10000 Light Years From Home Part 15

"But what can she do? Has she ever seen a computer?"

"She says she is a warrior."

"Yes, I know.... Hold it a minute, Det!" he shouted at his flashing intercom. "Al1 right, young lady, you've sworn fealty. Now you go along with Dr. Ooloo and they'll find you something to do. Find anything! Show her how to run the elevator! Now get out of here!"

He turned to bow deeply to the shaken tapir-faced one as Dana got them out. From the screen, Detweiler's face watched in puzzlement until Christmas gave him the all-clear.

"We were right, PC!" Detweiler burst out. "Ankru's a wildly oblate spheroid; they've got nearly three gee at the equator. That one-point-two figure was an average. Obviously they've been sending animals from their heavy zone."

"But in that case, shouldn't the specs have the letter V after it for variable?"

"Yes, it should, but it doesn't. Here, look at the Directory read out. Same in our synopsis, of course."

"Recent date on that paragraph," Christmas said thoughtfully. "Just about the time Ankru applied, wasn't it?"

"Why yes, it's a change notice. They come out periodically from Gal Comp by FTL and are automatically transcribed here... wait, let me see if we still have the old paragraph." He dived off-screen, to return noticeably pale. "The old directory paragraph has been destroyed, but I found it in my personal synopsis. The V was there, before the change. What could have happened?""Seems to me there's three possibilities," said Christmas. "Gal Comp mistransmitted, the FTL garbled, or something went wrong with the transcriber in your office."

"Gal Comp has never sent a mis-read, Peter." Detweiler seldom used his given name. "You know the Directory is the galaxy bible for navigation, administration, everything; they have a fantastic technical control on it. The Directory is literally error-free. Oh, the transmission could garble, of course, but they do triple redundancy with a discrepancy signal. For one letter alone to fall out and the warning to fail too would be, well, just about the fifty million monkeys. And the transcriber in our office is automatic too. It would be almost impossible for it to miss one symbol in an otherwise correct paragraph-" Detweiler's voice died.

"Unless somebody tampered with it." Christmas finished for him.

"Yes...it could be done. The original read-out is duplicated for the Directory and the synopses. If the process were stopped, a technician could alter the original...

"There is a gap in the line too, Peter, I think." The doe eyes were sick, and his face showed angles Christmas had never seen.

"The technicians are all our people," said Christmas.

"Yes, every one. Peter, I'm going to signal Gal Comp to check their master program. It'll take some while." He cut off abruptly.

Christmas sat drumming his desk. Then he shook himself.

"Dana, put a hold order on all Ankru races. Either they withdraw or the races are postponed.

Handicap error. And tell Kurt to see they don't get off the planet and to monitor any signals. But not to alarm them. And notify Mutuel that results on those already run are now officially invalid."

The Magellan voder crackled startlingly.

"Query correct understanding. You now (?) hypothesize (?) imaginatively postulate a Solterran has engaged in deception for gain."

"That's right," Christmas said. He took a deep breath. "Only a Solterran could have cut out the V that told the planet was irregular. Once it was out, the way was open for Ankru to bring in their heavies and make a killing. The fact that they entered so many items so fast suggests that there was a plan. Only one of our people would perceive the possibility.... Of course there is a microscopic possibility that there was an outside leader, maybe even from Gal Center, and that our person was intimidated. But it looks-no. It can't be. It cannot be."

"Query impossibility. Solterrans do not differ from other life."

Christmas' jaw worked.

"Such (?) ideals (?) systems have been known to fail in our galaxy. Possibility of material riches is very great," the voder probed on.

"What's to gain?" Christmas burst out, aware that he was being driven closer to what he would not say. "We have everything one could wish, homes, luxury, travel-all free."

"Possibility of material increment for your home planet is very great."

"This is our home planet," Christmas responded mechanically. What was wrong with Ser Nisrair?

How could he have failed to brief the Magellans? It was unforgivable. He felt the never-quite-absent ache rising.

"Query correct understanding," the voder was a vulture picking at his vitals. "You are native of planet Terra in system Sol."

He was going to have to say it. He surged up and strode to the window, his back to the aliens.

"There is no living planet of Terra. The Solterrans you have seen here are descendants of small colonies on our moon and a few other places at the time Terra was destroyed... Terra was the only habitable planet in our system."The ache was hard in his breast now. As a child he had sung "There is a dome that we call home, green Terra is no more." Neither he nor his fifteenth grandfather had known green Terra, and no Terran he knew lived in a dome, but the images were deep.... Grim survivors in asteroid bubbles under leaky Marsdome... watching the big ships of Gal Q come poking in to see what was burning up their scintillographs, and to rescue the orphans.

"In our galaxy, beings without home planet do not long persist."

"Nor here," said Christmas heavily: It was true. Orphan races somehow die out, no one knew quite why-or why the ache never died. Either you kept hold of the ache and lived or you forgot and after a while you weren't around any more.

"Raceworld is run by the planetless, you see," he said aloud. "There is no one outside to profit. Only Solterrans."

"Your a.s.sistant is not Solterran."

"Oh, we take in a few other orphans. Dana's people got one ship out of an inter-system war.

Doesn't often happen."

Were Dana's people going to live with the ache, too? Christmas had never pried behind the cheery brown eyes. Dana was fifth generation. There were still some cubs around.

"Query your planet was lost by war." The ghoul-voice bored on relentlessly. Christmas studied the horizon. The scene below him, the announcer's call-all phantasms now.

"No. We blew it up ourselves."

The voder gargled. "Such cases especially nonpersistent," it said.

This too was true. Those races who had destroyed their own worlds never lived on long. Except one.... All honor to the suicides, the fratricides, the matricides-the lost Solterrans who had found their immortality as purveyors of a primitive pleasure to the galaxy."

The voder-vulture was squawking again.

"Query you place value on (?) ethics (?) group conduct of dead planet."

Christmas whirled around.

"Terra is not dead!" he shouted into the white skull-faces. "Every civilized race in the galaxy knows Terra! The word Solterran is slang for fairness, for incorruptibility, all over the galaxy! Ask anywhere-ask in the Center, go to the Rim and ask things that hang by their tails-they know us. They joke about it-they don't understand it-but they play our game and they use her name! How can Terra be dead when mother fish in the seas teach their young about her?"

He caught his breath.

"There was nothing like Raceworld before we came. We-the Terran survivors-we thought of it, planned it, sold it to Gal Center. We're a good piece of their budget now. But with us it is for Terra.

How can she be dead when birds that fly in freezing ammonia speak of Terra?"

He ran down and the room was silent.

The voder curdled faintly, hushed again. Christmas went back to his desk. The black devils had got it out of him.

"Query," announced the voder. Christmas had the impression a different Magellan was speaking, but he couldn't care less.

"You experience noxious subjective disturbance."

"I experience noxious subjective disturbance, yes," Christmas said bleakly. "If... if one of us... The whole thing is no good the unique thing.... But it can't be-"

The minutes dragged by. The aliens spoke no more. Dana came in with some papers, not meeting Christmas's eyes; he always monitored the office.

A planetary rep came on the outercom, breezily intent on getting a special ruling in the hoppercla.s.ses. The rep looked like a kangaroo. Christmas answered him mechanically. In the middle of a complicated point about tail rests, Detweiler's signal chimed. Christmas spun away from the kangaroo.

"-definitely, Peter. I've seen the master read-in," Detweiler stuttered.

"What's definite?"

"The V was never transmitted from Cal Comp! Some molecule, I don't know-anyway, it's the first mis-read in five Standard centuries; they're wild. It's theirs, Peter! It's theirs!"

"It's not us," Christmas said softly. They broke connection. Christmas sat stone-still. Then he slapped his desk hard and whirled on the Magellans.

"You see?" he shouted. "You see? Oh, I should have seen it had to be them. A mechanical process can reverse a unit at random, but motivation acts like a field-elements don't change until the field does-"

The kangaroo was spluttering from the screen. Christmas got him mollified. Over his shoulder he heard the Magellans rustling and turned in time to catch a glimpse of crimson rib-flaps opening and closing along the black sides. The voder made an incomprehensible noise. Christmas stared, remembering that there were alien galaxies, and the shadows of unthinkable war. Were they offended?

Angry?

A grating sound came from outside the big doors. Dana rushed to fling it open, revealing Ser Nisrair standing eyes-talk-to-eyeball with the Myrian girl. The point of her sword was at Nisrair's ma.s.sive stomach plates. Hubbub arose from the offices beyond.

"Let him in and put that knife away!" Christmas roared. "Who in chaos told you I needed a door-guard? Excuse me, Ser, we've been having problems."

Nisrair stumped in, antennae formal. Three of his eyes-talks were trained on the Magellans, one on Christmas. The aliens gave no sign.

"The transportation back to Galactic Center which you requested is now ready," Ser Nisrair told them.

"No," said the voder.

"But-" said Nisrair. "Ah, then, you wish to continue the tour here? We have an interesting demonstration of probability extrapolation prepared for the evening."

"No," repeated the voder.

Again there came the crimson rustling.

"...Not previously visible," said the voder, and lapsed into unintelligibility. Nisrak swiveled a second eyestalk around to Christmas. Christmas opened his hands in a shrug.

"My companion (?) co-traveler is... untranslatable... disturbance. We wish to retire now to consider... garble... what we have seen."

"I will escort you at once to the hotel," said Nisrair. Still the aliens did not move.

The voder crackled on for a moment and then said clearly, "Technology, communications, mathematics, economics, chemistry, high bit-rate." It made a surprisingly expressive hiccough. The aliens were suddenly in swirling motion to the door.

There they stopped and contorted oddly. One of them stamped hard with black whiplike toes, making a report like a pistol-shot. Everyone jumped. The next second they were receding through the outer office.

Nisrair went after them, one round eyeball still twisted over his shoulder at Christmas.

Dana silently closed the big doors and leaned with his back to them, showing his substantial teeth.

"Who knows?" Christmas rubbed his head dazedly. "Tragedians, maybe. Romantics. Were they crying? Or laughing? Something they wanted, anyway. Gal Q has been killing them with computers and everything so sublime-""The G.o.ds do not come to earth to see lightning," Dana said. "An old saying of my people."

"Maybe they weren't G.o.ds," Christmas said. "Maybe they were a couple of old aunties out for a joyride. Or a retired couple who got lost."

He shook off his ghosts.

"All right, let's get that unholy Myrian in here-and that Doctor Ooloolullah."

He went to the window, snuffling luxuriously. The magic was back. Dana herded in the gangling humans.

"Young lady-no, stay on your feet. I've got something to tell you. You couldn't go home because you lost the race, right? Well, you didn't lose it, you won it. The animal who came in first has been disqualified; it was running under an inadequate gravity handicap. Do you understand? Tell her, Doctor, she won it fair and square. Now she can go back to Myria in triumph and be a sacred warrior virgin again. Right?"

The girl broke into sobs of unmistakable woe.

"For Solsake, what now?"

"She says she can't go home now, sir, because-uh-"

"Because what?"

"Sir, you said, do anything-"

"Oy not vergan now!" she wailed and collapsed on the intern's chest.

"She wants to stay here," said the intern. "I thought she could work out well with the animals."

"She can't stay here, she's got a home. What's that?"

"She says they'll disembowel her at home for not being a virgin," the intern said miserably.

"Really? Permissive types. Well! H'mm, Dana, do you think she might qualify as a de facto planetless person? I'll buck a request over to Det in the morning; he'll have to get cultural certification.

All right! You, Doctor, take her to Lament's transient billet; she can camp there till we get this straightened out. You, young lady, go with him and do whatever he says, right? You can put your pants on now and that sword goes away, right? No, on your feet-in public, anyway. And you, both of you; get out of here and stay out until I call for you-if I ever do-starting as of now. Right?"

The doors closed.

The drifting fragrance of a cheroot told Christmas that his night deputy had come into the office and was quietly checking through Dana's log to see what was pending for the night. Coburg was a stocky white-haired man who had been main track chief until his legs failed.

"Should be a quiet night," Christmas told him. "You might call Lament's office for quarters for a special case, you heard it. And you're bound to get some noise about the Ankru thing. Other than that-I'll call in later."

He gazed out to where the floodlights were coming on over plain and mountains, pylons, domes and sea. All were folded in the gold and pastel of Raceworld's perfect evening. One in her infinite series of perfect evenings.... Dana was watching him.

"Somehow I feel you and I could do with a small idyll," Christmas said. "How about getting your family to join me at Seaworld? We'll s.n.a.t.c.h a prime table by the big shark races and your kids can have themselves a ride."