Donald Moffitt - The Jupiter Theft

“And Captain Hsieh,” he reminded her.

She flushed. “And we ought to put it in his hands.”

Jameson was losing patience with Maggie. He’d had a lot of practice at it on Earth and during the trip out. “I thought you were the one who was always lecturing me about being a good little Guvie robot, kowtowing to authority! Maybe you got through to me, Maggie! This is too important to take chances with. Dr. Ruiz and I are taking the responsibility.”

Maggie’s manner softened. “All right,” she said. “But Boyle’s not one of those brainless government stonewallahs. Maybe he’s all spit and polish, but he’s human. You can trust him.”

“I trust him. I trusted him with my life. But I’m not going to lay this one in his lap.”

“Tod—”

“There are too many crazies in the command structure. Did you hear what Yao asked me about the nukes? My God, what if they got it into their heads to try to take some kind of action against the Cygnans? They couldn’t succeed, of course, but they might get the Cygnans annoyed with Homo sapiens. One little fly-by with that drive of theirs on, and they could cook the whole Earth down to the bottom of the lithosphere.”

Ruiz said, “If they succeed in getting one of their bombs off, it would be worse. They couldn’t destroy a whole ship, of course—it’s thirty miles between components. But they could kill a couple of million Cygnans and damage one of the ships. It would take them months to repair damage, transfer population. Delay the Cygnans’ departure.” He shrugged. “Good-bye Earth.”

“So you see, Maggie,” Jameson said, “it’s up to us.”

“No,” Ruiz said. He looked straight at Maggie. “It’s up to Mizz MacInnes.”

Maggie bit her lip. “I can’t help thinking about all these people.” She waved a thin arm at the scattered figures on the artificial landscape. “Condemned to spend the rest of their lives as exhibits in a … a menagerie. Without even a chance to have any say about it.”

“I know, Maggie,” Jameson said.

“Think about fourteen billion people on Earth without any say in it, M-Maggie,” Maybury said in a very small voice.

Maggie was silent. “We’re being very arrogant about all this, aren’t we,” she said finally.

“Yes,” said Jameson.

She gave him one of the blinding smiles that made him love her. “God help the four of us if our cagemates ever find out,” she said.

After the Cygnans turned the sky off, Jameson and Maggie lay side by side on their strawlike bedding for a long time without speaking, holding hands across the intervening space but otherwise not touching. They were a little apart from the others, in a shallow angle where one of the terrace shelves bent around the outer wall of the enclosure. The people who were still moving around tacitly gave them a wide berth, as they did all the other scattered couples. It was dim but not dark, with a pale luminescence that was a fair imitation of starlight. The Cygnans had instituted a terrestrial day-night cycle here. Some hundred yards away, somebody had built a small fire, probably with dried vines, and there was a small group around it softly singing folk songs. Somewhere in the dimness Jameson heard a woman moan as if in pain.

“Some of them are pretty shameless about it,” Maggie said. “Klein and that Smitty girl from the bomb crew. As soon as the lights are out—bang! Ugh, disgusting! I’ll say this for your friend Ruiz and his little assistant—nobody’s ever caught them at it.”

“Maggie!”

“All right, I’m a cat. But I hope you can persuade the Cygnans to let us have our birth-control pills. We’re starting to have pregnancies. Four so far.”

“I know. I saw Liz Becque.”

“Oh, that. That one got started in the ship. The others don’t show yet. Want to know who they are?”

“No.”

She squeezed his hand. “I know, Tod. Life in the zoo’s going to be hard enough. When you talk to the Cygnans, tell them humans need privacy.”

Three days passed before Jameson managed to talk to his keepers.

The first morning, in the artificial dawn before the human section of the zoo opened up to Cygnan visitors, the steaming basins of slop were wheeled in by Augie and an unfamiliar Cygnan who limped along tripod-fashion on what looked like a half-regenerated leg. Augie held the silent ring of humans at bay with a wide-mouthed neural gun while the crippled Cygnan unloaded. When they finished, they backed off warily and locked the barred gate after them. Jameson, in the forefront of the crowd, a space cleared around him, warbled his fractured Cygnan in vain. Augie didn’t appear to notice that he was trying to communicate. Jameson wondered if Augie could even tell him apart from the other humans.

“Nice try, Commander,” Captain Boyle said. “Don’t get discouraged. We’ll have another chance later.”

Jameson got in line with the rest while the distribution committee, supervised by Liz Becque and her Chinese counterpart, ladled the stuff out. When it was his turn, Liz said cheerfully: “There’ll be an ounce of fish with supper tonight. Kiernan says there’s enough to go around. If the Cygnans give you access to our stores, see if you can bring back some spices, will you? And some of the canned fruit.”

The next day went no better. Augie was absent. The lame Cygnan assisting Triad seemed preoccupied. Jameson whistled and gestured in vain. Finally he took a chance and moved forward a few steps. The lame Cygnan shrilled a warning. Triad swiveled a serpentine head around, the three eye polyps around her mouth pointed in his direction. Encouraged, he took another few steps. The next thing he knew was the agony of sensory dissociation. When things swam back into focus, the Cygnans were gone. Boyle and Gifford were helping him to his feet. He was shaking with reaction and with a residual jangle of the nerves. He felt like an old man. Several other people who had been too close to him had been caught by the modulated field generated by the crippled Cygnan’s weapon. Jameson wasn’t too popular with them the rest of the day.

The third day, Triad and Tetrachord served the rations together. They both wore aprons. Jameson revised his assessment of them. They weren’t even the head zookeepers, just the ones in charge of the sector that included humans and humanoids and Jovians and other creatures the Cygnans lumped together. They had Augie for an assistant, but they had a help problem.

Jameson whistled for their attention. Surprisingly, he got it at once. They whistled a few meaningless phrases back at him and went about their business. Jameson persisted. He repeated over and over again that he wanted to talk. The Cygnans had an argument. Triad won, and the next thing Jameson knew, they were motioning him away from the other humans.

As he passed through the gate, a cheer went up from the crowd. He could hear jolly voices behind him.

“Hey, Commander, bring back some booze if you can…”

“How about a load of frozen steaks?”

“Don’t forget toilet paper…”

Back in the Cygnans’ cluttered quarters, Jameson was made to wait in the center of the floor while they sent the lame assistant out for the Moog. The place seemed more disorganized than last time. It was stuffy, and there was a strange sour odor hanging in the air.

Jameson looked at his keepers hanging from their perches. Tetrachord seemed sluggish. The parasite dug into his belly was more bloated, like an engorged tick. Triad didn’t look too well either. She kept twitching her budlike tail nervously. Were the Cygnans sick?

The Moog was brought in by a couple of straining Cygnan laborers who dumped it on the floor and left, giving Jameson a wide berth. Jameson went eagerly to it. He opened the telescoping legs and turned on the power supply. The instrument looked battered. Some of the keys weren’t working, and the power was low.