Not I/We. One-not. Entities not-Bruno/Carol, not-other entity. One interrogatory. Arrive present. Speak wish interrogatory. Fortune better; Warm/Warm focus increase Warm/Cold. Speak wish interrogatory.
Bruno whistled. Carol, clueless, urged him to speak his piece.
'I think I understand. The Outsiders have another type of alien waiting to speak with us, another warm- temperature type, but not human and not kzin.”
Truth. Bruno-entity. One.
Carol nodded. 'Outsiders, we wish to talk to these other life-forms.”
Accept. One. Observe. Interact.
Another bubble-window appeared in the force-walled enclosure, very close to where they stood.
'What the… ' Bruno said softly.
Carol felt dizzy with the strangeness, shaking her head. Too much change in too little time, she thought wildly, and stood a little straighter.
Two aliens stood ten meters away. They both had three legs ending in tiny hooves. Each of them had two flat, single-eyed heads at the ends of long waving necks. They wore clothing and what looked like tools. The larger one appeared to wear armor studded with spikes and sharp edges, and one head hovered over what seemed to be a holster containing a pistol-like object. It never moved. The hair under the two necks of the smaller alien was elegantly coifed and glittered. Its heads waved gracefully, one held high and the other low.
A long silence.
'Take me to your leader,' Bruno muttered. Carol wanted to kick him in the shin.
The smaller of the two beings cocked a head suddenly and looked from Carol to Bruno, bird-swift. 'Mr. Takagama,' it sang in a woman's contralto, low and sexy, as Carol's jaw dropped in surprise, 'I hardly think that such inappropriate levity is called for under the present serious circumstances.”
The smaller of the two creatures then turned its other head to Carol, who slowly closed her mouth.
'We intend no disrespect to you, Captain Faulk,' crooned the alien from the second single-eyed loose-lipped head, in an identical voice. 'In fact, we are quite aware of primate protocols. However, may we speak frankly with one another? There is not a great deal of time for sociobiological niceties.”
CHAPTER SIX
Carol Faulk waited for the centrifuge in her head to quit spinning. It did not, and the rotor seemed a bit unbalanced to boot.
There had been too many changes since they had first detected the kzin ships back in the Sun-Tzu. And all of them far too quickly.
The battle between the Sun-Tzu and the kzin spacecraft. Bruno nearly burning out his brain from the EMP. The dogfight between Dolittle and the ratcat singleship. Then the moon-ship of another alien race somehow dropping them from nearly 0.8 lights to nothing, and the whiplike aliens from that huge craft dismantling Dolittle. Not only did she and Bruno wake up in an alien zoo near a comatose kzin, but now another type of alien confronted them. Too much.
Intelligent creatures with two heads, one of which spoke Belter Standard! They looked like bizarre mutant deer costumes from a masquerade party, with one-eyed heads at the ends of what should be arms. Like dual hand-puppets.
Puppeteers? Carol considered.
She shook her head again. The cobwebs were starting to clear, but slowly. She had to put her mind on a battle footing. Curiosity began to overtake shock in her mind. Okay, she thought. So you are facing three sets of aliens now. What's the big deal?
These newest aliens waited in what seemed somehow like politeness. The big one, loaded down with weaponry, said nothing and made no move.
Carol wanted to take control. Maybe there was a way out of this mess.
Yeah, right.
Bruno continued to chuckle softly at the implausible sight of the two creatures, with an almost hysterical undertone. Was it too much, too fast for him?
'Knock it off,' she hissed at him. 'Why? They look like something out of three-D, put together by people suffering from… ah, chemical enhancement. Kidvid aliens.”
'Yeah,' Carol whispered, smiling despite herself. 'A puppet show on braindust.' 'It's a little tough to take them seriously. And that might not be smart.' Carol frowned and narrowed her eyes. Bruno was right; the aliens looked more laughable than imposing at first glance. The Outsiders appeared far more frightening. Because they were more alien looking? Or because they had defeated a kzin singleship and dismantled Dolittle?
Even with the snaky necks, the three-legged aliens looked silly. But what about the big one's weapons? she reminded herself. Her singleship fighter-pilot reflexes were making the back of her neck crawl. That subconscious danger signal made her very suspicious. Carol had learned to trust her hunches while fighting kzinti in the borderland of Sol.
Things were seldom what they seemed in space. Carol poked Bruno in the ribs with a forefinger for emphasis. 'I think you're right. Don't underestimate them.”
'I agree,' he nodded.
'The big one in particular seems locked and loaded for a whole herd of angry bandersnatch. Look at the gear it's carrying, Tacky, Edged weapons and laser tech at the same time? Makes no sense.' Bruno's smile faded as he thought it over. 'Thing about aliens is… ' he began. '… they're alien,' she finished with him in a tired chorus. 'Many thanks to your old buddy Buford Early.' 'The real one, that is,' Bruno agreed. Carol took a deep breath and faced the three-legged aliens visible through the bubble-window. 'How do you know us?' she demanded.
The smaller of the two aliens' twin heads suddenly whipped up, facing one another eye to eye. Just as quickly, the aliens necks returned to their previous posture. Carol wondered what that meant. 'Captain Faulk,' it fluted in mellow tones, 'time is, as I stated earlier, of the essence. Still, it would perhaps be more conducive to swift results if we shared names. Labels are, after all, important to your species. Am I not correct?”
Carol felt an incongruous smile spread across her face. She just couldn't help it. The aliens two heads cocked in different directions, the single eyes in each head blinking with almost human-looking lashes. 'Captain Faulk?' it sang. 'Is this communications module translating my words properly? You are not responding.”
'Oh, we understand you,' Bruno broke in, sounding both tired and amused. 'We just have a little trouble believing in you.' The alien looked at Bruno for a few seconds, then turned back to Carol. 'We, too, have difficulties when meeting new species. May I continue?”
The odd alien waited until Carol finally shrugged agreement. 'Excellent,' it warbled. 'You may call me Diplomat, after my profession.' One head gestured cautiously at its companion. 'This one you may address as Guardian, or… ' Here the alien paused, an odd and somehow hesitant note in its voice. '… Warrior.' Carol pulled on her lower lip. 'Are we out of the waveform guide and into the emitter array, then?' After a pause, the smaller alien's twin necks snapped upward, the two flat heads facing each other, eye to eye. Again, the heads immediately returned to a normal posture.
Normal, Carol reflected, for a three-legged alien. And where was the beasts brain? Not in those tiny flat heads. The midsection? The creature spoke, the voice unmistakably that of a sultry-throated young human woman. 'Ah, I at length apprehend your meaning from symbolic context. It is an attempt at something like discordant synthesis, or… humor.' Bruno chuckled out loud and leaned close to Carol's ear. 'I see that your Belter lack of humor is appreciated even by alien species,' he whispered, breath warm and comforting.
Carol ignored him, looking directly at the weaponry carried by the larger alien. She then raised an eyebrow at the smaller one.
It whistled a high melodic note. 'To answer your unspoken supposition, Captain Faulk, you have nothing to fear from my quiet companion. Under normal circumstances, you would never have the opportunity to perceive that particular caste of my race.”
Bruno crossed his arms and spoke up. 'That is what you say, my friend.”
Carol was slightly annoyed at Bruno's interruption, but he did have a point. Military discipline had its
