Hotel Andromeda Part 8

'Take Protecting the Young. That's one of the most basic hu- man stories." It was also one that would lead very naturally to the point I wanted to bring up.

"Because we bear weak young that need years of nurturing and training before they can survive on their own, we have a very strong social drive to protect our young-anybody's young-anything that appears weak. When you thought the TELLING HUMAN STORIES 51.

Dendje was a.s.saulting the Skiouros you intervened without thinking, because you were in the human story of Protecting the Young. But that story doesn't really have much bearing on species that have evolved symbiotic relationships. And it can lead you completely astray in dealing with a species like the Hatartalan, who sp.a.w.n thousands of self-sufficient young at a time and then actively test them so that only the best will make it to the next life-cycle stage. You see?"

"Funny you should mention the Hatartalan," Jack said. He waved one hand at the activity all around us. "Know who's in the adjoining module? The Hatartalan amba.s.sador to Sokol Sector. That's what all this hoo-ha is for. Going to connect the modules tonight, have a grand diplomatic bash. Two amba.s.sa- dors of equal status-our fellow and the Hatartalan-crossing paths in s.p.a.ce, pausing to render honors and courtesies and all that. Interesting, huh?"

I agreed. I didn't add that a number of parties found the re- peated pattern of "accidental" meetings between Old Terrans and Hatartalans very interesting indeed. Instead I widened my eyes and looked impressed.

"A genuine Hatartalan?" I breathed. "You know, I've never actually met one. It would be so fascinating to find out how their behavior compares with what I've read in research papers-ah, I mean in the hotel training manual."

That was the point at which my dear new friend Jack was supposed to come across with an invitation to join the grand diplomatic bash. Unfortunately, he missed his cue and kept on missing it, no matter how wide-eyed and wistful I acted.

There must have been something faulty with his Protecting the Young story. I eventually left with a little information about the party, a lot more information than I'd bargained for about the life and times of Jack Kerensky, and no invitation.

Oh, well; if you can't get what you want, you just have to use what you've got....

By the time I came back to the Terra 4 module, the joint Terran-Hatartalan party had been going for some time-long enough for guests on both sides to make maximum use of their icebreakers of choice. The air was heavy with leaking smoke and vapor trails from the Terran poppers, while the Hatartalans were whooping it up with what the library index 52 Margaret Bail told me was their usual stimulant-translucent, wobbly eggs that burst to reveal some stuff like seaweed that had been dead a couple of days too long. The organic component of the seaweed turned into a cloud of small airborne particles the minute the egg burst, leaving a few dried wiry strands that the Hatartalans usually dropped while they were ecstatically inhaling the rotted-weed clouds.

The index hadn't mentioned that the process gave a Hatartalan party the distinctive aroma of a marsh in an ad- vanced state of ecological breakdown, or that the wiry seaweed remnants crunched underfoot while the jellyeggs squished.

Did I mention that Hatartalans are real slobs? Woops, hu- man story. Let's say that their species, having evolved to treat its sp.a.w.n as disposable commodities-"Throw 'em out, there's plenty more where they came from!"-treats every- thing else exactly the same way. Hatartala is said to be the only planet whose ecology is trashed worse than Old Terra's.2 No, I hadn't gotten access to the party yet. I was standing on a walkway under the balcony when a roboserv lurched out with a scoop full of seaweed and jellyeggs, missed the dis- posal chute, and showered me with the debris. That's how I happened to be an expert on Hatartalan trash before I got to meet any of them in person.

I was still picking seaweed crackle out of my black dress and reflecting that at least now I smelled like somebody from the right party when a pair of human bopperchicks spilled out of the lower entrance. They were both gla.s.sy-eyed, giggling, and scantily dressed, and they barely noticed when they nearly pushed me off the edge of me walkway. They probably wouldn't have noticed at all if I hadn't just had the unfortu- nate encounter with the malfunctioning roboservitor.

"Eeew, you smell gross!" one of them exclaimed, wrinkling her nose. "What've you been doing, seducing a buzzhead?"

Did I mention that the mature form of Hatartalan is vaguely insectoid, with long sticklike limbs and a head that's all buzz- ing, constandy vibrating mandibles?

"Some of my best friends are buzzheads," I told her.

"Where are we going?"

She giggled. "Saying good-bye to Bips and Puffy, of course!" Her eyes glazed over and she took a moment to un- TELLING HUMAN STORIES 53.

tangle her tongue. This one was really far gone. "Or do I mean Pips and Buffy? Good oF Buffm, bes' Men' a girl ever had, and I do mean best. You shoutd've met Puffin, he'd show you a good time. Lots more fun than hanging around with the buzzheads."

"Breaks my heart to've missed the opportunity," I agreed.

"But Jack gets so jealous. You know, good old Jack Kerensky?"

I'd hoped for recognition, but all I got was generic agree- ment. "Oh, darling, I know'. Aren't men the limit sometimes?

Oh, look, there they are now!"

I crowded into the overlook at the far side of the walkway and squealed and waved as enthusiastically as the rest of them while two very young Galactic Service officers hopped on an interior transport and zipped out of sight. While the girls were competing to see who could call out the most artistically ob- scene farewells, I slid out of my jacket and yanked at the col- lar of my dress until a seam parted and I could slide it down over both shoulders. Now I looked almost as trashy as the girls who'd dressed for this kind of party. I stayed in the mid- dle of the group and let them swirl me right up to the module doors.

Where two large Terrans in diplomatic uniform were checking IDs and party invitations.

"Oh, sweetheart, you just saw us come out!" protested one of my new friends.

While the girls in front of me were fishing around their skimpy dresses for IDs, I let out a piercing shriek and clapped both hands to my cheeks. "My bag! I left it inside. Oh, now, 1*11 simply die if Jack looks in it-there's my diary and every- thing. Boopsie, do you see it? Oh, there it is, just behind the bar!"

Both girls in front of me looked confused. Chances were neither of them was named Boopsie, but they knew somebody who was. One of them squealed and nodded as if she could actually make out a handbag amid the shadows behind the bar. I scooted inside, closely followed by the p.o.o.psies and m.u.f.fles, and the guards looked at one another and snickered behind us.

Once inside, I didn't have much trouble shaking Buffy or Moopsie or whatever their names were. They spotted another 54 Margaret Ball brace of Galactic Service officers to home in on. I drifted around the fringes of the party, making vague noises about looking for a lost handbag, and always keeping a few people between me and the gatekeepers' line of sight just in case they grew suspicious about the girl with the missing handbag.

This wasn't hard to do; the room was packed elbow to man- dible with partying Terrans and Hatartatans. It was a perfect milieu for exchanging secret information.

It was a lousy milieu for catching anybody at it.

But then, my unsupported eyewitness testimony wasn't what we wanted. We needed doc.u.mentary proof of what I'd been sent to investigate. A pattern of "accidental" overlapping lay- overs for Hatartalans and Old Terrans didn't, by itself, mean anything. A corresponding pattern of information leaked just be- fore scheduled diplomatic talks, maintaining the high tensions of all parties, was suggestive but didn't const.i.tute absolute proof.

Even the digging that had turned up the same two parties in- volved in all layover meetings-the Hataitalan amba.s.sador and my new buddy Jack-didn't, in the eyes of the galactic court, const.i.tute grounds for a search warrant Which was where I came in, poised insecurely between Terran skinpoppers and Hatartalan jellyegg sniffers, laughing and throwing my head back and shrugging one shoulder a lit- tle farther out of my dress and trying to figure out where the h.e.l.l I would hide my notes if I were an Old Terran pa.s.sing in- side information to a Hatartalan.

Not on any network or comlink, that's for sure. There isn't an electronote system made that can't be compromised. In my real training manual-which did not, by the way, have any- thing to do with Ae one they give to hotel security-they em- phasized that old-fashioned mnemonics are the best kind.

Forget datahedra, bit chippers, tone volts. Anything that has to be set up through some kind of complex machine can be spied on the same way. If Jack and the Hatartalans had been pa.s.sing data via computers, our hackers would've found it from remote and I wouldn't be hanging my body on the line here.

Species tended to keep notes in the formats they'd evolved to use. So Skiouroi said it with nuts and berries, Terrans scrib- bled on synthpaper, and Hatartalans-Hatartalans probably encoded it as a giant pseudowax honeycomb.

TELLING HUMAN STORIES 55.

If I were an Old Terran pa.s.sing data to a Hatartalan, I'd have already pa.s.sed it, hours ago, and there'd be nothing on me or in my quarters to prove the connection. So if 1 slipped into the Old Terran personal quarters, it would be easy to make up an excuse for being there, and I'd be able to read whatever I found, except there wouldn't be anything to find.

Whereas if I searched the Hatartalan amba.s.sador's private suite, I probably wouldn't recognize any compromising data, and I'd have one h.e.l.l of a time explaining my presence.

So which way did I want to lose?

In the end, chance decided it for me. I circulated around the edges of the party until I saw a shadowy opening between two wall panels. The way to a private suite? To the Old Terran suite, if I was lucky. I slithered between the panels.

trying to look like a glazed-over Boopsie looking for the fa- cilities.

Three steps down the temp pa.s.sageway, and I smelled rot- ten seaweed. d.a.m.n, wrong suite. I started to edge back when I heard an unmistakable voice rising above the high-pitched party chatter. "Girlfriend? What girlfriend? What diary?"

Old Terran tw.a.n.g, loud voice, crashing in with questions that didn't really need to be asked. Good old Jack.

It didn't, somehow, seem like a good time to reenter the party and keep circulating. I kept on the way I was going.

Even if I didn't find anything in the Hatartalan quarters, at least Jack wouldn't find me there.

But I did. Find something, that is. Although it look me a moment to recognize the significance of it.

The Hatartalan module was lit in their preferred range of frequencies. To human eyes, everything looked dark red and hexagonal, comb upon honeycomb of storage and sleep and sitting modules all alike, all subdivided into hundreds of thou- sands of twinkling sub-compartments, all slightly sticky with the trail of personal markers the Hatartalan spray wherever they claim territory.

I'd edged right behind the Hatartalan amba.s.sador at the party and had gotten a strong whiff of his personal spray-a bit on the gamy side, with overtones of musk and the usual rotten seaweed. No member of his entourage had a spray any- where near so marked; they wouldn't dare. I followed the 56 Margaret Ball seaweed-musk smelt to a clutch of honeycomb formations that stank so strongly of the amba.s.sador, I couldn't even pick out any competing scents. All the way my feet cmnched and squished on the debris of what must have been a pre-party party. There were strands of the dried-seaweed stuff hanging from the honeycombs, partially squished jellyeggs drooping over edges like surrealist watches, bright sc.r.a.ps of ribbon and tinsel and paper for nest building stowed in the pigeonholes of one honeycomb and cascading down the side.

And there it was. Old Terran writing. Old Terran gaudy red-bordered paper; the amba.s.sador might have a.s.similated the data into some waxen secretion, but he'd been too much of a slob or a magpie, choose one, to throw away the original.

This would do it beautifully, a packet of notes in Jack's handwriting and stinking of the amba.s.sador's personal spray.

1 clutched the treasure to my bosom while debating how to sneak it out of the party. The clingy little black dress hadn't offered many possibilities for concealment even before I turned it into an off-the-shoulder number, and the jacket with its inside zippered pockets was somewhere outside amid the synthetic shrubbery.

A noise that was at once both question and annoying buzz interrupted my silent debate about the ethics of the only smuggling system I had been able to think of. I turned slowly, because whatever made that noise sounded like something I didn't want to annoy. It hovered at the level of my midriff, gleaming, multifaceted, beautiful and deadly.

A bee-eye. Excuse me, I mean B.I., Bacatus inaccessus, as our xen.o.biologists tagged it before realizing it was actually the very rare and very elder last form in the Hatartalan life cycle. Inaccessus not because it was rare, but because the first two xenos to see one hadn't lived to do follow-up studies.

Bee-eyes take offense very, very easily.

How many Hatartalans made it from the standard adult stage-the one the amba.s.sador was in-to achieve B.I. sta- tus? Not more than one in a million, if the odds were any- thing like those against immature sp.a.w.n making it to adult stage. And who cared? The real question was, what were the odds on me making it back the way I came, with or without the stinking notes? Not good enough to make me want to try TELLING HUMAN STORIES 57.

calculating them. Still, there didn't seem to be any other rea- sonable move. Why didn't someone tell me the Hatartalans had a B.I. in the entourage? They're rare enough it should be hot news-unless they were keeping it secret for some reason- Like entrapping little spies.

That was dumb, it would be like using a cannonball to shoot a mosquito.

I thought all this between one dry-mouthed gulp and the next, already shuffling sideways as if I thought the bee-eye would just let me go back the way I came. At the same time the bee-eye was responding to my body language and alerting itself. It spouted a column of shimmering scales that started in midair, about where it had floated originally, and lifted its fac- eted head (body? eye?) to my eye level.

"So sorry, looking for the ladies', must've lost my way," I jabbered, sidling toward the dark pa.s.sageway some uncounted number of sticky steps behind me, "just go back to the party now, sorry to disturb you, senior gentlespecies ..."

The bee-eye hummed once on a sharper note and zipped around me, blocking my retreat. Oh, well, I hadn't really thought it would be that easy. How long did it take for bee- eye venom to woik on a small-sized human body? My grad- uate studies hadn't progressed far enough to go into such details before the scholarship fund ran out and I had to find a real job. At the time I'd thought myself lucky to get re- cruited by GIS. Who but the intelligence services would want an academic dropout with a minor in heuristic mathematics, a major in xenocultural studies, and a speaking knowledge of five alien languages in addition to Standard Galactic?

Just now I wasn't feeling so lucky. Nothing in my training-academic or intelligence-had covered how to deal with a life-form so rare and senior that none of my instructors had ever even seen one.

Stories, stories, dummy, I told myself. In times of stress we revert to old patterns. I wasn't really a spy. For that matter, I wasn't really a xenology student. Somewhere, way back there, I was still a skinny kid sitting in the central hall of Complex B449, telling stories to keep my little brothers happy whenever they shut off our vid service for nonpayment again.

58 Margaret Ball You have to tailor your stories to the audience. My little brothers liked lots of violence and somebody killed every few minutes.... Woops, wrong line of thought. What did bee- eyes like? n.o.body knew. Okay, what would ordinary Hatartalans expect and half believe before you started telling it? What were Hatartalan stories?

I wiped my one free hand on the skirt of the black dress and started in on the first idea that flashed on me; no second chances, this one had better work.3 Which it did.

The bee-eye personally escorted me down the access corri- dor and out through the party suite. With that level of support, I didn't really need to smuggle the papers out-I could have walked out clutching them in my hot little hand-but I thought it would be cooler if Jack didn't know exactly what I'd been there for until I'd had a chance to make delivery. As we reached the anonymous pile of coats and handbags and bodypockets I'd stumbled over coming in, I bent my knees and scooped up somebody's little black bag. It was just big enough to hold the notes, and I barely got them stuffed inside before the bee-eye's insistent buzzing warned me that I'd bet- ter keep moving.

People backed off to let us through. Jack was there, even redder in the face than last time; he recognized me and started to say something, but n.o.body-n.o.body'.-interferes with a bee-eye, as the Hatartalans there made quite clear to him.

The bee-eye buzzed behind me until we reached a nice.

well-lit multimodule intersection with an Andromedan gravity-well fountain sparkling through three stories of open s.p.a.ce. Then it shrank down to its original podlike shape and zipped back to the Hatartalan module, while I went around a few levels and took a pa.s.senger pod through the Rigel-nonn module and did alt the usual things to shake any possible tails. With incredible self-restraint, 1 didn't even open the lit- tle black bag and take a second look at my find until I got back here to vox the report.

Now that's done, I'm going to have a nice long look at the rest of the stuff in the bag before returning it to Buffie. You wouldn't believe what that girl puts down in her diary!

TELUNG HUMAN STORIES 59.

"You left a few points out of your report," my supervisor commented.

I shrugged. "Once a graduate student, always a graduate student.. - Notice the little numbers? I was going to add foot- notes, but you printed out the text before I got around to it."

"I suggest you add them. Now, before I pa.s.s it on."

Notes.

1. I knew that already, of course. I'd studied pictures of both subjects before starting to work the case. The Hatartalan picture didn't help much-they all look alike to human eyes-but my buddy Jack, tall and paunchy and red-faced and given to unfortunately loud suits, was a snap to pick out of a crowd. It was a piece of extra luck that I got to "meet" him this way. Or so I thought at the time.

2. At least the Hatartalans are species-programmed for this behavior. What human story we tell that makes us want to trash our own worlds, I've never figured out.

3. Okay. You want to know what story? Simple. Humans tell Protecting the Young a lot. Hatartalans tell Destroy- ing the Young (For the Good of me Race). Their natural bias is to let practically all of their sp.a.w.n die so that only the fittest survive to the normal adult life cycle, right? And bee-eyes, the next life-cycle stage, are to nor- mal adults as adults are to the insectoid sp.a.w.n-one in a million or so. It seemed a credible a.s.sumption that bee- eyes would be programmed to destroy adults for any failing, rather than protecting them. I told the bee-eye that the Hatartalan amba.s.sador had been caught selling secret data to the Old Terrans and that if I got the proof back to my bosses GIS would probably arrange a fatal accident for him. Of course, the facts were the other way around, but the bee-eye believed this story easily because it fitted the basic Hatartalan myth.

THE SMALL PENANCE.

OF LADY DISDAIN.

Michael Coney

How sick is she?"

"She has a day lo live, maybe two. She's very anxious to see you before she dies."

Hearing these words, he was ushered into the bedchamber of Lady Disdain, president of Earth.

"Imry Sanders." Painfully she extended a hand from under the covers. "It was good of you to come."

Her face was a mask of desiccated skin stretched tightly over the skull. Imry tried to reconcile this pale ruin with the face of Lady Disdain as he'd first met her in Hotel Andromeda-how long ago was it?-over two hundred years.

She'd never been beautiful; she was too arrogant for that. But she had looked ... aristocratic. Strong.

And G.o.d, how he'd hated her in those far-off days'

He looked around the room: the same sumptuous trappings she'd surrounded herself with in Hotel Andromeda. The rich tapestries, the deep rugs, the jade ornaments, the miniature

61.

62 Michael Coney peac.o.c.ks, the royal blue and the purple. The scent of wild roses. All the badges of office. No sound; the fabrics dead- ened even her harsh breathing, transforming it to a sigh, so that for a moment he thought the elevator ride had blocked his ears.