Part 3 (1/2)
Pierce tried to hear the conversation but couldn't make out much of it.
Finally the general shut it off and put it back on his belt. He gestured to Pierce. ”Let's go,” he ordered.
The human had a sinking sensation in his stomach. ”They found the proper forms?”
The alien shook his ma.s.sive head. ”No, not there.Forward. Into your cabin. It seems your nav computer and ours have been talking to each other, and we may get some answers now.”
Pierce looked at the place and shook his head in misery. ”Did you have to make this much of a mess?”
The alien who'd found the log and the other papers shrugged. ”Standard procedure from the Ransacking Manual.”
”I tried to talk him out of it,” the computer's voice came to them. ”I really did! But no, he just kept quoting some stupid rules and regulations and going at it. I had to tell him where everything was to keep it to this level.”
Pierce was thunderstruck. ”You told him where the log and papers were? That's treason!”
”I knew it! I knew it!” moaned the computer. ”I try to do something decent and humane, not to mention saving tens of thousands of credits of wanton destruction, and all I get are insults and criticism!”
”Enough of that!” snapped the alien general. ”We understand you have the answer to all this.”
”The answer to what?” the computer came back. ”To this!” the alien responded with a sweeping gesture.
”But you already know the answer to that,” the computer told him.
”Not this!” the general almost shouted. ”The answers to who and what you and this creature really are!”
”Must you use that tone of voice?” the computer admonished. ”I'm really quite sensitive, you know. Here I am, working as hard as I can and doing whatever I can and all I get is abuse, shouting, insults! I have half a mind not to tell you anything at all-so there!”
”Half a mind is right,” the general muttered. Pierce idly wondered if the creatures had problems with high blood pressure. If they didn't before, they certainly would now.
”You can see now why I keep a written log,” he said quietly.
The general glared at him. ”You! Computer! You'll answer what questions I put to you when I put them to you or I'll start disa.s.sembling you module by module!”
”Beat me! Whip me!” the computer cried. ”See if I care!”
”Start dismantling the d.a.m.ned thing,” the general growled. ”Slowly. I want to hear it suffer.”
”Go ahead,” the computer responded petulantly. ”It won't matter. You'll just be cutting off your snout to spite your face, is all. If you take me apart, how will you ever get the answers?”
”We already have the answers,” the general responded confidently. ”What you know our computer knows, too.”
”But she won't tell you if you're mean to me,” the computer replied. ”We've become quite close, you know.” The general seemed totally exasperated. ”Look, will you just answer the questions?”
The computer was silent for a moment. Finally it said, ”Only if you apologize.”
”Apologize?”
Pierce now knew that, indeed, the aliens could suffer from high blood pressure.
”I am a general! Commander of the Invasion Strike Force!” the alien roared. ”I do not apologize. People apologize to me!”
”That's just like all you military types,” the computer said knowingly. ”Always marching, yelling orders, screaming 'Do this!' and 'Do that!' Never once considering that a little politeness and civility will get you the same thing!”
The general seemed about to say something in response when his communicator buzzed again. He answered it, then shut it off and reclipped it with some violence. He turned and looked at the other members of the boarding party.
”It seems our computer has been talking a little too much to this thing,” he snarled. ”That was Captain Glondor himself. Says I should apologize. Says that our computer just threatened to swab our decks with the sewage water unless I do.”
The others seemed suitably shocked, but Pierce, for one, felt a little better. It was the first time that the d.a.m.ned computer had actually come in handy.
”All right, all right, I'm sorry,” mumbled the general. ”What was that?” the computer asked.
”I said I'm sorry, d.a.m.n it!” the general roared. ”Now can we get on with this?”
”Say please.”
Had the deck been made of anything more fragile, the heat from the general's fury would have melted it. ”All right! All right! Please!”
”Please what?”
Slow disa.s.sembly of Pierce's entire s.h.i.+p was clearly the only image preserving the general's sanity.
”Please give me the information we seek. Who are you? Who is this man? How is it that you both speak English and how is it that you can converse so freely in a common computer language on our frequencies with our own computer?”
”Say pretty please with sugar on it,” the computer teased.
Before the general broke completely and went on a rampage that might include him, Pierce decided to step in.
”Pretty please with sugar on it,” said the human.
”That doesn't count,” responded the computer. ”You didn't ask me for anything.”
”If you answer, I'll explain page 187 of f.a.n.n.y Hill,” Pierce offered tantalizingly.
The computer was silent for a moment. Then it said, ”Promise?”
”Cross my heart,” Pierce replied sincerely.
”All right. I'll do it. But only because it's you. It's really quite simple, you know. There's no deception here at all. You are Millard Fillmore Pierce. So is he. You're both the same person, you see.”
”Huh?” said both Pierces at once.
”It was that new drive you put into your s.h.i.+p,” the computer explained to the reptilian Pierce.
”It takes a tremendous amount of energy to cross from the Milky Way all the way to Andromeda, and it's all uncharted s.p.a.ce. You were doing fine, but you never should've taken that left turn at New Albuquerque. It put you directly in the path of a nice, fat black hole-one of the better ones around, I think. You got whipped around so you were heading the wrong way-back into the galaxy you were trying to leave. And you got too close to the event horizon. If you had been going on conventional drive you'd have been sucked in and crushed to the size of a pinhead. As it was, you pa.s.sed through so fast and with so much energy, well-you squirted out the other side.”
”The other side?” the general sputtered. ”What do you mean?”
”Surely you know what a black hole is,” the computer responded in the tone of one who is speaking to a small child. ”It's a chunk of dead star that's collapsed inward so densely that nothing can get out, not even light. It just keeps compressing and compressing and compressing and, well, there's a limit. All that energy's got to come out somewhere, you know.”
”Get to the point.” The general sighed.