Ascending

When I asked how there could be so much difference in one species, Festina explained their skeletal structure could shift into three distinct configurations. In the all-crouched-down position, most of the bones lay above the vital organs, shielding the body; it was a Defense Posture which made the Cashling much harder to injure than in other positions. The polelike configuration was nicknamed The Periscope — stretching twice as high as a human, the Cashling could raise its head above brush and other obstacles, in order to scan for danger or tasty things to eat. The drawback of both these arrangements was that the bones locked in place against each other, making it difficult for the Cashling to walk or even crawl. Therefore the third configuration, the high-waisted humanoid one, was most commonly used for everyday purposes. In this form, the Cashlings strutted about like Daddy Long-Legs, taking exaggerated strides that could cover distance quite speedily.

'Ha-ha, here we are,' called Dr. Havel. He clicked a button that changed the examination table’s screen from the picture of me to a filmed panorama of several dozen Cashlings. They looked quite different with their skins on… for their skins were every color of the rainbow, plus many other colors no self-respecting rainbow would dare exhibit.

Bright violets. Florid reds. Piercing blues.

Some were a single solid hue, and always fiercely eye-catching: flashing gold, burnished silver, gleaming bronze. Others were mottled with high-contrast tones, like orange and blue, or yellow and black. A few had stripes like tigers, but in garish colors a true tiger would consider beneath its dignity. Then there were others with swirling circular patterns starting as colored rings around their heads and twirling all the way down their bodies to end in fussy little curlicues on their toes. Only one figure in the picture showed any restraint, a creature who seemed snow white; but when Festina noticed me looking at that one, she said, 'He’s sure to be just as strongly colored as the rest, but in a frequency of light our eyes can’t see. Infrared or ultraviolet — Cashling eyes perceive the widest visible spectrum of any race we know.'

'But these Cashling ones are so — foolish!' I said. 'Hostile beings could see them from far far away.'

Festina shrugged. 'What hostile beings? Cashlings have tamed all the worlds they live on. No dangerous animals except in zoos… and of course, with the League of Peoples, no one has to worry about attacks from off-planet. Cashlings have no need to be circumspect, and they definitely don’t want to.' She waved a hand at the garish picture. 'Some primordial circuit in the Cashling brain is attracted to bright colors. Flashy is beautiful. Sexy. The same instinct as a lot of Terran birds. So for several dozen centuries, the most desirable mates have been the ones who look like a laser show. Over time, selective breeding, bioengineering, and cosmetic injections have made the whole damned populace fluorescent.'

'But they are so ugly!' I said. 'They are practically obscene.'

'Don’t say that to their faces. Cashlings are stupendously vain; if you insult them, they may decide not to broadcast our story.'

'Then I will charm them most graciously,' I answered. 'I am excellent at winning the hearts of aliens, even when they are thoroughly repugnant.'

Festina looked at me a moment, then broke into a grin. 'You do have the knack,' she said. 'Come on, let’s get ready for the broadcast.'

A Temporary Nursery

We left Uclod and Lajoolie in the infirmary. They were talking to each other in low voices, Uclod sounding most trembly while Lajoolie spoke with soft calmness. The rest of us had no desire to interrupt such a conversation, and I for one was glad to get away. Each glance in their direction brought home the terrible reality of bereavement; and I did not wish to be reminded of that at all.

The place we went first was a room for Nimbus. He said he had nothing to contribute to our testimony against the High Council, and more importantly, he needed to minister unto baby Starbiter’s needs. Therefore Festina took him to a passenger cabin which was tiny and cramped and blemished with hideous blue paint on the walls, but which had a full-service synthesizer that would let Nimbus obtain food and other necessities for the child. We tarried a moment to make sure he was properly settled in, then left him to his fatherly work.

Departing through the cabin door, we were forced to pass through a gritty black dust cloud swirling silently in the corridor. Festina said the cloud was a swarm of fierce microscopic machines, cousins to the Analysis Nano back in sick bay but designed to keep watch on Nimbus. If any speck of the mist man tried to sneak away from his body, tiny robots in the black cloud would swoop in, grab hold of the speck, and carry it off. The robots had been programmed not to damage Nimbus’s component bits, for he was a sentient creature and therefore not to be killed… but apparently, the League of Peoples would not raise a fuss if all of Nimbus’s individual particles were dissipated like fine dust throughout the ship, thereby preventing them from working together and doing harm.

Festina told me additional sentinel robots lurked in the ventilation ducts of Nimbus’s cabin, and even in the plumbing and electrical outlets. This proved the cloud man was a closely watched prisoner, much less trusted than I… for I only had a single mook chaperoning me whereas Nimbus had billions. Hah!

My Mook

My mook was the sergeant, and he showed excellent taste — he left his two lesser mooks in the infirmary to watch Uclod and Lajoolie, but he went with me himself. That must be the chief reason to become sergeant: so you can assign yourself to monitor the most beautiful security risk.

The sergeant’s name was Aarhus. When he finally took off his helmet, he proved to be a bearded man with hair the color of stone… by which I mean the yellow type of stone, not the gray, white, red, or brown types of stone which are also quite common, so perhaps I should have said he had hair like a goldfinch, except it was not that color at all. It was exactly the color of a pebble my sister once found on the beach, and close to the color of certain leaves in autumn, but not the sort of leaves that turn scarlet. So this tells all you need to know about Aarhus, except that he was tall, and he occasionally said odd things which might have been jokes but one never knew for sure.

The sergeant accompanied Festina and me as we proceeded toward the room where we would record our broadcast; and although he was not discourteous, his presence was still a Burden. This was my first time alone with Festina since we had been reunited, and there were many personal subjects we might speak of… but not with a stranger dogging our steps. In addition, I could not reveal my conversation with the Pollisand: bargaining with aliens is just the sort of thing a keen-edged Security person might take amiss, believing me to have become a Tool Of Hostile Powers.

Festina clearly felt the same inhibitions as I, stifled under the sergeant’s gaze. Instead of relating how she had grieved while believing me to be dead, or describing the joy she felt to have me back, she seemed at a loss for words; after an awkward silence, she simply began to name the rooms we were passing. 'Main Engine Room. Secondary Engine Room. Hydroponics. Gravity generators…'

The lack of conversation might have been more tolerable if I had been allowed to look into any of the rooms as we passed. After all, the engines of a starship must be quite a sight: great fiery furnaces tended by muscular persons with sweat glistening over their rippling torsos. But every door we passed remained shut and unwelcoming… until finally one hissed open just ahead of us.

Festina and Aarhus halted — they must have assumed someone was coming out into the corridor. When no one did, they simply shrugged and started forward again; but I remained frozen where I was, for I had heard a familiar voice.

The voice was distressingly nasal, coming through the open doorway. When the door began to hiss shut again, I dashed forward and grabbed the edge of the sliding panel. The door fought against me for a moment; then it grudgingly slid back into the wall.

'Hey,' Aarhus said, 'that’s the main computer room. Off-limits to civilians.'

I ignored him. Striding into the room, I searched for the source of the voice. It was coming from behind an array of computers so tall and wide I could not see past them. I could, however, hear the voice’s words quite plainly: 'What did you think you were doing? Why didn’t you test the code first? Did you really think an undebugged program would work perfectly the first time?'

Festina grabbed my arm. 'Oar, where are you going? What’s wrong?'

'That is the Pollisand!' I whispered.

My friend’s eyes grew wide. 'Oh fuck!'

Then she and the sergeant sprinted forward.

15: WHEREIN I TAKE CHARGE OF OPENING DOORS

Logic Scum

We rounded the bank of computers at a run… then stopped in the face of chaos.

First, there was the Pollisand: exactly as I had seen him in the lava garden. Indeed, I could still detect reddish stains on his feet, obtained when he peevishly stomped the scarlet flowers. This was definitely the same creature I had met hours earlier… or else such a perfect copy I could not tell the difference.

The Pollisand was not the only one with crimson stains on his skin. In front of him stood a human dressed in dark brown attire: a woman whose flesh was dark brown too, except for the fingers of both hands. Those fingers were smeared a vivid red — not blood, but a scarlet dust that sifted off flakes whenever she moved. Speckles of that dust lay scattered across the floor at her feet… and red chalky fingerprints glowed on the access panels of the computer in front of her.

Though those panels were shut, something bubbly leaked out around their edges: a charcoal gray foam, forcing itself through the seams of the computer’s casing, trickling down the machine’s exterior, and pattering onto the floor tiles. The glup had a musty smell, like human feet enclosed too long in stockings. When a clot of the stuff slopped down near the brown woman’s boots, she jumped back fearfully as if the foam could hurt her.

'Bloody hell!' Festina said. Shoving the brown woman aside, my friend drove a kick into the junction between two of the computer’s access panels. The kick must have snapped whatever locking mechanism held the panels in place; both doors swung open, propelled by great gouts of foam that had built up inside. Gray bubbles spilled and gushed to the floor, releasing such a wash of musty odor I nearly gagged.

'What is that?' I asked, feeling choked.

'Logic scum,' Festina said. 'Chunks of the ship’s data get encoded in organic molecules: DNA, long chain polymers, stuff like that — then all those chemicals are packaged into a single living cell. A data bacterium. The only problem is that bacteria can be killed.'

She nodded toward the red powder on the floor. 'That’s a chemical called Modig — a bio-poison that rips data bacteria to shit. This foam is the result: a slurry of bacterial corpses. All that’s left of the logic circuits.'

Festina booted another kick into the left access door, cracking it off its bottom hinge. The impact splashed back a flurry of foam that spattered onto the leg of her trousers. She retreated a quick step and shook her foot, endeavoring to throw off every speck of foam clinging to her pants. As she did so, she said, 'Oar, break that