The New Space Opera 2 (34 page)

This time, when I used the drop-shaft, following Shanen in, I didn't bother with even checking if the irised gravity field was working, or touch the ladder. At the bottom of the shaft, Shanen stepped out into the lit area beyond and swore out loud. I swore too when I saw what awaited us.

“Wonderfully realistic, aren't they?” said Ormod, stepping out from behind one of the six nautiloids standing on the floor arrayed about a large glass sphere. One of them had a shell ten feet across, while the other five were about six feet across, fatter with their spirals running slightly off-center, all of their squid eyes and writhing tentacles glistening realistically. One of them, I'm sure, even winked at me.

“Same ones as you loaded with CTD booby traps?” I suggested.

Shanen shook her head and glanced around at me. “These are a tad more sophisticated, I suspect.”

Of course, I had been forgetting that she had been involved in the same conflict as Ormod and
Gnostic
.

“Much more sophisticated,” Ormod agreed. “They wouldn't fool Polity security scanners, but they'll fool most of what the Lild have got, if they're not subjected to too rigorous an inspection.”

“If you could explain…” I suggested.

“Simple, really. Having communicated with the Lild High Family, this ship has been directed to a place in the fleet, while its captain is to take one segment of the ship to the homeworld, where there is now much excitement, for the captain is to deliver the human prisoners he managed to capture.”

Fuck
, I thought, clonks and booms resounding all around us as this segment of
Gnostic
detached from the main body of the ship.

 

Brian spun like a coin in his underwater palace, his children, nautiloids merely half a meter across, orbiting around him. He was ecstatic. There had been some controversy concerning the late return of one of the expeditionary warships, but a check of the records showed it to be one that had gone missing out in the general direction of humanspace. The story the captain of the ship told was a long and complex tale of their encounter with a human warship, battles, escapes, damaged engines that took decades to repair, and finally a sneak raid for intelligence, but with an added bonus.

The captain of this ship must be honored by an audience with Brian and be given a chance to tell his story to the theocratic elite. His adventures would be a salutary lesson to all Lild that would confirm their place in the universe, to dispel any remaining doubts raised by heretics and still harbored by those weak of mind. But most important of all was that added bonus, for he would bring human captives here for all to see—weak, malformed creatures obviously not shaped by God. Air-breathers, creatures no better than the leaf-eaters dwelling on a few homeworld islands. A species to be crushed for their temerity in confronting the Chosen.

Brian spread his tentacles and jetted water to bring his spin to a halt. Playfully batting at his children, he sent them whistling on their way to play in some other part of the palace. This was a joyous occasion, for the captain of that ship had already confirmed some of his own suspicions. The expeditionary ship the humans had destroyed had just been plain unlucky, having arrived at a place where the humans were strongest. This had been a message direct from God to shake the Lild out of their complacency. However, the good news was that these humans occupied just a handful of star systems, more than the worms, and more worlds, but
nothing like what had been claimed by the Low Family heretics aboard that first ship.

Moving over to his screens, Brian stabbed out a tentacle and manipulated the coral controls. Immediately, he obtained a view of the new arrival, one of its segments now detached and heading for homeworld. Within the day, that segment would dock with one of the big military stations, and the captain and his humans would be shuttled down to the planet, down through the Spiral Sea, and finally to here. There was much to do. Brian began summoning High Family theocrats to the palace.

 

I gazed around at this compartment, obviously constructed in what remained of Hold One. So this was what the interior of a Lild warship should look like! We occupied a coraline tube, with interior segmentation, perhaps just like the interior of a length of straightened-out snail shell.

“So what makes you think we're going to have anything to do with this?” I asked.

Ormod parted his mandibles and grinned spikily. “It's that time of your life.” He glanced at Shanen. “Is that not so?”

Shanen nodded agreement. Her face was flushed with excitement, and, poised on the balls of her feet, she looked ready to spring into action at once. I knew that she would do precisely what Ormod wanted, because, twenty or thirty years ago, I would have too. Now, however, I was starting to see downsides to risking my life.

“Perhaps you could explain further?” I inquired.

“There are risks associated with having people like you aboard,” he told us. “So, as I prepared for this, I never wanted any more than two of you at any one time. I knew that it is precisely those of your kind who would be inclined to do something like this—those who care so little for their own existence. Whether two human captives are taken down, or one, is irrelevant. The Lild Theocrat has been told of two captives, so that would be preferable, but one being missing can be easily explained. However, captives are essential because they utterly ensure that the nautiloid that did the capturing would be immediately summoned down to the ocean-floor cave systems.”

“Why not you?” asked Shanen.

That grin again. “With the assistance of a submind of
Gnostic
, I'll be controlling
them
.” He gestured to the six robot nautiloids. “I am also holding some other options in reserve aboard this segment vessel, and
it would be better for me to be here to control them.
Gnostic
itself has enough to do back in its present position, and I would rather it focused all its processing power on maintaining the subterfuge there.” He shrugged. “I'm also a lot more adverse to taking risks than I used to be, back when I was the same age as you and learning to talk to shindles.”

“And this is where I have my problems,” I said. “The shindles will be the salvation of the Lild, you told me. What are they going to do down there? Take control of the theocrats from within and guide the Lild to enlightenment?”

“No.” Ormod seemed to be enjoying my perplexity. “The shindles you have been nurturing for so long possess no intelligence at all. You have to understand that, like my own people, the shindles are genetic engineers, but they are ones who engineer their own bodies to create their organic technology—they actually create that technology
out
of themselves. The worms you fed are just a machine, a tool, a delivery system. I am an accomplished genetic engineer myself, but I could never alone achieve what has been done with them. However, when the organism concerned is cooperating with you at a molecular level, it does get much easier.”

“I was right, then—they're some sort of biological weapon.”

“Yes and no, but I can assure you that not a single Lild will be hurt or in any way incapacitated by them. They are so small and have been engineered precisely so that their hosts will hardly notice penetration, and as they breed and spread from that host to others, there will be no ill effects, rather a slight euphoria and increased production of sex hormones.”

“Stop playing around, Ormod,” said Shanen. “You're boring me.”

The captain nodded an acknowledgment, and got to the point, which was both stunning, amusing, and highly immoral, I think. I agreed to be one of the human captives because, to be frank, he'd already lured me in too far for me to just walk away from this, and he knew that though I was less inclined toward risk than Shanen, I still had not managed to give it up.

 

If the sphere had been made of chain-glass, had been Polity technology, I would have been fine about it, but it had to be Lild technology, and I wondered if it was of a glass strong enough to survive the pressure down at the bottom of the Lild sea. Ormod assured me it was perfectly safe, then went on to add further delightful news.

“You have to strip naked,” he told us.

“Why?” I was hoping at least for a high-spec Polity envirosuit capable of keeping me alive should I end up outside the sphere in Lild seas.

“You're captives,” he explained. “You have been stripped of everything and simply kept alive for display purposes. You'll also be heavily scanned before being taken down into cave systems. The Lild will be highly conscious of security, especially when bringing you before the Theocrat.”

“Bit of a shell game then,” said Shanen, as she stripped off the shapeless ship suit she always wore. I eyed her for a little while, and, finally seeing her naked, thought that maybe, if we survived this, I should perhaps set our relationship on a different course. Certainly noticing my regard as she pulled down her panties, she then flipped them up with one foot, caught them in one hand, and threw them at me.

“Get out of those rags, old man,” she said, and, with a flounce, stepped through the hatch into the sphere. The nerve; she wasn't exactly a youngster!

I took off the slip-ons, the worn old envirosuit trousers, and the T-shirt that had always been my favored dress for shipboard life, and quickly stepped into the sphere beside her. The thick circular-section glass hatch slid around into position on runners, then sank down into its hole like a large bung. We were standing on a two-meter-diameter circular floor over the life-support machinery. I sat down with my back against the glass. Then glanced across to where Ormod was standing with one hand resting against the biggest ersatz-nautiloid, which was now donning some kind of breathing equipment. I realized then that, of course, this was to cleanse the water of the contamination from its lesser brethren.

“What about communication?” I called, wondering if I was going to get any reply.

“Directional sound beam,” Ormod said, his voice almost seeming to issue from inside the sphere. He slapped his hand against the nautiloid and turned away, heading to a big pressure door in the side of this false Lild ship interior.

“Bit of a shell game?” I said to Shanen, really wishing she would sit down because there was simply no room in here for her to prowl around. Abruptly, she did sit, directly facing me, her legs wide apart. Ridiculous. We were about to head into a seriously life-threatening situation, and I was starting to feel horny. I looked to one side, just in time to see water pouring from vents in the walls into the hold—nautiloid atmosphere.

“Shell game,” Shanen repeated. “Three walnut shells and one pea, and
the mark has to guess which shell the pea is under. It's all about distraction and misdirection.”

“Yes, I know,” I said. “The nautiloids will be mainly focused on us, not on their ostensible kin.” I gestured to the robot nautiloids outside. “But you understand the humor?”

She just stared at me, a slight smiling twist to her expression as she gently patted her hand against her inner thigh.

“Shell?” I said. “Shell game?”

“Oh I see,” she said, her present amusement obviously about something else.

As the water level rose over the sphere, it became neutrally buoyant, as did the robot nautiloids. Turning now and reaching down to the floor with their tentacles, two of the smaller ones dragged themselves forward and took hold of handles positioned below the life-support section of the sphere to steady it in the water, just in time, for the whole ship shuddered at that moment.

“We're docked now,” Ormod informed us.

“What are these other options you're holding in reserve?” I asked. This whole operation was poised on a knife edge, and frankly, to go on and butcher a few metaphors, if the shell game did not deceive the squid eye, me and Shanen were fish food.

“Explosive options and particle cannon options. Like, for example, the CTD inside one of the smaller robot nautiloids accompanying you.”

“Ah, you neglected to mention that,” said Shanen.

Current abruptly began moving in the water surrounding us, picking up pieces of detritus, but none that could be identified as of human origin. Our two nautiloid handlers turned the sphere until they were facing a big iris door opening at the end of the tube. Now the real things began to appear, and the water filled with booms and pops and high-pitched squeals. After a moment, I began to feel a tightness at the base of my skull.

“Infrasound,” Shanen observed. “Let's just hope they keep the chatter down to a manageable level.”

We were propelled out of the tunnel, through the big airlock, or, rather, water lock, and into the interior of the space station, our robot nautiloid captain holding proprietary station above us. While we were being moved, Lild came up close, pushing their eyes against the glass, or clinking tentacles divided at the ends into feather fingers against the glass right next to us, just like humans trying to get a reaction from fish in a fish bowl. At one point, in a chamber shaped like a heart, they all drew back,
our handlers depositing the sphere in a large metal cup, and a rhythmic droning ensued, the sphere slowly revolved so we had to shift around inside it to avoid being tumbled about.

“Scanning,” I suggested, as our handlers returned for us.

“Damn,” said Ormod. “Don't these fuckers ever stop digging?”

“Problems?” Shanen inquired.

“Oh, I've got thousands of hours of nautiloid com and language programs running in each of the robots, so there should be no problem about the Lild discovering they're not nautiloids. The problem is the religious questioning. There are those here who want to find out if these newly arrived heroes might be guilty of heretical thought. It's depressing.”

At some point, we ended up inside a ship, and I'm just not sure when the transition was made, only knowing for sure when our handlers secured the sphere with long straps, and we felt the surge of acceleration taking us out into glaring sunlight. Obviously, we were to be on display at all times, for I now saw that we had been positioned inside a clear blister on the side of the vessel. I was glad of that—everyone likes a good clear view.