The Blue Marble Gambit (26 page)

"Well?"
I hissed at Dr
. Ought
.

His
pale blue eyes were watery beneath the thick lenses he insisted on wearing
despite modern corneal molding techniques. "Quite right. We
don't."

"Liars-"

"No
one calls me a liar!" boomed the Admiral.

"I
used your machine. We - us - saw me
doing it. I was wearing these skins. I had these marks. Which means I'm about to use it. I have to. Or else the entire time continuum is in
danger."

The
Admiral's eyes shot towards Trina, his eyebrows waggling upwards like curious
caterpillars climbing the smooth mountain of his skull.

"All
true," she murmured.

Why
o why was her word better than mine? Why was she impeccable, and I a mere rogue? Nature, I supposed. Or maybe nurture.
Or maybe both.

The
Admiral gathered himself up, puffing out his medal-covered chest. "No one," he boomed,
"calls me a liar-"

"Liar,"
I cut in.

"-
except
when I am one! But don't push your luck," he warned.

Dr
. Ought
leaned
over and whispered in his ear. The
Admiral frowned, then nodded.

"Any
such device would be Ultra Top Really Secret! You couldn't know about it!"

"But
I do," I explained patiently. "I used it. I need to
use it."

"Maybe
later!" tried the Admiral.

"Now,"
I shouted, maneuvering him into a headlock.

"Later,"
he screamed again, followed by, "My Zot you stink. By the way, later is an order."

I
tightened my grip. "Now! Or the mission fails!"

The
Admiral could change horses quickly in midstream, when necessary. "New orders: Now!" he yelled.

I
let him up, and was already aiming a kick at Dr
. Ought's
bony posterior. "Let's go!"

"Go!"
screamed the Admiral. "You
cheated," he muttered in a hurt tone, rubbing his kinked neck. Of course I had, but so had he. We always did.

Dr.
Ought took off at a dead sprint, as if the Admiral's lung blast had filled his
canvas. He led me through a long
tunnel of armored and coded doors, until we finally arrived at his dingy keep,
a cluttered lab.

In
a corner I found a battered old grav sled, laden with old tools. It looked vaguely familiar, more so
after I had cleared it off.

"I
thought this might be here," I said, while rubbing my ribs where the
Admiral had elbowed me.

"That
is an old unit," Dr
. Ought
warned. "It probably can't even hold a
charge."

"I'll
take the chance," I said confidently. "Again."

"No
no no," Ned whispered in despair. "No more flying!"

"Hurry!"
Trina barked. The present was
advancing at its inexorable unstoppable rate. Once it passed the Galactic Court
Hearing, it would be too late.

Dr.
Ought gestured at a small alcove inside a huge building of a machine. It was much larger than the Time
Oscillator of the Ohs Ohs. "You stand there," he said. "But I must warn you - this machine
may not work. It is not quite
finished, and highly experimental."

"Give
him the coordinates, Trina," I replied.

She
spat them out as if she'd been chipmunking them in her cheek. I mounted the small platform, already
atop the sled.

"Don't
activate the anti-grav field until you arrive," Dr. Ought warned. "That would play hell with all
this," he said, waving vaguely at the wall of machinery. "No telling what would
happen."

"Go,"
I said.

Dr.
Ought took a deep breath. "Are
you sure about this?"

I
thought about everything that had happened over the last few days. "Do it anyway."

He
did.

I
popped into a cool blue sky, bright above and dark below. I was instantly falling, and luckily
grabbed onto the sled handles. I
powered it up, and found myself just over the top of an oddly patchwork
balloon. From above it was so
lumpen I could hardly believe it was capable of flight. I regarded it with a bit of nostalgia,
for just moments before it had been a lost and decayed pile of ancient fabric.

I
could hear the faint whine of a maser, and just over it voices.

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

"Of
course it will."

"It
couldn't p-p-possibly fail."

"Not
a ch-ch- chance."

A
long creaking
sound,
followed by a short crackling
sound, then, "Zot!"

Then
the dull thump of bodies colliding, followed by, "Oh, double Zot."

Oops! I sprang into action, cranking the
handle to zip downward. At first I
was afraid I wouldn't be able to catch up, but I accelerated until I closed
in. Trina and I had stabilized in
free fall, and her eyes widened as she saw me closing in. "Wow!" she blurted. I held a finger to my lips, and winked.

She
stared, and then, of all things, winked back. I noticed that I looked even
more goofy
in freefall than I had supposed.

I
reached out and grabbed my leg.

My
head - my other head - spun. My
eyes were very big. I was
disappointed - I had hoped I would look a bit more calm and cool.

I
hauled Trina and myself aboard the sled, lowered them gently, gave my little
speech, and squirted on up, back to the future.

"Whew!"
I said.

"Are
we saved?" Trina asked.

"Ruined,
ruined, completely ruined," Dr. Ought was gasping. His huge machine was sparking and
smoking. He informed us, in terms
that would have made Trina blush if she wasn't busy memorizing them for her own
use, that an amount of irreplaceable materials equivalent to thirteen years of
Earth's GNP had just gone up in time-displaced smoke.

"Now
we are," I said to Trina, ignoring Dr. Ought. It was just as well, with me, if time
travel was theoretically possible but on a practical level impossible. "Though you could have warned me I
was coming. I nearly scared me to
death, and you saw it all."

"You
told me to keep quiet!"

"True,"
I shrugged. Now I identified more
with that me, rather than earlier me. But weren't they - we - the same?

"Give
up. Stop it," Ned advised, as
my head started to hurt.

The
Admiral burst through a door. "Hurry up! We're
late!"

"For
what?"

"For
court, Court, you idiot!"

The
Galactic Court held session in a moon-sized ship which rode celestial circuit,
dispensing justice where needed, or in the alternative, wherever it felt like
it. As Galactic procedural rules
dictated, the Galactic Court ship was now in Earth's system, the home of the
soon-to-be-dispossessed. Admiral
Fairchile's Bigger Than Yours, moored next door, most decidedly wasn't. It was a minnow beside a whale.

The Galactic Courtroom itself was a
gigantic cavern. The ceiling was
lost high above in a half-mile of darkness. The walls seemed miles away; the chamber
was designed to accommodate hundreds of thousands of members of all species,
since the fate of worlds would sometimes be decided here. There were huge tanks for liquid
breathers, and giant cells for methane-biochems.

The
Courtroom was mostly empty, but nevertheless held a few thousand aliens, most
of them trial junkies of a thoroughly alarming appearance. A contingent of Boffs was present, to
glory in the final defeat of the primates. They hated everyone, but kept a special black place in their green
hearts for humans. They hated
Etzans too, though not quite as much.

The
Chief Judge sat behind a high ebony bar, all three of his stalk-mounted heads
gazing at us coolly. Another
Orlyx! The last I'd met had wanted
my skull. Bailiffs, attendants, and
other personnel roamed about, of various shapes and sizes and layouts and
planforms, as if Darwin had run amok. Of course, in a very real sense he had done exactly that.

The
Chief Judge gaveled the session to order. "
This the
matter of In Re Earth," his
central head intoned. "At
issue is the valid ownership of the third planet of this system. The humans filed a claim some time
ago. That claim is now challenged
by the Etzans, who claim on the basis of
newly-discovered
evidence to have a pre-existing claim. Are the Etzans present?"

"We
are," said an Etzan at an opposing table. Although only two of these tables were
now occupied, there were many of them, for Galactic Court affairs could be
extremely complex.

"Humans?"

I
glanced at the Admiral. The Admiral
glanced at me. We both glanced at
Trina. She looked at the Admiral. Finally both of them stared at me. Where was humanity's lawyer? He was permanently stationed on board
the Galactic Court ship, and so should have been safe from the Etzans - even
they would only go so far. But he
should have been here.

Late,
the Admiral mouthed, tapping the time-strip on his finger. He shrugged, and pointed at me.
Very urgently.

I
shook my head. He pointed at me
again, with a distinct air of implied violence.

"Humans?"
repeated the Judge.

The
Admiral's eyes were threatening to bug from his face. I didn't want to see that, not at all.

"Here,"
I announced.

The
Orlyx gazed at me with a disdain that I found entirely too reminiscent of the
last, head-poker-playing Orlyx I'd met, then turned all three heads, one at a
time, to face the Etzan.

"Proceed
with your presentation."

It
was short and bitter. The Etzan
smoothly outlined the story of their crew finding and claiming Earth some ten
thousand years before, but then being lost in a space accident. The wreckage of the survey ship had only
recently been found, perfectly preserved in the vacuum of space, its records
intact. No doubt the unlamentable
Hurg and Urg had expired in mid-argument.

"Our
position is fully documented by this vid." The Etzan played the clip, showing a
millennia-old
scene which
I had already seen twice
before, once in the flesh. That
same wooly mammoth staggered across my view, one more time.

As
his finale, the Etzan produced the still-sealed sample canister, and
demonstrated that its codings matched those of the canister in the vid. He deposited it with the
Clerk,
a wet slimy mass built around one central large blue
eye.

Two
of the Chief Judge's heads turned away, to some menial paperwork. One, bored, regarded me. "The Etzans have a solid claim. Do you wish to be heard?"

"Most
certainly!" I said.

"There
is no point, you realize," the Judge advised. "It is over. Earth should now be called Etz. You would be wasting
Our
time, and We do not like That.

"Nevertheless,
a few minutes, please."

"Perhaps
you did not hear
Me
. We don't like having
Our
time wasted. At all." Crimson mandibles shivered in
irritation.

"I
won't take long."

The
lone head sighed, glanced at its compatriots, and turned back to me. "No," it said simply.

"Excuse
me?"

"No,"
it repeated in a hiss.

I
seemed to be unfamiliar with this legal maxim. "No?"

"No! Nugatory! Nix! Nay! Denied! See ya! Disallowed!"

A
small rustling cheer rose from the Boff section. Tentacles slapped together
enthusiastically. Another rose from
the Etzan stands. Though the Etzans
and the Boffs were sworn enemies their mutual hatred of humans could bring them
together.

The
Etzan began packing up his things, pausing only to make a rude
four-handed
gesture at us.

Ned
whispered something to me, and I leapt onto our table. "I demand," I screamed,
"Analysis! I invoke -
Urtok!"

A
hush swept the room. Mandibles
stopped chittering. Antennae ceased
buzzing. Wings stilled. Gills flapped closed. Mouth-holes froze.

"Analysis? Urtok?" echoed a hundred alien
tongues, filter levers, mouth pushers, air modulators, and clappers.

"Analysis,"
I repeated. "Urtok!" The audience stewed, which was a most
unpleasant image. The Boffs began
to boo and hiss.

This
was enough to get two of the Judge's heads turned towards me; the third was
still fascinated by paperwork.

"Most
irregular," chittered the Chief Judge. "But since ownership of the
primate's primary planet is at stake, we may be lenient.
Though only up to a
point.
You may invoke
Urtok. You understand what it
means, yes?"

"Of
course," stage-whispered Ned.

"Of
course," I repeated, while throwing the mental image of a huge question
mark at Ned. He whispered a vague
response about certain unpleasant consequences, in certain circumstances.