Rajnar Vajra: Doctor Alien’s Five Empty Boxes

“Any more specifics?”

I couldn’t help feeling defensive. “None. Honestly, the plan sounded wonderful at the time.”

“What did they hope to gain from this arrangement?”

“My invaluable services as a trading asset.”

“You said their offer sounded wonderful.”

I explained. Flushed with triumph, giddy from one of my best days ever, and blinded by opportunity, I’d accepted without pinning the Traders down as to details. I failed to ask what kind of “staff” they had in mind, just how close to my home the clinic would be located, how I’d pay my new employees or shelter them or feed them, and whether I’d be responsible for property taxes or rent on the new building. All of which proved that my three triumphs weren’t the result of my own brainpower.

“Tsf are honest,” I said with as little grump as I could manage, “but when you deal with them, it’s up to you to explore and fully understand all conditions of a trade. If you don’t, you’re stuck because they’d just as soon dismiss verbal contracts the way Crusaders would’ve thrown away the Holy Grail.”

“How did it play out?”

Like a good concerto on a bad piano, which I didn’t admit. “Could’ve been worse. My new employers assumed construction costs, taxes, wages, and my staff’s nutritional requirements, and put me on a nice monthly retainer. But they also used the Feds to do an end run around my community’s zoning and building laws, placing the clinic a mere four blocks away from Chez Morganson, and erecting it in two days with a really alien construction technique.”

Jones’s eyes flicked toward Smith, then back. “Describe this technique. We understand the clinic appeared to build itself.”

“Right. The Vapabondi, a species that trades with Traders, developed the technique. My security officer’s a Vapabond.”

A sore point. Given a chance to interview Tad first, I wouldn’t have hired her to walk my gerbil, but she came to me as part of a trade agreement, and that was that. I shouldn’t complain too loudly; my employers did better in choosing the rest of my staff, and they’d even followed my request to only sign up beings who could absorb human languages the way my fat cells absorb ice cream—didn’t want my new associates dependent on artificial translators.

“Go on,” Jones demanded.

“Vapabondi build things by using ‘macramites,’ a word coined by my receptionist combining ‘mites’ with ‘macramé.’“ Macramites are semi-organic crablike, flea-sized machines. They communicate with each other and with their programmers with microwaves and can reproduce faster than gossip. The weird part is that their main building material is themselves. My clinic, including floors, walls, ceilings, doors, plumbing, even the wiring is almost entirely interlocked macramites, self-assembled. Even what looks like glass is specially bred macramites. The whole thing went up in two days, and it’s not a small structure.”

I could almost hear a four-part AHA! echo in the room. “Could enough of these machines,” Jones asked in an elaborately casual voice, “detach from the building to carry an object of any substantial size?”

“Maybe. What do you mean by substantial?”

He ignored the question. “Could they… camouflage such an object while transporting it?”

I shook my head in bafflement. “Doubt it. I don’t think they can change color.”

I glanced over at Smith, who’d sighed almost loudly enough to hear with both ears, but she’d resumed playing portraitist. The excitement level sank, replaced by an equally palpable disappointment.

Jones’s non-expression didn’t budge. “Since your clinic is so close, why didn’t you walk to work today?”

“You’re thinking I’m lazy and anti-green? You’re only right about the lazy part. I had to go straight from the clinic to my son’s school to pick him up on time. Really. Once, I was five minutes late and his second-grade teacher gave me a look to make Hitler blush with shame.”

No one chuckled at my wit.

“I understand the clinic has generated some local resentment?”

“That’s beneath an understatement.”

He rubbed his botoxed chin, probably making sure it was still attached. “Tell us why.”

I studied his face for a moment, which wasted that moment. “Partly it’s because hundreds of curious souls drive s-l-o-w-l-y past the place daily, creating perpetual traffic snarls. Then there are the—pardon the unprofessional expression—crazies that show up. What I think clinches the deal, though, is that for some reason, folks dislike the idea of insane and potentially murderous aliens leaping or flying or burrowing… or oozing into their backyards.”

“Are you aware of any contact between your neighbors and extraterrestrials other than those on your staff?”

“Good heavens, no! And almost none with my staff. What are you getting at?”

Smith tapped lightly on the dining table. Jones didn’t look at her but sat a bit straighter.

“Does any ET at the clinic have access to any form of teleportation?”

“Not as far as I know. Your questions keep getting stranger.”

“Getting back to the patients you helped on the Parent Ship, tell us more about the first one.”

“As I said, it looked like a cross between—”

“Excuse me, Doctor. You mentioned that it could dematerialize enough to move through walls. Do you believe it was capable of manipulating solid objects in its dematerialized state?”

Stranger and stranger. “If by ‘manipulating’ you mean pick them up, I don’t see how.”

“Hmm. Then can you add anything concerning your third patient?” The three observing agents leaned forward a millimeter or so.

I let my puzzled expression speak for itself. “Not really. It was practically flat when I was trying to diagnose its problem, and I never saw it, um, reinflated.”

“Your report suggests that this patient may have come from another galaxy.” My therapist ear detected a new eagerness beneath the smooth surface of his voice.

“That’s what the Traders deduced. Since the creature’s recovery they’ve confirmed the theory, and also confirmed their suspicion that like themselves, that patient’s species engages in trading on a colossal scale.”

“Possible competition?”

I tilted a hand back and forth. “Also possible collaboration. I think the Tsf’s main purpose in bringing me to the Parent Ship was all about that patient. Last I heard, they’d made progress in communicating with it and had even gotten its name and the name of its species, the Hoouk. At least, that’s how I pronounce it. The Traders are hopping with excitement about—”

“Did you ever see any indications that this Hoouk, like your first patient, possessed… unusual abilities?”

A chill brushed my spine as my subconscious caught on ahead of me. “Remember, I never even saw it after— wait!” Funny, how one hint following an entire parade of them could transform confusion into clarity. “You think the Hoouk might be playing dirty to spoil Trader operations on Earth?”

Jones said nothing but didn’t deny it.

I shook my head. “Forget it. If the Hoouk operate on a scale only half as large as Traders, my little business would still be far beneath their notice. What would make you even look in that direction?”

Jones eyed Smith and got a distinct nod.

“Are you aware,” he asked, “that your clinic is under twenty-four hour government surveillance?”

I hadn’t been, but it made sense; the authorities would want to stay alert for unfortunate interspecies incidents. But the presence of a video feed offered me a blazing ray of hope. “So! You’ve got videos of the bomber?”