Blade of p’Na by L. Neil Smith
It struck me that these were freshwater fish. The plecostomus was, too. Nautiloids live in saltwater. I wondered how they handled the difference.
Mikado pressed his nose against the glass, watching the fish. “You know,” he said, “I can persuade my humanoid to take me anywhere for an exotic and delicious meal. I can order the house computer to prepare any delicacy that tickles my fancy: tenderly-sautéed liver, lobster pate, Chicken Pyrenees. It will find it for me, cook it, and deliver it.”
“Sure,” I said. “And…?”
“And despite all of that, every cell in my body is screaming at me to leap into that water right now and gobble up all those expensive—and probably poisonous—fish raw. I wouldn’t go to the wall to defend this theory of mine, Sam, but your kind have been domesticated—how I detest that word—for just about twice as long as mine have.”
The jury is still out on the exact dates involved. Dogs evolved from wolves, and are said to have partnered up with human beings in the northeast corner of the Great Continent an Ice Age or two ago. Housecats (Mikado probably hated that expression, too) are not related closely to lions and leopards, and supposedly arose in the northeast corner of the continent immediately south of the Inland sea. But the ancient Antarcticans had both dogs and cats, fifteen thousand years ago.
However, I said, “I suppose that’s true.” And it probably was.
“Wildness still lives inside us cats.”
I often have dreams of following a pack, the sheer joy of running into the wind, tongue hanging out, after a big herd of wild herbivores across some endless prairie somewhere. Eichra Oren tells me that my implants leak signals at a time like that, that he sees what I see, hears what I hear, smells what I smell—it’s like talking in your sleep—and that I whimper and jerk my legs whenever I have that dream.
Cell memory, Eichra Oren calls it. Human beings don’t have it. The herd-beasts of my dreams have been extinct a hundred thousand years. I told Mikado about it. He said that wildness still lives inside of me, too.
We understood each other.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
Pushing the Evidence
SEMLOHCOLRESH’S COLLOQUIUM BROKE UP NOT LONG after that.
Dawn was on the way, wispy pink and orange streamers showing on the eastern horizon just above the antique skyline of the ancient city, sunrise barreling toward at us at eleven hundred miles an hour, straight across the Great Continent, of which this was just a giant peninsula.
The big bright light was out for the day. Its lacy titanium tower was silhouetted starkly against the gradually brightening sky. The colors changed subtly from moment to moment, almost from second to second.
Morning had come to Lanternlight.
We might have called on Scutigera for a ride to our hotel (he’d sworn to us that he never slept, although I’m not entirely sure I believed it) but it was a perfect temperature outside, still and calm, the air smelled fresh and good, so we decided to walk. It wasn’t very far.
There’s something absolutely wonderful about a new day in a big town. The streets were wet and shiny, but smelled more like they’d been freshly cleaned while we were down in Semlohcolresh’s bunker, than as if it had rained. All across the city, businesses of every kind were waking up. You could smell the wonderful aroma of baking bread.
Sunrise down on the southern coast is pretty splendid, too. No baking bread, but plenty of morning-blooming flowers and prairie birdsong. The smell of a calm sea in the dawn of the day can be intoxicating.
“Okay,” I observed, breaking the spell. “As Jakdav Hoj put it, we have a pretty good idea what these are, the evolutionary descendants of common flatworms. But we don’t have any idea of who they are. And even worse, since we don’t know what they want, we don’t know why they’re here. We don’t know how they got here. And the worst part is that we don’t know where they’re keeping themselves while they are here.”
A heavy silence hung between us. Eichra Oren peered around as if looking for something to kick. We’d both seen what those things had done to Ray, and what they’d tried to do to Lyn Chow. I admit that whenever I thought about them, I had visions of flamethrowers dancing in my head. A very wise individual once observed that there isn’t any problem that can’t be solved with a sufficient quantity of high explosives.
“If they’re as technologically adept as all that,” Eichra Oren said at last, only half kidding about it, “at slipping quietly between parallel universes, then maybe they go home every night—or even for lunch.”
“Now there’s a depressing thought.”
As for Lyn Chow, I found it difficult to believe that somewhere, in all that mass of information she’d absorbed out there among the Asteroids, peering through Misterthoggosh’s cosmic knotholes, she hadn’t at least glimpsed something useful regarding the Grays and their homeworld. Maybe she didn’t realize it, there had been so many screens. Then again, she’s just one of thousands of females—okay, make that dozens of females—who lust after Eichra Oren. Personally, I don’t understand it. My boss is undeniably a great man, but he’s boring.
It was hard getting used to the idea that someone, somewhere might actually be ahead of the Elders technologically, or for that matter, in any other respect. But the nautiloids lived a long, long time, individually. And their civilization gave new meaning to words like “venerable” and “conservative”—it’s extremely difficult to wrap your brain around half a billion years. As a people, the molluscs were inclined to accept progress only slowly because along the way, they’d learned some excruciatingly painful lessons and tended to be somewhat neophobic.
If I ever get that old, please bury me. By any ordinary nautiloid standards—with the possible exception of the great lady Eneri Relda—the majority of Appropriated Persons must have seemed like little more than unruly children. And Misterthoggosh, who was neophilic, and tended to identify with us kids, was considered by many to be a raving lunatic.
Who consistently made them money.
“You know,” I said, “Mikado told me that there are individuals in other cultures, in other realities, who believe that these Gray guys travel around in flying disks.” No doubt the information came from Misterthoggosh’s stolen broadcasts. Sometimes I wondered if it was an unmixed blessing, the way the broadcasts were increasingly saturating nautiloid society.
Mikado said there were other stories out there about the Grays’ proclivities but they were too disgusting and unlikely to be taken seriously.
The boss stopped walking suddenly and turned to look at me. “We travel around in flying disks, Sam. The form is imposed by the nature of antigravity. The Grays we have here seem to prefer light aerocraft, and they also appear to swim pretty well. And they employ big curved knives as weapons. What the Hammer kind of advanced technology is that?”
I gave the little whuff that serves me as a laugh. None of that reconstituted electronic stuff for this doggy. “You carry a sword, yourself, Boss, but does that make you a primitive? Me, I’d argue that it’s symbolic of the most advanced ethical system ever known to sapientkind.”
“Sapientkind?”
“Sapienticity? Knives are deceptively sophisticated. The alloys involved are a matter of a lifetime’s study. The good ones work under every imaginable sort of condition, arctic, tropical, mountaintops, ocean trenches, outer space. And they never run short of ammunition or power. If I had thumbs, Boss, I might even consider carrying a knife, myself.”
A picture formed in my mind of yours truly standing up on his hind legs, growling fiercely and wielding a great big knife to frighten off his antagonists. I let Eichra Oren see it. He grinned and laughed out loud.
“You know what they say about somebody who brings a knife to a gunfight.”
The ridiculous image vanished like a popped soap bubble. The boss shook his head and resumed walking. “I’ve also started carrying what may be the world’s tiniest handgun that could still blow your head clean off. Not to mention your back garden wall. Now th
“Pretty hard to argue with,” I conceded, sighing inwardly once again for the lack of thumbs. I seemed to be doing a lot of that these days. “The world was made,” I told him sadly, “for people with thumbs.”
“People with thumbs made the world, Sam. Or their equivalent.”
“Too true,” I agreed.
“And another thing,” he went on. “I suspect that our friends the Grays sometimes drive big veeks filled with water. I believe that they may be the culprits who tried to run us off the road back home on the coast the other day. The subsequent air attack didn’t give me any time to investigate their veek, myself, so I’ve since asked Jakdav Hoj to analyze whatever evidence the road-owners’ emergency services may have collected and preserved, for organic residues consistent with our new visitors.”
“Because they probably excrete with their whole bodies, too. Yech.” Then I blinked, a purely human reaction I’d acquired. “But we found—”
“You found the claw of a sea scorpionoid, Sam, but not the rest of one.” He thought for moment. “I asked Misterthoggosh—Aelbraugh Pritsch, actually—to check around a little. There doesn’t seem to be a sea scorpion missing anywhere—nor any sea scorpion missing a claw—”
I had reservations of my own about asking suspects to help with an investigation, but the boss always seemed to know what he was doing. His judgment of other sapients had a pretty enviable track record. For lack of anything better, I offered, “They grow back, did you know that?”
“You mean naturally, without any high-tech medical assistance? Yes, I knew that, Sam. I have no idea where the Grays got it, but I think that claw was meant to throw us off. To make us suspect Misterthoggosh.”
“Because he uses sea scorpionoids for security? If that’s the case, it didn’t work too well. Most people who can afford bodyguards use sea scorpionoids. I don’t think they understand our culture.” I thought for a moment and added, “Me, I’d have left a big silvery gray feather.”
Eichra Oren laughed, but sobered again quickly. “Aelbraugh Pritsch may be unintentionally silly, and a stuffed shirt, but I don’t think he deserves to die for it. I believe that they killed Ray because he saw them, down there with that wreck on the sea bottom. But even that backfired, giving us pictures of them and tissue to identify them with.”
“Not to mention leaving his implants behind to be found by us, so we could feel them and smell them, as well,” I said. “Okay then, if we have to be invaded, let it be by incompetent invaders, by all means. Ray gave us that tissue. Do you suppose it grows back, too? That maybe you can cut one of these Gray creatures in half like their flatworm ancestors?”
“I don’t know, Sam. It’s a very interesting question.”
“So,” I said, “They want to discredit Misterthoggosh, and they don’t want people seeing them and living to tell about it. You think those are reasonable observations, or am I pushing the evidence too far?”
“No, no, I agree with you absolutely.” He shook his head. “But it’s only a beginning, Sam. It tells us nothing about their mission here.”
“Except that it’s secret.” So was Misterthoggosh’s mission, for that matter. “And probably evil, since they don’t mind killing those who get in their way. We don’t have a clue where to look for them,” I concluded.
“Then perhaps we ought to get them to come to us,” he said, brightening.
“What?” I had no idea what he had on his mind.
“And I think,” he mostly said to himself, “I know just how to do that.”
We could probably have gone right home immediately upon leaving the underground palace of Semlohcolresh. The veek would have done all the work, and there’s something to be said for sleeping in your own bed.
I suggested as much when we had nearly reached the Grand Hotel, the finest (or so its implant advertising was willing to attest) in all of Greater Lanternlight. On the other paw, all of our expenses here were being paid by Misterthoggosh and his partners, who rightly believed that they had “treated” themselves to the best p’Nan debt assessor available. With the possible exception of the mole people, an infamously penurious bunch, they wouldn’t have expected any less of us.
Eichra Oren shook his head. “We have a lot of unfinished business to attend to back home, Sam. And maybe other places to go, besides. Between that and the return drive—which you’ll agree is very pretty in spots—I think I’d rather face it wide awake and fresh. Wouldn’t you?”
Never, in all my experience with the man so far, had he ever had nice things to say about scenery. Eichra Oren wasn’t without aesthetic sensibilities, by any means, but he’d spent the drive here, which I presumed had been equally pretty, talking with people over the implant system. If he hadn’t been the one driving, he’d never even have looked up.
It was a grand hotel, right enough, at least for our civilization, which doesn’t care much, ordinarily, for clumping people up, let alone stacking them on top of one another. The place was admittedly pretty impressive, a dozen stories tall—they didn’t want anything taller in this city than their precious titanium tower—occupying a city block by itself. The front of the building, constructed in some style other than the Antarctican that we might have expected, was a long, concave curve, lit by streaks of colored light by lamps at the ground level. Flying machines of every kind were hovering over and landing on the roof.
Past the gracefully curving driveway and the three-story portico, in through the massive doors of glass and bronze—three different sizes and shapes to suit every possible landdwelling lifeform—the hotel lobby seemed more like the inside of an opera house, all gold pillars, black marble, and deep red velvet. Despite myself, I kept looking for a fat lady in a silly hat, but there wasn’t even a stage for her to stand on, let alone belt out the aria that would end it all.
Toward the back, a great wide flight of steps—carpeted to match velvet ropes hanging from golden posts—didn’t seem to really go anywhere.
The veek had already been here all night, washed and cosseted by machines almost as bright as the late Ray’s pet squid. The veek was pretty much self-maintaining, its antimatter engine hadn’t really needed attention, but the service came with the “package” and was a nice touch. I was already aware that, when we were ready to take our leave, we’d find a bouquet of freshly-cut flowers lying on the dashboard.
Aside from Eichra Oren’s debt assessor’s sword, which he wouldn’t let anybody touch, let alone carry for him, we hadn’t brought any luggage with us. I always travel light. This seemed to disturb the bell-being deeply. He (or she) seemed to be a product of nautiloid technology, rather than arachnid, a cybernetically enhanced deep sea predator of some kind—the really ugly ones from the abyssal plains featuring gigantic mouths, crazy eyes, and dozens of pointy teeth—in a glass ball full of water on a tall pole attached to the luggage cart.
A big spiral escalator whisked us skyward, where a hallway with a richly-carpeted moving floor—liquid in only two dimensions—swept us to where we belonged. The boss and I split up on the eleventh floor—this level being reserved for day-sleepers, and lit only by a soft, artificial light—and repaired to our separate accommodations, as usual. One of us snores and we’ve never settled on which one of us it is.
Inside, the room was luxurious (whatever windows it may have had invisible, tightly sealed against the daylight), generically designed to suit mammals, and adjusted—more brochure-speak—to the ideal temperature, humidity, and barometric pressure for my canine comfort and relaxation. I cleared my implant, told it not to accept any more commercial propaganda, and tried to decide whether I was hungry or not.
At my command, one entire wall of the room became a landscape, a panorama of the open veldt that occupies so much of the continent to our south, adjusted to resemble, as closely as possible, my recurring genetic memories. I added the singing of the appropriate birds, a light afternoon breeze, and my implant supplied the odors of a hot day in the long
While I was waiting for room service, I took a shower—purely electrostatic, with streams of designer ions removing accumulated dust and detritus—and, smelling like the bouquet that would be waiting for us in the veek, hopped up onto the enormous bed that had assumed for me “the ultimate degree of gentle firmness for my size and weight”.
I was about to check with Eichra Oren one last time—probably sound asleep by now—when I heard an actual physical knock on my door. Outside, a softly feminine, very human voice announced, “Room service”.
“Please come in,” I told her, and she did. I’d halfway expected delivery by pneumatic tube or something. But attired in the formal robe all the hotel employees wore, she carried a tray with my midnight meal—well, it felt like midnight, anyway; sapient beings create their own time. She set it down on folding legs, approaching me where I lay on the bed. Standing before me, she parted her robe from throat to ankle, revealing that the bed wasn’t the only thing in the place to offer me the ultimate degree of gentle firmness for my size and weight.
“May I?” Leaving her robe open, she sat on the bed beside me. “With the compliments of Misterthoggosh,” she said sweetly. “Would you like me to feed you, first? It must be just terrible, not having any thumbs.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
The Assessor’s Sword
THREE HOURS LATER, I WOKE UP. BESIDE ME ON THE BED, Marianne (that was her name) was still asleep. I’m afraid I’d worn the poor darling out.
Suddenly I heard my name inside my head—again. Eichra Oren. That’s what had awakened me without disturbing my lovely and talented guest. I leaped off the bed, willed the door open, and ran into the hall.