Blonde Bombshell (32 page)

A green light was flashing on the console to her left. “What’s that?” Mark Twain asked.

“Incoming call.”

“Who from?”

“I have absolutely no idea,” Lucy replied. “But if it turns out to be the
Reader’s Digest,
I’m going to be awfully disappointed. She pressed a button and said, “Hello?”

A screen that had hitherto been blank lit up. Hello. Are you Lucy Pavlov?

Lucy and Mark Twain exchanged glances. Mark Twain shrugged. “Yes,” Lucy said. “Who are you?”

Was it you talking to the warships just now?

“Yes, as a matter of fact it was. Who the hell—?”

Please hold.

They stared at the screen for a moment or so. Nothing happened. “Well,” Lucy said, “at least they’re not playing Vivaldi at us. That aside—”

“Cultural reference found,” Mark Twain said. “Who
is
that?” Lucy took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “I don’t think they’re the Ostar military,” she said. “For one thing, they don’t sound like them, and for another they were threatening to blow them up just a minute or so ago.”

“They can’t be Dirters,” Mark Twain said. “Dirters couldn’t get on board the missile vehicle. Absolutely no way.”

Lucy nodded. “In which case they must be Ostar. Only,” she added, glancing back at the screen she’d been working on earlier, “their biosigns aren’t Ostar, like I told you. Not human, either. Oh, that’s—”

She was staring, as if the screen had just smiled at her. “What?”

“Now there’s a
third
one,” she said. “And he’s definitely human. Well,” she added, “mostly human. Human, but with bits in.”

“Bits?”

“Bits of technology,” Lucy said, sounding rather dazed. “I must say, you do get to meet some fascinating people in this game.”

“But that’s impossible,” Mark Twain exploded at her. “How can you have a Dirter with bits of—?”

“Shhhh.”

“We were wondering where the hell you’d got to.”

George looked down at his feet. They were still blue, glowing and vaguely translucent, and they were standing on a metallic grille-thing, which he recognised as the teleport pad on the alien ship. “What the hell—?”

The Skywalker female was sitting at a sort of desk, with a console in front of her, all flashing lights and weird-looking alien graphics. “We thought you said you weren’t coming,” she said. “In fact, we thought you’d died or something. But then we picked up your life-signs at the teleport site. Look, sorry if we dragged you away from anything, but we need you.” She hesitated. “That’s all right, isn’t it?”

George could feel his feet again. Pins and needles like you wouldn’t believe. He staggered, and grabbed hold of a nearby handrail. “Absolutely fine,” he said. “What can I—?”

The male Skywalker swivelled his chair and nodded at him. “We need you to talk to Lucy Pavlov,” he said.

“Lucy—?”

“Pavlov.” The male twin pointed to a seat beside him. “It looks like she’s got hold of the other bomb — you know, the first one they sent. I think it’d be a good idea if we had a talk with her, and as you know her, it’d sound better coming from you.”

George nodded, then said, “What would?”

“George?”

Hello.

“George Stetchkin?”

Yes.

“What the hell are you doing,” Lucy asked, “on board an alien bomb?”

(( (( (( (( (( (( ((

“Stop doing that.”

Sorry. It’s the nearest I can get to hysterical laughter. Little habit I picked up while I was a

“A what?”

Don’t ask. Please, just don’t. Now listen. They can probably hear what you’re saying to me, so be careful. I’m pretty sure they can’t read my side of it, I’m using copt site-to-site.

“What?”

Sorry. It’s something to do with what you’re not going to ask about. Anyway. Why am I on board this alien bomb?

“I asked you.”

So you did. I was just hoping you had a better answer than I do, but apparently not. Here goes.

The screen filled with text. Lucy read it, with Mark Twain hovering over her shoulder like a huge parrot perched on a very small pirate. They read it three times before either of them spoke.

“Fine,” Lucy said. “It’d have been nice if—”

The screen cleared. What?

“Never mind,” Lucy said briskly. “Well, it seems like we’re not on our own after all. All right, here’s what I’d like you to do—”

Not so fast. My turn. Who the hell are
you?

“Later,” Lucy said. “We’ll explain, I promise. For now, though—”

You haven’t forgotten they can probably hear what you’re saying.

Actually she had. “Of course not.” She hesitated. Then Mark Twain reached past her and started typing. She put her hand over the mike and said, “What are you doing?”

“Replying.”

“How? You saw what he said. That’s special creatures-of-whatsisname code.”

“I’m a fast learner.”

For some reason, she found that disproportionately annoying. “Bullshit. You’re just another version of me, but without all the stuff I’ve learned since I’ve been here. If I can’t learn this copt stuff, neither can—”

“Actually,” Mark Twain said — he didn’t smirk, which was quite an achievement — “I have. Want to see what I’ve written?”

She looked at the screen. Gibberish.

“I’ve encrypted it,” he explained, “just in case they can see it. Don’t look at me like that,” he added, “I can’t help it if I’ve got a flair for languages.”

“But you can’t have. You’re just a computer program.”

He looked at her and shook his head. “That’s what I used to be,” he said. “Back when I was a weapon of mass destruction. All right. Now we’re both —” he hesitated — “human,” he said (and she noticed: human, not Dirter), “and you’ve turned out to be good with gadgets, and I’m good at languages. We’re different. I have an idea that that’s what being human is all about.”

“You’ve spelled ‘46&&Ti8Jt<++72’ wrong,” she said. “i before T except after &, remember?”

“Joke found,” he replied charitably. “Here, I’ll translate it for you.”

He pressed a key and the screen filled with stuff she could actually make sense of. She read it, then nodded grudgingly. “That’s about it, yes,” she said. “All right, you’d better send it.”

“I was just about—” He closed his mouth and hit the Send key.

The screen cleared, then: Got that. Good idea. At least, we don’t think it’ll work, but it won’t hurt to try. Also, since you would appear to have mastered copt site-to-site, which is really impressive, we think now would be a good time for you to tell us who you are and what you’re doing, and how you happen to have a
R’wfft
-class missile in your basement. Please don’t undermine the excellent impression we’ve formed of your intelligence by mistaking this for a polite request.

They looked at each other. “I vote we tell him,” Mark Twain said. “After all, we do seem to be on the same side.”

“Yes, but they’re still Ostar. I don’t trust—”

“George isn’t,” Mark Twain pointed out gently. “He’s human.” He paused. “Like us.”

She made a vague I-wash-my-hands-of-the-whole-thing gesture. “Fine,” she said, “you go ahead. Only don’t blame me if—”

Mark Twain was already typing. “I won’t,” he said.

“It’s them again,” the pilot said.

That should have been
It’s them again, sir,
but the PDF man let it slide. The forced egalitarianism of the shared abysmal cock-up is a useful working environment. “Which ones?”

“Coming from the planet.”

The PDF man sighed. “Put them on. Audio—”

But the screen in front of him came alive. He saw two humans, a male and a female, sitting in a room full of junk. “Well?” he snapped.

The female grinned disconcertingly at him. “Hello,” she said. “Are you in charge up there?”

“Yes. Disarm your weapons and prepare—”

“Shut up for a minute and listen.” Without breaking eye contact, the human stretched out her arm and pointed at something behind her. “See that?”

“No.”

“What? Oh, sorry.” She nudged the male viciously with her elbow; he fiddled with something on his console, and the camera angle widened. “Better?”

Not the word the PDF man would have chosen. Thanks to the expanded field of view, he could clearly make out the casing of the warhead of a
R’wfft
-class missile. It was glowing very faintly blue. Absolutely nothing better about that in the current circumstances.

“Get your people to run a trajectory analysis,” the female went on, “and you’ll see that our missile is pointed straight at Homeworld. Now, you may think that since it’s an Ostar bomb, you’ll have no trouble at all shooting it down before it gets there. Well?”

“You’re right,” the PDF man said, trying to convey a degree of confidence he didn’t actually feel. “We can and we will.”

“I don’t think so,” the human female said (and it occurred to the PDF man that she’s just said “Homeworld”, not “Ostar”). “You see, we’ve tinkered with it a bit. An upgrade here, a non-specified software modification there. I know what you’re thinking: any unauthorised alterations will invalidate the warranty. Well, that’s just a risk we’ll have to take. When it hits Homeworld, if by some miraculous chance it doesn’t go off and reduce the entire planet to radioactive gravel, you’ll be able to say,
Told you so.”

The PDF man’s ears were flat to his skull. “Who are you?” he said.

“None of your business. We’re—” For some reason she turned her head a little and looked at the male human. “We’re private citizens. Just a couple of people. In fact, the only thing that distinguishes us from our fellow-humans is the fact that we’ve got this really powerful bomb.”

The PDF man shook his head slowly. “You’re delusional,” he said. “If you don’t disarm that thing right now, we’ll blow up your planet.”

The male shook his head in a singularly irritating way. “Sorry, no,” he said. “You fire one shot, and our friends and colleagues aboard the
Warmonger
will blow us all to hell — you, me, the planet, everything. Oh, and yes, we know you’re out of the blast range now, but you’ll have to come into it to open fire. You’re screwed.” The female prodded him in the stomach. “Oh, nearly forgot. If you attempt to close the distance, we’ll launch our missile at Homeworld. Got you coming and going, yes?”

The PDF man decided that he hated the male human more than any entity he’d ever encountered. “No problem,” he said. “We’ll just sit here. No hurry.”

“We’ve got a better idea,” the female said. “Why don’t we all meet up together somewhere and try and discuss this rationally, like advanced life-forms?”

“But you’re not an advanced life-form,” the PDF man pointed out. “You’re a human.”

“That’s not a very constructive attitude.”

“I like it just fine.”

At this point, the PDF man heard a sound he recognised. It wasn’t very loud or particularly distinctive, just a soft click, a very faint whir and hum. It was the sound of a therion blaster’s safety catch being disengaged. “Excuse me a moment,” he said, and turned round in his seat. “What?”

The pilot was pointing a gun at him. “Sorry, sir,” he said. “You’re relieved.”

“Quite the opposite, actually. Will you please stop waving that thing around?”

“Relieved of command,” the pilot said. “Pursuant to Section 47, Subsection 15(c) of the Ostar Military Code.”

The PDF man frowned. “No, you’re wrong there. Section 47’s what you do if your commanding officer suddenly goes raving mad.”

“Yes.”

“Oh.”

The pilot was quite young, with a weak jawline and a rather sissy spoilt-rich-kid accent, but there was just enough raw terror in his eyes to convince the PDF man that he might just pull the trigger.

“When we get home,” he said, “I’m going to feed your liver to my goldfish.”

The pilot looked at him very sadly. “If we get home, sir,” he said, “you’re welcome to try.”

“I knew they wouldn’t go for it,” Lucy said. “Stupid idea.”

“Hold on.”

The screen flickered into life, revealing a young male Ostar in military uniform. He wasn’t looking at the screen; his eyes were fixed on something they couldn’t see, off to his left, and his right arm was outstretched, for some reason. “Ostar fleet calling Earth —um, citizens. Hello?”

“Hello,” Mark Twain barked at him. “Who are you?”

That appeared to be a sensitive issue. “Please hold the line,” the young Ostar said. “Command of this operation has been reassigned to the relevant civilian authorities. Transferring you.” Without looking down, the young Ostar prodded around on the console in front of him. Abruptly, the screen went dead. A moment later it came on again. The young Ostar was still there, looking embarrassed. “Sorry, not used to using this thing, not really my— Right, putting you through.”

He vanished, and was replaced by an older, bigger male Ostar with flecks of grey round his muzzle. Mark Twain felt an instinctive urge to lower his head and wag the tail he didn’t actually have, but Lucy said, “Who are you?”

“I am the director of the Ostar Institute for Interstellar Exploration. Who are you?”

“Lucy Pavlov,” Lucy replied brightly. “Are you the relevant civilian authorities?”

“What? Yes, I suppose you could say that. I’m in charge of the Ostar space programme, and I have authority over all offworld activities.”

“Splendid,” Lucy said. “You’ll do, then. I want you to meet us on the planet in, what, half an hour. My place: that’s a city called Novosibirsk, it’s on the main central land-mass, I’ll send you the co-ordinates and you can teleport down. You and one other. Agreed?”

The Ostar looked at her for what felt like a very long time. “Why would I want to do that?”

“So we can sort out this mess,” Lucy replied reasonably, “without anybody getting blown up.”

“You are hardly in a position to dictate terms.”

“You think so? Well, I’ve got one bomb pointed at you and another one aimed at Homeworld. As positions go, I think this one’ll do to be going on with.”

She got the impression the Ostar didn’t like her very much. “I have no intention of walking into an ambush. If I agree, I shall be accompanied by a full security detail.”