“Toots and Casper had a baby named….”
“Buttercup!”
Bott sealed the last of his belt grenades, having checked the charge in each one. “How can you chat that way with a slave ship?” he asked Nubry.
“Oh! Well,” The librarian shrugged three times in quick succession. “She’s not really that much of a slave ship. Is she? I mean, you rescued her before she could do any of that.”
“I happen to be the finest and fairest slave ship ever built,” said the Drover, replacing its previously warm tone with the elegant chilly one Bott knew better, “I am designed to be the greatest slave ship ever built.”
The librarian’s nearly nonexistent nose went up. “Then I am a mass murderer,” she said, “Because I was certainly trained to be one.”
“Were you really?” Borr inquired.
She shrugged just once this time. “We all were” in defense of the books, you understand. The university fleet could destroy eight battlewagons in an hour, if we were all at our posts.”
“Debatable,” said the Drover. “Still, you’d know, having had the training. Unlike some persons aboard this ship, who had no specialized training at all, except perhaps in littering.”
“Oh, now,” said Nubry. “He might be one of those people who rose from a regrettable beginning to become a galactic hero. Like Lord Inschude and…and so forth!”
Bott tried to decide whether he had been complimented. “Yes, yes,” the Drover replied. “I am certain his reform school issued him a scholarship so the Free Imperial Space Academy wouldn’t lure him away. Where were we? I’m well stocked on Endoverian comic history up to a point. Did the Blue Phlong ever marry the White Phlong?”
“Oh yes.” Nubry nodded. “On 17 Prine, S.F.A. Their son was Imperagon Strephon.”
“They tied it in to that series, did they?”
Bott sat back in his seat. “What in the name of Idot did they fill your memory with that kind of stuff for?”
“Myt memory is hardly filled,” the computer informed him. “I have over….”
“Why that kind of data?” the pirate persisted/.
“I can’t tell you that,” the Drover replied.
“It’s because even the Free Imperial State admits we have to save all manner of knowledge, throughout the whole realm of experience!” Nubry said, throwing her arms wide.
“Maybe,” said the Drover, with a tone that suggested “Maybe not.”
“How are you stocked in Faholean comic strips?” the librarian inquired.
Bott syudied his guest in the computer specialist’s chair. The ball of her hair bounced as sge and the computer prompted each other through centuries, it seemed, of Faholean comic strip lore. She seemed perfectly comfortable, without the slightest suspicion that either the Drover or its current captain might mean her harm. This made Bott suspicious himself.
Everything on the bridge had been pronounced beautiful by the rebel librarian; everything he had shown her he knew how to do had been hailed as a miracle of deduction and intuition. Bott had rather missed being complimented but even his own crew had never regarded him with such respect. Young pirates all, they had regarded him as a master of ships and someone who would lead them to such loot that they would each be able to buy a ship one day. And they would not have been as impressed as Nubry with the way he had mastered the reclining mechanism on the captain’s chair.
They were all dead now. Bott’s eyes narrowed. Bo captain who had lost a ship and whole crew deserved respect. Anybody who cheered him on had to be up to something.
His hand went down to his belt. He did not expect to avoid the computer detecting this, and he was correct.
“Oh, please,” said the Drover. “Not when we’re having such a good time.”
“What is that?” asked Nubry, turning to look.
Bott raised the metal object. “Harmonica,” he said, and leaned forward to blow into it.
His guest clapped her hands. “I haven’t heard music in ages! Have I? I have not!”
“You still haven’t,” the computer informed her, as Bott started in on “The Biggest Chocolate Hamster in Potarn.” Nubry’s eyes grew large.
“Oh, I could listen and listen!” she exclaimed. Bott frowned.
“I suppose it has some appeal,” the computer admitted.
This was all wrong. Even in the pirate pits, where his drinking ability had been much applauded, nobody liked his harmonica playing. Bott blew harder, knowing that whenever he did this he invariably hit discords.
“The gallant pirate captain boldly playing off-key as he sails to his doom,” the computer went on, “Yes, that has a certain crowd impact.”
Bott took the instrument from his lips. “Are you talking about some particular doom?” he asked. “Or are you just talking?”
“I have very little experience of pirates,” the Drover told him, “Though I wish I had less. But I would have thought a bold buccaneer would be giving some consideration to the possibility that this Library Planet would have some defenses at the ready.”
The harmonica slapped back into its place on the belt. “Have you been holding out all this time?” Bott demanded.
“On my very own captain? Heaven forfend!”
Nubry looked around the computer screens before her. Then she looked up. “Can just anybody forfend? Or only heaven?”
Borr checked his own screens. “There! On the right! What’s that?”
“Oh, a satellite,” said the computer, sounding bored.
“Show it to us!” Bott thumped a fist on the arm of his chair.
Nubry leaned way back in her seat as a massive white cylinder bristling with antennae filled the huge main screen. A round red light was blinking at one end. “I…I’ve never seen one of those before. Have I? I have not!”
“Me neither,” said Bott, scowling at the screen and the computer speakers generally.
“What do you suppose it can be?” said the computer, its tone conversational. It could be a defense satellite, I suppose, programmed to blast anything that doesn’t broadcast a code signal. Or it could be just a mine. Or perhaps it’s a sensor, relaying information on intruders so the really big artillery can move in. It might even be a crewless transport, conveying flowers to some big Imperial banquet.”
“Ship….” Bott growled.
“It’s small, actually,” said Nubry, checking one of her own screens. “I’;ve seen mines that size.”
“I hope it isn’t one of those BH-27 jobbers,” the computer went on. “Those increase the external temperature of a ship until it melts in one big flash, encasing the crew in a massive metal bodysuit. Still, I’d prefer it to a BH-26, which increases the internal temperature until the crew all simply open up, leaving their entrails all over the walls. I hate to think of you soiling my walls even more than you already have.”
Nubry looked to Bott; he nodded. He’d escaped a few BH-26 traps. The ship wasn’t making this ALL up.
“I could order a few pounds of onions from the kitchen,” the computer suggested. “Then you’d be palatable, at least, when we reach the Binnie system. Or do Binnians prefer lumpuicks with their liver?”
“Ho ho ho,” said Nott. “Scan the satellite, would you, and stop stalling.”
“Huh!” said the Driver, “Very well. Scan completed.”
The two-person audience waited, but there was no more. “Well?” Bott demanded.
“Were you expecting something?” the ship replied. “That’s an imperial vessel, and I’m not allowed to report on the scan of an Imperial vessel until you insert the proper command card.”
“Which one is it?” Bott demanded, reaching for his collection.
“I can’t tell you that until you insert the proper command card, either,” the ship replied. “How tedious! Don’t you hate it when your programming causes you to be blown apart?”
“You’re bluffing,” Bott snarled.
“There are mines that won’t do anything to you unless you shoot at them,” said Nubry, hands on her prayerstone.
“Go ahead,” said the Drover. “Male his day.”
Bott looked at the screen and then at his handful of cards. He had made it this far in piracy by making lightning decisions, more of them right than wrong. But he was tired, and just now everything looked wrong.
“I don’t believe there’s a captain this funny in any of the comic strips I have stored,” the computer noted.
“I’m doing the best I can!” snapped Bott.
“I was assuming that,” the ship replied.
Bott sat back, arms folded. “All right. Fire!”
Nubry leaned forward. A streak zipped across the viewscteen and the satellite vanished in a burst of many colors.
“Ooh!” cried Nubry, as bunches of blossoms rolled in all directions.
“How about that?” said the computer. “Correct on my last guess!”
Blogsy Babbles 