Ticking Bombs
The conference room had chairs that swiveled. This was most excellent indeed if you sat with your knees tucked up to your chest, you could keep spinning round until you got dizzy. Even better, one whole wall of the room was a great panel showing a blizzard of stars; the panel pretended to be a window, but Festina said it was actually a computer simulation. Either way, when you spun on your chair, you saw stars whizzing past like white streaks… which just goes to show Science is not totally bad, if it can make highly advanced chairs for Personal Amusement.
While I spun, Festina revealed how Royal Hemlock came to be in this region of space. Apparently, it was due to Uclod’s great-great-uncle, an elderly person named Oh-God. Like all Unorrs, Uncle Oh-God was a terrible criminal — one who happened to specialize in an offense called smuggling. (I did not quite understand why smuggling was such an odious crime, nor why humans gave it the cozy name "smuggling," which sounds like a pleasant bed game, not a felony at all; but my head was reeling in circles, so that is my excuse for not following the logic.).
This Oh-God had not always been a professional lawbreaker — in younger days, he belonged to the Technocracy’s Explorer Corps, though he was not human.[8] Ex-Explorer Oh-God still kept in touch with his friends from the corps… which is why he contacted Festina when he heard the Unorrs intended to release Admiral York’s secret files. He had warned Festina that trouble was brewing — there was no telling what the High Council might do to prevent the full truth from coming out. Therefore, Oh-God advised Festina to protect herself.
[8] — Apparently, the Technocracy welcomed Freeps, Tye-Tyes, and other Divian subspecies as citizens. Many Divian planets had even joined the Technocracy as Fringe Worlds… which I believe means they served as Faithful Sidekicks to real worlds.
As soon as my friend received Oh-God’s message, she realized the Admiralty would try to erase all signs of what had happened on Melaquin. Accordingly, she raced for my planet to preserve what evidence she could. Festina did not know that four navy ships had several hours headstart on her; nor had Oh-God mentioned that his great-grandnephew Uclod had set out for Melaquin even earlier. Therefore, Festina hastened through The Void, thinking she had a chance of reaching Oarville first… and she would have flown all the way to my planet, if her ship had not detected the brief transmission I made before the Shaddill jammed our communications. Since it was not far off her intended route, she ordered her crew to check the source of the signal. That is how my Faithful Sidekick found me in the infinite depths of space; and I was only a tiny bit angered she had not been searching for me, and had never visited Melaquin in the years since I supposedly died.
"But the planet was off-limits," Festina protested — as if that were sufficient excuse for not coming to weep on my grave. "I’d forced the Admiralty to agree no one would ever land on Melaquin again: not the council, not me, not anyone associated with the Technocracy. It was the best way to keep the League of Peoples happy. That’s why nobody had cleaned up the evidence before; the top admirals didn’t want to risk upsetting the League. Now, of course, with their asses on the line, the council will do anything to stay out of jail… which means they’re like rabid dogs, biting anyone who gets in the way."
"Including us?" Uclod asked.
"You, me, and their own dear mothers… not to mention," Festina raised her voice slightly, "anyone who’s managed to hack into the ship’s internal intercoms to eavesdrop on this meeting."
"You think we are being spied upon?" I whispered.
"On this damned ship, it’s a certainty. The ship-soul computers are constantly listening… which means other ears could be listening too."
Uclod snorted. "Hell of a security system you got if any Tom, Dick, or Harry can hack into your hardware."
Festina glared at him. "The fleet’s computer security is nigh well unbeatable against outsiders; the problems only come from insider spies. The spies work for admirals, and admirals all have backdoor access codes that circumvent our regular safeguards." Her fierce expression melted to a rueful smile. "Basically, this meeting is shielded against everyone except the bastards who are most likely to eavesdrop on us. And if anybody is eavesdropping," she said, raising her voice again, "you now know too much for the High Council’s comfort. If I happened to be a spy, I’d think long and hard about my own personal safety. If, for example, I received a secret order like, ‘Sabotage Royal Hemlock,’ I’d wonder what would happen if I obeyed. Suppose I disabled the Hemlock so it could be captured by the council. Would the Admiralty really reward me for devotion to duty? Or would I end up with everyone else on a thousand-year sleep-ship to Andromeda?"
She let the question hang in the air. Finally, it was the mook sergeant who broke the silence. "The admiral realizes," he said, "how unlikely it is that every spy on board will accept your reasoning?"
"Certainly," Festina told him. "There’ll always be idiots who dream of big payoffs, even when they know they’re working for treacherous bastards. But I’m hoping there’ll also be sensible people to stop them.People who’d rather not fall off the map, thank you very much, and who’ll blow the whistle to me or the captain."
"The admiral is an optimist," Sergeant Mook said, though he was smiling behind his visor.
"The admiral likes people to know where their best interests lie," Festina replied. "She also takes taking every possible precaution. For example, Sergeant, I would never tell you your job, but do we really need this huge contingent to guard unarmed civilians? Aren’t there better places your people could be?"
The sergeant’s eyes flickered. "Does the admiral vouch for these guests being trustworthy?"
Festina looked at us a moment. Uclod, Lajoolie, Nimbus, and me, then laughed out loud. "Of course not. All four are ticking bombs, for Christ’s sake. But compared to some members of the crew, these folks are absolute saints. Why not leave a few of your guards here, and send the rest to… oh, wherever you think a not-too-smart spy might stir up mischief."
The sergeant said nothing for a count of three, then nodded. "The admiral’s suggestion is well taken." He tapped a button on his wrist, then began speaking rapidly — which is to say his lips moved at high speed, though I could not hear a sound coming out of his helmet. I assume his words were transmitted privately to the troops around him… because in a few seconds, all but two of the mooks saluted and clattered out of the room. As for the sergeant himself, he and the two remaining Security persons took up a position in front of the door: all three of them in exactly the same stance, hands folded below their waists, feet slightly spread apart.
"Lovely," Festina said, turning back to the rest of us. "Now let’s get caught up, shall we? What’s been going on?"
When I told her my story, she screamed.
The Gawker
Festina did not scream loudly, nor in one continuous howl… but at key points in my tale, she yelped or winced or muttered most engaging profanities. She was not at all happy about the Shaddill hovering over Melaquin; she became all growls when I told how they shot us with a sinister unconsciousness beam; she was eyes-wide astonished when I described flying into the sun with no ill effects; but her most violent reaction came at the end, when Uclod rudely took it upon himself to fill in the "gaps" of my narrative.
I had chosen not to provide over-many details about my so-called death and the four years thereafter — if Festina learned I had lain in one place for month after month, she might mistakenly think my brain was becoming Tired. Furthermore, I omitted all mention of the Pollisand, including the description I got from the woman in the tower. Unfortunately, I had already told Uclod what the woman said; therefore, he cheekily thrust himself forward to reveal that information to my friend. This caused Festina to splutter with oaths most vile.
"A big white thing like a headless animal?" she asked.
"That’s what we were told," Uclod answered. "Right, Oar?"
"Yes," said I, most reluctantly. "Is this creature known to you, Festina?"
One of the mooks by the door laughed under his breath. The sergeant glared at him. So did Festina. Without taking her eyes off the mook, my friend said, "He’s known, all right."
"Who is he?" Uclod asked.
Festina did not answer right away; instead, she pressed a button on the conference table’s surface. A section of table in front of her rolled open to reveal a vidscreen and keypad. She tapped on the keys a moment, then turned to face the false window that had been showing all those pleasant stars.
The window had changed. Now it displayed a picture of a beast I recognized all too well — a headless white rhinoceros with eyes down his throat. "That," Festina said, "is an alien who calls himself the Pollisand. Possibly the most frightening creature in the entire galaxy."
Cleverly feigning ignorance, I said, "This Pollisand is a wicked villain?"
"No. Not in the usual sense. But if the Pollisand is in the area, consider me officially terrified."
"Why?"
"Because he’s a gawker. A disaster junkie. Someone who loves showing up at a certain kind of catastrophe."
Festina pressed more keys. The picture screen shifted to a different view of the Pollisand: this time standing inside a poorly lit mom filled with machinery. In front of him sat a human woman wearing a baggy green outfit of the type called overalls. She was not looking at the Pollisand, but he was definitely looking at her.
"This," said Festina, "shows the Pollisand’s first appearance in human space. The year 2108 on the planet Meecks, in the control room of the Debba colony’s fusion reactor. Surveillance cameras recorded this headless white alien materializing behind the command console at the very moment a technician finished entering a manual override on a safety mechanism that was supposedly malfunctioning."
Festina rose from the table, strode to the display screen, and glared at the baggy green woman. "The techie was an utter numskull. She’d misdiagnosed the problem, botched the solution, disabled a warning alarm so no one would know she’d screwed up… then kept hot-dogging with moronic attempts to stop cascading system failures throughout the installation. Result? Total reactor meltdown. Not a big boom, but the entire power generation system got slagged. Considering the outside temperature was ninety degrees below zero, it looked like the colony would freeze to death in a matter of days.
"And that’s when the Pollisand showed up." Festina pointed to Mr. Headless Asshole on the display screen. "Right in the control room, at the precise moment meltdown became inevitable. He pranced up to the woman and began to ask questions. Why did you do that? Why didn’t you call for help? Why did you ignore the expert systems? Is there some disturbance in your personal life that’s rendered you mentally incompetent? It’s hard to feel sorry for a techie so stupid, but it must be rough getting badgered with questions right after you’ve doomed a hundred thousand people to become icicles."
"Did the colony die?" Lajoolie asked softly.
"The colony did; the colonists didn’t. They sent out an SOS and got evacuated before they came downwith terminal frostbite. Unlucky for them, they were picked up by a Cashling outreach crusade… which means nothing to you, Oar, but suffice it to say, the colonists became indentured servants for ten years to pay off the cost of their rescue. After a decade of grunt work and listening to Cashling sermons on Godly Greed, those people must have wished they’d frozen."
Uclod wore a large frown. "You’re sure the reactors melted because of that technician?"
Festina nodded. "There was a thorough investigation. Why do you ask?"
"Because it’s awful damned convenient this Pollisand just happened to be in the right place at the right time."
"Isn’t it though," Festina agreed. "And since his first visit, he’s showed up in human space over and over again: always right after someone has made a disastrous mistake."
She moved back to the table and reached toward the keypad… then withdrew her hand. "I’ve got pictures of other Pollisand sightings, but they aren’t pretty. He’s particularly drawn to the Explorer Corps. Whenever someone has body parts bitten off, gets impaled on a poisonous plant thorn, or steps in something that explodes, there’s a chance the Pollisand will appear out of nowhere and ask, Why did you think that was safe? Why didn’t you walk around? What was going through your head… besides that big wooden spike?"
Uclod snorted. "You’re sure he isn’t to blame for these so-called accidents?"
"No one’s sure of anything. But we’ve never found a shred of evidence that he sets up these scenarios himself. It’s always people going about their normal business, making their own catastrophic decisions."
"Could he not have a Sinister Ray," I said, "that compels one to commit foolish deeds?"
"Theories like that have been suggested," Festina replied, "especially by the people caught acting like imbeciles. But investigations don’t bear it out; almost always, these folks have a history of similar stunts before the one that really cooks their goose. Coworkers are likely to say, It’s exactly the kind of stupidity we expect from that idiot… which begs the question why the idiot didn’t get fired long before, but incompetence is the norm in our beloved Technocracy." She turned back toward the screen and scowled at the baggy-suited woman.
"So if the Pollisand doesn’t cause these accidents," Uclod said, "how can he tell they’ll happen? You think he can see the future? He knows someone’s going to mess up, and gets a kick out of calling you a dope?"
"He doesn’t call people dopes," Festina said. "I could play you recordings of his conversations with Explorers — Explorers who’ve just got themselves or their partners maimed through bonehead mistakes. Judging by the Pollisand’s tone of voice, he truly wants to know why they made such bad choices: like he’s trying to get some insight into the human decision-making process."
"You mean he can tell in advance when someone’s going to flip the wrong switch," Uclod said, "but he has no idea why? What is he, some sort of time traveler? When he hears that someone screwed the pooch, he goes back into the past so he can find out the details?"
"That’s one possible explanation," Festina replied. "We’ve never got solid evidence of an alien practicing time travel… but the top echelons of the League do so many hard-to-believe things, why not that too?" "You think the Pollisand belongs to the top echelons of the League?" Nimbus asked. The cloud man had clustered himself around one of the other swivel chairs at the conference table, but he was not making it spin or anything. He had placed his baby on the seat and was taking great care not to jostle the child… even though a small Zarett person might enjoy a little controlled rotation under an adult’s cautious guidance.
Festina told Nimbus, "Whether or not the Pollisand ranks high in the League, he definitely has technology better than our own. For one thing, he always appears out of nowhere: teleportation, or maybe turning off an invisibility field."
"Perhaps he is only projecting his appearance," I suggested. "Perhaps he is actually far away on some planet known for its lava pools, and he simply sends out images of himself to ask these questions."
Festina looked at me most curiously… but Uclod waved away my words as if they had so bearing on the subject "What if there’s more than one Pollisand?" he asked "Maybe there are hundreds of these bozos wandering around, just waiting for people to get in trouble.
"Another valid possibility," Festina said, "and I could give you a dozen more. Navy Intelligence has plenty of hypotheses… but no real facts except that this headless white alien occasionally shows up at the precise moment of a disaster and begins to ask infuriating questions. Since the aliens always look and act the same, our NAVINT folks are inclined to regard the Pollisand as the only one of his kind; but who knows?"
Uclod made an ungenteel noise in his throat. "And your gurus think this Pollisand ranks high is the League? A super-evolved creature should have better things to do than thumbing his nose at people who screw up."
Festina shrugged. "In Explorer Academy, we studied all the advanced species known to humanity… and we came to the conclusion no one knows why any of them do what they do. Hell, in most cases, we have no idea how up-ladder aliens spend their time. Do they sit around contemplating their navels? Indulge in arts and sciences we don’t comprehend? Project themselves into higher dimensions and play chess with otherworldly powers?"
"If I were an otherworldly power," I said, "I would not play chess. It is a most boring game. Except for the little horses. If I were an otherworldly power, I would create a new game that only had the little horses. And the winner would receive excellent prizes, instead of that nonsense about the thrill of intellectual achievement."
Uclod gave me a look. "Try to stay focused, missy. Real live aliens don’t play board games with fictitious deities. Presumably," he said, turning back to Festina, "real live aliens have to eat and reproduce and gather raw materials for whatever gadgets they manufacture…"
"Don’t be too sure," Festina said. "From what we’ve seen of highly advanced races, they engineer themselves to transcend mundane needs. At the Academy, one of our professors theorized that to get past a certain point of evolution, species have to jettison almost all their natural drives. You can’t go forward till you dump the primitive crap that’s holding you back. And not just stuff like eating and breeding, but mental attitudes too. Territoriality, for example — humans, Divians, and other races of our approximate intelligence level all have at least some expansionist tendencies. We build colonies, terraform planets, try to keep our economies growing. But species above us on the ladder aren’t interested in such things. None of them has any known planetary holdings. They just… well, have you heard of LasFuentes?"
She was looking at Uclod. When he shook his head, she went back to the keypad and typed for several seconds. The display screen changed to show a bright desert landscape of hard-baked dirt, punctuated in places with scrubby weeds that looked like tiny orange balloons glued onto twigs. A white-surfaced road ran diagonally across the picture — a road pocked with holes where the pavement had turned to rubble. It looked most ancient and crumbling, stretching toward the horizon… until it suddenly disappeared over the edge of a large drop-off.
The view zoomed forward, closer and closer to the drop-off. Soon I could see this was the lip of a great crater, a huge round bowl sunk deep into the land. I had heard of such craters being made from the impact of cosmic objects hurtling out of the sky… but the one on the screen looked more like an artificial feature dug by an alien culture. The road continued forward down the side of the crater, fading now and then due to erosion but always resuming again, traveling in a straight line until it reached the bottom of the bowl.
There, in the center of the crater, stood a simple fountain made of bleached gray stone. No water bubbled from the central pillar and the basin was dry as salt; however, I could tell that long ago this fountain must have gushed as cheerfully as the two fountains in the central plaza of my home village.
"This," Festina said, "is the legacy of Las Fuentes — a race who once occupied most of the worlds now belonging to the Technocracy… including my home planet of Agua." She waved at the screen. "This particular fountain is in an Aguan high desert called Otavalo. There are other fountains all over my world: in rainforests, in the mountains, on the prairies, even a few underwater. Always at the bottom of great whopping craters dozens of klicks across, with one or more access highways leading in. And the fountains aren’t just on Agua; they’re on every planet Las Fuentes colonized."
"Religious shrines?" Uclod asked.
"Perhaps. People on Agua thought so — my nana used to take me to one in the deep jungle so we could light candles." She paused for a moment staring off into the distance; then she shook her head briskly and went on. "Anyhow, Las Fuentes dominated ninety-two star systems till five thousand years ago: a total population estimated to be at least a hundred billion.
"Then," she continued, "they just gave it all up. Peacefully, as far as we can tell — no signs of war or other disaster. And Las Fuentes are still around nowadays… or at least a race that claims to be the successors of the crater makers."
She pressed a key and the screen changed once more this time showing the interior of a room that was plushly appointed according to human standards. By this, I mean it had a number of big fat chairs that might have been very handsome if they had been clear instead of an ugly opaque brown. There were also grumpy paintings of humans on the walls, surrounded by tall shelves of objects that were probably books: the ancient type of book that always tells the same story and has no push-buttons. The scene looked most opulent indeed… except that one of the chairs was filled with a mound of vivid purple jelly.
Festina pointed to the jelly, "That’s what Las Fuentes look like today."
I stared. It did not look like a living creature at all; it had no structure, no orifices, no notable physical features — nothing but purple goo coagulated on the seat of the chair and heaped halfway up the backrest. If placed on the floor, the pile might reach to my knees.
"This creature does not look advanced," I said. "It is nothing but ooze."
"But smart ooze," Festina replied. "The picture was taken in the study of Admiral Vincence, current president of the navy’s High Council. Vincence found the ooze one night when he got home; it had somehow sneaked past the most sophisticated security system our navy ever assembled. The jelly introduced itself as official ambassador of Las Fuentes, gave a comm number where it could be reached, then disappeared — sank straight through a leather armchair and into the floor."
"Were the Fuentes purple jelly before?" Lajoolie asked softly. "When they were building the fountains?"
"Not according to archaeologists. Las Fuentes were big into cremation, so we don’t have any physical remains… but we’ve found a few tools, broken furniture, things that suggest they had conventional bodies. Flesh, blood, bone, the usual. When you ask the jelly ambassador what caused the big change, he’ll only say, We grew up."
Festina turned to look at the purple blob picture once more. "So now," she said, "Las Fuentes don’t have a home planet that we know of… just a single ambassador on New Earth. He won’t talk about trade, refuses to advise on scientific matters, and ignores requests for cultural exchange. Once in a while, he arbitrates disputes or clarifies the League of Peoples’ views on tricky legal questions — what we have to do to stay sentient — but he never seems to want anything from us. He isn’t interested in our labor, our data, our resources, our manufactured goods… so whatever goals jelly-people have, we humans are too primitive to be useful."
"And yet," Nimbus said pensively, "Las Fuentes maintain that embassy."
"I’ll bet they want to keep an eye on us savages," Uclod answered. "We lesser species may not be smart enough to contribute to these guys’ lofty existence, but there are probably ways we could screw them up. If we suddenly invented a way to mutate ourselves into the same kind of goo, Las Fuentes would damned sure want to know. Overnight, we’d change from harmless yahoos into direct competitors."
"That’s one obvious explanation," Festina agreed, "but it’s never smart to assume aliens think the way we do. Maybe there’s no such thing as ‘competition’ once you reach a certain stage of development. Maybe it’s nothing but sweetness and light: one big happy melting pot of cosmic love."
We all stared at her.
"Hey," she said, "it was a joke."
Plans Within Plans
"So what’ve we got?" Uclod said "The Pollisand spends most of his time badgering people about being idiots. But four years ago he broke with his usual modus operandi: he showed up on Melaquin, and instead of asking Oar why she jumped out a window, he simply patched her up."
"Is that unusual for him?" Nimbus asked Festina. "Providing medical aid in a crisis?"
"He’s never done anything like it," she replied, "and he’s been present at plenty of crises. I don’t think he’s ever showed up at a lethal accident — he seems to avoid fatalities. But he’s watched plenty of people crippled or bleeding, and he’s never tried to help a single one."
"All right," Uclod said, "so the Pollisand broke his pattern for Oar. We’ve also got the Shaddill getting upset when they find out Oar’s not dead. They say someone’s interfered with their plan. Obviously, the person who interfered was the Pollisand; he’s the one who took Oar away and brought her back to life. Do you think the Pollisand did that deliberately to screw the Shaddill?"
"Who knows?" Festina answered… but I thought I did know. The Pollisand told me he wanted to wipe the Shaddill off the face of the universe; if ministering to my health was a way to foil some Shaddill-ish scheme, he would gladly do so.
"I believe," I said, "that he helped me as a means of frustrating the Shaddill… though I do not know what role I play in all this."
Festina was looking in my direction, but her gaze was distant. "If the Shaddill thought you had died," she said, "and they still came to Melaquin… they might have been interested in your corpse." A light sparked in her eyes. "And why did they show up when they did? They must have known the navy was on its way to clean up evidence. Either the Shaddill wanted to examine your body before the navy took it away…"
"Or," Uclod finished her thought, "they wanted to remove missy’s body so the navy couldn’t check it out."
Festina nodded. "Both possibilities suggest there’s something special about you, Oar. Something that sets you apart from the rest of your people."
"Of course. I am more clever and beautiful."
Festina gave me a look. "It would be nice to find something even more distinctive."
"They thought she was dead," Lajoolie said softly. "That’s quite a distinction in itself." She looked at me with her mild eyes. "Isn’t it almost impossible for your people to die? You don’t age, you don’t get sick, you can’t drown or suffocate… short of falling off an eighty-story building, not much can hurt you. And if the Shaddill wanted a glass cadaver for some purpose, they couldn’t just kill one of your people; the League would never let them get away with outright murder."
Uclod smiled at Lajoolie. "My darling wife has put her finger on a fascinating possibility. If the Shaddill wanted your body to dissect or something…"
His voice trailed off as he caught sight of Festina shaking her head. "The Shaddill wouldn’t need to dissect Oar. They designed her race; they built her whole genome down to the last little nucleotide. What could a dissection tell them they don’t already know?"
"Perhaps," said Nimbus, "we should perform our own dissection to find out."
I glared at him and swept my fist through the place where his nose would have been.
"Settle down," Festina told me. "I assume Nimbus means we should give you a medical exam. See if there’s anything unusual."
"There is nothing unusual about me," I protested. "I am more healthy than anyone else on this ship."
"Then you’re unusual, aren’t you?" my friend said with a smile. "Anyway, I want you examined. If nothing else, we should know what the Pollisand did to you. Did he just fix your injuries, or did he do something else while he had you on the operating table?"
"What might he have done?" I asked.
"I don’t know. That’s why we’re going to check you out."
"I do not wish to be checked out," I grumbled. "Such treatment is only for damaged people."
"Humor me," Festina said, "it’s important. Your friends can keep you company… unless you’d rather be examined in private?"
"No," I told her. "I have had a good deal of privacy in my life. If you think I enjoy being alone, you are much mistaken."
Festina’s breath caught in her throat. She let it out slowly. "I’m sorry. But you aren’t alone now, Oar. I promise." She gave a small smile. "Go to sick bay, all of you, the sergeant will show the way." She glanced toward the door; the mook man nodded. Festina turned back to me, "I’ll join you as soon as I can, but I have to look into a few things. Okay?"
"Okay," I answered, using her own vernacular. Then, most bravely, I asked, "Do doctors hurt?"
"If he hurts you," Festina said, "you have my permission to punch him in the nose."
This made me very happy… but I still looked back with a lump in my throat as I went out the door.
Festina sat at the table, her eyes staring off into space as if she were thinking very great thoughts. I decided it would be pleasant to think great thoughts of my own; but the only thing in my mind was that I was walking away from my friend.