Federations Read online

  “Yes . . . Oh, I see. He’s a Barrayaran. He’s a long way from home.”

  “Oh, bleh. Throw him back.”

  “Oh, no. We have identification files for all their missing. Part of the peace settlement, you know, along with prisoner exchange.”

  “Considering what they did to our people as prisoners, I don’t think we owe them a thing.”

  She shrugged.

  The Barrayaran officer had been a tall, broad-shouldered man, a commander by the rank on his collar tabs. The medtech treated him with the same care she had expended on Lieutenant Deleo, and more. She went to considerable trouble to smooth and straighten him, massaging the mottled face back into some semblance of manhood with her fingertips, a process Ferrell watched with a rising gorge.

  “I wish his lips wouldn’t curl back quite so much,” she remarked, while at this task. “Gives him what I imagine to be an uncharacteristically snarly look. I think he must have been rather handsome.”

  One of the objects in his pockets was a little locket. It held a tiny glass bubble filled with a clear liquid. The inside of its gold cover was densely engraved with the elaborate curlicues of the Barrayaran alphabet.

  “What is it?” asked Ferrell in curiosity.

  She held it pensively to the light. “It’s a sort of charm, or memento. I’ve learned a lot about the Barrayarans in the last three months. Turn ten of them upside down and you’ll find some kind of good luck charm or amulet or medallion or something in the pockets of nine of them. The high-ranking officers are just as bad as the enlisted people.”

  “Silly superstition.”

  “I’m not sure if it’s superstition or just custom. We treated an injured prisoner once—he claimed it was just custom. That people give them to the soldiers as presents, and nobody really believes in them. But when we took his away from him, when we were undressing him for surgery, he tried to fight us for it. It took three of us to hold him down for the anesthetic. I thought it a rather remarkable performance for a man whose legs had been blown away. He wept . . . Of course, he was in shock.”

  Ferrell dangled the locket on the end of its short chain, intrigued in spite of himself. It hung with a companion piece, a curl of hair embedded in a plastic pendant.

  “Some sort of holy water, is it?” he inquired.

  “Almost. It’s a very common design. It’s called a mother’s tears charm. Let me see if I can make out—he’s had it a while, it seems. From the inscription—I think that says ‘ensign,’ and the date—it must have been given him on the occasion of his commission.”

  “It’s not really his mother’s tears, is it?”

  “Oh, yes. That’s what’s supposed to make it work, as a protection.”

  “Doesn’t seem to be very effective.”

  “No, well . . . no.”

  Ferrell snorted his irony. “I hate those guys—but I do guess I feel sort of sorry for his mother.”

  Boni retrieved the chain and its pendants, holding the curl in plastic to the light and reading its inscription. “No, not at all. She’s a fortunate woman.”

  “How so?”

  “This is her death lock. She died three years ago, by this.”

  “Is that supposed to be lucky, too?”

  “No, not necessarily. Just a remembrance, as far as I know. Kind of a nice one, really. The nastiest charm I ever ran across, and the most unique, was this little leather bag hung around a fellow’s neck. It was filled with dirt and leaves, and what I took at first to be some sort of little frog-like animal skeleton about ten centimeters long. But when I looked at it more closely, it turned out to be the skeleton of a human fetus. Very strange. I suppose it was some sort of black magic. Seemed an odd thing to find on an engineering officer.”

  “Doesn’t seem to work for any of them, does it?”

  She smiled wryly. “Well, if there are any that work, I wouldn’t see them, would I?”

  She took the processing one step further by cleaning the Barrayaran’s clothes and carefully re-dressing him, before bagging him and returning him to the freeze.

  “The Barrayarans are all so army-mad,” she explained. “I always like to put them back in their uniforms. They mean so much to them, I’m sure they’re more comfortable with them on.”

  Ferrell frowned uneasily. “I still think he ought to be dumped with the rest of the garbage.”

  “Not at all,” said the medtech. “Think of all the work he represents on somebody’s part. Nine months of pregnancy, childbirth, two years of diapering, and that’s just the beginning. Tens of thousands of meals, thousands of bedtime stories, years of school. Dozens of teachers. And all that military training, too. A lot of people went into making him.”

  She smoothed a strand of the corpse’s hair into place. “That head held the universe, once. He had a good rank for his age,” she added, rechecking her monitor. “Thirty-two. Commander Aristede Vorkalloner. It has a kind of nice ethnic ring. Very Barrayaranish, that name. Vor, too, one of those warrior-class fellows.”

  “Homicidal-class loonies. Or worse,” Ferrell said automatically. But his vehemence had lost momentum, somehow.

  Boni shrugged. “Well, he’s joined the great democracy now. And he had nice pockets.”

  Three full days went by with no further alarms but a rare scattering of mechanical debris. Ferrell began to hope the Barrayaran was the last pickup they would have to make. They were nearing the end of their search pattern. Besides, he thought resentfully, this duty was sabotaging the efficiency of his sleep cycle. But the medtech made a request.

  “If you don’t mind, Falco,” she said, “I’d greatly appreciate it if we could run the pattern out just a few extra turns. The original orders are based on this average estimated trajectory speed, you see, and if someone just happened to get a bit of extra kick when the ship split, they could well be beyond it by now.”

  Ferrell was less than thrilled, but the prospect of an extra day of piloting had its attractions, and he gave a grudging consent. Her reasoning proved itself; before the day was half done, they turned up another gruesome relic.

  “Oh,” muttered Ferrell, when they got a close look. It had been a female officer. Boni reeled her in with enormous tenderness. He didn’t really want to go watch, this time, but the medtech seemed to have come to expect him.

  “I—don’t really want to look at a woman blown up,” he tried to excuse himself.

  “Mm,” said Tersa. “Is it fair, though, to reject a person just because they’re dead? You wouldn’t have minded her body a bit when she was alive.”

  He vented a little macabre laugh. “Equal rights for the dead?”

  Her smile twisted. “Why not? Some of my best friends are corpses.”

  He snorted.

  She grew more serious. “I’d sort of like the company, on this one.” So he took up his usual station by the door.

  The medtech laid out the thing that had been a woman upon her table, undressed, inventoried, washed, and straightened it. When she finished, she kissed the dead lips.

  “Oh, God,” cried Ferrell, shocked and nauseated. “You are crazy! You’re a damn, damn necrophiliac! A lesbian necrophiliac, at that!” He turned to go.

  “Is that what it looks like, to you?” Her voice was soft, and still unoffended. It stopped him, and he looked over his shoulder. She was looking at him as gently as if he had been one of her precious corpses. “What a strange world you must live in, inside your head.”

  She opened a suitcase, and shook out a dress, fine underwear, and a pair of white embroidered slippers. A wedding dress, Ferrell realized. This woman was a bona fide psychopath . . .

  She dressed the corpse and arranged its soft dark hair with great delicacy, before bagging it.

  “I believe I shall place her next to that nice tall Barrayaran,” she said. “I think they would have liked each other very well, if they could have met in another place and time. And Lieutenant Deleo was married, after all.”

  She completed the labe
l. Ferrell’s battered mind was sending him little subliminal messages; he struggled to overcome his shock and bemusement, and pay attention. It tumbled into the open day of his consciousness with a start.

  She had not run an identification check on this one.

  Out the door, he told himself, is the way you want to walk. I guarantee it. Instead, timorously, he went over to the corpse and checked its label. Ensign Sylva Boni, it said. Age twenty. His own age . . .

  He was trembling, as if with cold. It was cold, in that room. Tersa Boni finished packing up the suitcase, and turned back with the float pallet.

  “Daughter?” he asked. It was all he could ask.

  She pursed her lips and nodded.

  “It’s—a helluva coincidence.”

  “No coincidence at all. I asked for this sector.”

  “Oh.” He swallowed, turned away, turned back, face flaming. “I’m sorry I said—”

  She smiled her slow sad smile. “Never mind.”

  They found yet one more bit of mechanical debris, so agreed to run another cycle of the search spiral, to be sure that all possible trajectories had been outdistanced. And yes, they found another; a nasty one, spinning fiercely, guts split open from some great blow and hanging out in a frozen cascade.

  The acolyte of death did her dirty work without once so much as wrinkling her nose. When it came to the washing, the least technical of the tasks, Ferrell said suddenly, “May I help?”

  “Certainly,” said the medtech, moving aside. “An honor is not diminished for being shared.”

  And so he did, as shy as an apprentice saint washing his first leper.

  “Don’t be afraid,” she said. “The dead cannot hurt you. They give you no pain, except that of seeing your own death in their faces. And one can face that, I find.”

  Yes, he thought, the good face pain. But the great—they embrace it.

  SOMEONE IS STEALING THE GREAT THRONE ROOMS OF THE GALAXY

  HARRY TURTLEDOVE

  Harry Turtledove—who is often referred to as the “master of alternate history”—is the Hugo Award-winning author of more than eighty novels and a hundred short stories. His most recent novels are The Man With the Iron Heart, After the Downfall, and Give Me Back My Legions! In addition to his SF, fantasy, and alternate history works, he’s also published several straight historical novels under the name H. N. Turteltaub. Turtledove obtained a Ph.D. in Byzantine history from UCLA in 1977.

  Given the seriousness of much of Turtledove’s work, it might surprise people what a great sense of humor he has. In his career, he’s written several humorous works, such as this one, which explores the adventures of a space cadet, who happens to be a hamster and the galaxy’s last, best hope. Warning: It contains fowl language. Er, actually, it contains rodent language. What I mean to say is, it’s full of puns. But it’s funny anyway, I promise. If you disagree, I give you permission to call it grimpting.

  When thieves paralyzed the people—well, the saurian humanoids—inside the palace on the main continent of Gould IV and made off with the famous throne room (and the somewhat less famous antechamber), it made a tremendous stir all over the continent.

  When pirates paralyzed the people—well, the ammonia/ice blobs—inside the palace on the chief glacier of Amana XI and made off with the magnificent throne room (and the somewhat less magnificent antechamber), it raised a tremendous stink all over the planet.

  When robbers paralyzed the people—well, the highly evolved and sagacious kumquats—inside the palace on the grandest orchard of Alpharalpha B and made off with the precociously planted throne room (and the somewhat less precocious antechamber), it caused a sour taste in mouths all over the sector.

  And when brigands paralyzed the people—well, the French—inside the palace of Versailles in a third-rate country on a second-rate continent with a splendid future behind it and made off with the baroque throne room (and the somewhat less baroque antechamber), it caused shock waves all over the Galaxy.

  As Earth has always been, it remains the sleazy-media center of the Galactic Empire. Anything that happens there gets more attention than it deserves, just because it happens there. And so there was an enormous hue and cry.

  Something Must Be Done!

  Who got to do it?

  Why, the Space Patrol, of course. Specifically, Space Cadet Rufus Q. Shupilluliumash, a Bon of Bons, a noble of nobles . . . a fat overgrown hamster with delusions of gender. And when Cadet Rufus Q. Shupilluliumash (last name best sung to the tune of “Fascinatin’ Rhythm”) got the call, he was, as fate and the omniscient narrator would have it, massively hung over from a surfeit of fermented starflower seeds.

  The hero who gave him the call, Space Patrol Captain Erasmus Z. Utnapishtim (last name best sung to the tune of “On, Wisconsin”), was a member of the same species, and so understood his debility. This is not to say the illustrious Space Patrol captain—another fat overgrown hamster—sympathized. Oh, no. “You’re a disgrace to your whiskers, Shupilluliumash,” he cheebled furiously.

  “Sorry, sir,” Rufus Q. Shupilluliumash answered. At that particular moment, he rather hoped his whiskers, and the rest of his pelt, would fall out.

  Captain Utnapishtim knew there was only one way to get to the bottom of things: the right way, the proper way, the regulation way, the Space Patrol way. “Go find out who is stealing the great throne rooms of the Galaxy,” he ordered. “Find out why. Arrest the worthless miscreants and make the mischief stop.”

  “Right . . . sir,” Cadet Shupilluliumash said miserably, wishing Utnapishtim were dead or he himself were dead or the omniscient narrator were dead (no such luck, Shup baby)—any way at all to escape from this silly story and the pain in his pelt. “Where do I start . . . sir?”

  “Start on Earth,” Captain Utnapishtim told him. “Earth is the least consequential planet in the Galaxy, and all the inhabitants talk too bloody much. If you can’t find a clue there, you’re not worth your own tail.”

  “Like you, sir, I am a fat overgrown hamster,” the space cadet replied with dignity. “I have no tail.”

  “Well, if I remember my briefings, neither do Earthmen,” the Space Patrol officer said. “Now get your wheel rolling.”

  “Yes, sir,” Shupilluliumash said resignedly, and headed off to check out a Patrol speedster, the P.S. Habitrail.

  Now you should know that there are many kinds of space drives to span the parsecs of the Galaxy. You should, yes, but since you don’t—you can’t fool the omniscient narrator (otherwise he wouldn’t be omniscient)—you have to sit through this expository lump. There is the hyperspace drive: traditional, but effective. There is the hop-skip-and-a-jump drive: wearing, but quick. There is the overdrive. There is the underdrive. There is the orthodontic drive, which corrects both overdrive and underdrive but is hellishly expensive. There are any number of others—oh, not any number, but, say, forty-two. And, particularly for fat overgrown hamsters, there is the wheel drive.

  The wheel drive translates rotary motion into straight-ahead FTL by a clever mechanism with whose workings the omniscient narrator won’t bore you (the O.N. knows you have a low boredom threshold, and you won’t sit still for two expository lumps in a row). Suffice to say that Space Cadet Shupilluliumash jumped in his wheel, ran like hell, and almost before he’d sweated out the last of his hangover he found himself landing outside of Paris—sort of like Lindbergh long before, but much fuzzier.

  He got full cooperation from the French authorities. Once local Galactic officials secured his release from jail, he went to Versailles to view the scene of the crime. “This is a very ugly building,” he said with the diplomacy for which his race was so often praised.

  After local Galactic officials secured his release from jail again—it took longer this time—they told him, “The French tend to be emotional.”

  “So do I,” Rufus Q. Shupilluliumash said. “Especially about the food in there—it’s terrible.”

  “And such small portions,” the Gala
ctic officials chorused.

  “How did you know?” Shup asked in genuine surprise. “Or do they bust everybody?”

  “Never mind,” the officials said, not quite in harmony. “Go back to Versailles. Observe. Take notes. For God’s sake, don’t talk.”

  “Oh, all right,” the hamster space cadet grumbled.

  Go back he did. Observe he did. Take notes he did. Talk he didn’t, for God’s sake. Except for two missing rooms and an enormous RD spray-painted on the side of the palace, nothing seemed out of the ordinary.

  Frustrated, Rufus Q. Shupilluliumash hopped into his wheel and departed for Alpharalpha B, home of the sagacious kumquats. “So what kind of jam are you in?” he asked them.

  After local Galactic officials secured his release from the thornbush, he proceeded with his investigation. “You see what they have done!” a sagacious kumquat cried, showing him the ruins of the royal palace.

  “Looks like the throne room and the antechamber are gone, all right,” Shup agreed . . . sagaciously. “What are those big squiggles on the wall there?”

  “They stand for the characters you would call RD,” the kumquat replied.

  “They do, do they? Looks like it might be a clue.” Rufus Q. Shupilluliumash’s sagacity score went right off the charts with that observation—in which direction, it is better to specu late than never. The Space Patrol didn’t raise any dummies, but sometimes it found one and took him in and made him its own.

  “What will you do? You must get the sacred structures back!” the kumquat keened. “How will our sovereign root in peace without them?”

  “Somebody did something pretty seedy to you, all right,” the space cadet said.

  After local Galactic officials secured his release from the thornbush again—it took longer this time—they told him, “Perhaps it would be better if you pursued your investigations somewhere else. Otherwise, the kumquats warn, they will soon be pursuing you.”

  “Some people—well, highly evolved and sagacious kumquats—are just naturally sour,” Rufus Q. Shupilluliumash complained. Neverthenonetheless, and entirely undisirregardless of the slavering mob of fruit salad at his furry heels, he made it into the Patrol speedster and got the hatch shut just in the proverbial Nicholas of time.