Larry Goes To Space (20 page)

“Thank you. I do have some rocks that I need to move around.” Larry smiled, although for all he knew the Teumessian miner was too afraid to even look at a carnivore over the monitors. “Jughead, can you get the Tetra back on the monitors.”

“We are here, human.”

“Good. Here is the deal. I’m going to save your people. But, I want something in return.”

“We will—”

“—if it is ours to give—”

“—already done so much—”

“—some agreement—”

Larry said, “If I can get the Almas to leave your planet and not come back, I want a spaceship. No. Don’t get huffy. You don’t even have to invite humans to join the Union. That is a bit above my pay grade anyway. I just want a spaceship and the instructions on how to use it. And to make it easy for you, I will take the spaceship you already gave to the Almas.”

“Will they go?”

“—save a full grid of Teumess, so—”

“—they leave?”

“Why would they go?”

Larry shrugged. “They won’t go because I beat them at their own game. They have agreed to it, but they won’t leave even if I beat them. I have another plan to convince them to go. You haven’t said yes to giving me a spaceship.”

“Yes.”

“Yes.”

“Yes.”

“Yes, but no introduction to the Union.”

Larry nodded, “Good. I’m not sure I want to join a union. Union dues always seemed too much like paying voluntary taxes.”

The room had become louder and louder as the Teumessians discussed Larry, the Almas, and the Teumessian Friends Society.

Suddenly, the room went deadly still as the Almas monitor came back on.

“Purple, the Almas are ready. We’re anxious to start. Begin now,” Tedorus demanded.

“As you wish, oh great and mighty Oz.”

“Fool,” the Almas snapped. “I’m Tedorus. Who is this Oz you speak of?”

Larry said, “Just a mighty person of intelligence, wit, and cunning. I called you by his name because you are so much like him. I am ready, except the Teumess will send a guide to bring back the one saved from this competition. We will begin when I know they are safe.”

He pointed at the scruffy little Teumessian, who took off with such speed Larry thought he could see a little cloud of fur left behind.

“May I study the grid while we wait?” He was going to have to give the location by such-and-such a number down and so-and-so across, hoping that the translator could get the message right.

Before he knew it, the scruffy little Teumessian was back with a child so small it was barely a foot tall. He looked at the grid and called his first number. He remembered playing Minesweeper as fast as he could back in high school. His goal had been to achieve a record time, regardless of the outcome. Lost games didn’t count. Here he would have to go slowly, lost games meant someone would die.

He selected a corner square. His reward was a square with the number three. Good! He could save three Teumess. Being a corner square there were only three adjacent squares on the grid. That meant each adjacent square had a hidden Teumess in it. Getting any number on a corner square was bad because he would have to take a guess with another unknown grid. Slowly he played, marking squares, analyzing each step.

He had saved only ten when he reached an impasse. There was no easy step remaining open to him. He had to make another wild guess. He did and was wrong.

He heard the Almas laughing through the monitor. They were obviously happy, having just won nineteen when a normal game would have only harvested them twelve.

The whole thing made Larry sick to his stomach. Even though he’d been instrumental in redesigning the game, the outcome was that he had just killed nineteen sentient beings. Sending cows off to slaughter at a packing plant was one thing. Even if they were slightly telepathic, cows were stupid creatures. The Teumessians were far from stupid.

Larry believed the Teumess were far more technical than they were letting on. They might have been a pre-space civilization before joining the Union, but he doubted it. They had a curiosity streak that was only tempered by their xenophobia. He wasn’t even sure xenophobia was a correct diagnosis. After all, even a cow wouldn’t knowingly enter a slaughterhouse just to see what was inside. That was assuming cows did anything knowingly, which they assuredly did not.

From what he’d gathered, they managed their space exploration by unmanned probes and listening satellites. That type of probe was sure to be a great disappointment to many human alien abductees.

His crew might trust him, but no Teumessian trusted Earth, a planet filled with humans. That alone showed a great deal of common sense.

Larry had known he had to lose this game. He would have deliberately lost if he thought he was getting close to winning. He needed to win, but he wasn’t ready to win yet. He had to delay for time, losing a few games would buy him the time he needed to gather information and implement the plan he had forming somewhere in his brain. Delay was easy for him, but it would be deadly on the Teumessians in the game.

The room was loud with shouting and Teumessians running around. Larry could only imagine the Teumessians were as upset as he was. He couldn’t look any of them in the face, collectively or individually. He hung his head and waited.

A new grid appeared on the Almas monitor and a countdown began. Larry checked his watch. It was only for ten hours.

Larry turned and walked into the bathroom. He found the indicated spot Betty had marked on the inside, pressed the spot and the door un-melted closed. It was the first time he had been alone in three — maybe four days. He wanted to cry. Logically he had only killed a small percentage of people who would be—

He stopped. That was it — they were people. The little Teumessians had gotten to him. They were no longer strange little fox-like aliens. They were people.

He stripped down and stood under the shower. He was tired and he was hungry. He gave up the thought of food. He wanted to get clean. He felt dirty. He wanted to sleep so he could forget for a while what he had just done. But, he wasn’t given time.

The door melted open. Betty came in. She walked into the shower and yipped at him. He’d left the translator in the other room, but it didn’t matter. She was tugging at him; trying to get him to come back to the main room.

Larry sighed. He didn’t dry himself off, but he did pull his clothes on. He trudged back to the main room. A wall of sound slapped him in the face.

“Betty, what’s going on in here?”

Betty laughed. They were close enough to the translator he could hear her high-pitched yipping and the machine version of her laughter. “They are celebrating. You have saved eleven Teumessians. Sunlight through a Dust Cloud has gone to bring back the ones you saved.”

“Who?”

Betty made a few hand gestures over her fur. It translated very well; she was talking about the scruffy, little Teumessian.

“Let’s just go with Dusty, okay? He may be crazy, but he’s a brave little cuss. But Betty, I don’t want to hear about how many I’ve saved. I lost more than I saved. This isn’t something to celebrate.”

Scooter slid next to them, “You are wrong, friend Larry. We celebrate life. You have given life to us. Yes?” He pointed at the monitors. “The Tetra wishes to speak to you.”

Larry shook his head. “I’m tired and I want to sleep before the next contest. There isn’t much time before then. Can they get together and decide that only one of them will speak for the whole?”

Scooter and Betty both laughed.

Scooter said, “Not in the time left.”

Betty added, “Not in our lifetime.”

Larry walked up to the four monitors. He pointed at the one on the left. “You speak. The rest of you shut your berry-eating holes and keep them closed.”

The designated Tetra said, “We have calculated you can win given enough time. You have given us hope. You say they will not leave even if you can win a contest. Yet, they’ve promised to leave.”

Larry said coldly, “They’re liars, but that’s okay, cuz so are humans. It was an empty promise. They won’t go no matter how many times I beat them.”

“Then why did you extract the promise, human?”

Larry sighed. “It was twofold. First, I was stalling for time. I’m still stalling for all the time I can get. Second, I want them to think that we have given in and are playing on their terms. I want them to relax.”

“But if this isn’t your plan, what are you going to do?”

“You don’t really want to know. I’ll tell you after I’ve made them leave.” Larry knew the Teumessians might not stop him, but they certainly wouldn’t help him if they knew of his plans.

“What if you aren’t successful?” the Tetra looked skeptical. The other three Tetra were holding their tongues, but it looked as if they were about to explode.

Larry shrugged. “I’ll be dead if I don’t succeed. But then you won’t be any worse off than you were before.”

“But—”

“But nothing.” Larry interrupted. “I’m tired. Go away.”

The Tetra continued to speak. The other three quickly joined him. Their babbling intensified.

Larry looked around. He didn’t see Jughead, nor could he recognize his two assistants even if they were standing in front of him.

He shouted over the din, “Can someone shut the sound off from the Tetra? Let them continue to listen, but we don’t need to hear them any longer. If they want to continue to be useful, they can go be volunteers in the next contest.”

The Teumessians near him looked aghast at such a suggestion. The Tetra still had their families. Of course, the Tetra were not insane. It would be insanity to volunteer to be supper, lunch, breakfast, or even a bowl of chips.

Larry looked for Scooter. Dragging the translator with him, he went and sat by his first Teumessian friend. Scooter handed him a fruit. It looked bruised and mottled, but Larry bit into it anyway. It tasted like the cross between broccoli and a Chicago style hot dog. It was definitely a strange taste, but not as strange as his grandmother’s tuna casserole.

“Scooter, teach me to pilot a spacecraft.”

Scooter said, “I’m your friend. You will tell me where to take the ship and I will pilot.”

Larry said, “Yes and no. Yes, you may be a pilot on my spaceship. I’ll be jubilant to have you with me. And no, you may not always pilot. I want to know how to pilot it myself. I will not ask you to pilot me where you wouldn’t go.”

Scooter said, “You wouldn’t put me in danger if you had another option. This is true, yes?”

Larry said, “I would not, but suppose I asked you to pilot the ship in such a way that it would endanger another. Could you do that?”

Scooter said, “I wouldn’t. You know I wouldn’t. So you will do this bad thing, you would damage your own heart, if you must, by endangering others? You would pilot yourself to spare me, yes? The Teumess believe a person hurts himself more than the other when he hurts another. You know this and would spare me, yes? This is why you must learn to pilot and why I must teach you.”

They spent a few hours going over the controls of the spacecraft. Scooter retrieved his written manual from their first spaceship and he grabbed a Teumessian pencil. It wasn’t like an Earth pencil. It was about the size and shape of an apple, but instead of a stem, a short stick stuck out of the center. It took a bit to get used to it, but Larry scribbled notes in English in the manual’s margins. Fortunately, the manual was more pictures and diagrams than text.

He finally took a quick nap before the next contest. He glanced at his watch. He’d been hoping the miners would get here before he started, but it was still too early for them to have run the distance.

“Time,” Tedorus shouted. A blare of discordant music blasted from the Almas speaker.

Larry imagined that the Almas television executive had implemented a new musical number to go along with the new game style. He could almost picture a row of Almas dancing girls in the background.

Larry watched Dusty streak out of the room, returning a short time later. He was helping an old female. She collapsed in the corner and refused to stir, even for Veronica’s stirring speech on the Teumessian Friends Society.

Larry wanted to start by selecting a corner square. On a computer with a machine’s random grid-fill process, it didn’t matter. However, the Almas had seen that move from the first contest. He may have been wrong, but he imagined they filled the corners with Teumess. He clicked dead center and began clearing a wide spot. He worked as slowly as he’d done the first time. He double-checked each move.

He had marked sixteen Teumessians. He was sure of where they were. He knew he could select another half dozen with surety, but he hadn’t marked them on the grid. He felt confident he could clear this grid and save all of the captured Teumessians.

The runners from the mine weren’t here, yet.

Larry closed his eyes and shook his head. He said, “Forgive me,” in a voice too soft to carry to the translator. He deliberately clicked on a corner square; killing thirteen Teumess and ending the contest.

He could hear the Almas cheering that they still had more than the previous games. He could hear the cheering of the Teumess as they celebrated saving seventeen of their people.