Sentient Within The Meaning

16

Sentient Within The Meaning

    Su was explaining to BrTl: “Uncle J’f got sick of me. He gets sick of everybody; Dad did tell me he’s that sort of being.”

    Vt R’aam Thirty-Two listened with a little smile. She wasn’t entirely wrong. The xathpyroid funeral had been a strong factor, too. Not to mention the as yet unsolved mystery of exactly who had overridden Admiral Ambassador Smt Wong’s translator during it. In his considered opinion, however, the main reason why her uncle had let Su come back to Booj’lly with them was that Trff had implanted a suggestion that he might.

    Yes, it agreed. That translator-overriding do was it, too.

    Was it? Thought it was me! returned the ex-clone.

    It as well as you-it. And BrTl and BrDv and Captain BrZv.

    Right! Got it! Vt R’aam Thirty-Two shook silently for some time.

    It has to go back to Intergalactica, Trff explained. It doesn’t want to but the senior cognate’s very annoyed with the Fleet Lords. And those other ones. F Reppos—yes. And F Senators. BrTl wants to go and see Dohra. You-it’s normal now: he-it doesn’t need to stay with you-it.

    Am I? Oh, good!

    Su had better go with BrTl, because Dohra’s on Friyria and he-it doesn’t like Friyrians. He-it thinks Dohra might like to keep the Loogher.

    Vt R’aam Thirty-Two swallowed hard, well though he knew both of them. Trff, from what he’s said of her I think Dohra probably would like that, but Su doesn’t want to give Phyoowella up, does she? What would Madam say about free will?

    Emanations of glumness surrounded him and Trff conceded: Oops.

    Su swung round with a suspicious glare. “What’s all that glum stuff about?”

    “Just that Trff thinks you and BrTl might like to go and see his friend Dohra, but it can’t come with you,” lied Vt R’aam Thirty-Two smoothly.

    She gave him a hard look. “Oh, yeah? I picked up something about Phyoowella.”

    “Mm. She’ll go with you, of course.”

    “Have they got ordinary grass on Friyria? –Don’t DO that!” she shouted as he winced. “It makes you look like flaming Vvlvanian-cursed Dad!”

    “Help, does it? Sorry!” he said with a laugh.

    “Whtyllian. He-it’s quite like him-it inside as well,” Trff explained helpfully.

    “Shut up, Trff,” she warned. “And DON’T do that glum thing!”

    “But it is glum: it’s got to go back to Intergalactica and stop the senior cognate from losing it completely with the Fleet Lords and F Reppos and F Senators and throwing all his-its fortune away and not being able to afford to get us back to the Third Galaxy and Jhl,” it explained sadly.

    Su gulped. “Sorry, Trff.”

    “The grass on Friyria is ordinary in your-its terms, Su,” it replied kindly. “The Loogher could eat it. Without dying or chucking up!” it added quickly.

    “Gee, comprehensive!” said Su with a laugh. “Could she digest it, though?”

    “Yes,” said Vt R’aam Thirty-Two quickly. “Standard o-breather planet, Su; haven’t you looked it up?”

    “YES! And STOP telling me to use the Encyclopaedia! –You as well,” she said evilly to BrTl.

    “I haven’t told you to look it up for ages.”

    “You were thinking it, though, don’t claim you weren’t, I could feel you. –I did look up Friyria, see, and it was stupid, all moons and rhoofer shit like usual.”

    BrTl sighed. “All right, what does vacuum-frozen Morpo say?”

    Su glared. “There isn’t a blob.”

    “Eh? There’s gotta be!” He looked round him wildly but as they were in the xathpyroid lodging house in the village nearest to the Academy no blob-vendors immediately started forward offering their wares. “Um, look, if we pop out, there’s a blob booth just before you get to Whizzo Burgers. Or if you want a shake, The Green Bubble is h-breather, but you could wear your FW pack.”

    “Er, no fluorogas shakes for Su, I’m afraid, BrTl,” said Vt R’aam Thirty-Two apologetically. “My Lord’s express orders.”

    “Anyway, I don’t want to sit there listening to you burp!” Su informed BrTl with an evil glare. “And why do you males keep changing the subject?”

    The two males stared at her blankly.

    She-it thinks the subject is whether the grass on Friyria is suitable for the Loogher, explained Trff. It is one of the subjects, it conceded.

    Vt R’aam Thirty-Two cleared his throat. “As I say, Friyria is a standard o-breather planet, so Phyoowella could certainly digest its grass. But let’s go and see if we can get a blob, mm?”

    “Don’t dare to humour me, Vt R’aam Thirty-Two,” warned Su evilly.

    He blinked. “Was I? I didn’t think I was!”

    “You were doing that ‘mm?’ rhoofer shit that Dad does!” she said crossly.

    Oh, Federation, had he been? “I’m terribly sorry, I didn’t mean to. I suppose one absorbs, um, patterns of speech,” he ended glumly.

    “I suppose one does, yeah! One could try to un-absorb them!”

    “Yes. Come on, we can take Phyoowella.”—Don’t ask the others: I think they’d like a little time alone together.—“And put Phyoowella’s reins on her, we don’t want an idiot cadet kidnapping her!”

    Su scowled, but put the Loogher’s reins on her. And they went.

    “Phew,” said BrTl.

    Yes, agreed Trff. Humanoids can be noisy beings, not to be anything-ist.

    Mm. Mentally, as well.

    The it-being emanating agreement, a peaceful silence then reigned in BrTl’s room in the xathpyroid lodging house. Mentally, as well.

    The blob booth down the street certainly didn’t seem to have a Morpo’s guide for Friyria, though it had the guides for a goodly assortment of other planets of the Federation. Vt R’aam Thirty-Two fought down the temptation to tell her to go back to the lodging house and look up the Encyclopaedia, and let her buy a Morpo’s Pocket Guide for the Intergalactic Traveller instead. It said just what he’d expected, but she was happy with it.

    “Fancy a shake?” he said kindly.

    “Don’t humour me! I was just going to suggest a shake, but only if you feel like one and I can tell you don’t, so we won’t. I’m not a kid,” said Su with a glare.

    “I generally find shakes too sweet,” he said mildly. “I’d like a drink, though. There’s a nice juice bar in the next street—BrTl won’t have mentioned it, but there is.”

    Su smiled weakly. “Right. Come on, then.”

    The juice bar of course catered for a wide variety of tastes, since its chief patrons were the cadets from the Academy; and since their socio-economic status ranged from those who were living off the Academy allowance up to the odd princeling, multi-billionaire’s offspring and so forth, offered juice at a fairly wide range of prices, too. Grimly Su vetoed the mn-mn juice, it was too dear in the two galaxies, but, after consultation of her new blob, conceded that she’d try a glass of real Wofer orange juice.

    “May I?” he said weakly, holding out his hand for the blob.

    “It’s just orange juice like ours, only with different colours!” said Su on a cross note, nevertheless letting him take it.

    “You do realise this is a crock, designed to make you buy another of these plasmo-blasted blobs?” he noted, handing it back.

    “It isn’t! Anyway I don’t care if it is! At least they’re sensible!”

    Er—oh. As opposed to the Intergalactic Encyclopaedia: right. He ordered a New Rthfrdian nettle juice for himself, though aware this was probably a tactical error: it was green, and in common with most humanoids Su considered that juices shouldn’t be green. But he liked it: it was very refreshing, and not sweet, with a very mild taste.

    When it came, sure enough Su looked at it askance. Then she consulted the blob. The scowl was a fair indication the thing didn’t mention it: he didn’t need to read her.

    He let her get a fair amount of the orange juice down—including the pink layer, which was the sweetest—before venturing: “Su, is something wrong?”

    “Why pretend you can’t read me?” she retorted crossly.

    “Your thoughts seem very muddled and… clouded. At least at the level on which it’s polite to look,” he said with a little smile.

    The little smile made him look just like Dad at his most superior. She scowled. “If you mean the stupid Academy’s taught you to look politely, I don’t care, see?”

    “Are you nervous about going to Friyria?” he asked cautiously. “I think they’ll treat you very kindly. And, well, I suppose we more or less saw the worst of it on the PBTT, with Vttrfeamiyyia, Pozzgwllnaabniia and B’ttrwullguffnia.”

    “Right, and they weren’t as bad as the Whtyllians. If I could stand Whtyll I can stand Friyria.”

    “Then what is it? Something about Trff, is it?”

    “Not Trff as such. Though it’s really fed up with Dad. Um, has it mentioned anything about blobs to you, Vt R’aam Thirty-Two?” asked Su on a plaintive note.

    Uh—when the it-being indulged in anything approaching chat, which admittedly was rarely, it did tend to be about blobs.

    “Not—not chatting,” said Su uneasily.

    “Well, no, I can’t think of anything significant. Um, apart from the details of the time on the PBTT, and, er, well, I could feel it looking off and on, but I can’t say we had anything approaching a discussion.”

    Su licked her lips. “No. Maybe you should of. Um, well, it just suddenly come out with this the other day, see: it wasn’t that we were talking about blobs or even thinking about them. At least, I wasn’t. It was just me and it, it’s found a place that sells real good fresh laa and it’s only a juice bar, so BrTl didn’t wanna come. Um, ’tisn’t o-breather,” she added on an uneasy note, “but I wore my FW pack, and anyway it was looking after me.”

    “Of course,” he said mildly. “What did it say?”

    “‘Would a blob be dead?’” said Su, swallowing hard.

    He stared at her. “What had you been talking about, if not blobs?”

    “Um, the Br-cognate. Navigator BrSl. It—it got the idea of dead off me, I s’pose.”

    “Yes. –You’re right,” he said, frowning over it: “maybe I should have had an actual discussion about the PBTT with it, instead of being content for it just to look.”

    “Yes. ’Cos see, sometimes it gets the wrong end of the ban-ban-ban,” said Su uneasily. “And I don’t think it-beings die like we do, do they? I did look up the Encyclopaedia, but it was even worse than usual.”

    “Mm. The Mistress suspects that the it-being may have influenced the content of that particular entry,” said Vt R’aam Thirty-Two drily.

    “Yeah. But Trff’s told me itself that they just go back to brood-pen and that there’s no essential difference between it and the rest of them. Only see, BrTl reckons it’s wrong, and that it doesn’t realise it’s got its own personality. ’Cos he has met lots of other it-beings—like, him and Mum have actually been to Zll with it, and they all looked the same, only they could feel that them others, they weren’t Trff. But all the same it doesn’t really understand what being dead is.”

    “Exactly.” Vt R’aam Thirty-Two sincerely doubted that any being in the whole of the three galaxies would get any closer than that to a definition of what the Ju’ukrterian it-being actually was. “There’s an Orpetularian at the Academy, and we had a long talk about the difference between dividing, as they do, and dying but having perpetuated one’s genetic material by having offspring, as we do, and although it could more or less make sense of what I was saying, it admitted that it couldn’t relate affectively—not on an emotional level, that is—to the concept of death.”

    “Right,” agreed Su. “So if Trff doesn’t understand what death is, would what it calls a dead blob just be like, clapped out?”

    “Did you ask it that?”

    “Yes. It said: ‘This blob was clapped out, Su.’”

    Vt R’aam Thirty-Two chewed on his lip. He didn’t know that he wanted to know the answer to his next question. “Did you ask it if it could re-blob it?”

    “Mm. It said it couldn't.”

    He swallowed.

    “That does mean dead, doesn’t it?” said Su uneasily.

    Blobs were not classed as sentient by the Intergalactic Sentient Life-Forms (Beings/Group Beings) Definition and Classification Act, but…

    “We-ell… There’ve been a couple of instances of expensive Oononian chemo-blobs it couldn’t re-blob, but they’re cultured that way. You’d better tell me what blob it was, because frankly, Su, I haven’t got the guts to look.”

    “It was only a text-blob. So I said: ‘That isn’t too bad, Trff,’ and then it said: ‘But a text-blob is only a blob, Su.’”

    “Federation,” he muttered.

    Su looked at him fearfully.

    “Su-Su,” he said putting a long, cool hand on top of her hot little one, “what feelings did you pick up at that moment?”

    “I—I thought it was real bewildered. Like more than puzzled.”

    “Mm. Um, frightened?”

    “No, but I don’t think it can be. Like, not really scared, Vt R’aam Thirty-Two, ’cos it can always see what’s going on.”

    “Mm. Well,” he said, frowning over it, “we shouldn’t worry too much over one blob. It’s probably just an anomaly.”

    “Ye-es… It muttered something about the pwld only then it started sending me numbers.”

    “Excuse me, I’d better look,” he said grimly.

    After a moment Su said: “Ow,” and put a hand to her head.

    “Sorry. They’re not statistics, at any rate,” he muttered. “Uh—algorithms, I think. I can’t make head nor tail of them. I’ll talk to it but I don’t think it’ll tell me any more than it did you—less, probably,” he admitted with a wry little smile.

    “It likes you, though.”

    “Er—no, I didn’t mean that. How can it tell me anything more if we’re dealing with a concept which it can’t really grasp?”

    “Yeah. Well, like you say, it was only one blob.”

    “Mm.” He could now see that that murky, clouded effect wasn’t just Su puzzling and worrying over something less than half understood: her mind was reflecting the feelings she’d picked up from the it-being. Federation!

    “I will talk to it,” he said with an effort. “Like another drink?”

    “Oh—no, ta. Um, I was thinking… What if all the blobs died?”

    On a planet like Booj’lly? Well, they might survive, it was naturally o-breather. But the climate was Meteo-driven, the weather’d go berserk. In an instant, he’d imagine: so it’d probably be wild hurricanes and rain storms, at the very least. And the multitude of non-o-breather beings here who relied on their blob-driven FW packs and their blob-maintained Guest Rooms for life support would perish immediately. Most beings would starve: as on all the civilised worlds, culture-pans were used for cooking. There’d be no communications at all, no vehicles, no space flight…

    He looked at Su’s face and said quickly: “Everyone would have to cope with pioneer conditions, as the members of the Expedition Fleet did when they landed in the Third Galaxy. But we’re getting ahead of ourselves. One blob wearing out probably doesn’t mean a thing. Shall we get back? You’ll need to pack for Friyria.”

    Su came with him, but he could feel she wasn’t much reassured. This was probably because she could sense that he wasn’t entirely convinced by his own feeble argument—yeah.

    He managed to take Trff out for a quick laa at the place Su had mentioned.

    “It was only one text-blob,” the it-being told him.

    Of course Vt R’aam Thirty-Two couldn’t read it, and he sincerely doubted there was a being in the Known Universe who could have. But he thought he caught a whiff of Su-ishness behind the remark.

    “I realise that, Trff. It may not be indicative of anything.”

    “That is the standard logic,” it agreed, emanating mild satisfaction.

    He waited while it siphoned up some laa. “Nice?” he said kindly.

    “Excellent fresh laa!” Trff reported happily. “It remembers now: this is the place it showed how to order fresh laa when it was a cadet!”

    Showed how to? The place’d be doing it until Vvlvania froze over!

    “No: the owner’s an aarNaarN,” said Trff calmly. “Their life spans aren’t that long.”

    Maybe not, but they did live to a considerable age, in addition to which they had more than one life cycle, all memories and characteristics being transferred from one generation to the next! “Not quite. Well chosen, Trff,” he said drily.

    “Thank you-it,” it said, emanating modesty.

    Vt R’aam Thirty-Two sighed. “Look, will you show me the maths relating to the dead blob?”

    Obligingly it did. We-ell… “Highly hypothetical,” he concluded at last.

    Yes.

    “Doesn’t this assume they’re all connected in some way?”

    Yes.

    “Well, are they?” he demanded in some exasperation.

    “Its research hasn’t yet confirmed that, Vt R’aam Thirty-Two,” Trff replied politely.

    No, because otherwise the maths would be quite different and he personally would be panicking!

    It doesn’t think so, you-it isn’t that sort of being. That’s a Rear Admiral that’s just come in.

    Ulp.

    It’s shielding you-it, Trff reassured him.

    Thank you. I don’t want my career to end on Mullgon’ya!

    Go back to the Third Galaxy instead? it echoed his thought.

    Wouldn’t it be safer? replied Vt R’aam Thirty-Two grimly.

    Yes. It showed him the maths.

    He looked at it weakly. Any other being would have said it was a megazillion to one that nothing would happen.

    It wouldn’t bet a bent Bluellian farthnum at those odds, either.

    N— Was I thinking that? So I was. Well, um, what now, Trff?

    You-it goes back to the Academy and BrTl and Su go to Friyria to see Dohra.

    “They’ll be safer there, will they?” he said grimly.

    It could show you-it the ma— No. Sorry, Vt R’aam Thirty-Two; it sees: an emotional issue. They will be safer, because Friyria has no Meteo, and Dohra and the Friyrian that it and BrTl and Jhl met on the third moon of Pkqwrd that time live a simple country-house life.

    There was absolutely no question but that it had picked up that last phrase from his memory store. That scene where Su had confronted him with the information about his original came back to him with startling clarity. Vt R’aam Thirty-Two found he had to blow his nose hard.

    “Do they? Good,” he said weakly.

    “She-it doesn’t think you-it’s prim now,” Trff assured him, emanating anxiety.

    “Thanks. I’m all right,” he said shakily, trying to smile.

    After a moment it ventured: “Too young in mammalian terms? Does it mean immature rather than young?”

    “Mm. She’s growing up, though.”

    “Oh, yes, definitely: she-it’s growing up!”

    He was almost sure it didn’t meant what he did, but he smiled at it anyway and they returned to the lodging house, Vt R’aam Thirty-Two trying to tell himself that if the odds were that long he had nothing to worry about and not wholly convincing himself, and Trff just trotting along slowly at his side not emanating a thing. Though as it didn’t usually emanate unless it was trying to communicate, this was no indication of anything.

    It wasn’t until BrTl and Su had taken off for Friyria and Trff for Intergalactica and he was back at the Academy that it dawned on Vt R’aam Thirty-Two that it had never occurred to him to tell My Lord about this!

    He had to swallow hard; was it because the it-being had implanted a suggestion he needn’t? He knew it didn’t like My Lord—that was, the individual Trff didn’t. But the great it-being as a whole? Or was there no difference, in affective matters? Not that there was any point in speculating on that one! Should he warn him? Vt R’aam Thirty-Two scowled over it. Unfortunately the more he concentrated the more he got a vivid picture of that time when Su was six and broke her leg grass sledding when My Lord insisted she try it. The Mistress had burst into tears and My Lord had panicked. Panicked horribly, as a matter of fact. And according to BrTl he’d been even worse when they found out the PBTT had broken down…

    No, well, even if both these points had been mind-suggested to him by Trff they were nonetheless valid, weren’t they? He wouldn’t speak to Shank’yar Vt R’aam yet, there was far too little evidence.

    Vt R’aam Thirty-Two went off to the gribble-ball courts sublimely unaware that for the very first time in his existence he’d thought of his former master as “Shank’yar Vt R’aam” and not as “My Lord.”

    “Here she is: she’s just the same!” said BrTl in relief as they emerged, sweating slightly, from Friyria Customs. The Customs officials had never seen a being from the Third Galaxy before and they were apparently convinced that Su and BrTl intended trading Phyoowella for a Flppu. Two separate issues which had each taken some appreciable time, in terms of the commonly perceived space-time continuum, to resolve.

    “BrTl!” cried the plump, fair-skinned humanoid lady with a laugh. “Still on about the commonly perceived Y-K-W?” She rushed forward and threw her arms round what she could reach of him, which wasn’t much: she was about Su’s height.

    Su could see that Dohra wasn’t the same at all: the picture in BrTl’s mind, not to say the picture that Trff had obligingly supplied, was of a much younger person—a girl, really. This lady was plumper, though the girl certainly hadn’t been thin, and her thick, short curly hair—very un-Friyrian—was silver mixed with pale gold instead of all pale gold.

    She is the same! he sent crossly, patting Dohra’s back with a pseudopod. “Don’t do that water-from-the-eyes thing, Dohra.”

    “No,” said Dohra shakily, standing back and smiling up at him. “It’s so good to see you, BrTl!”

    “You, too. This is Su,” he explained.

    “Of course!” Dohra beamed at her. “It’s lovely to meet you, Su! Do they shake hands or something on New Whtyll?”

    “Um, not really.”

    “Some of them suck your neck-hair,” reported BrTl glumly.

    “Ugh!” said Dohra, laughing. “Don’t worry, Su, I won’t kiss you, the Friyrians’d be shocked! Well, welcome to Friyria! It’s pretty stuffy, I have to admit, but don’t worry, we just live a cosy life at home.”

    “Yes,” said Su uncertainly. BrTl had admitted that the being talked a lot but she hadn’t expected… “So do we, as much as Mum can manage it.”

    “Of course! I remember her so well! Very sensible as well as very clever. And of course so pretty: I was so surprised when I first met her, because that part of her wasn’t in BrTl’s and Trff’s mind-pictures of her at all! Only then I realised that that wasn’t part of the essential her, and it was silly of me, really, to put so much emphasis on it. Only being humanoid, it’s hard not to, isn’t it?”

    “Yes,” said Su, suddenly deciding that in spite of the flow of chatter she really liked her. “’Tis. She said to give you her best, Dohra.”

    “Thank you. And is she keeping well?”

    “Very well, thanks. But she wears shades for reading, these days.”

    “Really? So does Ccrain! I’ll tell him that, it’ll make him feel better about it. Men can be very silly about these things, can’t they?”

    Suddenly Su received a real bright mind-picture of a tall, handsome, elderly male-tended Friyrian in a gill-collar shouting: “Vvlvanian curses!” And hurling a text-blob across the room, help! It was like being there, it was even better than Mum’s mind-pictures!

    “She’s a storyteller, so all her pictures are very real,” explained BrTl. “That’s him. I don’t remember those stripes in his head-fur, though.”

    “No. –Hair,” said Dohra, smiling at him. “It was a very deep indigo, wasn’t it? Very beautiful. It’s turning silver, now, BrTl. What humanoids call going grey.”

    “Oh, yes, Jhl’s hair’s doing that, too. She said to ask you about the younger cognates,” he remembered.

    “Kids,” said Dohra with her lovely smile. “They’re all very well, thanks, BrTl. Three of them came with me, but they’ve just dashed off to get a shake, they’ll be back in a minute. Our eldest son, Jnkalli, is off-world: he’s in Space Fleet. He’s a Squadron Commander now.”

    “A Pilot!” BrTl discerned on a pleased note.

    “Yes: and in a fighter squadron. What else would Ccrain’s eldest son do?” replied Dohra wryly.

    “That sort of being,” BrTl explained, as Su received a vivid mind-picture of the handsome elderly Friyrian patting the back of a tall young man with pale blue skin and indigo hair in a long plait. He was in cadet uniform with umpteen Merit Stars up. Dohra was there, too, wearing a pale pink long dress patterned with silver lozenges, and bawling into a matching pale pink senso-tissue.

    “Graduation. Telling them he wants to fly a fighter,” explained BrTl. Superfluously: the picture was already telling Su that. “I said: she’s a storyteller. Wait until she really tells you a story!”

    “Pooh, you slept through most of that one on the third moon of Pkqwrd!” said Dohra with a laugh. “If the picture gets too bright, just tell me, Su, and I’ll try to stop. I’ve got lazy over the past few years, I’m afraid, living on the farm!”

    So it was a farm! Su sagged. In that case it probably would be really cosy. Nothing she’d heard about Friyria up to now had suggested the word “cosy” could ever apply there, and the mega-humungous spaceport had certainly reinforced the notion that it was a terrifically sophisticated world. Dohra’s lovely pink dress in her picture hadn’t helped, either, though at the moment she was wearing coveralls. Certainly not in Durocloth, and not Service greige like BrTl’s, pale blue, but coveralls, yes. Was it a Friyrian fashion? She looked round but couldn’t see anyone else wearing them.

    “Here come the children!” said Dohra, waving. “Wessy Kally’s with them. You met her, BrTl.”

    “The blue being,” he said uncertainly. “Wasn’t she just in your story?”

    “No, the story wasn’t real, but she is. She came with Ccrain and J’nno and me to that lovely Galaxy Day on Morphy’s Planet, for the Ma’manker ending-sizzle: you remember!”

    Su knew he remembered the Ma’manker pancakes that had featured at the ending-sizzle; she looked up at him anxiously

    “Oh, yes! Those were galaxious pancakes.”

    “Exactly! I thought we might have some for lunch: I’ve got the recipe for those ones with the secret ingredient that were your favourites,” beamed Dohra. “’Tisn’t a secret now, ְ’cos Trff spotted it!” she said to Su with a loud giggle.

    “Got it!” she agreed, grinning. Though actually she felt quite nervous: the three younger people with the tall blue-skinned lady were about her own age and what if they didn’t like her, or she didn’t like them?

     They’ll like you, BrTl assured her comfortably. They’re Dohra’s cognates!

    Yeah, something like that. Su smiled nervously as she was introduced to Wessy Kally, who was Captain Ccrainchzzyllia’s adopted daughter, though she was about Dohra’s age, and to Dohra’s own three younger children.

    Brtelli was Dohra’s second son. He was named after BrTl, explained Dohra: it was the nearest they could get in a friymanoid name, though of course she realised he wasn’t entitled to a real cognate name!

    Brtelli grinned at Su and said: “Not like some, eh, BrSu?”

    He was such a cheerful-looking young man, with a round, smiling face very like his mother’s, except for the pretty pale blue skin, that Su found she was grinning back. Even though it was very cheeky of him to read her like that, let alone use the xathpyroid name, and she was positive that his old-fashioned father would have taught him better. His fair hair was short, but allowed to curl on top: the same sort of bubbly curls as his mother’s. Su began to feel better about her own short, bubbly curls.

    Hallikalli was the elder daughter: younger than Brtelli but, Su thought, a bit older than she was. Her hair was long, very thick and wavy: a pale shade just touched with gold: really gorgeous. Her skin was paler than her brother’s: only faintly tinged with blue.

    She looked a lot like Vanna, Athlor’s former bond-partner: certainly she had the same sweet expression. She seemed very shy: she smiled timidly at Su.

    Dohra put her arm round her and said: “She was named after a daughter of Ccrain’s who was lost. It’s a sad story; I won’t tell it now.”

    “No, or we’ll be here till next Galaxy Day!” said Brtelli with a laugh. “I’m glad you like the pale blue, Su. It isn’t generally admired here, but we think she’s very pretty, in the family.”

    “Yes: I think so, too,” Su agreed firmly, as Hallikalli was now looking agonised. Help, did the Friyrians treat her unkindly because she was the wrong colour?

    “They treat all friymanoids unkindly—well, at the most with tolerant scorn,” said Brtelli drily.

    “Look, stop reading her!” said his mother crossly. “Your father would have ten megazillion fits! –The people round home don’t, of course, Su, they’re used to us all. But there is a lot of prejudice against friymanoids, yes. Ccrain’s worked very hard to get non-discriminatory laws passed.”

    “Yes,” replied Su dazedly. Wasn’t it IG-illegal to discriminate against beings for that sort of thing, though?

    “Home World Regs,” said BrTl heavily. “Friyria’s in the Federation, so beings above Class 390 have to go to school and can apply for the Academy, but otherwise the world can make its own regs about what they’re entitled to, geddit?”

    “Yes. I never knew that,” she said shakily. Help, maybe there was some point in H’lln’s endless politics, after all!

    For a wonder BrTl wasn’t telling her to use the Encyclopaedia; instead he held out a pseudopod to her, sending: There is some point, yeah, even though politics are Vvlvanian-cursed boring most of the time.

    Gratefully Su held the pseudopod. “Um, at home on New Whtyll you’d be equal,” she said shyly to the friymanoids, going very pink.

    The girls nodded and smiled, and Wessy Kally replied nicely: “I’ve always thought it would be a good place to live. Pioneer worlds are usually much freer, aren’t they?” but Brtelli cried: “Help, she blushes just like you, Mother!” Laughing, but looking at Su with frank admiration.

    Poor Su blushed harder than ever as his mother said: “Yes; I keep telling you: your father’s wrong, I’m not unique. And for Federation’s sake stop making personal remarks! About anybody,” she added firmly.

    “Yeah: shut up, Brtelli,” agreed the younger girl. “Hullo, Su, I’m Jhlelli,” she said with a friendly grin.

    Unlike her siblings she looked very Friyrian: her skin was turquoise and she didn’t have big blue eyes like they did, but the rather slanted, long golden eyes that most Friyrians had.

    “After Jhl. As close as they could get: see, it has to be a friymanoid name—that’s a World Reg, too,” explained BrTl.

    “I see,” said Su dazedly. “It’s lovely to meet you, Jhlelli.” She’d thought that Dohra didn’t know Mum all that well, because that time she’d been stuck on the third moon of Pkqwrd for months at the same time as BrTl had, hadn’t Mum been somewhere else?

    That’s right, agreed BrTl. The thing was— Bother. Well, it was all very complicated. Um, humanoid repro stuff—and Friyrian repro stuff as well, come to think of it—and, um… That DorAvenian was definitely in it, curse his vacuum-frozen eyes. Think the blue being was in there, too, somehow, but it all got plasmo-blasted complicated, he ended lamely, looking hard at Wessy Kally.

    She was rather blue, but very, very pretty. Her hair was the thick, straight indigo that lots of Friyrians had and she was wearing it long with some flowers in it—ooh, those little white starry flowers were Gr’mmeayan jasmine, like the big climber Mum grew on the orchard wall!

    Yes: it’s from our garden: imported, Mother knows people on Gr’mmeaya.

    Su jumped and gave Brtelli a glare.

    “Was he sending?’ asked Jhlelli. “Honestly, Brtelli, you are the ultimate end of the universe! Ignore him, Su: he does it to annoy.”

    “It’s all right, he’s rather like my brother, Athlor. He’s always victimising me because I’m a rotten sender and I can’t read worth an ig.”

    Brtelli had now flushed a dull indigo, though unlike some, Su wasn’t gonna remark on it aloud. “No! I mean, sorry!” he gulped.

    “You get used to it, being the youngest,” said Su heavily.

    Jhlelli gave her a very kind look. “Yeah. I’ve been put down all my life, too.”

    “Poor little thing,” said Brtelli with horrible mock sympathy. “Tell you what: we’ll go to New Whtyll with Su, and that’ll leave you free to pass, oh turquoise-skinned one.”

    “I don’t wanna pass! I’m not into denying my heritage!” she snapped.

    “That’ll do, you two,” said Dohra placidly. “I can only apologise for them, Su. Actually, New Whtyll sounds really lovely. I’d love to see it.”

    “Yes, you’d like it,” agreed BrTl. “But the dooler grass might make you sneeze.”

    Only xathpyroids were allergic to dooler grass pollen: Su looked anxiously at Dohra.

    “That sounds bad, BrTl,” she said sympathetically. “What is dooler grass? I don’t think we get that here.”

    Releasing Su’s hand and offering Dohra the pseudopod instead, BrTl began to tell her, as they moved off slowly through the crowded concourse.

    Brtelli looked after them drily. “Father was right about those two. Symbiotic, huh?”

    “No!” said Su crossly.

    “No, of course not. Don’t say that sort of thing, Brtelli, it’d hurt Dohra’s feelings if she heard you,” said Wessy Kally firmly, going off to join them.

    “You’re an idiot, Brtelli,” said Hallikalli unexpectedly.

    “Yeah, and on many worlds of the Federation that remark would be considered indecent,” added Jhlelli evilly. “I’d love to come over to the Third Galaxy, Su, only Father thinks we ought to work to get friymanoids accepted as full citizens here. But Mother says principles are all very well, but that big a change’d take generations.”

    “I see. Come on, Phyoowella,” said Su limply.

    “[Subjectless particle] hungry!” she wailed, and the young friymanoids jumped.

    “Help, was that speech?” croaked Brtelli. “My translator can’t translate it.”

    “Yes, ’course: it was Loogher. She’s Class 396 within the stupid Meaning,” replied Su with a glare. “Never mind, Phyoowella, we’ll have lunch soon. –Soon eat [nominal particle] me, Phyoowella [conjunctive particle].” Soon eat [nominal particle] me, Phyoowella [conjunctive particle].

    They had all winced, and Brtelli gasped and clapped his hands to his head.

    “Serves ya right for eavesdropping,” said Jhlelli sourly.

    “Yes,” agreed Hallikalli. “Could I—could I hold one of her other hands, Su?”

    “Yes, ’course. Look, Phyoowella, this nice girl’s gonna take your hand! –Nice [nominal particle] not-Loogher [objective particle] hand take.” Nice [nominal particle] not-Loogher [objective particle] hand take.

    “[Subjectless particle] [possessive particle] hand take,” agreed Phyoowella, letting Hallikalli hold her paw.

    “Ooh, she’s warm! Hullo, Phyoowella!” beamed Hallikalli. “Aren’t you nice?”

    “Yeah, ’course she’s warm: she’s warm-blooded, see?” Su wasn’t too good at dependent clauses in Loogher, so instead of “She thinks that you’re nice” she just said: “[Nominal particle] Phyoowella nice,” ([Nominal particle] Phyoowella nice) and it seemed to go down good. At least with the Loogher; the three friymanoids clapped their hands over their ears.

    “Sorry. It does take a bit of getting used to. She likes it if I send to her as well as say it,” Su explained limply. “Especially if we’re somewhere that’s strange to her.”

    “Of course!” agreed Hallikalli. And they all hastened after their elders, the sisters asking lots of questions about the Looghers and the other fauna of the Third Galaxy and Brtelli trying to pretend he wasn’t listening as avidly as they were.

    Brtelli was in charge of the family lifter and after his mother and his adopted sister had both told him not to swoop and Jhlelli had told him not to go into hyperdrive they settled down for a nice little scenic tour of the city and environs before heading home.

    The city was huge, and so beautiful! Elegant spires and towers, all in lovely pastel colours. It seemed terrifically organised: there was a great deal of flying traffic, but it was all in lanes.

    “It’s only a provincial city, of course, but we thought it’d be much more convenient for you to land here,” explained Dohra.

    “You mean it isn’t the capital?” gasped Su, peering out at it.

    “By no means!”

    Help. If this was their idea of a provincial city, what was their so-called farm gonna be like?

    “Green grass,” discerned BrTl in tones of unalloyed relief as Brtelli disengaged from their lane and they flew away from the city and its great spread of garden suburbs.

    “Yes: would you call it lurghple?” asked Dohra.

    “No, not enough yellow in it. Nice, though. Not too blue.”

    “No, that’s what I thought. Sorry about the blue sky, BrTl!” she said with a giggle.

    “Standard Class 232 world,” he replied resignedly. “Though a Meteo could fix that.”

    “We haven’t got one. There’s a very strong… um, well, Brtelli calls it a reactionary movement. But it’s more than a movement, really, though some of them are very vocal and organised. But people here are very conservative. They like things the way they were in the old days.”

    “Gee, never thought to hear myself say it, but that’s one thing Friyrians have got in common with us xathpyroids!”

    “Yes; it’s comforting, in a way. And when you get to know them and understand their customs, it’s not such a bad place to live at all. I know other worlds of the Federation think it’s a very restrictive society, but everyone has the freedom to change their gender if they want to, you know.”

    “Except us,” said the pilot very drily indeed.

    “Don’t be silly, we’re friymanoids,” replied Wessy Kally calmly.

    Su gasped. Help! How unfair!

    “No!” said Dohra with a laugh. “I’m so sorry, Su, I didn’t explain it properly! Ccrain’s always telling me I’ve got a mind like a boo-bird!”

    “It’s a biological impossibility for us, Su. We’re like you: one sex,” explained Wessy Kally.

    “I see,” said Su limply. She was getting a very clear picture from Dohra of a short-legged bird about the size of a po-goose, sort of vague-looking, peering about for something.

    “‘A mind like a boo-bird’ is a popular Friyrian saying, not particularly pejorative, Su,” put in Jhlelli. “Do you have boo-birds on New Whtyll? No? They’re quite common in the two galaxies. They’re native to Friyria, but lots of other worlds raise them for their eggs. They’re, um, not very good at paying attention.”

    “She’s putting it nicely!” said Dohra gaily. “They’ve got almost no attention span at all! You can put them down in front of a nice little pile of grain and even though they’re hungry, after a bit they’ll just wander off and forget about it. They’re short-sighted, too, that doesn’t help, ’cos see, after they’ve wandered off they can’t spot it again and so you always see them poking about on the ground sort of, um, blearily, really!”

    “You need shades,” drawled her son.

    “I can’t make them work,” said Dohra placidly. “It’s all right, Su, you can laugh!”

    Su did laugh, though rather guiltily. She was a bit like a well-feathered, plump domesticated fowl. A very pretty one, though.

    “The eggs are delicious,” put in Hallikalli on a shy note, “but you can’t eat the flesh, like grqwaries: it’s theoretically edible, but very sour.”

    “I see,” said Su feebly. It was now very clear, not that it hadn’t been pretty evident all along, that Captain Ccrainchzzyllia’s entire family was reading her!

    They flew over a lot of pretty countryside, much of it farmed, but quite a few wilderness areas with forests and pretty streams as well, Dohra chattering away happily, and finally swooped down well within sight of what Su, frankly, would have called a palace. Not nearly as big as the Vt R’aam palace on Whtyll, no, but it looked as if it was made of pale blue marble and those there were spires and turrets—

    “Don’t panic,” said Brtelli. “That’s where Grandparent used to live. Father’s turned it into an arts and community centre. The local people don’t know what the arts are, mind you, but they like the community side: gribble-ball courts, indoor jiminy-rix, endless pongo-pongo games! Our house is over here.” And he swooped down in front of a long, low house that seemed to be made entirely of shaggy logs! As they landed Su saw it wasn’t, quite: the window surrounds and the verandah posts, quite like Mum’s verandah back home, were of white-painted wood.

    As they got out of the lifter the tall, handsome elderly Friyrian of Dohra’s vivid picture came wandering round the corner of the house.

    Ooh, he was carrying a grqwary—dead, but unplucked—and he was dressed in faded Service greige coveralls, in fact he reminded Su of no-one so much as her brother, Rh’aiiy’hn!

    His thin turquoise face creased into an excellent simulacrum of a humanoid smile and he said, with a gentle Friyrian tinkle: “So this is Su! Welcome to our home, Su. I’m Ccrainchzzyllia.”

    “How do you do, Captain Ccrainchzzyllia?” replied Su shyly. There was, of course, a big age difference between Dad and Mum, but she thought there must be even more between him and Dohra. He certainly looked old enough to be his three children’s grandfather.

    Friyrians have longer lifespans than humanoids, BrTl informed her helpfully. “Good to see you again, sir.”

    Help! He replied in Slaetho-Xathpyrian, overriding their translators effortlessly: “Welcome to our home, Br-cognate.”

    “Was that right?” asked Dohra, going up to him and taking his arm—the one that wasn’t holding the grqwary. “He’s been practising. –Is this for dinner? Thank you, Ccrain.”

    “Yeah, good,” croaked BrTl numbly. “Um—sorry.” Politely he removed his translator. “That was very good. Thanks for having us, Cr-cognate.”

    Slaetho-Xathpyrian as spoken by its native speakers was rather a loud language and the Captain hadn’t managed anything like the volume BrTl produced. Dohra was unmoved—well, she had spent some time with him on the third moon of Pkqwrd, of course—but all the friymanoids, even Wessy Kally, were unable to conceal their winces. Su didn’t pick anything up but she thought their father must have told them off, because they all went indigo and Brtelli shuffled his feet and scowled.

    BrTl resumed his translator. “Sorry. The Slaetho-Xathpyrian dialects were developed on the rolling plains.”

    “Please don’t apologise,” said the Captain with a hard look at his descendants.

    “No,” said Brtelli quickly. “We apologise, BrTl. And I’d like to add my welcome to Father’s.”

    “Thank you,” replied BrTl simply. “We’re glad to be here.”

    “Yes,” said Su, blushing as the attention of everyone, including the terrifying Captain Ccrainchzzyllia, switched to her. “He’s been looking forward to it like anything.”

    “So has Dohra!” said Captain Ccrainchzzyllia, smiling again and this time producing a positive cascade of little tinkles: ooh!

    Dohra hugged his arm. “See! I told you that all fair-skinned humanoids can blush! I’m not unique!”

    He looked at her quizzically and murmured: “I think you are, darling.”

    “Yes,” agreed BrTl. “Hard to describe it, really… No, I can’t. Very Dohra-ish? These young cognates are a bit similar inside,” he added dubiously.

    “Only a bit, I think!” said their father with a muffled tinkle. “Now, I think there’s one being missing, isn’t there? Where is your famous Loogher, Su, my dear?”

    Blushing again, Su explained: “She went to sleep, sir. She can be noisy if she wakes up in a strange place.”

    “I’ll stop her,” offered BrTl.

    “No!”

    “My dear, if she’s upset at all, I think I can help,” said the Captain smoothly. “Would you show me?”

    Ooh, heck! He gently detached his bond-partner’s hand from his arm and came and took Su’s elbow! Numbly she let herself be led over to the lifter.

    “I—I duh-don’t think she’s the same inside as—as beings from the two galaxies, sir!” she hissed, as he looked at the sleeping Loogher with a tiny tinkle. Not through his mouth: help, was he doing it just through his neck-gills?

    Yes, through the gills, he said in her head. I'm old-fashioned, as perhaps my children may have indicated.

    “No!” gasped Su. “They didn’t say anything, but I—I can feel they all respect and love you very much, sir!”

    “Thank you, Su. I’ll just look,” he murmured.

    Su watched respectfully as the elderly Friyrian looked at the Loogher.

    “Fascinating. Very well, my dear, wake her up.”

    Swallowing, Su undid Phyoowella’s straps and shook her shoulder. “Wake up, Phyoowella! –Wake up, [vocative particle] Phyoowella!” she gulped in Loogher. Wake up, [vocative particle] Phyoowella!

    Phyoowella’s three round eyes opened slowly. “[Subjectless particle], [verbless particle] Su,” she discerned.

    “Yes, it’s Su!” cooed Su. “That’s better, now you’re awake!”

    The eyes focussed on the Captain. “[Subjectless particle], [verbless particle] furry, furry,” she decided.

    Su went all limp. “She likes you. She thinks you’re pretty,” she croaked.

    “A retinal predisposition towards the blue range, I think,” he murmured with a muffled tinkle. “Hullo, Phyoowella!” he cooed. “[Verbless particle] furry, furry, [vocative particle] Phyoowella!” [Verbless particle] furry, furry, [vocative particle] Phyoowella!

    Su’s jaw dropped. “What did you say?” she croaked.

    “Wasn’t that right? I tried to say ‘You’re pretty, Phyoowella.’”

    “[Verbless particle] furry, furry Phyoowella,” agreed the Loogher smugly.

    “Yes, it was exactly right,” said Su numbly. “She’s real pleased, she’s agreeing with you.”

    “Good. I can’t say I have a facility for languages, but I’ve developed a great interest in them since I decided to learn Flppu. Then of course I learnt a smattering of Slaetho-Xathpyrian in order to greet BrTl.”

    “I’ve known the Looghers all my life and I still can’t speak their language good,” croaked Su.

    “It is a difficult language, I’d say,” he said kindly.

    “Yes. It’s got all these, um, thingos. Particles, that’s it. Like sometimes where you leave things out and sometimes where you put things in, and you can’t second-guess it. And no tenses.”

   “Mm: very interesting. Flppu has no tenses either, but no particles at all, and makes no distinction between singular and plural nouns: where we would say ‘one tree’ and ‘two trees’ they say ‘tree’ and ‘tree-tree’. More than three trees,” he said, reading her mind without any difficulty whatsoever, “are simply ‘tree-many’. It often omits verbs and you can’t second-guess that, either!”

    “Galloping grqwary gizzards,” said Su numbly. “That sounds even harder than Loogher.”

    “Indeed!” he agreed with a merry tinkle. “Shall we take her inside?”

    Su agreeing, they headed off to the house with Captain Ccrainchzzyllia, still with his grqwary in one hand, holding one of the Loogher’s paws and Su holding another.

    Or, as Brtelli put it a little later to his siblings, when the visitors had been shown to their rooms: “Eating out of his appendage! Well, Mother may be unique as he claims, but it’s obvious his appeal hasn’t worn off as far as plump little pink-skinned humanoids are concerned!”

    Jhl put the text-blob down, grinning. “Reading between the lines of this, BrTl and Dohra have picked up where they left off on the third moon of Pkqwrd, and the gill-collared one’s fallen for Su about as heavily as he did for Dohra!”

    “What?” said Athlor, dropping the text-blob he’d been reading.

    “Not like that, asteroid-brain! He’s old enough to be her great-grandfather several times over!”

    “When did that stop a Friyrian?”

    “Your prejudices are showing, Athlor. As a matter of fact he was a highly principled being back then and it appears he hasn’t changed. Though unlike some he seems to have got more flexible, not less, in his old age. He’s seriously considering letting the kids come over here, since thirty IG years of unrelenting struggle haven’t succeeded in mitigating the Friyrian anti-friymanoid laws by one iota.”

    “Can they inherit property?”

    “Nope. Not Friyrian property: that farm of his’ll go to his siblings, I imagine. Theoretically they can inherit friymanoid property, but as it’s almost impossible for a friymanoid to own any—”

    “They would be better off here, then. –Did Su actually tell you that?”

    “Yes. She’s improved a lot.”

    “Dad apparently agrees with you,” he said with a shrug, tossing her his blob.

    Jhl caught it automatically. “His Whtyllian Lordship’s descended to a text-blob?”

    “As you see. The first half of it’s a sustained complaint about the quality of the recorder-blobs one gets on Intergalactica these days,” he said with another shrug. “And most of the rest of it’s a tirade about the IG Government: sure you want to read it?”

    “Not really.” Jhl scanned it rapidly. There was a short paragraph near the end where his plasmo-blasted Lordship mentioned his daughter with approval, and that was it. Nothing about Vt R’aam Thirty-Two’s exam results at all!

    “Have to wait for the clone to write, to get the Dinkum Megglybits,” he drawled.

    “You wouldn’t know a Megglybit if you fell over it!” snarled Jhl.

    “No, quite right, I wouldn’t. What is a Megglybit, and why is it Dinkum?” he asked, smothering a yawn.

    “Go to bed!” snapped his mother.

    “No: enlighten my ignorance.”

    “Look up the Encyclopaedia; I’m going to bed.” She walked out.

    Athlor shrugged. Encyclopaedia, he ordered. Nothing. “Encyclopaedia!” he shouted. Still nothing. He threw a cushion at the plasmo-blasted sim-receiver. It shimmered and reported: Dinkum Megglybits. Spacers’ slang = the truth; the real th… And apparently expired.

    Scowling, he picked up Su’s text-blob. Blah, blah… Yep, she’d fallen for the elderly Friyrian captain good an’ proper. Well, a crush wouldn’t hurt her. The Loogher had eaten what? Well, who cared? Yawning, he chucked the blob onto one of Dad’s Vvlvanian-cursed occasional tables and trailed off to bed.

    He woke early the next morning and couldn’t get back to sleep, so he got up and went downstairs. The sitting-room was occupied by Clone Vt R’aam Seventy-Two, kneeling in front of the fireplace, inefficiently attempting to light the fire with an igno-blob.

    “Use a match, Vt R’aam Seventy-Two!” said Athlor impatiently.

    The boot-boy looked up at him doubtfully. “Vt R’aam Forty-Nine tole me to use the blob, sir.”

    Sighing, Athlor concentrated on the igno-blob. Nothing. “It’s blobbed out. Get a match, it’s like the vacuum-frozen plains of Gwrrtt in here!”

    Clone Vt R’aam Seventy-Two scurried out. In his absence Athlor concentrated hard on the neatly laid fire: his mother had the skill of lighting things by the power of her mind alone. Well, with the aid of oxygen, presumably, though the plasmo-blasted woman hadn’t been able to tell him exactly how she did it. …Nope. Nothing,

    Clone Vt R’aam Forty-Nine came in, emanating butlerliness. “I’m so sorry the fire’s not lit, sir.”

    The butlerly bit was becoming very, very boring. “Yeah. Get on with it. Use a match.”

    “Vt R’aam Seventy-Two will do it for you, sir,” he said smoothly, snapping his fingers. Vt R’aam Seventy-Two! Get in here!

    The boot-boy scurried back. “First Cook Kadry says we’re nearly out of matches ’cos the igno-blobs are all blobbed out!”

    “Were you asked that?” asked the older clone acidly. “Light the fire for Lord Athlor immediately!”

    Reddening, the boy got on with it.

    “Clone Vt R’aam Forty-Nine,” said Athlor coldly, sounding in his own ears horribly like his father, “I believe that Captain Smt Wong Vt R’aam has ordered the household not to address me or refer to me as ‘Lord’? –Don’t apologise. Please remove yourself, that ridiculous rig-out you’re in and those Vvlvanian-cursed emanations of butlerliness from the room. And do not favour us with the emanations at all, in future,” he added icily.

   “Yuh—yessir!” the man stuttered, stumbling out.

    Athlor’s lips tightened. He walked over to the windows, scowling.

    “It’s going, sir,” croaked the boot-boy.

    “Mm? Oh—good. Thank you, Vt R’aam Seventy-Two. –Just a moment,” he said as the boy scrambled up. “Shouldn’t you be at school?”

    “I’m going, sir!” he gulped. “Me an’ BrPl, we’re going together. He’ll lope, see!”

    “Young BrPl? Is he over here?”

    “Yessir! The Mistress said he could sleep in them stable things of my Lord’s! Like, they got good stalls, if you’re not too tall!”

    Athlor had to swallow. Dad had ordered—very long-distance, yes—a stable block to be built at the rear of the house, apparently to accommodate some Whtyllian horses, or possibly Old Rthfrdian horses, the message hadn’t been clear on that point, that he intended sending over once he was sure the PBTTs were safe. The roomy stalls would be about the right height for a young xathpyroid, yes. But there were no neck-rests.

    “Where does he put his neck?” he asked feebly.

    “Like, on that funny little door, sir!” replied the boy eagerly,

    Er—got it. Dad’s idea of a stable door was a thing that came up to about thigh height with a sort of shutter above it. Presumably that was how they did it back on Whtyll. At all events First Cook Kadry had approved the result as really smart. “I see,” he said, eyeing the wisps of straw on the boot-boy’s garments drily. Evidently Clone Vt R’aam Seventy-Two and his xathpyroid friend were sharing the stall. He was about to dismiss him but took another look. That wasn't merely dirt on his upper lip.

    “Come here.” He took him by the chin and peered. “Mm. Growing up, I see. Your balls dropped, have they?’

    “Yessir!” beamed the boot-boy, going very red but terrifically pleased. “An’ I been uncloned, too!”

    “What?”

    “Yes! See, the Mistress, she told off Madam Mrsha to do it, ’cos she was the one that cloned me, and they done it! So now I can have a girlfriend an’ everything! But I’m still allowed to be a house clone, see! And they done all our batch!”

    “But—” No, well, possibly it was engineering: genetic engineering or—or something similar? But great galloping herds of grpplybeasts, Vt R’aam Thirty-Two had been done by a bunch of Full Surgeons! “Do you feel okay?” he asked uneasily.

    “Yeah, great! First Cook, she says I’m all legs an’ stomach!” he beamed.

    “That sounds normal,” said Athlor weakly. “Well, off you trot. –And oy! If there’s anything you want to know about girls, you ask me, see?”

    “Right you are, sir! Ta!” he beamed, departing.

    Athlor tottered over to the flop couch and collapsed on it. Mrsha couldn’t have… Not by herself! And the boy had said “they done it”, too. No, well, there was only one being on New Whtyll, given the absence of both Trff and his father, that had the mind-powers even to attempt it, wasn’t there? He went upstairs, looking grim.

    His mother was asleep with the plasmo-blasted jooghers on the end of her bed. “Get off!” he said irritably, giving the nearest one a vicious shove. They piled off, yowling, and Jhl opened her eyes.

    “What’d you do that for?”

    “I want to talk to you. Sit up, wake up, and don’t dare to lie to me.”

    Jhl sat up, looking defiant. “Well?”

    “Did you unclone young Vt R’aam Seventy-Two and his batch behind Dad’s back?”

    “Yes,” she said, sticking out her chin. “So?’

    “So, you could have killed the boys, Mum,” said Athlor in a shaken voice.

    “No. I know to you lot I’m just your old mum, but way back when, I discovered I had the sort of powers the Full Surgeons have. Well—ancient history. But I manipulated certain beings’ minds, okay? Immature beings, about the age of those boys, though one mammal’s mind is very like another’s. Back then I was too busy zapping the odd lifter and so forth to think about what else I might usefully be doing. Then during the Expedition your father kept me busy having you lot and then trying to bring you up like reasonable beings rather than rich little Whtyllians, added to which I was supposed to be captaining a ship. But I did put in a bit of time doing Full Surgeon-type stuff when a few odd things went wrong. Accidents, mainly. You know: knitting bones, keeping a body alive while I stuck its heart back together.”

    “Eh?”

    “It’s a very simple mechanism, but there was no way to make the blood circulate without it, so I got Trff to make a blob do it. –Pump it round!” she said impatiently.

    “Uh—right. But uncloning isn’t on that level, is it?”

    “Uncloning’s a misnomer. All I did was restore their sexual drive from a latent state. There are, um, thingos, the Full Surgeons’d have names for them, physical thingos, that whizz round and come out of organs, that you have to, um, encourage a bit, but it’s largely a matter of the right connections in the brain. And you see, it was mainly brains that I’d worked on back before. It’s always a matter of grasping the structure of the thing. There’s no risk if you’ve got the structure right.”

    He passed his hand through his hair. “No, okay, you know what you’re doing. Even though you’ve got virtually no medical vocabulary,” he added in spite of himself.

    “I’ve never thought in words.”

    No, words were too slow for her. High-level mathematics, was more like it. Way beyond him. “No, I know. Have you thought through the implications— No, scrub that. Why would you go and do something that you know will drive Dad into a fury?”

    “It needed to be done. I was looking at the stats. There are ten times more beings here of clone status than not, do you realise? What sort of society are we creating, for Federation’s sake? Personally I didn’t come all this way to set up a world that’s even more discriminatory than the places we shook the intergalactic dust of! I decided that that’s why I’ve got these abilities: to do it. I’ve done most of the house clones: those that wanted it, they didn’t all, of course. And I’ve done Mrsha’s and H’lln’s, too.”

    “You mean you bullied them into letting you.”

    “No, they were keen. Mrsha thinks every being should have the right to be a free engineer,” said Jhl on a dry note, “and H’lln’s all for anything that’ll get her more votes. Once she saw the stats she realised that clone rights could be a very big issue.”

    “I see,” said Athlor tightly. “Well, that makes three of us on your side: I’m all for exercising one’s sexual abilities. Um, sorry, Mum: I’m not saying it’s not a worthy cause, and very well worth doing, rights and all, but behind Dad’s back?”

    Jhl rubbed her nose. “There is an expression for it: I heard it used back when BrTl and Trff and I were getting that load of plush-moss out of Bo’ommer III and the régime changed. Well, one lot of uniforms led by a princeling took over from another lot of uniforms led by a different princeling, far as we could tell. And I heard it on Old Rthfrdia, too… Oh, yes! Palace coup.”

    Athlor choked.

    “Hah, hah,” said Jhl.

    “Look, don’t claim you didn’t do it deliberately while he was away!”

    “I’m not claiming any such thing. Arguing with him never works these days. Anyway,” said Jhl impatiently, “did he expect us all just to stagnate, awaiting his lordly pleasure, while he was away? Everything changes! The essence of life is change! Time itself is change!”

    “Er—yes. Don’t let’s go into the space-time garbage again, Mum. Um, and he did go to rescue Su: don’t you think you’re being a bit mean to him?”

    “He’s been away for MONTHS!” she shouted. “We don’t NEED the plasmo-blasted relay stations, and he’s never gonna get support for an augmented string of them, and the whole thing is POTTY!”

    Athlor gnawed on his lip. “Mm.”

    Jhl stared in front of her for some time. “Athlor, I think there’s something wrong,” she said at last.

    “Uh—Dad’ll give up eventually, Mum, and you’re doing your bit for the clones—”

    “Not that.” She fished in her beside cabinet. “Look.”

    Athlor looked. “Clapped-out blob,” he discerned with a shrug.

    “Yeah. Now hear this.” She got out another blob. Trff’s image flashed up immediately. “Hullo, Jhl. It had a blob. The blob is dead.” It paused. “It might be Su’s word. It’s the word in her-it’s memory store. Can a blob be dead? It was only one text-blob. It can’t re-blob this blob. It’s continuing its research. Trff out.”

    Athlor gaped at her. “Losing it,” he pronounced at last, very faintly.

    “Ya reckon?”

    “Well, uh—” He picked up the clapped-out blob. “It is a funny colour,” he admitted.

    “Right; I’ve certainly never seen anything like it.”

    “Uh—mok droppings,” he muttered. “Actually, I think I have. Wait there.” He rushed out.

    Jhl looked grimly at the “dead” blob. After a while a joogher got back on the end of the bed and she booted it off.

    “Here!” gasped Athlor, rushing back in.

    “What was it?”

    “An igno-blob the boot-boy had this morning: neither of us could get it to work.”

    She put it on her palm. Then she put Trff’s dead one next to it. Then she blinked at them. “No discernible difference even with shades,” she reported.

    “No,” said Athlor faintly. “Dead blobs?”

    “Could’ve been a bad batch.”

    “Yes.” He sat down slowly on the edge of the bed. “When did Trff’s one arrive?”

    “Yesterday morning.”

    “Mm.” He could feel her watching hopefully while he thought about it: help! “Okay, either nothing is wrong or something is wrong,” he said at last. “In the first case, either we do nothing and preen ourselves, or we drag everyone back home and make intergalactic fools of ourselves. In the second case, either we drag everyone home and, providing we do it in time, save their lives, or we do nothing and lose them forever.”

    “Mm,” she agreed. “Unless Trff can figure out a way to make the pwld drive the ships all the way by itself. Though maybe it was all the cursed pwlding that made the blobs go bad. On the other hand, these two dead ones aren’t drive blobs—not to mention being from opposite ends of the Known Universe. Um, ten to one it was the blobs dying that made the PBTT break down, rather than the pwld?”

    “Don’t let’s speculate, Mum,” said Athlor firmly. He got up. “I’ll get them back. I’d rather be an intergalactic fool than never see half my family again.” He went out.

    Very, very faintly Jhl managed: “Blow me out beyond the last black hole. He’s grown up.”

Next chapter:

https://theadmirableclone-sf.blogspot.com/2023/11/the-blobs-are-dying.html