be admitted that their feeble attempts to harmonize had failed so miserably that the Edilsoni’s visceral reaction to their singing was the only thing that kept the aliens from noticing how utterly terrible the humans’ lyrics were. Finally, when the four paused for a breath at the same moment, although it was obvious they had only covered a third of their points, the Edilsoni prime minister practically fell over his podium as he leaped forward to interrupt, asking if that concluded the Earth Confederation’s presentation. Valance was just about to throw in the proverbial towel, considering losing the planet and his commission favorable to provoking interstellar warfare, when suddenly a shout was heard from the back of the amphitheater.

“If you kind and noble Edilsoni will permit,

I’d like to step up, while you sit . . . ,”

  As Valance stared in disbelief, he saw Machinist First Mate Li Qui Kon actually doing a handy little two-step, making his way in between the central two rows of spectators down toward the staging area where he and his fellow officers had been dying by inches.

“And discuss with you the ramifications,

Of inter-galactic political integrations.”

  Reaching the captain and his officers, Rocky urged them to vacate the stage, telling them in an exaggerated stage whisper;

  “Don’t worry, sir. I think he knows what he’s doin’.”

  “But Vespucci,” answered Valance, “singing and dancing . . . a machinist?”

  “With all due respect, a
Chinese
machinist, sir.”

“There are species descended from fish and bugs,

Others that crawled up from oozing slugs,

Some came from birds and some from rats,

Insects, clams, giraffes and bats,”

  “Chinese moms, sir,” added Rocky. “How’d he say it? They expect their kids to . . . well, they have to be a credit to their family.”

“And they’re all fine, in their own way,

But they’re kind of singular, I must say,

Bred for a certain uni . . . form . . . ity,

They lack that one human odd . . . i . . . ty.”

  “Mrs. Kon, you see . . .”

“The thing that makes us the ones to choose,

That quality that guarantees you never lose,

It’s our single greatest facility . . . Our hard-won, irritating . . .

“Un . . . pre . . . dic . . . ta . . . bility!”

  “She wanted an entertainer in the family.”

  And then, at a hand signal from Noodles, waiting in a lurkercraft hidden in the clouds, Technician Second Class Thorner began their free-air music broadcast, as well as sending down a blinding purple spotlight, illuminating the machinist in an iridescent glow as he warbled—

“Oh, everything’s better with monkeys,

We’re the best bet in the show,

I’m certain you’re getting a lot of offers,

But trust me, simian’s the way to go.”

  While Noodles spun around, setting himself up for the next stanza, Rocky caught the captain’s ear once more, telling him;

  “Five years of tap and jazz dance, six of voice training, and apparently eight years of piano which, from what he says, were a really serious mistake.”

“Yes everything’s better with monkeys,

They’re curious, funny, and true,

They’ll stand by your side, go along for a ride,

And they’ll make sure you get what you’re due.”

  As Noodles went into a complicated dance routine, one that seemed to Rocky he had seen in a revival of “My Fair Lady,” the two of them had been lured into by promises of a different type of entertainment, the gunnery officer and his captain began to notice that the crowd was responding favorably to the performance. Indeed, those who had been previously fleeing from the caterwauling of Valance and his officers actually seemed to be returning to their seats. While the captain dangerously tempted Fate by allowing his hopes to rise from actual imprisonment to a simple court-martial, Rocky sent the signal to Mac Michaels up above with Thorner to both turn up the music and begin the fountain of lights display. As the crowd began to “aaaaahhhhhhhhh” in synchronized harmony, Noodles went into his big finish.

“Yes, we earthlings, we make mistakes,

We’ve got our bad eggs, who will always disgrace,

We spill our own blood, and we’re not always smart,

But the one thing I can assure you is . . .

The human race has . . . got . . . heart!”

  And then, in that instant, even as the entire ship’s company of the
Roosevelt
Machinist’s Saturday Evening LARP Society surrounded the stage, decked in full costume from their upcoming Bambi versus Godzilla extravaganza, accompanied by all the final entries in the Sexiest Robot of All Time competition, all around the stadium Edilsoni began to jump up from their seats. Unable to restrain themselves, the rotund aliens began humming and dancing, slapping tentacles, spinning on their mouths, and in short throwing themselves with total abandon into the fierce joy of Noodle’s song.

“We’re not perfect,

We don’t claim to be,

Hell what do you expect?

Twenty thousand years ago,

We were all still monkeys!

“But you can trust me, you can trust that fact,’

Cause even after all this time,

You throw crap at us,