Strider's Galaxy (20 page)

"I'm sorry," she said again. "I'll be expecting you to scrub my back next."

THAT IS SOMETHING WE CANNOT DO, ALTHOUGH . . .
There was a wistfulness in the song.

"Although what?"

The Images giggled, and were gone from her mind.

#

They heard the aperture closing behind them, closing off the last remnants of sunlight. Strauss-Giolitto could see absolutely nothing. Had it not been for the presence beside her in the slidecraft of Polyaggle and Pinocchio—one of whom, it had to be assumed, knew exactly what she was doing, and in the other of whom she now had complete confidence—she knew that she would have panicked, would have jumped hysterically over the side or done something else equally suicidal.

Pinocchio took one of her hands in his and at the same time switched on the lights in his eyes. The bright yellow beams shot here and there around the enclosure in which they were pent, picking out details of heavy machinery, banks of slidecrafts on shelved bays along the wall, huge cables that curved sinuously away across the floor . . .

"Turn those off," demanded Polyaggle sharply.

He did so.

"There are detector cells implanted all over the walls in this chamber," she explained. "They're examining us to make absolutely sure we are who we say we are and who we look like. Quite a number of them are low-frequency photoreceptors, and you've probably just blown out about half of those."

"I apologize," said Pinocchio.

"You weren't to know. I don't blame you." Ten Per Cent Extra Free translated her tone as irritable. "We have plenty of replacements, of course: it's the actual job of replacing that's going to be a pain in the butt."

Ten Per Cent Extra Free didn't often go in for colloquialisms when he was translating. Most of the ones he did use he had obviously picked up from Strider.

"I apologize again. If we can help . . ."

"You can't. We don't want you to be here more than a few hours."

Suddenly, dazzlingly, the lights came on. Strauss-Giolitto used her free hand to shield her eyes from the bright greenness.

A sequence of cooing noises echoed through the chamber, which Strauss-Giolitto, recovering her vision, began to realize was even bigger than she had thought during that brief glimpse when Pinocchio had lit his eyes.

Ten Per Cent Extra Free translated:
WELCOME TO YOU, POLYAGGLE, AND TO YOUR COMPANIONS. BRING YOUR SLIDECRAFT TO THE GROUND.

Polyaggle touched a couple of the buttons on her control board, and the vessel slowly sank. All at once there were a dozen Spindrifters around them. Strauss-Giolitto's blood froze momentarily, but the aliens were unarmed, and most of them showed little interest in her or Pinocchio; they seemed to be a welcoming party for Polyaggle. She was hoisted out of the slidecraft by helping hands; the two offworlders had to climb over the low ledge and drop down to the ground under their own steam.

Of course,
she thought.
We'd be too heavy for them to lift.

A couple of the Spindrifters stayed on foot to escort Pinocchio and Strauss-Giolitto across the floor of the hangar; the remainder of the aliens, Polyaggle included, flew towards a diamond-shaped opening in the far wall. Under the green lights the butterfly wings of the Spindrifters took on even more enchanting tones. One kept expecting those many fluttering wingtips to collide, but somehow they never seemed to.

Strauss-Giolitto, barefoot, trod in a puddle of thick, gelatinous oil. It was an experience she decided not to repeat. Clutching Pinocchio's arm to stop herself from slipping on her oily foot, she picked her course carefully as they followed the two Spindrifters. Here and there they had to step over the thick cables or make a detour round some larger piece of seeming detritus. It was obvious that no one ever walked on the floor in here unless they were carrying something heavy: the Spindrifters flew across the hangar whenever they could.
We're walking through their garbage tip,
thought Strauss-Giolitto.

Several minutes later they were in a chamber some twenty meters long and high and perhaps half that wide. Around its walls were numerous cylindrical objects at whose nature Strauss-Giolitto couldn't guess. On the rounded top of each of the cylinders was another of the very simple control boards like the one she had seen Polyaggle use on the slidecraft.

"What are those things?" she subvocalized.

PUTERS,
said Ten Per Cent Extra Free.
AMONG THE MOST ADVANCED IN THE WONDERVALE. IN FACT, THEY'RE SO FAR AHEAD OF ANYTHING YOU'VE COME ACROSS THAT PERHAPS "PUTER" IS THE WRONG WORD. THAT'S WHY THEY LOOK SO SIMPLE.

Their escort had left them at the door, flying off down the broad, high corridor to go about other things. In the center of the chamber stood Polyaggle and a couple of other female Spindrifters whom Polyaggle quickly introduced as Nerita and Feefaar. At first Strauss-Giolitto assumed these individuals must be top-ranking officers in the military of the Associated Villages, but it soon emerged that they
were
the Associated Villages military. With the aid of their machines they could, together or singly, mount Spindrift's defenses—which Strauss-Giolitto began to infer were a lot less meager than Polyaggle had implied. In the event of the enemy's battling their way through them to the ground, as many Spindrifters as could manage it would take refuge in this vast bunker, which she gathered stretched for kilometers underground; the rest of the species would be doomed.

Out of the corner of her eye she saw a swiftly moving glimmer of not-quite-light. There was another Image in the chamber.

She let Pinocchio do most of the talking. She felt she had very little to contribute.

"We will give you what we can," Nerita was saying. "What we cannot give you is any weaponry information which, if you made use of it, might by its very nature allow the slightest possibility of the Autarch's forces tracing it back here to Spindrift. Most but not all of his lieutenants are as stupid as he is himself, but some are capable of the most intelligent ratiocinations. Every weapons system has its own signature, and that signature might give a clue to the Autarchy as to where you had gained the system's theoretical underpinning."

"That is perfectly understood," said Pinocchio.

"Not by me," subvocalized Strauss-Giolitto.

WHAT HE'S SAYING IS THAT IF YOU HUMANS SUDDENLY START DEPLOYING SOME VARIANT OF AN IDENTIFIABLE ANCIENT SPINDRIFTER WEAPON, SOMEONE IN THE AUTARCHY MIGHT PUT TWO AND TWO TOGETHER AND TORCH THIS PLANET ON PRINCIPLE.

"But there are other ways in which we might assist you," said Nerita. "For a start we can give you the co-ordinates of the stellar systems of the other ancient species in The Wondervale. They may be able to offer you different information. Some of them might even dare to give you technological data which would help you in your struggle."

"Is it likely?" said Pinocchio. Strauss-Giolitto envied the way that he seemed so perfectly nonchalant in these surroundings. She herself was all too aware that they were in the stronghold of aliens about whom they knew virtually nothing, and that there were millions of tons of ice and metal above them.

"Not very," said Feefaar. "But certainly they will give you information which is both unknown to us and likely to aid you."

"What sort of information?"

Nerita spoke again. "Our communications with those other species are sporadic and rare, but we know that some of them are more restless under the tyranny than we are. Remaining neutral is harder work than you might think, even for a species like ourselves, who think in timescales of billions rather than millions of years."

"No," said Strauss-Giolitto, speaking for the first time. "I know exactly what you mean. Injustice is difficult to stomach. So is guilt."

The Spindrifters looked at her silently.

"You must feel guilty about all the sentient beings who are dying because the Autarchy persists," she went on, floundering for words, becoming swiftly embarrassed.

"No," said Feefaar. "Why should we?"

"Because . . . well, because . . ."

"What is more important," said Feefaar, "is that, the longer the Autarchy and its inevitable successors continue their bloody rule, the more likely it is that our species will be destroyed."

The Spindrifters turned their attention back to Pinocchio and Strauss-Giolitto let the conversation drift away from her.
You don't even know how these people think,
she told herself,
so how can you start guessing at their morals and priorities? Just because they're roughly the same shape as you and they seem to be talking in Argot—not to mention that you find all
three
of them fascinatingly desirable—you can't assume that they're like you in the slightest. What emotions do they have? You can't even
imagine
what their emotions might be like. Get to grips with this.

She looked around her. The warmth that Pinocchio had given her aboard the slidecraft had all ebbed away by now, and she realized that she was once more very chilly under her thin robe. Her head was beginning to throb from the cold. Aside from the rows of Spindrifter puters along the walls, the chamber was featureless. Green light—fortunately not as lurid as that in the hangar—came from somewhere. The walls seemed to be grey. There was no decoration at all on them.
No art of any kind,
she thought.
Perhaps the Spindrifters
are
their art.

Pinocchio tapped her on the shoulder.

"I want to consult briefly with you," he said very quietly. The three Spindrifters had turned politely away.
Although who knows how sensitive their hearing is?
thought Strauss-Giolitto.
Maybe this place is bugged up to the eyeballs anyway.

"With me? I'm no expert in any of this."

"The Spindrifters are prepared to feed into my puter all the information that they're prepared to give us. I think, from what they tell me, that I have the capacity to handle this amount of data—although I shall ask you to monitor the process in case I run the risk of crashing."

"What's so confidential about this that we have to be whispering?" she said.

Pinocchio shook his head. "That is not what I want to talk about. In exchange, I propose to permit them to download my puter into theirs beforehand." He looked hesitant. "It's a pity the Main Computer is dead. These people—they know so much more than we do that it's impossible for me to determine whether or not there's any information we might have that could be of use to them."

"There's bound to be," she said, glancing across to where the three Spindrifters huddled in the far corner. They, too, were talking in low tones. They seemed to be arguing—at one point Feefaar fluttered a meter or two into the air, speaking rapidly. "We've undergone a completely different cultural evolution," she continued, "and we've done it in isolation in a galaxy who knows how remote from The Wondervale. There's certain to be stuff that we've come up with that they don't know."

"This is my feeling also," said the bot. "But I do not think that I can go through with this enterprise without specifically asking for human permission. Ideally I should ask Strider, but she's not here. I'm reluctant to delay my offer until I've had a chance to speak with her, because already one of the Spindrifters is dubious about the wisdom of helping us at all. We may not be allowed to send a second deputation down here."

"Feefaar," she said.

"Precisely."

She wondered why Pinocchio was telling her this, then whispered: "Oh."

"You're the only human being here whose permission I can ask," said Pinocchio.

"What makes you think you aren't a human being, bot?" she said after a long, thoughtful pause. She touched him on the arm. "I'm a teacher from City 22—a few years ago I was showing infants how to access databases and fine-tune their neural implants. I'm not qualified to make decisions like this. You are. Do what you think you should." She punched him on the shoulder and tried to disguise the fact that it felt as if she'd broken a couple of knuckles. "Strider sent you as her ambassador. So go ahead and ambassad."

I COULD HOOK UP WITH NIGHTMIRROR TO ASK STRIDER IF SHE APPROVES THIS COURSE OF ACTION,
said Ten Per Cent Extra Free.

"No," Strauss-Giolitto said. "This is Pinocchio's deal. Strider delegated the decisions here to him."

"Are you sure?" said Pinocchio.

"Yes."

"You realize you've just answered the question you said you weren't competent to answer?"

Strauss-Giolitto supposed she had, in a way, but this was no time to be chopping around with logical niceties. "Do what you think is best," she said quietly. "Only, do you think you could give me some more of your heat? I'm freezing to death in here."

His arm around her waist, Pinocchio put his proposition to the Spindrifters. They retreated for a few further moments to their corner to discuss it, and now Polyaggle and Nerita very obviously prevailed over the skeptical Feefaar. The argument didn't last long.

"We accept your offer," said Polyaggle with seeming formality, facing the two offworlders. "And we will give you the data that has already been discussed." She paused as Feefaar said something to her with quiet intensity, but then Polyaggle raised her wings angrily at her. "There's something else we might be able to do for you. If we could have access to your Main Computer . . ."

"The Main Computer is dead," said Pinocchio. "I took out of it everything that I could. That wasn't very much, but it's all in the files I'm offering to download into your machines."

"There's no such thing as a truly dead computer!" exclaimed Feefaar. "Why do you try to deceive us this way?"

LET ME HANDLE THIS,
said Ten Per Cent Extra Free.

"Can our Image speak with your Image?" said Pinocchio. "Or would you prefer to speak to our Image direct? Let him explain."

"Let him talk to me," said Feefaar in a tone which Ten Per Cent Extra Free translated as contempt.

There was a brief silence. Feefaar stood with her eyes closed. At last she opened them.

"I understand now," she said. "I hadn't appreciated quite how primitive your technology is. If the Images have failed to drain the last out of your Main Computer, then perhaps much of it really
is
dead."