[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
from Mergly, whose mind was tumbling confusedly.
Sure! The Bauble's not a living telepath like Monte. It's merely a gadget! It
doesn't reach out. We have to reach in. Give it our individual punched cards,
so to speak. And so far, only you and I have reached in! You felt I had been
there before you, remember. That was because it had my pattern. It has yours,
too. I'm going to flip on this antique toothmike of mine and call Rogers,
while you warp for the capital to give the Council the news!
Very well, but . . . but this is difficult to take in, Rof. Not thirty minutes
ago you had me convinced the Bauble couldn't possibly work, that the whole
project was based solely on your wishful thinking and misinformation . . .
Tosen thought a big happy smile. Dave, we'd all still be living in Earth caves
if we hadn't wished for things we couldn't possibly have. And as for
misinformation . . .
Yes?
Mergly prompted.
Well, when misinformation says the impossible can be done instead of the other
way around, then it just might turn out to be the truest information you ever
heard!
Little Game
1
The AWOL Guardsmen had taken over an E-type wildworld called Jopat, the
Primgranese contingent holding the northern hemisphere and those from the
Lontastan Federation the southern. The tropics between served as their
battleground.
And a battle was in progress as Gweanvin Oster approached the planet. She
could see nothing of it, even with her amplisight blinked on, from where she
hesitated fifty thousand miles out. The barbs had evidently agreed to limit
their combat zone to the ground and atmosphere perhaps because space-fights
were too deadly even for them.
What Gweanvin could not see, however, she could hear quite distinctly over the
comm implant in her left ear. Cryptic commands and responses were snapping
like verbal firecrackers among the Primgranese forces, along with savage yells
of glee and occasional grunts of dismay. She had no trouble recognizing the
deep bark of Spart Dargow, general of the Primgranese barbs, as he bellowed
his orders.
Using her psionic comm tuner, Gweanvin scanned the band and found the
frequency being used by the
Lontastan forces. All she could get was a meaningless garble, since her
unscrambler could not handle the
Lontastan code. She listened only a moment before tuning back to General
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ABC Amber Palm Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abcpalm.html
Dargow.
" . . . Red-seven, red-seven, horseback dawn, horseback dawn! . . . Jato.
Blue-forty, jato, damn it!
. . . Red-ten, red-ten, washout, washout!"
As a frontliner herself, Gweanvin had worked with Guardsmen enough to be
familiar with their command language. But she could make only limited sense
out of what she was hearing. Dargow was using a couple of terms she had never
heard before, such as "horseback dawn." And she wasn't sure such familiar
commands as "jato" meant the same thing here on Jopat as back home.
Here, after all, the language was being used in a situation that had never
existed before a pitched battle between massed forces of Guardsmen. In the
econo-war, Guardsmen guarded. They defended their worlds, whether in the
Primgranese Commonality or the Lontastan Federation, against entry by such
enemy frontliners as spies, saboteurs and subverters. Occasionally a squad
would vector out a few light-years to the assistance of a returning and hotly
pursued frontliner, and a brief running battle would ensue. But never anything
so insane as this combat on a wildworld.
Gweanvin grimaced in disgust. What boneheads these genetic barbarians were!
Very useful in keeping the econo-war honest, very competitive, very
high-survival but boneheads!
She went full inert and let her momentum carry her slowly downward, her
velocity perhaps ten thousand miles per hour relative to the planet. Except
for being hungry after five days in space, she had no reason to hurry. Could
be that it might be best to let the battle end before she tried to land. She
had now located the scene of conflict as the late-afternoon zone, and she
guessed hostilities would end by the time night fell if not before.
A Lontastan voice, speaking uncoded, suddenly boomed at her: "Hey, you at
forty-seven thousand altitude! Identify yourself!"
Gweanvin's zerburst pistol was in her right hand instantly and her detector
implants out full. She had trouble spotting her challengers, with the mass of
the planet behind them and they only a few thousand miles up. There appeared
to be about twenty of them, hanging south of the battle area, probably as rear
guards and observers.
She tongued her toothmike and replied: "I'm Gweanvin Oster of the Commonality.
Don't let me interrupt your stupid game. I'll wait here till it's over."
"Like hell you will!" boomed the response. "You got no business up there!
You're south of the equator!
Haul it north, doxie, or we'll blow you north!"
"Just try it, foghead!" she snarled back, and went on with a suggestion that
the Lontastan go amuse himself in a manner both vulgar and physically
impossible.
* * *
The twenty vague specks vanished abruptly. Gweanvin held her position a
precise two-fifths of a second, then warped away on a minivector of some five
thousand miles eastward. At that, she moved a trifle too soon to sucker the
entire squad. Only six zerburst lances were fired, to terminate into flares of
supersolar energy around the spot she had vacated. Gweanvin fired two quick
shots of her own at the sourcepoints of two lances and vectored away quickly [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
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from Mergly, whose mind was tumbling confusedly.
Sure! The Bauble's not a living telepath like Monte. It's merely a gadget! It
doesn't reach out. We have to reach in. Give it our individual punched cards,
so to speak. And so far, only you and I have reached in! You felt I had been
there before you, remember. That was because it had my pattern. It has yours,
too. I'm going to flip on this antique toothmike of mine and call Rogers,
while you warp for the capital to give the Council the news!
Very well, but . . . but this is difficult to take in, Rof. Not thirty minutes
ago you had me convinced the Bauble couldn't possibly work, that the whole
project was based solely on your wishful thinking and misinformation . . .
Tosen thought a big happy smile. Dave, we'd all still be living in Earth caves
if we hadn't wished for things we couldn't possibly have. And as for
misinformation . . .
Yes?
Mergly prompted.
Well, when misinformation says the impossible can be done instead of the other
way around, then it just might turn out to be the truest information you ever
heard!
Little Game
1
The AWOL Guardsmen had taken over an E-type wildworld called Jopat, the
Primgranese contingent holding the northern hemisphere and those from the
Lontastan Federation the southern. The tropics between served as their
battleground.
And a battle was in progress as Gweanvin Oster approached the planet. She
could see nothing of it, even with her amplisight blinked on, from where she
hesitated fifty thousand miles out. The barbs had evidently agreed to limit
their combat zone to the ground and atmosphere perhaps because space-fights
were too deadly even for them.
What Gweanvin could not see, however, she could hear quite distinctly over the
comm implant in her left ear. Cryptic commands and responses were snapping
like verbal firecrackers among the Primgranese forces, along with savage yells
of glee and occasional grunts of dismay. She had no trouble recognizing the
deep bark of Spart Dargow, general of the Primgranese barbs, as he bellowed
his orders.
Using her psionic comm tuner, Gweanvin scanned the band and found the
frequency being used by the
Lontastan forces. All she could get was a meaningless garble, since her
unscrambler could not handle the
Lontastan code. She listened only a moment before tuning back to General
Page 218
ABC Amber Palm Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abcpalm.html
Dargow.
" . . . Red-seven, red-seven, horseback dawn, horseback dawn! . . . Jato.
Blue-forty, jato, damn it!
. . . Red-ten, red-ten, washout, washout!"
As a frontliner herself, Gweanvin had worked with Guardsmen enough to be
familiar with their command language. But she could make only limited sense
out of what she was hearing. Dargow was using a couple of terms she had never
heard before, such as "horseback dawn." And she wasn't sure such familiar
commands as "jato" meant the same thing here on Jopat as back home.
Here, after all, the language was being used in a situation that had never
existed before a pitched battle between massed forces of Guardsmen. In the
econo-war, Guardsmen guarded. They defended their worlds, whether in the
Primgranese Commonality or the Lontastan Federation, against entry by such
enemy frontliners as spies, saboteurs and subverters. Occasionally a squad
would vector out a few light-years to the assistance of a returning and hotly
pursued frontliner, and a brief running battle would ensue. But never anything
so insane as this combat on a wildworld.
Gweanvin grimaced in disgust. What boneheads these genetic barbarians were!
Very useful in keeping the econo-war honest, very competitive, very
high-survival but boneheads!
She went full inert and let her momentum carry her slowly downward, her
velocity perhaps ten thousand miles per hour relative to the planet. Except
for being hungry after five days in space, she had no reason to hurry. Could
be that it might be best to let the battle end before she tried to land. She
had now located the scene of conflict as the late-afternoon zone, and she
guessed hostilities would end by the time night fell if not before.
A Lontastan voice, speaking uncoded, suddenly boomed at her: "Hey, you at
forty-seven thousand altitude! Identify yourself!"
Gweanvin's zerburst pistol was in her right hand instantly and her detector
implants out full. She had trouble spotting her challengers, with the mass of
the planet behind them and they only a few thousand miles up. There appeared
to be about twenty of them, hanging south of the battle area, probably as rear
guards and observers.
She tongued her toothmike and replied: "I'm Gweanvin Oster of the Commonality.
Don't let me interrupt your stupid game. I'll wait here till it's over."
"Like hell you will!" boomed the response. "You got no business up there!
You're south of the equator!
Haul it north, doxie, or we'll blow you north!"
"Just try it, foghead!" she snarled back, and went on with a suggestion that
the Lontastan go amuse himself in a manner both vulgar and physically
impossible.
* * *
The twenty vague specks vanished abruptly. Gweanvin held her position a
precise two-fifths of a second, then warped away on a minivector of some five
thousand miles eastward. At that, she moved a trifle too soon to sucker the
entire squad. Only six zerburst lances were fired, to terminate into flares of
supersolar energy around the spot she had vacated. Gweanvin fired two quick
shots of her own at the sourcepoints of two lances and vectored away quickly [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]