John Scalzi - The Android's Dream

Phipps pointed at the transcript. "That makes it pretty obvious it wasn't an accident, doesn't it. He knows Moeller's history and that he worked for your dad. But at this point, he figures Moeller was freelancing for his own reasons."

"He was," Schroeder said. "I just helped in the implementation."

"Whatever," Phipps said. "Short story is that you're unsuspected. As am I. In fact, Pope suggested I contact you, seeing as you've been helpful with off-the-book investigations before. I'm actually supposed to be here this time. We might need your help."

"I love it when a plan comes together," Schroeder said.

"That makes it sound like you planned it to go like this," Phipps said.

"Oh, no," Schroeder admitted. "We're way off track from where I thought we'd be. But maybe it's better this way. We had only expected to derail the talks and the coronation. Now we might actually get a revolution."

"Unless they find the sheep," Phipps said.

"They're not going to find the sheep," Schroeder said. "They've got a billion sheep to sift through in a week. And they'd have to find the sheep before we do. They might do one, but not the other. No matter how good Javna's friend is, no one is that good."

Harris Creek sat across from Lingo Tudena, the Kathungi Cultural Attache, and performed his role for the State Department: He delivered the bad news.

"I'm sorry, Mr. Tudena," Creek said. "But I'm afraid we can't let your spouse on planet."

Tudena's vestigial shoulder wings, which had been fluttering excitedly in anticipation of his wife's visa, halted mid-flutter. "Begging pardon?" he said, through his vocoder.

"Your wife, Mr. Tudena," Creek said. "Her visa has been denied."

"But why?" Tudena asked. "I was assured by the Art Council that her visa would be no problem at all. Just a few routine checks. No problem."

"Normally there isn't a problem," Creek said. "But something popped up in your wife's case."

"What?"

Creek hesitated for a minute, then realized that there was no gentle way out of it for either of himself or Tudena. "Your wife, Mr. Tudena," Creek said. "She's entered her fertility cycle."

Tudena twitched his head in the Kathungi physiological equivalent of a surprised blink. "Impossible. I'm not there to initiate it. You must be in error."

Creek reached into his portfolio and slid the doctor's report over to Tudena. Tudena grabbed it with one of his forearms and held it up to one of the simple eyes the Kathungi used for near objects. After a few seconds, his vestigial shoulder wings began to jerk chaotically. Physiologically the Kathungi have no need of tears but by any emotional standard it was clear he was crying.

The Kathungi were a people with a beautiful and artistic culture and a procreation process that utterly disgusted every other sentient species they had come in contact with. After a nearly month-long phase in which the female Kathungi was enticed into a fertility cycle by her mate, both male and female Kathungi were pheremonally trapped into an uncontrolled "spew" phase: The female Kathungi would be randomly seized by a contraction of her egg sac, which would spew a milky, rancid-smelling fluid embedded with hundreds of thousands of eggs onto anything in the vicinity.

At the sight and smell of the eruption, the male Kathungi would follow suit with a greenish and even more foul-smelling milt that would coat the egg spray. The two substances would then congeal into a gelatinous mass whose purpose would be to protect and nourish the fertilized eggs until they hatched. By which time the Kathungi parents would be gone; rare among sentient species, the Kathungi were not nurturers. Kathungi eggs hatched into voracious, cricketlike larvae that ate everything in their path (including other larvae); it wasn't until a much later phase that members of the vastly thinned ranks of surviving larvae entered a pupae phase in which they grew the brains required for sentience.

The particulars and repercussions of Kathungi reproduction were visited upon Earth not long after the UNE allowed non diplomatic Kathungians to visit Earth on tourist visas. One young Kathungian couple decided to drive across the United States on a road trip and got as far as Ogallala, Nebraska, before they were overcome by the spew phase. The two rented a room at the Sav-U-Lot Motel off of Interstate 80 and spent the next day and a half with the "Do Not Disturb" sign on the door, coating the interior of the room with goo more than an inch thick in places. The cleaning crew quit rather than touch it; the manager ended up scooping up the goo with a dustpan, depositing it into the bathtub, and running the shower head to dilute the stuff enough to let it slip down the drain.

One week later, guests of the Sav-U-Lot ran screaming from their rooms as millions of larval Kathungi, who had consumed the contents of the Sav-U-Lot s massive and poorly maintained septic tank, migrated en masse through the plumbing in search of food. The manager rushed into one of the rooms armed with a flyswatter and a can of Raid Ant & Roach Killer. The Kathungi larvae ate everything but the plastic zipper on his pants and the metal grommets of his shoes; seven guests were never found at all. After consuming every organic morsel the Sav-U-Lot had to offer, the larvae, with their natural predators far away on the Kathungi home planet, set on the town of Ogallala like a Biblical plague.

The Nebraska governor imposed martial law and sent in the National Guard to eradicate the larvae. After it was discovered that the insects were in fact Kathungi larvae, the governor was hauled into CC court on the charge of xenocide and hundreds of thousands of individual counts of murder of a sentient species member. The bewildered governor served out the remainder of his term of office from the federal prison located (gallingly for a Nebraskan) in Leavenworth, Kansas. Shortly thereafter the UNE changed its visa policy to require that Kathungi females visiting Earth to be on birth control; under no circumstances would a female Kathungi who had begun her fertility cycle ever be allowed to set foot on planet again.

The fact that the cultural attache's wife was fertile doomed her chances of coming to Earth. The fact that the cultural attache's wife had begun her fertility cycle while her husband was away was going to doom her marriage. One simply does not enter a fertility cycle randomly. And one definitely doesn't enter a fertility cycle without one's spouse.

Creek gently took back the medical file from the cultural attache, whose wings were still jerking up and down. "I'm sorry," he said.

"She always said she wanted to come to visit Earth,'' Tudena said. His vocoder, tuned to be sensitive to its wearer's emotions, inserted sad, gulping sounds.

"She didn't know you were trying to get her a visa?" Creek asked.

Tudena shook his head. "It was going to be a surprise," he said. "I was going to take her to Disneyland. I've been told that it is the happiest place on Earth." His shoulder wings began to shake violently, and he buried his head in his forelimbs. Creek reached over and patted Tudena on his chitinous husk; Tudena shoved back from the desk and stumbled out the door. After several minutes one of Tudena's assistants came to collect Creek, thank him for his time, and escort him to the door of the embassy.

Creek's official title with the State Department was "Xenosapient Facilitator," which meant absolutely nothing to anyone but the State Department bursar, who could tell you that a Xenosapient Facilitator got the GS-10 pay grade. Creek's unofficial title, which was more accurate and descriptive, was "Bearer of Bad News." Whenever the State Department had bad news to deliver to a member of the alien diplomatic corps who was significant enough to require a personal response but not significant enough to rate someone who actually mattered, he, she, or it got Creek.