Tom Paine Maru - Special Author's Edition (35 page)

I had learned that it answered to the name of Mymysiir Offe Woom —“Mymy” to its friends. We were here to break its husband out of prison.

“Okay, here’s the situation,” said Couper as the conference broke up. Crouching, he slid over to where we were finishing adjustments on the bomb-like object. Behind him, Lucille—how odd to think that she had been born on Earth, the birthplace of all mankind—was examining Mymy’s gun, a big three-shot revolver, gray with long use, hard wear. It looked like it used blackpowder cartridges, brass, with big lead bullets.

“Well, our pigeon’s cooped up down there on the top floor—he’s a Very Important Prisoner, apparently—in a corner cell. They appear to be luxury quarters, considering circumstances, with lots of light, a great view, very dry and warm, the way these people like it. The catch is that he can be reached only through a guard-room. We have to get past the guards. How are you coming along with that stasis-bomb, Rog?”

The gunsmith looked up, “You know that this is a prototype, Coup. There were only two. Lucille used one on Afdiar, and I’m not sure this one’s going to work. The Heller effect is a pretty iffy proposition at best.”

Couper assumed the grim expression that he felt most comfortable with. “I want to avoid hurting people if we can, Rog. We’re here to stop the killing, not add to it. Mymy tells us that rher husband is something of a celebrity down there. The guards here treat him like royalty.”

“A policeman’s lot, and all that.” Howell trotted beside Couper. In his close-fitting coyote-shaped smartsuit, with a pair of small remote controlled pistols fixed to the helmet, he looked like a rubber dog.

“‘Rher’? Is that the proper word for this whatchamacallit?”

“Have a care, Whitey old fellow,” admonished Howell. “The lamviin have excellent hearing, albeit their atmosphere is rather thin. They evolved in it, after all. I suspect, as well, that Mymy’s beginning to pick up a modest smattering of English. Rhe’s an exceptionally bright organism.”

“I’ll second that,” said Couper. “Good tactical sense, too.”

“Rhe, rher, rhers’,” Howell went on. “Those are the pronouns for the third sex. Mymy’s a
nidfemo,
a ‘surmale’, the weakest and the smallest of the three lamviin sexes. Although if that’s true, I dread the coming confrontation. Rhe’s quite a formidable being, rherself. Rhe’s also a physician, and has explained to me how their biology works.”

“Oh?” Rogers asked at the same time I did.

“No time now,” Howell replied, a malicious expression on the face-piece of his helmet. He turned to look at Couper. “Have we a plan?”

The big man returned the coyote’s gaze, unrolled the blueprint—it was ochre, actually, with reddish ink—that the alien had given him.

He shook his head. “If you want to call it that. The only way is through that ground floor arch, with a portcullis either end of the passage. Mymy’s been allowed to visit Mav. He’s been in a couple of years, local time, since the war started heating up, so rhe knows the layout.”

The others joined us.

“I don’t know what you got me down here for,” said the diminutive xenopsychologist, tucking her dagger away. She patted Mymy between the eyes, “They may look a little strange, but in here, they’re just like us.”

“Why, thank you kindly, Elsie Nahuatl,” said the alien. I jumped, startled at her—rher—‘command’ of the language, until I realized it was only our smartsuits translating. Had I dared to strip off my helmet, I would have heard the creature speaking Fodduan. “You look a little strange, yourself. And you say that Howell, here, is your father?”

“More so than most fathers,” the little girl nodded proudly, “I was going to spin you a tall tale about being the larval form of a coyote, but the absolute truth is that I was a contract-baby, constructed especially to order, gene by gene, so he could have a daughter.”

Mymy said, “I believe that may be illegal in Great Foddu.” Rhe glanced down at the map, pointing to the center, “There is the courtyard.”

“In fact, the place is little more than three walls about an exercise yard. ’Round the inside, as you may observe on the outside, as well, there is provided a walkway upon each floor, the salient difference being that, inside, these are connected by flights of stairs.”

Mymy’s voice seemed to emanate from small dilating orifices either side of rher leg where it joined rher dome-shaped body. I could hear rher breathe between phrases. Rher mouth, sort of a flattened beak, had nothing to do with respiration. In essence, rhe talked through rher nostrils.

“We have two choices,” rhe observed. “Entering the archway at the front, passing through both iron gates, up two flights to the second floor, through the guard-room and into my husband’s cell—or scaling the outer wall straight to the third floor to pass through the same guardpost.”

“Not much of a choice,” said Elsie. Lucille was being unusually quiet, I thought. I couldn’t blame her. She had once died here, after all.

“In any event,” Mymy went on, “we shall have to contend with at least an octary of guards assigned to scarcely half again that number of prisoners.” Rhe shook rher carpet-bag in emphasis, laid another hand on rher revolver. This left a third hand, with which rhe pointed angrily at the fortress below. “Positively scandalous, that’s what it is!”

“What is an octary?” I asked, watching the alien in amazement.

“Eighty-one,” Lucille answered for her. “Nine-times-nine. It’s the one hundred in their base-nine numerical system. Any more stupid questions?”

“Sure.” I refrained from the sarcastic remark that crossed my mind about numbers—or calendars, “We are supposed to get in there past eighty-one guards (or is it a hundred?), then climb three floors past professional opposition, without hurting anybody? Why did we bother coming?”

Couper laid a hand on my shoulder. “Just do your best. I never said you couldn’t defend yourself. We’ve got the stasis-bomb. That’s what we’ll use in the courtyard. What radius have you set it for, Rog?”

The gunsmith was disgusted. “The marks on the case say a hundred yards. I haven’t any idea how truthful they are. How’re we gonna play this?”

Couper gathered us all around him, like a kickyball coach, even laying a brotherly hand on Mymy’s furry carapace. “Well, here’s my plan ...”

-2-

There had not been any point to our waiting until sundown, after all. Three moons rose, almost simultaneously, flooding the marshy meadow with the reddish reflected light of the Sodde Lydfen sun. You could have read by their glow, if Confederates had ever acquired such a habit. Each of us lay, face down, at the dry edge of the field, our smartsuits telling lies to any eyes that happened to wander their direction.

Suddenly Howell jumped up, his smartsuit suit turning—at Mymy’s suggestion—a brilliant lime green, a color that never occurs in nature on this yellow-red-orange planet. At something in excess of forty kilometers an hour, he rushed, yapping loudly in the evening stillness, toward the open portcullis of the prison archway. Couper followed, more slowly, the Heller Effect bomb in one hand, ready to throw.

Mymy ran with Rogers, behind Couper, while Elsie and I followed Lucille with a different task in mind. We angled off toward another wall, hoping the diversion would distract the guards’ attention from us. The whole idea was to keep little Elsie from getting shot at, not because she was only nine years old—Confederates simply do not look at things that way—but because she was physically small, could not run as fast as the rest of us. Also, despite her frequent and modest disclaimers on the subject, she was the only expert we had on alien psychology.

From the corner of my eye, I watched the other group converge on the entrance. Howell was already inside, now, making noise enough to raise the dead. The guards inside would be shocked, never having seen or heard anything like a coyote before. The fact that he ran on four legs was enough to make him a monster. In that color they probably thought he was some kind of demon from whatever hell they believed in here.

No one on the planet knew we were here except Mymy, plus whoever rhe talked to via their underground radio network. It was that station—plus half a hundred more like it, planetwide—that had called Confederate attention to the enormous antiwar movement we were now attempting to aid. Not even Agot Edmoot Mav, rher husband, suspected he was about to be rescued, by aliens, at that. Life on other planets was still a speculative concept here, the subject of fiction or fairy tales.

Wait until they saw a killer whale!

Lucille reached the wall ahead of me, began to climb the rough stone toward the catwalk overhead. I still found it odd that many of the cells, on all three floors, had doors connecting directly with the outside of the prison. Lucille would likely reach Mav’s cell ahead of everybody.

Responsible for Elsie’s safety, I certainly could not climb the same way. I started the little girl up, then began following her, when a bullet zinged past us, striking the stone wall at a shallow angle. I glanced up, flattening myself against the triangular stones, saw a lamviin arm with a large automatic pistol, taking aim again from the guardpost corner. I drew my own pistol, fired three shots. The arm withdrew.

More gunshots rang out, most of them from overhead.

“Whitey!” Lucille shouted, “This isn’t working! Shit!”

She had slipped, one smartsuit-covered leg thrusting down between the widely-spaced slats of the second-floor catwalk. Now I understood their purpose: they allowed plenty of room for the guards to aim and shoot through; they were also almost unnegotiable, in a hurry, by human or lamviin feet. Still only a meter or so above the ground-level, trying to shield Elsie’s body with my own, I clung to the wall, returning fire to the second-floor corner guardpost, nearly getting myself caught in crossfire between two posts on the ground level corners.

“Keep climbing!” I shouted at Lucille, “I have an idea!”

Tucking our miniature xenopsychologist behind me, I dropped back to the ground, stepped to the door of the nearest cell, fired point blank at the clumsy brass padlock keeping it shut. The tortured metal bent, shattered. I threw the door open, gesturing at the blinking creature inside.

“Come on out, friend, you are free to go!”

I was shocked when the lamviin in the cell picked up what looked to me like a wooden stool. I was shocked even more when he (she, rhe) threw it at me. I could see now why Fodduan prisons were constructed so much differently from Vespuccian ones. Apparently nobody wanted to escape. Ducking, I ran to the next cell, to blow the lock off that door.

Before I could open it, hot lead came whisking through the air from the other corner. Elsie suddenly fired three or four shots. I heard a scream—she must have connected with a careless trio of fingers—then kicked the cell door in. Its occupant, a rather small non-Fodduan lamviin, to judge from the reddish-black color of his fur, dashed outside, nearly knocking me over, began running across the meadow.

Little spurts of dust, water, or turf followed him as the guards reacted.

That was more like it!

The next cell I opened was empty. The next cell after that one was occupied by a pair of Fodduan-looking individuals. “You are free to go!” I shouted at them. “We have come to rescue you! Get out of—
hey!”

“We may be criminals,” one lamviin said, grabbing at my gun. “But we are no traitors! Get it, Byv!” The other lamviin jumped into the fray.

“I’m trying, Toym! It won’t hold still! What is it, anyway? It’s ugly!”

“Takes one to know one!” I yelled, forgetting all the interspecies civility I’d learned. Hard as I could, I punched the first creature between the eyes. Only my suit saved me from a broken hand. Crowded, hurried, I pulled the trigger when the second prisoner rushed me. It staggered back, only stunned, then came for me again. I fired again—this time it ignored the bullet, began grabbing at me with all three hands.

I shot it in the foot.

The lamviin began hopping around, cursing just like any human being, trying to hold its injured foot, yelling at its cellmate to do something. I waved my Dardick at him in warning, deflecting the muzzle toward his toes. “Get out of here, both of you. Right now!” I fired a shot into the floor. It ricocheted once off the flagging, then fell silent.

“We’re going, already!” He helped his injured companion out the door.

By now, the guards seemed to have lost interest in the outside of the fortress. My idea of diverting them with escaping prisoners was failing. Finding Elsie, with her smoking pistol, I rushed around the corner to see Couper, Rogers, still outside with Mymy, the bomb in Couper’s big hand.

Both portcullises were down.

Howell, apparently, was still inside, trapped.

Our brilliant plan was failing. Poor Howell had been supposed to attract the guards into tight bunch (he’d told me he had border collie genes, whatever that meant) so that Couper, once the coyote had dashed out of range, could knock them all out with the stasis bomb, in theory without hurting any of them. The Fodduans were not cooperating. I ran around, letting several dozen more equally-uncooperative prisoners loose on the remaining two sides of the prison. They all ran out into the field, then stopped a safe distance away to watch what was going on.

We were not impressing them, either.