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Bureau (part 3)
"Once more; you almost had it then." said Aouwwrr'lrr. Kelanie composed herself, put her head back and mewed: "Aoouw? Aooouw?" Aouwwrr'lrr flattened her ears, lashed her tail. "Excellent. This should be said before the act, never during; it is intended to indicate availability." "Which means that once we start, then I'm no longer available." Aouwwrr'lrr closed her eyes. "Of course." Kelanie sat back on the branch, dangling one leg over the edge, swinging it back and forth. "Exactly how far is this intended to go? As far as consummation?" Aouwwrr'lrr mewed, flicked her tail once in amused surprise. "If you want. I won't be jealous, if that's what you mean. Tendeysharhi are used to sharing around our males. I should caution you, though: a detail of the male's generative organs may complicate things. How are Human females structured?" Kelanie removed her skirt. Aouwwrr'lrr examined her, prodding her cautiously with a paw, and then purred. "I foresee no major problems. Except possibly that my mate may experience feelings of inadequacy."
Marek was chatting with one of the Underground Networks' `NAPAISub' simulators; in itself, very revealing that such a borderline-illegal service should be available to a datapost in what was allegedly a government office. Ambassador Pr'rtr (Aouwwrr'lrr's mate - "it sounds like she's purring when she talks about him", Kelanie had said) was dividing his attention between this and toying with a replicate-lizard, which he intended to eat eventually. Marek faced the datapost, addressing the NAPAISub simulator directly. "Okay, I want you to observe this exchange, and identify it. Understand?" The holograph animated two spheres knocking together twice, to indicate an answer in the affirmative. Marek turned back to Pr'rtr. "Is that a real lizard?" Pr'rtr dangled the wriggling green shape from one paw, flicked it with his other. His translator replied: "Of course not. It's a genetically-engineered plant, with built-in reflexes that make it behave like a lizard. What do you think we are, savages?" The datapost displayed a black cube that broke apart into six pyramids and rejoined. Marek was about to ask the datapost to translate this when Kelanie and Aouwwrr'lrr reentered the front office. Kelanie took Pr'rtr's paw in her hand and led him into the conference room. Marek watched them, then glanced at Aouwwrr'lrr, who flicked her tail once. He smiled. In the street, order had been restored after the bombing of the cafe. The only figures that weren't moving past were the two Bythians that had been placed on sentry duty, and the Barber, who was hiding behind the remains of a truncated pillar, listening to the conversation in the Tendeysharhi Embassy, through the front window, using an interferometric laser-scope. It reached into its pouch, withdrew a metallic ovoid, and twisted a dial at one end. It grinned, exposing rows of flat teeth. A tongue like a rat's tail flickered out and back in. There was an ear-piercing yowl, and a large furry shape pounced on it from somewhere above, knocking it to the ground and kicking the grenade away. The Tendeysharhi grabbed the Barber by some loose clothing at the front, and slashed at the juncture of body and head with exposed claws. Four parallel furrows opened in the front of the Barber, spewing forth milky-looking blood. It writhed, tongue lashing about madly, scrabbling for its pouch. The Tendeysharhi slashed at its neck again, and shuddering, the Barber died. One of the Bythians turned its flat head to one side, regarded them, and turned away again.
NAPAISub: Subsystems of the NoSaNoOs Associative Processing Artificial Intelligence (NAPAI). Each subsystem is individually identified by a decimal six-figure code. Built as part of a project to `downscale' NAPAI, the original Guidance AI of the NoSaNoOs, to a more manageable system and to have sub-units to which details of minor projects could be delegated. Originally, only four of these units were constructed; shortly after their inception, rationale for more units was quickly invented, and now there are as many NAPAISubs as there are worlds in the Dominion. In other words, lots. Kelanie removed her clothing and sat in the matted grass that lined the conference room floor. Pr'rtr, perched on the branch nearest the ground, stared at her, his head cocked to one side. She smiled up at him, remembering not to bare her teeth as she did so - the Tendeysharhi would take that as a threat. Pr'rtr lashed his tail once. She turned away from him, resting on her hands and knees, her bare behind pointing at him, and mewed: "Aoouw?" she was surprised to hear the rhythmic hissing of Tendeysharhi laughter. She turned around and gave him an indignant look. "What's so funny?" Pr'rtr was clutching the branch with his claws extended to keep from falling off; a few sibilant mews emerged. Kelanie's notepad translated: "That sound you made. It's perfect, but -" "But what? Don't you find me attractive?" More hisses. "I suppose that you're quite attractive - to another human... but you - you don't have a tail!" Pr'rtr lost his grip on the branch and fell into a pile of leaves at the base of the conference-room tree, landing nimbly on all fours, and then spoiling the illusion of agility by rolling over on his back, hissing uncontrollably. Kelanie shifted into a sitting position and stared at him, chin on hands, until he recovered. Pr'rtr lay on his back, tail twitching from side to side, arms and legs outspread. "I'm sorry," he said at length. "Things have been so serious around here lately, what with the Moridani Infiltration and all." Kelanie stared at him in shock. "I beg your pardon? Are you certain that you should be saying things like that, being the Tendeysharhi Ambassador to the NoSaNoOs?" Pr'rtr rolled over, lay on his stomach, resting his furry chin on his paws and levelling his cool, emerald gaze at her. "Oh, it's safe... the NoSaNoOs never monitor me; the females of our race are the devious ones, the ones that the NoSaNoOs have to be concerned about. Us males are almost second-class citizens... that's one thing the Moridani promised us they'd change." Kelanie smiled. "Does Aouwwrr'lrr know about this?" "Of course! She's a suffragette, you know. In fact, she was chosen by the Moridani to approach the Human Government about permission to station a Moridani Partisan in the Human system." Kelanie listened to this with a growing sense of unreality. The Moridani were universally dreaded; it only took a hint to the NoSaNoOs that a Moridani might be on a planet for them to blow that planet to pieces in a frantic attempt to destroy it. It was rumored that there were only twenty-three Moridani left in existence. She became aware that Pr'rtr was sitting next to her, anxiously tapping her on the shoulder. "Miss Camden?" She shook her head, sat back in the grass with her eyes closed. "I can't believe any of this. It's too -" "Too?" " - too extraordinary."< Pr'rtr rubbed up against her, purring reassuringly. The sound relaxed her. After a while, he said: "It's true. There is a Moridani Partisan hidden in our Embassy. She uses her own - interdicted - technology to hide from the NoSaNoOs. She believes that your race can be helpful to the Moridani Cause, and so they want to station her in your solar system." Kelanie sat up suddenly. "I can't authorise something like that! If the NoSaNoOs find out what's going on, they'll drop an asteroid in our sun!" Pr'rtr's eyes opened wide, seeming to change from a brilliant emerald to aqua. Kelanie's notepad reproduced the serious tone of Pr'rtr's words: "She has something important to tell you. She didn't think you'd believe me, so she will tell you herself. Do you think that Marek should be present?" The sense of unreality came back, even stronger. "I do. Actually, I really want someone to tell me that I'm not dreaming." Unexpectedly, Pr'rtr butted his head against her shoulder, purring. "You aren't dreaming."
Marek and Kelanie followed Pr'rtr down a spiral ramp, deep into the basement of the Tendeysharhi embassy. At the bottom, the blue-green bioluminescent strips had been removed for the most part; the air was damper and even more oxygen-rich than Millimillenarian standard. Kelanie swallowed as her throat burned. Pr'rtr approached a blank wall, turned to face the two humans. :I'm aware that you, Marek, have spent most of your life on Millimillenary, and are familiar with unusual xenoforms; and that you, Kelanie, work for the Bureau of Procuration, and that you are no stranger to aliens; I want to remind you that the rumors of the Moridani being bloodthirsty, maniacal killers are completely untrue, despite their appearance." Marek replied, "You can disregard anything you've heard about Humans taking NoSaNoOs propaganda literally. We know how to listen to what a Bureaucracy tells us." Pr'rtr slitted his eyes, lashed his tail and turned back to face the blank wall, which rippled and developed a spiral pattern of grooves which spread out from the middle, gradually erasing the wall until it had vanished completely. Beyond it was darkness; Kelanie's translator-eyepiece, viewing in the infra-red range, outlined a massive shape at the far end of the darkened room. She heard a soft murmuring sound, as if there were a group of people holding a private discussion in the darkness. Over this susurration, a soft voice spoke in perfectly-accented Terrestrial Anglic. "Come in, please. My name is Tsiry-Feylen-Kendr-Tariy." Kelanie stepped into the gloom with Marek following nervously behind her. The murmuring conversations were coming from the Moridani, who shifted slightly, giving the impression of something with the mass of a large horse. The voices diminished in volume until only the occasional sibilant hiss or glottal click could be heard... with a peculiar scraping sound underlying them. Tsiry-Feylen-Kendr-Tariy smoothly rose from her crouching position, revealing her full height, and moved over to a wall; an arm flexed out from her front, touched a contact, and as the light levels slowly increased, her form was revealed by degrees. Despite herself, Kelanie drew back slightly, bumping into Marek. She - Tsiry-Feylen - was shaped something like a six-legged centaur; a pair of thin, double-jointed arms mounted at the front; slick grey flesh patterned in tiny scales that glittered in the faint light. The attitude of the legs, the placing of the hooves and ankles hinted at an ancestor with radial symmetry, although she had a head at one end and a tail at the other. Kelanie stood there, fascinated; someone had once put forward a theory that stated that intelligent life in the galaxy had, so far, been distinguished by three distinct waves, of which humanity and related races were part of the third; the Moridani would have been part of the first wave. Tsiry-Feylen was utterly unlike anything Kelanie had seen thus far on Millimillenary. The vertical mouth that divided the triangular head, mounted below a pair of large, diagonally-slitted eyes opened briefly, revealing rows of long, needle-like teeth. Suppressing the urge to turn and run, Kelanie realised that the Moridani was smiling at her, and that the scraping sound was the noise made by the teeth as they slid past one another. "Pretty nasty, eh?" Tsiry-Feylen said without using a translator. Kelanie thought that she recognised the voice. "Have we met before?" she enquired politely. Tsiry-Feylen bared her fangs again, bobbed her head. She replied in a different voice, "We're sure that we have..." - she continued in her first voice -"dearest." Kelanie was certain now. Marek looked like he was about to panic and run, so Kelanie took his arm and murmured reassuringly, "It's okay... she's on our side. Tsiry-Feylen, this is Marek Waddell, former owner of Waddell's Emporium of Extremely Fashionable Attire and Quite Nice Ice Cream Parlour." Tsiry-Feylen splayed her front pair of feet slightly, bowing. "Marek, one of these is-" "One of these? How many are there?" Tsiry-Feylen settled to the floor, folding up neatly like a cat, and replied, "Each Moridani has four personalities, each shared with four other Moridani... although, as there aren't as many of us as there used to be, this practice has declined. Miss Camden is familiar with our `Tsiry' aspect...' Kelanie smiled. "As I was about to say; Marek, I'd like you to meet Robyn Starkey, Section Head of the Bureau of Procuration, Syndaine office. My immediate superior. What I'd like to know is: how do you get away with it?" "Teleconferencing has been popular for hundreds of years. Quite a few government officials, including humans, hold two, sometimes even three positions, under assumed names. When they have to put in an appearance, they do so by video filtered through a cosmetic graphics program. We rarely have time for anything fancy, image-wise, because apart from our partisanship, we hold two positions in the Human government and one in the NoSaNoOs Bureaucracy." Kelanie looked around for something to sit on, saw nothing appropriate, and settled for sitting on the floor, cross-legged. Marek sat next to her. Tsiry-Feylen stared at them for a few moments; Kelanie found that she had no idea of what Moridani kinesics meant; she would have to rely on what she could pick up from Tsiry-Feylen's voice. "We're afraid that we have some bad news for you. The NoSaNoOs have completed their initial Evaluation of humanity, a study that began almost ninety years ago. Our position in the NoSaNoOs Bureaucracy has allowed us to steal a copy of the preliminary recommendation." "Which is?" "In about a month's time, the NoSaNoOs are going to drop about a dozen large asteroids on Earth, followed by another thirty that will be dropped into your sun at regular intervals. This will coincide with the arrest and subsequent termination of all free humans anywhere in the NoSaNoOs Dominion. We must say we're impressed; we haven't seen a reaction this extreme since they discovered that there were a few of us Moridani still on the loose." There was a moments' silence while they digested this. Finally, Marek said, "Do you expect us to believe that?" Tsiry-Feylen held out her hands and shrugged - a very human gesture. "The choice is yours. You have twenty-seven days." Kelanie grasped Marek's hand, cleared her throat and said, "Do you have any proof? Something tangible?" Tsiry-Feylen drew a small card made of clouded white plastic, handed it to Kelanie. "Nothing that can't be easily faked. The best way we can think to convince you is to show you the activity in your asteroid belt, where the Militia are, even as we speak, preparing the projectiles that will be - " Tsiry-Feylen paused, seeing Kelanie and Marek absorbed in reading the documentation. Kelanie had placed the card against her notepad's scanner, which read it and translated the NoSaNoOs Tertiary into Anglic. The message was short: Office of Risk Evaluation: Date: 9327685491767632151 "You can ignore the last part; the Office of Threat Termination report all such enquiries to the Militia as a matter of course." Tsiry-Feylen said. Marek and Kelanie exchanged glances. "You think that Barber-xeno was after us?" she murmured. "It would make sense... round up the strays..." Marek faced the Moridani. "Okay. If this is all true, then what the hell can we do about it?" Tsiry-Feylen's mouth twitched, exposing a few glittering teeth for a moment. "You could warn everyone, which would cause panic. You could do nothing, which would mean that your planet would be destroyed with most of the inhabitants still on it. You could try mounting an attack on the Bythians in your asteroid belt, which could prove difficult given your lack of spacecraft and weapons, and would most likely fail, as most attacks on Bythians do. Or you help with what is being done; get as many important people off Earth as possible and hide them." Kelanie was indignant at this. "Important? Who gets to decide who is important and who isn't?" Tsiry-Feylen's head swivelled to face her, eyes narrowed. "We do. We are financing this operation. We are hiding your people in our bases and are assuming the responsibility for making sure that they remain hidden. We are saving any humans who can assist us in our war against the NoSaNoOs. We do not have the resources to hide everyone. We have been working on this since before you were born, Miss Camden; we can only progress when we are entirely sure that there is no risk of discovery." Kelanie felt a numbing chill settle over her as the scope of Tsiry-Feylen's revelation sank in. "We have been hiding from the NoSaNoOs for over forty thousand years; we have never exposed ourselves to the possibility of discovery to the degree that we are doing at the moment. The only reason we are doing this: we believe that humanity can, one day, help us. Now, this is what we are going to do next..."
The closest a Bythian has ever come to creating a work of art or evincing a sense of humour was when the level three sub-commander in charge of the assault force on the Moridani-held world of Triple-S ordered a bomb-pattern that spelled out the words "Up Yours, Ugly" in Moridani Phandric. Three large, featureless white-metal shapes made their way down the crowded street. The crowds parted before them, breaking on the larger of the three like water on the prow of an icebreaker, flowed past the two that followed, the rift quickly healing close behind. The first shape was about the size of an elephant; it had four strong, stumpy legs at the narrow base of an inverted trapezoid shape; two double-jointed mechanical arms were neatly folded at the front. This shape moved deftly, occasionally whirling around to check that the other two were following, utilising an involved sequence of steps, turning back when it was sure that they were still in tow. They were smaller and obviously of a different species; bilaterally symmetrical, two arms and legs. Where the first shape was almost three metres from the ground to the forepeak, the others were squat shapes just under two metres tall. One of them seemed to be unsure of the correct method of walking; it stopped with one foot in the air every few steps. "Crash it, what's wrong with the damn thing NOW?" Kelanie snarled. "You're fighting it, Kelanie; try dropping force-feedback a few notches-" "Or turn it off altogether. You may get tired, but it won't matter in the short term." Kelanie sighed, hunted for the force-feedback control mounted somewhere on the inner face of her land-mate battle suit and replied, "I can understand why you need a suit like this, Tsiry-Feylen; but why the hell do we-" "The Bythians are probably looking for you by now. We stand a better chance of getting away with this if they think we are someone else." "You don't mean that we will have to wear these suits until we get back to Earth?" Kelanie wailed. She had only just become used to the new-vinyl smell of the inside of the land-mate; the spread of the leg-spaces was rubbing painfully on the insides of her thighs, and she half-expected to be bow-legged when she finally divested herself of the thing. "Once inside the ship and safely away, you can take them off. We, however, that is, we-myself, won't risk exposure until we have safely reached the Moridani base in the asteroids... assuming that the Threat Termination team haven't lobbed it into the sun... anyway, we are quite comfortable in this suit. We-myself have spent weeks at a stretch in it." "We-yourself are probably a couple of cans short of a six-pack." Kelanie muttered. Tsiry-Feylen laughed. "By your standards, we probably are. Uh-oh - quiet, children..." They were passing four Bythians who were checking ID bracelets. Tsiry-Feylen had been able to remove Kelanie's bracelet, providing a similar one which now hung on the outside of Kelanie's suit. The Bythians grabbed one arm of Tsiry-Feylen's armour carelessly, dragging it closer to read the pattern of dots on the tag that hung on the leading edge of her suit. They assumed a marginally more respectful attitude after they had read it; Tsiry-Feylen was posing as an important government official. She snatched her arm from the Bythian's grasp, made an involved gesture with it, and the four Militia stepped aside. They proceeded; Kelanie angled one of her shoulder-boom-mounted cameras backwards and watched them. The Bythians were ignoring them. "Will these disguises get us past the ExPort authority?" She asked. "We were hoping that you wouldn't ask that," Tsiry-Feylen sighed. "We think so. We have used this disguise before, and have never encountered any problems. Mind you, we didn't have two pesky humans in tow then. We are prepared to fight if necessary, although small-arms combat with Bythians is something we'd rather watch on video than participate in." Kelanie's suit paused, one foot in the air, lagging behind Marek and Tsiry-Feylen for a moment, then catching up again. "(Damn it!) Do you think we'll be in a shoot-out? I feel like a sitting duck in this thing! Does it have any weapons?" Tsiry made a reproaching tsk-tsk sound. "You're supposed to be a Bureau of Procuration operative, not some gun-nut weapons system expert! Your suit doesn't have any energy-weapons, but if you turned the force-feedback up all the way, you could easily put your fist through the side of a NoSaNoOs transport. That also applies to the leg-movements; with the force-feedback on full, you could leap up to a third-storey balcony, or jump off the roof and land safely. So be careful." The thought of being that strong appealed to Kelanie; when they stopped at an intersection to let a line of what appeared to be Parkry children pass by, she started experimenting with the controls. First, she played with the response-time fine-tuning, and found that this was the cause of her suit's lagging behind on some steps and anticipating others. When it was tuned properly, she could almost feel it slip into place. She flexed the fingers in front of the shoulder-boom-mounted cameras, bent the knees. It suddenly felt like a second skin; a feeling of energetic euphoria that she'd only experienced previously when absorbed in a complex gymnastic routine. Inside the suit, she grinned, turned the force-feedback control to the `x4' position and tapped her toes. The suit responded, jumping three feet off the ground, landing on the flat, splay-toed feet, the knees bending automatically to absorb the shock. "Hwaaar!" she shouted, turning the control to the `x8' position and leaping eight metres into the air, performing a somersault and landing on the other side of the street in a gap barely big enough to accommodate the suit. "Kelanie!" Tsiry-Feylen froze her suit by remote control. "If you want to draw attention to yourself, you can take all your clothes off and run down the street. Try to keep our situation in mind, please."
Tsiry-Feylen poked a camera-boom around the corner, scanned the broad courtyard outside the ExPort. Two more booms, mounted on Kelanie's and Marek's suits respectively, appeared just underneath Tsiry-Feylen's. There were at least thirty Bythians arranged around the courtyard, and even to Kelanie's untrained perception, they weren't merely on guard. Someone had anticipated them. "Wait here, children... We've arranged a reception for our fascist friends - some Pthalklin Ervae - when we give the signal, we want you to run straight into the ship." Even as Tsiry-Feylen spoke, Kelanie saw a movement in the decorative shrubbery arranged around the triangular doorways of the geodesic dome... then she realised that the movement wasn't caused by someone hiding in the bushes; the movement was the bushes. Six plants, shaped like large agapanths, a central shaft topped by what appeared to be a large red pineapple, moving on round platforms that hovered a few centimetres off the ground, emerged from the less ambulatory shrubs. Sharp, compressed-air sounds came from within their broadly-spread leaves; half the Bythians fell to the ground with large holes blown through them; thin yellow blood sprayed about. The remaining Bythians immediately returned the fire, microwave weapons causing three of the plants to burst into flame. There was a massive explosion in the corner nearest the Moridani and the humans; flat pieces of concrete chipped off the courtyard corner wall clattered off their armour. When Tsiry-Feylen dared to put a boom-camera around the corner again, she saw two of the plants nudging the bodies of the Bythians into a heap. She gestured to Kelanie and Marek and dodged nimbly around the corner. They ran after her, pausing only briefly when she stopped to confer with the two surviving Pthalklin Ervae. Inside the ExPort building, everything had stopped at the sound of the explosion. Parkry seated next to their dataposts regarded them blankly. Kelanie went to leap over the short barrier that laterally divided the room in two; she seemed to strike an invisible, flexible barrier and fell on her behind with a crash. "What the line-noise was THAT?" Marek stumped over to help her up, reached out and twanged a set of invisible wires strung over the barrier. "Monofilament. Lucky we're wearing these suits, or we'd be on the other side - in thin slices." He walked over to the gap in the barrier, and kicked out the door. It flew across the room and embedded itself in the far wall, end first, with a short metallic screech. The Parkry hopped back nervously as the two passed through the gap and ran up the ramp into the ship. They turned left at the first corridor inside the ship, and found themselves face-to-face with a Bythian, who was raising his weapon. Without thinking, Kelanie lashed out with one of the suit's arms, back-handing the Bythian flat against the wall with terrible force, killing it instantly. She crouched to pick up the plastic gun, examined it. It looked something like an automatic rifle, with a long rectangular magazine jammed in the base; there was nothing that obviously resembled a trigger. She shrugged within the suit and bashed the gun against the starship wall, snapping the barrel. She angled the two shoulder-mounted booms forward, extended them to their full reach of two metres and tip-toed up the corridor, peeking up the side corridors as they progressed. As they approached the end of the corridor, they heard the hum of a Bythian microwave weapon, coming from the right-hand branch of the intersection. Immediately afterwards, a grey shape flew through the air, past them and down the left-hand branch of the intersection. A large white shape ran after the grey shape; they barely had time to recognise Tsiry-Feylen in her battle-suit. They ran to the intersection, and saw Tsiry-Feylen holding a Bythian by its legs, batting its head against the wall with measured ferocity. When the Bythian came apart, she dropped the pieces she was holding, stamped on the head with both of the battle-suit's front legs, abruptly span through one hundred and eighty degrees and punched out a wall panel with both hands. She reached in, extracted the dented panel and tossed it over their heads. Kelanie heard a soft squelching sound, and turned a boom-mounted camera back to see a Bythian, crushed against the further end of the corridor behind the wall panel. While Tsiry-Feylen was working on the machinery behind the panel, tearing cables out and poking fingers into control-spaces, another Bythian appeared down the corridor, at the ship's hatch. It levelled its weapon at something outside; that something slashed at the Bythian's neck, severing the axe-shaped head and knocking its weapon aside. One of the Pthalklin Ervae hovered up the ramp and through the hatch. The entire ship shuddered, rocked; the suits' internal gyros keeping balance. Tsiry-Feylen darted between them, off down another corridor. They ran after her. The ship had lifted with its hatches still open; the air thinned, vanishing completely when they had reached low orbit, except for the room in which they had secured the Pthalklin Ervae. Tsiry-Feylen had been rushing from one end of the ship to the other, checking the most likely hiding places. "If there are any more Bythians, they should be dead by now. The ship had landed only four hours ago, so there shouldn't have been anyone else on board. When we've reached our allocated departure point, we-myself will have finished searching the entire ship; we can close the hatches and refill the ship's air supply from the stores." Kelanie's suit gestured to Marek. "Come on, I want to see Millimillenary from space!" they stamped off down the half-lit corridor while Tsiry-Feylen stalked through the ship, kicking service-hatches open, thrusting her camera-booms rapidly in and out of the circular doors of the berths, finding nothing. There were no more Bythians on board. Kelanie and Marek were leaning out of a hatch in the underside of the ship, into open space. Below them, the golden surface of Millimillenary was spread out, the faint grey gridwork of the city visible even from this altitude. Their suit radios beeped, and Tsiry-Feylen said, "Heads up, children, we're about to close the hatches." They pulled back into the corridor as the black-glass hatchway rippled into existence. Almost immediately, their suits lost some of the stiffness that came with vacuum. They made their way back to what Tsiry-Feylen thought was the pilot's ward-room, and when the air pressure was adequate, they gratefully divested themselves of the battle-suits. "Ohhh... praise "Bob", that's a relief." said Marek, stretching. Tsiry-Feylen made no move to take off her suit. Kelanie reached for her toes, straightened, arched her back and wondered how Tsiry-Feylen could stand to be confined in her suit for such long periods. The Moridani spoke through an audio port mounted on the side of her suit: "We're half-way home, children, although you should both know that the most dangerous part is still ahead of us. We'd like you to set up a recorder on the ship's communications column to monitor the trade channels. Then go and make sure the Pthalklin Ervae is safe. We've prepared a brief knowledge-base for you, describing most of the dangerous features of this ship; familiarise yourselves with it." She handed them a white plastic card. "Meanwhile, we are going to spy on the enemy." Kelanie and Marek sat cross-legged on top of a shipping container in the cargo bay, where the Pthalklin Ervae (whose name, apparently, was "Kayren-Kayley") had broken open about a dozen plastic bags filled with soil, and was spreading it evenly across the floor. On closer examination, the Ervae was not really an intelligent plant, but rather a living hive, host to thousands of tiny insects acting in communion with the plant, communicating via chemical tags. Individually, the insects were very simple; each acted out complex, genetically-programmed motions, forming the basis of an intricate object-oriented intelligence program. Conversations - conducted between Kelanie's notepad and the plant's spectrographic interpreter- were hampered by the plant's slow reaction-times. "No, I don't see it as a handicap," Marek said, "But if your species has such slow reflexes, then how can you effectively support yourselves as mercenaries?" Kelanie's notepad converted his words into NoSaNoOs Tertiary and transmitted them to the Pthalklin Ervae's interpreter, which rendered them as a pattern of pheromones, spraying at the insects that teemed in the diagonal interstices of the pineapple-shaped top. An airborne caste of the insects replied, dancing and spreading pheromones against the interpreter's reading plate, which then spoke to Kelanie's notepad, in Tertiary. "The next-to-smallest components of us are the equivalent of your computers," it said. "Once instructed, they can operate with great speed. We have several sets of components that know how to react to situations, and we cycle through these sets, modifying them as necessary. The largest delays occur when we have to communicate with animals who don't have the requisite sense-organs to read our chemical expressions directly."
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