The Dinosaur Chronicles (8 page)

—

In his yard, Ferguson sat hunched over a deck table. On the other side, Tar F’set, who had no need of chairs, rested on his six legs. After several wavings of antennae, the bug grabbed his King’s Rook with his mandibles and deposited the piece deep into Ferguson’s portion of the chessboard.

Ferguson had lathed, carved and stained the chesspieces himself. The lumber he’d gotten at the community general store. Life had hardly begun on Evensong before some ancient catastrophe had hurled the planet from its original orbit into one that would put it in deep-freeze for billions of years. So while the potential for life was there, all of the flora and fauna had been imported. But the local white oak was dense and even, and Ferguson had been satisfied with the results.

True, he could have bought one of the holographic sets, but as he’d told a neighbor, you couldn’t slam down a holographic piece when issuing
check
, and that took half the life from the game.

Ferguson watched the rook land and stared at the Tarapset with barely-controlled frustration. Six weeks earlier he’d taught the bug the game, and in the last two weeks winning for Ferguson had become as realistic a proposition as walking up a wall.

“Losing to you, Tar F’set, has become a repetitive, though admittedly interesting, experience.” Ferguson looked again at the devastation that remained from his defense of 1 P-K4 with 1 ... P-QB4. F’set had played 2 P-KB4 and had by superior chess or Medieval alchemy converted the play into a perverted King’s Gambit Accepted—his favorite opening of that week—anyway.

“Are you resigning, Human?” the bug inquired.

“Do I have a choice?”

“You have four moves left before mate.”

Ferguson resigned.

F’set finished logging the moves to the game into his portable computing unit and leaned back in what Ferguson understood was his “conversational” position.

Ferguson said, “I’ve a confession to make. I’ve bought a copy of CyberKnight, the new 412 release. I intended to use it to sharpen my own skills, but I’d be interested to see how you can do against the program. It’s on the house computer.”

The Tarapset beat his wings in the laughing mode again. “All right, Ferguson; I have no pressing appointments, no business to transact. If you wish to watch for several more hours, I shall be happy to try.”

As Ferguson led his guest inside, he said, “You’re aware that the better chess programs have for years been unbeatable by any biological opponent, that the various contests against the programs have been to see which competitor could last the longest.”

“I did read your bookchip,” F’set said, tipping slightly to squeeze himself through the bungalow’s back door, “and I know this. Your game accepts descriptive notation?”

“If you want to use keyboard or voice, and not the pointer, yes it does.”

“Fine. You know I consider the algebraic system, while more logical, far less poetic.”

Two minutes later, Ferguson had initiated the program and had logged F’set on as opponent. F’set opted to defend.

The program began 1 P-Q4.

F’set answered 1 ... P-KB4.

Ferguson put his hand to his mouth.

“You do not approve?” the bug asked, and Ferguson’s cheeks warmed. He’d forgotten about the Tarapset’s eight eyes, two of which looked backward, and straight at him.

“The Dutch Defense,” he coughed reluctantly, “is now considered broken. All I can do, Tar F’set, is wish you Good Luck.”

Six hours later, on the 93rd move and to Ferguson’s astonishment, Tar F’set obtained a draw by repetition. The repetition sequence included moves by four queens—two white, two black—and took twelve moves for the cycle.

The program rated F’set’s play at 3316.

Ferguson whistled low under his breath.

He didn’t tell F’set at the time, but he submitted the game to the
Association Chess Quarterly
. Three weeks later, he received a notice of acceptance. Also, his sovereign account registered a 500-credit increase; he promptly had the money transferred to F’set’s account.

F’set seemed surprised by all the interest.

“You’ve put life back into the Dutch Defense, that’s why,” Ferguson told him. “With so many of the old openings discredited, chess players lust after playable variety.”

“But the 500 credits—”

“Yours. You earned them. And I know that expenses are sometimes a problem for you, even if you don’t say so. I see you standing in line at the Asset Conversion Office at the end of the month, looking anxious.”

Tar F’set could not, of course, blush, but there was a noticeable hesitation in his reply. “What of yourself, Human? Have you no needs?”

“I was an electronic technician, and I’ve got a couple of minor patents to my credit. My monthly stipend suffices.”

“I used to be—” the bug began, then stopped to pull the PCU from his thoracic belt. Ferguson saw F’set run his dictionary program. “I used to work in a
clerical
capacity,” the bug said finally, “and my financial situation, while bearable, is, as you have suspected, somewhat austere. Your gift is appreciated—and accepted.”

Ferguson rapped the bug on his shell, where a shoulder would be, and said, “We can still celebrate your good fortune. We can go to our one-horse town’s lone watering hole and strike a blow for liberty.”

By the time the two reached Granger Hollow’s only public house, F’set had worn the legends off his PCU keys but had just about extracted the gist of the colloquialisms.

—

Ferguson chuckled as he recalled the puzzled look on F’set’s face. After a while, he’d come to read expressions into the unchanging features of the arthropod—the tilt of an antenna, the parting of a mandible, the curve of his proboscis. But when it came to reading body language, Tar F’set was the expert. Once he’d said to Ferguson, “We cannot change our faces as you can, so we must interpret the feelings of our brothers and sisters from the way they walk, the way they hold their antennae and mandibles, and so on. Learning to read human signals was not so difficult, though I am still confused about one thing.”

“And what is that?” Ferguson had asked.

“Wherever I go, I sense among your people conflicting reactions. In some, I sense fear. Fear, perhaps, of the unknown—which I must surely be to them—or fear of my bulk and physical abilities, for Tarapsetteans are hardly as fragile as humans. And I also sense respect, as one intelligent creature may show respect to another, and this results in great politeness. But there is also a third element—I have difficulty giving it a name—perhaps
appreciation
, though I do not know for what we should be appreciated.”

The conversation had taken place outdoors, during the long twilight only a giant star can bring. F’set and Ferguson had taken a walk to the Hamlet’s newly-planted stand of birch.

Ferguson looked up and pointed to where a few bright stars heralded the coming of night. “Look at the stars, my friend. For three hundred and fifty years we’ve had hyperdrive. In that time, our ships and probes have mapped some four percent of the galaxy. That’s not an insignificant sample. We’ve found other life-forms, but most have been primitive—sponges, mosses, algae, a few plants and worms. For three hundred years—until the time we discovered your world—our scientists and philosophers were getting more and more worried. It’s a big galaxy, and we were afraid—”

“—of being alone?” Tar F’set finished. “I see.”

They stood there, on a little rise outside the hamlet, and watched darkness fall. F’set said, “You too, are alone, aren’t you, Ferguson? ‘The man who put six billion out of work.’ Yes, I have heard this, yet my research shows your action was honorable, so I do not understand the shunning.”

“It’s not as bad now as it was in the beginning,” Ferguson said. “And it’s an emotional reaction that only slowly succumbs to reason. Out here on the colony planets, plasjoint is the universal building material. And the building of houses, office buildings, bridges—you name it—drives the economy. When I found that insufficiently-cured plasjoint released neuroactive chemicals into the air—resulting in premature dementia for people living in homes made of the stuff—there was hell to pay. It also didn’t help that I was an electrical engineer and not a chemist or biologist. My discovery—plasjoint induced dementia, or PJID—cast doubt on the credibility and competence of the government and the established scientific community. Until the curing vats could be retooled, the production of plasjoint was restricted to emergency use only, resulting in job layoffs, reverberations in related industries, and so forth. All this occurred in the midst of a recession, so weddings and surgeries were postponed, and more than once my home on Wellington’s Planet was sprayed with gunfire.”

Tar F’set waggled one antennae. “As a matter of interest, just how
did
an electrical engineer make such a discovery?”

Ferguson started a slow walk down to the hamlet, and Tar F’set followed. “A friend of mine, back on Wellington, had a sister who was hospitalized with psychosis. You know on colony worlds that housing is scarce. His sister for some time had tried to move, claiming that her house was ‘evil’ and sucking the life out of her. This was doubly confounding, because the woman had been a rational, level-headed individual.”

“So your friend asked you to examine her dwelling?”

“He did, after the local authorities came and found nothing. I told him it was totally out of my field, but as a friend I took air samples and made other tests. I didn’t find anything either, until I was trapped in her house one evening by a storm and—having nothing better to do—reran some of those tests. Turned out, the chemical release didn’t occur until late at night—when most people were sleeping—because a temperature drop was needed before the plasjoint seals formed microscopic gaps. The chemical itself degraded quickly and had to be inhaled shortly after release to be harmful. I knew I’d have trouble getting the planetary government to roll on this, so I hypergrammed Earth directly—sent my findings to the Centers for Disease Control. That really got a number of people upset—going over their heads like that. But there was nothing else to be done, and later even a few Wellington officials privately told me I’d done the right thing.”

“Doing the right thing,” F’set said softly, “is often appreciated only by historians.”

—

Ferguson stared through the window glass.

The rain was easing, and in the distance a faint rosy glow began to bleed away the night. He recalled another dawn, some months after their talk on the hill and nearly a year after the Dutch Defense game, when Tar F’set had come rapping on his front door.

—

Ferguson had answered the door with a noticeable limp.

“Human, my friend,” the bug began, “I greet you this morning, the start of a new day, and ask for a favor—are you injured?”

“You’re fortunate,” Ferguson said, “‘cause I’m usually in a lousy mood before breakfast. No, I’m not hurt. I generally wear an assist on my weak leg—mangled it in an industrial accident many years ago. Come on in,” he added, opening the door wide, “and place yourself at the table—or wherever. Let me get myself together and I’ll see about your favor.”

Back after strapping on the autocrutch and climbing into his clothes, Ferguson ordered the kitchen to brew a pot of coffee for himself and cup of herbal tea for his guest.

F’set had followed him to the door of the kitchen and said, “When we have a bad appendage, we just clip it off and another grows back in six to eight weeks.”

“It’s not quite so simple in mammals, my friend. A doctor suggested I have the tibia and fibula totally rebuilt, but I have an aversion to hospitals, so I’ve lived with this.”

Seconds later, Ferguson placed the drinks on the living-room’s coffee table and sipped from his own cup. F’set politely dipped his proboscis into the tea.

“So what can I do for you?” Ferguson said. “I too, have no appointments, obligations, or major business at hand.”

F’set’s antennae showed puzzlement, then realization as the bug correlated the allusion. “You are aware,” F’set said, “that recently several other Tarapsetteans have come to live on Evensong?”

“I’m aware, for you have told me time and again.”

“One of them, Rehar M’zek, is an educated, refined female.”

Ferguson grinned. “Is this why your visits to my bungalow have dropped to a mere three a week?”

Tar F’set laughed. “We wish to be bonded.”

“My best to you, then. What is the favor?”

“We wish—
I
wish—you to act as Gar Gisset.”

“Which is?”

“I know in your culture the bonding ceremony is performed by a government or religious official. On my world, it is done by the groom’s appointed. On Evensong, I have no friend closer than yourself.”

Ferguson cleared his throat. “So what’s involved?”

“You recite the bonding vows, both in Standard Galactic and Tarapseti, present the bonding amulet, and file the bonding and
certain other forms
with the local government.”

Ferguson knew the “certain other forms” were the Certificates of Nonfecundity that had to accompany each marriage on the planet. Only the researchers and government officials, who served defined, limited terms on Evensong, could legally bear children.

“I’d be glad to officiate, Tar F’set. Have you set a date?”

“The 12th of next month. Will that be all right?”

Ferguson put on an exaggerated frown. “I’m not certain. Let me check my calendar ...”

As Tar F’set slurped his tea, he laughed once more.

Three weeks later, on a balmy evening well after the last streaks of twilight had vanished, Ferguson presided at Tar F’set’s and Rehar M’zek’s bonding. The ceremony was held in F’set’s back yard, and Ferguson had borrowed the town’s fireworks holojector to display instead an image of Tarapseti’s two moons. When the moons kissed, F’set and M’zek started an intricate courtship ballet that ended twenty minutes later when the inner moon no longer touched the image of the outer.

At that point, Ferguson held up his hands and the bugs approached.

He presented their vows in Standard Galactic. He recited the vows, laboriously memorized, in Tarapseti. His throat ached for three days after, but he thought he’d done a good job of mimicking the clicks, trills and buzzes that made up the greater part of the Tarapseti language.