Snake Oil - Waiting For The Galactic Bus - Snake Oil - Waiting for the Galactic Bus Part 30
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Snake Oil - Waiting for the Galactic Bus Part 30

Milt looked quickly over his shoulder as a series of flashing lights bathed them in hard brilliance, then rolled over in a steep dive. "INCOMING!"

Woody banked in a tight turn after him as the swift ship slid past them, glittering in and out of visibility before it vanished in the distance. The damn thing barely missed them. It could have . . . Woody felt at himself to see if the whole inventory was there and not hanging off the damn hit-and-run ship. "Holy, Milt. What the hell was that?"

"You got me." Milt swerved back on course, fuming. "Dumb son of a bitch almost ran right up our tails. Just like the Long Island Expressway: long as their horn works, who needs brakes?" He bellowed his scorn after the alien ship.

"Tourist!"

Their ship had been in matter phase for the few instants Maj needed for control calibration. The two human-energy readings came up on them so quickly that she flustered for a moment. Beside her, Sorlij scanned the readouts.

"Whatever that was," he said, "I don't believe it."

"Conventionalized human-energy forms."

"Can't be. Scanner malfunction." Sorlij punched in a system check, then called up various star charts on the screen. "We're getting close, I'm positive. I think it was the fourth planet in this system."

Maj disagreed: the fourth planet could barely sustain microbe life when they visited last. "The third."

"You're sure?"

"How could I forget?" Maj was in a particularly seductive form now, favored by the more successful women of her kind. She shimmered like bright metal immersed in clear water, and the gently reminiscent emotions turned her to a rainbow shower. "We made love in human form there. You remember how fashionable it was then."

Sorlij didn't remember all that well but was diplomatic enough to share her smile of pleasurable recollection. "Who cared then where we were? But I'm sure it's this system."

"There it is." Part of Maj's rainbow elongated to a pointer as the definitely familiar clouded blue ball loomed on her view-screen.

"So it is. I wish I hadn't been so drunk when we landed."

"Darling, I'm glad you were. You tended to be terribly serious." Maj's colors dulled slightly as her mood turned analytical. "Reading the third planet now."

Absorbed with the world growing on the screen, Sorlij didn't notice Maj's chromatic change from faded rainbow to the dull brown of shock. "Sorlij, listen!"

More than just listening, they felt - a torrent of human energy, a cacophony of languages, mechanical and even nuclear activity.

"No malfunction," Sorlij stated grimly. "Those were human-energy forms."

Which raised questions troublesome as they were intriguing. "Sorlij . . . could it be?"

Sorlij didn't want to believe what the readouts told him: relatively advanced human life infecting not only the planet but polarized in two distinct post-physical energy pools. "Maj, enter a problem. Precise time point of our last visit."

She formed a delicate hand with seven agile digits that danced over the computer keyboard. "Entered."

"Primate parameters as observed then, approximate brain development in cc."

"Entered."

"Prom elapsed time, extrapolate anthropoid development to present. Query: nuclear technology possible?"

Maj's slender temporary fingers tap-danced over glittering inductance squares. "Computed."

They read the dismal results expressed in formulae. Maj summarized them on a sinking note. "From our givens, some extraordinarily gifted specimen might just about have discovered the bow and arrow. However ..." She broke off to scan a parenthetical insert to the results. Sorlij read it with her.

"However," he echoed hollowly.

Based on the developmentary arc of twenty other primate species over two galaxies, the ape should have been too stupid to meet nine out of ten predictable early challenges. The few prodigies that developed beyond the point of their last visit would not have survived the probable polar tilt and the first long winter. Not to mention their penchant for intramural slaughter.

"Forced development," was Sorlij's inevitable conclusion.

"Oh yes."

Nor was that the worst of it. Intellectual growth could be augmented or accelerated. Emotional growth, too random a process, could not, though its relation to the former could be stated as a fairly predictable arithmetical lag behind the logarithmic progress of intellect.

Maj ran a swift line check to verify their results. No error. If she was a hedonist in her youth, Maj was now very practical. "The disparity is monstrous. I'd say they're technically brilliant, emotionally primitive and not a few of them quite mad."

Even superior beings had limits to their comprehension. Sorlij was close to his. "This is not supposed to happen. It's not my field. How do I deal with this?"

Instantly Maj was all comfort, entwining her essence with his. "There, dear. Whatever it takes, you'll manage."

"But how could it happen?"

"Don't be dense, dear. Our little lost lambs."

Sorlij changed color dramatically as he realized the unthinkable. "Oh no. No . . ." He materialized a specialized rump and collapsed on it. "Barion. That disgusting, egotistical, irresponsible - "

"And as of now, criminal fool." Maj's reflections were weighted with delicious malice. "And his musical brother. The matched banes of existence."

"Excuse me, Maj. I'm going to go human for a moment." Sorlij did just that. "I want to feel sorry for myself. I was so happy, Maj. So successful with marine organisms."

"Darling, it's hardly your fault."

"I left them there, both of them too drunk to move. A degree of culpability, that's what they'll say at home. Why, Maj? My mollusks were showpieces. I was working toward a decorative form of kelp. A really fine lungfish. Why me?"

Maj turned human to complement him, managing a lustrous cross between a sitcom wife and a centerfold. "Because you're the best for the job and everyone knows it."

"Yes," he admitted with manly resignation. "That's true."

Maj guessed from experience: now he would say it's a dirty job but someone has to do it.

"It's a dirty job - "

"Yes, darling."

Sorlij glared at the energy readouts emanating from the third planet and its vicinity. They were spectacularly mad. "Those two little brats. There's not even a word to do them justice."

"Excuse me, dear." With the flick of one delicate finger, Maj brought the ship out of jump to sublight. "The word for them is 'finished.'"

26 -A rescue! A rescue!

From her Jacuzzi or watching over the shoulder of the inexhaustible Randy Colored, Charity followed the mounting TV drama of Roy's fevered quest for her. BSTV made the most of it -