The Blue Marble Gambit (12 page)

"Good
point," Ned agreed. “Maybe we
can modify the morph-pack projections later; but underlings are more anonymous,
in general. For now," and he
gestured grandly at the steaming pile of asparagus guano, "duty
calls. It would be a great insult
for you to retreat, having made the offer."

Orna
was waiting expectantly, slightly perturbed at the delay. No doubt he would lay it at the many
gnarled feet of the oh-so-impressive Great Bog.

"You
win, Ned," I muttered silently.

"I
know."

I
gritted my teeth and did my duty. It wasn't as bad as I expected - it was worse. The substance was like loose clay, and I
corralled it into disposal slots built into the floor of the hoverbus. My fall from grace was now complete - I
had sunk to the level of janitor to one of the
most vile
,
disgusting species known.

Finally
I was back in what passed for my seat. From inside her aspara-suit Trina was staring at me in horror.

"Don't
ever," she whispered, "tell me what you were just doing."

"Deal,"
I agreed, trying to ignore a reek that rivaled putrefied abalone. The overpowering stench was apparently
of as little notice to the others as was my entire ordeal - in fact, time and
again, other elderly Boffs dropped steaming yellow piles, and each time, a
younger subservient like me cleaned up.

I
tried to ignore this grim cycle and looked outside. The scene was alien rural, Norman
Rockwell on a mindbend trip.
A very bad mindbend trip.
Round green houses were scattered about,
each surrounded by a low bristly hedges that penned in five-legged creatures,
something like the evil progeny of a forced mating between Bambi and an
artichoke.
Odd
and faintly disturbing, for reasons hard to identify.
I waited with faint trepidation for the
scene to pass, to see what Boff would show me next.

It
showed me more round green houses, more
low
bristly
hedges, more five-legged Bambi-chokes. More. And still more. I looked around carefully, wondering if
we were circling. Hoping we were
circling.

We
weren't. The scene was simply
repeating itself, over and over, and over again. It was an awful rhythm that jangled my
brain and assaulted my eyes. Finally they mercifully glazed and I lapsed into something of a stupor.

"Good
news," Ned announced, some time later. He stood before me, a buxom blond
wearing a slinky red dress and spike heels. Very disconcerting. That, of course, was why he was doing
it. “I've been eavesdropping."

He
could do that, I reminded myself. He had free access to my ears.

Ned
waited until I finished my internal dialogue, which was his subtle way of
reminding me that he knew I was having one. He smirked and continued. “By doing that clean-up gig, we've
established a relationship of podness with Orna."

I
stared at Ned as coolly as you can stare at a creature with no existence.

"You
mean . .
. We're
podners?"

"Er,
sort of, Tex."

"Help
me out here. That's a good thing,
right?"

"Of
course! He'll look out for us. Something
like
a mentor. It's a Boffian custom for those new to
Sprouthood."

"Like
us."

"Like
us," Ned agreed.

I went back to my thousand-parsec
stare. Ned stomped off to the front
of the bus, sat on the lap of a grizzled, ancient Boff, and slowly morphed into
a large frondy fern.

Much
later, the hoverbus lurched. I
didn't realize it had stopped until all the Boffs rose and began to shuffle
off.
End of the
line?
Time Oscillator
ho? No, Gastro was supposedly a
recognizable city and we were still quite plainly in the local version of the
sticks. More huts and hedges and
beasts, oh my.

Orna,
who had started down the aisle, glanced back at us and stopped. “Ah, still addled by the wonders of the
Great Bog," he hummed. “So too
was I, my first time. But come,
Young Shoots. It is the Day Of All,
and we have arrived at The Festival."

"Of
course," I said uncertainly, and we rose to follow him off the
hoverbus. Outside were clustered
thousands of
brethren
vegetables, so many it seemed
they'd sprouted from the very soil.

Orna
chatted on blithely as he shuffled on his two thousand tiny legs and we
imitated that hovering shuffle. You
do it by bending your knees slightly and creeping
ahead
verrrrry sloooowwwly.
Perfectly level, no up and no down.
For a bipedal primate,
a perfectly agonizing form of locomotion.
As Trina and I subjected ourselves to
the slow motion torture of faux Boff walking, Orna unintentionally - or perhaps
intentionally, given my plainly idiotic state, from the Boffian point of view -
gave us a lecture on the Day Of All.

It
was the festival at the core of the present Boff philosophy.
The present
philosophy, because it changes from time to time.
But the Day Of All commemorated and
celebrated the essential equality of all Boffs before the Great Harvester who
awaits each sprout at the end of the season of life. All were equal, all identical in the
eyes of the great Harvester, all exactly the same. Boff was a smooth, uniform pudding, not
a lumpy stew of different parts.

"How interesting, O Orna," I lied
enthusiastically. I decided to see
what else I could fish out.

"Unfortunately my feeble powers now
seem unable to grasp such concepts. For to the humble tangle of cells I call my brain, it seems that not
everyone is the same. Some are a
little taller, some a little shorter."

He looked at me with pity. "Of course. But we adjust for that. For example, in athletic contests
neither the strong nor the tall are allowed an advantage. There are different goals for each size
and level of athletic ability. Under this marvelous system, the
merest
stripling has every chance of defeating even Drood-za, the greatest Rot-wa
player of all.
As
it should be.
Everyone must
be equal. It is simply not fair for
some to be superior."

Orna
guided us around a corner and onto a wider path, filled with a crowd of green
stalks.

"But
what about those with naturally superior intellects?" I was hoping that if
I kept the conversation going, eventually I could steer it towards some area
that would help us - it couldn't hurt to gather as much background information
as possible. For example, we didn't
even know exactly where the Time Oscillator was. Not that I saw any way this would help
find it.

"A
slightly different approach, of course. It is a simple matter to identify them at an early age and ensure that
an appropriate proportion of them are channeled into
jobs
which
, although admittedly not taxing to their powers, nevertheless
assure the Harmony Of The Whole. Meanwhile, a proportionate number of those with lesser, even deficient,
mental skills are channeled to become leaders, professors, and great
scientists.

"Please
remind me, oh Orna. My mind is
still fuzzy. Who decides all
this?"

"You
silly young Boff! The Great Pod Leader, with the help of the Master Vegeputer. At maturity, every individual is
measured both physically and mentally, and assigned to particular groups. That is the key: all individuals are
rightly perceived as members of groups. And all groups must be fairly represented in all things. The Vegeputer assures that the
proportionate number of, to take you for an example, rather dim-witted
Spotted-Stalks are able to overcome their natural deficits by being given
high-placed positions. Ah, we are
almost there. Come. It is time."

Orna
led us to the end of an orderly line of Boffs standing in long before a
platform which
was open to the brown sky. I glanced left and right. It looked exactly like a vegetable patch
and I had an almost irresistible urge for a power mower or a laser tiller.
Even an old-fashioned
hoe.
Not surprisingly there
was nothing of the sort handy.

I
mulled over Orna's words as the Boffs took their places. We knew so little about this species
that one would think every bit of information would somehow be useful. But I apparently had mined an entirely
useless vein of sociological ore. There was absolutely no way that Orna's drivel was of any help.

A
hush fell across the assembly and I sensed that The Festival was about to
begin. What alien pagan rituals
awaited us? Torture? Sacrifice?
Gratuitous
violence or nudity?
I hoped
so. The hush deepened as a lone
Boff ascended the stage and moved to its center, then turned outward to face
the crowd.

Killu,
his name was. The planet Boff may
have a long tradition of powerful oratory; the planet Boff may have a legendary
pantheon of compelling, moving speakers, of fabled rhetorical power. If so, Killu would not be among them.

"Honored
Proportionals, welcome to the Festival Of The Day of All!" he began in a
dull and scraping monotone. “I am
only one of many speakers, at the many Festivals on this Majestic Day.
Each Speaker has of
course been selected by the Master VegePuter on the basis of Statistical
Proportionality and not individual merit
. I am therefore the personified Essence
of Proportionality!"

"Ahh-HO,"
exclaimed all the Boffs at once, making me jump. Ned explained that this meant, roughly,
"Amen."

The
Speaker dove into a long and frighteningly dull discourse on the merits of
Statistical Proportionality. He
outlined the positive effects on Boff society – mathematically precise
equality, evenness, fertilizer in every plot, and so on, and even gave us some
history. Statistical
Proportionality had ended the rule of the Stalkists, who had maintained the
now-despised philosophy of Stalkism. Now all had an equal chance, regardless of their clan or the decorations
upon their stalks or their abilities. The Master VegePuter assessed all upon sprouthood, and assigned them to
tasks that ensured the Statistical Proportionality of the masses. A lack of individual freedom was a small
price, and gladly paid, for the utter equality it bought. No other species was so even! So smoothly distributed! So . .
. Bog
-like!

"Ahh-HO!"

Encouraged,
he continued with renewed enthusiasm, which manifested itself in his dull dry
tone and clunky phrases. No other
species, he dully announced, could match the Boffs in intra-species
equality. Someday all would emulate
Boff! After decades of warfare,
strife, and sap-shed, Statistical Proportionality had ushered in a new age of
peace. Progress had also tapered
off, but this was a tiny and irrelevant price. After years of effort, the final goal
was in reach - soon, a perfectly proportional society might be achieved,
emerging whole like a ripe vegetable from the ground. Of course, it would be a constant battle
to maintain it, but so be it. The
goal was worth the struggle.

"Ahh-HO!"
encouraged the crowd. The Speaker
continued.

This
Statistical Proportionality of the Boffs seemed very odd to me - not that I
cared, as far as I was concerned these Boffs were free to paint themselves
orange, hang from trees, and call themselves fruit - but it was the exact
opposite of my own life in its complete sacrifice of all individuality. The Master VegePuter categorized and
pigeon-holed every single one of them, then funneled them into appropriate
places so some giant musty statistical ledger would balance. Well, whatever put the green in their
leaves.

The
Speaker continued unabated for a painfully long time. He had a politician's gift for saying
nothing, over and over and over. It
went on and on, and on, and then on some more.
Ad nauseam, through
nauseam, and finally well beyond nauseam.
I began to fantasize about throwing off
my morphsuit and running down the aisles screaming, letting the snicking
razor-scythes end my agony.

Finally,
suddenly, it ended. The Boffs
finished with a final enthusiastic Ahh-HO!
and
then
rose and began to shuffle off.

My
legs were almost too stiff to manage the Boff creep.

"What
now, honored Orna?" I asked our self-appointed guide.

"What
now?" He seemed stunned by the question, although I suspect he was getting
used to being stunned by my questions. “Now we get drunk!" he said.

CHAPTER
10. BREWHAHA

Getting
drunk, Boff
style, consisted of soaking one's lower
half in huge tubs of a vile, yellow-green fluid. It apparently diffused through the cell
walls and then coursed through whatever hell-spawned vascular systems these
Boffs had.
Straight
to the sap-stream.

Trina
and I were a little concerned. Was
it acid? Poison? Were we in any danger of, say, melting?

Nope. It turned out be
a
sludge
of Boffian mud and odd vegetable matter, which gave it that
attractive color and seductively fecal-style lumpy texture. The active ingredient was, of all
things, a heavy dose of plain old Altarian Sip - which of course has almost the
exact composition of that centuries-old Earth favorite, Coca Cola. When this startling coincidence was
first discovered on Earth it caused quite a shock. That initial shock was followed by a
second, larger jolt. For of course
there was no coincidence at all. Coca Cola, not mathematics or language or metallurgy, was the one
legitimate "gift of the gods," the sole artifact of interstellar
culture bequeathed to humanity by some passing alien philanthropists. Not medicines or star drives or the
secrets of universal peace. Cola.

The
universe was that kind of place.

There
were a variety of vats, with different colors, concentrations, and presumably
flavors. Bundles of Boffs soaked
and twittered as they sampled each, and we imitated them.

"What,"
Trina muttered to me urgently, as we shuffled along, "are we doing?"

"Making
the best of it?" At first I'd
been intrigued by the concept of some good Boffian ale - until, that is, I
found out that it was a kiddie drink, and we didn't get to drink it. I was a slave to my biology, to the
intestinal nature of my imbibing. I
was elementally alimentary.

"But
our mission-"

"No
talking now - just fit in and don't attract attention."

She
crunched forward - the nod of a human in a Boff aspara-suit.

We
wandered among the luminous vats, through swirls of eager Boffs. In order to blend - a painful word for a
vegetable - in, we finally chose an outlying, unpopular pool and waded in. It was almost exactly like wading into a
warm, sticky soup, which of course it almost exactly was.

We
rose and trundled to another, darker-colored vat. Into this one we plunged, and then
several more, as all around us the Boffs got drunk and drunker, which was
followed closely by silly and sillier.

Nearby,
two Boffs traded small slimy packets filled with yellow powder. They saw us watching and huffed away,
offended.

What
in Zot? I wondered.

"You
just witnessed," Ned answered, "high Boff passion. A carnal act."

“Sex?”

"Close. Pollination."

So much for sampling that local pleasure.
Trina and I shared a moment of silent
thanks for our biology and continued our
tour,
trying
to imitate the fumblings of hammered vegetables, pardon the image.

Apparently
we didn't imitate too well. Soon we
were attracting attention for our resistance to Boffian ale.

"Here,
come here," one young
fellow
said, taking me by
the stalk. “Dip," he said,
ushering me generously to a place in an especially putrid vat. This was, I surmised, the local
equivalent to buying someone a drink.

I
settled into the vat. The Boffian
way was to ease in very slowly, millimeter by millimeter, but I was tired of
this approach. It seemed wimpy. I dropped in, knee-deep.

A whisper of awe from the crowd.
I paused, as if sampling the brew
through a million quivering stomata. I tottered, as if it was affecting me. I shivered, as if fighting for
control. Then I gathered myself - a
hard thing to do as a Boff - as if about to go deeper, and the crowd tensed and
fell silent. I waited, building the
tension, relying on a universal Galactic constant: Drinkers respect anyone who
can drink more.

I
plunged in chest-deep.
A lusty roar of approval.
I was led to another vat, where I
plunged in again, and then to another, which I conquered the same way. By now I had attracted a crowd of
worshipers. And oddly enough, I
began feeling pretty good about myself. I was the alpha-dog of this pack. I could soak in sweetened soup all day long, none the worse for
wear. I could go neck-deep.

I
did.

Drunken shouts and cheers.
I was a star.
A legend in the
making.
The sapped Boffs
were trying to out-do each other with toasts to my prowess.

“To an ironclad meristem!"

"To one tough stalk!"

"To the steel-stomataed one!"

I
basked in the praise. Heck, I could
swim under this stuff. Maybe I
should drink a shot or two, just to impress them. Never mind that they lacked mouths. I could even -

Trina,
I noticed, had an odd red spot in the center of her trunk. I instantly calmed. By Mars' dusty red arse no, not a
morph-pack malfunction here. Surrounded
by the enemy. That's what they
were, I reminded myself. These
sodden, schnockered spouts were the enemy.

That,
I realized, was exactly Trina's unspoken point. And it was that which was making her
face a bright red blotch against her green trunk, a Christmas display that only
I could see, thanks to the optical filter in my own suit.

I
calmed down, rose from an industrial-strength vat, and tried to slip away into
the gathering. We - I - had
attracted a Boffload of attention. Behind me, several younger stalks were trying to duplicate my feats. They plunged mid-way into
frighteningly-strong
Cola, rose, then to a stalk splatted
over with wet flopping noises.
You could almost set a watch by them
,
they
were so regular
. Splash. Flop. Splash. Flop. Splash. Flop.

"You
idiot!" Trina hissed.

I
nodded glumly. She was quite right.

"You
said not to attract attention!"

"Point
taken," I whispered. She
didn't have to say any more, but naturally she did.
Quite a bit more, in
fact.

"You
there!" called a voice some time later, finally interrupting her
tirade. A big Boff was tottering
towards us. I could tell Trina was
reaching for her maser but I waved her off. Wait, I whispered.

"Yes,
Fellow Spawn of the Great Seed?" I murmured as drunkenly as I could,
hoping that Ned could handle the inflections convincingly. Either he could or it didn't matter,
given my cola-clobbered audience.

"An
admirable display of soaking!" said the approaching Boff. His top was oddly frazzled, as if he'd
had a bad experience with a thresher. As if a Boff could have any other kind of experience with a thresher.

"I
enjoy the brew, no more and no less than any other Boff, as is fair and
just," I said, or heard myself say. Ned, I knew, had helped me with that one. But this time he seemed to have done
better. At least he wasn't
volunteering me for any unspeakably despicable tasks. And my line seemed to have gone down as
nicely as, well, Boffian ale.

"May
I offer you with a soak of my custom batch?"

It might be rude to refuse
,
I rationalized
. And, I didn't admit, it was tremendous
fun to be so drink-proof. “Of
course, friend."

"Men,"
Trina muttered in disgust. I made a
face at her.

"This
way, this way," said the stalk, and gestured us to follow. We shuffled off with knees bent and legs
aching, towards one of the round green houses.

The
stalk paused, turned, and rustled at us. “Forgive me, pod-mates. My
manners have been drowned in a deep vat! I am Toona."

He
paused. This time I knew what he
was waiting for. On an Agent-style
impulse I decided to take new identities. “I am Broc," I announced, hoping it wasn't a cuss word or personal
insult on Boff. Ned flashed into
being long enough to grimace at me as he translated it. “And this," I gestured at Trina,
"is Coli."

Toona
remained stock-still, as if considering. Or, I thought, as if rooted in place. I fondled my maser more affectionately. For all their oddities, the Boffs were
big, strong, nasty, and malevolent; those green leafy folds hid long daggers of
razor bone that could fillet an offender instantly.

"Oh!"
Trina blurted over our link.

Toona
finally bent sideways - a local nod. “Odd names, but honorable ones, given your talents."

I
sighed with relief and explained that Trina - Coli - could not speak.

"No
doubt she receives her compensations from the state," Toona replied.

"Only
her just due," I said. “As
fairness demands. All for
Statistical Proportionality, and Statistical Proportionality for all."

"That's
the saying," Toona said, and punctuated his comment with a Boffian
shrug.
A
rippling, strangely unsavory motion.

We
stopped beside his green hut, where a smallish bright green pool waited. It was almost fluorescent, with bobbing
chunks of yellow, brown, and dark green floating about.

"Lovely,"
I sighed. Oh god, I thought.

"I
use only the ripest of the nullberries, the foulest of the dung, and the most
virulent of the neurotoxins," said Toona.

Invisible
inside my aspara-suit, my jaw dropped. Ned appeared. “Just
kidding. I made up that last bit. Make nice-nice noises."

"How
marvelous," I said smoothly. Somehow, somewhere, I would get Ned for all this. It would probably be a Pyrrhic victory -
after all, he was in my own head. But right then I hated him enough to cut my own head off just to spite
it. I wondered - if I did it fast
enough, would I be able to savor a moment of appreciation before it was all over?

"Unlikely,"
Ned answered.

"Please,"
Toona said, and gestured.

I
eased into the pit. It felt like
all the others - warm, wet, and sticky. Trina moved towards it, but I rustled a frond to stop her.

"Too
strong," I said, and Ned translated it for Toona. Toona beamed at the compliment.

I
eased in up my waist. Toona was the
first Boff we'd been alone with.

"You
must be dry, my friend!" Toona said. He himself was only knee-deep, which I could see was causing him some
embarrassment. After all, it was
his brew.

"Not
really so strong," I said, and dipped deeper. The foul liquid lapped at my chest. “Though quite nice. A bit weak, but really quite
decent."

Toona
flushed pale red with shock. A pink
tentacle unfurled from somewhere and waved at Trina. “But you said it was too strong
for-"

"That
one," I ad libbed in a faintly haughty tone, "has a processing
disorder. Anything stronger than
plain green water is too much. Don't be offended. This ale
is quite nice, though, for the area."

As
I'd expected, Toona was of course offended.

"Ah,"
he said. His green deepened. I had thrown down the Boffian version of
a gauntlet. “Perhaps you are right,"
he said, and plunged deeper into the pit. He matched me,
then
went deeper, though for
only a moment. The Boff skin is
more permeable in its upper areas - so the deeper they submerge, the bigger
slugs they take.
Straight
to the sap.

He
retreated, somewhat shakily. “My
deepest ever! And it was easy!" He did it again, to demonstrate. Then, just to be absolutely sure that
the first two weren't flukes, he did it one more time.

He
showed us the Boffian version of a silly grin - not pretty - and shivered.
Even less pretty.

Then
he flopped onto the side of the pool with the same wet sound we'd been hearing
all night. I lifted his slimy,
reeking body and propped him up. Beneath a thick leaf-like sheath I glimpsed a gleaming hook of curved
bone, glinting wetly with deadliness. Another reminder that the Boffs weren't just buffoons, they were deadly
buffoons.

"Not
bad at all," Toona slurred.

"I
am curious," I said, sensing that the time was
right,
"is it fair - or proportional - that you have such an excellent pit? Do others?"

Toona
shivered, then began to shake. His
green color paled to a near yellow. He suddenly looked like a
house plant
cursed
with bad light.

"No! You are Testors! How can this be! Testors do not partake. They only ensure the
Proportionality!"

He
assumed the attitude of submission: Fronds tucked under, top stalk wilted.

"Toona,
we are not Testors," I reassured him. Ned whispered in my ear; he constantly monitored nearby conversations,
sieving them for data to cross-reference with the bits and nuggets we already
had. Testors roamed the Boffian
populace, ensuring that the mandates of Statistical Proportionality were met.

"You
are!"