Far-out Show (9781465735829) (51 page)

Wilburps’s signature logo marked the end of
the upload of stored material and that screen sector blanked.

Soon Krinkle leaned into the car and turned
the jammer back on. The continuous feed image promptly deteriorated
into snow.

“Ending with the confirmation that the
inhabitant’s device is the source of the interference,” Molten
noted.

“Encouraging us to not only figure out how to
end its effects on our systems, but to learn how it works so we can
use that technique when we want to assure the privacy of our
messages,” Icetop said.

“We’re working on both parts of that,” Yelpam
said. “Shut it off or sidestep it. Bring it aboard to use ourselves
or at least learn how it’s programmed. See, we’re very busy
guys.”

“There’s also another important bit in that
scene,” Lacrat said. “The inhabitant turned off his device to allow
Wilburps to send us what he had stored up. That means this
inhabitant didn’t take Nerber prisoner, he’s working with him and
must know what the zerpy is doing.”

“To what end?” Yelpam asked. “What are their
agendas?”

“More questions that will surely make a
difference to how things work out but that we have no more than
wild guesses about for now and no clear path to finding the
answers. Another day in the intergalactic entertainment show
production business.”

“It’s possible that Nerber has cleverly
tricked him into letting Wilburps work. Maybe Nerber’s way smarter
than we’ve given him credit for,” Lacrat said.

Molten stared at a monitor as he called
quietly, “There’s another change in the situation but only a
partial one.”

“For better or worse?” Eroder asked as he
looked at the monitor.

“For different,” Molten replied. “The mystery
zerpy is active again. It’s sending signals.”

“Quick, while it’s detached from the ship,
eject it,” Lacrat urged.

“It didn’t let go or even loosen its grip,”
Eroder said as he keyed in commands and watched the responses. “Now
I realize why it attached where it did too. The wiring to all the
ship’s systems come together inside that wall section. That’s one
of the few spots in the whole ship where it can tap into all the
systems to monitor and insert commands into all the systems. For
its purposes that’s the perfect place so it has almost welded
itself on there. Clever design.”

“That puts us back at risk of obliteration at
the whim of those far away,” Lacrat said.

“Until we find its secrets and do get rid of
it,” Icetop said. “Techs are often at our best when faced with
challenges.”

“It’d be more reassuring if this trip didn’t
present us with so many of them all at once. And non-lethal ones in
case we can’t solve them in time,” Yelpam noted without letting his
emotions about that distract him from the technical tasks at
hand.

Biccup stood at the transport room podium,
his fingers flying across the control console. He muttered to
himself, “It’s at least good that I detected that problem. It won’t
stay fixed. It’s like some source outside the ship tried but failed
to activate this system but messed it up in the process. Maybe
enough that it won’t work right. I’m fixing the changes however
they happened as fast as I can since we might need to bring Nerber
up fast at any moment. Since there’s nothing down there that I’m
authorized to test it on, for now I can only hope this fixes it. I
hope that for Nerber’s sake and for mine. If this won’t bring them
up I get all the blame, not the faulty equipment or those who
started the process knowing things weren’t reliable.”

* * *

Hasley, Feedle, and Lacrat got comfortable in
their chairs in the producers’ office. Hasley brought up Svenly on
a screen and Wilburps's view of Nerber hiding in the tool shed on
another as Wilburps said, “I am not programmed to be helpful at a
time like this.”

Nerber said, “No, the producers want the
contestants to deal with all the problems on their own. That's what
the audience wants to watch. The harder and more gruesome things
are the better. But if I'm stuck on this planet I have to think
about what is best for me. Maybe I should even turn you off so you
can't be secretly sending all this without telling me, Wilburps.
Are you doing that?”

“I am not aware that I am sending any signals
to the producers except when you tell me to but I remind you that
my wiring would allow that without my control centers knowing.”

“I am a trained zerpy engineer so I know for
more truly certain that you can.
Fampfuzzle
! What is the
point of going on when I am a failure, not a hero, to the citizens
of Ormelex?”

Feedle freeze-framed the recording.

Lacrat observed, “Fear is definitely eating
him up but it's not making him good show material now.”

“We're only guessing about how much danger
he's for truly in,” Hasley said. “We're learning more all the time
that indicates these inhabitants have more advanced technologies
than we thought based on our analysis of out-of-date intercepts
from here.”

“We can't rely on any of what we knew
officially and that, despite disclaimers, was not sure beyond
doubt,” Feedle agreed.

“Not about what we thought we knew about the
inhabitants but we're clear on how strongly the governors feel
about how critical it is to not allow any of us or our equipment to
be examined closely by the inhabitants who could learn from it
though,” Lacrat said.

“The self-destruct devices in the ship and in
each of us... Oh.” Hasley stopped in mid-sentence and
mid-thought.

Svenly assured him, “It's okay, everyone on
the crew knows about those. We're not thrilled to be at the mercy
of the A.D.U. bosses who can send a signal from far, far away and
do away with us as nuisance evidence to be swept into the trash but
we live with the idea for now.”

“For now? What do you know that I don't?”
Lacrat asked.

Svenly looked around and shrugged, then said,
“Some techs are examining the ship and the things they implanted in
us to see how those are protected and how they'd be triggered.
Techs are always big on undoing things that other techs have
devised.”

“Have they made progress?” Feedle asked.

“Yeah. It's not all worked out but I hear
they've made major steps,” Svenly admitted. “Don't write off going
boom on some far away guy's say-so just yet but don't think it's
inevitable either.”

“Knowing that makes me feel better,” Lacrat
was happy to say. “More reason to convince the A.D.U. and Peepees
that for at least a little bit longer we're still too valuable to
sacrifice to cover their losses.”

“Do you believe they'd send those signals?”
Hasley asked.

“Why not?” Feedle responded. “They have big
insurance policies on us and nothing would be left that the
insurance adjusters could examine to prove they destroyed us. They
wouldn’t look at anything more than the interference-filled
recordings the company would present as the only evidence of what
happened. Even that’s only if the governors would allow a
significant investigation since they have an important interest in
this. Oh yes, those insurance policies would be paid off.”

“So we are insured. We suspected as much but
didn't know for sure,” Svenly said.

“We're not supposed to know it so don't talk
about that openly where your conversations are being secretly
recorded by one group or another,” Hasley cautioned.

“The Peepees would miss us but they're not
sentimental. They'll love the next big audience pacifying
moneymakers in our place in a tiny part of a
bimpledop
,”
Feedle said with a shrug.

“In case you haven't thought about it, the
way things are right now, nothing gets seen by the home audience
without going through systems controlled by the Peepees,” Svenly
pointed out.

“What's your point?” Lacrat asked.

“That for practical purposes we're expendable
since we're ciphers who can't rally the support of the masses to
protect us,” Feedle said. “We're at the mercy of the Peepees since
we can't get any uncensored messages to the mass audience.
Therefore we need to maintain their interest in us while we walk
the thin line between scaring them off by getting them to think
we're a lost cause and making ourselves invaluable to them by
generating audience-fixating tension about our fate.”

Svenly nodded agreement. “That says it nicely
in a small package, Feedle. That's why you're successful as a
producer.”

“We have to work on our strategy,” Lacrat
said.

“Keeping the realities in mind,” Hasley
urged.

Venrik touched a button on his console which
caused a musical tone to sound in the producers’ office. Then he
glanced up and said, “Oh, right. You’re already tuned to us. This
news made me lose track. We received some responses from home that
needed extensive cleaning before we could understand them because
of the interference we don’t understand. Those are ready so I’m
transmitting them to you now.”

“Can’t you just tell us what they say?”
Feedle grumbled. “You make it sound like they contain secrets.”

“On your explicit order I’ll do that on this
open channel, Feedle. Nerber isn’t who he claimed to be. His
application information doesn’t check out,” Svenly said. “Now
everyone on board can speculate about what that means and what a
great job you guys did screening applicants.”

“Everyone might as well know the full
report,” Venrik said. “The
Bang-Boom
home office can’t find
anything about Nerber except that he’s a fake because he doesn’t
officially exist. It turns out that he was sort of pushed to the
head of the line of possible contestants because guys with some
influence put maybe not so subtle pressure behind him.”

“Guys assumed to have ties to the governors
or to various useful business groups,” Svenly said. “Officially
those pressures had no effect but, in light of what’s happened,
what we don’t know about the guy but it seems we should, it all
seems suspicious. Who is he and what did those guys expect him to
do or not do?”

“One particularly interesting but maybe also
worrying bit is that the worker at the home office assigned to
search for anything about the guy we know as Nerber triggered a
warning from the governors’ office about trying to search
restricted data bases,” Venrik told them.

“That wasn’t unexpected really, what was
surprising was how fast the warning came,” Svenly noted. “As if
everything our guy was doing was being monitored minute by minute
and they wanted to turn her away before she could spend even a
short time searching those records. It makes you wonder who’s the
most paranoid group – and who should be even more so.”

Hasley and Feedle focused their attention on
the text now on the small console monitor while Lacrat, blocked
from ready access to that by the chairs of the others for now,
asked, “Exactly what do they mean he’s not who he says he is?”

“His background doesn’t check out. No family
ever lived at the address he listed. There is no record of him
attending the training center he put down - and no official record
of his hatch,” Svenly answered.

“Not even an official listing of his name on
the charts,” Venrik added. “The government records don’t confirm
there is any living individual named Nerber on the planet.”

Lacrat considered that for a moment, then
asked, “So what? He might have stuff in his past he prefers to keep
private. What difference does it make to us who he really is?”

“Directly it shouldn’t change anything,”
Hasley said now that he was finished reading the report on the
monitor. “It raises warnings though that he may not be as compliant
as we have him pegged for.”

“He means Nerber may not be as much of a dupe
as your plans called for,” Svenly said. Then she added cynically,
“Oops, wasn’t I supposed to mention that so openly?”

Feedle glared at her on the screen but said
nothing. Those two had never liked one another and each knew that
given the chance each would let bad things befall the other so they
had no illusions and usually didn’t bother playing up to one
another.

“Maybe we can say his lies could disqualify
him from the show so we wouldn’t have to give him any reward but
can still use the material,” Hasley mused aloud as he plotted.
“I’ll have the lawyers explore that possibility.”

“Assuming he’s not more valuable to us as the
winner and our buddy when we get back there and see how things have
worked out,” Lacrat said.

“Of course. Successful producers always hold
off on decisions as long as possible to see how things actually
work out rather than how they hoped or planned for,” Hasley
agreed.

Nerber appeared on another screen section
where he was talking with Krinkle in the gazebo, audio off. Venrik
said, “You might be very interested in this latest development.
Nerber met this inhabitant who's the most interesting one so far.
One who seems to realize Nerber's not one of them - and to be okay,
even thrilled, with that thought. Then this interference caused by
that guy’s device started.”

“Which we already know is a problem so is
there any change in the situation?” Lacrat asked.

Feedle grumbled, “I’m not against punishing
that inhabitant for making us worry or work hard if we can do that
to him without too much trouble to ourselves. They want to be
afraid of us so I say let’s justify their worries.”

“Don't panic quite yet,” Venrik said as he
tapped buttons and the screen image cleared enough to show a blurry
image of Nerber standing by Krinkle's car wondering how to get in.
“I finally discovered that the earth device doesn't totally disrupt
the visual signals when we use our older uncorrected translation
system. We have to do some filtering and that delays us finding out
what’s going on but with that restriction we're back in contact.
The sound part is still intolerable though. We’re working on that.
Fortunately zerpies don’t mind noise, they only analyze signal
frequencies and amplitudes.”