Nagasaki Vector Read online

  I felt a tug: down between my Academy-green pantlegs, where they hang out over my old-fashioned lace-up parachute boots, were not just one, not merely two, but all three aliens, doing the Sonja Henie bit in and around my feet. I scored them a well-deserved 8.3 and generously resisted the urge to add a steel-lined toe-tip for artistic endeavor. “What’s got into you little buggers, anyway?”

  Another noise behind me, a scuff and shuffle of human feet. Keeping both eyes on the engine-status indicators as they hotted up, I reached for my beer-baggie. “Well, kid, our passengers all tucked away nice an’ neat?”

  A yellow light flickered on the board; the Yamaguchians seemed to be going crazy; I nudged a vernier microscopically, bringing Georgie's highly-critical field-densities back into alignment, talking over my shoulder. “Take a gander at our VIPs here, kid. Don’tcha think they’re acting kinda—”

  WHAAAACKM

  They’re right, y’know, about seeing stars. Whatever it was collided with the side of my head just then, it started little teensy supernovas flashing on and off behind my eyes. And I couldn’t find the right knob to adjust ’em.

  It wasn’t that I minded so much, but the pain. And I remember thinking: I’m never gonna get a beer this afternoon, am I?

  2 Grounds for Complaint

  “Gruenblum, this could be your Most Important Mission Ever!” His fat face swam in and out of focus, changing colors every now and again.

  Funny, I didn’t remember it doing that the first time I’d had this conversation.

  I did remember how much I'd always hated being addressed by my “naked patronymic”—almost as much as being called “Captain"—and the situation wasn’t much improved by the fact that this hypercaloric moron was sullying his own name whenever he sullied mine.

  Just to prove he knew what he was doing—and was doing it on purpose—he turned chartreuse, and posies blossomed from his ears.

  Green-bloom, get it?

  Things steadied down a little.

  I’d thought about flicking half an inch of cheap cigar ash on his hand-imported carpet just to give him an idea of what was really what and who was really who. Unfortunately, I wasn’t too sure about that myself, right now. “Cuthbert, I hate to spoil your fun just when you’re getting warmed up, but this ‘Most Important Mission’ batbarf—that’s what you always tell me!”

  “Batbarf?” He blinked stupidly, then made an effort to regain his sense of inflated self-importance. “I’ll trouble you to remember that it’s Colonel, Gruenblum!”

  “No, it’s Captain Gruenblum. Cuthbert, and I oughta know—I’m him. I mean, he. Least I was last time I looked at the labels in my underwear.”

  I love to see a stuffed shirt splutter incoherently, especially when I’m the cause of it.

  “Look, Cuthbert, do us both a favor and cut the crap. I’m overdue for a date with this redhead over in Von-braunsville, see? An’ she’s got the most terrific set of...” I raised both hands by way of illustration. My cigar ash was at least three-quarters of an inch long by now and none too firmly attached. I looked around for an ashtray.

  “Grandfather, will you please stick to the subject at hand? This could be... well, it really could be your Most Important—”

  I glared at him, and he shut up—a modest talent I cultivate, which has its uses on occasion. More than anything else, more than “Gruenblum,” even more than “Captain,” I loathe being called “Grandfather.”

  But, I sighed inwardly, it Was true enough: this pompous, cetacean-sized subsimian parked on the fifty yard line of the desk in front of me—come on, spit it out, Bemie!— was my very own darling grandson. One of them, anyway; it’s a cast of thousands.

  What made it downright unconscionable was that Cuthbert was also my immediate superior: Lieutenant Colonel Cuthbert M. Gruenblum, AdminTempDiv, OchsMemAcad, SPCA, SPQR, and LS/MFT. Had the little family beauty-spot on his blubbery jaw, and everything.

  Shoulda had one of those vasectomies back when they were offering two for the price of one.

  Now he sat there, feeling hurt and pouting, something he’d practiced faithfully since he was three but which looked silly as a propeller beanie on a Lieutenant Colonel.

  “Okay, Cuthbert, didn’t mean to piss in your little red wagon. Give it to me straight: where you gonna send me this time, an’ what am I supposed to do when I get there.

  Low gravity’s too good for some folks; seems to encourage subcutaneous superfluity. He rose from behind that pretentious block of mahogany like the B. F. Goodrich blimp, ran the back of a flabby hand under several of his chins, and tried to pace back and forth. Doesn’t work too well in one-sixth gee, lacks dignity somehow, and the sound of velcro shoesoles on the carpet gets on your nerves.

  Rip, rip, rip!

  “Well, you see, Grandfath—Cap—Gruen—”

  Rip, RIP, rip, rip!

  “Siddown, for Ochskahrt’s sake, Cuthbert! An’ try ‘Ber-nie,’ since you seem t’be havin’ identity problems this morning.”

  I took another drag off my cigar and this time let the ash fall—entirely accidentally, of course. There was a sudden glitter at the baseboard; a tiny, rodent-shaped bundle of chromium-plated machinery bulleted across the floor, scooped up my oxidized detritus, chittered at me reprovingly, and vanished into the wall again.

  This seemed to throw poor Cuthbert off somehow. He gazed at the bald, bespectacled portrait of Ochskahrt on the wall behind his desk in prayerful appeal. “Where was I? Oh, yes—it isn’t so much the particular mission, er, Ber-nie...”

  Rip, rip, rip.

  .. it might have been almost any old mission at all...” Rip, rip, rip, rip.

  Was he ever gonna sit down again?

  “... so long as you are the pilot!”

  He smiled brightly at this and plunked his behind into the office-swiveler. Never felt so grateful for anything in my life. Well, practically anything.

  “How’d I get so lucky, Cuthbert?”

  Curious now, I let a few more ashes dribble floorward; they drifted slowly under the mild acceleration, and before they lighted on the carpet, the electronic mouse was there again, waiting for them.

  “And why am I so lucky all of a sudden?”

  “Because you’re going to have some company on this trip, Bemie. Besides your new A/O and whatever scientific personnel it happens to involve, I mean.” He gave me a leer like an IRS agent writing up a seizure order for Tiny Tim’s crutches on Christmas Eve. “You see, the Yama-guchian Legation, here in—”

  “Entropy and eggrolls! Pylon take you, Cuthbert, I won’t have any of those dagblasted little... just becausc I once...and anyway, it isn’t ‘Yamaguchian.’ How many times do I have to tell you people, that’s just some Earthie astronomer’s monicker for their late, unlamented former star-system? If anything, they’re Ganymedeans now, and...”

  For the first time, almost in centuries, I couldn’t think of anything else to say.

  But I was thinking harder and faster than I’d ever done in my life.

  All right, you can read the official report somewhere else if you’re that type. And there’s a popularized version circulating Earthside I don’t even wanna think about.

  But the plain and disgustingly simple truth is that the Yamaguchii or the Ganymedii—the “Freenies,” actually— whatever you wanna call ’em, every single last one of the little misbegotten sons, daughters, and fifteen other what-have-yous-of-bitches... thinks I'm his God.

  It ail started innocently enough. But any mission which requires cooperating with the Spacers... well, I’d as lief spend a dirty weekend in Long Beach with a Marxo-Friedmanite Neo-Revisionist of the Old School.

  Seems there was this splendidly normal main-sequence star, Yamaguchi 523 by the catalog, that suddenly went kablomm! one day. Only, by the time the news reached Luna, it’d happened several thousand years ago, light-waves being the notorious slow-pokes that they are.

  Understandably, the telescope-johnies were mildly intrigued: if it could h
appen to a presumably well-behaved little hydrogen-bumer like Yamaguchi 523, why not, then— picking a star totally at random—to our very own dearly-beloved cosmic lightbulb, Sol?

  Shucks, it’d make every day Ash Wednesday.

  So they hawsered my precious Georgie up into a stinking Spacer’s hold, warping yours truly, plus assorted slide-rule types, out to this former stellar system, now a rapidly expanding sphere of slowly cooling incandescent gas.

  Then it was my turn. I took us all backward to a thousand years before the dust-up. We settled in on a revoltingly decorated ball of mud which I figured was gonna be well-off vaporized. Whole place looked like something you’d rub the dog’s nose in and tell him t’do it on the paper next time.

  The scientists scientized while I sat around counting rivets on the bulkheads, thinking wistfully about ordinary missions where I’d have the chance to savor local color— oughta see the way they dress the girls in ancient Crete! Sooner or later, I got bored enough to go out for a walk. That’s how I ran into the Freenies, although they weren’t in any condition to appreciate my godlike qualities then.

  Y’see, they were animals.

  No kidding, they weren’t just primitives or savages. They didn’t use tools. They didn’t make fires. They didn’t even follow the sports pages. They just hung around, well, being animals.

  At the time, I thought (and never since) that they were kinda cute, in a stomach-turning sorta way. Same as they are now, of course: a foot-diameter hot-pink hemisphere, Ochskahrt knows how many wiggly little lime-green legs sticking out underneath, and this rubbery, wrinkled, turkey-neckish thing poking out the top, with a giant fly’s eye nesting in the end.

  Anyway, I started playing around with them, lacking anything more constructive t’do, building little traps and labyrinths t’see how bright they were, what they could be trained to do. For once, I could interfere all I wanted to with local events. This place—and the Freenies—didn’t have any future history to screw up. Everything was scheduled to go up in subatomic particles at the stroke of the millennium.

  Naturally, training required rewards. I tried all kindsa garbage, and it turned out they preferred percolator-leav-ings. Or old tea-bags. Even certain underhanded brands of artificially-processed orange-juice. In short, anything with caffeine in it. Hell, they even went for Midol.

  Now it says here that caffeine measurably enhances human intelligence, and I believe it. Modem civilization’d be downright impossible without that first cup of coffee—what else could get a perfectly sane anthropoid up off his warm nest and out into the rat race every morning, day in and day out?

  Notice that the “Age of Reason” didn’t get into full swing until the little brown beans started getting imported and that the First Industrial Revolution cranked itself into gear on an island where everything comes to a screeching halt for the afternoon cuppa.

  Thus it was, Freenie-wise, as well. They were bright little critters, as animals go, just teetering on the edge of whatever separates us from horses and kangaroos, and those well-used tea-bags of mine shoved ’em right over.

  Our mission called for skipping ahead a few decades at a time, taking observations until the onboard whiz-kids figured out what’d made the sun go boom.

  I’m telling you, before we left that planet, the Freenies (named by me, if y’want the ugly truth, for the sound of their voices) had bootstrapped themselves through a couple Industrial Revolutions of their own, begun using atomic power, and practiced a religion with me, Bernard M-for-Moron Gruenblum, as its Entity-in-Chief.

  I’ve thought about hara-kiri, but I get woozy from a paper cut.

  The Freenies hadn’t quite invented starships, so after I made the mistake of opening my big fat face back at the Academy, we rescued ’em: huge fleets of starships, time-buggies in their cargo holds, ferried millions of the critters off their doomed planet, first to Luna, later to a Yama-guchiformed Ganymede.

  The Red Cross served doughnuts and coffee.

  I wish it’d been Sanka.

  Cuthbert shifted nervously in his chair.

  Afraid he’d take to pacing again, I essayed quickly, “What does all this have t’do with the price of fish-meal, anyway?

  What does the Yamaguchian legation really want?” Experimentally, I let another cigar ash fall. Sure enough, the mechanical mousoid got to it before it actually hit the carpet.

  Cuthbert blinked but stayed planted on his fundament. “Why simply to send a group out with you on your next full-dress assignment.” He hesitated, and I began to get an awful feeling about what was coming. “It’s a religious experience for them, Bemie, sort of a pilgrimage.”

  “A pilgrimage?” Yep, I’d figured right. Mentally, I started adding up my bank accounts, including the two in Switzerland and Hong Kong I didn’t think the Academy was wise to—in this business you can collect a lotta highly salable antiques if y’know what you’re doing.

  “Why yes. As I’m sure you’re aware, the Yama— Freen-ies possess the capability, far from unique throughout the zoological realm, to transfer individual experiences genetically, and—”

  “How many?" I chomped my cigar, there being no bullet immediately available. His hands flopped on the desk like a midget hiding underneath had punched him in the groin. “Er...”

  “Come off it, Cuthbert. We both know what I’m talking about: race memory. How many of the little... darlings do they wanna send with me, one of each sex?”

  Considering the circumstances, you might say there was a pregnant pause. He looked at me almost apologetically, saying nothing. A highly eloquent nothing.

  “I quit.”

  Punch Number Two. He spluttered, muttered, blustered, an’ got flustered, all at the same time. Thought he was gonna have a hernia. “B-but Grandfa—Cap—Gruen—” “That’s Bernie; you’re forgettin’ yourself, Cuthbert. An’ there ain’t no way I’m gonna take seventeen of those creepy-crawlies along on a mission. Nuts! I’m only eighty-one years old; somewhere there’s a job for me in what’s left of the private sector: composing crossword puzzles; piloting a sanitation scow out in the Asteroids; my brother-in-law’s gotta frog-fur farm out on Betelgeuse IX he’s always wanted me to go halvsies on. I don’t need you, Cuthbert, or your Academy, an’ I sure as shootin’ don’t need the grief.” “B-but Bernie..

  “I’m serious, Colonel.”

  “B-but Bernie..

  “You’re repeatin’ yourself, Cuthbert. Look, put this on your mirror an’ snort it: you can get yourself another boy. An’ the Freenies’re gonna hafta get themselves another Deity—God ain’t dead, he’s just resigned!”

  I rose, zipped the top two inches of my coverall for emphasis, and woulda jammed my hat on my head as a final gesture if they’d been in style this century.

  The door was halfway dilated before my Leader regained his composure. “How many, then, Major Gruenblum?”

  It’s nice to be needed. "Zero, Cuthbert, an easy figure to remember, the ultimate Round Number—it’s how many of you people in Administration have any brains!”

  I started through the door.

  Look at it his way: every kid an’ all the telemedia in the Dominion may’ve thought the Freenies were cute as polka-dot suspenders; their rescue was the bieedin’ heart story of the century. But, way down deep, the Academy—an’ when you mention that institution, you’re talkin’ about all the government that counts in the Solar Dominion—the Academy was terrified by the little critters.

  Think about it: a species which can pass on everything it’s learned to future generations just by breeding; which had risen from leaf-hopping to atomic energy in a short ten centuries; and which now was scarfing up everything it could about our star-traversing, time-traveling civilization?

  Come t’cogitate on it, it scared me, too!

  “Grandfather...” I’ll give this to Cuthbert; his gaze was suddenly cool and steady despite the sweat-beads crawling down his jowls in the fractional gravity, and I don’t think I’d heard him more direct and
businesslike before or since. “The Yamaguchians simply want the experience of Being-With-God, the opportunity to transmit it into their hereditary record. That's why they require an individual of each gender—”

  “Yeah. All seventeen of ’em, clutterin’ up my nice neat ship.” I sat down again. “Tell you what, Cuthbert. I’m t'eclin’ generous this momin’: promote me two more grades— so I’ll outrank you—let ’em pick out a single representative, an’ I'll take him-her-it anywhere an’ anywhen y’want. Bein’-With-God’ll work its way into their race memory eventually. It’ll just take longer, is all. An’ the lucky winner’ll have a lot more fun seein’ it gets done right.”

  Cuthbert seemed to brighten noticeably. “Would you consider six, Bernie? Otherwise, the number of generations necessary, including fissionings and sporifications, to distribute data evenly among...”

  I let him ramble for a while about genotypes, phenotypes, alleles, and “replicative verification densities.” You know, dirty talk. Who knows, this all might turn out to my advantage, wangled right.

  “Since when you been such an expert on Freenie genetics, Cuthbert? I would a bet you took your advanced degree in polishing pants-seats.”

  He grinned sheepishly, opened a desk drawer, and tossed over a small bottle. Crimped metal band around the top, plastic stopper with a puncture-mark in the center. I brushed a thumb across the cue-dot on the label:

  “Genetics and Information TheorylYamaguchi 523: A Case-Study, by Robert H. Anson, Ph.D., Copyright 2285, Random-LaRoche Pharmcopublishers, Lagrange II, Earth. Protected in all provinces and territories under the Solar Dominion; reproduction in any organism or device, without express permission, strictly—”

  RNA extracts—our own artificial race-memory.

  Hardly ever touch th’ stuff myself.

  In the end, I didn’t take those three promotions. Once you outrank something like Cuthbert, what’ve y’got? Instead, I let myself get dickered up to three Freenies in exchange for a very special RNA extraction from a certain Don Juan de Tenorio of Seventeenth-century Seville, collected surreptitiously by one of our more conscientious female bus drivers.