Gateways (61 page)

“Weapons Officer,” cried the captain. “Get rid of those things!”

“Greatly regretful, Most High Up of All Those Aboard Ship Except the Moral Zoologists,” cried the Chummy weapons officer. “No MZ rating on the attackers is currently available. Offensive weapons may not be used on those rating six or above . . .” On any ship occupied by Pronunchumniaks, the weapons officer was Pronunchumniak, as no other races could be trusted to be consistently moral when they had itchy trigger fingers.

“This is emergency,” shouted the captain. “Another hit like that, we all dead, you all dead, Thwart will sue hind tentacles off every Chummy still living!”

A rapid though lengthy discussion ensued, after which the WO was allowed to fire warning shots across what were assumed to be the frontal areas of the instabilities. One stopped, two withdrew, and the last two, which were also the largest, continued to follow the
Denart Sp**t
, though at greater distance.

“I am of the opinion it would not be totally inappropriate to assume a manifestation of both animosity and aggression,” said one MZ to another.

“Though one must take into consideration that they were, perhaps, provoked,” replied the other. “I think we should maintain course, swing around that little star and see if the things don’t give up.” It shrugged one tentacle, tentatively. “They might.”

“Such a course of action would require that we gain a great deal of velocity,” said the WHOA. “I will accordingly compute an orbit that will result in our arriving back at the proper nexus which is, at this juncture, a relatively great distance behind us. We will, however, expend an enormous amount of time in the endeavor.”

“That’s all right,” said the chief MZ. “There’s a marvelously complicated gas giant very near, which bears a huge roseate vacuity upon it. We can take this opportunity to do a survey. Also, no doubt the crew needs some time to repair the engines.”

The damage control officer snarled. “Engines one and five of the ship
Denartesestel Radichan
are unfortunately in no condition to be considered repairable. The aforementioned engines are not even salvageable, being in a condition of total absence.”

“Oh, my gracious,” said the chief MZ. “Will we be able to return to the locus considered by most of us to be one of sentimental partiality?”

“It may be possible to get home given a little luck,” replied the WHOA,
with such Thwartian brevity as to sound positively rude. “If nothing else happens.”

The two persistent instabilities continued to follow the
Denart Sp**t
. The one instability that had remained in place moved toward the gas giant. The two that had withdrawn moved slowly toward another gas giant, farther out, which was haloed with several debris rings. The MZs watched with great interest as the two instabilities approached the rings, abruptly broke up into a multitude of small, fractal subunits, and joined the rings of debris. Long-range scanners showed the smaller units happily munching on ring debris and building others of their kind.

“Machines,” said one MZ. “That’s what I thought.”

The third instability approached the largest gas giant and plunged into it without a moment’s pause. Some time later, a huge, brilliant green plume of gas came up from the place it had entered. All this was recorded by the MZs, as were the two instabilities that were still following the ship. Nothing else happened for some little time.

Then: “It is with deep regret and reluctance that I acknowledge the existence of a problem of some considerable dimension,” said the WHOA to no one in particular. “It seems the
Denartesestel Radichan
is currently of too great a mass for us to make the required orbit with only four engines.”

“Make it how?” asked the captain.

The WHOA sighed and condensed what it had been going to say. “Make it back to the nexus, so we can go home.”

“What can we do?”

“Jettison cargo,” said the WHOA.

“Jettison cargo,” cried the chief MZ. “We’ve only partially classified one section of oxygen hold six. There’s no morally acceptable way we can jettison an unclassified cargo!”

The WHOA composed itself and said in a tightly controlled voice, “If the cargo classifies as type five or below, you could jettison it, right?”

“Quite correct.”

“If the cargo classified above a five, you could jettison it in order to save our lives, right?”

“That is true.”

“Since there is no other classification than that included in the aforementioned categories, I suggest you jettison the entire cargo under either or both of the classifications I have mentioned.”

“But we don’t know which is which,” cried the chief MZ. “The records would need . . .”

“Since the end result will be the same in either case, I would suggest an arbitrary classification,” cried the WHOA.

The Moral Zoologists spent the next six waking periods discussing this, at the end of which time they had agreed upon a course of action. There would be a valid but preliminary classification based on survival characteristics, after which some creatures would be jettisoned onto the rocky planet inside the orbit of the big gas planet. Some creatures would be jettisoned back toward the big gas planet itself. Some creatures would be jettisoned on each of the subsequent inner planets: a watery one, a very cloudy hot one, and an even hotter one close in. In each case, the creatures having the best chance of survival in that location would be jettisoned.

Each creature container was, in fact, a self-contained environment, provided with appropriate life support, including soft landing and automatic-release systems. The Moral Zoological Institute had ruled long ago that organisms might be collected only if such safeguards were provided in case of shipwreck. As the
Denart Sp**t
plunged sunward, therefore, the cargo holds were gradually purged of their contents, escape environments hastening away toward planets where they would land after only several revolutions. The ship was able to make an appropriate swing around the sun, which headed it back to the nexus that would take it home. The two instabilities that had pursued it as far as the orbit of the hot cloudy planet had entered that planet’s atmosphere and had later been seen disporting themselves in the sulphurous cloud layers that masked its surface.

Having jettisoned sufficient cargo, the Thwartians and the Pronunchumniaks returned to Sector ORV 254 without further incident. The Moral Zoological Institute thereupon began hearings as to what, if anything, should be done to recover the specimens jettisoned in that far-off, lonely corner of the galaxy. Reports and recommendations on this subject were heard at each annual meeting for the next fifty-three revolutions, at which time it was determined that retrieval was a moral necessity if for only one reason: in their haste to return from their unfortunate voyage, the Moral Zoologists aboard the survey ship had neglected to find out if there were life-forms on any of the planets toward which they had released their cargo. This fact had already resulted in the commission of grave ethical errors, which might, on further study, turn out to be irreparably indicative of the necessity for ritual suicide. This was particularly true in the case of the suspected OBBU race, the bisexual one. While the depravity of bisexuality was not totally unknown in Sector ORV 254, virtually all practitioners of it had been sought out and destroyed during periodic ritual cleansings of the sector.

A multispecies committee was formed to consider this subject, and was ordered to do a prompt and thorough feasibility study of various rescue methods. It was determined that special, small, disk-shaped retrieval ships should be sent to the various planets to locate the surviving creatures and extract them, particularly the creatures that had been dropped on the watery planet third from the sun, as they were considered to be so morally reprehensible that any native population they had encountered might already have been eradicated. The Moral Zoologists ruled that immediate extraction of these castaways had first priority, as the creatures had the disgusting habit, among many others, of taking the shape of whatever race might be numerous in any given ecosystem and preying upon that race from within.

The extraction ships that approached the third planet, which was called
Urth
by many of its inhabitants, found that it was completely occupied by an omnivorous, bipedal, bisexual, unarmored race calling itself
peepul.
The castaway creatures had had quite a lengthy time in
Urth
years in which to become well established. The Moral Zoologists estimated that inasmuch as the castaways could no doubt have taken the form of the
peepul
, one in ten of the OBBUs on
Urth
might actually be a castaway. Still, the Moral Zoologists did not consider that the problem was beyond solution. Since they had previously determined that the OBBUs picked up during the survey used a consistent and unique form of predation, the MZs felt it would be relatively easy to determine which of the OBBUs were the products of native evolution and which had been cast away upon the planet.

The unique form of predation commonly used by the castaways began with the subversion of the brains of their prey, starting with the younger ones, by sensory assault, largely sonic. This short-circuited the victim’s not-yet-developed “ugmomfit,” or “common sense,” so called because it was common to all speaking races in the universe, as well as a good many non-speaking ones. The vacuum resulting from the extraction of common sense was then replaced by a set of “wish images” tailored to the basic yens of the various subsets of native creatures. These “wish images” were then used to weld the native creatures into subgroups that could be relied upon to provide their “leaders”—the castaways—with whatever needs and pleasures were wanted: food, drink, sensory stimulation, accommodations, all in return for having their “wish images” repeatedly confirmed. The “wish image confirmations” took the form of, 1.
Definition
(You love woggle fruit! Yes you do!!) 2.
Affirmation
(Everybody who is anybody loves woggle fruit and Mumdah knows you do too!!) 3.
Purchase price
(Well, you work real hard for Mumdah) and, finally, 4.
The promise
(Mumdah will see that when you
get old you’ll go to a wonderful world that is just full of woggle fruit, and you can eat it forever). Or, 1.“You hate those nasty old other-politicals/other-believers/other-skinned people/other-haired people. 2, “Everybody who is anybody hates those other people.” 3. “Well, you just give lots and lots of money to Mumdah and help Mumdah throw a few bombs.” 4. “We’ll get rid of every one of them!” This latter wish system had often been used on the castaway’s native planet to decrease population density in certain areas. The castaways called their method of predation “economics.”

As has been mentioned, PECSNIF statistics indicated that one out of every ten of the OBBUs should be a castaway. Imagine, then, the dilemma presented to the Moral Zoologists when their retrieval ships returned with tests of the population showing that only a few of the creatures could be identified as native born. Virtually all OBBUs were either leading wish groups or members of them. The entire planet was filled by swarms of OBBUs inventing wish images, advertising wish images, and desiring wish images. Meantime, the basic bisexual genetic depravity with which they were burdened, constantly stimulated by wish images into repeated and needless sexual activity, had resulted in overpopulating their world and driving virtually all other living creatures into extinction. As had been true in ORV 254 before bisexuality was declared depraved and subject to immediate eradication, all planets so occupied inevitably destroyed themselves. This process was so well known and recognized that bisexuality was no longer tolerated in any civilized sector. Only calm and rational budding, as needed for population balance, was approved.

The leaders of the retrieval expedition turned the matter over to the PECSNIFs who would make the final determination. That was, after all, why the Professional Ethical Calculators and Special Native Intelligence Functionaries got the big bucks!

PECSNIF declared as follows:

A:
If we assume there had never been a native OBBU population, merely a very fast population explosion of castaways, then all the OBBUs on
Urth
would need to be eradicated because they threatened the native biome and had predated upon all living things including their own kind. In that case, no fault would be assigned nor would there be any remediation except fixing the local ecology ruined by the castaways.

B:
If, however, we assume there had been a sensible, non–wish image native population that, in its entirety, had been subverted by the castaways, then the fault lay with the members of the original expedition including
the PECSNIFians among them, all of whom would be expected to commit ritual suicide out of shame.

C:
If, however, an existing native population of OBBUs had
always
been as it was now, then no fault extended to either the Thwartians or the Pronunchumniaks, not even remediation of the environment.

In order to ascertain which of these possibilities was true, a significant body of
Urth
history and literature extending back to precastaway times was borrowed from the libraries of the
Urth
and translated into both Thwartian (one slim volume) and Pronunchumniaknius (one newly built orbiting library including all resultant theses).

After much discussion—of which meticulous minutes were kept by the Chummies in order to prove beyond controversy that all sides of every argument had been considered—it was determined that the
Urth
creatures had always been mostly that way—with a few unisexual exceptions—that the castaways had had, in fact, no discernible effect and therefore, no guilt was assigned to either Thwart or Pronunchumniak. Since no one could tell the difference between castaway or native bisexual groups, reliable extermination would simply include every member of the population in any way connected to a bisexual wish image group or activity. After extermination, a team of Budding Coaches would be sent to the planet to adapt the remaining unisexual
peepul
so they could bud rationally.