Super Extra Grande (14 page)

Not even with Narbuk. To my endless surprise, and I suspect also to the amazement of the ecologists on Abyssalia, my secretary-assistant had dealt with the out-of-season spawning of the grendels with consummate skill. And entirely on his own! Though he never came within two kilometers of any of the gigantic crustaceans, it took him no more than twenty-six hours to analyze the water and discover the biochemical pollutant that, even in extremely diluted concentrations, was disrupting the critters’ life cycle.

How smug he was when he told me!

If he only knew…

As a reward for his splendid independent performance, I prepared a dish of fried eggplant with seasoned tomatoes and capers. And he loved it.

After wolfing down his second helping, the impudent little fellow hinted he’d like to set himself up on his own as a second “Veterinarian to the Giants.”

Fine by me, I told him. A little competition lends spice to life.

But he shouldn’t even dream of me lending him the money to get his business started.

And the slogan was all my idea.

Fair’s fair, but too much is too much. Love your neighbor as yourself, sure—but not more than yourself.

And Cosita?

Fine, thanks. From what we could tell, it hadn’t even noticed anything.

And that’s where matters would have ended, with no further repercussions, all of us more or less satisfied. Except my parents, of course. And grumpy old Juni Tacho, maybe.

But the fact is, the story didn’t end there.

Not at all.

Three weeks after my lucky rescue, the veterinarian biologists orbiting Brobdingnag (new ones, of course, not the same eight) noticed that Cosita was starting to display behaviors no one had ever seen in a laketon.

First it stopped moving, regardless of how many tasty cometoids rich in carbonaceous chondrites fell within a few hundred meters of it. It didn’t even stir when other, smaller laketons ate them, taking advantage of its peculiar quiescence.

It didn’t react to anything.

Over the following weeks, its enormous body began to reorganize as it slowly took the shape of a giant cone whose apex towered nearly thirty-five kilometers above the ground. A living mountain that left even the famous Olympus Mons of Mars in the dust.

Its cytoplasm also changed from a translucent blue to pitch black, and its cell wall seemed to grow markedly harder, until it assumed nearly the consistency of horn.

Since it gave no signs of metabolic activity, the general opinion was that Cosita was dying… and everyone was getting ready to observe that exceptional event.

It would be sort of like witnessing the death of a god.

When I found out, I admit I felt pretty guilty. Could I have killed it, what with the missiles, and the salt, and the colchicine?

Half the galaxy was fixated on Brobdingnag for the next two weeks. Until one fine day, after some people had started to think nothing else would happen, when suddenly Cosita exploded.

Not a metaphor.

It literally
EXPLODED
.

A good part of the matter that formed it was ejected at high speed from the small “crater” that opened up at the apex.

The living mountain really was a volcano, it turns out. Except that when it erupted, instead of red-hot lava, in a final titanic effort it ejected billions upon billions of oval capsules, barely half a meter across each.

Spores!

Due to the tremendous gravity on Brobdingnag, almost ninety percent of that eruption of life fell right back onto the planet’s surface, though some of them landed thousands of kilometers away.

I’m certain that some of them will germinate.

But the lucky and determined ten percent of these condensed seeds of life did escape into space, where they dispersed in every direction.

And that’s when the trouble started all over again.

My colleagues were thrilled. They’d finally solved the long-standing mystery of how laketons reproduce! And it was as spectacular as everything else having to do with the titans of Brobdingnag!

So many fascinating new questions now arose. Could those traveling spores be the original panspermia that had dispersed from the depths of the cosmos and gave rise to oxygen-based life on so many worlds in the galaxy? (Oh, Arrhenius, what you’re missing!) Could we Laggorus, humans, and Cetians all be distant descendants of Cosita, Tiny, and company? Since all three species share DNA as our means of transmitting and replicating biological information, that could well be the case…

More research was called for. And since inorganic machines hold up better to extreme accelerations than their makers, a variety of automatic probes were soon on their way to the surface of Brobdingnag to recover some of the millions of spores that hadn’t made it off the planet.

That’s when they discovered something very curious.

As is usually the case with spores, each contained all the genetic information needed to give rise to a new laketon, an exact replica of Cosita.

Or rather, not quite exact… Because, buried inside the DNA, there were a few curious chains that had hydrogen and germanium foam bases. What the…? The three or four distinguished Juhungan biologists on the team immediately identified these chains as coming from one of their bioships.

One of the biologists even broached the possibility that, merely by physically penetrating the laketon without exchanging genetic material with it, a Juhungan vehicle could have set its reproductive mechanism in motion.

Unheard of. A Juhungan bioship had fertilized Cosita? But how? Why? And when?

I could have explained the whole thing to them. Apparently, the final dose of salt and colchicine I administered to Cosita to force it to release us must have sent its metabolism into crisis mode, and its nucleus must have decided that under such harsh conditions the best thing to do was sporulate.

But the weirdest and most awful thing was that since the remains of the Juhungan bioship were still inside the digestive vacuole at the time, its genetic information must have gotten mixed up with Cosita’s. So the bioship’s genes were reproduced billions of times, in each and every one of the spores.

An original… plus
n
tending to infinity copies.

Even at this point, properly managed, there wouldn’t have been any scandal.

But of course, given the military’s secrecy complex, it didn’t occur to any of them to warn the Juhungans not to analyze the elements of their bioship they found inserted in the laketon genetic code carried by the spores.

Likewise, no one had let Enti Kmusa or An-Mhaly know that the biocomputers built (or cultivated, actually) by the deaf and blind hydrogen breathers function as virtual black boxes, preserving a full record of every operation they carry out.

Since the representatives of the two opposing camps had nothing else to do while captive in the cytoplasm, they’d used their ship’s on-board computer to finalize the details of the Olduvailan-Cetian treaty. It turns out, all the details of their top-secret negotiations were recorded inside every one of Cosita’s spores.

And millions of them were now zooming all over the galaxy, no less.

We should acknowledge that the Juhungan biologists behaved properly: as soon as they discovered what had happened, they immediately reported it to their bosses, who were already up to speed on the whole affair.

But by then it was too late to stop the avalanche. Veterinarian biologists were flocking to Brobdingnag to investigate Cosita’s sporulation, and it had occurred to plenty of them that there was something strange about finding Juhungan bioship records encoded in the spores… So they set about deciphering the DNA, no easy task. That’s how they learned about the secret treaty between Olduvaila and Tau Ceti. And all the rest.

In less than three hours, every ship that found a spore in space, every planet where a spore was found orbiting—the whole galaxy, in a word, would learn about the supersensitive accord.

It was a disaster.

A genuine credibility crisis for the Galactic Community Coordinating Committee.

The Amphorians, Laggorus, Kerkants, even the Parimazos, all burst into laughter, not so much at our human and Cetian obsession for keeping up appearances as at our obvious inability to do so successfully.

The Juhungans, with their lame excuses, just added fuel to the fire.

Feeling they had been made fools of in front of the whole galaxy, the former Olduvailans, now Mvambese, rose up in arms against their leaders, demanding instant death for those who had shamed them.

The brand-new planet’s entire governing cabinet was tried, found guilty… and executed.

Luckily for President Enti, she wasn’t on her planet at the time; that was the only reason she escaped her fellow citizens’ fury.

They’ve also demanded my head, by the way, but a planet’s sentences are only valid on its surface… Well, there are still lots of other worlds in the Milky Way for me to visit, aren’t there? And Mvambaland isn’t high on my list.

The Cetians, as dramatic as the Olduvailan-Mvambese, though I admit rather less bloodthirsty, passed an irrevocable sentence on the Assimilation master in their new colony on Urgh-Yhaly-Mhan, my old secretary-assistant An-Mhaly: banishment from their culture for life. And the hunt for scapegoats to answer for the “affront to the honor of the Goddess’s own People” did not stop there. An-Mhaly’s milk cousin, Gardf, lost her position on the Galactic Community Coordinating Committee, and along with Conflictmaster Jhun-Likha was condemned to “ritual death”: returning to the same Cetian sea from which they had once emerged as shivering eel-like spawn, entering it dressed in the full garb and regalia of their offices, and emerging without insignia or clothes, and with new names.

But still alive, at least.

I pity them for their political ambitions. I really do. I had come to feel… a kind of affection for them. And their downfall doesn’t make me happy.

Actually, given that they both had enough inner strength not to commit suicide when their reputations were ruined, I’m fairly confident they’ll win back prestige and responsibility. Though it may take some time.

As for me, the agent of their race’s discredit, I was forbidden to set foot ever again in any Cetian colony or ship anywhere in the galaxy, under penalty of death. And all the lovely six-breasted humanoids were informed that it was taboo to even think of contacting me.

That really did hurt. Cetians used to be my best clients.

Admiral Hurtado and General Kurchatov were likewise immediately demoted. I think Juni Tacho went back to Anima Mundi to resume his studies of veterinarian biology, but I haven’t confirmed it.

I suspect he’s really trying with all his might to get a PhD in oceanography. Bar to bar, dive to dive…

The Army and Space Force of Earth tried to sue me over my “unauthorized utilization of classified military materiel,” based on the episode of the seventeen bunker busters, and they demanded I return the “material incentive received for disinterested assistance” to pay for “moral damages”…

But I’m not Enti or An. I stopped them dead in their tracks; if they kept pressing their ridiculous claim, I’d divulge every detail about the ultrasecret design of
Beagle
…

They gulped and dropped the matter.

In fact—in order to save face, I suppose—they actually gave me a medal.

We’ll consider ourselves even, then.

Though if I look at the whole balance sheet, I came out ahead. Pretty far ahead.

My parents aren’t ashamed of me anymore; they proudly tell everyone they’re the parents of the famous “Veterinarian to the Giants.” My client list, though now deprived of six-breasted Cetians seeking my services, is almost twice as long as before. The Brobdingnag incident was great publicity for me. It sure didn’t hurt when that rascal Narbuk updated my holonet site with images of my daring rescue of the victims trapped inside the second largest laketon in the universe.

Don’t ask me how he got the pictures… I actually think most of them are fakes.

Life goes on.

I recently heard that the Governor Tarkon was unexpectedly deposed on Nerea. A scandal involving the illegal trafficking of (why am I not surprised?) tsunami fecal pearls. With the Amphorians.

His whereabouts are currently unknown. And will remain so for quite a while, I expect. He faces corruption charges that could keep him behind bars for the rest of his life.

They say his worthy spouse has disowned him and is now in a torrid relationship with one of her former bodyguards. That’s the latest scandal on the Nerean holonews. Seems it’s the same guard who harpooned the tsunami so skillfully with the radio tag that allowed me to identify the bracelet eater.

To think there are still people who say women are ungrateful.

I don’t bear the lady any ill will. After all, you only live once. But I hope, for her own good, she isn’t dumb enough to give her damned Aldebaran topaz-inlaid platinum wedding bracelet to her muscular new love interest—assuming Tarkon let her keep it, of course.

By the way, I’ve changed my advertising slogan. Now the sign on my office door simply says:

SUPER EXTRA GRANDE
IF IT’S ONLY MEDIUM-SIZED, DON’T EVEN BOTHER

I can barely keep up with all the clients demanding my services. That’s why I’m not worried about the Laggoru’s threats to start his own business. The waiting list for my service calls is months long, in spite of all the juggling my three secretary-assistants do to streamline things.

That’s right, three. For now, I’ve still got Narbuk-Alr-Quamal-Tahlir-Norgai on my payroll. After his distinguished service on Abyssalia, it’s the least he deserves. Though he constantly reminds me that he wants to fly solo. One of these days.

But he still hasn’t done it. For the record.

Oh—and I found out he’s not exactly a member of the male sex. A week ago, without really bothering to explain it to me at all, he gave me notice he’d be having cubs in a few months.

After he’s had them and they’ve grown big enough, I guess he’ll leave me. We’ll figure things out at that point.

As for my two other assistants…