Flight of the Maita Supercollection 3: Solving Galactic Problems Collector's Edition (137 page)

"That isn't
important."

Thing squeezed
with a tentacle very slightly to indicate it knew what he was
doing.

"Kemat was
dickering with a fellow about some Krish oil. The fellow was a
master at deception. I could see such was the truth with my own
talent, but I am limited to knowing THAT a person will tend to lie.
My ability doesn't always extend to knowing WHEN a person is
lying.

"Zonn would, at
times, make certain motions at this seller of oils, which I didn't
understand. Lape whispered to me that it was telling Kemat when the
Krish oil salesman was lying. Zonn is never mistaken about that. It
is a talent that one sees in some domestic pets to a minor extent,
but which is strong in Zonn.

"The man was
telling about how his mate was ill and under a physician's care and
how his two children had no food or clothes to keep them from the
cold. I was ready to offer what poor possessions I hold to those
unfortunate tykes, particularly the little girl whose fingers were
frostbitten.

"Zonn was not
fooled. It stood on the ends of its ... those things ... and made
sounds and actually spat at him. Kemat declared the fellow a liar
and a particularly bad one, though I thought he was VERY good and
we turned to leave. The fellow stopped us to argue and Kemat was
able to get a much better price than the market would seem to
allow.

"You can easily
test it. Make a little lie or false boast as we are talking and
watch Zonn. Make a big one – or I will. It can't understand words
though it understands much more than mere conversation can convey.
You'll see!"

"We are here to
see about getting your friends out," Mujat said, cutting his eyes
to look sideways at Thing. "I have to get home. I haven't had my
breakfast yet."

Thing shook a
tentacle at him. Seemum looked cagey and said, "Yes. We'll get them
out for you if you will take responsibility for them.

"I don't like
this warm weather, do you?"

Thing shook a
tentacle at him so the scribe said, "I don't have any paper!" and
got a tentacle shaken at himself, which seemed to tickle him. He
was about to say something else when Z winked at Seemum and said,
"Lape is my little brother, you know."

Thing started
banging him over the head with a tentacle, which got everyone to
laughing. Z made a statement that Lape and Kemat were really from
the city, but only from years ago and that, so far as he had heard,
it had been years since they had been home. They both tended to
have short tempers in some ways and were easy to insult or to
imagine they were insulted. They would become very stubborn in
those situations.

Thing's floater
in the cart was sending the statement directly to them, as it had
been doing since they arrived, so they would know how to act.

Seemum had them
brought in and the first thing Kit said was, "And who is watching
my boat!?"

Thing sprung to
climb all over Tab, then Kit, then Tab again.

"You said you
would return in a certain time and you did not," Z said calmly. "I
came looking for you. The boat is quite safe."

"Yes, well
thank you, Larj," Tab said. "These people seem to assume people are
liars if they don't say exactly the words they want to hear!"

"They're simply
doing their job," Z replied, unperturbed. "If you simply told them
the truth they wouldn't bother you."

"We did tell
them the truth!" Kit cried. "They said we were lying! They claimed
we had to be lying because we didn't really know anything about
Royal City and we said we were born here! This isn't anything like
the place we knew more than ten or twelve years ago! There was
nothing here then but a farming town !"

"Well, it was
more than sixteen years ago, but that is truth!" Tab said. "Let me
tell you of an experiment with little Zonn, here. It isn't possible
for us or for anyone else to lie around it. If you lie, it...."

"I showed them,
Kemat," Z interrupted. "You aren't remembering the way it actually
happened. They asked you where you were from AS A RESIDENT, not
where you were born. You should be more careful about such things.
You often take offense where none was intended."

"Take offense?"
he cried. "What are you talking about? Since when are there people
who can hold you against your will because of something so silly?
What's going on in this place? Just who are these people in the
stupid clothes? Where is it written they can molest citizens?"

"Royal City has
grown," Z chided, unruffled. "You have been to small town, village
and city. Where is the place you find crime? In which village can
you be robbed of your savings in broad daylight?

"No. That is a
problem of the larger cities. I long prophesied some king would
find himself in a position where he would have to form an
independent guard corps. The soldiers are too often corrupt. It
must be removed from them. This is something the nature of the Saj
makes inevitable."

"You know, not
only are you a good storyteller, you're smart!" Mujat said. "That's
precisely what happened. The palace soldiers were the criminals
themselves. No one could do anything about it until King Narum
decreed the police force and decreed that even the palace guard
were subject to investigation and arrest and he wouldn't lift an
eyebrow to help any convicted of a crime! He even decreed the
police and soldiers were to be held to an even higher standard than
the regular citizen."

"You see? It
had to be," Z said. "Mujat, my friend, could you tell me where I
might find accommodation for one of rather modest means? Perhaps a
place where the, er – scenery – isn't, shall we say, dreary?"

"Say!" Mujat
exclaimed. "Tell Captain Seemum about that broa ... charming lady.
You know."

Z had to make
up a couple more silly stories about supposed seductions where his
sensitivities weren't so terribly bruised by an insensitive
delightful feminine love child. He could combine the talents of
Larj with his own flair for fantasy and stories he'd heard over the
years and could fascinate even the robots. The talent for
storytelling Larj had possessed was a truly great one. The moves
and intonations of Himl added to the effect. He could see Thing
seething, knowing this was all to bait it. It felt good to be able
to do that to Thing, who usually was able to get the upper hand in
those games.

Kit suggested
they all go to the boat for the night and return the following day
with samples for trade. Everyone agreed that such an idea was
probably a good one, Z somewhat reluctantly. He would much prefer
some other company than a fisherman and a buyer, but it WAS only
for one more night.

They walked
along the road toward the river and to the boat Maita had secreted
among the overhanging trees not far from the docks. It had a shock
beam and infrasonics to discourage anyone from bothering the
vessel. This was an age where there was some residual fear of black
magic so that wouldn't be too remarkable.

The boat was
comfortable and was made along the lines of the commercial craft in
the area. It was stained on the bottom and there were some
barnacle-like deposits at the waterline to simulate its having been
in the salt oceans for some time. As soon as they were aboard and
knew definitely that they were secure Z asked what Tab and Kit had
learned.

"It's obviously
coming from that palace, which my built-ins say is the energy
source. I'd say it's built around a spaceship or something such,"
Kit said. "We can't see what the object might be. The people are
being helped in a lot of ways, but this is far more than they could
hope to assimilate safely. It could destroy them."

"There are
courts, which they can handle. There are police, which they can
handle," Tab said. "There are mining methods which they can't.
There are refineries here turning out high carbon steel and alloys.
Those bars aren't your typical cast iron. There's electricity a
good four hundred years too early and a crude form of radio that's
being yanked ahead at a rate beyond possible comprehension to them.
They’ve never had a vacuum tube, yet they're into transistors and
silicon chips. There isn't one person in the native population who
can understand the theories on which the theories are based to form
the theories that will result in any of it!"

"The math is
all there, but no one knows how it got there," Kit continued. "It's
all explained in very clear, concise terms, mathematically, but no
one knows what the MATH means or where it came from. These people
are already becoming so confused they may never recover. We may be
too late already – and all this started sixteen years ago. That
beautiful city of carved marble was built in sixteen damned years!
It should take these people fifty years to carve the marble for the
palace alone! There's paper damned money! People poured in for
several years and this sudden city in the middle of nowhere,
lacking any logic for even existing, will have a million people in
four more years – and that assuming all immigration stops right
now."

"From what I
heard and T Six detected they're drilling out there with a
corundum-sided laser drill," Kit said. "The purpose? Geothermal
steam to power a generator! Great colliding galaxies! They have
COMPRESSION IGNITED FUEL INJECTED locomotives! There isn't one
person on this planet other than the ones who built the damned
things who has any conception of how they work. They have a damned
OIL WELL out there to get the fuel and a REFINERY! Thing, Z, these
aren't bad people, but they're being turned into another bunch of
Immins as certainly as I'm sitting here!"

"We have to get
into that palace," Z said. "My character resulted from some bandits
attacking and killing a defenseless old man within sight of town.
You saw all of that."

[ What you
didn't see, Z, was that those bandits actually WERE attacked by
other bandits after you left. We have to stop this! We're lucky
it's all confined to this one city. If it begins to spread,
well.... ]

*I can't handle
this! Before any of this can be allowed to be exported we will have
to ... stop it. There are three quarters of a million people in
that city now. I like Mujat and even Seemum. Larj was very
likeable. I can't handle something like this damned bullshit! I
don't want this kind of responsibility. Wait until you see the rugs
and tapestries these people weave! They're on a par with Parf in
that art form, believe it or not!*

[ It's a matter
of one city to save a world. I couldn't make that decision, either.
]

"Then we have
to solve the problem here without resorting to that," Z said. "I
agree. I couldn't be a part of anything like that. They could turn
into something like the Immins, but they aren't now!"

"Well, just
maybe an exceptionally skilled storyteller with a flair for the
bawdy, if only by innuendo, can get us into the palace," Tab
said.

It showed how
truly they all were concerned that Thing nor any of the others
ragged Z for the stories.

Strange
Cargo

[ How odd!
]

"What?" Z
asked.

The four were
on their way back toward Royal City with a cart filled with various
trade items the ships could supply quickly in large enough
quantities that Kit and Tab would be accepted as bona fide traders.
They had to guess at what might strike the fancy of the
otherworlders they were sure were at the palace, but decided to
just let it be known they could get any number of things. If they
could get some definite idea of what the aliens needed they could
extrapolate what they were doing here, hopefully. There had to be
some reason anyone would take the chance of angering Emperor Maita
on a restricted world and that reason should become apparent
quickly enough.

[ I find it
very odd there are no reports whatever of strange beings here. I
don't know what it could mean. If there are any aliens other than
ourselves here – and there are and have been for at least sixteen
years – I'm sure someone would have seen them and remarked on them.
]

"I've been
thinking a lot about that point," Kit answered. "Terrans, Bentans
and a few others could pass for these people so long as no one saw
them from up close. Z would look like one of the ones who're less
hairy than the norm and a Bentan could pass for a fat, much less
hairy rather coarse one with bad color."

"The hair and
color are too easy to add," Tab pointed out. "They'd have to be
from a culture with technology that would mean they wouldn't do
what they're doing to this culture to copy the smell and such,
though. If they could manage to stay far enough away or maybe to
always be around other strong odors they could pull it off."

[ And keep it
up for sixteen years while steering the entire culture? I find it
hard to believe! ]

"So do I, but
someone's obviously doing it," Z agreed. "What races could it be?
Maybe we can work backwards. Bentans would do this and Jornians
would. That's something to consider.

"It's not
Terrans because they aren't out here.

"If we can
decide who are here we might be able to figure what they're doing.
There aren't blood diamonds of psiltripium on this world. Nothing
else is rare enough to appeal much to anyone. Tapestries and rugs
Maita mentioned, if they're really that good, would be worth it,
but it wouldn't take ten lousy minutes for them to be identified
simply because art on that scale is unique. This wouldn't be the
place they'd be if it was art of any kind.

"The Acnians
could do it using hypnosis, but they wouldn't. None of the
reptilian races or the amphibians could hope to pull it off. The
Cheeth wouldn't do it and the Lornans aren't out here.

"I'd say
Bentans or Jornians – but WHY? And how are they staying
disguised?