Minor Complications

14

Minor Complications

    “How did you get this frequency?” demanded BrTl, neck-hair bristling.

    “You gave it to me, Lieutenant,” replied Full Surgeon Tr’pplghnn’tia politely.

    “Uh—oh. So I did,” he recollected. His neck-hair relaxed and got on with its filtering job. “You and the Full College of Full Surgeons. So what’s up? –Bones of Brqa, is she all right?”

    “Oh, perfectly. Though a fresh supply of fruits would be most welcome,” she said with a faint tinkle. “In particular those delicious mn-mn fruit.”

    “Huh? Oh: the new ones with the nice untranslatable-noise colour on one side,” he agreed. “Unfortunately I’m officially on Urrgaynia II. True, it’s Urrgaynia I that’s the swirling cloud of magma-pit-temperature gas,” he noted politely, “but nevertheless the slightly-more-than-vacuum-frozen atmosphere of Urrgaynia II doesn’t actually encourage the growth of those c-based, o-breather whatever-they-ares, either.”

    “Partial o-breather; c-based plant Bio is actually quite—”

    “No, it isn’t, Full Surgeon,” noted BrTl through his impressive teeth. “What’s UP?”

    “A—a slight situation has arisen here,” she said feebly.

    BrTl breathed heavily. So heavily that his neck-hair had trouble filtering even though he was on the ship. “All right, I’ll go into hyper-hop. …There. Go on, spell it out. It’s impossible to eavesdrop on a hyper-hop loop.”

    “Ye-es... Shall we just say that Captain Smt Wong”—BrTl flinched even though Jhl was actually supposed to be in the plasmo-blasted nursing-home; though of course at this moment, or at what passed for this moment, given the hyper-hop loop, he wasn’t supposed to be him, he was supposed to be Lieutenant BrJk—“um, that the Captain’s got unexpected visitors.”

    “Put ’em down your recycler,” he advised in a bored voice,

    The Friyrian produced what for a Friyrian was definitely a gulp. “We couldn’t possibly!”

    “They’re not elderly Mklontians, are they?”

    “What? No,” she said dazedly. “They’re humanoids.”

    “They’ll fit, then,” said BrTl in a bored voice.

    “Lieutenant, you don’t understand!” she cried. “They’re Captain Smt Wong’s relatives!”

    For a moment the hyper-hop loop communicated only silence.

    “I see,” he said slowly. “Captain Smt Wong’s been visited by some relatives of Captain Smt Wong’s. I won’t ask how they got in— Asteroids of Hhum, it’s not Mum, is it?” he croaked.

    “Er... There is one adult female. Her personal name is R’shn.”

    “Eh?"

    “She’s a young female, Lieutenant. Personal name R’shn. She said she knows you.”

    “There were a lot of them,” he said uneasily.

    “I see. Um, she has a baby.” There was a pause: the connection didn’t break but BrTl could sense Tr’pplghnn’tia was no longer communicating. Then she said: “A young one. She says you and Slp-Og V. Trff both admired it over the Galaxy Day holiday.”

    Ignoring the “admired it” bit, BrTl said slowly: “A young one… Oh! The pup! Oh, yes. It did have a—a being that was suckling it.”

    “Its mother.” She sent a picture reminding him of mammalian humanoid reproduction.

    “Don’t let’s go into that,” he groaned. “I remember. What did you say its name was?”

    “R’shn.”

    “The mother?” he said cautiously.

    “Yes,” agreed the Friyrian grimly. If she hadn’t been such a polite being you’d have sworn she was saying it through her teeth.

    “And—uh—are there more, as well as the pup?”

    “Yes. One other: a young one. I don’t think you’d think of him as a pup, Lieutenant. He’s a young male, about half-grown, I suppose. His name is G’gg.”

    There was a blank silence.

    “He and R’shn are cognates,” she said desperately,

    He coughed. “If you don’t fancy the recycler, what about your experimental section?”

    “That is against our Code of Ethics!” shouted the Full Surgeon, entirely forgetting herself.

    “Eh?”

    The Full Surgeon took a deep breath. “Despite the myth prevalent amongst spacers, Lieutenant, the Full College of Full Surgeons does have a strict code of ethics which incorporates a restatement and reinforcement of the IG Inalienable Being-Rights—”

    “Yes, well, let’s drop the myths, shall we?” he said cordially.

    After a split-second pause the Full Surgeon said very angrily indeed: “That is not in the least amusing, Lieutenant!”

    “Amongst spacers it’s generally not considered to be all that amusing, either. ’Specially not amongst those spacers whose ship-companions have mysteriously disappeared into that non-existent experi—”

    “ARE YOU COMING OR NOT?” she screeched.

    Groaning, BrTl admitted: “I suppose I’d better. Though if you and the Full College can't think of a solution, I dunno what I can do. Um—Trff isn’t here, so I can’t bring it.”

    “Yes, it is, BrTl,” it said in surprise.

    “NOT ON URRGAYNIA II!” he bellowed.

    “In terms of the commonly perceived space-time continuum, that’s true. Though this it-being is on its way and in fact— It’ll meet you-it on Mullgon’ya, Full Surgeon,” it said hurriedly.

    “Thank you so much, Slp-Og V. Trff,” said the Full Surgeon, not hiding her huge relief. “I would have contacted you directly, but I didn’t realise it was possible on this frequency.”

    “It isn’t,” said Trff.

    “But—”

    “Don’t ask,” groaned BrTl

    “Oh. Very well,” she said with an uncertain tinkle. “I shall see you very soon, shall I?”

    “In terms of the commonly perceived—”

    “DON’T!” he roared.

    “Immediately,” Trff admitted. “BrTl will use the hyper-hop, and this it-being will—”

    “Hitch a ride,” he groaned.

    “That isn’t precisely— Um, yes. All right. It’ll hitch a ride, Full Surgeon."

    “Yes. Thank you,” she said limply.

    BrTl broke the connection immediately.

    “Are we here, or not?” he demanded grimly.

    “It and you-it are at this point of the hyper-hop loop, certainly,” it agreed courteously.

    “Don’t give me that!” BrTl looked cautiously round him at the arid h-breather Mullgon’yan plain. “All these Class 398 planets look alike,” he sighed.

    “Yes. –Fl’Oo-ooueroii wants to come with us,” Trff noted, adjusting its FW pack.

    Grimly BrTl replied: “Fl’Mnn-nnlluyii: you’ve de-Fl’Oo-ooueroii-ed it. If you-it remembers?”

    “Oh, yes. It wants to come with us,” the engineering brain repeated.

    BrTl took a terrible breath. “Trff— Sorry,” he said sheepishly as the Ju’ukrterian picked itself up quite some way from where it had been a split second before.

    “Don’t mention it!” it hooted, dusting the arid plain of Mullgon’ya off its fluff.

    BrTl eyed it uneasily. “Yeah. Uh—what I was gonna say is, is it safe to let it?”

    “The IG M.C. is entirely incapable of penetrating the shield the Full Surgeons routinely maintain around Mullgon’ya, if that’s what’s worrying you-it.”

    “Worrying me?” said BrTl in a high, silly voice. “What a funny idea! Me, worried about a little thing like being chucked head-first down a Vvlvanian magma pit with a rr’trr tied to my tail by the IG Minerals Commission? Never!”

    “It thought it was a brace of rr’trrs?” it replied smoothly.

    “One would do,” he noted. The Ju’ukrterian merely emanated mild expectation so he admitted weakly: “Oh, well, in that case, I suppose it doesn’t matter who it thinks it is. We might as well let it— come. Don’t DO that sort of thing!” he added irritably as the bright blue Flppu, in its FW pack, bounced out of the ship’s hatch. CLOSE! he sent, but too late, Trff already had.

    “Greetings, Great It-Being!” squeaked the Flppu. “–Look at me, Great BrJk, I’m wearing an FW pack! Isn’t this fun?” It bobbed up and down a few times.

    Hastily BrTl shot out a pseudopod and grabbed it before it could bob itself off into space: the un-meteo-ed parts of Mullgon’ya were slightly less than Friyrian grav, which was what constituted normal to a Flppu. “I don’t suppose,” he said heavily to Trff, “you could make it call me BrTl or even Great BrTl? Just temporarily?"

    “Of course it could.”

    “THEN DO IT!”

    The engineering brain must have got the point because the Flppu then said: “Ooh, isn’t this planet bouncy, Great BrTl?”

    BrTl merely took a few deep breaths of sustaining h-atmosphere and said: “This way.”

    ... “Great steaming Vvlvanian magma pits, what have you done to them?” he choked, looking down at the two still forms in the narrow humanoid-type beds.

    Full Surgeon Tr’pplghnn’tia bounced R’shn’s baby on her thin hip. “What a pretty girl, then! What a pretty girl! –They’re perfectly all right, Lieutenant.”

    “That isn’t what I asked.”

    Tr’pplghnn’tia eyed Trff uneasily as the Ju’ukrterian laid a couple of tentacles delicately on R’shn’s and G’gg’s heads. “Very little,” she said in a weak voice.

    “She-it had removed all memory of their trip here and their reason for being here, but it’s put it back,” reported Trff.

    Tr’pplghnn’tia’s neck-gills opened and closed once.

    “Hah, hah,” noted BrTl politely.

    “She-it’s removed something from this one’s blood, too. Some beings. –Is that blood?” it said.

    Tr’pplghnn’tia nodded. “Yes. Humanoid blood, type—”

    “We don’t need to know,” sighed BrTl. “Removed what beings?” he added to Trff, though without much hope.

    “In terms of mammalian humanoid existence, they’d be classed as a disease,” it replied dubiously.

    “Yes,” said the Full Surgeon. “Very rare indeed. This being would have died of it in less than two IG years.”

    “Would that be bad?” asked BrTl politely.

    “It would in this being’s eyes, and very bad for this offspring,” she said, jigging the pup on her hip. “That’s a good girl! That’s a good girl!” she cooed.

    “She sounds just like Mum,” said BrTl in bewilderment.

    “Oh, yes. It thought that sound reminded it of some being,” Trff replied vaguely, again applying the tentacles.

    “What now?” said BrTl with foreboding.

    “This one— Is this the male?” it asked.

    Tr’pplghnn’tia nodded mutely, looking stunned. Not used to the engineering mind, noted BrTl with silent glee.

    “This male,” continued the engineering mind smoothly: “is merely asleep. He-it’s got some latent mind-powers, which she-it’d put to sleep, too. But it’s woken them up.”

    “Chief Engineer, they were merely latent, and this being might never have discovered he could make use of them!”

    “He-it’s Jhl’s cognate, and she-it enjoys using her-its, so the it-being thought this one might, too.”

    “This individual it-being, or the great it-being itself?” she quavered. BrTl eyed her maliciously. This was going to be good!

  · “There’s no difference,” it murmured. “Er, what? Oh. The Slp-Og V. Trff thought this one might, Full Surgeon,” it said courteously, “but there’s no essential difference. –It means ‘thought’ in your-its terms, of course.”

    “And in terms of the commonly perceived space-time continuum, of course,” agreed BrTl smoothly.

    The Full Surgeon was just opening her mouth to rubbish this statement when Trff said placidly: “Of course.” So that shut her up.

    Trff then pointed out that Full Surgeon Tr’pplghnn’tia had removed several scars from G’gg’s person and suggested politely that she put them back. Because the being was proud of them, it explained. Tr’pplghnn’tia put them back but at least one of those sentient beings present and awake hadn’t thought she wouldn’t.

    “Anything else?” he said genially.

    “Only the blrtlberries,” explained Trff.

    “Ooh!” squeaked the Flppu, bobbing excitedly.

    “Oh, yes: they’re considered a great delicacy by those sentient beings native to Friyria, that’s right,” he remembered tactfully.

    The Full Surgeon said in an annoyed voice: “I merely had them removed to the kitchen because they needed to be thoroughly decontaminated before any being ate them!”

    BrTl had a coughing fit.

    When the Flppu had been rescued from a far corner of the room—Trff was all right: it had been expecting it and had wound a tentacle round the foot of R’shn’s bed—the Full Surgeon released her grip on BrTl’s leg and sent for the berries. When the servo-mech had been sent back to retrieve the decontaminated original container and the berries were in it, BrTl noted courteously: “I think we might wake them up, now.”

    He peered hopefully into R’shn’s face. “I do remember this one. It’s the one that looks a bit like Jhl. Ooh, internally as well! –Shall I?” he said politely.

    While Full Surgeon Tr’pplghnn’tia was still frantically wondering how best to point out tactfully to Lieutenant BrTl that the sight of a huge, hairy, two-nosed xathpyroid face with enormous eye-teeth was not perhaps the best sight for a small mammalian humanoid to wake up to in a strange room on a strange planet, Trff had said courteously: “Please do,” and BrTl had done it.

    “Ooh, hullo, BrTl!” she squeaked.

    “Hullo, R’shn. Still suckling the pup?” he asked politely.

    R’shn had flung her arms round his neck and kissed him. “No,” she said, releasing him and smiling. “She’s weaned, now. She’s nearly a year old, you know. She can crawl, now!”

    BrTl bared his teeth carefully, as she was doing it to him. He twitched a bit in the faint hope of encouraging the neck-hair to dry itself off. “Indeed?” he said. “Oh—yes: I know! That’s progress, then: she’s growing up, just like— Ow!” he gasped.

    Trff’s tentacle retreated from his tail. “Like a being he-it knows,” it said severely. “Hullo, R’shn. Is-you-it feeling better?”

    “Trff!” she squeaked.

    BrTl watched with interest as she went through the hugging and hair-sucking routine again. Trff appeared not to recoil, though admittedly it did adjust its FW pack a fraction.

    “Actually I feel terrific,” she said dazedly. “The doctor said we’d better have a nap  while we were waiting for you. It was an awfully long trip, all the way from Bluellia!”

    “Er…” began BrTl dazedly.

    “Oh, of course: you don’t know!” she beamed. “Well, you see— Ooh, is G’gg still asleep?”'

    “No,” decided Trff.

    “Hey, Trff!” cried G’gg, sitting up and baring his— Smiling, that was it. Smiling. BrTl moved his neck slightly in his direction, taking care to avoid the ceiling, and bared his at him.

    “Hey, BrTl!” he cried. “Galaxious! Hey, we come on a trader ship: a P-Class Bhylloblaster! It was huge!”

    Huge and slow, no wonder they’d been tired after the trip from Bluellia. …And what in Blerrinbrig’s name had it been transporting?

    Vacuum-frozen grqwaries, Trff sent.

    “Well, quite!” he agreed with feeling. A thing that size? Even with a hyperdrive it could only travel at approximately—

    “No: vacuum-frozen grqwaries were its cargo, BrTl,” said Trff.

    “I knew that!” he said hurriedly. “Vacuum-frozen grqwaries, eh?” he said kindly to G’gg. “Must have slowed you down, eh?”

    “Yeah, but the Engineer, he let me see the drive an’ everything!”

    Mad, concluded BrTl. A great lumbering Bhylloblaster, filled with vacuum-frozen grqwaries and crewed by maniacs.

    R’shn was explaining excitedly that she had won the trip as a prize in a competition on one of the Services... Yeah, yeah. For two, so she’d brought G’gg.—G’gg beamed.—Of course, the family had urged her to bring L’ll, but he was a jerk, she’d dumped him, Grandpa had been right about him! “He said he was a vacuum-frozen grqwary dropping, and he is!”

    “When she says ‘Grandpa’, she means the being of whom you think as ‘Dad’,” the Friyrian said kindly. BrTl was about to thank her but she added: “They’re both kinship terms, Lieutenant.”

    “Never mind,” said Trff quickly. “Did it and BrTl meet L’ll?” it asked. “No,” it answered itself before R’shn or G’gg could reply.

    G’gg began cheerfully: “He’s a vacuum-frozen—”

    “We understand,” said BrTl courteously: “but why should R’shn have been expected to bring him rather than you, G’gg?”

    “Is he-it perhaps a closer cognate?” asked Trff helpfully.

    “Um—dunno,” replied the valiant G’gg, faint but pursuing. “Um—he was her bond-partner, only she’s dumped him. She got one of those IG-legal divorces, eh, R’shn?”

    “Yeah!” she agreed, beaming. “Mum had ten fits!”

    BrTl looked uncertainly at the smile. “This is good, is it?”

    “When she says ‘Mum’—” began Tr’pplghnn’tia.

    R’shn giggled suddenly. “I get it! When I say ‘Mum,’ BrTl, I mean M’mri’in, because she’s my mum! Only when you say ‘Mum’ you mean Grandma—Dad’s mum, eh?”

    “Think of them as successive layers of cognates?” suggested Trff dubiously, as BrTl’s powerful frame swayed slightly and the room creaked ominously.

    He coughed slightly. “Can we agree to refer to Mum as ‘Mum,’ and to Dad as ‘Dad,’ perhaps?” he suggested tactfully.

    R’shn collapsed in sniggers, but agreed weakly to try.

    “Good, well, you won a trip on a Bhylloblaster, R’shn, and you brought G’gg; we get it.”—R’shn and G’gg nodded happily.—“So does the pup not count as a being?” he added in confusion, side-tracking himself.

    “Who? Oh: S’zzie! No, she’s too little!” she said with a laugh.

    “Certainly in comparison to the mass of a P-class Bhylloblaster with a hold full of vacuum-frozen grqwaries,” agreed BrTl. Mysteriously, G’gg collapsed in hoarse sniggers.

    “Um—no,” said R’shn weakly. “They said of course I could bring her. –When I say ‘they’ in this context,” she added with a sudden loud giggle, “I mean the competition organisers, not my family!”

    BrTl gave her a suspicious look.

    “I’m not reading you, BrTl, you were sending quite loud!” she said with another giggle.

    “Have you always been able to receive?” he asked curiously, trying and failing to recall if he’d picked up a receiver at the farm apart from the frightful but negligible third male cognate.

    “Uncle J’f,” R’shn reminded him helpfully. “Yes, only before, it was all sort of... fuzzy. –I feel ever so well,” she said to the Full Surgeon. “Was I asleep for ages, Doctor?”

    Before Tr’pplghnn’tia could tell her a convincing lie Trff said helpfully: “No, but while you-it was asleep the Full Surgeon cured you-it of some rare blood beings. It means of a disease."

    “The doctors on Bluellia said there was no known cure,” said R’shn faintly.

    “See? I TOLE ja they’d have a cure here!” cried G’gg loudly.

    To BrTl’s bewilderment drops of water began to roll down R’shn’s cheeks out of her lower eyelids. Didn’t they only do that when they were very upset?

    “Yes, but I can’t afford anything like that!” she gulped.

    Oh, well, understandable, then, he recognised silently, just as Trff was assuring her the Full Surgeons wouldn’t charge for the service. BrTl was just going to tell it to pull the other appendage when he noticed that the Full Surgeon’s neck gills were opening and closing.

    “You-it sees,” Trff explained carefully, just in case any being hadn’t got the point: “it’s IG-illegal to perform any sort of operation on a being, or on any being in its blood or in anything else in its body, or in whatever it uses, without the being’s consent. Or if it’s incapable of consent, the consent of—”

    “Don’t go on, that spaceport lawyer,” he groaned.

    “No! I mean, thank you very much for explaining, Trff, but we’ve got the point now!” squeaked R’shn ecstatically.

    “Yeah. –And never mind that Full-Surgeon-type shield you’ve felt, quite a few beings could get to know about it,” BrTl explained helpfully to G’gg’s puzzled thought. “For one thing, Trff and me and this Flppu aren’t actually here, we’re in hyper-hop. Apart from which, the Ju’ukrterian it-being knows.”

    G’gg broke down in frightful splutters, gasping: “Good one, Trff! Good one, BrTl!” There was more of Jhl in that cognate, mused BrTl, than he had hitherto supposed.

    When G’gg was over that, and R’shn was also over it, and over the Flppu, and when at her request it was sitting on the end of her bed, bouncing slightly, and she was holding the pup, which Full Surgeon Tr’pplghnn’tia had seemed strangely reluctant to give up, given that it had drivelled—no, dribbled—all down her garment, BrTl was finally able to ask: “But why in Federation choose Mullgon’ya? Or was it the planet offered in the competition?” he added groggily.

    “Yes. Well, it was only the third prize,” R’shn explained.

    “I see!”

    When various beings had righted themselves or been retrieved, and BrTl had apologised all round, G’gg elaborated: “The first prize was a trip for two to Playfair One in a real Gorbachian Lines Rhyzwollo Pleasure Cruiser Mark VII!”

    “That was why I went in for the competition,” agreed his cognate. “And second prize was a small lifter.”

    “That woulda been good,” noted G’gg glumly.

    “Yeah. Um—only when I won the third prize,” said R’shn, “me and G’gg thought we might as well come, because even if there isn’t much to see here, um…”

    “We thought they might cure R’shn,” explained G’gg, “if we offered them—”

    “Yes! The pup! For their experiments!” cried BrTl.

    Mysteriously, G’gg had now turned a sort of mottled maroon, which was definitely not a colour of which he was fond, it had too much pink in it, whilst R’shn was giggling helplessly, groping for senso-tissues.

    “No,” she said weakly, blowing her nose. “I’m sorry, BrTl, I didn’t mean to laugh: after all, why should you be supposed to understand our peculiar customs? But I love S’zzie, you see. She’ll stay with me until she’s grown up,” she explained, sucking its head-fur.

    “Of course.”

    “What I was gonna say,” said G’gg, grinning at him, “was that me and R’shn were gonna offer them everything we earned: you know, like when I grow up. I mean everything except what we’d need for food and that,” he explained clearly.

    Forty thousand Bluellian farthnums a Bluellian year, noted Trff.

    That’d buy a lot of vacuum-frozen grqwaries, BrTl agreed. “It was a nice thought, G’gg. Very generous. The sort of thing one xathpyroid cognate might offer to do for another,” he added kindly.

    G’gg turned maroon again, this time apparently with pleasure, and gasped: “Gee, thanks, BrTl! Hey, did you come to see Aunty Jhl?”

    There was a short pause.

    “We came to see Captain Jhl Smt Wong,” admitted BrTl cautiously.

    “Yeah: Aunty Jhl,” he said happily, nodding. “I said to R’shn, even if they won’t take an IOU it won’t be a wasted trip, ’cos we could visit Aunty Jhl, only she reckoned they wouldn’t let us in. Only all we hadda do was let the gate read our arms!” he finished pleasedly.

    BrTl rolled an eye at the Full Surgeon, just as Trff was waving an antenna at her.

    “And when we were inside,” continued G’gg happily, “it was all this galaxious garden and stuff; ya can’t see it at all from outside, can ya? And then this galaxious servo-mech come up and took us over to the building! And then the Doctor came!” He beamed at her. “And now we can give Aunty Jhl all those blrtlberries that Grandma—I mean Mum!” he said with a giggle, “that Mum give us for her!”

    “Yeah, and that you reckoned they’d never let us give her,” R’shn reminded him.

    BrTl lowered his shades at the basket of blrtlberries. Clean as a Bdeeg’s whistle after Space Patrol Decontam. So why—?

    Trff pointed an antenna at them. “Clean as a Bdeeg’s whistle after Space Patrol Decontam.,” it reported in confusion.

    “There are no longer any beings or substances present in them, or the container, that could do a humanoid—or indeed Ju’ukrterian, xathpyroid or Friyrian—life-form any harm,” the Full Surgeon explained courteously. “Though the College does not advise the it-being to consume them!” she added with a little tinkle.

    “Yes: hah, hah,” BrTl agreed. She seemed genuine, so he gave up. Possibly the berries had been innocent all along, and— Forget it. “Well?” he said to her. “And now what?”

    I don’t know, she said desolately in his mind.

    BrTl squared his shoulders. “Uh—sorry,” he muttered, as the ceiling creaked. “We’d better tell them.”

    Tr’pplghnn’tia looked at him helplessly.

    “They are her cognates,” he reminded her. “Front gates or not,” he noted pointedly. “Uh—look, R’shn, G’gg, S’zzie: Jhl’s all right, but she’s not here.”

    There was a short silence.

    “Why did the gate let us in, then?” asked R’shn, narrowing her eyes.

    “Why, indeed? Uh—well, overlooking the point of non-matching genetic encodings, and in fact dropping the whole mystery of the gate, and not even breathing the expression ‘IG-illegal’ or the expression ‘nursing-home licence,’ there is a being here, a female humanoid, pretending to be Jhl,” he explained.

    “I get it!” gasped G’gg. “Aunty Jhl’s on a secret mission, isn’t she?”

    “More or less, mm,” he said weakly.

    “Galaxious!” the boy gasped.

    There was a short silence.

    “You made the gate believe this other lady’s got Aunty Jhl’s encoding, didn’t you?” said R’shn on a grim note to the Full Surgeon.

    Tr’pplghnn’tia’s neck-gills opened and closed. “Um—yes. Er—in terms of the IG Nursing-Home Licence Regulations—” She stopped.

    There was a short silence. Then R’shn asked uneasily: “Is Aunty Jhl in danger?”

    “No,” said Trff.

    R’shn goggled at it. The ball of pale green fluff just sat there.

    “She may be in the future!” squeaked the Flppu. “Secret missions are like that!”

    “Asteroids of Hhum, you’ve got so bad even a Flppu feels you need translating!” cried BrTl. “Just remember that an individual Ju’ukrterian will take anything you say literally, if it’s possible within the laws of the Known Universe,” he advised R’shn.

    “I got that,” she replied composedly. “Maddening, isn’t it? Interesting, too, of course.”

    “Uh—yeah. –She’s really very like Jhl,” he noted feebly.

    “That is quite correct,” said the Full Surgeon, staring at the Bluellian girl with an arrested expression on her face.

    “No, no, no,” he groaned. “What with individual Ju’ukrterian it-beings unable to remember which it-being they’re supposed to be at any given point in the commonly perceived space-time continuum,”—he ignored the indignant whistle—“and me dashing madly in and out of Grand Occasion Saddles not to mention plasmo-blasted Number Ones, not to say personae, and blue Flppus being tricked into thinking they’re themselves when all the time—make that half the time—they’re another blue Flppu entirely—”

    “Don’t go on,” said Full Surgeon Tr’pplghnn’tia limply, though with the suggestion of a tinkle.

    R’shn and G’gg collapsed in splutters. In fact G’gg spluttered so much he nearly fell out of bed. Even the blue Flppu bounced so ecstatically it shot up to the ceiling and stayed suspended an IG fluh beneath it, squeaking helplessly.

    “Hah, hah,” noted Trff happily.

    “Well,” he muttered sulkily.

    “But wouldn’t it be sensible, Lieutenant?” murmured the Friyrian. “Er—cheaper, certainly.”

    “Who cares if your nursing-home breaks the Bank of Whtyll? –Yeah, yeah, cheaper and easier. For some,” he muttered, hoiking the Flppu down.

    “Less risk of detection,” she added.

    “The we-it agrees,” said Trff.

    Groaning, BrTl said: “All right, all right! –I suppose we may admit that this humanoid cognate has free will, may we?” he added nastily. “Only in the negligible terms of the Inalienable Being-Rights Declara—”

    “Yes,” said the Full Surgeon hurriedly. “Would one of you care to explain the situation to her?” She looked from him to Trff.

    “I’ll do it,” he said hurriedly. Quickly he explained the situation, or some of it, to R’shn, suggesting she take L’Thea’s place as Jhl. The more so since she’d been broadcasting loud and clear for quite some time her determination to do anything rather than go back to Bluellia and the egg sheds.

    There was a sufficiently long silence when he’d finished.

    “I see…” she said slowly. Certain beings looked at her without hope. “I’m sorry,” she said, blushing, “but it doesn’t sound very sensible to me. Um, well, I mean, me pretending to be Aunty Jhl and this other lady having to pretend to be someone else until that man’s better? It could take ages, from what you were saying. Wouldn’t it be better if we just pretend Aunty Jhl’s got better, and me and G’gg are just us come to visit her; and you all go off to this delegation place and the other lady goes with you? As Aunty Jhl, I mean. And then her and Aunty Jhl can swap places once they let you onto the other planet,” she ended, looking shy.

    “Blast me out beyond the last black hole,” invited BrTl numbly.

    “It sounds all right to me,” said G’gg, glaring at him.

    “All right? The being’s a genius!” he cried.

    “No—” began Trff.

    “Shut up. Metaphorically, not literally, you intergalactic clown. –Don’t you think that’s perfect?” he said to the Full Surgeon.

    Tr’pplghnn’tia tinkled delightedly. “Why, yes! Ideal! –It took a young, fresh mind to think of it,” she said approvingly to the blushing R’shn.

    To save the Full College’s necks from the hyperdrive, she meant, reflected BrTl sourly. Fooling the gate into thinking L’Thea had Jhl’s encoding? Great steaming piles of mok droppings! “Good. We’ll do that. There is the one small point that we’re in hyper-hop, so we can’t take L’Thea with us,” he noted. “In fact we’ll have to be going fairly soon.”

    Various sophisticated beings immediately put forward sillier and sillier suggestions, but R’shn and G’gg solved that one together by suggesting there must be a regular passenger ship that they and L’Thea could take. At which Full Surgeon Tr’pplghnn’tia conceded that there was quite a regular service to Belraynia. And, gulping slightly, that the Full College would be happy to be responsible for the fares. Which meant that they’d recharge them to You-Know-Who’s account with the Bank of Whtyll, but it was good enough.

    And they all went off happily to give L’Thea the blrtlberries, having to assure the Flppu as they went that they were sure she’d give it some…

    In the end BrTl—why was it always him?—had to contact Lady Myr-Lah gh K’ml Vt R’aam and get her to pull strings in order to get the false Jhl seconded to a delegation. He had no doubt that any shield the it-being had put up round the heads of four small mammalian humanoids would laugh at any sort of probe from a mere Whtyllian lordship, but all the same he was plasmo-blasted glad it wasn’t the Whtyllian delegation she chose. No, as they were heading for Belraynia, Lady Myr-Lah thought it had better be theirs. The cognates? Well, each attaché was of course entitled to a personal staff, that would be no problem. Of course, he agreed limply.

    Coming aboard! piped the ship.

    At the hatch BrTl squared his shoulders in his plasmo-blasted Number Ones.

    “How splendid you look, Great One!” squeaked the Flppu.

    “Shut up!” he hissed.

    The Flppu bobbed a bit but shut up.

    A small mammalian humanoid in a very clean and shiny Wavey-Spacey lieutenant-pilot’s uniform with a merchant captain’s star up came aboard. BrTl saluted. The small figure saluted back, grinning.

    “Welcome aboard, Captain Smt Wong,” he said formally.

    “Thank you, Lieutenant-Pilot BrJk,” she replied.

    “May I introduce Supernumerary Fl’Mnn-nnlluyii?” he said glumly.

    “Glad to know you, Supernumerary Fl’Mnn-nnlluyii,” said the Captain, grinning.

    “The honour is all mine, Captain Smt Wong!” it squeaked, bobbing frightfully.

    “That’ll do,” said BrTl glumly.

    “May I introduce my companions, Lieutenant?” she said.

    “Huh? Oh—of course.” They were duly introduced and he suggested: “Would you care to accompany me to the bridge?”

    “Delighted,” replied Captain Smt Wong politely.

    Once safely on the bridge he dropped heavily into the pilot’s seat, groaning: “Great steaming piles of mok droppings! Thank the Federation that’s over!”

    “There were beings watching us, eh?” spotted G’gg.

    “Thousands of ’em,” he groaned. “Uh—well, a few odd beings with nothing better to do than hang round the spaceport, and a few dozen of the usual rubber-neckers these delegations attract. –And the usual several thousand immature beings from the local populace that generally infest any area one tries to park a ship quietly in,” he added pointedly.

    G’gg just grinned happily.

    Shall we go? suggested the ship hopefully.

    “NO!” he shouted. “Uh—sorry. Well, welcome aboard and so forth,” he said, baring his teeth carefully.

    Calmly L’Thea replied: “You don’t have to practise your mammalian smile with us, BrTl. –Does he, R’shn?”

    “No. We understand it isn't your natural reaction, BrTl,” she agreed. “–Here.” She handed him a senso-tissue. “You’d better wipe your uniform where S’zzie grabbed it.”

    Even though the senso-tissue was pink BrTl wiped his uniform thankfully with it. “Why are they always sticky?” he asked gloomily.

    “Endemic to the state!” said R’shn, smiling. “May I put her down?”

    “Yes. The ship won’t let her touch anything,” he agreed.

    Nodding, R’shn put S’zzie down. She immediately crawled over to the Flppu and began patting it. The false Fl’Mnn-nnlluyii not only didn’t seem to mind, it positively preened itself. Oh, well, it took all sorts to make a Known Universe.

    “Could I have a look at the drive?” asked G’gg hopefully.

    BrTl was about to refuse on principle but the ship replied: Yes, of course.

    “It’s got all hypered since I asked it to pretend to be another ship entirely,” he groaned. “Uh—well, come on, then.”

    They exited, G’gg explaining that he’d got this gear at J’rd’s on Belraynia, the great big branch in Hinnover City, wasn’t it galaxious? BrTl agreed. G’gg began to demonstrate all its pockets. BrTl pretended he was listening…

    Back on the bridge R’shn looked around her with bright-eyed interest. “What’s this?” she said to L’Thea.

    “Dunno. I’m not really a captain!” she said with a giggle.

    The ship explained helpfully. R’shn jumped and gasped, but soon began to ask more questions. “It’s interesting,” she concluded thoughtfully.

    “You have to do lots of maths to be a Pilot, though,” said L’Thea. “Would you like that?”

    R’shn sighed. “No. And I’d never be able to catch up on everything I missed, with not finishing Second School.”

    L’Thea nodded sympathetically: the fact of R’shn’s never having finished Second School, in fact having left in order to have S’zzie, had made a great, though not favourable, impression on her.

    “And archaeology sounds interesting, but it’s not really me,” said R’shn politely.

    L’Thea sighed. “No, I’ve decided it’s not really me, either. I’ve sort of… grown out of it, I suppose. I mean, it’s interesting, but I don’t want to spend my life grubbing round in caves and so forth.”

    “No,” agreed R’shn sympathetically.

    “You could just do a general Third School degree,” L’Thea suggested kindly. “There’s usually plenty of choice.”

    “Not on Bluellia. You have to do ten subjects, and eight of them have to be agricultural ones.”

    “Eight?” she gasped.

    “Yes, well, it's an agricultural world… In a way, thinking I was going to be dead soon was easier,” she said slowly.

    “Mm.”

    “I—I left school and had S’zzie because I—I didn't want to miss out,” she said, pinkening.

    “Yes,” L’Thea agreed, nodding.

    “Only… Well, I don’t regret having her,” she said, smiling, as S’zzie crawled round the bridge, chuckling, closely followed by the Flppu, also endeavouring to chuckle, “but there’s more to life than just perpetuating your genes, isn’t there?”

    “Well, I think so, yes. Though I wouldn’t mind having a baby,” said L’Thea, a trifle wistfully. “Only on New Rthfrdia you have to be bond-partnered to have one, or you’re a social outcast. –Not that not being a social outcast’s much fun, either!” she added with some feeling.

    “No. Um—do you have to go back there?” asked R’shn shyly.

    L’Thea sighed. “I suppose so. It is my home planet, after all: I haven’t got any other home. –Sometimes I wish I was still Lord Vt R’aam’s s-being, it was so much easier!” she confided, cheeks very pink.

    “Yes,” said R’shn simply.

    “And he… Well, he never took very much notice of me, of course: I was too lowly. Only he did do it with me, once,” she said wistfully.

    “Really?” gasped R’shn, eyes widening.

    “Yes. He was really lovely… Tender.”

    “Tender?”

    “Mm!” said L’Thea, very pink and smiling, tears standing in her colourised eyes. “Most men are horrid and rough, aren’t they?”

    “Yeah. Um, well, the boys at school were, and so was L’ll.”

    “But Lord Vt R’aam wasn’t…” A senso-tissue floated into her hand. “Green: it must be one of BrTl’s,” she noticed, smiling mistily as she blew her nose.

    R’shn sighed deeply. “I can’t imagine it… Tender!”

    “Maybe you’ll find someone else, now that you’re better.”

    “Not on Bluellia, I won’t.” She smiled suddenly. “Anyway, if they’re all rough and horrid except great Whtyllian lordships, I don’t know that I want one!”

    “No!” agreed L’Thea, giggling.

    “I’d really like to take up my weaving again,” murmured R’shn.

    “Yes: it sounds really creative and satisfying,” she said enviously.

    “Mm, only lots of people weave, on Bluellia. There isn’t much of a market.”

    “Help, on New Rthfrdia only tremendously rich beings can afford hand-woven cloth!” she gasped. “And even Lord Vt R’aam only had a few hand-woven garments! I mean, he had galaxious mn-mn silk shirts and that, but most of them were blob-made.”

    “I use grqwary down and wh’h flax,” she offered dubiously. “I spin them together in different proportions, y’know? Depending on the weight of— What?”

    “R’shn, your fabrics would be worth a fortune on Whtyll or Playfair Two! Is there anyone back home that could help you market your wares?”—R’shn shook her head.—“I know! We’ll talk to BrTl about it!”

    “L’Thea, we can’t do that!”

    “Yes, we can. If it’s commercially viable, he’ll be interested, you’ll see!”

    L’Thea was quite right. BrTl was very keen and helpful. “See?” she said triumphantly.

    R’shn nodded, smiling weakly. “Thank you, BrTl.”

    “My pleasure. Wonder if I should speak to Lady Myr-Lah gh K’ml Vt R’aam?”

    “No!” gasped L’Thea in horror.

    “Eh? Oh! No, just about the commercial possibilities. You don’t need to be afraid of her: she gave you to me.”

    “What?” she gasped, bursting into tears.

    Once they’d sorted out that these were tears of relief and BrTl had promised that L’Thea could stay with the ship as a supernumerary for as long as she liked, or as long as he had a ship—not mentioning the small point of his job’s being about to be swept out from under him—she brightened up amazingly and began to make all sorts of happy plans.

    Most of these seemed to include R’shn. But as BrTl had said vaguely he didn’t think the ship would even notice having to feed another small mammalian or two, R’shn decided dizzily that it seemed to be all right, then. And almost anything would be better than going back to Bluellia and having to be bond-partnered to another jerk like L’ll that didn’t know or care about women’s orgasms and wasn’t tender, and having to milk grqwaries and look after the egg sheds for the rest of her life! Not that she minded that part of it, so much: it was warm in the egg sheds, but it was about the most boring existence you could possibly imagine!

    That evening, in the privacy of the huge and luxurious bedroom in the Urrgaynia II hotel allotted to the humanoid members of the delegations, she called up the picture of the laughing-eyed, winged-jawed Whtyllian lordship that she’d culled from L’Thea’s memory store, and sighed over it. He was just so handsome! And tender with it? Galaxies!

    At that point S’zzie whimpered in her sleep. R’shn went over to her. “Never mind,” she whispered, picking her up. “I’m gonna make sure you have a better life than me, and find a better bond-partner, too!” S’zzie made a contented snorting sound that might have been interpreted as agreement. “Come on, you can come in my bed,” decided R’shn. She felt her bottom gingerly but the extremely up-market senso-tissue-based “Baby Panty-Panty”—so expensive you couldn’t even buy them in Bluell City, but that the humanoid room on Urrgaynia II had produced as a matter of course—was quite dry.

    R’shn got carefully into bed with her. “It’s really unfair,” she discovered, frowning. “Why can’t Baby Panty-Panties be supplied free to all mothers and babies everywhere? Well, to all humanoid ones. And non-humanoid types to other beings: that’d be the really fair thing!”

    S’zzie began to snore.

    R’shn thought it over. She knew there were a lot of ideas in it, like equality and democracy, but she knew also that she didn’t know enough to even begin thinking about them. “I’m gonna ask BrTl for something to read,” she decided. “Those Urrgaynia Services are really blaach, eh? Dumb Romances and stuff. Maybe he can blob me onto the Encyclopaedia,” she said, yawning.

    S’zzie merely snored.

    “Anyway, I'm gonna do something!” she decided. “I’m not gonna be just a dumb mum, like Mum and Grandma!”

    … “The Encyclopaedia?” croaked BrTl, next day.

    R’shn looked up at him hopefully.

    “Look, just at the moment… Look, promise you won’t ask it anything about minerals or the IG Minerals Commission, okay?” he croaked.

    “Okay,” she said blankly.

    Trff had come aboard, though not as itself, of course. “It could set it so as she-it can’t ask it that sort of thing.”

    “No!” he snarled. “I’m not taking the risk!”

    “Um, can I ask it about commerce?” said R’shn.

    BrTl blenched. “Look, Trff, put a block in her head,” he said heavily.

    “No!” she cried. “I've only just started to be me! I don’t want bits of me blocked off!”

    “It’ll make a little list of things you-it mustn’t ask the Encyclopaedia until all this pre-Fed stuff’s over and Jhl’s safe,” decided Trff. “You-it won’t mind having a little list in your-its head, will you-it?”

    “Um, no… I don’t even know what mn-mns are,” she said limply.

    “Fruit,” explained BrTl helpfully. “Newish. What else is on this list, Trff?”

    “All tradable  commodities, all questions pertaining to the Commodities Exchange, to minerals, mineral rights, the IG M.C., and methods of intergalactic transportation.”

    BrTl shuddered slightly. “Right.”

    “Plus anything pertaining to Fleet Commander Vt R’aam, naturally.”

    “But—” R’shn’s face turned bright red. BrTl got hurriedly in front of the receiver in case she was intending to haul off and kick it in the guts.

    “You-it wouldn’t like him-it, if you-it did meet him-it,” said Trff kindly.

    “But I only—” It was pointing an antenna at her. “He can’t be like that!” she cried.

    BrTl took a look. Well done, that Ju’ukrterian that’s pretending to be another Ju’ukrterian entirely. “He’s very like that. He doesn’t always have that thing on his head, of course.”

    “Not that! He—he’s not even fair!” she cried in anguish.

    “Puts it well,” he agreed.

    “He’s a horrible—What is the word for the horrible lordships and that, BrTl?”

    He waved a gracious appendage at the sim-receiver. “There’s the Encyclopaedia: blob onto—” She already was.

    “She’s interested in political systems?” he croaked.

    “Possibly a mammalian predisposition,” murmured Trff.

    BrTl could see its attention was on the Flppu. He sighed. “What’s L’Thea doing today?”

    “Sight-seeing with G’gg,” said R’shn, not looking up from the Encyclopaedia.

    Sighing again, he sat down in the pilot’s seat.

    Shall we go? suggested the ship hopefully.

    “Shut up, shut up, shut up,” he groaned. “How many days is it now to F-Day?”

    “Only twenty IG days,” said Trff helpfully, not looking up from the Flppu.

    BrTl closed his eyes, and groaned.