The Blue Marble Gambit (18 page)

The
Commandant was plainly suspicious. He trundled forward, saying, "Oh? What, then?"

"We'll
just run away," I said, then grabbed Trina's tentacles and sprinted into
the cave mouth.

"Cowards!"
I heard from behind us, followed by the rustle of 3000 churning Boff feet.

Perhaps
the one advantage humans have over Boffs, physically, is that they can run just
a little bit faster. Somehow those
tiny little finger-legs just can't move those big heavy bodies all that
quickly. This advantage isn't much
use in a fight, but it is a great deal of use in running away.

With
these thoughts in mind I hurried us down the passage. The walls were dripping and damp, and
the center of the roof much higher than the sides, to accommodate the tall Boff
stalks. We ran and ran and ran, and
then ran some more. My lungs burned
and my legs ached, though not in the way the Commandant had intended. We ignored the occasional
cross-passages, even dimmer and danker than the one we were in, and stayed our
course.

I
was expecting things to get worse - after all, the Senior Commandant thought he
was pursuing renegade veggies, unless he realized we were the missing
humans. Either way, we could expect
more attention.

But
there was none. Foolishly, I eventually
began to relax, to think we'd escaped. As if cued by my complacence, alarm bells began to ring.

"OK,
Ned," I said calmly, trying to ignore the painfully strident whoops that
were spanging off my
ear drums
. These were real, not a result of Ned's
brain-poking
. “What now?"

"Quickly,
Ned," Trina put in.

"I
got you this far, didn't I?" Ned asked petulantly, appearing as a tiny man
on tiny hoverscooter, flitting beside us.

"Yes. Into the middle of the most secure
building on Boff. But I'm prepared
to forgive you if you get us out."

Ned
looked at me sadly. “Listen
carefully, Court. There is no plan,
from here on. You're in; the rest
is up to you. Though I will say
that if I were you, which in a sense I am, I would keep running."

We
did exactly that.

"If
it wouldn't be too much trouble," Trina wheezed later, "maybe Ned
could at least change our uniforms?"

"Already
done," Ned replied, and I passed it on.

I
glanced down at a modified array of squiggles and dots.

"You
are now Underlings of the Fourth Root of the Second Tree. A bit less prestigious, but it should
also be a bit more safely anonymous."

"I
hope we get the chance to find out," I gasped. Being a Finger requires me to be in top
physical condition. It does not
require me to enjoy it. Trina, in
contrast, seemed to relish the physical exercise, though I sensed she was
bothered by the prospect of being flayed for a warmdown.

We
ran past a floating holo-sign; horrible green dips, dashes, and curlicues on a
brown background.

I
glanced at it once, very deliberately, getting it into focus. I wasn't looking at it for me, but for
someone else who could supposedly read the local lingo.

"Get
it?" I rasped.

After
a long pause, Ned grew into the form of a long Nubian body, clad in skimpy shorts
and a tiny top, revealing bulging muscles. He began loping along beside me, a gazelle beside a stomping mule. “Yes. We're on course," he replied, then
shot ahead, shrinking away to nothing in the distance, as if he'd been
rocket-launched. Of course it was a
simple visual trick. Of course I
didn't like it.

"Stop!"
Trina hissed. I skidded to a halt
beside her; she was already doing the bent-legged quad-burning crawl. I imitated it as a squad of big ugly
troops emerged from a side passage, stomping along angrily on their tiny
feet. They passed us without a
glance and shuffled off down a side passage.

Either
Ned or I - I'm not sure who - imagined a Boff in a shoe store:

Clerk:
These size ones fit perfectly. Will
there be anything else?

Madam
Boff: Well, yes, actually.
Another five hundred pairs.

"How
much farther?" I burbled. Despite his sprint into the distance, I knew Ned was where he always
was: right behind my eyeballs.

"Much,"
Ned said.

We
ran on. The thick Boffian air
wasn't much help - it burned and stung and stank. Our hall evolved into dim twisty
passages, dank and dripping, like Quasimodo's hideaway. I half-expected to be jumped by trolls or
some other earth fairy-tale creatures. But of course the true irony was that our pursuers were far worse than
the demons of old earth stories. You know things are going badly, I've always said, when your reality is
worse than your nightmares. It is a
sad commentary on my existence that I frequently get the opportunity to say
things like that.

Our
tunnel ended in a large cavernous chamber, out of which two paths exited, each
cut through the far wall at different angles. A fork.

"Hmm,"
Trina said.

"Two
paths diverged in a Boff, and I . . . “

"What?"

"Nevermind,"
I said, thinking.

Which
to take? We couldn't afford a mistake, but there was no clue. I asked Ned; he had no idea and said so
in extraordinarily colorful terms.

"We'll
separate," I announced to Trina. “You take the left. I'll try
the right."

"Are
you nuts?"

"You
want the right? Fine."

"We're
going to separate?"

"Trina,
dear, we have mere minutes, maybe far less, before they find us. If we split, we can cover twice as much
as ground. Travel down your tunnel
for no more than ten minutes - if you've found nothing by then, come back. If you find something sooner, come
back. We'll meet right here."

The
poor thing looked frightened. “You'll do fine," I counseled.

She
rolled her eyes. “I know that. I'm worried about you."

"Oh,"
I said. Then I shrugged and trotted
down my tunnel. I took a suck from
my drinking tube, but hit the wrong button and shot stale coffee around the
inside of my aspara-suit. No
matter. Onward. With the fate of a planet hanging in the
balance there was no time for personal hygiene.

The
tunnel turned tight and dank and twisty, or, actually, tighter and danker and
twistier. I was ignoring the musty
side passages, hoping not to get
lost,
when it
abruptly opened up into a huge chamber with walls so far away they were almost
invisible. I kept moving forward,
though Boffs were everywhere. Many
of them were soaking in various pools. Others were arranged in clumps. Some were plainly soused. The postures and arrangements were a dead giveaway, I realized
suddenly. By Jupiter's Great Spot!
A cocktail party! At least none of the Boffs were even giving me a second look.

Correction.
None,
except
one. That one was careering at me,
trundling on those busy little finger-legs, transfixing me with a tripod yellow
gaze. I picked up the pace of my
shuffle, but it was no use. The new
one had the angle on me; intercept was inevitable. At least he hadn't raised a cry
yet. I steeled myself,
waiting. Deep in the cavern there
was so much green around me that I felt like a pea surrounded by soup.

My
pursuer pulled abreast of me and a bevy of horrifying tentacles reached out
from under a host of disgusting fleshy sheaves and grasped at me. Fondlingly. Pinkly. Grotesquely.

"Come
here often?" leered what I suddenly realized was a lusty sprout.

"No!"
I blurted.

"Me
neither," agreed my new friend cheesily. “I am Ront."

"I
am not interested," I replied, which seemed like a solid candidate for
Biggest Understatement in Human History.

"But
I am!" said Ront suavely. Ridges of mottled flesh above each eye waggled up and down.

"No!"
I crackled. “My buds are dormant!
Go away!"

Ront
blanched, a sweep of pale green climbing up his dusky shaft.

"Go
on! Scram! And take your
pollen!" I repeated, feeling giddy and bold. I wasn't busted! I was only the object of a drunken
Boff's lascivious attentions. Although which was worse wasn't clear.

"So
rude!" Ront lamented. “What is
the younger generation coming to? I wanted only a simple exchange of genetic
material. But nooo-" at this
point he made what had to be an obscene corkscrewing gesture with two
intertwined tentacles, then turned and shuffled off, listing slightly. Fortunately he was hammered - squashed,
perhaps. If he'd been sober, my
insult might have provoked combat.

But
it hadn't. I was feeling pretty
good. I had survived yet another
shimmerball from that fabulous spaceball pitcher, Fate. I should have known to recognize my
optimism as a warning sign. But I
didn't. Instead I floated on
through the party, even finding myself tempted to put on a drinking display in
the various tubs. I could show them
a thing or two about sucking down syrup.

"Uh
oh," said a low deep voice in my ear.
Ned's voice, of course.
“We have a problem," he said
slowly.

My
tentacles waved a Boffian salute to a general as I murmured, "I can't wait
to hear this."

"The
experimental morph-pack. The field
generator is overheating."

That
sounded, well, like more than a problem. It sounded like a disaster. But I remained calm while passing through the center of a loose group of
young warriors. “Overheating? How
bad is it?"

"Bad
enough."

"'Bad
enough'? By the ice crystals on Neptune's butt! How much longer
will
it last?" I started looking around for a
refuge. There was nothing. Nada. Zip.

"If
I don't do anything about it, about seventy seconds."

"Then
do something about it, and quick, silicon-brain!" This last wasn't really
fair - Ned's quantum computers were based on a host of materials, only some of
which were
bio-organic
silicon.

Ned
replied in a measured tone. “I need
to shut it down to see if I can re-route the circuit."

Shut
it down? Shut it down?

"Then
I won't look like a Boff!" Around me lurked hundreds of large, nasty
Boffs. They would doubtless express
their dismay with a human in their midst in a variety of interestingly
eviscerative ways.

"Not
for several minutes, you won't. But
if I don't fix this, you'll never look like one again."

Great
Zot! I was about to court disaster once again! "O.K. Just wait until I'm clear of this bunch
of critters."

"Can't,"
Ned said. “The damage will be
irreparable in thirty seconds."

I
would need at least two minutes to clear the huge crowded chamber. I turned away from the entrance and
plunged deeper into the cavern.

"Ned,"
I said calmly, "I believe you have a death wish."

I
made a hard turn through the swirling crowd, ignoring the drunken sprouts
happily soaking in their tubs. I
again felt a minor urge to show them some real soaking, but restrained myself. It wouldn't have the right impact, when
my Boff suit snapped away in mid-soak.

Straight
ahead, in front of the entire assembly of Boffs, appeared a tall urine-yellow
curtain. Why oh why was everything
on Boff so reminiscent of excretion? But it was the only cover; whatever was
behind that curtain, it couldn't be worse than a thousand Boffs. Unless, Ned suggested, it was two
thousand Boffs.

I
snuck around the side and found myself in a dark alcove, which bore a set of
odd protuberances on the walls.

No, not protuberances.
Heads. The large, quite
misshapen, and completely dead heads of various overgrown and nasty creatures,
dripping teeth, horns, fangs, venom projectors, spine throwers, chem sprayers,
and all manner of other hi-how-are-yas.

But
what really got my attention was what stood below the heads, front and center
in the alcove. Whole
creatures. And not just from Boff -
dead examples of creatures from two dozen planets were here, in crudely
stitched,
clumsily-taxidermied
glory. With dismay I saw a human, an old
gray-haired man with a roughly sewn incision crossing his neck where whatever
stuffing was used had been inserted.

The
curtain rustled. I could hear a
sudden murmur of anticipation from the crowd, then silence. A whole new kind of bad feeling settled
over me.

"Perfect!"
Ned exulted. “Hold still!"

"Not
with a bunch of corpses, no thanks," I said. My skin crawled, just a little bit, at
the thought that I might very well end up in this very room, for eternity. Where, I wondered, would they put
me?
In a position
of honor?
Or hidden in a
corner? And in what pose? I could see that the Boffs preferred to
mold their victims into frozen positions of terror, mouths or breathers agape,
arms akimbo. It was an odd feeling,
like previewing your own grave.
A bit
damp, but I suppose it will do. You don't have anything a bit further
from the ice machine? No?
Very well, then
.