Posleen War: Sidestories The Tuloriad (15 page)

“Would you sit with us?” Frederico asked, excitedly. “I don't really ever have anyone to play with besides my Dad and his AS.”

“Why is that?” Sally asked, bending over to bring her head roughly parallel with the alien's. “A bright, well-behaved boy like you?”

“Cuz I'm a Posleen,” the boy said. “And nobody quite trusts me. Even dad says it will be a while before he's sure that I'm not going to attack someone by instinct. And even dad's congregation back home keeps their kids away except during services.”

“You mean you don't have any friends at all?” Sally asked

Sadly and slowly, the little Posleen shook his head. “Not even one. It's just my dad and my mom and the AS and me. Oh, and Maria who comes and helps my Mom with the dishes a couple of times a week, but she's blind so I think she really doesn't know what we are. Not deep down, anyway.”

“Dishes?”

“Yes, silly! Dishes. We're people too, dad says, and people eat from dishes.”

Almost against her will, Sally smiled and asked, “What is it that you eat from . . . dishes?”

“Well . . . most anything people eat,” the boy answered. “And then my mom's nestlings that aren't going to grow up smart . . . we eat those, too. They're not people, dad says.”

And on that note, Sally thought, I'd better sit down.

“Do you have any really, really vile whiskey or rum?” the AS asked. “If all else fails, strait formaldehyde would do.”

Dwyer twisted his mouth into an upside down bow and answered, “Well . . . we're not a dry ship . . . exactly, but if there's anything still stashed in my communion cabinet or in the medical stores beyond wine and rum it's probably not going to be exactly vile. Formaldehyde, you said?”

“Yes. Not too much. A quart or so to relax Reverend Guanamarioch and loosen his tongue.”

“Sally, did you hear that?” Dwyer shouted.

“There's some in the morgue, sir,” a disembodied voice whispered into Dwyer's ear. “I'll have it sent out.”

“It's on the way,” Dwyer said, brightly.

“Interesting, that,” observed the AS.

“Which?”

“Your ship is sentient. During the war we heard of such, but we didn't know any of them survived.”

“Both did,” Dwyer answered. “At least, both of those I know about did. You heard her talk to me?”

“Not in words, but yes.” The AS didn't elaborate.

“Do you have any children?” Frederico asked, hopefully, after casting his line again and beginning to slowly reel it in.

“Not yet,” Sally said. And, if I don't work out something with Dan, maybe never. And why shouldn't I work something out? Here I am, sitting with a couple of the creatures I said I couldn't stand to have near me. And they're . . . not so bad. No, be honest with yourself, Sally, old girl. The boy is so ugly he's made the transformation all the way to adorable. And his mother . . . well . . . she's a mother. I could probably learn a thing or two from her.

“That's too bad,” the Posleen boy said. “If you had some, maybe I'd have someone my size to play with.”

“Well, even if I had some now, it would be a while before they were fully grown enough to be chums to you.” Sally thought about that and started to giggle.

“What's so funny?”

She looked at the boy and tried to explain. “Chums? Chum? Dead fish guts all ground up you put in the water with the blood to attract fish.”

Frederico's eyes grew saucer-wide. “I'd never . . . you would never . . .”

“No. No, of course not. But . . . see . . . you're a Posleen and . . . well, we had a lot of jokes about Posleen during the war. Do you know what a lawyer is?”

“Sorta.”

“Ok. What's the difference between a Posleen and a lawyer?”

“Number of legs?” the boy offered.

“Well, besides that,” Sally said. “See, one is a vicious, twisted, man-eating, menace to society. And the other is just an alien life form.”

“I don't get it.”

“You don't have to. Besides, all too soon, you will.”

Sally noticed the boy's fishing line twitching. “And more important, you've got a bite.”

“And so you want the Reverend Doctor to be a fisher of . . . Posleen?” the AS asked.

“More part of a fishing team,” Dwyer answered. “See, we can't know which religion will take with them. So we want to give them a menu to choose from.” Dwyer thought upon the sundry missionaries collected so far for the mission and thought, A highly limited menu, if I have anything to say about it.

After the AS translated, Guano sat on his haunches for some minutes, absentmindedly sipping from his quart of formaldehyde. When he began speaking again, it was to say, through the AS, "Despite Boyd's little joke, I've never actually made a sermon against the Whore of Rome. I don't make sermons about or against Jews, or Mormons, or Muslims, or Buddhists or any other of God's children. I'll admit to having a soft spot in my hearts for Sikhs and Gurkhas and Kshatriya Hindus.

“And I have a soft spot, too, for my own people, forever denied God's grace and redemption. So, yes, Father, I and my family will go with you.”

Then did the hurtling asteroids menace;

Then did the star, Hemaleen, threaten death.

—The Tuloriad, Na'agastenalooren

Anno Domini 2010

Posleen Ship Arganaza'al

There was an ancient song of hope, sung upon entry into a new system. Tulo'stenaloor's bridge crew sang it, even as did the various kessentai busied about the innards of the ship, as the Essthree called out, “Emergence in . . . five . . . four . . . three . . . two . . . one . . .”

And nothing happened.

The Essthree immediately turned to his navigation computer and began to beat on the control panel. That first choice failing, he actually began trying to use the thing's controls.

“No luck,” said Essthree. “I'm locked out.” He began to pound on the control panel again. Well, it wasn't as if the original ship designers hadn't anticipated that a frustrated Posleen God-king might not feel the urge from time to time. The thing was overbuilt.

“Fuscirto! Miserable, misbegotten, filthy, foul, vile . . .”

“Shut up, Essthree,” Tulo said, one claw indicating the main view screen where the formless void of Transitspace was replaced with the torso of Aelool, the Indowy.

“Greeting, Posleen!” Aelool's image said. “And welcome aboard Hijack Spacelines, Flight Number One. I'll be your flight attendant for this trip. We'll be cruising the galaxy at speeds you really wouldn't believe. So relax and enjoy the journey. And just leave the driving to us.”

“I hate fucking Indowy with a sense of humor,” Tulo muttered. To the screen he shouted, “When do we come out of Transitspace? Where will we come out.”

The screen didn't answer.

About two weeks later, as humans meansure time, the screen came to life once again with the image of Aelool.

“By this time,” the image said, "you will have realized that you are not coming out of subspace quite where you intended to. That was, of course, my doing. I'd give you my apologies for infecting your ship's navigation computer but what good would apologies be at this point?

"Nevertheless, be of good heart and good cheer. I did not do as I did to harm you, but to help. For reason I cannot go into without betraying confidences, you will not be safe unless you get very, very far from the humans, far enough, at least, for them to forget the better portion of their grudge.

"Long and hard we searched, my clan and I, for at least the start point for you to begin looking for such a world. Between legends—yours, ours, the crabs', and the Aldenata's . . . oh, and some others we can't quite pinpoint the origin of—we think we did find such a place. It is to that that you are going. It is from there you may begin your search for . . . for whatever you think you want to find.

“In time, you may well thank me. Good luck. Aelool, out.”

“Bastard!” Tulo said. “We should have eaten him after all.”

“Umm . . . maybe not,” Goloswin said as the ship suddenly emerged out of transitspace. Though what kind of space it emerged into . . .

“Where the fuck are we?” Tulo demanded. It was a really good question since the ship had popped into an area of space with no stars nearby. This was . . . rare.

“Beats me,” Essthree and Esstwo said together.

“I've got nothin',” the Rememberer said.

“And we need to refuel,” Essfour added.

Goloswin looked terribly unhappy. Or confused. It amounted to the same thing with him.

“There's something out there,” the tinkerer admitted. “I'm not sure just what, though.”

“Fine,” Tulo said. “What do you think it is . . . or might be . . . or whatever?”

The tinkerer chewed on his lower lip carefully for a whle before answering. “I think it's a power source . . . ummm . . . for a containment unit . . . full of anti-matter.”

“In the middle of nowhere?”

“Infinite universe,” Goloswin offered. “Infinite possibilities. No, I don't know what the fuck a pod of anti-matter is doing here. I only know we need to refuel and there it is.”

“A trap?” the Rememberer suggested.

Golo shook his head. “A trap is for beings you haven't already trapped. We, on the other hand, once that little fuzz-face took over the ship, were already trapped.”

“Refuel then?” Essfour asked of Tulo'stenaloor.

“You have a better option?” the clan lord asked.

“Umm . . . no.”

“Then, by all means, refuel.”

Refueling, for the Posleen, generally meant taking station off of a gas giant and manufacturing anti-matter, a process that could take anywhere from days to weeks. In this case, with the fuel already present, it was done in a matter of hours, most of that being spent docking the containment unit to the ship.

Had it taken twice the normal time, they'd still have been on their way sooner than they were. As it was, nearly six of the humans' weeks had passed and they were still stuck there, fully refueled and unable to make any headway. The ship lay dead in space.

Goloswin thought he was making headway though. Hunched over a holographic projection of the virus that had taken control of the ship, he believed he had narrowed it down to a certain set of—admittedly very complex—codes.

“Identifying the virus is the key to defeating it, Tulo,” he said, his claw sweeping expansively over the projected code. “If I can . . . ah, shit.”

Even as Golo cursed, the code began transforming itself under his very eyes. As it did that, the ship began to hum as it powered itself up for a jump through transitspace.

Eons past the asteroid had been formed, back in the time of the Knower Wars, the ancient wars fought between those Posleen who, while loyal to the Aldenata, Lords of Creation, had still questioned the Aldenata, and those who had been both loyal and unquestioning.

There had been two Posleen planets in the system then, one dominated by the Knowers and the other by the Loyals. No one living knew any longer which of the two had seen its planet blown to flinders to form the asteroid belt that remained. It didn't really matter anyway, as the Posleen of the planet which had been smashed had still scoured the other planet almost free of life before dying. They had scoured it free of anything one might call civilization.

The ship emerged, in a flash that told of the rending of Transitspace. There had been little warning before the Posleen of Tulo'stenaloor experienced the gut-wrenching shift and found themselves hurled into a maelstrom of hurtling asteroids, meteors, and other space debris.

“Little fucking-bat-faced shit eater!” exclaimed Esstwo, as he found himself, once again, desperately trying to keep his ship from destruction. Under Esstwo's direction, fire lanced out from the ship, most notably at an “o-my-freaking-spirits-of-the-ancestors-and-Aldenata-demon-shit-combined” huge asteroid that was not merely in the ship's path at emergence but was, all on its own, on a collision course.

“Getitgetitgetitgetit!” shrieked the Essthree, standing at the helm.

“I'mtryingdammittothepits!” the Esstwo screamed back, even as his beams and KEWs attempted to break the asteroid into little bits. But the thing was enormous. There was little chance.

“Notgonnawork!” Tulo said, then repeated, “Notgonnawork. Fuckfuckfuck!”

Tulo shook his head, collecting himself. “If you can't smash it can you shave it?”

“Shave it? Shave it? Shave it!” The Esstwo tapped his screens several times, causing a grid to appear over the asteroid in the main view screen. “Essthree, I'm going to put everything I have into slicing the section that will appear—” a caret showed on the asteroid's upper middle quadrant—“here. Can you dive under it?”

“Beats trying to smash through,” Essthree answered. “But I don't know if we'll . . .”

Not waiting for the Essthree to finish, Esstwo began slashing at the asteroid, his beams following down the spot marked on the view screen. Bits of incandescent matter began to slough off.

In the screen the asteroid arose, then recentered itself as the computers adjusted.

Essthree shook his head. “It's going to be close but, no, we're not quite going to make it.”

“All hands, secure for collision!”

Finba'anaga heard the call, “Secure for collision.” His hearts immediately began to race. Even as they did, he did; to race for the interior of the ship.

There was a traffic jam of sorts at the nearest passageway. None of the Posleen present had weapons, and so it came down to teeth and claws. Finba was smaller than most. He found himself pushed aside. Which was just as well, really, since the hatchway sphinctered shut, slicing two larger Posleen neatly across the torsos. They screamed for a little while, not very long.

Fortunately or unfortunately, that left Finba'anaga alone in an airtight compartment.

A close but uninvolved observer would have seen quite a show. The asteroid spun as it moved, leaving a vertical spiral trail of glowing matter behind it. The Arganaza'al didn't spin, but it did twist as it attempted to go under the asteroid. Almost, it made it. Sadly, the top five sections that comprised the ship—landers for when the time came for landing—were sliced off, in whole or in part, spilling air and writhing, agonized, rapidly decompressing and flash freezing Posleen bodies to space.