Beert was still talking. “This particular device is not exactly like theirs; I built it in a different shape, to serve the purposes it is planned for, and had to waterproof it to protect its power.” That reminded me. “And it’s self- powered?” He stared at me. “Of course. Why would it not be?” “Well,” I said, “I’ve been wondering about that. I’ve looked at some of your other gadgets, and I don’t see any wires.”
He made a hissing noise of exasperation. “There are no wires. Each device draws its energy from-“
That wasn’t the end of his sentence, it was just the point at which it turned into gibberish and I couldn’t understand it anymore. I asked, “What?”
“I said it draws its energy from the garble of the garble garble which is present in the garblegarblegarble.”
That was no improvement. I shook my head apologetically. “I guess this translator thing doesn’t work as well as I thought,” I said, touching the thing behind my ear. “I didn’t understand any of that.”
He sighed, wriggling his neck regretfully. I said, “If you could just try to explain a little-“
“I did try,” he said testily. “You simply do not have the background to understand the words, and I do not have time to teach you just now. The person I wish to help will be waiting for us.” He put the scrambler in the basket with the other things and closed the lid, gesturing for us to leave the lab.
Outside, Beert slammed the door behind us and grabbed my arm. I let him lead me toward the stream that went through the grounds of the nest, and there, standing by one of those round little bridges, I saw the person Beert wanted me to help.
It was no friend of mine. The thing was a Wet One, one of the amphibians who had killed Patrice.
I didn’t say anything to Beert. Well, maybe that’s not true. I think I probably did say something like, “Screw this,” under my breath, but I doubt that Beert heard me. I wrenched my arm free from his grip, turned around and walked away, not looking back ... for no more than three or four meters.
Then I stopped.
Beert was a funny-looking little dinosaur, and his unpredictably fluctuating moods-his often childish moods- sometimes made that particular little dinosaur difficult to live with. But he had done his best to befriend me. Had, in fact, saved my life, just for starters. And if he was now asking me to help him, even to help him do something for a species I hated-didn’t I owe him something?
“Oh, hell,” I said, this time out loud, and turned around. Beert was peering after me.
I retraced my steps to the stream bank. “Exactly what is it that you want me to do?” I asked.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
I don’t know if Beert had any idea of why I had walked away. He didn’t comment. Maybe he figured it was just another bit of Earth-human queerness. He simply said, as though nothing had happened, “I will show you,” and began pulling things out of his little basket and carefully setting them on the ground next to the Wet One.
Who was studying me intently with those bulging hippopotamus eyes that were set on the top of his head. I didn’t speak. Neither did he. I did see that the tentacular electric organs that sprouted from his face were writhing restlessly. That didn’t seem to be a friendly sign. It crossed my mind that Beert might have misjudged the situation, and I instinctively began looking around for something that might work as a weapon if the thing suddenly jumped me.
Beert’s tap on my shoulder distracted me and I looked around. “Are you paying attention?” he asked crossly. “See, this is how the scrambler fits on the Wet One’s body.” He had it in his other hand, and began carefully to place it on the amphibian’s gross belly, just behind its tiny mid-arms. I wondered what he was going to use for glue to make it stick to the Wet One’s hide, but he didn’t have to do that. He had something more effective than glue. A metal socket was actually embedded in the amphibian’s flesh; the creature had evidently allowed someone to fasten the socket to his body surgically, right through the skin. There were two similar sockets flanking the one with the scrambler, and the next thing Beert did was to attach a couple of stout leather pouches to them.
Then he pulled the last of the basket’s contents out.
It was a pair of handguns. My handguns. Two of the twenty-shot, Bureau-issued guns that had been my basic carry weapon ever since I became an agent.
I nearly lost it one more time, as the anger I had managed to push back out of sight boiled over again. If anybody was going to have my guns, it damn well ought to be me. I made a grab for them, snarling, “Hey! Those are mine!”
The amphibian slithered a half step away toward the stream, grunting a protest, but it didn’t try to stop me. It didn’t have to. Beert was fast as well as strong; he dropped the weapons, and his two rubbery arms clamped quick and hard around my wrists. He didn’t raise his voice. “Actually,” he said, “these two projectile weapons are for the Wet One. If you have a requirement for one, it can be copied for you, but I do not see any such necessity.”
I wrenched free of his grip. He let me go, but his arms stayed near mine and his face danced before me. “They belong to me!” I complained. “That thing is a killer. How do I know he isn’t going to shoot me with them?”
Beert said patiently, “He has no such intention.”
That was when the amphibian spoke up, surprising me. He wasn’t easy to understand. He spoke that same Horch language-naturally enough; I could see that he was wearing an implant of his own, tucked under his jaw. But he didn’t have the same sort of vocal cords as I did, or even as the Horch did. The sounds he made were more like a hoarse, unpleasant kind of roaring than conversation, and I had to strain to make them out: “That is true. Shall I now speak of unfortunate past events?”
I guess the question was rhetorical, because the Wet One went right on talking. “The lethal pulsing of your female person should not have happened,” he stated. “The sharp-object stabbing of our persons by yours should not have happened as well. The reason for these wrong happenings may be that my party was in Other Water, where we did not know its tastes. In Home Water,” he explained, “where our females stay and the pups are reared, we know which tastes are persons and which are prey and which do not matter. In Other Water we may not know all the tastes. Yours were strange to us, and then your persons attacked us, so they were wrongly pulsed.” He regarded me for a second with those knobbed eyes, then finished. “There is nothing else to speak on this matter.”
