The Blue Marble Gambit (24 page)

Success! Once again we had overcome the
impossible!

Trina
chose my moment of self-congratulation to offer an important observation. "Diz, aren't we going the wrong
way?"

She
was right, of course.
The irascible and fickle wind.
Of course, a balloon cannot be steered,
but is as helpless as a leaf in a stream. Almost.

"Not
a problem," I said. "We'll just go higher." I had read once about balloons. The trick to going where you want to go in a balloon is finding the
right wind. Different winds blow at
different altitudes. Supposedly.

We
climbed to fifteen thousand feet before I found a wind going the right
way. Then we hung there, looking at
the unknown world below. It was an
odd amalgam of the familiar and the alien, both far more familiar than many
alien planets, but not quite our Earth either. If we failed, though, our Earth would
not last much longer.

The
cold of high altitude sank into us. We shrugged into the fur and skin
clothes which
Chief Rotolo had thrown into the bargain - my set included a nice though gamy
leopard cloak - and still we shivered. The tiny wobbling basket swung back and forth, the support ropes creaked
and twisted and moaned, and the thin layer of crackling reeds beneath our feet
- all that kept us from a three-mile freefall followed by a splat - shifted and
bent and in general tried with great success to scare the Zot out of us.

The
temperature dropped far below freezing; even in our full native regalia we were
shivering. The basket seemed ever
more fragile, and I was concerned about what effect the cold might have on the
slim reeds. For fear of breaking
them we tried to warm ourselves without moving - not an easy task. But no more difficult than what lay
ahead. The true goal of our
mission, for which
we'd
covered light years and time
years.

Under
Galactic law, there were several steps to the valid claiming of a planet. The claiming race had to actually set
foot upon the planet in question, plant their flag, and perform the ritual
salute of claiming. Also, they had
to take up a small piece of its soil, in whatever claspers, tentacles, or
pseudopods they used. A portion of
this was flung through the air, which signified control; another portion was
taken away in a sealed container, as symbolic evidence of the acquisition of
the entire planet, and as proof of the actual visit. I didn't let on to Trina that we were
now facing what was by far our most difficult task - I had never really
expected us to get this far, and even if I had expected it, I had been much to
busy trying to survive our various trials and tribulations in space, on Boff,
and here. Our upcoming difficulty
lay in our need to disrupt the ceremony, without the hi-tech gimmicks we'd left
about the Blue Bean, and yet in a stealthy way. Otherwise, the Etzans would merely go
elsewhere, the next day. And
perform it validly.

And
that, of course, would be bad.

I
had a long argument with Ned about our navigation, during which he refused to
respond. While Trina and I could
guess and approximate, only Ned could give us the precision guidance we needed
to find the Etzan's claiming site. After fruitlessly appealing to his honor as a Neural Emplant Device, his
obligation to humanity, and even his vanity, I thanked him for finally giving
me a valid reason for having his tiny bundle of wet chips yanked and
recycled. Once we got back, no more
Ned. Bye bye, brain buddy. Adios, head-mate. Ciao, cranial pal.

Ned
finally relented, though only partially. He provided a big red arrow, and a range indicator, super-imposed on my
field of view.

Good
enough. I followed the arrow,
adding more hot air to ascend, letting our sieve-like balloon leak to descend,
as I chased wispy clouds going the right way. Eventually, we were at 20,000 feet. The jet stream hurled us along, dead on
course. We swept ever closer.

Things,
I pointed out to myself, were going remarkably well. I should have known better than to point
such a thing out, even to myself; this was throwing down the gauntlet. Unknown to me, Fate picked it up and
shook it at me.

"This
m-m-might work," Trina said through chattering teeth.

I nodded. We were getting very close to the
claiming site.
Less
than ten kilometers.

The
basket began making a very troubling creaking noise. It was very troubling not only because
of the sound, but because of the slow sag developing beneath our feet. Trina and I scampered to the sides and
tried to place our feet on the strongest, firmest, least-saggy sections.

"I'm
sure it will hold," Trina said.

"Of
course it will," I agreed. “It
simply has to.”

The
basket weighed in by creaking louder. Trina and I moved quickly, instinctively. Searching for solid footing. Hunting along the edges.

"It
couldn't p-p-possibly fail," Trina said.

"Not
a ch-ch- chance," I agreed.

We
slid our feet along, searching for strong spots, trying to avoid weak ones.

As
it turns out we needn't have bothered. With a startling lack of warning the entire bottom of the basket cracked
free in one big piece, as effectively as a hangman's trapdoor, though a bit
more surprisingly. Anyone standing
on a hangman's trapdoor at least has some idea about what's coming.

"Zot,"
I blurted as my feet plunged through the hole. I caught the vertical bottom edge of the
frozen basket in a dangerous one-handed grip, supporting my weight with a
slipping fistful of frozen reeds.

Then
Trina plowed into me from above and knocked us both free.

"Oh,
double Zot," I muttered.

We
fluttered about like leaves in a wind, tumbling,
then
reached that oh-so-unfortunately named speed, terminal velocity. It felt like floating. We hung near each other; it reminded me,
only a little bit, of our happy times in the Blue Bean.

"I
thought we'd already survived falling to death on Boff," Trina shouted
over the rocket-blast of the wind.

"Life's
a cycle. You always get another
chance," I supposed.

Trina
gave me a dirty look then glanced downward. "You have about ninety seconds to
think of something," she shouted.

"Don't
worry. I will," I screamed
back. I was pretty sure there was
not a thing that I could do, but I wasn't going to admit that. And in ninety-one seconds I wouldn't
have to.

The
world swelled and flowed and rushed. Trina and I were somehow hanging stably, almost face to face. I thought madly. First I took an inventory of everything
we had. That was quick - we had
only our clothes and, in my hand, my maser. The clothes were utterly useless. So was the maser. I glanced downward. The earth didn't seem to be moving, but
it was much larger. And though it
felt like we were floating, of course we were actually stones, plunging
downward.

Forty-five
seconds to go, I figured. With the
wind pounding past, buoying us on what seemed an upward blast, it felt almost
serenely peaceful.

"Ned!"
I shouted inside my head. "I
could use a little help here!"

Ned
made only a flickering subliminal appearance, an image of a small boy crawling
beneath a bed to escape monsters. "I told you so!" the boy wailed. Then he was gone. Completely.

I
glanced down.
Rocks
and stones and dry-looking trees, coming up soon.

I
looked into Trina's gold and green eyes as she hung in space right in front of
me. She seemed a little petulant.

"Well?"
she shouted. “I'm waiting!"

All
I could think of was a haiku:

Clear
bright freezing air

Monkeys
falling like big stones

I
bet this will hurt.

So
I smiled as bravely as I could, then tried to frame a reply about being almost
ready to save us. This would
hopefully distract us from the annoying reality of being squished to death.

But
instead I got distracted when Trina's eyes suddenly grew wide. Her wind-pressed face re-layered itself
to accommodate a mouth that suddenly gaped. Her gaze was over my shoulder, and far
beyond me.

"Wow!"
she said.

Before
I could turn, I felt a hand on my leg.

Then
I turned and looked into a face that was craggy and dirty and tired and, all in
all, not quite as handsome as I'd thought.

It
was my own face.

CHAPTER
21. QUID PRO CLOD

The
new me was riding a grav sled, and looked even more tired and beat than I
felt. He slid beneath us,
decelerated to let us float gently onto the sled, then twisted the lift lever
to lower us down without a word. The new me turned away, about to take off again.

"Hey!"
I said. If it really was me, there
was no need to say more - I would know what I meant.

"Oh
yeah," the other me said, stopping with a finger poised on the lever. "Do us a favor - don't forget to
come back and save you. Otherwise,
the time stream might get complicated. It might not, of course, but no one really knows. So just play it safe. By Zot, you're filthy. You should clean yourself up. Gotta run now." He flashed a wry tired grin, then
touched the lever and rose upward until he vanished into the robins-egg sky.

I
looked at Trina triumphantly. "I told you I'd think of something."

"That
wasn't this you. That was some
other you. Slightly cleaner, though
not much."

"Same
thing. We're related, you
know."

Trina
was trembling, ever so slightly. She ran her hands down her body, as if smoothing her skin clothes,
though I suspected she couldn't believe she was still in one piece.

"The
claiming site should be about three miles that way," she finally said,
pointing to a low scarp of sandstone hills. She glanced at the sun. "Better hurry."

An
hour later we hunched on a low rise that looked over the claiming site. It looked exactly like the vid I had
seen - would see - in ten thousand years.
A picturesque valley, lush with tall grasses and
occasional huge conifers.
A scorched circle at its center, surrounding the wedge-shaped
landing pod.
Small piles of
equipment neatly stacked about, for the survey and the claiming ceremony
itself.

"What's
the plan?" Trina whispered.

"The
plan? Simple. We use the projection matter transformer
to alter the composition of the Sacred
Clod which
the
Etzans must collect and return to the Galactic Court. If the Sacred Clod doesn't match Earth,
the claim is invalid. Simple."

Trina
narrowed both her gold and her green eyes. "I'm beginning to think you're a simple clod. The matter transformer is gone! It was on the Blue Bean! We don't have it anymore!"

I
plucked a long stem of prehistoric grass and chewed thoughtfully.
Full and sweet.
"Yes, I know that."

"Then-"

I
spat out the grass. "Then that
was just my charming way of giving you the answer to your question. Using the matter transformer was - and
is - the plan. We don't have
another!"

Tragically ironic, but true.
We had travelled across space and time,
survived perils and travails, all with no way to complete the last and most
important act of our mission. It
was like a eunuch planning and carrying out every step of an elaborate
seduction, except for the final act. Of course I'd known this all along, but all along there was nothing I
could do about it.

Trina
was shaking her head. "Pluto's
frozen balls. We may as well stay
here, then. I guess I could get
used to wearing skins - kind of dashing, in an elemental sort of
way." She tugged on my
leg. Her mind made one of its
characteristic lunges. "C'mere. I see a soft
spot under that tree."

I
slapped her hand away. "Brazen
hussy! We've got to do
something!"

She
rubbed my chest. Her voice turned
husky. "There's nothing to be
done. You said as much, yourself. We don't have the tools for the
job! So we'll stay here. Become prehistoric denizens. Live in caves. Hunt. Wear skins. Invent the wheel. Maybe," and now her hand roamed
lower, "raise some prehistoric rug-rats."

"The
Time Oscillator return pod is coming for us," I pointed out.

"True,"
Trina agreed. "But we don't
have to get in. It's keyed to our
chronic freqs, which are unique in this timespace, so it'll find us. But we needn't take the ride."

I
was still watching the Etzan's site. Nothing had moved. Odd. Etzans were infamously busy, and also
notorious collectors.

"Have
you seen any Etzans?" I asked.

She
turned her gaze to the camp and the valley. She squinted and frowned. "Actually, no, not a one."

"Well
where the Zot are they?" If
they weren't in camp, then they might be anywhere. They could be out surveying, exploring,
or sample collecting. They could be
a lot of places, the sneaky devils. They could even be-

"Uh
oh," Ned said.

I
tried to spin but couldn't. I tried
to pull my maser but couldn't. A
hissing blanket of buzzing, prickly static electricity was wrapped around me.

"Court!"
Trina grunted. "Tangler
field!"

"I
know," I managed to hiss back.
All our voluntary muscles were paralyzed by this
decidedly un-prehistoric weapon, leaving our hearts to beat and our lungs to
breath
. Talking could barely
be accomplished, with a huge effort, but major muscle groups such as those in
our limbs were off limits. Shut
down. Neuro-blocked.

"Ned!"
I cried out internally, as I fought to move but lay like a statue. "Help!"

He
appeared before my eyes, dressed in an all-white suit topped by a sporty white
cap. Hands on hips, he smirked at
me. "Well now, Court. A friend in need is a friend indeed,
right-o?" He jauntily danced a
cane on his shoulder. "Oh, you
didn't want my input on that balloon shenanigan, but now you come crying to
Ned. Ha."

"Can't
- move - my - body! You - try! Permission granted! Quickly! They must - be close!" The tangler is a short-range weapon
only. No one on Earth could have
one. Which meant: Etzans.

Ned
turned and began to walk away, stepping carefully to keep his spats clean. "Don't be silly. You're locked up. Paralyzed. The Etzans caught you fair and square,
my boy. And by the way, I already
tried. I can't move your muscles
either. They've closed down all the
neuronal pathways. Nicely done,
too." His tone had a hint of
professional appreciation. He
stopped and bent to examine a stone up close, then moved on.

Behind
us crunched booted feet. A plier
field grabbed us and hoisted us onto a grav sled like the two prehistoric lumps
we were.

"Now
what have we here?" said a snide voice. "Grungy and pathetic
locals." It wasn't speaking
any human language, but for some reason I could understand it. I saw Trina's blank look and realized
Ned was translating.

"Very
grungy. Very pathetic," agreed
a second voice. The grav sled began
to move, and as we were trucked along I caught occasional glimpses of the two
spindly-legged, pot-bellied, four-armed figures. Etzans. Though Etzans were one of the few other
non-insectoid Squishy races, they weren't the
sort
of
relatives one cared to have.

"What
are they going to do with us?" Trina managed to whisper.

I
shrugged, or tried to.

One
of the Etzans looked at the other. The small antennae on his forehead, visible beneath the open visor of a
silvered helmet, waggled inquisitively. "They actually seem to have a primitive form of communication, the
wretched creatures."

"Perhaps,"
said the other. "More likely
those are mere mouth sounds of terror. They are no more intelligent than garden furniture. Some sort of low-rent, retrograde
primate. A disappointing
capture."

The
sled lurched to a halt in their camp; the Etzans left us on it like two inert
bundles of prehistoric plasm. We
were captured booty, trophies of the hunt, mere samples. We might be flash-frozen, atomized, or digitized,
but probably not lyricized.

In
a bit of a black mood at this final bitter twist, I took in the camp. Before me on the ground in a careful
arrangement was a collapsed pole-flag, a hand-sized hovercam, a group of things
that looked oddly like vid props, and two carefully-selected clods of dirt.

"The
Incidents of Claiming," Ned explained, overlaying himself into the
picture. He tweaked my visual
cortex so that I saw him pick up the flag - which of course he couldn't really
do.

The
pole exploded in his hands, expanding out to its full size with a loud bang.

"Oops,"
Ned said. I gaped. How would the Etzans respond?

"Just
kidding," Ned said, and the pole was normal again. He had again played a trick on my
hostage brain. Reality was a
variable and uncertain proposition, with Ned around.

"Arg,"
I moaned.

The
Etzans were regarding us.
Short and pot-bellied, with spindly legs and four arms, in silvered
exposure suits.
They looked
exactly like the Etzans of my own time - their culture and biology was entirely
stagnant, and had not changed in countless millennia. They had, as they liked to say, arrived.

"Shall
we keep them?" said the first and slightly shorter one.

"What
for, fool? Mere primitives. Look at them. No more intelligent than
houseplants."

"But
we get extra bounty for bringing them in!"

"Not
enough to be worth stinking up our ship!"

"We
could put up with a little stench, Hurg. Can't be any worse than-"

"Watch
it, Urg," glowered Hurg.

I
recalled that Etzans were famously argumentative and disagreeable. Squabbling was their passion and their
credo, and they lived by it and for it.

"But
if they are proto-sentient, we might get a bonus for them."

"Urg,
they are clearly moronic. Look at
how they're draped in skins - not a tasteful synthetic fabric anywhere. Mud. Dirt. They are not even close to
semi-proto-sentient. If anything,
we would be fined for wasting the time of the Institute for Sentiency."

"I
have noted your opinion, Hurg," Urg said testily. "But I am not convinced. I will half-detangle one, for additional
observation."

"You
are wasting our time. Again. I should be used to it."

"I
have always hated you, Hurg. Spending my existence travelling to such putrid worlds, in your horrible
company, is worse than being slowly devoured from within by intestinal
parasites."

For
the first time a look of fondness seemed to cross Hurg's face. "And you, Urg have always disgusted
me more than a soufflé of droppings.
More than a bouquet of genitalia.
More than being served a platter of my
own lightly-stewed entrails."

"You
flatter me with your insults," Urg said, and crossed out of my view. "Half-detangling the bigger one for
observation."

"If
you must," sighed Hurg, moving to a piece of equipment. "I will switch on the
translator."

Suddenly
the invisible raspy blanket scraped across the upper half of my body. From the waist down I was still tangled;
from the waist up, free. Trina
remained totally wrapped up.

Urg
moved in front of us, and in both Etzan sign and voice language slowly sounded
out, "Arrrrre yoooooouuu prrrrooooottttoooooo-saaaaaaapieeeeeent?"

These
words came out of their translator box, a bright red glowing sphere on a
tripod.

"Galalalalalalalalaaaallllaaalllla
urmph gurg," I said.

The
translator box hummed and clicked; colored lights flashed.

"Galalalalalalalalaaaallllaaalllla
urmph gurg," it said in perfectly rendered Etzan.

Hurg
and Urg traded glances. Eight hands
fluttered in confusion.

"Do
you understand me?" tried Urg again, more gamely.

I
bugged my eyes, twitched about, and began to drool. "Urrp leevy squeeeowly!" I
shouted.

"Urrp
leevy squeeeowly!" the translator box repeated after a short delay.

I
began to pound my hand against my head, while staring around wildly. Smack smack smack.

"Arrf
tooloddle urrrg twally!" I screamed.

The
translator was getting into it. “Arrf tooloddle urrrg twally!" it screamed.

"Hopeless
trash-heads," grunted Urg. "Not worth the trouble of transport. No bounty at all. Drat!"

Hurg
pulled a tool from his belt.
Slightly bigger than his spidery hand.
Multi-barreled. Pointy.

Uh
oh.

"Should
I put them out of their misery? It
might be kinder than letting nature take its inevitable course."

"Assuredly. Even though we are Etzans, we are not
without compassion. Let's take a
few samples first, though." Urg
pulled out a recognizable laser scalpel. "Maybe a brain, heart, or some such?"

I
couldn't help but notice that my various body parts had become very popular of
late. So far no one had actually
gotten one, but according to the Law of Averages, my luck had to run out soon. Then again, perhaps my luck had already
run out, only I hadn't yet found out about it.

"Later,
Urg. I want to proceed with the
Claiming. I am feeling very
photogenic right now."