It was even darker than I remembered but I managed to reach the shaft in which we had earlier taken the transport disks. I considered it dubiously for a long moment, then slipped past and padded into the darkness. For several minutes I moved cautiously through the inky tunnels, navigating nearly as much by the slight echoes produced by the slapping of the soles of my feet against the succulent’s resilient floor as by the occasional patches of dim light that appeared at erratic intervals.
Just as I was beginning to wonder if I was hopelessly lost, I heard the soft hooting echoes of Bagpipe conversation intermixed with an eerie, undulating wail. Dragging my left hand along the corridor’s wall to keep from smashing into unseen obstructions, I stepped up my pace.
The tunnel came to an abrupt end at a dimly lighted chamber near the heart of the cactus. The silhouette of Rebona Myking appeared just before me. Beyond her were two Bagpipes and, slumped within a tangle of alien equipment, the corpselike form of Xavier Xerxes.
I paused in the tunnel’s darkness only inches behind Rebona. I could see Tall And Thin and Almost Gray standing over Xerxes, a dozen of their appendages beating a staccato tattoo on the weakly glowing surface of an instrument panel. Suddenly Xerxes’s body tautened, his eyes popped open, and he emitted a high, bloodcurdling shriek to which the Bagpipes remained utterly indifferent. Heart pounding, I slid forward and clapped my hand over Rebona’s mouth.
“Not a sound,” I hissed into her ear as she struggled frantically. “We’ve got to get you and Xerxes out of here.” Her body relaxed and she let me pull her back into the blackness of the tunnel.
“What are they doing to him?” I whispered when I thought we had retreated far enough to avoid being overheard.
She shook her head back and forth wildly. If she noticed I was naked she gave no sign. “I don’t know. I don’t think they’re trying to hurt him, but they have no way of understanding us.” Taking a deep breath, she made an obvious effort to compose herself. “I think they’re just trying to change his mind, to convince him to leave the crystals alone, but God knows what it’s like from Xerxes’s side of the conversation. Did you see how his body stiffened up? I’m afraid they’re going to kill him.”
I nodded grimly and pulled her another couple of steps away from the Bagpipes’ re-education chamber.
“Do you think you could talk them into letting Xerxes go?”
“No—I’ve already spent hours trying. I think they’ve decided that we humans are either crazy or just plain evil.”
I looked at her bleakly. “Then we’ve got no choice. I’m going to have to get you and Xerxes out of here before I deal with them. Here,” I said, reaching into my saddlebags and shoving some torn-up narco-flower blossoms into her hand.
“What’s this for?”
“We know these things have a powerful effect on humans. I’ve taken a look at their chemical structure. They should affect almost any creature with > a nervous system even remotely similar to those I’m familiar with. Besides, I remember you telling me that the Bagpipes were affected by them too. We’re going to mash this stuff down every tube we can reach. I’m hoping it will make them sick or dazed or dizzy or at least distract them enough so that we can get Xerxes out of here.”
“I only said I thought they might be affected by it! No one really knows if the blossoms have any affect on them or not.”
“When your choices are slim and none, slim is better.”
Shaking her head and plainly scared, Rebona accepted the handful of petal fragments, then followed me back towards the aliens’ chamber.
This time Tall And Thin and Almost Gray detected us as soon as we entered the room. Their lack of familiarity with human beings apparently kept them from interpreting our abrupt intrusion as a personal threat. Possibly they considered themselves physically invulnerable to unarmed humans. And who could be more unarmed than the totally naked Isaiah Howe?
At this point subtlety was useless. I simply walked up to Tall And Thin and began stuffing handfuls of flower-petal pulp into every open orifice I could find. Beside me Rebona was doing the same to Almost Gray. The Bagpipes immediately backed away, then stood very still, perhaps trying to comprehend what was happening. Seconds later they began to shake, snort, spin, flail their tentacles, and expel atomized clouds of petal pulp.
I didn’t wait to find out what happened next. Discarding the saddlebags, I pulled Xavier Xerxes’s limp body from the tangle of instruments, brushed the crystals away from his head, and threw him over my shoulder. Then I staggered out of the chamber with the best speed possible.
Rebona trotted ahead of me and, by the feeble glow of her computer’s display screen, we worked our way up through the tunnels. “Almost there,” I panted, “that light we see must be—”
We rounded the last bend.
The silhouettes of five Bagpipes blocked the entrance to the landing platform, their tentacles waving ominously. Rebona and I skidded to an ignominious halt.
“These aren’t the best circumstances under which to begin negotiations,” I growled as I tried to keep Xavier Xerxes’s leaden form from slipping to the floor, “but I don’t think we have much choice. Tell them I’ve figured out a way to protect the crystals from any further interference.”
“I’ll try. I have the words for ‘agreement,’ ‘acceptance,’ and ‘success.’ We’ll see if that works.” Casting an anguished glance at the aliens, Rebona lowered her eyes to her keypad and moments later the tunnel was filled with the grunting, hissing hoots of the machine’s pidgin language. I let Xerxes’s slack body sag to the floor, where he lay snoring raggedly.
“Tell them my solution won’t work if they continue to torture Xerxes, that they’ll only cause the human authorities to get further involved, and that if that happens everyone in Human Occupied Space will find out about the crystals’ real value.”
“ ‘Danger’ and ‘caution’ are about the best I can do. I’ll see if my dictionary has anything else that might work.”
For a full minute after Rebona completed her translation the five aliens huddled in a group, looking like a thicket of bamboo trees thrashing about in a hurricane. Finally one of them burped a reply.
“He… says something about danger, distrust, uncertainty, concern, change, or perhaps death as solving the problem. It doesn’t look like they’re in a frame of mind to negotiate anything.”
“Tell them that if Xerxes is killed, or mind-damaged, it will be impossible to protect the crystals. That if they come to my ship we’ll use the translator they installed and I’ll be able to explain my solution to them.”
“I’ll tell them ‘negotiation,’ ‘meeting,’ ‘success.’ ” Rebona continued her manipulation of the translator. Eventually the Bagpipe spokesman made his reply.
“Now they’re saying lack of trust, fear. I think they want one Bagpipe to go with you and one of us to remain here.”
“Do we dare leave Xerxes? Do you think they’ll go back to work on him?”
“I… don’t know, but I’ve been working with them for months now. I don’t think they’ll hurt me. Take Xerxes and I’ll stay here as their hostage.”
I nodded grimly. The logic was unassailable but it was a decision she alone could make.