2
The Question Of Clone Vt R’aam Thirty-Two
It was apparent to both her parents that Su had succeeded in looking up Clone Vt R’aam Thirty-Two on the Clone Register, but as she hadn’t broached the subject, neither of them did—Shank’yar, admittedly, because he wasn’t interested. Jhl, however, was letting the information simmer. When she judged it had had enough time she blobbed off with a sigh of relief from her youngest son’s crop predictions for the next five local years—Athlor’s stats were okay as far as they went, but he hadn’t yet learned that stats could be interpreted any which way and were meaningless in themselves—and strolled out onto the verandah, smiling, as she always did, at the pleasant semi-tropical sight it presented. (The winters were very hard in the Smt Wongs’ part of Bluellia and in fact in most of Bluellia.) Clone Vt R’aam Forty-Nine was on duty on the cane chair outside Shank’yar’s study; she smiled at him, too, and said: “Lovely day, isn’t it, Vt R’aam Forty-Nine?”
“Yes, Mistress,” he agreed pleasedly, getting up and bowing deeply, Whtyllian-style.
“At ease, Vt R’aam Forty-Nine,” returned Jhl, swallowing a sigh. He sat down again and she asked—without hope, it would’ve been her bond-partner at it again: “What happened to that joogher kitten you had?”
“My Lord said I’m not to have it on my knee when I’m on guard duty, Respected Mistress,” replied the clone sadly.
Jhl took a deep breath. Jooghers were looghoids, about the size and intelligence-level, or so it was claimed, of Whtyllian cats: most of the settlers had kept one as a pet at one time or another, and had duly discovered that unless you kept the young ones with you all the time they transferred their affections to whatever being happened to be handy. So that was that for Clone Vt R’aam Forty-Nine’s joogher kitten. As for guard duty! There was a company of militia permanently patrolling the periphery— Forget it. Him all over.
“I’m sorry about that, Vt R’aam Forty-Nine. Um, would you like a singing fish to keep in your room?”
He brightened. “Yes, please, Mistress!”
“Good. Well, pop up and choose one from the bowl in my upstairs sitting-room. Uh—as soon as you’re off-duty,” she ended weakly.
“Thank you very much, madam!” he beamed.
Yeah, well. The things were driving her dippy, they’d been a present from one of the qwlot-soaked Federation diplos that had come over on that official junket— Never mind. He was happy. Smiling and nodding kindly at him, Jhl went along the verandah and down the steps to the side lawn, where Su could be observed sitting bolt upright, cross-legged, in the same way the Whtyllian clones naturally did unless he had ordered them to sit to attention on— Oh, forget it. At least he was letting them use the cane chairs, these days.
“Dad made Vt R’aam Forty-Nine give up Floffy-Woffy,” said Su immediately.
Jhl sat down beside her on the grass with a sigh. “Quite. I’ve given him a singing fish.”
“Good.”
Jhl drew her knees up to her chin and hugged them. “Lovely day, isn’t it?”
“Um, yeah,” replied her daughter blankly.
“Look around you,” said Jhl heavily.
Su looked blankly at the sloping expanse of shaven green lawn—courtesy of Shank’yar’s gardeners’ blobs, helped along by Floffy-Woffy’s relatives, when he wasn’t looking—the flower-beds bright with pink, yellow, apricot and blue flowers, the great swag of white-starred, orange-scented Gr’mmeayan jasmine on the stone wall that sheltered the orchard, and the fruit trees that Jhl had planted here and there. Never mind that that, according to her Whtyllian bond-partner, gave the lawns an “informal” look!
Well, for Federation’s sake, ffjjiis grew like weeds in this climate, and so did Old Rthfrdian mn-mns, and the trees were very pretty— And over against the stone wall she had a whole row of spiny ban-ban-bans, flourishing like—well, like spiny ban-ban-bans, so those remarks about our winters being too cool for them had been all wrong!
“Um, yeah, ’tis pretty, I suppose,” Su conceded. “I’d of had fruit trees on the lawn, too. Um, don’t you get tired of it, Mum?” she asked curiously.
“What, being on my guard against any and all unreasonable orders, encroachments, or just plain taking advantage when the back’s turned and the mind’s switched off? Not really; keeps me on my mental toes!” said Jhl with a laugh. “Besides, half the time he doesn’t mean it, it’s just habit.”
“He still goes and does it, though,” noted his daughter sourly.
“Yeah, well, I knew what he was like when I agreed to bond-partner with him.”
“I couldn’t stand it,” said Su with a sigh.
“No, but you’re a different type from me.”
“Mm. Um, Fr’dda was going on about Wm again, the other day.”
Jhl’s second son, though politically tending her way, was about as imperious as his father in his private life—without Shank’yar’s excuse. Fr’dda was the offspring of a C’T’rean couple from the Expedition, like most C’T’reans a being of plenty of common sense, except, it had been instantly apparent, in the matter of Wl’hlm S’njee Vt R’aam (Wm in Bluellian). “Yes, well, some of us tried to tell her what he was like when she insisted on bond-partnering with him.”
“Didja? I see.”
“Yeah. –Ah!” said Jhl, suddenly sitting up and snapping her fingers. “That’s it!”
“What?”
“The pink being! Uh—the humanoid girl I told you about who bond-partnered with the Friyrian captain, Su. That’s where she came from: C’T’rea.”
After a moment Su said drily: “It must be in the C’T’rean genetic make-up. I’ve always thought plasmo-blasted Wm was as superior as a Friyrian.”
Jhl grinned. “You’ve got a point! Um, listen: what would you say if I said Athlor reckons that the past ten years of sandstorms and drought out in the Big Sandy Desert indicate that the next five years will be as favourable for the cultivation of Wurratonoonian desert lemonberries as the last?”
Su replied without hesitation: “I’d say he’s an asteroid-brain. Didn’t he even talk to the Looghers? Asteroids of Jollifer, even Dangerous could tell ya that they get eleven years of drought conditions followed by huge downpours that last six to seven months: why does he imagine the Looghers call the Dry Lake that?”
Jhl grinned at her. “Because he’s an asteroid-brain.”
“Yeah. When it fills they call it the Big Wet, we’d probably translate that as Big Lake, but ’tisn’t, it’s the Big Wet, and all the desert Looghers come from glps around and have huge festivals.”
“Yep. To know that, he’d have to descend to talking to a Loogher, though. Well, shall I let him order the planting of fifty times the current acreage of lemonberries, or shall I enlighten him?”
Su’s big grey-blue eyes narrowed. “Either would be good, acksherly,” she pronounced.
“Yeah!” said Jhl with a laugh. “No, well, for the sake of the planet’s economy I’d better enlighten him. Wanna listen in?”
Su nodded eagerly, her eyes shining, so Jhl produced a comm-blob from her pocket and called up her youngest son.
“That was good,” said Su with a deep sigh when the discomfited Athlor had blobbed off.
“Yeah! Well, it’s about time he started to learn there’s more to life than maths.” Jhl lay down flat on her back, smiling, gazing up at pure blue sky. “Why you want to leave all this and go off to the Federation I don’t know,” she murmured.
Su went very red. “You’ve done loads of things!”
“Mm? Oh—I know. I wasn’t criticising, I just spoke a thought aloud… Irritating though your father can be, I never dreamed I could be this happy.”
Su was now a glowing puce. “Good,” she croaked.
Jhl glanced at her in some amusement, but said nothing.
After quite some time Su revealed, as she’d known she would: “Hey, I found Vt R’aam Thirty-Two’s clone record.”
“Mm?” replied Jhl mildly.
Swallowing, Su croaked: “Doesn’t Dad realise? I mean, his original was a Whtyllian Space Fleet lieutenant with an exemplary record! Last performance rating AABB!”
“Two A’s? Asteroids of Hhum,” said Jhl in the Federation vernacular.
“Yeah. –Of Jollifer,” corrected the New Whtyllian.
“Whatever. Well, the cloning engineers wouldn’t dare to give the Admiral a second-rate clone, Su.”
“Yeah, but Mum! He’s gotta be a very intelligent being! Like, that lieutenant had done Advanced Pilot Training and topped his class!”
“Mm. Um, had he?”
“You’re not listening!” said Su crossly.
Jhl squinted up at her daughter’s untidy silhouette against the clear blue sky. “I am listening, dear, but I don’t see your point.”
“Well, in the first place he didn’t oughta be Dad’s butler at all, he oughta have a job where he could use his abilities; and in the second place, a being like that’s not gonna want to trail around looking after me like a—a Flppu!”
On cue, a bright blue fluffy sphere bobbed unsteadily out of the house and wavered over to them.
“Did you call me, Young Mistress?” it piped hopefully.
“Uh, not acksherly, Fl’Oo-ooueroii , but it’s a good thing you’re here, you can sit down and keep us company,” replied Su kindly.
Emanating immense gratification, the blue one bobbed to an approximation of a sitting position next to them. “What a lovely day, Mistress and Little Mistress!” it squeaked.
Jhl swallowed a sigh. Fl’Oo-ooueroii had once been her Official Ship’s Flppu (self-appointed, though the ship hadn’t stopped it), and it was undoubtedly the oldest Flppu in the Known Universe. Or the cosmos, according to Shank’yar, who rather unfortunately was not particularly fond of or patient with potty blue Flppus. It had taken it fifteen New Whtyllian years to stop calling her “Captain, sir”—not that Jhl gave a cptt-rvvr’s fart what it called her, but it had been driving Shank’yar out of his mind—and start calling her “Mistress” or “madam”, and in fact they’d all concluded it was never gonna manage it, when suddenly it had started. On Su’s seventeenth birthday, in fact. It was as obsessive as most Flppus and certainly as intelligent, and take it for all in all, it wasn’t a bad thing that these days it didn’t manage to do much more than doze in the sun in between sips of the watered-down iirouelli’I juice that Shank’yar had at last given in and declared the being could have. –IG Intox. Rating O25. Highly addictive to the Flppu metabolism. But letting it drink was much, much better than letting it obsess over, just as a for instance, polishing their wooden passage floors to the stage of deadly, as it once had with her ship’s xrillion companionways. As Jhl had not failed to point out to her bond-partner.
“Yes, it is a lovely day, Fl’Oo-ooueroii. We were just talking about Vt R’aam Thirty-Two,” she said on a weak note.
“Oh, yes! Very interesting, Respected Mistress!” it squeaked. “Blobs and everything! Ooh, and great big shiny ships!”
“Yeah, he was cloned on one of Dad’s big shiny ships,” agreed Su kindly. “So?” she said pointedly to her mother.
“Mm? Oh! Yes, I agree with you, dear, but I’ve decided that a being can only do so much in a humanoid lifetime, and it’s going to be up to your generation to do something about the clones.”
Su stared at her, frowning.
“Yes, indeed, Mistress! Do something about the clones!” squeaked Fl’Oo-ooueroii. “No iirouelli’i juice, though.”
“No, definitely no juice for clones,” agreed Su automatically. “Whaddaya mean, do something?”
“About their rights,” replied Jhl simply.
“Clones haven’t got any rights,” said Su uncertainly.
“Exactly. I have tried to point out to your father that if he fills the Third Galaxy with clones, one of these days the beings’ll wake up—”
“I’m awake!” squeaked the Flppu.
“Yeah, well done, Fl’Oo-ooueroii,” agreed Jhl automatically. “One of these New Whtyllian days the clones will wa—ditto,” she said hurriedly, “and start demanding their rights, and quite possibly take them by force.”
“Eh?” said Su numbly.
“Think about it, Su! Put yourself in their place! Look, you’ve just said yourself that Vt R’aam Thirty-Two is a highly intelligent being. But he’s got about as many rights as a plasmo-blasted s-being, in fact the only difference between your father’s clones and the s-beings he used to have is that the clones aren’t in bracelets!”
Su had never seen a servo-bracelet: her mother had put a stop to that practice long before the Expedition Fleet reached the Third Galaxy. “Um, ye-ah… They’ve got everything they need, though.”
“Everything except the right to choose their professions, buy land, walk off from their plasmo-blasted jobs if they don’t like them, and vote!”
Su gave a startled laugh. “Clones don’t vote!”
“That is my point,” said Jhl grimly. “Not to mention Loogher rights— No, well, don’t get me started on that one, thanks.”
“Looghers’d vote for something potty, though.”
“That would be their right,” returned the Bluellian grimly. “If you didn’t want them to, you and your lot would have to persuade them—I mean actually persuade them, not zap them with a mind-message—that voting for something not potty would be better. That is what democracy is,” she ended between her teeth.
“I thought we had democracy?”
“Think again.”
Su looked dubious.
“But as I say, I’ve done my bit. And believe you me, getting your father to order the freeing of all s-beings in the Fleet was no nirvana garden— Never mind. I just hope for all your sakes that the clones demand their rights rather than deciding to take them.”
“But Mum, they’re perfectly happy!”
“Mok shit, Su. They’re not free.”
Su stared unseeingly at the lawn, frowning. Eventually she said: “I don’t mind asking Dad if Vt R’aam Thirty-Two can have a better job, but grqwaries’ll fly before he listens to me.”
“I can fly!” squeaked Fl’Oo-ooueroii.
“Yeah, like a grqwary,” agreed Su automatically. “Well, um, shall I ask Vt R’aam Thirty-Two if he really wants to baby-sit me all over the Federation?”
“Asking can’t hurt,” replied Jhl mildly. “But the being’s got such an overdeveloped sense of responsibility and duty that he’s highly unlikely to admit— But never mind. Ask him. You might get the truth out of him where he’d feel it wasn’t the done thing to reveal it to me.”
Su got up. “Yeah, he’s got an overdeveloped sense of etiquette, too. –No, Fl’Oo-ooueroii, you stay here and keep Mum company, eh?”
“I shall keep our Great Mistress company!” it squeaked, fluffing itself up proudly.
“Mm. Good show,” agreed Jhl, closing her eyes. After quite some time she murmured to herself: “I wonder if that’ll ever bear fruit? Well—no harm in trying. And at least she’s got some sense of reality, unlike the rest of ’em!”
“Shall I pick you a nice fruit, madam?” offered the Flppu, faint but pursuing. “A delicious mn-mn? A juicy ban-ban-ban?”
Last time it had tried to pick a ban-ban-ban it had spiked itself on the spines and contracted blood-poisoning that no chemo-blob in the Third Galaxy was capable of curing and Shank’yar had had to send urgently to Oononia, where they cultured the plasmo-blasted chemo-blobs, for a special, mega-expensive—
“No, none of the fruit’s ripe, remember?” she said quickly.
“Oh, no! None of our fruit’s ripe! Silly me!”
Quite. Jhl lay back in the semi-tropical sun with her eyes closed…
Vt R’aam Thirty-Two was discovered superintending the tidy-blobs’ polishing of the plasmo-blasted silver tea service presented to Dad by an early Feddo delegation to New Whtyll, the vacuum-frozen full banqueting set of silver cutlery presented to Dad by a Whtyllian member of the said delegation (going one better—right), and the Vvlvanian-cursed set of giant silver serving dishes presented to Dad by the most recent Feddo delegation to New Whtyll. He forced the clones to serve up his ghastly quaenong soo-lip tea from Little Beishyungkwo in the first of these offerings but the family was mercifully spared the rest of the space junk.
“Those tidy-blobs could do it all by themselves, you know, you’ve got them trained up real good,” noted Su.
“Thank you. But I think you mean ‘really well trained,’ Young Mistress,” replied Clone Vt R’aam Thirty-Two smoothly.
“Whatever. Um, listen,” said Su, standing on one foot and hooking the other round its fellow’s ankle.
“Yes, Young Mistress?” prompted the clone, when she hadn't produced further utterance.
“I was just wondering how to put it so as you’d tell me the truth—only I’m positive you’ve read that, anyway; and anyway there’s no way you’d tell me the truth about anything if you thought it wasn't gonna be for my own good!” said Su on a note of despair, lowering the suspended foot.
There was a tiny pause. Then Vt R’aam Thirty-Two asked politely: “What is it you wished to ask me?”
She took a deep breath. “Do you really want to come over to the Federation with me?”
“Of course, Young Mistress,” he replied immediately.
“NO!” shouted Su at the top of her lungs. “I mean, REALLY want to!”
The clone set down the giant silver dish he was holding and turned to look her in the eye. “Yes, madam. I’ve never seen the two galaxies of the Federation; I think it’ll be very exciting.”
“Uh—yeah,” said Su weakly. “Um, well, Dad’s lined up all these awful old rellies and other beings he knew back in his Feddo days… Well, it’ll be different, I guess. They’ve got h-breather worlds and all sorts, over there!”
“Exactly,” said the clone, smiling.
It was a very smooth smile, and Su received it with a grim look. It was a megazillion to one it was veiling a strong desire not to go, only how was she ever gonna tell? If she looked at Vt R’aam Thirty-Two’s mind all she saw was a sort of shiny nothingness, a bit like the surface of that plasmo-blasted bowl he was eyeing out of the corner of his—“PAY ATTENTION!” she shouted terribly.
“I beg your pardon, Young Mistress,” he said quickly.
“No, I do,” said Su, going very red. ‘I didn’t mean to shout like that. I dare say you can concentrate on two things at once, like Mum and Dad and R’jt and all of them, but I can’t,” she admitted glumly.
“Please don’t apologise to me, Young Mistress,” he said politely. “I assure you, I am greatly looking forward to the trip.”
Su sighed. “Yeah,” she said dully. “Um, do you get motion-sick on vehicles?”
“No, Young Mistress,” he said politely. There was, however, the suspicion of a twinkle in the sky-blue, slanted Whtyllian eyes.
“Go on, say it,” said Su resignedly.
“I do beg your pardon, Young Mistress. Was I broadcasting?”
“No, not as such. But I sort of felt you thinking it—well, it was the obvious thing to think.” She waited but nothing happened. “Say it, or I’ll burst,” she admitted glumly.
This time there was a definite twinkle and the well-modelled mouth almost twitched. “Or on xathpyroids,” he murmured.
“Yeah,” said Su with a silly grin. “Oh, well, if you don’t, that’s all to the good—only I’m Vvlvanian-cursed if I can tell whether that’s the truth or not, either!”
“I wasn’t sick on the trip to New Jishowulla: I’m sure your respected mother would confirm that,” replied the butler calmly.
“Vt R’aam Thirty-Two, you were in hyperdrive, there’s no motion in hyperdrive!” said Su loudly.
“Uh—well, I never feel queasy in bubbles or lifters,” he said on a weak note.
“Don’t you? If that’s true, it’s a good sign,” admitted Su gloomily. “Um,” she said, standing on one leg again.
“Yes, madam?”
Su set the spare foot down and, coming up to the long table on which the tidy-blobs were working, picked up the silver teapot. “Well, acksherly, I looked up your clone record. Do you know who your original was?”
“Certainly. Lieutenant-Pilot K’ml Raj Nr M’snn of Whtyll, one of the deceased members of the Expedition Fleet.”
“Yeah. Look, Vt R’aam Thirty-Two, the being did Advanced Pilot Training and topped his class and everything—I mean, his last Space Fleet performance rating was AABB! Surely you must have his genes, why don’t you ask Dad if you can be something more interesting than a butler?”
There was a little pause; Vt R’aam Thirty-Two’s golden-tan, high-cheekboned face remained perfectly expressionless. Then he said: “I do have his genes.”
“Well, yeah, that’s what I mean!”
“I find being a butler very interesting, Young Mistress.”
“Overseeing the plasmo-blasted tidy-blobs that’ve been polishing Dad’s plasmo-blasted silver space junk since Athlor Kadry was a pup?” cried Su incredulously. “Rhoofer shit!”
“A pup? Oh, I see, it’s one of Commander BrTl’s sayings! Uh—no, there’s very much more to it than that. The smooth running of the household depends on me, you see. Including the duties, behaviour, and well-being of the servants, the provisioning, and so on.”
Su didn’t say anything but she was still broadcasting Rhoofer shit.
“I dare say,” murmured the clone with just the suspicion of a smile in his voice, “that I do as much timetabling and supervision of personnel as Lieutenant-Pilot K’ml Raj Nr M’snn ever did on board his Expedition Fleet ship.”
“Was that his job?” said Su numbly. “I thought the Register said he was a First Officer.”
“Yes. That’s a large part of what First Officers do.”
She swallowed. “Oh.”
“Only on ships carrying a large number of personnel, of course,” murmured the clone.
“Uh—yeah. Oh, was I broadcasting about BrTl? Um, yeah. Well, Mum’s ship wasn’t very big.”
“No, of course.”
“Um, well, there must be better jobs on New Whtyll!” said Su on a desperate note. “Lots of clones are managing farms, these days: wouldn’t you like to do that?”
“It would be quite interesting, but I prefer my household duties,” he said primly.
“Well, um… Work in an office in New Z’therabad?” she groped. “Wm says there are lots of opportunities for intelligent beings to better themselves there.”
“I think that would be quite interesting, too, but I really prefer the country-house life,” he said primly.
Su began to feel very strongly that if Lieutenant-Pilot K’ml Raj Nr M’snn’s clone didn’t stop sounding prim, she was gonna strangle the being!
“I do beg your pardon, madam: it was not my intention to sound prim,” he said immediately.
“No,” said Su heavily. “I dare say.” After a moment she added dully: “I suppose I prefer the country-house life, too. New Z’therabad’s pretty awful.”
“Yes, of course you do, Young Mistress.”
“Well, uh, wouldn’t you like to run the estate?” suggested Su on a desperate note.
“Should My Lord offer me the opportunity to assist him with the running of the estate,” replied the clone carefully, “I think that would prove a very satisfactory task indeed.”
Uh—was that a Yes? “Um, shall I ask him?” ventured Su feebly.
“No, thank you very much for the offer, Young Mistress; but now would not be an appropriate time,” replied the clone politely. “His Lordship has other plans for my immediate destiny.”
“Yuh—Oh! Yeah. Looking after me on my trip—right. All right, I’ll ask him when we come back!” said Su with great determination.
Clone Vt R’aam Thirty-Two bowed deeply. “You are too kind, madam.”
Was she? Gee, so wasn’t it funny it didn’t feel like it? Su gave an exasperated sigh. “You do know that Dad reckons the Nr M’snn family is a very distinguished Whtyllian family?”
“Certainly the main branch, yes, Young Mistress. But I’m only a clone.”
“All right, be like that!” replied Su crossly, slamming down the teapot.
Clone Vt R’aam Thirty-Two merely bowed politely, his good-looking face expressionless, as his young mistress stomped out. But when the door had closed after her he did pick the teapot up and examine it anxiously for dents and smeary fingerprints. A job was what a being made of it—but the young mistress was far too young to understand that.
“Clones are all like that,” said BrTl comfortably. “Cultured up that way.”
Su sighed. “Yeah, I suppose. Is your thirtieth neck vertebra giving you gyp again?”
“Thirtieth and thirty-first,” admitted the xathpyroid.
“Stretch your neck out on the grass and I’ll give you some massage.”
Thankfully BrTl stretched out his long neck on the warm, pleasantly green grass of New Whtyll—pity the place had to have all that blue sky, otherwise it was just about perfect for a xathpyroid, never too cold in winter and nice hot summers—and let Su massage the spot in question. “Are you doing it?” he said after a while.
“Yeah, ’course!”
“Oh. Uh—rub harder, would you? Can’t feel it through the hair.”
Obediently Su rubbed harder.
“Ooh, that’s it… It’s nice down here. Nice view of all this green. It isn’t just grass, you know: there’s lots of other small plants, all different shades…” Dreamily he began to list the shades in his Slaetho-Xathpyrian dialect. Su didn’t listen, she was used to him, but after a while Phyoowella, who had accompanied her over to the Southern Continent where the xathpyroids had settled, began to keen piercingly.
“Oops,” he said, stopping. “Sorry, Phyoowella.”
The pale blue Loogher went on keening so they both bellowed: “Stop, Phyoowella!” BrTl into the bargain sending it, and after a bit she got the point, and stopped.
“Slow, aren’t they?” noted BrTl. “Have you ever looked at that mush she keeps under those three round ears?”
“Um, well, yeah. It is more or less mush, yeah. Only there are feelings in there.”
“Mushy ones, yeah. –Don’t stop. Um, ever tried reading the clone?” he asked cautiously.
Su frowned. “I can’t see a thing! It’s all shiny and nothing!”
“Oops. There’ll have been a Whtyllian Lordship-type digit or two in that particular nymbo cheese pie, Su. Or maybe he just ordered the cloning engineers to make sure the being’d be able to put up a shield that no-one but him’d be able to penetrate. –Same difference, really. In which case no being’s ever gonna know if the clone wants to go with you, so I’d stop worrying about it, if I was you. Ow! Uh, no, don’t stop: rub harder, would you?”
Su got on with the massage. After some time she said: “I could get Dad to send for that special xathpyroid-type chemo-blob, BrTl.”
“Did I ask?”
“No,” she growled.
BrTl sighed, though thoughtfully directing it away from Su: stronger beings than your average young female mammalian humanoid, not to be anything-ist, had been known to roll a hundred IG fluh down sloping stretches of grass just like this one when a xathpyroid expelled atmosphere incautiously.
“We’ve decided that it won’t be cost-effective to spend that many igs until more than one xathpyroid cognate’s got this neck-joint gyp. It’s not just what the plasmo-blasted Oononians charge for their vacuum-frozen chemo-blobs, it’s the cost of getting it here. Given that the IG You-Know-Who owns those parts of the Tri-Galaxy Interchange not the property of the flaming Vvlvanian-cursed Government of Whtyll.”
Usually Su had no trouble interpreting BrTl’s You-Know-Who’s or Y-K-W’s, but this time she said weakly: “Eh?”
“The vacuum-frozen IG government. That IG You-Know-Who.”
“Ugh!”
“Quite,” agreed BrTl on a pleased note.
Su went on rubbing, but he could feel she was still thinking about the plasmo-blasted clone. Eventually she said: “Hey, BrTl?”
“What?” he groaned.
“Um, well, I was just wondering… Um, like, well, would it be the IG You-Know-Who that’d have to, um, pass a law or something if we wanted to, um, make our clones just like other beings?”
“Huh?”
Su swallowed loudly. “I dunno how to put it.”
He could see that; what was between the ears of many humanoids was, frankly, pretty much mush, and Su was about average, but he’d spent such a large proportion of his life with humanoids that he was capable—well, pretty much capable—of interpreting it. He didn’t know how to put it, either: xathpyroids weren’t interested in that sort of intergalactic space garbage, in fact those xathpyroids who actually stood for election as F Senator or F Reppo were generally pitied, back home. And of course only their deadliest enemies voted to send them to the plasmo-blasted parliament.
“Um… Make them free beings?” he ventured. “Ah! Sentient within the Meaning!” he cried.
“No, BrTl,” said Su feebly when the echoes had ceased ringing and Phyoowella had been hauled out from under a jooterberry bush and one or two xathpyroids who’d actually looked up placidly from what they were doing—sitting and thinking, or just sitting, in the main—had gone back to it. “You’re thinking of the wrong Act.”
“Uh—am I? Oh, so I am. Uh—am I? Intergalactic Sentient Life-Forms (Beings/Group Beings) Definition and Classification Act,” he murmured to himself.
“No,” said Su firmly. “That is the Sentient within the Meaning one, but it isn't the one that—that talks about beings being free.” She stopped massaging him and produced a text-blob from her pocket.
BrTl swallowed a sigh. This had started off—apart from the odd twinge or seventy thousand in the region of the thirtieth vertebra, of course—as such a nice day, too! Early this morning—well, fairly early—the sky had had almost a green tinge to it.
Su was apparently picking him up. “Yes. It’s the reflection off the dooler-grass plains, and look out, the grass’ll be flowering any day now, so remember to use your anti-pollen chemo-blobs.”
“Oh—right, thanks for remind—”
Thanks for reminding us! they all sent pleasedly, almost mind-deafening Su.
Yeah, she replied limply. No problem.
BrTl cleared his throat cautiously: if he really cleared it, that pale blue Loogher, what an unpleasant shade, no green in it at all, would probably roll right off the grass and into that stream down there only five hundred IG fluh away, unfortunately not deep enough to drown the plasmo-blasted being, but more than deep enough for a xathpyroid’s shin-hair to get really, really wet as he waded in to rescue the plasmo-blasted— “Oh, sorry, didn’t mean to broadcast,” he said feebly as Su dissolved in a fit of mammalian humanoid giggles.
“No!” she gasped. “And six is a lot of shins, not to be anything-ist!”
“Exactly.” He eyed the blob cautiously, not, however, hoping that she’d forgotten about it, because he could see she hadn't. “What about this Act, then?”
“Oh! Right.” She held the blob up and, not asking it merely to send its message to him, read out: “‘Intergalactic Inalienable Being-Rights Declaratory Act. Sets out the rights (personal/group) of all sentient beings. Examples are the rights to exist, think, express, travel, believe, litigate. Unless it infringes any of the preceding, free will is also a right. More specific rights are set out for individual species: e.g. Honnoyers have a right to toe-cropping, and this cannot be denied them even under circumstances of IG penal servitude. Note: infringement of this Act brings some of the most severe penalties in IG law.’ –See?”
“Uh—what is that blob?” he croaked.
“Morpo’s Pocket Guide to IG Law, of course.”
“What? One of those things that lorpoid company cultures up by the megazillion?” he groaned.
“It’s got a picture of him: Morpo. He is a lorpoid,” said Su in a puzzled voice. “It says he does them himself.”
“It’s a giant company— Oh, forget it,” he groaned. “He is, or was, a lorpoid, yeah, though that isn’t a lorpoid name. Uh—that was the Intergalactic Inalienable Being-Rights Declaratory Act he was trying to describe, there.”
“Yes! It says that!” said Su crossly.
“Read it again. –Not out loud,” he groaned.
Scowling, Su read it over silently to herself. Nothing happened in the mush between the two round humanoid ears, though, so eventually BrTl said heavily: “Su, this plasmo-blasted Act sets out the rights of sentient beings. Are clones classed as sentient beings under the Meaning? –The Meaning of that other Act,” he groaned.
“The—Oh. Um…” She looked at the text-blob again. BrTl just waited, allowing his eyes to rest on the peaceful green—not quite a nwhortlp shade—of the grass. Finally she said in a very, very small voice: “It doesn’t mention clones, here.”
“No, quite. Oh, Federation, Su, don’t do that humanoid water-from-the-eyes stuff!” Senso-tissues! he ordered, forgetting that on New Whtyll they were in very, very, very short suppl—Oh, thanks very much, GrRv! he sent gratefully as a very senior female-tended Gr-cognate sent over a small bunch of hers. Palest jade green, in fact vlohffert, the most delightful shade… Ugh, would this mean he’d have to sit right through the next plasmo-blasted rendition of The First Gr-Cognate’s Great Fluhgrunder Kill instead of sloping off quietly to somewhere utterly elsewhere?
Yes! they all assured him gleefully.
“What?” asked Su in bewilderment, mopping her eyes. “Yes what?”
“Never mind,” said BrTl quickly. “Just a xathpyroid thought or two zipping about out there in the o-breather. Uh, well, the thing is, Su, the plasmo-blasted IG You-Know-Who—them, right,” he agreed as a light-blob lit up in the mush—“doesn’t give a cptt-rvvr’s fart about clones.”
“But they are beings, and they are sentient!” she cried.
“Yeah,” he agreed uneasily, suppressing an urge to tug at the collar of his Durocloth coverall: they were, after all, a megazillion, megazillion light-years away from the plasmo-blasted Federation and all its works. “Uh, well, what does old Morpo say there about clones?”
Su read it over to herself dubiously. BrTl didn’t have to ask what it said: she was broadcasting it loud and clear.
Classed as property! they were all sending.
“It duh-doesn't say anything about property here,” said Su on a tearful note.
“No; that’s because it’s that lorpoid’s version. –Here’s GrRv,” he said in relief. “She’ll set you right!”
Su looked round in bewilderment: wasn’t that very, very big xathpyroid over there in the Durocloth coveralls GrRv? Oh! Yes, she was getting up now.
The huge being in the faded Service greige coveralls came up very slowly: Su had plenty of time to scramble to her two humanoid feet and stand respectfully to attention.
“Sit down, Su,” said Rear-Admiral GrRv kindly to the small humanoid being.
“Thank you, Admiral!” gasped Su, sinking back to a cross-legged position.
GrRv sat down very, very carefully: there was a plasmo-blasted pet Loogher somewhere in the offing, and they didn’t want floods of that humanoid water-from-the-eyes stuff, most especially not from a descendant of Leader Vt R’aam’s.
“Descendant!” said BrTl pleasedly. “I always forget that one!”
Yes, she agreed. “As you can see from that blob, Su,” she said: “both the cloner and the clone would have to make a special application for your clone to be eligible for treatment as a sentient being above Class 390 under the Intergalactic Sentient Life-Forms (Beings/Group Beings) Definition and Classification Act.”
Su licked her lips. “Um, yes, Admiral. Um, special application?”
Megarafts of super-igs! they all sent.
“I’m afraid they’re right, Su: an application would cost megarafts of super-igs,” GrRv admitted.
“And that’d only be to get the right plasmo-blasted IG form,” noted BrTl sourly.
“Exactly. Federation alone knows how much you’d have to pay to bribe the officials concerned—though there’s no doubt your senior cogn—uh, Leader Vt R’aam could afford to!” she added quickly.
“I see,” said Su glumly. “It’s all that bureau—um, bureau rhoofer shit?”
“IG bureaucracy,” said GrRv heavily. “Yes, indeed.” She sighed.
Hastily BrTl shot out a pseudopod and grabbed the blue Loogher just as it was about to roll off over the grass.
Thanks, Br-cognate, the Admiral acknowledged. Hang onto the plasmo-blasted being while I get up, would you?
Will do, he agreed.
She got up carefully. “Got the picture, Su?” she said kindly.
Quickly Su scrambled up and stood to attention again. “Yes, thank you, Admiral, it’s clear, now!”
“Yeah. Well, I dunno that that’s good, but at any rate, I suppose clear can’t be bad,” she returned amiably, wandering off with a casual wave of her— Oops!
Thanks again, Br-cognate, she sent resignedly as BrTl shot out another pseudopod and rescued Su from the huge sweep of the giant tail.
After quite some time Su said very, very faintly: “Gosh.”
“Yes. Well, mature female-tended xathpyroids are like that,” he admitted.
“Mm. I don’t think Dad’ll want to pay megarafts of super-igs to unclone Vt R’aam Thirty-Two,” she said in a small voice, “’cos he says he’s the best butler he ever had.”
“Huh? Oh, the best being who carries the food platters and timetables the other servant beings—right, goddit. Uh—mok shit,” he concluded, looking at her in dismay.
“Yes,” agreed Su very grimly indeed. “Mok shit it is.”
After quite some time of sour brooding on her part and emanations of sympathy on his—well, a clone was a clone, but if she wanted the plasmo-blasted being to be classed as sentient within the Meaning, why not?—he ventured very, very cautiously indeed, even though there was the best part of half a world between him and the plasmo-blasted Whtyllian: “There is one being, I use the word ‘one’ advisedly, that could hyper through that xrillion mind-shield of your senior cognate’s, and out the other side without ever being spotted.”
Su was goggling at him hopefully. “Would it?” she breathed.
BrTl began happily: “Like a plasmo blast slicing through—” He broke off, gulping slightly, as a Thought struck him. “Uh, well, yeah, but if it did get spotted—not at the time, of course, but supposing a being such as,”—he swallowed in spite of himself—“Jhl, just as a suppose, was to take a look at the Whtyllian being’s mind—”
“Mum doesn’t bother to read Dad much these days, she says she knows him too plasmo-blasted well.”
Ugh! “Um, yeah,” he croaked. “I geddit. But there’s no guarantees, though.”
“No, um, but she thinks clones ought to be free sentient beings, BrTl!”
Great splintered shards of quog, did she? BrTl looked limply at Su’s shining mammalian eyes. “Uh—right,” he said groggily. “Oh! I geddit! Bluellian democracy, right? Right!” he said proudly as Su nodded hard. “Oh, well, in that case—”
“No, but she’d still be wild if we interfered with Dad’s free will!” she gasped.
“Eh?” After a bit it all came back to him. Oh, yeah. Free will: Jhl always had been magma-pit hot on that one. “Pity. It’d have enjoyed doing it. Added to which,”—it was really all coming back to him, now—“it knows that being’s mind inside out, upside down and from here to next Galaxy Day, because it had to do all that tuh”—uh, not tinkering—“fixing, when that being was sick.” He looked around him vaguely. “We were on some grass, a bit like this, only much higher up… There was another being there, that did the humanoid bits that Trff couldn’t do.”
“Yes, Mum’s told me all about it,” said Su patiently. “But Trff could do it to any being’s mind, eh?”
“Mm? Oh, pretty much, yes. Well, there was one being it might not— That was at around the same time, come to think of it. But it didn't get much of a go at him, for one reason or—”
“Yes, Mum explained all that.”
Eh? He took a really good look. Phew! No, she hadn’t. Because, now he came to think of it, that story, which had been really good while it lasted, wasn’t all that fit for an innocent young mammalian humanoid’s round ears: too much zapping, and then, all those humanoids had been, uh, something like cognates, especially the one that got zapped— Anyway, not suitable for the immature cognates!
“No,” agreed Su with a smile as some of the immature cognates could be observed rushing down the slope on the other side of the stream in order to stop short on the very brink—“Oops! Fell in!” she said with a laugh.
“Serve him right,” replied BrTl automatically.
“He’s a Kr-cognate, right?”
“Right,” he croaked, goggling.
“I didn’t read it, silly, I recognised him, it’s KrPl!”
It could well be, yes. “I dare say. Um, well, is that It, then? No tink— Uh, fixing?”
“Um… I could ask Trff what it thinks,” said Su dubiously.
Ye-ah. Well, yeah, she could; and what Trff would say it thought, never mind what it might be thinking, the word “thinking” being used very, very loosely in this context, would be precisely what she wanted to hear.
“Would it hurt, after all this time, to tell me all the details that aren’t fit for the immature cognates?” she then asked wistfully.
“Uh—oh. That. Probably not, only you never can tell, with humanoids. Well, I can't,” he added quickly. “Not to be anything-ist. Well, at one stage me and Jhl sorted it all out with a very pretty pwm set that belonged to Y-K— Uh, never mind!” he said hastily, recalling that the small humanoid now rubbing his neck again was a descendant of the Y-K-W in question. “You could stop now, I feel much better,” he added kindly, realising what those emanations were.
“Oh, good,” said Su thankfully, resting her aching hands. “That is a very pretty pwm set,” she added admiringly. “I see! Those green pwm pieces are Dad, and those little bunches that are only half green are my half-brothers! –Cognates,” she added quickly.
“That’s right!” he agreed pleasedly. “Half him, and half, um, some other beings.”
“Maybe you better not try to tell me,” Su concluded weakly as the picture of the pwm set illustrating the relationships between her father, her half-brothers and their mothers became very muddled and then suddenly exploded into a megazillion particles.
BrTl was about to tell her his mind hadn’t clouded, Jhl had zapped the plasmo-blasted Whtyllian’s pwm set with her blaster, but thought very much better of it. “Okay, then, I won’t. It was mainly mammalian repro stuff, anyway.”
“Disgusting!” agreed Su with a laugh. “I’d’ve liked to see Trff making Dad better, though.”
“Huh? Oh, restoring his mind-powers, right, right. Though there wasn’t anything to see. I mean, Trff just sort of sat there like a ball of vlohffert fluff. Well, it is, physically speaking.”
“There must have been something to see!”
“Uh—nope.”
“Well, didn’t Dad look different?”
“No,” said BrTl definitely. Su glared, so he made a real effort. “His maths got a lot better.”
“Maths!” she cried with loud indignation.
“Don’t blame me, that’s what it mainly did, brought back his maths and cognitive powers, and the other being did the humanoid stuff. Oh! I’ve remembered! He was walking really good by the time Jhl and me got up there—to the place where all the grass was—and didn’t have to wear the handy humanoid excreta-moppers any more!”
Su gulped, but said gamely: “I geddit.”
“Just as well Trff was on hand, eh? That other being did good, too.”
“Ye-es… Well, Mum said she was an old lady—humanoid,” she prompted.
“Eh? Mind like a sheet of tempered xrillion, is what I remember. Could have been humanoid, I s’pose. I don’t remember the being that way, though.”
She was, it had all taken place on Old Rthfrdia, the humanoid world where Su’s half-brother Drouwh lived, Mum had told her quite a lot about it.
“Tempered xrillion,” said BrTl firmly. “Could go and see Trff anyway?” he suggested hopefully. “It might have a good idea. Well, a practical— No, scrub that. It might be able to think of something that hasn’t occurred to us, eh?”
“Yes! ’Cos it’s got the greatest mind-powers in the Known Universe!” she cried happily, scrambling up. “Come on, Phyoowella, we’re going for another ride in the lifter!”
Creaking and groaning a bit, BrTl got slowly to his feet. The greatest mind-powers in the Known Universe. Right. Sure. Well, taking the Ju’ukrterian it-being as a whole, though possibly there was no essential difference between the mind of the individual Trff, as was claimed, and that of the it-being as a whole—taking that, it could well be said to have the greatest mind-powers in the K.U., yes. But that did not count for everything. By no means. And if Su hadn’t realised it by now, he had a feeling she was about to get a demonstration.
She was pawing at his leg. “What?” he said, peering down at her. “Oh!” he said, realising why she was holding out her paw like that. “Right!” He shot out a pseudopod and let her hold it with the paw. They were always hot and sticky, and hers wasn’t any different.
“Shouldn’t you tell the others where you’re going?” said Su feebly as they approached the lifter.
“Why? They know, anyway.”
“I see,” said Su humbly.
“It’s not me! We’re not all in touch all the time like the Ju’ukrterian it-beings!” he said indignantly. “It’s you, you're broadcasting it!”
“Oh, am I?” said Su limply.
Yes! they all replied. Have a nice time!
Thanks. Bye-bye, replied Su limply, getting into the lifter but not taking the pilot’s seat because even though it was her lifter—
BrTl got into the pilot’s seat. First sending it a deafening mind-message to the effect that it had better adjust to his size or feel the power of his crunchers! It adjusted, what lifter-seat wouldn’t have? Straps on! he sent happily.
The straps snapped closed like the proverbial dendrion nut round Su and Phyoowella, a mind-blast from BrTl stopped the keening in the Loogher’s throat, and they WHOOSHED! up vertically about half an IG glp and POW! into hyperdrive, another mind-blast from BrTl choking off Phyoowella again—and into the absolute stillness of hyperdriving. Stillness unless you looked in the direction of down, when you were above a planet. Su hurriedly shaded her Loogher’s port.
“Good! Don’t want any beings to chuck up!” said BrTl cheerfully.
“No,” she croaked.
“Uh—oh. You okay?”
“Yes; I’m always okay once the lifter’s in hyperdrive.”
“Yes, thought I remembered that. Good. We’ll be there in no time!” he said happily.
They’d be that, all right. Or even earlier.
Leader Vt R’aam had appointed Trff I/C Blobs & Pwld, so that was what the it-being was doing. Or, sitting there like a ball of pale green fluff—yes. Su remarked in awe as they passed through the giant hangar-like structure on the edge of New Z’therabad’s spaceport that there were an awful lot of blobs here. And engineers. “Awful” was in BrTl’s opinion pretty much the word, in both cases, so he agreed. And they went into Trff’s office, not needing to ask the door to let them in or anything like that, because when they were still ten xathpyroid strides away, or about thirty Su strides, the Ju’ukrterian sent: Come in.
“Don’t ask what it’s doing,” warned BrTl laconically as they went in.
Su gave him a quick scornful glance before crying: “Hullo, Trff! We’ve come to see you! What are you doing today?”
“Hullo, Su,” it said mildly. “It’s just tinkering with a few blobs.”
“Um, yeah, ’course,” replied Su valiantly.
BrTl eyed them sourly. His idea had been that good old Trff, who had been their ship’s Chief Engineer, would come on over to the xathpyroid continent and settle down with them. Unfortunately Leader Vt R’aam had got his bribe in first. Into the bargain Trff was living at the Vt R’aams’ house—though, true, this meant that Jhl could make sure it didn’t forget to eat and drink while it concentrated on its plasmo-blasted blobs.
“I’m going to visit the Federation soon, did you know?” she beamed.
“Yes,” Trff replied simply. –BrTl had to swallow: it wasn’t always that obvious, but it tended to overlook niceties like pretending it couldn’t pick up any being on the planet when it had been buried in its plasmo-blasted blobs.
“It means,” it said quickly, “how exciting.” Is that emotion she-it’s emanating excitement? it asked him.
Yes, replied BrTl heavily.
Oh, good.
Su was agreeing happily: “Yes, isn’t it? I’m taking Phyoowella; she wants to come, don’t you, Phyoowella?”
Excitedly the Loogher replied—fortunately, or perhaps unfortunately, BrTl had forgotten to remove his translator, so he was able to understand it, more or less: “In [nominal particle] ship big go [nominal particle feminine] me, [nominal particle feminine] Su [conjunctive particle]!” Well, Loogher was like that. It didn’t have any tenses, or even any plasmo-blasted particles that indicated tenses, so you just had to infer them from the context. Or not.
“Did she understand you?” he said weakly.
“Not exactly,” replied Su cautiously. “I sort of send to her in Loogher as well.”
“Yes,” agreed Trff. “She-it does. Only in sort of Loogher, of course.”
“Um, yeah,” said Su humbly. “So, what blobs are you working on today, Trff?”
She-it doesn't mean that literally! warned BrTl frantically: they didn’t want to be here until Vvlvania froze over while it listed them.
It knows that! it replied crossly. “Very nice hyperblobs with considerable pwlding potential, Su.”
“Ooh, that’s nice!” she beamed, apparently sincere—no, actually sincere. “So they’ll be used in PBTTs, will they?”
Does it matter if she-it knows? Trff asked BrTl blankly.
Was I emanating panic? Fancy that. Yes, it does, asteroid-brain, because remember who her-its senior cognate is!
It remembers that the humanoid term for him-it’s “father,” at any rate! it replied pleasedly, pointing an antenna at him.
Su broke down in helpless giggles immediately. Well, the antenna-pointing, especially at him, BrTl, did tend to do that to small, not to be anything-ist, female humanoid beings. And to G’gg, come to think of it.
And to the pink being! Trff added happily. “These nice hyperblobs with considerable pwlding potential may well be fit to be used in many PBTTs, Su,” it agreed smoothly.
“What pink being exactly did that thought refer to?” asked BrTl heavily.
“I didn’t pick that up. You don’t mean Dangerous, do you?” asked Su.
“No, that being isn’t a pink being in his-its mind,” explained Trff before BrTl could utter. “It meant W’t, Dohra B’Jn, IG ID CT00002578-1345872/684005-90B-W47259/00000044/02-F.”
BrTl’s jaw fell open but no sound proceeded from it.
After the Loogher had been retrieved from under Trff’s desk, Trff just by the by removing all memory of the incident, he croaked, very faintly: “It’s remembered not only the pink being herself but her IG ID.”
“’Course,” replied Su with the utmost calm. “It remembers everything, don't you, Trff?”
“Not everything, Su. Only things the it-being’s seen, sensed, heard, received, read—”
“Don’t go on, thanks,” groaned BrTl. “I don’t fancy spending the next three Galaxy Days in this office.”
“Hah, hah!” it replied huffily. “All it was trying to indicate was that its antenna had that effect on that pink being as well as on small, not to be anything-ist, female humanoid beings.”
BrTl goggled at it.
“What’s the matter?” asked Su, quickly taking her Loogher’s paw in one of hers. “It’s all right, Phyoowella, he’s not cross.”
“That pink being was a pink being!” he cried.
“Don’t shout. –It’s all right, Phyoowella, he’s not cross. –It would be.”
“Huh? Uh—Vvlvanian curses! I mean she was a small female humanoid being!”
“You can’t have forgotten that, Trff,” said Su in a firm voice.
“No, it’s a female humanoid IG ID,” it agreed.
“What about her?” asked Su in a firm voice.
Don’t, BrTl warned his former ship-companion. “Dohra—that was her personal name, she put her cognate-name first, like us—was one of the small, not to be anything-ist, female humanoid beings that used to have those humanoid hysteric things when it pointed its antenna at me. We met her that time I was stuck on the third moon of Pkqwrd—uh, not that time,” he said as she broadcast her cognate’s jaundiced picture of that other time. “That time me and G’gg were stuck there was another time.”
“You seem to have got stuck there a lot,” she ventured.
“Uh—well, not a lot, it only felt like it. It’s a transit station for lots of places, you see.”
“I see!”
“No, you-it doesn’t, Su,” said Trff. “What it was going to say was that you-it’ll meet her-it when you-it goes on your-its trip to the Federation.”
“Eh?” said BrTl limply.
“Are you looking at the future, Trff?” asked Su in a fearful voice.
“Not in the sense you-it means, Su,” it said placidly. “Your-its senior male cognate has arranged for you-it to visit that pink being on Friyria.”
“Ugh!” cried BrTl. “I mean,” he said limply, when Phyoowella had been coaxed out from under the desk again and Trff had taken the memory away and into the bargain—though unbeknownst to Su—made it seem to the Loogher as if he, BrTl, wasn’t in the room at all—“Dohra was okay, within the limits of—um, pinkishness, as it were.”
“He-it liked her-it,” explained Trff placidly. “Jhl was afraid it was going to be a limping Bdeeg do all over again, but it wasn’t. It was a pink being do.”
“Uh—yeah,” said Su weakly, trying to pretend she wasn't picking up BrTl's emanations. “Oh! I geddit! Is she the lady that bond-partnered with the Friyrian Merchant Service captain?”
“No,” replied Trff before BrTl could admit she was. “And yes,” it added before he could roar at it.
“It means she wasn’t a ladyship,” he sighed. “Well, wasn’t then. Could be now, of course: look how other things have turned out.”
“Mum’s told the servants not to call her that, and—and if she hadn’t bond-partnered with Dad, I wouldn’t even be here!” cried Su crossly. “And anyway, it’s natural for a la—for a woman to have a bond-partner and have kids!”
“Humanoid repro stuff. So it is,” conceded BrTl heavily.
“I can read what you’re thinking, BrTl,” she warned in an evil voice that was so like Jhl’s evil voice—or one of them: she had several—that he blinked and had to repress an urge to look over his shoulder, “and if it hadn’t been Dad but another humanoid male, I wouldn’t be me!”
“She-it’s quite right,” approved Trff.
“Shut up,” he snapped: “you-it didn’t even manage to guess which being she’d take as her bond-partner, and let’s just drop the subject, shall we?”
“One of its guesses— All right, subject dropped!” it said quickly. “Tell it what you-it’d like it to do to the clone, Su,” it said comfortably.
BrTl swallowed, but didn’t tell it not to put it like that, because it was too late. And in any case Su hadn’t grasped the implications: she was explaining earnestly about Clone Vt R’aam Thirty-Two being an intelligent being and a clone of a Whtyllian lordship-class being (ugh) and etcetera…
Finally Trff said happily: “It sees. But BrTl’s quite right: although it could mind-suggest anything at all to Leader Vt R’aam, Jhl’s got so good she-it’d probably spot what it had done, if she-it bothered to look. Though mind you-it, she-it hasn’t been practising lately.”
“Lately?” ventured BrTl.
“Fifteen years, local time, loosely speaking.”
“Suh-since I was five?” squeaked Su.
“What? Oh—yes, since you-it was five point zero, zero, three, four local years old, Su.”
“Well, um, what are the odds she-it’ll bother to look, Trff?” asked BrTl cautiously.
“If he-it does an atypical act, it means atypical of that being? Fifty-two to one,” it said placidly.
“Well, mok shit!”
“Yeah, rhoofer shit,” agreed Su sourly.
“Hang on, Trff: what are the odds she-it’ll be pleased, though, if the act results in something good, Bluellian-democracy-and-free-will-wise?”
“Two to one against,” it said instantly.
Su bit her lip and BrTl admitted sourly: “That is pretty much what we figured.”
“Yes, it can see that. There are other things it might do, Su, yes, that would result in that clone’s being, in your-its terms, uncloned.”
“Would that mean he’d be able to get a good a job and—and vote, and everything, Trff?”
“Not everything— No, you-it didn’t mean it literally, of course! That being wouldn’t be able to get as good a job as you-it’s envisaging, Su, because he-it hasn’t been to Third School or Space Fleet Academy.”
Su glared indignantly.
“And he-it wouldn’t be able to stand for the local parliament because he-it isn’t one of the original Exploration Fleet members or their cognates, affines, or descendants. Clones don't count,” it reminded her placidly.
“But you were going to UNCLONE him!” she shouted.
“No, it wasn’t, Su, it was just considering the possible courses of action that might not alert Jhl.”
“You’re USELESS, Trff!” she shouted bitterly.
That put it quite well. BrTl cleared his throat cautiously—small, not to be anything-ist, pale green beings had been known to have been blown right across a ship’s bridge when he really cleared his throat. “Some of us did think this sort of thing might happen. It’s very literal-minded, Su.”
“It sees: to unclone that being to the point you-it wants, Su, it would have to undo all the cloning records of the Expedition and all the household records pertaining to Leader Vt R’aam’s estate, re-set the pertinent ships’ manifests, re-set the local census results, re-set the planet-mapping records—easy as falling on a flop couch!” it assured her face of horror—“and alter the memory-stores of every being that had ever encountered that being or read or been sent any of the cloning records—”
“Stop, Trff,” said Su limply.
It stopped, emanating expectancy.
“There are visiting F Reppos and other qwlot-soaked diplos that met him, too,” noted BrTl.
“Oh, easy: one clone’s much like another clone to that sort of being,” it assured him.
“He—he went to First and Second School, too, Trff,” said Su in a very small voice.
“School records are very easy, Su.”
“Yes. Are they? I didn’t mean that, I meant all the people who knew him at school…”
“Oh, yes,” it agreed mildly.
“And—and all the other servants… And the shopkeepers and— It wouldn’t be sensible,” finished Su in a tiny voice.
“Gee, you noticed!” noted BrTl.
“Shut up! Don’t be horrible! –Can’t you think of anything else practical that—that could work, Trff?”
There was dead silence in Trff’s pleasant enough, if slightly sterile and Space Service-like office.
“Not in your terms, apparently,” noted BrTl.
“Shut up!” she cried. “Can’t you, Trff?”
“Not in your-its terms, Su. But the being likes being a clone.”
“But he’s being wasted!” she cried bitterly.
Apart from the sufficiently horrible sound of a Loogher humming mindlessly to itself, there was silence in Trff’s neat office.
For Federation’s sake agree with—
Yes! “Of course he-it is, in your-its terms, Su,” it agreed kindly.
Su gave it a baffled glare.
“Uh—change New Whtyll’s world regs?” suggested BrTl delicately.
“It could do that, but that wouldn’t unclone the being, or any being, because the cloning regs aren’t world regs, they’re IG Regs.”
BrTl gulped, and fell silent.
“This planet’s status is IG Protectorate,” it reminded him. “Limited self-government on internal matt—”
“Yes! All right!”
This time there was a long silence in Trff’s neat office.
Finally BrTl said heavily: “Don’t ask it that, Su. It could, but that’s an IG offence. I’m not sure what the punishment for it is, but—”
“Penal servitude on Vvlvania for life,” said Trff placidly.
Su gulped. “Help.”
Another long silence.
“What else can change an IG Reg?” asked Su in a tiny voice.
“The Council of the Federated Worlds, by passing a law,” explained Trff. “To do that, a majority of the F members in both houses have to vote for it. Not that sort of house, Su, though they do have separate buildings: the Senate and the House of Representatives.”
“F Senators and F Reppos,” murmured BrTl. “The thing is, we haven’t got any, because we’re only a Protectorate, so we can’t even start by bri—uh, lobbying our own Reppos.”
“I can see that!” she said crossly.
“Some beings go to Intergalactica and start lobby groups, of course,” he said neutrally.
Su glared.
“I’ll spell it out anyway,” he decided. “A small, not to be anything-ist, humanoid being could use up its entire lifetime lobbying F Reppos and F Senators and still not get nearly enough on side to get a law passed.”
Su glared.
“Even if the said being,” added BrTl thoughtfully, “had inherited the whole of its senior cognate’s mega-humungous intergalactic fortune. –I know he-it handed over his Whtyllian estates to the cognate before we left,” he said to the emanations, “but there are still his holdings of pwld, which, correct me if I’m wrong, amount to fifty percent of the entire pwld deposits in the two galaxies, plus all of the pwld here.”
“You-it is wrong. His-its Mklontian partner still owns a certain percentage of the pwld in the two galaxies, and then, there was the usual agreement with the IG Minerals Commission— A megafortune: yes, BrTl!” it agreed quickly.
“Yeah. Terrible pity the IG M.C. ceded those two giant moons of Athlor’s Planet to him before they realised they were full of the muck, too, isn’t it?”
“No,” replied Trff blankly.
“Uh—irony, Trff,” he said on a weak note. “No, well, see what I mean, Su?”
“No. How could the IG Minerals Commission not see the pwld, BrTl?”
“Uh— ” BrTl looked sideways at Trff.
“It shielded it from those beings and their probes, Su,” it said happily.
“Er—yeah, well, for various reasons it, me, Jhl and the Admiral all felt pretty much the same about the IG M.C. at that particular point in the commonly perceived space-time continuum, and my point is,” said BrTl hurriedly, as Su was emanating great interest and curiosity, “that maybe you could afford to bribe several million F Reppos even in your humanoid lifetime, with a fortune like the senior cognate’s at your disposal!”
“It won’t be coming to me. I’m only a girl.”
“You-it’s wrong, Su. Jhl’s made Leader Vt R’aam leave equal shares of his-its estate to all the descendants.”
“All?” echoed BrTl limply.
“Yes. Oh! Not all, BrTl, no. Only to the first layer of cognates that are fifty-percent him.”
“Yeah,” he said groggily. “I get it. How much will she get, Trff? –In round figures. To the nearest million igs. –Base it on the current state of the markets, if you-it likes.”
“Oh, that’s easy!” it said happily. “You-it would get, in round figures, three thousand billion, four hundred and thirty-two million igs, Su. That’s assuming that Jhl is still alive, because a proportion of his-its estate will be set aside for her-it.”
All six of BrTl’s knees went weak and he subsided onto the floor. Su staggered, and groped round her blindly.
“Sorry,” said Trff, quickly reaching out a tentacle for a humanoid-style chair and pushing it against her legs.
Su turned round and sank down numbly onto the chair. “It can’t be that much!”
“The markets change every IG microsecond,” it replied, emanating vagueness.
“Yeah; don’t give her the amended figures, there’s a good old Trff,” croaked BrTl. “Um, dare I ask if that’d be enough to bribe enough F Reppos and F Senators to get a plasmo-blasted law passed?”
“Yes. But it would take some time, in terms of the commonly perceived space-time continuum… Possibly if you-it hired beings to help bribe them, Su?”
“I don’t think you’d better ask it what ‘some time’ means,” decided BrTl. “There is the point that Leader Vt R’aam’s still alive,” he noted pointedly.
“Yes,” said Su, swallowing. “I don’t want Dad to die.”
How strange. BrTl wouldn’t have minded at all, and he’d have taken a large bet that Trff wouldn’t either, never mind the hangarfuls of blobs it had been bribed with.
“Approximately forty-five IG years,” it said placidly.
“It’s all right, Su, it’s not reading the future!” gasped BrTl. “That’ll be the average number of years Leader Vt R’aam’s got left, based on, uh, humanoid norms and, uh, Whtyllian male normal lifespans, and, uh, that sort of space garbage!”
“Yes,” Trff agreed placidly.
“I see. Maths,” said Su in tones of loathing, glaring at it.
“Don’t be cross, Su. By that time, you-it could have had many—uh—many—”
“Yes?” prompted BrTl sweetly.
Help! It’s forgotten the plasmo-blasted word! Pups?
No, he sent, relenting. Poor old Trff, stuck in here day in, day out, tinkering with its vacuum-frozen blobs! Jhl calls them kids, remember?
Oh, yes! Phew! Thanks, BrTl, it owes you-it one! “Kids. Many kids, Su. Of your-its own,” it ended, less certainly.
“Oh, yeah, IG years are longer than local years, of course!” she beamed, cheering up. “I’ll be quite old by then!”
Agree! sent BrTl frantically, but there was no need, Trff had got the point and was agreeing happily. It then put its tentacle down its speaking tube, so to speak, by suggesting they adjourn to a fermented-laa dive, but fortunately Su, having known it all her life, merely corrected this placidly to “shake shop.” So they went.
The local shakes were nothing like fluorogas shakes, which were h-breather drinks, but not bad. Trff could’'t digest shakes so it just had plain laa, but BrTl and Su had raffleberry shakes, because they tasted good, even if they were pink: berries all mushed up with lots of sugar and something else. Besides air, Trff! Oh, right: grqwaries’ milk—revolting by itself, so it was funny how good the result turned out.
They had a few flaming ooff-puffs on them: the things had been priced far beyond the reach of their humble selves on this side of the Known Universe, until BrTl had had a few words with Trff on the subject. Shortly after these few words an experiment with ooff-puff spores and pwlding had been scheduled—to see if they survived instantaneous being-transportation alive, was the story. No being had questioned why the experiment couldn’t have been done from the other end, instead of necessitating a cargo of the things being sent out to Trff on a PBTT—funny, that. Whatever happened to the things when they were instantaneously transported, and BrTl hadn’t asked, they sure grew real well in the basement of Trff’s hangar: got just enough light and o-breather, and temperature adjustment was real easy to an it-being, and the left-over heat went to warm the offices. After which a nice little local company had been set up, New World Ooff-Puffs Pty Ltd, him and Trff being the sole owners. Oddly enough no being had queried who the owners were.
The shake of course didn’t make Su forget the topic of the plasmo-blasted clone, but at least she didn’t revert to it until they’d had a second round and were digesting. Then she said in a small voice: “It won’t work, will it?”
“It will if you-it hires beings to help with the lobbying, Su,” replied Trff kindly.
“Huh? Oh—right,” agreed BrTl.
“But I’ll be old—I mean, in forty-five IG years? I’d probably even have grandkids!” she cried. “And—and Vt R’aam Thirty-Two’s older than me, he muh-might be dead!”
BrTl shook in his Space Issue boots but Trff didn’t agree with her, thank the Federation! “Unlikely in terms of the humanoid norms,” he said firmly. Trff! Agree, even if it's not true!
“Yes, Su: unlikely in terms of the humanoid norms. He-it might well be dead before you-it and the hired beings have completed the lobbying and got the law passed, though. In which case, in your-its terms it won’t work—no.”
“No. And don’t you dare to emanate any maths at me, Trff!”
Presumably it didn’t, because it sent them to BrTl instead, but he just ignored the whole bit—he’d had plenty of practice.
“All I want,” said Su tearfully, “is for Vt R’aam Thirty-Two to have a good job and—and nuh-not be wasted!”
BrTl waited but gee, it didn’t say that wasn’t all she-it wanted. That was a first. “Uh—maybe something’ll crop up,” he said lamely. “You never know.”
Su gave him a bitter look. “Don’t you? Sometimes you have a pretty good idea!”
“Wait. Didn’t Jhl once tell us—Yes! Like R’jt and all the other cognates! You’ll have a house and a butler of your own one day, Su, because that’s what the humanoid cognates do, when they mature! You could ask Leader Vt R’aam to give him to you!”
Su’s jaw sagged. “Like, tuh—to be my butler?”
“Yeah. Whaddaya think?” he said proudly.
“BrTl, that’s inspired!” she said in awe. “Then I could borrow some money to get one of those thingos that Admiral GrRv explained to us, and then he could be uncloned!”
“Special application—yeah. Uh—you’d have to find the cloner, but I dare say—”
“Engineer gheshwarenD uw noorweL,” it said calmly.
“Uh—was it? Oh, good, she lives on New Nblyteria,” said BrTl somewhat weakly. “We know her quite well, don’t we, Trff?”
“Yes: a sympathetic being, in matters of— Never mind.”
“Call it insubordination, loosely speaking,” suggested BrTl happily. “Well, that’s that!”
“Um, I s’pose I’d have to be bond-partnered first,” admitted Su glumly.
“That is the humanoid, norm, yes!” Trff agreed happily.
It hadn’t bothered to look, of course; BrTl could see that the idea didn’t appeal to Su, but he couldn’t see why. Well, there were a lot of what she imagined were reasons in there, floating about in the mush, but—uh—nope.
“I’m not gonna wait,” she said grimly. “I’ll tell Dad I want a house of my own as soon as I come of age.”
If she means as soon as she gets back from the Federation, which I think she does, the being’ll never agree, noted BrTl.
Never mind, she-it’s happy! it sent jauntily.
Uh—yeah. Oh, well, sufficient unto the day! And quite probably by the time she got back from the plasmo-blasted Federation, Su would have forgotten all about any potty notion of un-cloning the clone and have some totally different obsession in her humanoid mush!
“How’d it go?” asked Su’s mum on a dry note as Su came in from the vehicle hangar.
Su sat down on a flop couch with a sigh. “I think they’re getting worse, acksherly, Mum! Trff had forgotten the word for ‘kids’, and BrTl had forgotten about the dooler-grass flowering—well, they all had, acksherly—and his driving’s loads worse!”
“Impossible.”
“Hah, hah. And he started going on about some old pwm set— Oh, well, I s’pose he's getting on.”
“Well, not for a xathpyroid, and he always was like that, but xathpyroids do get worse when they’re together. Were they doing anything?”
“Nothing discernible, no. Well, it was a lovely day… Oh, the immature cognates have got a new game: you run as fast as you can down to the edge of the stream and pull up short on the brink. Or not!” she ended with a laugh.
Jhl grinned. “Sounds like them! How’s the ooff-puffs venture?”
Su gave her a dry look. “Ya mean the temperature in Trff’s plasmo-blasted hangar, don't you? Well, I think the humanoid and Nblyterian engineers must have taken your advice and got the blobs to reverse the extra heat, ’cos it was acksherly nice and cool in there. I don’t think it’s noticed.”
“Nope, wouldn’t’ve. Uh—didn’t mention anything new on the pwlding scene, did it?”
“No.”
“No,” she agreed with a sigh. “Oh, well, I did tell Shan that ten IG years staring at blobs were just like a thousand IG years staring at blobs to a Ju’ukrterian, can I be blamed if he didn't believe me?”
“Nah, ’course not,” said Su comfortably. “We went to Jonti’s and had shakes, they were great.”
“Good. Any xathpyroid or Ju’ukrterian inspirations in the direction of the Vt R’aam Thirty-Two question?’
“You knew exactly how it’d be!” shouted Su terribly.
“No need to bellow. Uh, well, not exactly—great steaming piles of mok droppings, did Trff actually suggest that?—But I did have a fair idea. Common sense was never exactly their thing, and what with several years grazing with the cognates on the one appendage, and ditto spent mooning over its vacuum-frozen blobs on the other— But actually that idea of BrTl’s seems quite sensible. Uh—where are you going to get the money for the application, though?”
“I’m gonna borrow it from the Bank of Whtyll,” she said evilly, “’cos see, Trff told me exactly how much my share of Dad’s estate is worth in terms of the IG market thingos! And don’t tell me the Bank won’t lend to a minor, ’cos I’m gonna do it the minute I come of age!”
“Yeah. Well, good for you,” said Jhl limply. “They’ll charge you humungous interest, of course— Steaming Vvlvanian magma pits, how much?”
“Eh? Oh, Dad’s estate. Yeah, it’s the pwld, I think, Mum. Mind you, I didn’t say so to Trff, ’cos it had done all the maths and that and it was so pleased with itself, but ya never know with the markets and the IG Commodities Exchange and like that, do ya? ’Cos see, what if some being discovers something better than pwld and the bottom falls out of the pwld market?”
What, indeed? Jhl looked at her plump youngest daughter with considerable approval. Sixteen—no, make that sixty! Sixty times more common sense than the rest of ’em put together!
“Only probably,” said Su grimly, “the Bank of Whtyll’ll be betting that it won’t.”
“Right!” she said, grinning. “Well, good luck! Uh—are you going to tell him?”
“No! Oh—Vt R’aam Thirty-Two,” said Su sheepishly. “Um, well, when we get back.”
“Good idea, he’d only tell your father. Um… I don’t think he’ll bother to look, Su.”
“No, ’cos he’s thinks I'm only a stupid little pet!” Su got up. “I’m gonna have a shower, and then I’m gonna pack.”
“Uh—for the Federation?” Jhl swallowed a sigh. “All right, dear.”
Su stomped out, looking grim.
When she came out of the hygiene cabinet Vt R’aam Thirty-Two had most of her clothes spread out on the bed, inspecting them. Too bad if she’d of been starkers, eh?
“Welcome back, Young Mistress,” he said, bowing. “How was Commander BrTl?”
“Good. Well, pottier than ever, but good. What are you doing?” demanded Su grimly.
“Sorting out those clothes that would be appropriate for the trip to the Federation.”
“That’ll be the ‘No’ pile, will it?” she said, pointing to the heap of eighty percent of the garments she owned.
“Yes, madam.”
Su breathed heavily. She stomped over to the bed. “I’m taking this—and this—and this— This is my best party dress!” she cried. “What’s it doing here?”
“It is, if you will permit me to say so, madam, quite hideous.”
“No, I won’t!” cried Su angrily.
“I really think that most of these garments are fit only for the recyclers.”
“NO!” shouted Su. “You’re not in charge of my clothes, Vt R’aam Thirty-Two!”
“But your respected father has asked me to oversee them, Young Mistress.”
“Okay, stand over there and oversee them!”
“Very funny, madam,” he said politely. “You will have the opportunity to do a lot of shopping in the Federation, you know.”
“Shopping!” cried Su scornfully. “Rhoofer shit! And go away, I want to get changed!”
Vt R’aam Thirty-Two went over to the door. “One is only permitted a small baggage allowance on a PBTT, Young Mistress.”
“Yeah, and my best dress is gonna be part of it, and GO AWAY!” screamed Su.
Bowing, Vt R’aam Thirty-Two disappeared. The door closed silently after him.
“Plasmo-blasted CLONE!” shouted Su bitterly, hurling the dress across the room.
Next chapter:
https://theadmirableclone-sf.blogspot.com/2023/12/the-clone-comes-through.html
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