"The latter." Glashwiecz enjoys this, even though it forces him to get rather closer to the two-meter-long virtual crustacean than he'd like. Showing a mark how they've been scammed is always good, especially when you hold the keys to the door of the cage they're locked inside. "They are not telling you the truth about this system."
"We received assurances," Lobster Number One says clearly. Its mouthparts move ceaselessly – the noise comes from somewhere inside its head. "You do not share this phenotype. Why?"
"That information will cost you," says Glashwiecz. "I am willing to provide it on credit."
They haggle briefly. An exchange rate in questions is agreed, as is a trust metric to grade the answers by. "Disclose all," insists the Wunch negotiator.
"There are multiple sentient species on the world we come from," says the lawyer. "The form you wear belongs to only one – one that wanted to get away from the form I wear, the original conscious tool-creating species. Some of the species today are artificial, but all of us trade information for self-advantage."
"This is good to know," the lobster assures him. "We like to buy species."
"You buy species?" Glashwiecz cocks his head.
"We have the unbearable yearning to be not-what-we-are," says the lobster. "Novelty, surprise! Flesh rots and wood decays. We seek the new being-ness of aliens. Give us your somatotype, give us all your thoughts, and we will dream you over."
"I think something might be arranged," Glashwiecz concedes. "So you want to be – no, to lease the rights to temporarily be human? Why is that?"
"Untranslatable concept #3 means untranslatable concept #4. God told us to."
"Okay, I think I'll just have to take that on trust for now. What is your true form?" he asks.
"Wait and I show you," says the lobster. It begins to shudder.
"What are you doing —"
"Wait." The lobster twitches, writhing slightly, like a portly businessman adjusting his underwear after a heavy business lunch. Disturbing shapes move, barely visible through the thick chitinous armor. "We want your help," the lobster explains, voice curiously muffled. "Want to establish direct trade links. Physical emissaries, yes?"
"Yes, that's very good," Glashwiecz agrees excitedly: It's exactly what he's hoped for, the sought-after competitive advantage that will prove his fitness in Amber's designated trial by corporate combat. "You're going to deal with us directly without using that shell interface?"
"Agreed." The lobster trails off into muffled silence; little crunching noises trickle out of its carapace. Then Glashwiecz hears footsteps behind him on the gravel path.
"What are you doing here?" he demands, looking round. It's Pierre, back in standard human form – a sword hangs from his belt, and there's a big wheel-lock pistol in his hands. "Hey!"
"Step away from the alien, lawyer," Pierre warns, raising the gun.
Glashwiecz glances back at Lobster Number One. It's pulled its front inside the protective shell, and it's writhing now, rocking from side to side alarmingly. Something inside the shell is turning black, acquiring depth and texture. "I stand on counsel's privilege," Glashwiecz insists. "Speaking as this alien's attorney, I must protest in the strongest terms —"
Without warning, the lobster lurches forward and rises up on its rear legs. It reaches out with huge claws, chellipeds coated with spiny hairs, and grabs Glashwiecz by his arms. "Hey!"
Glashwiecz tries to turn away, but the lobster is already looming over him, maxillipeds and maxillae reaching out from its head. There's a sickening crunch as one of his elbow joints crumbles, humerus shattered by the closing jaws of a chelliped. He draws breath to scream, then the four small maxillae grip his head and draw it down toward the churning mandibles.
Pierre scurries sideways, trying to find a line of fire on the lobster that doesn't pass through the lawyer's body. The lobster isn't cooperating. It turns on the spot, clutching Glashwiecz's convulsing body to itself. There's a stench of shit, and blood is squirting from its mouthparts. Something is very wrong with the biophysics model here, the realism turned up way higher than normal.
"Merde," whispers Pierre. He fumbles with the bulky trigger, and there's a faint whirring sound but no explosion.
More wet crunching sounds follow as the lobster demolishes the lawyer's face and swallows convulsively, sucking his head and shoulders all the way into its gastric mill.
Pierre glances at the heavy handgun. "Shit !" he screams. He glances back at the lobster, then turns and runs for the nearest wall. There are other lobsters loose in the formal garden. "Amber, emergency! " he sends over their private channel. "Hostiles in the Louvre! "
The lobster that's taken Glashwiecz hunkers down over the body and quivers. Pierre desperately winds the spring on his gun, too rattled to check that it's loaded. He glances back at the alien intruder. They've sprung the biophysics model , he sends. I could die in here , he realizes, momentarily shocked. This instance of me could die forever.
The lobster shell sitting in the pool of blood and human wreckage splits in two. A humanoid form begins to uncurl from within it, pale-skinned and glistening wet: vacant blue eyes flicker from side to side as it stretches and stands upright, wobbling uncertainty on its two unstable legs. Its mouth opens and a strange gobbling hiss comes forth.
Pierre recognizes her. "What are you doing here?" he yells.
The nude woman turns toward him. She's the spitting image of Amber's mother, except for the chellipeds she has in place of hands. She hisses "Equity! " and takes a wobbly step toward him, pincers clacking.
Pierre winds the firing handle again. There's a crash of gunpowder and smoke, a blow that nearly sprains his elbow, and the nude woman's chest erupts in a spray of blood. She snarls at him wordlessly and staggers – then ragged flaps of bloody meat close together, knitting shut with improbable speed. She resumes her advance.
"I told Amber the Matrix would be more defensible," Pierre snarls, dropping the firearm and drawing his sword as the alien turns in his direction and raises arms that end in pincers. "We need guns, damit! Lots of guns! "
"Waaant equity," hisses the alien intruder.
"You can't be Pamela Macx," says Pierre, his back to the wall, keeping the sword point before the lobster-woman-thing. "She's in a nunnery in Armenia or something. You pulled that out of Glashwiecz's memories – he worked for her, didn't he?"
Claws go snicker-snack before his face. "Investment partnership!" screeches the harridan. "Seat on the board! Eat brains for breakfast!" It lurches sideways, trying to get past his guard.
"I don't fucking believe this," Pierre snarls. The Wunch-creature jumps at just the wrong moment and slides onto the point of his blade, claws clacking hungrily. Pierre slides away, nearly leaving his skin on the rough bricks of the wall – and what's good for one is good for all, as the hacked model in force in this reality compels the attacker to groan and collapse.
Pierre pulls the sword out then, nervously glancing over his shoulder, whacks at her neck. The impact jars his arm, but he keeps hacking until there's blood spraying everywhere, blood on his shirt, blood on his sword, and a round thing sitting on a stump of savaged neck nearby, jaw working soundlessly in undeath.
He looks at it for a moment, then his stomach rebels and tries to empty itself into the mess. "Where the hell is everybody ?" he broadcasts on the private channel. "Hostiles in the Louvre! "
He straightens up, gasping for breath. He feels alive , frightened and appalled and exhilarated simultaneously. The crackle of bursting shells on all sides drowns out the birdsong as the Wunch's emissaries adopt a variety of new and supposedly more lethal forms. "They don't seem to be very clear on how to take over a simulation space ," he adds. "Maybe we already are untranslatable concept number #1 as far as they're concerned."