simulate the goo on my cheek.) Naturally, Tut had used paint that withstood every solvent Pistachio kept in its storerooms... so Tut's portrait of my face stared back at me as I powered up the tracking unit.
The top surface of the Bumbler—the "scalp" area, if you're still picturing the machine as a head—was a flat vidscreen for displaying data. I keyed it to show where Tut was, as determined by a radio beacon I'd planted in his backpack when he wasn't looking. Generally, Explorers didn't use homing transmitters; they could be deadly on survey missions, especially if you were investigating a planet where carnivorous lifeforms could "hear" radio waves and use them to hunt prey. (Explorers found it unhealthy to be flashing a big loud "Come eat me" signal.) But that didn't matter on a tame planet like Cashleen... which is why I'd hidden a beeper in Tut's gear for exactly this kind of emergency.
A blip flashed on the Bumbler's screen: Tut, still running, heading deeper into the city. But the knotted nature of Zoonau's streets made it impossible to tell if he had a goal in mind or was just turning at random whenever he reached a corner. Either way, his path was a sequence of zigzags, loops, and switchbacks, reflected by the blip on my screen.
A voice yelled in my ear. "What's going on, Explorer?"
Ambassador Li. Who'd cranked up the volume on our shared comm link, either because he didn't know better or didn't care. I almost did the same with my own end of the link, but decided not to be petty.
"My partner," I said, "has proceeded ahead to reconnoiter. I'll be joining him in a moment."
"What's the Balrog doing?" That was Ubatu. Her voice sounded strangely eager... but I put that down to more ghoulish fascination with aliens that ate people.
"I don't have visual contact yet," I said. "Just a second."
I'd stopped halfway down the entry tube in order to use my Bumbler. Now I walked the rest of the way forward, feeling my heart thud in my chest. There were no Balrog spores directly in sight, but a dim ruby glow shone through the door in front of me, as if a bonfire burned just around the corner. I paused before the doorway, took a long slow breath, then peeked around the frame.
A glowing red face looked back at me. My own. Mouth open in shock. Which is surely how I looked myself.
I came perilously close to screaming, but reflexes kicked in and kept me from crying out. In fact, my reflexes kept me from doing anything.
As an ongoing experiment, the navy conditioned Explorers with one of three "instinctive" reactions to sudden shocks:
1. Dropping flat on the ground and staying down.
2. Diving, rolling, and ending up back on your feet in a fighting stance.
3. Freezing in place till you could think clearly again.
The goal was supposedly to see which response gave the best chance of surviving unexpected dangers... but most Explorers believed the Admiralty was just having fun at our expense. ("Let's make the freaks dance!")
I'd been assigned to the third group: I froze when something took me by surprise. After years of systematic programming—through classical stimulus-response, sleep induction, and "therapeutic sensory dep"—I could no more resist my conditioning than I could fly by flapping my arms. There in Zoonau, face-to-face with my glowing red look-alike, I stood paralyzed into impotent numbness.
Thought and motion returned simultaneously: I relaxed as I realized the face in front of me was only a sculpture—a topiary version of myself constructed from red moss. The Balrog had seen me coming... had known I'd stick my head around the doorframe... and had arranged a group of spores in my likeness to startle me.
You demon, I mouthed to the spores near my face. But I didn't say it aloud. Instead, I spoke the words that came almost as automatically to me as freezing in the face of danger. "Greetings," I told the statue. "I am a sentient citizen of the League of Peoples. I beg your Hospitality."
For a moment, nothing
The top surface of the Bumbler—the "scalp" area, if you're still picturing the machine as a head—was a flat vidscreen for displaying data. I keyed it to show where Tut was, as determined by a radio beacon I'd planted in his backpack when he wasn't looking. Generally, Explorers didn't use homing transmitters; they could be deadly on survey missions, especially if you were investigating a planet where carnivorous lifeforms could "hear" radio waves and use them to hunt prey. (Explorers found it unhealthy to be flashing a big loud "Come eat me" signal.) But that didn't matter on a tame planet like Cashleen... which is why I'd hidden a beeper in Tut's gear for exactly this kind of emergency.
A blip flashed on the Bumbler's screen: Tut, still running, heading deeper into the city. But the knotted nature of Zoonau's streets made it impossible to tell if he had a goal in mind or was just turning at random whenever he reached a corner. Either way, his path was a sequence of zigzags, loops, and switchbacks, reflected by the blip on my screen.
A voice yelled in my ear. "What's going on, Explorer?"
Ambassador Li. Who'd cranked up the volume on our shared comm link, either because he didn't know better or didn't care. I almost did the same with my own end of the link, but decided not to be petty.
"My partner," I said, "has proceeded ahead to reconnoiter. I'll be joining him in a moment."
"What's the Balrog doing?" That was Ubatu. Her voice sounded strangely eager... but I put that down to more ghoulish fascination with aliens that ate people.
"I don't have visual contact yet," I said. "Just a second."
I'd stopped halfway down the entry tube in order to use my Bumbler. Now I walked the rest of the way forward, feeling my heart thud in my chest. There were no Balrog spores directly in sight, but a dim ruby glow shone through the door in front of me, as if a bonfire burned just around the corner. I paused before the doorway, took a long slow breath, then peeked around the frame.
A glowing red face looked back at me. My own. Mouth open in shock. Which is surely how I looked myself.
I came perilously close to screaming, but reflexes kicked in and kept me from crying out. In fact, my reflexes kept me from doing anything.
As an ongoing experiment, the navy conditioned Explorers with one of three "instinctive" reactions to sudden shocks:
1. Dropping flat on the ground and staying down.
2. Diving, rolling, and ending up back on your feet in a fighting stance.
3. Freezing in place till you could think clearly again.
The goal was supposedly to see which response gave the best chance of surviving unexpected dangers... but most Explorers believed the Admiralty was just having fun at our expense. ("Let's make the freaks dance!")
I'd been assigned to the third group: I froze when something took me by surprise. After years of systematic programming—through classical stimulus-response, sleep induction, and "therapeutic sensory dep"—I could no more resist my conditioning than I could fly by flapping my arms. There in Zoonau, face-to-face with my glowing red look-alike, I stood paralyzed into impotent numbness.
Thought and motion returned simultaneously: I relaxed as I realized the face in front of me was only a sculpture—a topiary version of myself constructed from red moss. The Balrog had seen me coming... had known I'd stick my head around the doorframe... and had arranged a group of spores in my likeness to startle me.
You demon, I mouthed to the spores near my face. But I didn't say it aloud. Instead, I spoke the words that came almost as automatically to me as freezing in the face of danger. "Greetings," I told the statue. "I am a sentient citizen of the League of Peoples. I beg your Hospitality."
For a moment, nothing
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