Bill 2 - on the Planet of Robot Slaves (10 page)

“The fiends are torturing her!”

“I wouldn't know about that. But she is unmoving. Asleep or dead.”

“Let's go!”

They went. Walking in silent apprehension. Which is all right as long as you wipe your shoes off afterwards.

“That is the door. Instead of blowing it down I will use a silent lockpick to open it.”

“Yes, great, do it!”

There was a small metallic click and the door swung wide. They hurried through and Mark I closed and sealed it behind them. Bill gasped as he saw the silent figure, slumped, hanging from the chains.

“She's dead!” Bill groaned.

“No I'm not,” Meta said, opening her eyes and yawning. “But I'm damned uncomfortable. I'm very glad to see you, Bill darling. Can you do something about these chains?”

Even as she spoke the Fighting Devil had scuttled to her side and with rapid snips of a cable cutter had set her free.

“Meta, this is Mark I Fighting Devil.”

“A pleasure to meet you, Mark. Thanks for leading my shipmate here. And what plans do you have for the future?”

“A diversion has been arranged, a different escape route opened up. But, hist, wait a moment — I sense movement in the ceiling!”

It moved over, looked up — and was struck by an orange bolt of lightning that flared down from above. The Fighting Devil glowed all over and rattled in every joint. Smoke began oozing out of its vents. Then it slumped down, silent and motionless. The Fighting Devil had fought its last fight.

A tiny door opened in the far wall and a Chinger stepped through. Bill grabbed out his blaster.

“Don't try it, Bill. Gee — it would be suicide. There are a hundred guns trained on you.” To prove his words more tiny doors opened and gun-toting Chingers pointed their muzzles out at him. And the muzzles of their guns as well.

“Put it down, slow and careful, and no one will get hurt.”

“Do it, Bill,” Meta said. “You got no choice. I'm sorry I got you into this mess.”

He hesitated, wanting to go down fighting. Wanting to stay alive as well. But he who hesitates is lost he discovered when the nearest Chinger jumped into the air and grabbed the blaster, then tossed it to one of his companions. And one of his fingernails as well. He sucked at the finger and felt sorry for himself.

“Gee —” the Chinger said. “Now we can relax and sit back and talk, just like old times. Right, Bill.”

“Your voice is familiar...” He gaped. “But how could it be. I don't know any Chingers. Or maybe just one of them — but he's dead. Eager Beager!”

“Gee — that's me, in the green flesh, old buddy.”

“You can't be! I saw you eaten by a giant snake on Veniola, the fog-shrouded planet that creeps in orbit around the ghoulish green star Hernia —”

“Spare me the details, I've been there. If your memory had not been destroyed by years of alcohol and military service, you would have remembered that we Chingers come from a dense, heavy planet. I just gave the snake indigestion, opened its jaw, and even broke a tooth off it getting out.”

Meta was sidling away, looking from one to the other of them, shock and horror on her features.

“Bill — you know a Chinger! You must be a spy...”

“Gee — you better relax, lady. It's a long story so I'll shorten it. Many years ago when our mutual friend was a recruit I was one too. A spy. Bill discovered this and turned me in.”

“You couldn't be a spy! You would be recognized.”

“A keen observation. I was inside a dummy human robot which the other dummies never noticed. And I have been meaning to ask, Bill, gee — how did you find out about me?”

“Your camera-watch went click.” Bill figured that after all the time that had passed, telling the Chinger now wouldn't matter. And it might help to at least appear to cooperate.

“Gee — I thought it might be that. The new model spy-watch doesn't click, you will be cheered to know. Now, to pick up where we left off that hot, humid day so long ago. In our talk you said that your race, homo sapiens, likes war. Do you still believe that?”

“Yes. Only more so.”

“And you, dear lady, member of the gentler sex in uniform. Why do you fight this war?”

“Because I was drafted.”

“Agreed. But if you were not drafted — would you have enlisted?”

“Maybe. To make the galaxy safe for humans. After all, you filthy Chingers started this war and want to kill and eat us all.”

“The last is a physical impossibility — our metabolisms are too different. But the truth is that we are a peaceful race and loathe violence. It is really you humans who make war on us.”

“Do you expect me to believe that old bush-wah?” she sniffed.

“Believe it,” Bill said. “It's true. The whole war is a fake to keep the military in power and the factory wheels turning.”

“Gee — the same can be said of all wars down through human history. I have become a keen student of humanity since I saw you last, Bill. So — gee — would you help me, both of you?”

“Death to Chingers,” Meta muttered.

“Help you do what?”

“End the war, of course. You would like that, wouldn't you?”

“I'm sort of used to the job now —”

“Gee — Bill — you are being a dummy! I don't mean you personally. I mean your entire society. Wouldn't it be nice to free your fellow men, and women, from the burden of warfare once and for all? End all the death, mutilation and destruction. How about that?”

“You would put a lot of people out of work.”

“I can't believe that I'm hearing this. What about you, Meta? You look like a sensible girl. Do you really believe that unending war is the only future for mankind?”

“I never really thought about it. But we really have to protect ourselves.”

“Against what — whom, or which? Let me tell you about recent history — because I was involved in it myself. Settle down on the nice stone floor and listen.”

The Chinger leaned back comfortably on his tail, tucked his thumbs into his marsupial pouch, and told them —

THE CHINGER'S TALE

My youth was spent in happy study at the university, whose name you could not pronounce, on the Chinger home planet, which you will never find. In those halcyon days of yore, BH, Before Humans, life was an idyllic pleasure. I graduated head of my class and my family was so proud. They held a grand party and all my siblings came, pouch-brothers we call them. All males of course, for ours was a male family. There are female families, neuter families and stupidaggine families — but I digress. This is not the time to talk about sex.

After the banquet of grilled snake's legs, my mouth waters at the memory, my old teacher took me aside — may his aged gray scales be ever blessed! — and asked me what I intended to do with my life. I told him I had considered teaching, but he cozened me against it. “Get out into the world, young lizard,” he said. “Or better the worlds.” And he was right. I opened my first exopology text and I knew that this was what I wanted to devote my life to. The study of alien life forms. I got a doctorate for my paper on Veniolan swamp denizens and went on for my masters in Cacabene dung roller beetles. Life was indeed sweet. It was then we had our first contact with homo sapiens.

This was to be my specialty, I felt it in my bones. We had a small settlement on the planet Cacabene, built around a heavy-metal mine. I knew it well from my years of study in the surrounding swamps. When the FTL message was received that a strange spaceship had been detected landing on the planet I hurried to the town hall just as fast as I could swim. I volunteered to lead the exopological contact team — and I was selected. Stopping only long enough to pack my Easilearner Machine Translator, often abbreviated to EMT, I grabbed the first spacer going in the right direction.

I had a good team, highly skilled and eager Chingers. No contact had been made with the space travelers. The locals were awaiting our arrival, but they were being kept under close scrutiny. We joined the observation team in their jungle camp. It was then that I had my first intimation that these aliens were different from all other life forms ever contacted before.

“Bgr,” the head observer said, “these aliens are something else again.” He called me Bgr because that is my name, or why I adapted the nom de guerre Eager Beager that you know me by. But I digress. I was warned to be very careful with my first contact since the aliens had, up to that moment, killed eighty-one thousand creatures from forty different species. Most interesting, since exopologists only work with live specimens and save dissection for those which die of natural causes. This was death on a massive scale and I was thrilled at the novelty of this new species to study.

Having been warned, I approached the alien encampment with extreme caution, swimming underwater through the swamp with my EMT sealed in a plastic bag. When I was close enough to hear voices I planted the EMT, turned it on and split. I retrieved the recordings the following night and discovered that the machine had worked perfectly. Much conversation had been recorded. There was a growing vocabulary list and a preliminary linguistic analysis. I memorized everything, chuckling at witticisms like “blow it out your barracks bag” and “your mother wears GI shoes.” Within a fortnight the EMT had done its job and I felt prepared to carry on a coherent conversation with the space travelers. The next morning I eagerly awaited sunrise outside the electric barrier that ringed the encampment. When they emerged I addressed them.

“Greetings, O strangers who have crossed the trackless wastes of space, greetings.”

I then ducked back behind the trunk of a large tree as the expected bullets, shells and blaster blasts blasted all around me. When the firing had died down I tried again.

“I come in peace. I am unarmed. I am the representative of an intelligent race who anticipates friendly contact with another intelligent race.”

There was less firing this time. When I repeated the aims of my friendly mission in greater detail, a few more times, the firing finally stopped and a voice called out to me.

“Come out with your hands in the air — and don't try anything funny.”

“I cannot raise my hands into the air, since I have none, but I will raise my paws instead. All four of them since I have four arms. Hold your fire, dear friends from space, for here I come.”

As you can imagine it was a traumatic moment, for me if not for them, for there could have been a trigger-happy microcephalic who might blast me. But science is not without risks! But opposed to my personal safety was this opportunity to be part of the first contact between intelligent races. I stepped out proudly — and dropped flat as a bullet whistled by.

“Take that trigger-happy microcephalic's gun away!” a voice shouted. “Okay, lizzy, you're safe now.”

Arms high I stepped forward proudly and, as they say, the rest is history. When they saw how small I was curiosity replaced fear, for give mankind that, yours is a curious and intelligent race. They all got their cameras out and took pictures, then the leader wanted pictures of him and me shaking hands. Which we did, though unhappily I squeezed too hard and broke three of his fingers. I was most apologetic, explained about being from a 10G planet and all, and he forgave me as they bandaged him up.

After that it was clear sailing for quite a while. We invited them to our settlement and showed them our technology and such. They took plenty of notes and pictures, but gave us very little in return other than diagrams of electric eggbeaters, power operated shoehorns, pencil sharpeners and such. Everything else was what they called a military secret. Since both terms were new to us we were very interested as you can imagine. Soon after this they invited us to appoint a delegation to return with them to their home world. We were thrilled at this, I more than ever when I was officially appointed as ambassador. I selected a staff and we joined them in their spacer. By this time we knew that our metabolisms were completely different so, in addition to our communication and recording equipment, we packed a considerable supply of dehydrated beetles and other rations.

What a wonderful experience! We discovered that once the trip had begun they were more outgoing. They answered all our questions, even the most technical ones, and were grateful when our physicist pointed out ways of improving their FTL communication equipment. I was in fourteenth heaven as I made the notes for my book, the first exopological text to be written about homo sapiens. The commander of the spacer, a Captain Queeg, offered to help me in any way he could. I decided an interview in depth should begin at once. Armed with a recorder, notebook and stylobiro I went to his quarters.

“This is pleasure of greatest importance, Captain Queeg,” I told him. “I know scarcely how to begin.”

“Why not start by calling me Charley, which is my first name. And you?”

“We have but one name and mine is Bgr.”

“Bugger?”

“Beager is closer. Two words you have often used intrigue me. What is a secret?”

“Something you don't tell anyone. You keep it secret.”

“If a fact is kept secret then how can communication and learning be accomplished?”

“Easily — on other matters. But secrets are kept secret.”

My stylobiro flew across my pad. “Fascinating. Now the other word, often linked with 'secret'. Military.”

He frowned. “Why do you want to know this?”

“Why? Why not. Many things we asked about we were told were military secrets. Both concepts are unknown to us.”

“You don't keep secrets?”

“We see no reason to. Knowledge is public and meant to be shared by all.”

“But you got armies and navies don't you?”

Oh how my stylobiro flew. “Negative, negative. Meaning of terms unknown.”

“Let me explain then. Armies and navies are large groups of people with weapons who defend those nearest and dearest against the vicious enemy.”

“But what is enemy,” I asked, getting into deeper water all the time.

“Enemies are other groups, countries, people who want to take your country, land, freedom away. And kill you.”

“But who would want to do that?”

“The enemy,” he said grimly.

I was at a loss for words, a rare thing for a Chinger of education. I finally managed to control my spinning thoughts and speak. “But we have no enemies. All Chingers of course live in peace with other Chingers, since to consider injuring another means that another could consider injuring you and that is nonviable. And, in our voyages to other worlds, we have never met an intelligent species before. We study the species we meet, aid them if we can, but have found no enemies so far.” At that point a sudden thought devastated me and I could barely speak, barely choke out the words. “You humans, you are not our enemies are you?”