M. Planck - The Kassa Gambit

“Don’t they usually end up at hotels?”

“Yes, lady.” He grinned even wider. “That you come to such a fine house means your husband must be very rich indeed.”

She tipped him well. He deserved it. Then, gratefully, she put her feet on unmoving ground, and dragged Jorgun after her.

Jandi’s house was indeed “fine.” Not a mansion, but large enough to be stately, and on a private lot. The entire neighborhood was like that, the street lined with tall, majestic trees. On Kassa trees were cut down as a nuisance. On Altair, they smelled of age, stability, and money.

On the door screen, the same little green man glared silently at her, holding up a small box with a button in one hand. When she reached to push it, he moved it away.

She tapped on the center of the screen, ignoring the antics of the little figure. It squeaked at her in annoyance, but she could hear a door chime sounding inside the house.

“Come in, come in!” The door opened as Jandi hauled on it from the other side. The door was two meters tall and made out of a single piece of wood. Altair must pay their professors quite well.

“Do you like my door? It’s an import. Something I picked up on a field trip. All of my colleagues thought I was insane to pay the freight charges to bring it home. All of my neighbors are insanely jealous, and think I paid a dozen times what I did.”

The trader in her couldn’t resist asking. “Why didn’t you import a dozen more?”

Jandi smiled at her, crinkling the bulk of his face into an impish grin. “The value of the door as a stanchion of perspective was greater to me than a fistful of credit sticks.”

“I like the cartoon on the front,” Jorgun said.

Jandi bowed his head in respect. “A discriminating taste you have, young man. That is also an import—said to be an image from Earth itself. Do pardon my speech, I beg you; I am an old man and politeness is such an imposition on my time. I have what is reputed to be a digital copy of the original sequence: the little man, an alien, engages in a comic battle with a Terrestrial rabbit. Would you like to watch it?”

Jorgun nodded eagerly. Probably the only thing he got out of the speech was the swear word and the idea of watching a possibly naughty cartoon. It was enough, for Jorgun.

Snapping his fingers, Jandi led them into a large den, where a wall-mounted vid sprang to life. He rattled off some commands and the vid began displaying a cartoon, complete with the strangest music Prudence had ever heard. Its age was undeniable; the graphics were primitive beyond belief. Yet despite their crudeness, they had an innate power, like cave paintings of men hunting deer.

Prudence had only seen pictures of cave paintings in history books. She wondered what it would be like to see one for real. To view an artifact that had been made by human hands before the exodus. All she had ever seen were digital reproductions of digital recordings.

“Make yourself comfortable, lad.” Jandi waved at the various couches sprawling about the room. “My dear, if you would help me in the kitchen?”

She followed him through the house, feeling the need to reassert some control. “We can talk in front of him. He’s not simple enough to babble to strangers.”

“I did not doubt his valor,” Jandi responded politely. “But I thought you would not want to disturb him with your speech. I presume you did not really come out here to discuss Mauree Cordial. How is the old rogue, by the way?”

“He seems happy enough. Zanzibar suits him.”

“Yes, it would,” Jandi agreed. “Flavor over substance. And none too picky about the cleanliness of the plate it’s served on.” That did describe the planet succinctly, to Prudence’s mind. “But now that we’ve established your bona fides, we can stop sparring. Why did you come? Surely not just for the free meal. I am vain, yes, but not about my cooking.” They had reached the kitchen, and he lifted a pot lid, stirring the contents. Cubes of various vegetable proteins, boiling in a thick broth. Stew, soup, mush, gruel, whatever you wanted to call it. It had a thousand names and flavors on a hundred worlds. Prudence had stopped counting long ago. Jandi’s version at least smelled palatable.

“I watched you on the Willy Billy show.” She took the bowl he was offering, held it while he spooned soup into it. “I wanted to tell you that you’re wrong.”

“You believe in space-faring aliens?” He raised his bushy white eyebrows, like snowy caterpillars on parade.

“I saw the evidence myself. A ship, crashed in the snow. A single-pilot fighter, but not built for humans.”

Calmly Jandi snapped on the vid screen over the stove, flipped past the cooking channels, and called up a picture.

The alien fighter craft. Photographed in a warehouse, lit by floodlights. Jandi paged through a dozen shots from different angles.

“Fleet has been handing out these pictures to their friends. I still have friends at the university, so I’ve received an unofficial copy. I’ve seen the pictures, and I’m still not convinced. Ships are made by men.”

Prudence fished a plastic bag out of her pocket. Inside was the precious sliver, stained in blue. She offered it to Jandi silently.

Taking it gently, he held it up to the light. “A nice touch, making it blue. Any idiot can tell it’s not human that way. But why bring this to me instead of the government?”

“What government? All I’ve seen is the League. There was a League officer on my ship when I found the alien vessel. Then a League officer showed up and claimed the prize.”

“And you don’t like the League?”

“I was born on Strattenburg.” She didn’t know if that would mean anything to him, but it meant a lot to her.

He looked at her sadly. “Are the rumors true?” He was an academic, a member of a university, the one social institution that lived longer than governments. They were the only entities that tried to keep any kind of contact between the far-flung driblets of the okimune . He had at least heard rumors.

“No. The truth is worse.”

“You fear it could happen here? The situation does not seem analogous.” He spoke about tragedy in scientific terms. She had to remind herself that he couldn’t help it. He was an academic.

“All I know is what I feel. And the League scares me.”

Jandi nodded in acceptance. “I can analyze this without going through official channels. But it will take time. Yes, I know, you are in a hurry. Young people always are. I am in a hurry, too, my dear. My doctors are terrible liars. Take some soup to your young fellow. Enjoy the cartoon. I will contact you as soon as I can.”

She left her berth number at the spaceport, and went to find Jorgun. He ate his soup without comment, watching the end of the cartoon. Prudence waited with him, wondering if the police were on their way now, wondering if Jandi had betrayed them.

“That was funny. But they said the dirty word a lot.”

“It’s a grown-up cartoon, Jor,” she reassured him. “They’re allowed.”

Jandi’s voice came over the house intercom.

“My apologies for being such a poor host. But I have so little time left, and this puzzle needs solving. Please show yourselves out—I’ve already summoned a cab. Do not despair, my brave young captain. I will not fail thee in thy hour of need.”

“He has a puzzle? Can we play with it?” Jorgun was phenomenally good with jigsaw puzzles. Prudence wasn’t sure why he enjoyed them. All he did was take the pieces out of the box, one at a time, and put them where they belonged. Once she had chastised him for tossing a piece into the trash when he was halfway through a puzzle. Contrite, he had fished it out again, and placed it on top of the duplicate piece already on the table. After that, she had let him do the puzzles his own way.