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not move quite speedily enough my right arm and shoulder were still exposed
when the ball hit the floor with a clink.
I did not see or hear any spectacular result no flash, no explosive boom. My
unprotected arm simply went numb from shoulder to fingertips. I could see the
arm was still there, but it had no sensation at all. Even worse, it had no
strength; and that was the hand which had been holding the platinum ingot.
Before I realized the danger, the ingot slipped from my limp fingers and
dropped to the ground.
Clunk!
So much for lurking in secret. Without hesitation, I let forth a gasp of
Poignant Distress and slumped into an aesthetically pleasing sprawl on the
floor. Since I had accidentally revealed my presence to the Shaddill, I would
let them believe they had bested me with their numbness device; that way they
might not embark upon more drastic action to overpower me or my comrades. When
they came to collect my unconscious body, I could still take them by surprise
and rain punches on their villainous noses.
I lay where I was, cleverly opening my eyes in tiny slits to observe what was
going on. At first, I saw nothing; but I heard heavy footsteps walk cautiously
out of the airlock and advance in my direction.
None of my hidden comrades attacked. I did not know if they had fallen victim
to numbness themselves or if they had been sufficiently shielded behind crates
and were simply biding their time, waiting for the Shaddill to advance farther
into the room. It was also possible there were multiple Shaddills to
consider if a single one ventured into the receiving bay while others remained
in the airlock to provide covering fire, the situation required delicate
handling. As for me, all I could do was lie still and wait... until I saw a
pair of feet step around a box some four paces away.
They appeared to be human feet. More precisely, they were feet wearing
human-style boots very much like the boots both Festina and Aarhus wore.
Sturdynavy-issue boots.
A Ghastly Realization
The boots took a step toward me. My head lay at an angle that prevented me
from seeing more than the person's legs... but they looked very much like
human legs enclosed in human trousers. Gray trousers. Gray trousers exactly
like Festina's the color that denotes an admiral in the human fleet.
I suspected this was not just an Eerie Coincidence.
The person in gray made rustling noises: I could not see what this person was
doing, but it sounded as if he or she was rooting inside a jacket pocket. Then
a man's voice said in conversational tones, "It's Oar. We've got her."
No doubt he was speaking to someone else via a communication device. This in
itself was enough to give me chills confirmation that these people were
looking for me in particular. But even more terrifying washow he spoke: not in
English, butin my own language. The tongue I had learned from infancy, the
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language of my mother and my sister and all the teaching machines on Melaquin.
Suddenly, I had a terrible thought. Those teaching machines had been built by
the Shaddill... and I knew our current language was not what my ancestors
spoke when they first arrived from Earth.
What if all this time from my very birth and from the births of untold
generations of my glass predecessors we had been speaking the Shaddill's own
tongue? What if they had created the teaching machines to make us over in
their own image? Our flesh-and-blood ancestors could not have prevented it;
they were mortals who died in their natural time, and after that, our only
instructors were the machines. Perhaps somewhere on Melaquin, in some well-lit
Ancestral Tower, members of the first glass generation still remembered words
from ancient human tongues... but those ancestors had not made sufficient
effort to pass on the words to subsequent generations, and now we were
thoroughly immersed in the language of our enemy.
In a horrid way,I was a Shaddill.
I hoped that beneath the gray pants, the man in front of me did not have
glass legs.
I Make First Contact With The Shaddill
The man stepped closer. Indeed, he came near enough to nudge me with his
foot. I let him do so; he gave a satisfied grunt, then turned away. That was
the moment I swept my right leg in front of his ankles, while kicking at the
back of his knees with my other foot. His knees buckled most satisfactorily he
fell backward on top of me, his head striking my stomach with a satisfying
thump.
It was an Earthling head with genuine hair. Not my lovely glass species at
all.
My right arm was still entirely numb. However, I threw my left around the
man's throat in an arm-bar and squeezed tight. He tried to yell, but could
draw no air. Desperately, he grabbed my arm with both hands and tried to pull
it away. If I had possessed a functional right hand to reinforce the armbar,
he never would have pried me loose. As it was, he still had to work hard for
it after five seconds, he was just able to inhale, readying himself for a
shout, when a large orange hand clamped down hard on his mouth.
Lajoolie. I had not heard the tiniest whisper of her approach.
She was not quite so silent in finishing the man off one cannot throw eight
successive palm-heels into a man's solar plexus without making noticeable
thumps, not to mention the "Whuf!" sounds that emerge from a man's mouth no
matter how thoroughly you have him muffled but the noises were scuffly and
vague, rather than clear-cut evidence of a fight. If other persons were
listening, I hoped they would think the man was merely struggling to drag my
unconscious body out into the open... and indeed, a moment later, a woman's
voice called, "Do you need a hand with her?"
Lajoolie looked at me helplessly. The words had been spoken in my own
language; Lajoolie did not know what had been said, and no doubt feared it was
something like, "I know you have pummeled my partner, and now I will shoot you
like dogs."
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I gave Lajoolie a reassuring smile and called back in a throaty whisper,
"Yes, come help." One would never pretend it soundedexactly like the man, but
my performance was good enough to fool the unseen woman her footsteps came
slowly out of the airlock, moving in our direction.
As she approached, there was time to inspect the man Lajoolie and I had just
bludgeoned. His hair was jet black, cut close to the skull, and he sported a
fussily trimmed goatee; his skin was golden, about halfway between Aarhus's
light pinkness and Festina's deep tan. As for his clothes, they were indeed a
Technocracy admiral's uniform something that raised important questions, but I
had no time to ponder such issues. The man's female colleague would soon be
upon us and...
And...
The man was not breathing. In fact, he had gone quite limp; I could not
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