B00BFVOGUI EBOK (10 page)

Night never fell at this location
on Baghula’s surface, and it seemed to Jamie that the
planet’s natives never slept, either. Three hours had passed since the aliens
went berserk, and their endurance seemed without limit.

Jamie had been known for his
stamina on the trading desk. Sleeping was overrated when one market on Earth or
another was always open. He’d driven brokers on the Ops floor to distraction by
banging his cowbell at all hours, proclaiming his trading successes. Now all he
wanted in life was to stay in the passenger seat of
Indispensable
and never move again.

But everyone else aboard was in
motion. Madaki had parked the shuttle safely away
from the stampeding Baghu hordes on a quiet mesa — and
that had been the cue, evidently, for Welligan’s team
to begin rushing about the vessel. Some of the troopers were adjusting their
weapons. Others were fiddling with crates from stowage holding metal tubes
Jamie had never seen before. Some kind of ordnance, he imagined.

Boots off and
helmet in his lap, Jamie felt like he was watching one of his immerse-goggle
sitcoms. He
was physically there, but he wasn’t a participant. That was fine by him. He
yawned.

“Glad to see you can keep a cool
head,” Lynn Stubek said from her seated position at
the communications panel.

“Somebody has to.” He opened his
eyes and forced a smile. With buzz-cut red hair, Stubek
was one of the youngest members of Surge Sigma — and one of the few that hadn’t
given him a hard time yet.

“I’ll wake you up if I need the
rest of my squad killed,” she said.

“Roger.”
Well, there goes that.
He directed his attention to her viewscreen, which was filled with static. “You still
haven’t raised the Sheoruk expedition?”

Stubek shook her head. “They’re
reporting the same crazy business we are. The Sheoruk
rolled for their lives as soon as the Baghu started
moving. They’re locked in their compound now, but the Breathers have knocked
down their external transmitter.”

“I didn’t think they were that
intelligent,” Jamie said.

“I didn’t say they were. I think
they’re just running around and knocking stuff over.” She worked a control.
“Wait,” she said. “I’ve got something.”

A wave of revulsion gripped Jamie
as he saw the image on the screen. Pulsating nodules of red
and brown soaking in a blood-colored sauce. It looked like a close-up of
someone’s abdominal surgery. “Eww!” he said. “What
the hell is
that
?”

“That’s the biologist you met
earlier,” Stubek replied. “Lorraine.”

“No, no,” Jamie said, standing up
before the monitor. Going in for a closer look was a mistake, and he
immediately backed off. “Lorraine was a big wheel thing. That’s just gross—”

“You’ve got your space suit, I’ve
got mine,” Lorraine said over the communication system’s speakers. It was the
same feminine voice he’d heard earlier — but now it was coming from a greasy
blob, burbling pus from folds of flesh.

Jamie forced down a swallow.
That’s our stewardess? No wonder Pan Am went
under!

Lorraine’s voice had lost its
lilt. “Really, I don’t know why the humans decided to send such an insensitive
being to work with other races.” The mass on the screen quivered. “And I don’t
know what you said to those fine, peaceful creatures out—”

“Hey, those peaceful creatures
were trying to kill me!” Jamie slapped his chest with his hand. It had been a
long enough day already, and he wasn’t going to take
insults from something that looked like the middle of an oyster.

Lorraine’s form rumbled back and
forth, sacs quivering with what even Jamie could interpret as anger. “Now, listen here, you — you —
human
!
I’ve been here for seven years. And never in that time have I seen the Baghu agitated in this manner!” Alien organs blushed a furious red. “They’ve been swarming our camp,
looking for
you
! You must have done
something!”

“I showed them a teddy bear,”
Jamie said, still not believing the episode. “They ate it.”

Lorraine paused for several
seconds — doubtless, Jamie thought, checking in with her knowglobe
to see what a teddy bear was. Her next comment, a calmer one, confirmed it.
“Interesting fellow, this Teddy Roosevelt,” she said. “He seems to have had
great respect for other species — unlike some humans. I should like to learn more
about him.”

“Whatever,” Jamie said. “But
before you get down to watching full episodes of
Zazzy the Zoobear
, tell me what they want. Our
people are in trouble!”

The Sheoruk waggled
in something like a shrug. “I’ve never known them to
want
anything. Their lagoon teems with food, although we’ve never
studied their digestive cycle.” Lorraine paused. “But they do seem to prefer
some of the dried sponges on the beach. Perhaps your Zazzy
bears are just the right composition for their palates.”

“They offered to give me what was
under the water,” Jamie said. “What’s down there?”

“Nothing. They’ve said as much before — they
have nothing of value down there at all.”

Lorraine paused again, apparently
thinking. Jamie had had an easy time imagining a persona for Lorraine back when
she was a mystery figure in a wheel, but now, strangely, he was becoming
accustomed to talking to a picture of an appendectomy.
I’ve got to get out of this place
, he thought for the hundredth
time.

“Things under
the water!”
Lorraine repeated. “It’s a strange thing for them to say. Are you sure the Baghu said it?”

“Repeatedly!”

“And Chief Yang — has she seen
anything down there?”

“She can’t,” Welligan
said, snapping a power pack into his rifle as he walked up. “Look, we’re about
out of time. I need to know what’s waiting for us down there.”

“We don’t have any idea about the
Baghu community beneath the surface,” Lorraine said. “They’re
protective of their privacy. They don’t let anyone go farther out than wading
on the shore. We haven’t made any attempts to go down there.”

“They’re hiding something?” Welligan asked.

“More like they’re — well, I don’t
know how to put it. Ashamed of something, is more like it.”

“You’re a research team,” Jamie
said. “Haven’t you sent down a probe?”

The glob shook. “Would
you
like an alien probe poking around
where you live?”

“No,” Jamie said. That was an
entirely different nightmare.

“But wait,” Lorraine said. “Are
you intending to enter the water yourselves?”

“Looks like we’re going to have
to,” Welligan said. “We don’t want to.”

Lorraine paused. “No, I don’t
think you do,” she said. “But be aware of this: I don’t know how the Baghu will react to your incursion. And I don’t know what
level of force you can apply without harming one. No one has ever tried. We
don’t know what your weapons will do — and we don’t know what they will do in
response.” The Sheoruk’s strange form glistened with
moisture. “You could bring on a calamity on a planetary scale.”

Welligan nodded,
his expression grave. It jolted Jamie, who had never seen the man looking
serious before. “I’m aware of that,” Welligan said.
“But we don’t have any other choice.”

Lorraine seemed to go limp. “I…I
understand. The Sheoruk cannot stop you. But I
implore you, use mercy.”

“Mercy,” Jamie said. He snorted.
“I don’t think they understand that.”

“That’s just because you don’t
share the same frame of reference, trader,” Lorraine said. “But every living
being functions because of one thing: logic.
Something
makes their parts move.
Something
makes them behave as they do. If you don’t understand
what they’re up to, it’s not because they’re illogical. It’s because you’re not
thinking like a Baghu.”

“Thanks for the help,” Jamie
said, not meaning it. He really didn’t see any similarities between himself and
a bunch of walking stomachs.

Unless, of
course, they too were feeling nauseated right now.

In her years as part of the
expedition’s surge team, Geena Madaki
had been like a mother to Bridget. Or grandmother — it was hard to tell any
human’s age anymore. All Bridget knew was the soothing voice over the
ultrasound receiver sounded like home.

“We’re coming for you, Bridget.
You sit tight.”

“That will not be a problem,”
Bridget said.

It had been for some of her
comrades, some of whom had wasted power trying to wrest free. Bridget hated
feeling helpless, too, but she seldom thought she actually
was
helpless — including now. She’d been reviewing the Sheoruk researchers’ notes on the Baghu
and their lagoon, and the tentacles before her face were as good as a tissue
sample for her armor’s instruments. She just needed time to put it all
together.

And that time was running low.
“Ten minutes,” Dinner said. His reserves were lowest.

“We’ll be there,” Madaki said. “I’m putting Surge Three on the beach now.”

Bridget inhaled deeply.
Here goes nothing
, she thought.

If Welligan
was nervous about being all that was left to save his chief’s squad, Jamie
thought the man was doing a good job of hiding it. His hair was, too. Inside
his helmet, Hiro’s mop was a cool cinnamon, the EndoSys nanoids altering his
follicles’ pigment to reflect his mood.

Jamie’s space suit was fully on
again. The port and starboard airlocks on the two personnel ’boxes that were
part of
Indispensable
were open. Two
gunners were stationed in each one. Behind the troops in each doorway was a
portable turbine the size of a suitcase.

“Pilot’s going to bring us in at
ten meters and do a three-hundred-sixty-degree turn,” Welligan called out. “We hit the landing area with sonics — hit ’em directly if we
have to. If they won’t budge, switch to nitros and
put some rounds into them. We’ve already seen the pulse weapons don’t faze ’em.”

Eyes wide, the trooper looked
back at Jamie. “You’re gonna want to stay inside,
Jamie. We don’t know what gases are in those Breathers. For all we know,
they’ll go up like grenades.”

Jamie nodded. He wasn’t planning
on going near the exits — or even watching from the front. Welligan
was going to open a landing spot on the beach and then tear a path down into
the lagoon.
Indispensable
’s sensors
had mapped enough of the body of liquid to reveal a sloping approach down into
the undersea realm. Welligan’s team would simply walk
underwater toting the turbines. They would use them to reach the captives — and
to help bring back anyone they freed.

There would likely be a big mess
on the water afterward. Jamie didn’t want to see it.

“Jamie Sturm!”

Jamie looked back. From the
controls of
Indispensable
, Madaki looked urgently back to him. “I’m hearing Bridget
through the buoy. She wants to talk to you!”

His eyes widened. “Me?”

“Patch into Channel five sixty!”

Jamie touched the number on his
wrist. “Yang?” he asked.

“Jamie!” Bridget’s voice was
faint. “They
do
have something to trade!”

“What?” Jamie had forgotten all
about the trading mission.

“I was right. They do have
something to trade, but they don’t think so. You have to talk to them again!”

Jamie’s head swam. “But they did
say they had something. You’re not making any sense.”

“Just shut up and listen!
Remember—”

The connection went silent.

“Remember?” Jamie asked.
“Remember what?”

Madaki looked back and shook her head,
sadly. “Her suit power’s too low. Either that or they’ve smashed the buoy.”

From his position in the port
airlock where he’d been listening, Welligan slapped
the wall. “That’s it, then. Bring us down, Geena.
Weapons live!”

Bewildered, Jamie shook his head.
His eyes searched the shuttle — and found the monitor showing the feed from below
Indispensable
. There was the throng
of Baghu, bigger than ever. Stomping stomachs
bustling all around the fabricator. But they hadn’t destroyed it, he noticed.
Much less moved it.

He had a thought. Quickly, he searched
his suit’s recorder for the encounter.“
We will trade you the things under the water
,”
the Breather had said. It repeated it again more slowly, and the human voice it
was translated into spoke with seeming passion.“
We will trade. We will!
”

Jamie cued it ahead — and listened
to the Baghu calls from once he climbed atop the
device. “
We trade. We trade. We trade!
”

He thought back on Lorraine’s
words about thinking like a Baghu.

Could
it really be that simple?

Jamie bolted forward and grabbed Welligan’s arm, stopping the trooper in mid-countdown. “Stop! You’ve got to get me to the fabricator!”

Welligan rolled his eyes. “I know you’ve
got some money problems, but I think we’re going to have to write this mission
off.”

“No, I mean it,” Jamie said. He
pulled again at his arm. “You get me down there!”

“Jamie, I can’t—”

“Yes, you can,” Jamie said,
wedging himself into the narrow space remaining inside the airlock. He grabbed
at his badge. “I’m the trader. While the trade mission’s on, you work for me.
And I say it’s on!”

Hiro looked at him, amazed. Then he
turned and called out to his teammates on the opposite side. “Stand down,” he
said. He looked back to Madaki. “Can you put us down
on the fabricator?”

“It’s where I picked him up
from,” the pilot said. “Round trips are my specialty.”

Indispensable
lifted away from the intended
landing site and hovered above the fabricator. Welligan
stepped inside the open airlock door with Jamie, who clutched the ship for dear
life.

This
is crazy
, he
thought, seeing the mad mass of aliens around. There was still time to change
his mind, he thought — but instead he looked at Welligan
and pointed down to where he needed to go. Welligan,
hair flame red, nodded — and shoved.

Jamie’s boots hit the roof of the
fabricator with a thud. A tentacle from below lashed at him, and he slipped. Welligan landed on the other side of him, in perfect
position to stop his fall. The trooper brought his rifle low and fired a sonic
blast over the crowd closest to the fabricator’s side. It scattered the creatures
for only a moment — but that was all the time Jamie needed. He heaved himself off
the fabricator and onto the muddy surface below. Seeing the Breathers starting
to close in again, he turned and fell against the device.

It was the correct side. He found
the manual override and punched the button.

A teddy bear, already
manufactured earlier, popped from the slot at his side. In an instant, the
alien wave halted.

“I trade,” Jamie said, his
announcement echoing in the Baghu language. He looked
to the Breather closest to him. “I trade,” he said again.

The alien sniffed at the stuffed
animal with its snout. Was it the leader Jamie had talked to in the beginning?
Who could tell? All the trader knew was at that
moment, the creature barked something even Lorraine’s vocabulary database
couldn’t translate.

And the mob fell still.

“Something’s happening,” Madaki said over the audio linkup.
Indispensable
was still hovering overhead. “Something’s happening
in the lagoon!”

The Baghu
waddled away from the fabricator, leaving Jamie an open path to the shoreline.
Jamie looked up at Welligan, still atop the device,
covering him. Hiro nodded. “I think they want you to
take a look,” he said.

Mystified at the scene — and amazed
that he might be right — Jamie walked with the stuffed Zazzy
through a corridor of Breathers. At the lake’s edge, he looked out to see a
clear spot, free of bobbing Baghu, near where the buoy
had been dropped.

And a moment later he saw Arbutus
Dinner break the surface of the brine, propelled upward by his Baghu captors. Captors that now carried him gently to the
shore, before releasing him.

The big man looked green. Jamie
stepped up to him — and turned back to face the Baghu
who’d made the sounds earlier. “You gave me the thing under the water. So I
trade.” He passed the bear to the alien — and at once tentacles went up all
across the beach. The Baghu whooped, jubilantly, as
the leader thrust the stuffed toy high — before swallowing it, whole.

“We trade,” said other Baghu, more calmly.

“Not yet,” Jamie said, kneeling
beside Dinner. “Welligan!”

The squad leader was already on
the move, hopping off the fabricator. Welligan dashed
over and cleared a landing area at the water’s edge. The
Breathers moved back, suddenly pliable. In moments, Dinner was back
aboard the
Indispensable
, receiving
emergency care.

Jamie ran back to the fabricator
and cycled it again. Another bear — and another member of Bridgie’s squad surfacing from below. He kept the
machine operating at peak speed, worrying only that it would run out of
whatever it made the bears from.

Welligan stood by Jamie, watching now in
wonderment as the team members reunited. “Teddy bear ransom!”

“No,” Jamie said. “Trading — Baghu style.” He looked
out at the aliens as his machine churned. “They didn’t think they had anything to
trade with — so they grabbed something they thought we wanted — our own people!” He
recalled what he’d heard in the recording. “Before they grabbed our people,
they were saying they were
willing
to
trade. Once they had them, they said they were
ready
— but I didn’t get it.”

“Crazy!”

“Yeh.”
He pulled a final bear from the fabricator. “That’s it,” he said. “That’s all
we’ve got.”

“That’s all we need — Bridgie’s the last one down there.” Welligan
opened a panel on the fabricator and turned a handle. With a whir, the sides of
the massive device opened like petals, revealing its mechanical innards. The
transformation seemed to puzzle the nearby Breathers. Welligan
took the stuffed animal from Jamie and smiled. “If you don’t mind, I’d like to
be the one that saves the chief.”

“If you feel you really must,”
Jamie said. He sat down on the sand and tried to remember how to breathe.

Walking up from the dark water,
Bridget felt something like an ancient deity — only a goddess who’d lost her
rifle. She saw what she expected when she emerged. With the fabricator cracked
open, the Baghu had lost interest and dispersed.
There were no more tasty bears inside.

She spied Jamie standing on the
shore. He’d found his battered briefcase and menu and was receiving accolades
from the troopers preparing to move the fabricator to the shuttle. Approaching
him, she moved her gloved hand — and what it held — behind her back.

The trader looked at the dripping
armored woman and smirked. “While you’ve been lounging around in the pool, I
was saving the day.” Jamie eagerly explained his theory, omitting any
suggestion that he had gotten the idea from her. She let him.

“Oh, I don’t doubt you were
right,” she said when he finished. “The Baghu didn’t
think they had anything to sell, so they stole us. They’ve never traded in the
history of their race — they probably didn’t get that stealing was wrong.” She
raised an eyebrow at Jamie. “There are some
civilized
races that don’t get it.”

“Hey!”

Bridget smiled curtly. “But you
didn’t get to hear what I figured out,” she said. “Here.”
She pulled her hand from behind her back and presented Jamie what she had found
in the water: a rocky mineral lump the size of a grapefruit.

“What’s this?” Jamie said,
looking it over.

“Breather dung.”

“Gah!”
Jamie dropped it immediately.

“I thought you loved money,” she
said. “That there is probably worth a hundred thousand dollars on its own.” She
reminded him of the gold flecks from the Breather’s tentacle. “Between the
water composition down there and the close look I got at the Baghu holding me, my onboard computer was able to make a
guess at the species’ body chemistry.” She knelt and picked up the nodule. “Pseudo
feces, just like a mollusk puts out. The brine at the bottom is thick with gold
chloride, among other things. Highly soluble — and it winds up in the Baghu, where it turns into these.”

She shook herself off. “Once they
let me go, I stayed down long enough to see hundreds of the things all over the
lake floor.”

Bridget tossed the dripping ball
back into Jamie’s hands. He bobbled it but caught it this time. “Yecch!” he
said. But he didn’t drop it.

Bridget started walking toward
Indispensable
. “That’s what I meant when
I said they had something to trade — but they didn’t
think
they did. To them these things are nothing — something to be
ashamed of. I think maybe that’s why they were so private about the lake. Hard
to invite visitors in when you’re living in your own filth.” She stood in the
doorway and looked back at him. “I think having all these down there was even
making them sick. So they desperately want to trade.”

Jamie looked back at the
Breathers and nodded. “All right,” he said. “I’ll write a contract.”

“You can clean up somebody else’s
mess for a change,” Bridget said, stepping into the vessel. She thought for a
moment about adding how one person’s crap was another person’s treasure — but,
remembering how badly she wanted to pee somewhere other than in her armor, she
decided to call it a day.