Part 20 (2/2)
Pierce-Arro saw no reason to keep the general on the wire, as it were, any longer, anyway, so he released him. Soon the figure of genial Frank Poole the android ambled up to them, but it wasn't all that clear that he was going to be any help.
”I'm higher'n a kite,” he said with a smile, ”and mellower than a kitten.
”What's wrong with him?” Marshmallow asked.
”I think he got too much recharging current beingheld there so long. I'm afraid that now he's turned on,” Pierce commented.
”Yeah, that's me,” General Pierce responded. ”Like, wow, man! Turned on, juiced up, tuned in, and charged to the hilt!” He crackled a little bit when he moved as if to emphasize the point.
”Don't touch him!” Pierce warned. ”He's probably got enough energy there to electrocute anybody he touches!”
As if to emphasize the point, the general grabbed the back of a chair and the plastic sizzled and started to melt, stinking up the cabin.
”Well, he's shoah no help, sugah,” she commented. ”Only thing he's good foah is shakin' a few pahrate hands and fryin”em like bacon and grits!”
”Who's that big ugly dude on the screen?” the general asked innocently.
”An! Who you callin' a big, ugly dude, you poor excuse for a deckhand?” the pirate exclaimed angrily. ”If it wasn't for the fact that we don't gets paid unless we delivers the wench whole, I'd come over there and short out a few choice circuits! I got 'alf a mind to throw a tractor beam on ye and take ye all back as a neat package to La Hibernia. Pierce and Marshmallow both turned toward the screen, mouths agape. Finally Pierce asked, ”Uh, Captain, why don't you do that? You've got to have a s.p.a.ce drydock there of some kind just to keep your own s.h.i.+p in its excellent condition. There we could be safely removed by using a pressure tunnel and wrapping what's left of my poor s.h.i.+p.”
”An, that's not a bad plan, matey! Glad I thought of it!”
”Sorry,” Pierce-Arro broke in, ”but it won't work. The vibration from entering hypers.p.a.ce would still break us to pieces.”
”I wouldn't have expected a decent plot from a pin-striped swabbie!” the pirate growled.
”Great!” Pierce sighed. ”Now what do we do?”
”Maybe hunt up some grub,” Marshmallow suggested. ”Ah'm stahvin'!”
Pierce sighed. ”Might as well. It seems we're at a standoff, as always. What a situation! You can't even get captured and hauled away by pirates!” He looked up toward the ceiling. ”Hey!
Conqueror! Time to feed the other two prisoners. The first one's got too much, I think.”
”They call me Mellow Millard!” the general sang off-key.
”Oh, I suppose we might as well,” Pierce-Arro grumped. ”I told you, though, that the only thing I can do is the biochemically compatible caloric liquid I distilled from the engine maintenance and lubrication system.”
”Anything. My throat's dry, too,” Pierce told him.
”Then get your cups and use the washbasin faucet. It's the only one I could reroute without a full mechanical overhaul.”
”This be the real pits,” the pirate image moaned.
”In a Gadda da vida, honey!” bawled the general.
Pierce took a cup and tried the faucet and a clear liquid that looked just dike water dribbled into it. He waited until it was about half full, then handed it to Marshmallow and did the same with another cup. When done, he shut off the tap, clicked his cup to hers, and said, ”Well, I don't know what this is going to taste like, but it's all we've got.” He took a drink, and so did she, and suddenly their eyes bulged and they both seemed to be having an attack.
Finally Pierce managed, hoa.r.s.ely, to ask, ”What is this stuff?”
”The process involves over four hundred synthetic products,” Pierce-Arrow told him, ”but the end result ischemically identical to what the data banks here call grain alcohol. About ten percent of it is water, but it is impossible to separate it further.”
Pierce stared at him. ”That's a hundred and eighty proof!”
”Whoo-eee!” Marshmallow exclaimed. ”That there's the smoothest dern country moons.h.i.+ne ah evah did taste!”
”We can't drink this!” he protested. ”Not unless it's way diluted, anyway.”
”I told you, it's all there is, and I cannot separate the water out any further without destroying the stability of the compound. Within it is all that you require for survival, which is the best I can do. In other words, it's that or nothing. ”
”A few moah sips of this heah lightnin' and we'ah gonna be singin' with that general,” Marshmallow noted, then drank some more. ”Sh.o.r.e beats just sittin' around, though! A few more gulps of this and Ah'm gonna be drunk as a skunk!”
This is the book speaking again. Remember me? We interrupt here to point out that (A) The real Marshmallow, still in lizard-Pierce's body, is also still on the big dreadnought loaded with conquering bureaucrats some-where in s.p.a.ce; (B) the one who thinks she's Marshmallow is really human-Pierce; (C) the one who thinks he's human-Pierce is really Sly, the XB-223 navigational computer; (D) we are not advocating the consumption of grain alcohol, unless, of course, you're stuck in a shaky and partly destroyed s.p.a.ces.h.i.+p with an overcharged lizard-Pierce general in the body of an android overseen by a smashed-together pair of microbial conquerors inhabiting the s.h.i.+p's navigational computer while being under the guns of a pirate s.p.a.ces.h.i.+p. Clear?
If you have followed everything up to this point with perfect clarity, please place your summary, using words of no more than two syllables, neatly typed or printed out, in an envelope and send it to the authors, care of Tor Books, because we don't understand it at all.
So, as long as everybody is either mellow (including dead *drunk and uninhibited even if not uninhabited), stalled, or totally confused, let us leave this scene for a moment (we'll be coming back, I promise) and see what's been happening to poor Marshmallow-the real one-on the great lizard dreadnought . . .
”Tell me, General, when did you first begin to believe that you were a female ape?”
”Ah ain't no ape and I ain't no general!” she shouted back at them for the nine hundred and ninety-ninth time. ”Ah'm Honeylou Emmyjane Goldberg and when mah Daddy heahs 'bout this he's gonna have the biggest dern sale on lizand-skin luggage in the history of the univahse!”
”Fascinating,” said the first psychiatrist. ”Do you suppose it was formed in childhood and only surfaced under the pressures of a battlefield command?”
”Well, I've been researching the literature for a true example of neo-Freudian transversals with suggestions of Mommism and a totally Jungian counterpoint and the nearest I can come up with is some ancient writings from a controversial and not wholly appreciated minor figure that might explain a few things while still leaving us room for our inevitable thirty-six technical papers and two or three pop self-psychoa.n.a.lysis best-sellers that will make us rich and famous.”
”Really? Two or three? Who is the figure? Hubbard?”
”No, Leary.”
”Ah, yes, that would explain a lot. But both he andHubbard were true examples of McLuhanesque figures, recall.”
”I recall that they all died filthy rich, which is why we both got into psychiatry in the first place, wasn't it?”
”That's the fuhst d.a.m.n' thing I heahrd from either of you so fah that's made any sense at all,”
she grumped.
But by now they'd returned to so much psychobabble, sometimes mixed with economics, that they no longer paid any attention to her at all. It had been this way almost from the start and she was feeling pretty d.a.m.ned depressed and frustrated by this point.
She got up and lumbered back to the ward, where, as far as she could tell, the only sane people on this entire s.h.i.+p stayed.
About the only thing good about her situation, she decided, was that the air didn't stink.
One fellow, who called himself Pokey, had been a particular friend since she'd been stuck here. He wasn't very old and he was quite pleasant; supposedly some kind of computer whiz who could work out almost any technological problem in his head. That was part of his problem. First of all, you weren't supposed to solve problems in the system, not unless you at the same time created ten new ones for others to work on. And he was very good at solving things. They'd let him pretty well alone, since, it seemed, he was the only one on the s.h.i.+p who could repair anything that broke, but one day he'd gone too far. He'd used the s.h.i.+p's main computers to run a problem and discovered a neat, simple table of operations that totally eliminated all need forever for lawyers. The moment the High Command had seen it and realized its truth and simplicity they'd had no choice but to commit him to the psychiatric wards, with occasional furloughs to fix broken things now and again.
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