This work is copyright 2000 by Xaltatun of Acheron (A Pseudonym). It may be posted on the Internet to any free forum, provided it is not modified in any way, and provided that this notice is included in its entirety. It may not be sold, or included in any compilation that is sold, or posted on any forum that requires a fee for access, without my written permission. My permission will require payment, terms to be negotiated. For purposes of this notice, sites guarded by Adult Check or similar packages are considered pay sites. Posting on any site must include this copyright notice.
Adult Content Warning - this story may contain adult themes, including a rather cavalier attitude toward sex. If you are under the lawful age for such materials (18 in most jurisdictions) or if you would find such material offensive, please go elsewhere.
OK - now on to the story -------
There should have been bands playing, politicians making speeches and all that. The maiden flight of the Loaded Die deserved it. However, all the politicians were in a snit about our first interstellar spaceship being backed by the Dodecahedron, so they were trying to ignore it. Ceremonies are important, so I made do with “The Green Hills of Earth.” The science fiction author who wrote it is long dead, most of the descriptions are flat out wrong, but it’s still a great song that doesn’t owe anything to any political division.
“Ok, Michelle, let’s roll it.” I spoke aloud for the benefit of the rest of the people in the command center. Half of the people winced. Well, I really can’t blame them. The Loaded Die is a huge cube of rock, a mile on a side. Someone had come up with the brilliant idea of painting the thing white, so the instrument clusters show up as black dots. The level of humor dropped precipitously after that. In fact, it got so low that some wit suggested the current name. The Archons accepted the suggestion. At least, it kept the stuffier politicians at bay.
Michelle is the computer that more or less runs the place. I named her after another of the long dead author’s creations. She isn’t sentient (I think), but then, she doesn’t have to be. She played a short sound bite of straining gears, and the pictures on the view screens shifted suddenly. The Dodecahedron vanished and the Sun shrank, not that it was that big to begin with. We’d decided to take it easy at the beginning; one six light hour jump every five seconds, and Michelle was to stop the program if there was any type of gravitational anomaly.
General Jinjur unwrapped her tail from around my neck; Lady Donna stretched and began purring.
Jinjur is a 5’10” redheaded ponygirl, named after a character in a century old children’s story. She very much prefers playing pony to playing girl, at least most of the time. Right now, she was kneeling on the left side of my chair, playing girl. She’d left her tail on to get the point across. She’d debated leaving it off, but I’d told her to keep it. If our passengers and crew couldn’t handle a 5’10” girl (6’3” in her pony boots) with a tail, they had absolutely no business going out to meet real aliens. The centaurs downstairs were for extra credit, as were several Sirians deadheading home on rotation from their study team.
So was Lady Donna. Donna was a 300 pound feline something colored very much like a Siamese cat; that is, cream color with black muzzle, paws, ears and the tip of her tail. She looked somewhat like a cross between a lion and a tiger with a subtly bigger head than either one. A few years ago, she’d been a fairly nasty piece of work that had kidnapped me with the intention of torturing me to death and leaving the remains to puzzle the police and fuel more public hysteria about a serial killer. Being a killer cat suited her disposition.
Six light hours every five seconds doesn’t sound like a lot, but we’d be in the Sirius system in less than a standard day. Now that we were under way, and nothing broke, I decided to speed things up. I told Michelle to reduce the interval to one second. That gives her plenty of leeway to survey the space ahead, looking for major anomalies. She does the space around our next breakout point in finer detail, of course. No sense in running into a wandering free planet, or something.
The physicists were mostly ignoring the whole mess. They’d called what we were doing the “Wish Fulfillment Drive.” Well, they had a point. The whole mechanism completely ignored things like distance and interval, not to mention conservation of mass/energy, conservation of momentum, conservation of angular momentum, and several less obvious etceteras. The astronomers, on the other hand, were cranking every photon they could capture through the computers, and trying to refine their three dimensional map of the nearer part of the local arm.
Meanwhile, the three of us had an appointment. The last thing I’d done before we left was snatch Ester and Terry from whatever they were doing, and teleport them to the stable area where the ponygirls and centaurs had their stalls. They should be done just about right, wondering where they were and what was going to happen to them. I teleported us down to the stable area. Ester and Terry stared at Lady Donna, who had just appeared out of nowhere in front of them. Donna added to the atmosphere by licking her chops. “Hi, guys. Funny meeting you here,” I said from behind them.
They spun around. “You!” Ester gasped.
“Yes, me. You owe us. It’s payback time.”
Ester stiffened. “For what? You walked into it, we had to do something.”
“You were where you shouldn’t have been; you were some of the chief instigators. I wouldn’t have walked into it if you hadn’t been hiding out there. You kept me for two months; you owe me two months. I walked into it totally unaware, so I snatched you. You don’t owe me for the ponygirl training, but you do owe me one more. I haven’t figured out yet what to do, however.” I grinned evilly.
“I presume,” Terry said, “you want us for trainers.”
“Exactly. As far as I could tell, you did it quite well. Jinjur didn’t have any complaints. Sea Breese and Driving Rain have some suggestions. Let me show you the layout.”
“While you do, where are we?” Ester asked plaintively.
“We’re inside of The Loaded Die, and on our way to Sirius. That’s a star,” I added helpfully. “You’re stuck here at least until we return to the Solar System.”
They didn’t look all that happy about it, but then, what could they do? Answer: Exactly what I could do about it when they captured me and started training me as a ponygirl. That is, nothing.
“You can start by harnessing General Jinjur and Lady Donna,” I told them. “I’ll show you the tack room.”
“We harness that cat?” exclaimed Ester.
“Well, just for riding. We never did design a pulling type harness for her.”
The tack room was well organized, with each ponygirl’s and centaur’s tack nicely labeled, and with a wardrobe for each of the ’girls that went into girl mode regularly. “Strip!” Ester told General Jinjur. Jinjur stripped with a lovely economy of motion and threw the laundry into the basket. Ester got down to harnessing her swiftly. Terry looked at Lady Donna’s tack, and then at Lady Donna. She looked back in that way that cats have of saying, “You’ll regret it if you try that.”
“Um,” he said. “Is it really safe to saddle her?”
“Quite safe. She bitches a lot, but the computer has her under tight control. If she tries to do anything, she’ll be stopped in mid try, and she doesn’t like what happens next.”
“Tell you what,” I added,� “I’ll set it up so you can talk to her.”
“She talks?” Terry sounded surprised.
“Not vocally, but she’s still got a standard human type brain. She’s got all the circuitry upstairs. Just visualize an intercom or something with some buttons.”
<Do you hear this?> I said, keeping my mouth tightly shut.
“Who said that?” he said, sounding surprised.
<I did. Keep your mouth shut, and pretend you’re talking into the intercom.>
<Like this?> he said.
“You’ve got it. Now tell Donna to get up on the stand so you can harness her.”
He turned to Donna. “Move.” She looked at him and yawned. ZZZZZZ YEOWWWLLLL!!! She jumped on the stand, fur standing on end. That pain rod was a great motivator, as I well remembered from when they were training me.
<One of these days�> Donna said with menace.
“Yeah, right. One of these days lots of things will happen. Like the sun going nova. You just behave yourself, or I’ll feed you some more corn flakes.” She calmed down a bit as Terry brought over her harness and threw a saddle pad on her back. He got her harnessed fairly quickly. Meanwhile, Ester had harnessed Jinjur to a two-person chariot. I swung into Donna’s saddle, and she sank under me. The fact is, they did something to the wiring when they changed her into a cat so she actually likes being ridden, she just thinks it’s beneath her dignity, or something.
<Oh, by the way,> I told Terry. <I gave Ester the same communication upgrade you got. Show her how to work it.>
You can put quite a lot inside of a cubic mile of rock. The stable area had twenty Freehold style ponygirl stalls, and four old style ponygirl cells. The stalls are designed so that a ponygirl in four-footed mode can’t turn around. The cells are these humongous things with a running machine, a chair and a grooming room built in. General Jinjur had started out being trained in one of them, old style. The only time she’d been in a Freehold type stall was when Ester and Terry had captured us. The Dodecahedron just lets their ponygirls wander and sleep in the meadow in four-footed mode when they weren’t actively being used for something.
They were in a state of shock as soon as we got out of the stable. We had several hundred acres on this level mostly devoted to agricultural land. There was also a meadow and a racing track. It converted between a standard ponygirl racing track and a standard horseracing track. We had ten ponygirls, fifty agricultural workers and several supervisors, all nicely packaged with our own simulated sun. We’d modeled the thing on the Old South enclave on Freehold, with overtones of how the Dodecahedron handled its own agriculture. The agricultural workers were either people who enjoyed the life of a plantation slave, or various people who had taken serious psychological damage in the Dodecahedron’s full citizenship program, and were not good for anything else. Even though I’d been working for the big D for several years, I didn’t understand the system. I also wasn’t a full citizen, and had no intention of taking the course any faster than my mind could adapt without serious trauma. If that meant I died of old age first, then so be it.
Once they got over the shock, they realized exactly how badly they’d been had. They thought they only had one ponygirl and two centaurs to take care of. Now they had eleven ponygirls and six centaurs, which was a bit much for just two trainers.
“Do we have to take care of the cat?” asked Ester.
“She’s my housecat, and pretty much takes care of herself. You just need to keep her in practice being ridden every once in a while.” Ester just looked at her and shook her head.
“Huh. It still looks like more work that we can handle.”
“Not really. The centaurs take care of themselves, and several of the agricultural workers are trained to take care of the ponygirls. So can the centaurs in a pinch. What you’re here for is actual training. The ’girls are mostly out working during the day, so you can arrange a training schedule with the supervisors. I want them brought back up to form on racing and dressage. You can take your time as long as they are making reasonable progress. Use the agricultural workers as much as you need.”
“Anyway, before you get started, I need to show you where you’ll be living.” I took them out to the grav tubes. Terry and Ester looked at them somewhat askance. The tubes look like semicircular niches in the walls, with a hole on top that just goes on up.
“How do we work this thing?”
“Just walk into the enclosure and say your destination. The system knows you, so ‘home’ gets you to your apartments. ‘Stables’ gets you back here. You’ll learn the rest shortly.” I decided to take the tube myself; it’s kind of a fun ride.
Ester swallowed and then walked into the enclave. “Home.” She rose into the shaft like a huge vacuum had sucked her up. Terry followed, and then it was my turn. “Home” works for me; we’d assigned them an apartment in the same block most of the Dodecahedron personnel inhabited. The walls moved past swiftly as I twisted and turned through the system. After a few moments, I popped out into the foyer of my apartment complex.
The initial impression is that you’ve accidentally stepped into the foyer to Heaven. Directly across is the cloakroom where we keep wings for when we fly. Off to the left gleamed a low, steel railing protecting an opening onto a huge cylindrical cavern. Openings to other apartment and office complexes pocked the walls. Several hurtling forms glided past.
Ester and Terry were looking around in bewilderment. “Hey guys.” They turned. “Flying is one of the perks. Most of us do it, either for fun or upper body exercise.” We walked over to the railing to look. “The wings have a built in gravity compensator; you weigh maybe a tenth of what you’d weigh otherwise. That’s enough for flying after you get some shoulder strength built up.”
“We can?” Ester looked with wide eyes. Terry was a bit more reserved, but he was clearly interested. “I wonder?” She licked her lips and looked at Terry out of the corner of her eye.
“I don’t think anyone has tried that before,” I said. “I’d like to return you two in good condition.”
They looked at each other. “Well, �” Terry drawled.
“Coming back to our tour,” I said. “The central cylinder goes all the way down to the agricultural area, so you can fly to work if you want. It’s also the central air reservoir. You can get just about anywhere by flying. There’re a few things you can only get to by grav tube, but you won’t normally need to go there. The apartment complex is to the right.” We turned. The foyer opened onto a nicely manicured lawn bounded on the sides by two gently curving rows of houses. An open-air picnic and cooking area completed the enclosure.
“You’re over here.” We walked about halfway down one side to a house where the nameplate said: “Terry and Ester Johnson. Senior Ponygirl Trainers.”
“It’s three rooms and bath. Lots of closet space. No kitchen.”
“No kitchen?” Ester sounded surprised. She opened a closet. Empty space stared back. “Did you bring our clothes?” she looked at me accusingly.
“No. We use the Freehold build to order system for clothes. You can select any style and any fabric within reason, and it’ll be ready for you in a couple of hours. The system has your measurements. Exact fit is guaranteed.”
“As far as food goes, meals are a community affair. Everybody has a day to cook, serve and clean up. No exceptions. I do my share just like everyone else. It keeps us pulled together.”
Time to check on my official duties. I teleported back up to the control room. Michelle had been keeping me up to date on status, which hadn’t changed in the slightest. Sirius had been growing steadily brighter in the forward view screens. We were now close enough to see that it was a double star; a huge blue giant and a brilliant point of light that was the white dwarf. We weren’t going to get close enough to make the white dwarf show a disk except under magnification.
We stopped several light hours out and called Sirius traffic control on the hyper-com. This was one gadget I knew absolutely nothing about; the Sirian study team in our system had contributed it. As far as I was concerned, it acted enough like a radio that I could use it to talk to someone else with one. They weren’t divulging any of the physics behind the device. I suspect part of it was that they were just as baffled by our drive as we were by theirs, and were simply putting on a good front of the scientifically superior race.
Sirian traffic control came on and welcomed us. Sirians look like they might be vaguely related to gorillas or chimpanzees, in that they have two legs, two arms, one head and lots of hair. They’ve been hanging around our system for a long time, and have been spotted numerous times around their primary base in the Himalayan Mountains.
The Dodecahedron had built a translation system that still impressed me, even though I’d been using it for a few years. From my point of view, as long as the computer understands the language, I just understand what the person is saying. It feeds meaning directly into the appropriate area of my brain. To talk to someone, the translator takes direct control of the motor areas in my brain concerned with speech. It works as long as I don’t think about what I’m saying, although I’m told that the syntax is atrocious. Since I think I’m speaking English, the computer doesn’t have a very large window to juggle word order.
This whole thing works for those of us with direct connections to the computer. The rest of the crew and passengers use a version that’s more what you would expect. It’s not perfect, but they cope.
Traffic Control had us park well away from the planets while I put out our energy collection screens to top up our accumulators. They scheduled a shuttle so that part of their observer staff could leave; I’d given them a ride home as a courtesy.
“Um, if it wouldn’t offend you,” he said, “we’ve got a problem you might be able to solve for us, if you’re so inclined.”
“Oh?” I said.
“There’s another race in this sector, the Ixiixxi, that have a study team down on a planet that needs to be rescued. We don’t have anything that can do the job.”
“And we do? I presume you mean the study team needs the rescue, not the planet? More to the point, what do they need to be rescued from?”
“They’re studying a level 2 aggressive species. They’re level 5.”
I stared at the com. “Are they out of their minds?”
He shrugged. “They’re sulfur breathers. That was the only other planet they could reach that has a sulfur atmosphere. Their scientists wanted something to study to justify the expense of getting interstellar travel.”
“They’re still out of their minds. We certainly don’t have any accommodations for them, and I wouldn’t know how to go about building any. How do you expect us to do anything?”
�“Use your teleporter,” he said. “We know several races that can teleport, but yours is the only one handy that has a mechanical teleporter that doesn’t require the operator to be present. You should be able to get them to their ship in one piece.”
“We could probably do that. The big question is what condition they’d arrive in.”
“How so?”
“Early versions tended to drive a large proportion of our species nuts just to be near it. We fixed that, but your people still aren’t comfortable around it. How this other species will react is anyone’s guess until we try it out.”
“We didn’t realize that!”
“Well, your people aren’t exactly advertising it. We’ve noticed that they prefer to get around our system in their own craft rather than let us teleport them, and the ones on board seem to be doped up with your version of painkillers.”
“We’d better send some medics with the shuttle, then.”
“I think that would be advisable. Now, the other issue is simple. How do we talk to these people? Both mechanics and translation.”
“They’ve got a hyper-com, so the mechanics are taken care of. I take it you’re not using our translation system?”
“No, we added your language to one of our own. Your physiology and conceptual structures are close enough to ours that our standard translators could be programmed to handle it. Your study team helped immensely with the details.”
“OK, I expect we’d best contribute a translator. We’ll give you a hyper-com that can reach us from there.”
“Should work. If you can send a language download for your translator system for both our languages, I’ll have our linguists and computer staff see if they can adapt it. How quickly can we expect them?”
“They’ll be on the shuttle. How quickly can you get going after that?”
“As soon as your shuttle gets clear and we get equipment installed and checked out. We’re pretty self-contained except for energy, and we’re topping off as we speak. The biggest issue will be getting our scientists reoriented to the new plan.”
“Sounds good. Off for now.”
“Off.”
The biology and agriculture scientists wanted a tour of our hydroponics section. Hydro? Well, they were going to be in for a little surprise. I suspected that they hadn’t been briefed as to what we actually did for food. Old Earth was getting more than a little crowded, and hydroponics was the coming thing in growing enough to feed the multitudes. I had agreed to meet them in one of our conference rooms on the residential levels.
The study team was four people and lots of equipment. Shriram was an Indian, Sun Meiling was Chinese, Richard was English and Carmen was Brazilian. All of them spoke excellent English, which was a relief. It had already been a long day, and I wasn’t in the mood for working around language problems.
“Howdy, people. From your request, I take it nobody briefed you on what we actually do for onboard agriculture.”
“No, we didn’t get any briefing,” Richard said. “We assumed hydroponics, but your question makes me wonder if you aren’t doing something different.”
“Hold on to your hat. We’re using standard intensive agriculture and slave labor. It’s a lot cheaper for our purposes than heavy equipment.”
They all stared at me.
“Well,” I continued, “remember that although the percentage of people that actually like the life of a plantation slave is very small, with a population of ten billion, that’s still a lot of people. We have very little problem finding recruits that will be happy with the lifestyle. Recruiting is integrated with the ponygirl program.”
“Ponygirl program?” asked Meiling. “Oh, right. This is a Dodecahedron project, isn’t it? I’ve got to quit making assumptions.”
“Yeah. Assumptions get us all at one time or another. I’m told the predecessor organization to the Dodecahedron used hydroponics, and they were quite a bit in advance of then-current practice. Once they invented teleportation, they dropped it. We picked up the plantation agriculture from Freehold. I can see if there are any archives, and if they’ll let you have access to them, but that has to wait until we get back. In any case, I expect current practice is better than anything the Community did.”
“Could be,” Meiling said. “Still, there are probably techniques to mine if it was a different development branch. Since I’ve never heard of it, it’s worth taking a look.”
“If that’s all, let’s go see the fields.” We headed out to the grav tubes.
I was quite happy to see that Ester and Terry had risen to the occasion. Sea Breeze was harnessed to a four person cart, and Lady Donna was saddled, waiting for me. While she didn’t look all that happy, that was normal for her. She vastly preferred hunting to being a riding cat, but she didn’t have a choice. The last time she’d been really obnoxious about it, I’d fed her on corn flakes for a week. She’d developed a hearty distaste for children’s books after that. She also learned to mind her manners.
Lady Donna was about four feet tall at the shoulder, about five to the top of her head when she had it up. I swung into the saddle easily and felt her settle under me. My four guests quit staring at Sea Breeze and got into the cart. I couldn’t blame them for staring. Sea Breeze was about five feet at the shoulder, eight feet to the top of her head. She had a standard pony or horse type coat, except for her face, arms and breasts. Her mane went from the top of her head, all the way down the vertical part of her back, onto the horse torso.� Right now, she was wearing a standard pulling type rig, horse collar in front to distribute the load. Unlike a horse, she didn’t need it to keep from being asphyxiated; her lungs were in the erect part of her torso. She was also wearing a belt with reins clipped to each side. She wasn’t wearing anything else; she never did.
The artificial sun was fairly far toward the west, not that we could have told without a map.
“This is huge,” Carmen said.
“It’s actually smaller than it looks; the walls and ceiling are decorated to make it look bigger. Let’s go down to the agriculture area.”
Richard had gotten in front and grabbed the reins. “How do I work her?” he asked.
“Just talk to her. The reins are there mostly for signals if you’re talking to someone else at the time.”
We headed down the road. The first thing we came to was a field of green beans being harvested. The girl doing the harvesting was kneeling on a flat, four-wheeled cart between two rows of bean plants. As we watched, she was sitting on her heels, stripping the bean pods from the plants and throwing them into a basket in front of her. When she finished the plants in easy reach, she came up onto her knees and pulled a lever on the side of the cart. It moved backward about two feet, and she crouched down again and began harvesting the beans. When her basket filled up, she put it on the ground in front of her cart, and took another empty basket from the pile in back.
She was completely nude, and quite evenly tanned, as if she never wore clothes. She was working with quiet intensity, not hurrying, but not stopping either. Most of the field of beans had been harvested; at her rate, she would be done in another half hour or so.
We moved on, past fields of strawberries, green beans, lettuce, carrots, tomatoes, corn and other crops. Some of them were being tended by single workers, or occasionally by a worker driving a ponygirl attached to a cultivator or plow.
They were all looking very thoughtful. Carmen spoke up first. “Isn’t this awfully inefficient?”
“Depends on your viewpoint. Classical Europe had between 80 and 90% of its population engaged in agriculture. We have about 20% or less. The big difference is that we’ve got more efficient crops than they had, and we don’t have to waste our people’s time on inessentials like winter. Ponygirls can do the same effective work as horses, and eat a lot less. We also organize things better. It all adds up. What we get out of it is real good food. If you’ve ever tasted the difference between a real, hand grown tomato right off the vine, and the machine product, you know what I mean. If you don’t, you’re in for a real treat at meal time.”
“On the other side, machine agriculture is very capital intensive. Many of the machines sit idle for most of the year. Consider that girl. A robot harvester could do that job, but it would be idle for at least half the time � which is much better than standard because we can stagger our growing and harvest cycle for maximum efficiency. She works six days a week, and we don’t have to compromise the quality of the plants to optimize them for mechanization.”
Sun Meiling interjected, “I’ve had some of your food. It seems fresh. How do you keep it in season?”
“We don’t, actually. This is a single season environment, but we don’t have a field of each crop maturing every day. We’ve got a real nice storage system. It does about a thousand to one time slowdown. Effectively, anything you eat has been stored for a few hours at room temperature.”
“You have a time warp?” Richard seemed somewhere between shocked and awed.
“Yes, it’s one of those embargoed technologies. We use it mostly for preservation, although it’s also useful for speeding up generations for biological experimentation.”
“I presume the plants are all gene-engineered?” Carmen asked.
“I think so, but not to the extent they are on Earth. We don’t need to breed pesticide resistance since we don’t have pests. Mostly, they’re native varieties that are adapted to our climate and growing cycle. In fact, we could have done it all with selective breeding and the time warp. Ask Black ThunderBolt; she’s on board. As far as I know, she may have used a time warp instead of fiddling with the genetics.”
Shriram asked, “They aren’t really slaves, are they?”
“Well, it depends on your definition of slavery. Classical Europe would have regarded them as slaves. They don’t get paid. They don’t have any say in what they do, and they can be severely disciplined for disobedience. On the other hand, they can opt out any time they want, and we’ll pay them off in proportion to the time they’ve been with us. It’s only a couple of thousand for each year, but its still more than many people manage to save. They’ve got their own little society here, and they get everything they need supplied. We have very low turnover.”
“I was hoping you’d have some pointers we could take back,” Richard said.
“Sorry about that. Earth just doesn’t have enough land area to feed the population with the kind of agriculture we do, and they don’t have enough people that would work this way even if they did. You’re welcome to drop down any time you want and look it over, however. I’ll introduce you to the supervisors.”
Nothing like having an insufficient briefing. Our target was a big ball of impenetrable, multi-colored clouds. It didn’t look like they had left a ship in orbit, either. Fortunately, our science people came to the rescue and found a couple of reasonable transmission bands so we could look through the atmosphere on visuals. Once we had them located, our surveillance system took over. They were buried in a mountain, and holding off the natives handily. Their ship was outside, and looked like it had been rather thoroughly wrecked. They didn’t look like they were in any real immediate danger until we did a scan of the mountain. Then we found the tunnels the natives were drilling to reach them.
Now what? I really didn’t want to kill more natives than I had to. I really didn’t want to kill any of them, in fact. They were basically reacting to an invasion of their territory, and while they were a bit more enthusiastic about it than I liked, I figured they had reason. Well, it didn’t look like those tunnels were an immediate problem.
The first thing was to figure out how to get them out of there and back to their home world. Our crisis team came up with an idea; just teleport them into one of our holds, and wrap them in a time warp and gravitic field. Then we could scoot to their planet and drop them. It sounded good, as long as they could stand a teleport.
I decided to kill two birds with one stone. We teleported a small bomb into one of the tunnels that didn’t seem to have any natives in it at the moment. The tunnel walls collapsed nicely. So did the people we were trying to rescue. Fortunately, they came to fairly quickly, but it was still a hell of a reaction to a teleport two miles away.
We dropped a weight ten miles away to check. They all winced. Looked like teleportation was ruled out, at least our variety of teleportation. Time for the crisis team to come up with another idea.
The next idea was to rip them straight out of the mountain with a shaped gravitational field, and then wrap it in a time warp. Fortunately, they didn’t have any reaction to the time warp or the gravitational field. It wasn’t going to do much for the looks of the mountain, however.
That still left how we were going to get them home. We couldn’t manage it; I suspected that they wouldn’t survive the trip, even encased in a time warp. Fortunately, the Sirians decided they could contribute a ship, so we needed to find if the engineering was compatible.
The Yellow Blossom arrived in a couple of days. It was a big freighter, easily large enough to hold the entire capsule with room to spare. We mounted the equipment, turned it on, and watched as it tried to use its interstellar drive. I can’t describe the feelings when it actually worked! I hadn’t expected any problems with the gravitics; after all, we’d gotten the technology from them in the first place. The time warp, however, was a different matter altogether.
The final operation went off more smoothly than I really expected. We just dropped the generating equipment right on the mountain. It drilled its way in, throwing rock all over the place. When it got close enough, the capsule closed over the hapless investigative team, and they came back up like they were on an elevator. We stuck the whole assemblage into the Yellow Blossom, and it headed off to their home world. Then we picked up their wrecked ship, and headed for their planet. We were there, parked fairly far out-system when they arrived. We’d dropped their ship into orbit around their planet, and their people were already looking it over.
Planetary Control finally ran down with the effusive thanks and promises of eternal gratitude, so I could get a word in edgewise.
“We were quite happy to help your people, sir, but we really don’t expect eternal gratitude to last more than a quarter revolution around your primary. Now that we’re here, our sponsors would appreciate our investigating mutually profitable trade possibilities.”
He sounded startled. “What would we have to trade? Transporting raw materials over interstellar distances is prohibitively expensive.”
“Science and technology, mostly. I suspect we’ll find some art objects as well. Our materials scientists are quite intrigued at some of the things they see, and I’ve got an idea for something that I think you want for your next explorations, if the powers that be approve it.”
“What could you want that we have? You’ve got to be well ahead of us.”
“Actually, you’re ahead of us in general. What you’re looking at is the property of a very small enclave. Most of the politicians on our planet have nightmares about what would happen if any of it got out. The ones that don’t have nightmares themselves give everyone else nightmares. We don’t expect to do asteroid mining for another century, if that.”
“What?” The translator module made him sound startled. “Why wouldn’t that technology be shared for the good of all?”
“I expect you need some background. Do you know the species aggressiveness scale that the Sirians use?”
“Aggressiveness scale? I’ve never heard of it.”
“They may have been waiting for you to discover it yourself. To summarize, your species is a level five, which is the most common. We’re a level three. Think of a territorial pack carnivore, and you’ll have some idea.”
“Territorial pack carnivore? Oh, my. You’re like that?”
“That was the species base. We’re more civilized now, but there was quite a bit of betting about whether we’d kill ourselves off when we discovered nuclear power. We got past that, and we’re mopping up serious damage from uncontrolled abuse of our environment. The planet isn’t politically integrated yet. We started the process several lifetimes ago, and even the most optimistic think it will take several more lifetimes.”
“Oh, my.” I had the impression the translator toned down his comment considerably. “I’m beginning to understand why they recommended we not investigate that planet.”
“Exactly. It’s a level two. If they discover nuclear power before they get the planet integrated, they probably won’t survive it. We’ve got a remote surveillance device that would do, but as I said earlier, I’d need permission to give it to you. And even at that, surveillance is not a substitute for being on the ground, talking to people and experiencing the context.”
“Too true. It sounds like we may not be able to do any exploring.”
“Probably not, but don’t give up hope. If we work up some trade, the word will get out, and you’ll probably have people come calling. There’s always something that some species can do better than others.”
“Well, folks, we’re back in the Sirius system, and we’re staying for the next month. The port authorities have given us permission to take liberty in one of their vacation spots. Just to cover the drill. There’s a mandatory multi-cultural, multi-species orientation you have to take. There will be an exam before you’re allowed onto the planet. One of the Sirian study team will also give an orientation that’s more specific for us. There will be a quiz. Outside of that, the weather will be warm and the ultraviolet will be intense. It’s well within tolerance if you’ve got the Dodecahedron environmental modifications; otherwise, see the clinic for sunscreen and take it easy on the exertion. I shouldn’t need to tell you not to look at the sun. We can regenerate eyes and skin, and take care of melanomas, but why go through the bother?”
“Arrange your schedule with your work or study team. Several of the ponygirls and all of the centaurs will be available for transportation if you want to be mildly outrageous, but you’ll have to make reservations.”
“One word of warning. Be on your best behavior. This is not a place to act up. Act like you were in Freehold City, and you’ll be all right. If I get complaints, I will take disciplinary action. If you’re totally out of line, I have two very good ponygirl trainers on staff, and they’d like some practice. Other than that, have fun.”
In this case, rank had absolutely no privileges. I had to take the orientation just like everyone else. I passed. I made sure that Lady Donna answered the quiz too, even though she was under tight control. I was happy to see that the study team had recovered from the trip here. I turned control over to my exec, and headed to the stable area.
I’d reserved a stable with an attached meadow for our ponygirls and centaurs. Ester and Terry had the ponygirls and their two assistants lined up, ready to go. We’d decided to send the ones that could go in girl mode that way, rather than deal with too much livestock. We teleported down as a unit. The bureaucracy did its thing, and then we headed out toward the stables. I rode Lady Donna, Ester and Terry had Seashell and Crocus hitched to their chariots, and the rest of us walked. The sunlight was brilliant, and the sky was the most intense blue I could ever remember seeing. It almost matched the intensity of the stares we collected as we proceeded down the street.
There’s a myth that the best way of keeping out of trouble is to think pure thoughts and stay away from shady characters. Yeah, right. If you only think pure thoughts, you don’t have the experience to tell the shady characters from anyone else. I wasn’t expecting that the locals would cause any trouble. What I was expecting was that some of our people would think the locals had big, irresistible SUCKER signs pasted all over them, and try to take advantage of it. I had a side bet with both Ester and Lady Donna about whether the local police or Michelle would complain first. My money was on Michelle, I had her monitoring the most likely suspects.
The three of us were sitting in this sidewalk caf� enjoying the shade and the taste of a truly unique local drink, and watching the crowd walk, float and occasionally slither by when Michelle gave us our heads up signal. Ester stood up and gave a little wiggle to settle her black leather miniskirt and make sure her hypersonic prod was handy. Lady Donna came up and stretched. Then they both disappeared, and popped into the scene I was watching in my mind’s eye.
Ester appeared about two paces in front of them, with her prod in her hand. They stopped like they had run into a wall. Then they tried to run. Big mistake. The first thing they saw when they turned was Lady Donna sitting on her haunches and licking her chops as if to say “Dinner?” A couple of the local peacekeepers came up on their floater just then, completing the triangle.
“Give it over,” Ester told them, hand out. “We’ve got the entire scene recorded.”
“What are you talking about?” Farina tried to bluff. She had the innocent look down perfect.
I decided to intervene. Farina’s bag floated off of her shoulder, and tipped over, spilling its contents where they hovered in midair.
“This,” Ester said as one piece of the contents floated out. “Recognize it?” It floated toward the peacekeepers.
He picked it out of the air and looked at it. “That’s an automated picklock. Where’d you get it?”
“Our readout says they stole it from that shop over there, officer.” Ester contributed helpfully.
As the two officers headed over to the shop, Ester said, “Don’t even think about escaping. I don’t want to have to think up a worse punishment than what you’ve already got coming.” They shrank back a bit more.
A couple of minutes later, the officers came out with the shopkeeper between them. “He shouldn’t have had it for sale, and he didn’t even know it was missing. He’s got an appointment with the adjudicator. What do we do with these two?”
“Take them along to the adjudicator,” said Ester. “We know what we’re going to do to them, but they may need to make some amends here, also.”
The adjudication took place in a nice looking office building. The adjudicator sat behind a desk, a spiritual specialist sat next to him. The police officers told their story, the shopkeeper told his story, and I showed the surveillance record. Farina tried to ask for a lawyer. She got told that neither Sirian nor Freehold law permitted one, unless there was a significant legal issue involved. Shoplifting and possession of burglary tools didn’t involve any legal issues.
The adjudicator sentenced all three of them to reeducation. Then he looked at me. “I don’t know what to do about those two. I don’t know if you have a reeducation process.”
“We do.” I told the adjudicator. “I’ll turn them over to Freehold when we get back, with the evidence and the court records. If they fail the reeducation, we’ll take them back. We can always use more ponygirls.” Farina’s partner in crime fainted. The spiritual specialist laughed.
I waved my hand, and they disappeared, to reappear in the holding tank in The Loaded Die.
I heard Chrissie say, “We can always use ponygirls.” Farad fell over in a dead faint, and then the world spun around me for a moment and everything went black. I mean, everything went literally black. There was no light at all, and I felt like I was floating in something, except there was no pressure. I could hear my breath coming in and out, and my heart beat. Outside of that, nothing.
Time passed. How long, I don’t know. It couldn’t have been too long, because sensory deprivation is supposed to drive you insane, and I wasn’t feeling very much distress. Actually, it was kind of pleasant, just drifting there, and letting my thoughts drift through my mind. Then I felt something touching my waist, my wrists, ankles and head, all at the same time. Whatever it was, I felt my breath whoosh out as it tightened around my waist. Something else twisted over my mouth and around my head and then tightened. My head felt enclosed in something like soft leather. Something very pleasant stroked my arms and legs. I felt my arms move toward my back, and my legs move up, all moving toward that sensuous ecstasy. Then the ecstasy vanished, and I found that I couldn’t move my arms and legs. They seemed like they were fastened to a belt around my waist. Then I felt something else come up my back, and then there was a gentle pressure on my knees.
My body suddenly sagged, and I could hear muffled sounds around me. I felt hands doing something at the back of my neck, and then suddenly I was almost blinded as the hood came off. When my sight cleared, I saw I was in a room with several people, that damned tiger something and Farad. He was kneeling on a platform, attached to a pole, and looking frantic. I seemed to be on the same kind of setup, from what I could feel.
The woman who had stopped me in the street came up to him and took off his gag. “Do you want a drink?” she asked him. The banality of the question brought my mind to a frozen halt for a minute. She walked behind us and returned with a glass of water and a straw. He drank about half of it and then stopped.
“Where am I? What are you doing to me?” he asked.
She smiled at him. “Where do you think?”
“You’re going to turn me into a ponygirl?”
“You got it. You’re going to make a good ponygirl, I can just tell. Your girlfriend might have some trouble, but you’ll take to it like a hog takes to mud.”
“But, but, I don’t want to be a ponygirl.”
“Tough. You lost your right to make choices when you decided to shoplift burglar tools. You’ve really only got one choice left.”
“What’s that?” he said, a bit shakily.
“Whether you want it easy or hard. If you cooperate, you might even enjoy part of the process. If you don’t, all that will happen is that you suffer more. You’ll still be a ponygirl, but you probably won’t turn out quite as well.”
“Now,” she continued. “This next part is going to hurt.” She took a wand like thing off her belt, and flipped it in her hand. I could see him tense from the corner of my eye. “Do you know what this is?”
“Some kind of punishment?” he hazarded.
“Partly. It’s called a hypersonic prod, although the technology has changed a bit. It’s got several different settings.” She did something and the prod emitted a low hum. Then she stroked his arm with it.
YIIIIII! He screamed.
She looked at him strangely and then tried it on herself. I saw her wince. “Either you’ve got a real low pain threshold, or you’re faking. That setting isn’t really a punishment; it’s to get your attention and correct faults. This is a punishment.”
The whine went up in pitch. She stroked his leg with it. YIIIIIEEEE! He screamed again, but this time it seemed to have a note of distress the first scream hadn’t. So he had been faking. Interesting, if not very relevant at the moment.
Now he really did look scared. “There’s another setting I won’t demonstrate. It’ll leave you on the floor, writhing in agony.” She put it back on her belt and then walked over to the table and picked up an assemblage of straps with a big red ball in the center.
“One of the rules for ponygirls is that they don’t talk. For some of them, they don’t talk ever, for some, only under very specific conditions. Once I put this on you, you’re not going to talk for a very long time, if ever. Any attempt to talk will be punished severely.”
“On the other hand, I enjoy chatting with my work. If you promise not to make a fuss, I’ll leave it to the end. I’ll warn you, a lot of what I’m going to do to you is painful, and if you do make a fuss, you’ll regret it.”
“You’d better gag me now, ma’am,” he said.
“Open up wide,” she instructed.
He opened his mouth, and she popped the ball in. Then she buckled the horizontal strap behind his head, and brought the rest of the straps up and over. In a moment, she had him buckled into the bridle. I must say, it set off the shape of his face nicely. On the other hand, his eyes bulged out a bit; that ball must have been huge.
She walked over to the table and picked up another tool and showed it to him. “Dressmaker’s shears.” It hummed quietly when she turned it on. Two passes, and she pulled what was left of his shorts and briefs off and threw them in the disposal. Four more passes, and his t-shirt joined them.
“Livestock tags next.” So saying, she punched a neat hole in each ear, and assembled tags out of a hollow post and two circular end pieces. He made muffled screams all through the process.
“Next, we usually install breast rings, but you don’t have any breasts � yet.” My head went back in shock, and I saw his eyes bulge out in surprise. I’d thought she was speaking metaphorically. “Girls don’t have a penis and balls, so we’ll do something about that now.” She held up a tool that looked like a pair of pliers with a circular hole on the end. “This is what they use on stallions to turn them into geldings.” She pulled up his penis, and put a circular piece of plastic around the root of his scrotum, and then used the pliers to tighten it. His body arched, the gag barely muffling his screams. Suddenly, a pungent smell pervaded the room as his bowels and bladder let go. His head fell down � he had fainted again.
“I always did want to see if I could scare someone shitless,” she said with a grin. “Now to finish this up; he can live with the stink until we clean him off.” She took out something that looked like the headrest on a dentist’s chair, and fastened it to the top of the pole. She pushed his head back and clipped the harness to the headrest and then finished it off by draping a thick blanket over his passed-out form. The guy, I guess his name was Terry, pushed it out the door to the sound of complaining casters.
“You’re next,” she said, turning to me. That wand on her belt seemed to expand enormously as she walked over and took off my gag. “Are you thirsty? Do you want some water?”
“I don’t think so,” I heard myself saying from a dry mouth.
“Better reconsider,” she said. “You’re not going to get anything to drink for several hours.”
“Then I guess I’d better.” She brought over a glass with a straw. I hadn’t realized how thirsty I was. “Another one?” I agreed, and finished it too.
She took the glass away, and then unhooked the wand from her belt with a flourish. “I guess you know what this is, right?”
“Yes, you’re going to hurt me with it.”
“I sure am. Nothing personal, really, but you need to know what it feels like. Then you’ll be able to make a rational judgment about whether to cooperate, or be hurt and then cooperate.” She gave me a toothy grin. Somehow, I didn’t feel reassured.
ZZZZZ. OUTCH! I managed to keep from yelping. “That thing stung!” I said shakily.
“Well, it’s supposed to. That’s to get your attention. Now, this, on the other hand, is supposed to really hurt.” The whine went up, and then my arm felt like she was pouring boiling oil on it. YYYEEEEHHHHAAAAA! I screamed. I couldn’t help it, that hurt.
“That’s what a punishment feels like. Feel a bit more like cooperating?”
I looked at that thing again. “Uh, yes.”
“Well, you heard the lecture I gave your girlfriend about not talking. Gag you now or gag you later?”
“He’s my boyfriend!” I said, kind of automatically.
“Not after the sex change, she isn’t.” she said, grinning again. I felt like reevaluating my attitude toward people who liked their work.
“Did you have to do that to him?” I asked.
“You mean the castration? Not really, he’d have been losing the dick and balls in a day or so as the sex change progressed anyway. I just wanted to see how badly I could scare him. You seem to have done a nice job of psychological castration on him anyway, I just made it official.”
“You�” I almost couldn’t talk. “�castrating bitch!” I snarled.
“You do say the nicest things. Bitch, yes. Castrating bitch, no. I like my men on the macho side. If he can’t keep me under control, what use is he?” She spun the bridle and ball gag around her finger. I opened my mouth to say something else, and she slammed the ball into it. I didn’t manage to get my tongue in place to spit it out before she had it buckled tightly.
“Well, it looks like you decided not to talk after all. Funny about that.” If looks could kill, she’d have been deep fried on the spot. She worked around my head for a moment. I heard a thump like a bolt going through, and then she tried to shove my head back. I was still seeing red so I resisted. YEEEEOW! Flame poured through my butt. My head went back, and then I found I couldn’t move it.
“I do so love a resistant pony.” She grinned. “I get to exercise my sadistic side without being taken to task. It’s such a paradox,” she said as she got the sheers, “the best way you have of making me unhappy is to cooperate.”
Zzzzz. A couple of swipes, and I was naked. She reached below my line of sight, and I felt her kneed my breasts. “Lovely breasts, my, what do we have here?” She flicked a fingernail against my erect nipples. “She likes the rough stuff, does she? She may do better than I thought.” She walked away and came back. I felt something cool on my breasts, and then I felt a needle go in and out. Surprisingly, it didn’t hurt. Then there was pressure as something bigger came in. She worked for a moment, and then stepped back. “Lovely, if I do say so myself. Hum, let’s see.” She held up a pair of glass chimes so I could see them, and then reached down. I felt a tug on my breasts. “Shake yourself, now.” I held still.
YEEEOOWWWIIII! Pain poured through my other ass cheek as I screamed into the gag. I heard the friendly tinkling of the chimes as my body finished shaking.
“You must be a masochist,” she said, brightly. “We’ll get along splendidly. I just have to remember that you need to be trained in between torments.” The world went red as my back arched and I screamed curses into my gag. Suddenly, the tension poured out of me, and I found myself sobbing, with the tinkling of my chimes as a counterpoint to my breasts heaving up and down.
“There, there,” she said. I felt a hand on my abdomen. “Just breath in and out. Take a deep breath, that’s right.” Eventually, it passed, and I could see the ceiling again.
“Well, let’s finish this up. This is going to hurt, no way to avoid it.” My ear felt like it was on fire as she punched the hole, and then it settled down to a dull ache when she assembled the tag. The other ear blazed up and then settled down.
“Night, night.” She picked up a blanket and twirled it over me. Darkness settled. I felt someone take my stand and push it somewhere.� My body relaxed until only the belt and the bridle held it up. Someone else had taken control of my life. The notion was oddly comforting.
Ester had put them into side by side cells, so they couldn’t see each other. I stepped back so I could see them both at the same time. The girl in the first cell was kneeling on her stand, outfitted traditionally. From the top down, she wore a harness that had a ring on either side of her mouth. From there, straps came down under her chin, around the back of her head, up over the top of her head, and up the sides of her nose to meet just above her eyebrows. From there, another horizontal strap went around her head, and two vertical straps went over the top and down the back, with her mane standing erect in between them. Her lips curved around a very red ball on a metal rod that was attached to the rings on the sides. I could just make out a hole in the ball that I knew went all the way front to back.
Thick, short hair covered most of her head, shading from a light grayish brown that matched her skin at the hairline, to a brilliant red where it suddenly extended to a mane.
We’d decided to do the color scheme in shades of green. A green collar surrounded her neck, much higher in front than in back. The height exactly complemented the tilt of her head on her headrest. She had to maintain that tilt even when she didn’t have a rest, or the top of the collar would chafe her neck painfully.
Her main garment, if you could call it that, framed her breasts on the underside and went down to where it curved over her hips, and ended just where her pubic hair began. The center was a horizontal circle of brilliant green, segueing evenly through yellower greens to match the light brown of her skin at the top and bottom. It pulled her waist in smartly to the absolutely perfect ratio.
Her arms were encased in shoulder length gloves, and pulled bent up at the elbow with the hands out so they looked like a puppy’s paws. The elbows attached to her waist, and the back of her wrists attached to her shoulders, so the pose was not only permanent, it framed her breasts nicely. We’d colored the gloves a complementary blue. On the bottom, she wore mid-calf black leather boots, with five inch heels that forced her feet to a full vertical position. The boots were shod with real horseshoes, and were attached to the back of the platform with short chains that allowed her about an inch of movement.
Her buttocks, thighs and calves were noticeably bigger than they had been when she started training. The conditioning exercises had added quite a bit of muscle mass to her legs; she was going to be quite powerful when we finished with her.
I waved at her, and she twitched her ears and whinnied at me. That ear twitch was a new innovation the Thunderbolt had come up with. It was the same as a real pony ear twitch, but we had left her ears alone; they were still round rather than long and pointed.
The other girl was outfitted the same as the first one, except that the color scheme was reversed; her main garment was blue, and the puppy paws were green. Her breasts were just beginning to come in and her hips were just beginning to expand; other than that, she looked exactly like the girl in the other cell. Her skin had smoothed nicely after all of the male hair had dropped out. When she finished developing in a couple of months, you wouldn’t be able to tell them apart by casual inspection.
“How do you like?” Ester asked from behind me.
“They’re just utterly darling,” I enthused. “That pose is so appropriate, kneeling on those stands. This is the first time I’ve ever seen the classical model. They’ve got this feeling that they’d rather be doing this than anything else. How ever did you bring them along this fast?”
“Well, it’s not like I haven’t had practice,” she said.
“Too true. But then, I don’t think I looked quite that satisfied with my role in life in just two weeks.”
“It took you about three,” she commented dryly. “That’s why I was surprised when you just vanished one morning, and then returned with the cops. By the way, however did you do that?”
“Not succumbing to the conditioning, or jumping out when they had the collars suppressed?”
“Not succumbing. I don’t think I’d understand your explanation on the collars anyway.”
“Alice tells me it was somewhat similar to what she did. She split off a separate personality; I used a corner of my normal personality, like an actress. The only real difference is that I could drop it cold, and she couldn’t. We have amazingly similar personality structures; it’s just that all of my subs are perfectly aware that they are parts of a whole, hers are more resigned to being together for the ride.”
Ester shook her head. “They give all of us multiple personality theory during training. It works wonders from the outside, but I’ve always been afraid to muck around in my own head.”
“Then don’t. I found out about this when I learned self-hypnosis. They said to talk to myself and listen for answers, so I did. I had several different things I wanted to do, and I found out I had different selves for each of them. Then I decided to hold a conference. It was only later I found out the theory.”
“That’s what they tell us. I still don’t want to test it out.”
“No reason to, really, unless you want to.” I paused a moment. “As long as we’re on the subject, I really admired the way you did orientation. I didn’t think you had that level of menace in you.”
“I really don’t. I was getting pointers from Lady Donna the whole time.”
I laughed. “That explains it. It certainly fits the time she had me on the receiving end.” I changed the subject. “We’ve got something else to discuss.”
“Oh,” her eyebrows were quite eloquent.
“Yes. You’ve been here for two months now, which is all I can hold you as a payback. I’d like to keep you on, but it’s really your choice. You’ve got a while; I won’t be back in the solar system for almost a year. If you want to deadhead, you can, but I think you’ll want to do something useful.”
“If it was just you, I might deadhead,” she grinned at me. “Well, not really, I couldn’t leave my girls in the lurch. I’ll probably stay on, but it means I’m going to miss all the fun back home.”
“Oh, some celebration?”
“For some of us. They’re making the community trainee program mandatory � including the guys. They’ll go through as fillies, and get turned back into guys when they come out. Some of the girls will go through as stallions.”
“Kinky. What brought this on?”
“Oh, that pot has been stewing for quite a while. Alice finally brought it to a boil when she announced that Black Thunderbolt had worked out the kinks in the Board Member to toad program, and she was going to volunteer several board members to test it if they didn’t agree.”
“I can just see Alice doing that,” I laughed. “Just a minute, she’s not part of your community, she’s part of the core Dodecahedron community.”
“True, but she still has a hand in senior trainer training. I gather that the Archons had been getting a bit of flack about our not conforming to the U.N. women’s rights decrees after they put teeth into them.”
“And the Archons are perfectly capable of taking a decree and carrying it to a bizarre conclusion. That ought to have some amazing effects, at least on the decibel level. I expect that they’ve wanted to clamp down on you people for a while.”
“Then why didn’t they?”
“Real politics doesn’t work that way. The popular fantasies are that we can get away with anything, but in reality, if we backed too many people into a corner, it would get real ugly. Expand that a bit, and there are several systems around this corner of the galaxy that are perfectly ready to blow the Dodecahedron out of space. They might not like to do it, but it’s not like it would affect our integrity as a species, and they don’t dither around with proven menaces to the peace of this section of the spiral arm. So far, they’re quite happy that we can act rationally, and our relations with Earth are part of their evaluation.”
Our next destination was a black hole. Why, you should ask, would we go look at a black hole? There shouldn’t be anything to see; that’s why they’re called black holes. The way the astrophysicists explained it, there has been an argument for over half a century as to whether they actually exist. It seems that Einstein had left a term out of his relativity theory; this caused mathematical singularities under extreme conditions. Putting the term in fixed the mathematics. Not so incidentally, it caused event horizons to vanish. If it was correct, it would also cause a large amount of theoretical physics, not to say theoretical physicists’ reputations, to go down a black hole, thus demonstrating that they did, in fact, exist.
Einstein had what appeared to be good reasons for leaving the term out; it wasn’t an oversight. The differences in predictions were small enough that they hadn’t been resolved yet. The Sirians said it would be better for our species development if we went, looked and came to our own conclusions, rather than having them give us the answer.
Getting there wasn’t much of a technical issue; our destination was about sixty light years out: two and a half days at our cruising speed. The trouble was politics; our destination was in another sector. There wasn’t anything we would call an interstellar government. Regions were defined either by the presence of a race with enough philosophic depth that they garnered universal respect, or by common agreements on protocols for communication and trade.
Our request to go there had been turned down. Their issue wasn’t technical; they understood the science issues and regarded gathering data before theorizing as good policy. They simply didn’t want us in their sector until we had gotten more of a track record, and they were sure we understood the ground rules.
Rescuing the Ixxiixi study party had turned the situation around. We were now invited to visit the senior species’ main system. It was a nice F5, with a correspondingly big habitable zone. They had a gas giant on the far end with two earth sized satellites; and another roughly earth sized planet on the inside of the zone, with a moon that was big enough to thin the atmosphere so it wasn’t a heat trap.
There were four local sentient species; one on the gas giant, one on the gas giant’s two moons, and one just emerging and one transplanted species on the inner world. The senior species, the Quzix, was on the gas giant; there was no way we were ever going to be able to meet them physically without major environmental containment. The species on the two moons, the Foma, was a hexapodal tool user. At a distance, it looked kind of like a centaur in the same way a cat looks like a horse.
The emerging species on the inner planet was vaguely snake-like, without hands. They weren’t going to develop the kind of manipulative technology we had, for sure. The transplanted species resembled whales and dolphins to a startling degree. I got the clear impression from the briefing that there was something we weren’t being told. The conclusion was fairly obvious. I didn’t want to go there unless invited.
We parked where System Control told us to, and deployed the gravitational lenses we use to recharge our energy supply.
The Foma sent a small observer team. Up close, they looked more like six legged flying squirrels than anything else. Six foot tall, six legged flying squirrels with fur that practically glowed and heads that swiveled through a full hemisphere. The pictures simply didn’t do them justice. On first sight, my only thought was to be happy they hadn’t brought Bullwinkle along.
We gave them the VIP tour of the ship. They ranged from impressed to amused, which I figured was ahead of the game. Except for the artificial gravity, surveillance system, drive and storage areas, everything we had was current Terran manufacture and consequently far behind what they were presumably doing. Or so I thought.
“Is that computer sentient?” asked the team leader.
“I don’t think so,” I replied.
“Wanna bet?” Michelle broke in.
“Not with you, dear. How would we prove it?” I shrugged. “I guess that means she is sentient.”
“I didn’t think it was possible,” the team leader said.
“If she is, the incarnating being has to be one of our own species with a penchant for doing the most bizarre things imaginable. She clearly doesn’t have a survival perspective, and doesn’t have much of a problem interacting with us.”
He looked worried. “What’s bugging you?”
“Is she alive? Can she reproduce?”
“I’d want my engineering team the first few times,” Michelle said. “They had to intervene several times while I was building myself. Multiple viewpoints are always useful.”
The answer didn’t seem to reassure him. It didn’t reassure me either.
We hit the agricultural area next to last. I thought their reaction to our labor policy might be interesting.
It was, but not in the way I had thought.
“We’re finding this methodology � quite disturbing,” the team leader began. “Is it policy among your people to impress members of your species to do low level tasks?”
“Actually, no it isn’t,” I responded. “It’s highly illegal, which doesn’t stop some people from trying it. These are here because they wanted to be here, doing this.”
The set of his shoulders expressed extreme skepticism.
“The proportion of our species that likes this lifestyle is, understandably, small. However, a very small proportion of a population of ten billion is still a lot of people. We don’t have any problem finding recruits.”
Another of their party commented: “Remember, we had a subspecies we used for heavy labor not too many lifetimes ago.”
“Point taken,” said the leader. “But we got rid of them when we developed suitable mechanical equipment.”
I decided to take the bull by the horns. “How do you handle lifetimes finishing off that karma, and early incarnations that need a highly structured environment?” I was expecting the translator to refuse, but it surprised me. The set of the leaders shoulders showed surprised comprehension.
“We’ve got several special subcultures that are suitable for them. You don’t?”
“We’ve got several, but only one interfaces properly with the rest of society. The other subcultures cause a great deal of trouble because they aren’t isolated well enough.”
“Using a carnivore,” he changed the subject by nodding at Lady Donna, “as a riding beast is certainly different. Are you doing it as a mark of status?”
I laughed. “No, not really. Lady Donna was one of our species. We changed her form as a punishment. She was in the habit of kidnapping people, torturing them to death, and then leaving the remains to sow terror in the general population and waste police resources in a vain attempt to find her.”
They looked sick. “We were unable to cure her without violating her psychological integrity. She’s calmed down significantly since she’s had this body. There are mechanical safeguards to keep her from harming anyone. Other than that, she’s still intelligent, she’s got most of her memories, and she can communicate on the net, although not vocally.”
We finished up in a conference room.� “This is certainly impressive,” the leader said. “I don’t think I’ve ever heard of anything like this for a first interstellar ship.”
“I know exactly what you mean. We did a lot of research into speculation for the last century and a half before designing her. Everyone seemed to assume that the first interstellar ships would be an outgrowth of interplanetary ships. The thing is, we don’t have any of those.”
“Oh? That’s rather � odd.”
“Well, yes. Our subculture developed very long range teleportation before we got more conventional vessels out to the nearest planet. It’s had the extremely unfortunate side effect of inhibiting development in the direction we were headed otherwise. Our interstellar drive is an outgrowth of the teleportation system. We sent out automated probes several decades ago and bumped into the Sirians. This craft is basically wrapping a habitat around a technology we already had.”
“It’s still impressive. The resource requirement to build it must have been staggering.”
“It certainly looks like it. Actually, it probably cost no more than 200 work years, most of which was design. Construction was completely automated, and done in a time warp. Michelle is a linear outgrowth of the construction computers. The ship basically built itself from plans.”
“You know,” the leader said, “we’ve got a problem you might be able to help us with.”
Why was I not surprised? “Oh?”
“The Sirians tell us you have something unusual in the way of scan equipment. You know about the emerging sentients on the inner habitable planet?”
“Yes, it was in the briefing. We’re naturally planning on staying away from them, unless you grant permission. What’s the problem?
“Well, there’s been a cultural shift that doesn’t seem to have any cause.”
“And you suspect cultural contamination.” I paused for a moment. “Are you certain that there isn’t a highly charismatic prophet that’s tuned in to another culture somewhere else?”
“We don’t think so, but it bears checking.”
“So you’d like us to scan and see if there’s anyone there who shouldn’t be?”
“Exactly. How long will it take?”
“Darned if I know. Michelle?” I said to the empty air.
“Probably several hours if I have to look under every rock,” Michelle answered. “Want me to get started?”
“Would you, please.”
“Running,” she said. A holographic display of the inner planet sprung up in the middle of the room. Three red splotches showed immediately. A minute later, a fourth one was added.
“That one is ours,” he said, pointing at the third splotch.
“I thought so,” Michelle said. “They look like you, and they’ve got the same genetic signature. They don’t seem to be spending much effort on advanced camouflage, either.”
“No real reason to, I suppose,” I said. “If the natives don’t spot it, it’s good enough. Why waste resources?”
“Exactly,” said the leader. “What about the other three?”
“This one,” Michelle highlighted the central splotch, “is our old friends, the Slissi. They seem to have stealthed their base very thoroughly. I’d never have spotted it if they hadn’t left skin scrapings outside of their area.” She put a picture up.
“This one,” she highlighted the other early splotch, “is another of our old friends.” She put a picture up. “And I don’t have any record of the fourth one.” She put another picture up. The observer team looked startled. “I take it you know them,” she said.
“Only from the data base. I’ve never met one personally.”
“Well, let’s put our big-eyed friends into the picture,” I said. “I doubt they’ve been meddling intentionally. The team in our system is a bunch of arrogant bastards that think their species is the only one that’s important. Their data collection methods leave a lot to be desired, and so does their security. There’ve been pictures of them all over our communications media for a good part of a century. Mostly faked, fortunately.”
I paused a moment. “Michelle, can you break into their communication net?”
“Done.” A picture of one of them appeared on a wall screen. He looked at us in surprise.
“What is going on here?”
“I’m Chrissie, captain of the Loaded Die, Dodecahedron registry. Our hosts are not happy to see you here.”
“This is supposed to mean something to me?”
“Only that either you’ve not been paying attention to data from your team in my system, or they haven’t been reporting the real situation.”
“I’ve never heard of your species.”
“Pity. We’ve got the capability of booting you out of the system if you don’t behave. Our hosts are going to make a decision shortly whether they want to let you stay. If they do, you’d better clean up your act.”
“Why should I think you could follow up on that threat?”
“Let me ask you one. How many observer teams are on that planet?”
“Just us.”
“Right. You missed the other three. It took us about five seconds to find all four of you, from our ship on the other side of the gas giant. You might also contemplate the ease with which we broke into your communication system, and the difficulty you’re having finding out how.”
He looked at his communicator. “I see.”
“I’m sure you do.” I broke the link.
“Is that going to take care of them?” the leader asked.
“Probably not. Dodecahedron security keeps close tabs on their team in our system, and arranges occasional demonstrations so they don’t forget.”
“Well,” the team leader said. “That’s one started. What about the other two?”
“We don’t have translator programs for them.”
“We do.”
“If you’d give Michelle access, she can start integrating them into our translators.” He talked on his phone for a moment.
I stared at the snakes for a moment. “I think I recognize one of those snakes. If I do, either Ester or Terry can talk to them. They’ve got an oddball language of convenience. I’ll be able to understand, but I never practiced talking. The other species doesn’t look like an immediate problem. They seem to be keeping hidden and just studying.”
“The Duta are definitely a problem. They’re a level three aggressive that’s trying to build a trading empire. I expect they’re here looking to see if there’s enough resources to risk irritating us exploiting them.”
Just then, Michelle broke in. “I’ve got the language programs for those three races integrated.”
“Thank you. That was a quick job.”
“Think nothing of it. I think I need a vacation.” I blew her a raspberry, and she laughed.
“Break into number 4, will you?”
“Done.” Another image appeared on the wall. He looked like an erect lizard: two legs, two arms, head, tail, and iridescent scales. At the moment, he was staring in surprise at something off to the side. If that was his communicator, surprise was indicated.
“Who are you?” Some questions seem to be standard, the universe over.
“Chrissie, captain of The Loaded Die, Dodecahedron registry. Just a friendly word of advice. There are no exploitable resources in this system.”
“Oh? That’s not what our investigation shows.”
“Exploitable by you, at any rate. The Quzix and Foma will not permit it. Publicizing unavailable resources could lead to massive waste of effort that could be put to more profitable use.”
“And why are you concerned? I would think the Foma would be delivering this message � if they could find the guts somewhere.”
“I happened to be in the vicinity, on the other side of the gas giant, for other reasons. They asked me to check out some anomalies on the planet. For the record, it took us about five seconds to locate you. You needn’t bother trying to find out how we’re tapping your communicator. It would be a waste of resources you could better spend packing.”
“And just why should we pack?”
“I don’t really think you’re that interested in pure knowledge � which is all you’ll be allowed to collect here. Especially when you could be establishing trade relationships with us.” The switch in his reaction was almost comical. Fortunately, the translator included body language as well as verbal, or I would have burst out laughing.
He recovered nicely. “Your species doesn’t seem to be in my data base.”
“Check under level 3 aggressive closed systems in the Sirian sector.”
He paused a moment. “You’re that species! I’ve been ignoring the bulletins.”
“Probably reasonable. I doubt they mentioned we’d be opening up for trade.”
“They didn’t. What’s the protocol?”
“Assuming our hosts will let you, drop out here and we’ll get acquainted. We’ll be here for a couple of weeks. They’re still making up their minds whether they want us in their sector.”
“Well, folks, we’re going to be here for a couple of weeks before heading out to our next stop. Our hosts have graciously offered us the freedom of their port area. I’m going to be very cautious about accepting. They’re level 5 aggressive, and I don’t want any incidents like we had on Sirius. They don’t either, so we’ve got a consolation prize.”
“Anyone who wants to can do a campout on the inner planet. That’s on one of the continents that the local sentient race hasn’t gotten to yet, of course. Considering the number of cases of third degree sunburn and melanoma we had last time, if you go, you’ll get the full environmental genetic upgrade. Remember that it makes you ineligible for any variety of military service when we get back, although you’ll find yourself in great demand for search and rescue teams, if that interests you.”
The engineering crew set up our on-site study center quickly. It hadn’t really been intended for a vacation spot, but then, all of the life sciences people wanted down there so they could do their studying. We added camping equipment by the side for the vacationers. Then we added more facilities for the Duta and the Foma that came along.� By the end of the day, we had a nice little mixed species village nestled on the side of a hill.
Several of the biologists had taken to the air immediately, trying to do a large animal survey. We’d rigged up a motorized version of the wings for them that left their hands free. They were doing long, lazy spirals, looking for all the world like sea gulls at a distance. They’d spotted a number of herds of herbivores, none of which seemed to pose a threat. They hadn’t seen any carnivores yet, but that didn’t mean they weren’t there. The day was still young.
Lady Donna was in her element. I gave her leave to hunt anything she wanted as long as she was back by nightfall, and didn’t exceed her bag limit. The biologists were beginning to hit their stride on the second day when it happened.
<Help!> That had to be Lady Donna. It was. Being hooked directly into the computer was sure handy. I found her and looked. A group of the herbivores had her surrounded and was closing in for the kill. She’d dropped the cat pose, and was using everything she knew to try to break through without exposing her belly to those horns. They kept shifting position to cover the holes she was trying to force in their ring.
<Michelle. Teleport her out of there now,> I said. She vanished to appear just outside the circle, spun around and made a tan streak for home. She skidded to a stop just outside the village, and then ambled on in as if nothing had happened.
<Donna,> I asked. <What’s the likelihood that they’re sentient?>
<If they aren’t, I’d hate to see the predator they evolved that defense for. Those critters are tough.>
<I’ll have the biologists keep an eye out. We’re on this continent because we didn’t think there was one. Meanwhile, if you want to try one of the other species of herbivore, go ahead. Just keep your eye out for any odd behavior.>
She washed a paw and looked at it critically. <I think I’ll just do that little thing.> She stretched and padded off in another direction.
Things settled down. The herbivores turned out to be sentient. We cracked their language and discovered that we had done no damage. We were far enough outside of their frame of reference that it was unlikely we’d be remembered for long.
Unfortunately, the Slissi had left a lasting impression. We sent them packing and went out to look at the black hole while the situation developed. The astrophysicists made their measurements and we came back. They were now discussing the results and designing more measurements.
The furor hadn’t died down. The lack of hands looked like it was going to become a racial inferiority complex, or some such thing. The Quzix were having a classic case of indecision. They felt it was partially their fault for not keeping a better eye on things, and wanted to do something. Unfortunately, they couldn’t come up with anything feasible. I figured we’d better do some research before I poked my nose into it.
Stephen, the head of the language team; Black ThunderBolt, the Dodecahedron’s first and still best geneticist; and Donna Yang, the head of Cultural Anthropology, joined me for the meeting.
“Well, guys, I expect you know we’ve got a problem.”
“I assume you want to help the Quzix with the mess the Slissi left behind,” said the ThunderBolt, “but I don’t see where we come into it. Or at least I don’t see where Steve and Donna come into it. I assume you want me to provide them with hands.”
“Exactly. At least provide them with the option. And I don’t know the design specs yet � the Quzix are likely to want them to have a vote rather than just having us dictate the result.”
“Designing it is going to be a lot of work. Especially the brain sections. I’m going to need test subjects.”
“Which means an ethics committee. The Quzix won’t let us get by without one. Well, get started on the preliminary work, and I’ll talk to them about it.”
“That seems reasonable,” added Steve, “but why am I here?”
“The Quzix want to present both sides, and they don’t have any species that can talk about the wonders of a life without hands, and sound believable.”
“I didn’t think we wanted to involve the herbivores in anything.”
“We don’t. I’m thinking of the whales and dolphins.”
Both Steve and the ThunderBolt looked surprised. Donna looked inscrutable. “The briefing said they were sentient, and had been transplanted here from somewhere else,” said the ThunderBolt. “You don’t suppose?”
“No, I don’t have to suppose. They were transplanted from Earth.”
They looked shocked.
“We need to do something.” Donna got it out first.
“Well, maybe,” I said. “There’s a boatload of interspecies karma to be paid back, and we may wind up doing some of it ourselves. However, that’s tomorrow’s problem. Today’s problem is that they are the ideal spokespeople, assuming they want to do it. We just don’t have any language programs. Neither does anyone else.”
“And this whole thing is going to have to be presented in a way that’s healing for the species,” said Donna thoughtfully. “We’re going to need to get into their skins. I’ll get a team on it right away.”
“We’re also going to have to make the ThunderBolt’s test subjects fit in with us,” I said.
“Right!” Donna said. “Actually, that meshes with the cultural study. They can help us a lot by being available to answer questions.” She paused a moment. “What do we do for habitat? We can’t just put them in a lab cage.”
Black Thunderbolt groaned. “I’ll add providing them with insulation to my list. Then they should be able to live with us.”
“That’s going to take a lot of education for them to do that.” Donna looked happy. The cross-species cultural anthropology was going to make a lot of careers, I could just tell.
“This is going to take lots of computer time,” Steve said. “For all of us. Do we have enough?”
“I’ve already asked Michelle to add more capacity. Don’t worry about it; it’ll be there when you need it.”
“I think that wraps it up, guys.” They nodded at me.
“Soonest begun, and all that.” Steve headed for the door with Donna just behind. The ThunderBolt vanished.
At the next meeting, I made my suggestions. The notion that we could actually provide them with arms came as a pleasant surprise. We discussed ways and means. The Quzix turned out to be more flexible than I had anticipated with respect to collecting test subjects. Since informed consent was impossible before collecting them, they told us to grab several specimens that were about to die accidental deaths, and make do.
Our five subjects popped into existence in midair in the habitat we had prepared for them. After a moment of disorientation, they flew into the trees we had put there, and wrapped themselves around limbs as if they were trying to keep them from escaping. Having five winged snakes staring at you is a bit disconcerting, to say the least. Since they weren’t saying anything, I decided to break the ice.
“I take it you’re wondering what happened?” The translator converted my words to hisses.
One of them hissed back. “Yes. An explanation would be appreciated.”
“First off, you are still alive, although you are very far away from where you almost died. The reason you’re here is that the Slissi seem to have convinced you that hands are better than wings. They shouldn’t have done that.” More hissing. Eventually they quieted down again.
“We’re not gods. You can think of us as elder siblings; we know more and can do more, but that doesn’t make us gods. Our job is to give you hands if you want them.” Even more hissing.
“As I said, we are not gods. A god could give you hands just by thinking about it. We have to think, consider, design, try it out and correct mistakes. Each of you was heard to express a sincere desire to have hands before you committed the acts that would have caused your deaths. You’ve got your wish; you will have some variety of hands. I will guarantee you that if our workers get it right the first time, it will be a miracle.”
More hissing.
“Unfortunately, I can’t tell you how this will be done.” Donna had given me an example. “Think of a funeral cairn. There are stones on the inside you can’t see that support the stones on the outside you can see. Then think of a cairn that would be built over many lifetimes.”
More hissing. They got the example.
“You’re welcome to live among us. In fact, we think this is a good idea. However, our living quarters are as cold as the slopes of a mountain, and as dim as the twilight before a moonless night. We will fix that so you will be comfortable with us, but again, it’s going to take time. Meanwhile, this habitat is yours, and will remain yours.” More hissing. We left to let them settle in.
There are a number of places that can be put in a time warp. The food storage lockers are obviously one. The Gnrlx habitat was another. Since we decided to get things done fast, we kept them on speeded up time while the geneticists worked on the environmental modifications and the cross-cultural xenologists worked on their minds.
The Quzix decided that they wanted to try to clean up the mess, and we were nominated as the actors in the drama. The anthropologists unanimously declined the honor; on the not unreasonable basis that they would be lynched on return if they did what we asked. Or whatever the academic equivalent of lynching was, which I gathered was not preferable to the real thing.
They’d been staging religious ceremonies to ask the gods to give them arms. So far, the gods had declined to answer. We decided to take the opportunity to respond.
Which is why I was nervously waiting my cue to play god. I suppose the ritual looked awesome to them. To me, it was mostly a clearing in a swamp, surrounded by large, moss-covered trees and festooned with limbless, winged snakes. The bang, thump and hiss sounded exactly like an old-fashioned steam heating system. Fortunately, the translator made sense of it for us.
Eventually the hiss and clank stopped with an air of anticipation. A fuzzy blue ball of light suddenly appeared in the exact center of the clearing. We’d chosen the image as the thing they’d be least likely to anthropomorphize (snakemorphize? Whatever). The sight was met with dead silence, punctuated by several of the snakes falling off their trees into the swamp in a dead faint. The speech began, with more hissing. The music makers mercifully decided not to contribute their bang, thump and clang.
“Many years ago, Spirit decided to explore what life would be like as winged snakes. So the immortal spirit became mortal, and contributed intelligence to what had been unintelligent animals. This is not, I believe, news to you. What will be news is that Spirit also decided to find out what life would be like in many other forms, in many other places. Yours is one of many. Spirit is always looking to find something new, different, interesting. None of these is better, none is worse. They are simply different.”
“Not too long ago, another form came among you and convinced some of you that you needed hands, and since you lacked hands, you were somehow inferior. This is swamp rot. It is quite true that your life as a species with hands would be very different from your life as a species without hands. Not better. Not worse. Simply different.”
“You’ve asked your gods to give you hands. Your gods have been silent. We are not your gods; we are simply another form of intelligence. We’re not showing you our true form, so that you can’t think that it is somehow special. It isn’t. We occasionally experiment with changing it, just to see what it would be like.”
“Your gods do not care. You can ask them forever, and they will not answer you, because you are as they created you, and they see no need for you to change. If they did, they would have done it, without all of this fuss and bother. The gods do what they do.”
“We can give you hands. Think it over. Talk it over and come back here in a year’s time and give us your decision. If you want, you will have both hands and wings. The change won’t be easy. As I said, we are not gods. We cannot suddenly make hands appear, with full knowledge of how to use them. We can plant a seed in you, and in your children, and they will grow in about a season.”
“Think. Talk. Come back in a year.”
The blue ball of light vanished.