Super Extra Grande (10 page)

I’m also a bit confused, I won’t deny it. Because the ultrarapid shuttlecraft that Gardf-Mhaly hired for me hasn’t exactly brought me to Brobdingnag…

But rather to something orbiting it. My first impression was that it looked like the enormous excrement of some unknown space organism—not a pleasant thought at all, just a few hours after the tsunami business on Nerea, which gave me enough scatology lessons to last three lifetimes. But when I entered the object, I could see it was a non-human space vehicle.

Indescribable from the outside, it didn’t look Cetian or Laggoru from the inside, either.

What, then? Amphorian? Parimazo? Kerkant?

Or maybe… Juhungan?

What would the hydrogen breathers be doing in the middle of this spat between two oxygen-breathing species? Why so much fuss about rescuing a couple of my old assistants?

To cap it all off, as soon as I walked in I recognized Kurchatov.

Of course, that’s not the name that first came to mind.

Because, as it turns out, this hardass big shot used to be a bit of a slacker when he studied two years of veterinarian biology with me at Anna Mundi…

Back then he was a party animal, famous for getting soused every night. Our friendly nickname for him was Juni Tacho.

Obviously, this was before three generations of scientists in his family finally accepted the fact that he was only interested in colonial insects because his real calling was in the military—something they had obstinately refused to consider possible before then.

Pity about the kid. He was pretty obsessed with soldier ants, militaristic beetles, and the like, but he could have made a good veterinarian biologist. We missed him a lot in our “oceanography studies” over the next few semesters. I was the only one who could out-drink him, and not by many teaspoons…

And now here he is, a full-blown general with so much gold braid on his shoulders it’s a wonder he can hold them up. I hope, for his subordinates’ sake, he doesn’t still drink C
₂
H
₅
OH compounds as enthusiastically as he did when he was a student…

Living proof of the miraculous memory-scrubbing effects of high rank, my former classmate shows no sign of recognizing me—so instead of invoking our old Anima Mundian alcoholical familiarities, I keep my mouth respectfully shut.

A prudent attitude when faced with so much power gathered in so few square meters, I think.

ME
: Umm… Hola, Gardf-Mhaly, delighted to meet you en persona, I mean, close up. (I register Hurtado’s rank, realize that Kurchatov has the equivalent rank in the Army of Earth, that they all work for the Coordinating Committee, and I gulp; now I really start to worry.) Admiral? General? Our Cetian friend me dijo que el accidente de Enti y An-Mhaly era un secreto, pero…

HURTADO AND KURCHATOV
(in chorus)
: We aren’t aquí. Nosotros never gave you la misión que estamos about to entrust you with. If you succeed, nadie will ever know, y there will be no medallas. If you fail… la culpa will be yours alone.

ME
: Okay; voy a necesitar the smallest, sturdiest ship you’ve got. Not a bioship, por favor: a traditional design, human si es posible, good solid metal y plástico. With superpowerful ion máquinas, a magnetohydrodynamic propulsion system, room aboard para tres personas, y a g-force cushioning system. También, at least six motherships with powerful engines, preferiblemente human Tornado-class frigate carriers; unos five hundred kilómetros de carbón nanotube fiber cable; seis toneladas de table salt; dos toneladas de colchicine o algún toxic secondary metabolite similar; y…

LIKHA
(interrupting me)
: Doctor Sangan, do these specific requests significan que you have already mastered todos los detalles de la situación?

ME
(arrogantly)
: What’s there to master? Enti y An-Mhaly took a trip para recordar about old times, they got muy cerca de Brobdingnag, they got caught by the planet’s tremendous gravedad, they came tumbling out of el cielo, y luego a laketon mistook them for comida and encased them in one of its alimentary vacuoles. Since those mega-amoebas no pueden digerir inorganic matter, en un par de semanas a lo mucho the bug will expel them, after the digestive vacuole encasing them los convierta en excretory organelle. So yo supongo que ellos no deben tener mucho oxygen left, or there wouldn’t be all this urgencia.

HURTADO AND KURCHATOV
(in chorus)
: Eso es exactly what happened. Muy astute, Doctor Sangan. Give us su shopping list y we’ll get it all para usted on the double so you can get moving lo antes posible.

MHALY
: Yes, it is an urgent case, muy urgente. Pero no por falta de oxygen. It is that… Enti Kmusa y An-Mhaly did not exactly pass by Brobdingnag por accidente, and things did not go precisamente as you suggested, Doctor Sangan.

ME
: Entonces, tell me how it really went down, as accurately as you pueda…

This calls for a shift to a more schematic, data-based style so I can skip the endless tug-of-war it took for me to drag a precise idea of the matter from the teeth of their military penchant for secrecy.

For example, I could express it all in syllogisms, so Argol Swendal, my symbolic-logic professor at Anima Mundi, might feel proud of me at least this once:

FIRST PREMISE
: Garden planet with oxygen atmosphere, relatively nonaggressive fauna, and exuberant flora, third from a type G2 yellow dwarf star; that is, very similar to the humans’ Sun. A tempting nugget for any colony scheme.

SECOND PREMISE
: Planetary system on the border between the human and Cetian zones. Humans name the promising planet Canaan. Cetians call it Urgh-Yhaly-Mhan, which in the language of the Goddess means “we deserve this because we are who we are.”

THIRD PREMISE
: Both species are highly expansionistic and will not hesitate to turn to violence if they think it necessary to support and/or safeguard their interests.

CONCLUSION
: To avoid sparking a large-scale armed conflict, in the years following the First Battle of Canaan (a minor skirmish that left thousands of casualties on both sides) neither race risks settling the tempting border world. They sign a solemn treaty sanctioning this unstable but reassuring equilibrium. A tiny joint garrison of troops from both species will oversee compliance.

FIRST PREMISE
: Far, far from Canaan, the grassland planet Olduvaila, a First Wave human colony world, has barely eight-tenths the gravity of Earth. Its inhabitants, descendants of the Maasai people, average seven feet in height as adults and specialize in cattle ranching.

SECOND PREMISE
: Bwana, a gas giant approximately the size of Saturn and the fourth planet in the same system, passes near Olduvaila every fourteen years, and with each pass it overwhelms the colonial world’s weaker gravity and captures a bit more of its atmosphere. This process has been going on for millions of years… but after two or three more passes, the declining density of the local atmosphere will leave it too thin for the humans and their herds to breathe. Already the air on Olduvaila is barely equivalent to the atmosphere at an altitude of five thousand meters on Earth.

THIRD PREMISE
: The Maasai, a cattle-herding African people from whom the human colonizers on Olduvaila are descended, have a strong warrior tradition and have never resigned themselves to being defeated by drought, famine, other natural disasters… or any enemy.

CONCLUSION
: The warlike and desperate inhabitants of the dying planet Olduvaila are seeking another world where they can move. Urgently and en masse, no matter where it is and no matter whose bodies they have to step over to get there.

FIRST PREMISE
: One fine day, 3,600 ships appear unannounced at Urgh-Yhaly-Mhan, or Canaan to the humans. Their crews total more than sixty thousand well-armed people who are ready for anything: the advance guard of the Olduvailan migration. They are led by the old and skillful populist politician Mvamba Kmusa.

SECOND PREMISE
: Grown lax after three long decades of peace following the First Battle of Canaan, the minuscule joint human-Cetian garrison is taken completely by surprise. But in an unforgettable show of interracial cooperation, the human members of the force, including two soldiers from Olduvaila, fight as fiercely as the Cetians against the much larger invading forces, delaying their landing for as long as they can… until the last soldier falls.

THIRD PREMISE
: During the bitterly fought Second Battle of Canaan, a costly Pyrrhic victory for the invading forces, old Mvamba dies. By Olduvailan political tradition, power passes to his daughter, Enti Kmusa. But the heroic resistance of the mixed human-Cetian garrison bought enough time to prevent the expeditionary force from completing its mission of clearing the way for the rest of the colonizers to land. The entire Cetian fleet rushes to blockade the illegally occupied planet, preventing reinforcements from joining the Olduvailan advance guard occupying the ground.

CONCLUSION
: An old tactical axiom states that it is impossible to use an attack from space, even by overwhelmingly superior forces, to dislodge any planetary position that has been reinforced with nuclear artillery and missiles—which Enti Kmusa and her followers possess in abundance. As the colonizers cannot be expelled from Canaan (which they immediately renamed New Olduvaila) or receive reinforcements from the rest of their people, the situation has frozen into an exasperating impasse that has gone on for six years now—though for once, the Galactic Community Coordinating Committee has managed to keep a pretty tight lid on it.

FIRST PREMISE
: The leadership of the Olduvailan rebels, watching their supplies and ammunition dwindle, realize that their position is militarily and politically untenable. Yet the morale of their troops is as high as on the first day, and they won’t hear a word about surrender, treaties, or concessions. They’ve conquered a new homeland, and they have no intention of relinquishing New Olduvaila.

SECOND PREMISE
: The Cetians, feeling affronted, demand that the human race expel the intruders unconditionally from Urgh-Yhaly-Mhan… or exterminate them. But their military leaders would prefer to come to an agreement with the illegal occupiers. They feel that, in the name of peace, they could grant them a consolation prize—some other world, one not quite so heavenly as Canaan or (preferably) so close to Tau Ceti.

THIRD PREMISE
: The governments of the other five races in the Galactic Community are prepared to do everything possible to bring the warring factions to an understanding.

CONCLUSION
: The Most Correct Juhungan Hegemony assault ship
Imperturbable Eviscerator of Unredeemed Suns
(or something of the sort; translations from the Juhungan can never be exact) offers the use of its facilities to the two contending parties while they negotiate a treaty. In absolute secrecy.

FIRST PREMISE
: Taking the Cetian side in the discussions is Coordinator Gardf-Mhaly’s honorable milk cousin, An-Mhaly, whose impossible love for a stonyhearted human (the author of these lines) has made her a romantic heroine among her people. Her one-time friendship with the current leader of New Olduvaila, who worked as an assistant for the same human, will, it is hoped, facilitate their negotiation of a just treaty that neither side will find too dishonorable.

SECOND PREMISE
: Given Enti Kmusa’s paranoid fear that even the giant Juhungan warship isn’t safe from prying eyes and ears, the patient hydrogen breathers offer her and the Cetian one of their many secondary vehicles so that, while traveling an undisclosed route, they can have all the time and secrecy they desire to nail down the details of the pact.

THIRD PREMISE
: The small exploration vessel in question is organic, like all Juhungan technology. Carbon-reinforced germanium foam. And it flies dangerously close to Brobdingnag.

CONCLUSION
: When their vehicle is captured by the gigantic planet’s gravitational field, the Cetian negotiator and the leader of the illegal occupiers of New Olduvai/Canaan/Urgh-Yhaly-Mhan cannot prevent it from plummeting to the planet’s surface—where a laketon, attracted by the irresistibly delicious chemical composition of the Juhungan vehicle, promptly devours it.

FIRST PREMISE
: Enti Kmusa and An-Mhaly must be freed as quickly and as secretly as possible so the conflict between Olduvailans and Cetians doesn’t flare up and drag on forever.

SECOND PREMISE
: The laketon that “kidnapped” them is none other than the second largest of the 611 inhabiting the planet, after Tiny. Called Cosita, it is nearly two hundred kilometers wide. They have to be rescued right away, before the chemical contents of the digestive vacuole completely dissolve and assimilate the organic Juhungan ship—along with its two passengers.

THIRD PREMISE
: Given its extremely thick cellular wall and its natural resistance to radiation and impacts, any weapon powerful enough to cause discernible damage to Cosita is just as likely to annihilate its precious “prisoners” in the process.

CONCLUSION
: What they need is a miracle rescue. What they need is Jan Amos Sangan Dongo, a.k.a. the “Veterinarian to the Giants.” He’s said to be amazing, surprising, a genius (viewed objectively). If he can’t extract them from the laketon’s innards, nobody can. And besides—what a coincidence!—it turns out he’s well acquainted with the “kidnapping victims,” so they’ll trust him.