Part 5 (1/2)

And that was how matters stood when Tillie went off to play with the alien giantesses.

With Tillie next to them, our shop became Miss Government Agency of the moment. The reluctant trickle of collateral data swelled to a flood. We found out, for instance, about the police rumors.It seemed the big girls wanted exercise, and the first thing they asked for in any city was the park.

Since they strolled at eight mph, a foot guard wasn't practical. The U.N. compromised on a pair of patrol cars bracketing them on the nearest road. This seemed to amuse the Capellans, and every now and then the police radios went dead. The main danger to the big girls was from hypothetical snipers, and n.o.body could do much about that.

After they went through Berlin the Vapos picked up four men in poor condition in the Tiergarten, and the one who lived said something about the Capellans. The Vapos didn't take this seriously-all four had vagrancy and drug records-but they bucked it along anyway. Next there was some story from a fruity type in Solsdjk Park near The Hague, and a confused disturbance in Hong Kong when the Girls went through the Botanical Gardens. And three more defunct vagrants in the wilderness preserve outside Melbourne. The Capellans found the bodies and expressed shock. Their men, they said, did not fight among themselves.

Another tidbit was the Great Body Hunt. Try as we had in Mexico we had never got one look at them completely naked. b.r.e.a.s.t.s, yes-standard human type, superior grade. But below the navel we failed. Now we found out that everybody else all along the route was failing too, although they'd pushed the perimeter pretty close. I admired their efforts-you wouldn't believe what some of our pals had gotten pickups into. But nothing worked. It seemed the Girls liked privacy, and they had some sort of routine snooper-sweep that left blank films and tapes. Once when the j.a.p I.S. got really tricky they found their gismo with the circuits not only fused but mirror reversed.

Tillie's penetration evoked a ma.s.s howl for anatomical detail. But all she gave us was, ”Conception is a voluntary function with them.”

I wondered if anyone else around the office was hearing mice in the woodwork. Was I the only one who knew Tillie was under pressures not listed in standard agent evaluation?

But she was helpful on the big question: How did they come to be so human? There was no doubt they were. Although we hadn't got pictures, we had enough a.s.sorted biological specimens to know they and we were one flesh. Or rather, one DNA. All the Girls themselves would tell us was interpreted as ”We are an older race”-big smile.

Tillie got us the details that shook our world. The navigator had too many balloon-gla.s.ses one night and told Tillie that Capellans had been here before-long before. Hence the chart notation they'd wanted to check. There was something of interest here besides a nice planet-something the first expedition had left. A colony? The navigator grinned and shut up.

This tidbit really put the strawberries in the fan. Was it possible we were the descendants of these people? Vertigo hit the scientific sector and started a babble of protest. What about Proconsul? What about the australopithecines? What about gorilla blood-types? What about-about-about WHAT? The babble mounted; a few cooler heads pointed out that n.o.body really knew where CroMagnon came from, and he had apparently interbred with other types. Well, it's an old story now, but those were dizzy days.

True to human form, I was giving the grand flip-flop of history about two percent of my attention. To begin with, I was busy. We were fighting out a balanced representation of earth scientific specialists with all the other nations who had delegations in the visiting party to Luna. It was to be a spectacular talent show-everything from particle physics, molecular genetics, math theory, eco-systems down to a lad from Chile who combined musical notation a.n.a.lysis, icthyology and cooking. And every one of them handsome and certified heteros.e.xual. And equipped with enough circuitry to-well, a.s.sist their unaided powers of observation and report. Even in the general euphoric haze somebody had stayed cool enough to realize the boys just might not get back. Quite a job to do in two weeks.

But that again was background to a purely personal concern. The Monday before the party took off Tillie and the Girls came through D.C. I cornered her in the film vault.

”Will you receive a message in a sanitized container?”

She was picking at a band-aid over a shot-puncture some idiot had given her. (What the h.e.l.l kind ofimmunization did the medicos think they had for a.s.signments on the moon?) One eye peeked at me. She knew she was guilty, all right.

”You think your big playmates are just like yourself, only gloriously immune from rape. I wouldn't be surprised if you weren't thinking of going home with them. Right? No, don't tell me, kid, I know you. But you don't know them. You think you do, but you don't. Did you ever meet any American blacks who moved to Kenya? Talk to one some time. And there's another thing you haven't thought about-two hundred and fifty thousand miles of hard vacuum. A quarter of a million miles away. The Marines can't get you out of this one, baby.”

”So?”

”All right. I just want to get it through to you-a.s.suming there is a human being under that silicon-that out here is another human being who's worried sick about you. Does that get through? At all?”

She gave me a long look as though she were trying to make out a distant rider on a lonesome plain.

Then her lashes dropped.

The rest of the day I was busy with our transmitting arrangements from-actually-Timbuctu. The Russians had offered to boost the party up in sections in six weeks, but Captain Lyampka, after a few thoughtful compliments, had waved that off. They would just send down their cargo lighter-no trouble at all, if we would point out a convenient desert to absorb the blast. Hence Timbuctu. The Capellan party was spending two nights in D.C. en route there.

They were lodged in the big hotel complex near our office and adjoining Rock Creek Park. That was how I came to find out what Capellan did in parks.

It was a d.a.m.n fool thing, to trail them. Actually I just hung around the park input. About two A.M. I was sitting on a bench in the moonlight, telling myself to give it up. I was gritty-eyed tired. When I heard them coming I was too late to take cover. It was the two J.O.'s. Two beautiful girls in the moonlight.

Two big girls, coming fast. I stood up.

”Good evening!” I essayed in Capellan.

A ripple of delighted laughter, and they were towering over me.

Feeling idiotic, I got out my cigarillos and offered them around. The first mate took one and sat down on the bench. Her eyes came level with mine.

I clicked my lighter. She laughed and laid the cigarillo down. I made a poor job of lighting mine.

There is a primal nightmare lurking deep in in most men, having to do with his essential maleness. With violation thereof. I'd gone through life without getting more than a glimpse of it, but this situation was bringing cold fingers right up into my throat. I essayed a sort of farewell bow. They laughed and bowed back. I had a clear line of exit to right rear. I took a step backward.

A hand like a log fell on my shoulders. The navigator leaned down and said something in a velvety contralto. I didn't need a translator-I'd seen enough old flicks: ”Don't go 'way, baby, we won't hurt you.”

My jump was fast, but those mothers were faster. The standing one had my neck in a vise at arm's length, and when I tried the standard finger-pull she laughed like a deep bell and casually twisted up my arm until things broke. In three places, it turned out later.

The ensuing minutes are what I make a point of not remembering except when I forget not to wake up screaming. My next clear view was from the ground where I was discovering some nasty facts about Capellan physiology through a blaze of pain. (Ever think about being attacked by a muscle vacuum cleaner?) My own noise was deafening me, but either I was yelling in two voices or something else was screeching and scrabbling around my head. In a dead place somewhere inside the uproar I a.s.sociated this with Tillie, which didn't make sense. Presently there was, blessedly, nothing... and somewhen else, ambulance jolts and smells and needle-jabs.At a later point in daylight George's face appeared around a ma.s.s of tapes and pulleys on my hospital bed.

He told me Tillie had screamed the captain into calling off her J.O.'s before they ruined the kid's toy. And then she got a call through to George, and he sent the special squad to haul the corpse to the hidey-hole for Cla.s.sified Mistakes. (I was now very Cla.s.sified.) While he talked he was setting up a video so we could watch Earth's scientific delegation embark for Luna.

Through the pulleys I saw them-a terrific-looking group; the cream of Terran expertise, and most of them still looking human in spite of being about thirty percent hardware. They wore the dress uniforms of various armed services-the pair of Danish biologists in naval whites and the Scotch radiation lad in dress kilts were dazzling. Myself, I had most faith in the Israeli gorilla in khaki; I had run into him once in Khartoum when he was taking time off from being a n.o.bel runner-up in laser technology.

The bands played; the African sun flamed off the gold and polish; the all-girl Capellan freighter crew lined up smartly as our lads marched up the ramp, their heads at Capellan belly-b.u.t.ton level. Going into that s.h.i.+p with them was enough miniaturized circuitry to map Luna and do a content a.n.a.lysis on the Congressional Library. At the last minute, a Pakistani got the hiccups, and his teeth transmitted flak all over the screen. Tillie followed the men, and behind her came the captain and her roughnecks, smiling like the girl next door. I wondered if the navigator was wearing any band-aids. My teeth had had hold of something-while they lasted.

There they went, and there they flaked out, to a man. We next saw them on a transmission from the mother s.h.i.+p. There wasn't a molecule of metal on them. We found out later they'd dozed off on the trip up, and waked up in the s.h.i.+p clean as babies, with healing scars on their hides. (The Pak had new teeth.) Their Capellan hosts acted as if it were all a big joke and served welcome drinks all around every ten minutes. Some drinks they must have been-I caught a shot of my Israeli hope. He was sitting on the captain's lap wearing her helmet. Somebody had had the sense to rig a monitor on the satellite relay, so the world at large saw only part of the send. They loved it ”Round one to Mordor,” said George, perched like a hobbit on my bed. He had stopped enjoying the situation.

”When the white man's s.h.i.+p came to Hawaii and Tahiti,” I croaked through my squashed larynx, ”they'd let a herd of wahines on board for the sailors.”

George looked at me curiously. He hadn't had the chance to meet his nightmare socially, you see, while I was getting friendly with mine, in a grim way.

”If the girls had a machete or two, n.o.body got mad. They just took 'em away. The technological differential here is about the same, don't you think, George? We've just had our machetes taken away.”

”They left some new diseases, too, when they moved on,” said George slowly. He was with it now.

”If this bunch moves on.”

”They have to sell that ore.”

”-What?” (I'd just caught a glimpse of Tillie on the screen, standing near the Capellan male we had been calling Leif Ericsson. As I had figured, he was about my size.) ”I said they have, to get home to sell their cargo.”

And was he right. The operative word was cargo.

The plot unfolded about a week later when the visiting party was sent back from Luna, along with three new Capellan ratings who were to collect the VTO launch. To my inexpressible relief Tillie came with them.

The cargo lighter dumped Tillie and our deflowered male delegation in North Africa and then took off on a due south paraboloid which put the Capellans down around the hip of the globe.

”Near Kleetmanshoop, South Africa, Woomara says,” George told me. ”Doesn't smell good.” Thethree states known, among other names, as White Man's Heaven weren't speaking to the rest of the world that year. They did not see fit to announce that the Capellans were paying them a private visit.

”Where's Tillie?”

”Being debriefed at the Veddy Highest Levels. Did you hear the mother s.h.i.+p is unloading its ore?”

”Where would I hear anything?” I wheezed, rattling my pulleys. ”Give me that photo!”

You could see it clearly: conical piles and some sort of conveyor running out from the big hulk on Luna.