Short Stories (21 page)

“I see you, Envoy Prilk,” Harris Moffatt III answered, in Krolpish this time. He might not grant special honorifics to any of the renegades who were such uncomfortable guests here, but he had to give the ruler’s representative his due. The Krolp often acted as if humans offended them by existing, and especially by refusing to become Krolpified. They only got worse when they discovered real reasons for affront.

“Good,” Prilk said, continuing in his own language. Chances were he didn’t truly speak English at all: he’d memorized a phrase or two to impress the natives. And impress them he had. Now he could get down to business. He could, and he did: “We want something from you, Moffatt.”

“You can’t have the renegades. They’re under my protection,” the President said. They were what Prilk was most likely to want, as far as he could see. The Krolp didn’t like it when free humans learned from them, although their finishing schools and other academies taught people in the broad occupied zones quite a bit.

Prilk waved his hands. They looked funny by human standards: they had four fingers in the middle and a thumb on each side. The thumbs had nails. The fingers had claws. Even a weaponless and unarmored Krolp was no bargain. “I do not care about the renegades, Moffatt. We do not care about the renegades. If we cared about the renegades, you would have never seen them. Believe it. It is true.”

Maybe so, maybe not. The Krolp weren’t immune to bullshit: one more hard lesson out of so many the past fifty years had taught mankind. But if Prilk said the renegades weren’t the issue now, they weren’t. They probably aren’t, Harris Moffatt III amended to himself. Prilk might find a way to come back to them later.

Warily, the President asked, “Well, what do you want, then?”

Prilk waved his hands again, this time purposefully. A map appeared in the air between the envoy and Harris Moffatt III. It was, naturally, a Krolpish map, with the place names written in the Krolpish language. That hardly mattered. Moffatt read Krolpish as well as speaking it. And the aliens had borrowed most of the place names from English. Why not? That was easier than making up their own.

Long before the Krolp landed, Americans had borrowed a lot of place names from the Native Americans who’d lived in these parts before them. Much good that did the Native Americans, most of whom were swiftly dispossessed. And much good the English toponyms on a Krolpish map did the USA, too.

“You see this place here?” Prilk pointed. A small patch of northeastern Utah glowed red on the map. How? Harris Moffatt III didn’t know, any more than he knew how the map appeared when Prilk waved. Krolpish technology was that far ahead of anything humanity could do. Or--shit--maybe it was magic. Harris Moffatt III sure couldn’t prove it wasn’t.

“I see that place there,” Moffatt said. “What about it? I see it is in the territory that belongs to the free United States. I see that it is in territory that belongs to me. Not to you. Not to Vrank.” Vrank was Prilk’s immediate superior, the Krolpish governor of North America. The President took a deep breath. “Not to your ruler, back on your planet, either.”

There. He’d made it as plain as he could. Too plain, maybe. As far as the Krolp were concerned, anything they could get their weird hands on belonged to them. But that glowing patch lay right in the middle of what was left of the USA. Harris Moffatt III had to do whatever he could to hang on to it. If he didn’t, what point to being President?

Prilk opened his jack-o’-lantern mouth wide. It looked like a threat display--I will eat you. As a matter of fact, it was. “You say this to me, Moffatt?” he growled.

“I say this to you, Envoy Prilk,” Moffatt answered, as steadily as he could. “Flarglar agreed that this land belonged to humans. Belonged to the USA. Belonged to my father.” Flarglar had been Vrank’s next-but-one predecessor. U.S. archives still held a copy of the treaty.

How much good would showing it to Prilk do? The envoy waved once more, dismissively. “Flarglar is not here anymore. Neither is your father.”

Flarglar, sure enough, had been recalled to the homeworld in disgrace. A drunken Krolpish renegade (the Krolp, damn them, loved whiskey as well as snarfar) had killed Harris Moffatt II. He’d died for it. Not much was left of West Yellowstone, Montana, these days, but that renegade was by God dead.

“The agreement is here. Your ruler did not reject it. It is still good,” Harris Moffatt III said, with more confidence than he felt.

“We did not know everything when we made that stupid agreement. We have been here longer now. We know more,” Prilk said. “There is silver under this land, silver and some gold. We want it.”

Winter ran through the President of the United States. The Krolp took human works of art, in exactly the same way as human conquerors looted the folk they overwhelmed. And the Krolp took minerals in a way that was like nothing on Earth--which was putting things mildly.

They thought Earth was a treasure trove. It was more tectonically active than most of the planets they knew, which meant it kept recycling its riches instead of locking most of them away beyond even Krolpish reach. And the reach of the Krolp went far beyond anything humanity could match. Twenty miles down? Fifty miles? A hundred? The Krolp didn’t care. Controlling the forces they did, they could go that deep with ease.

Of course, they made kind of a mess in the process. Harris Moffatt III knew people had strip-mined whole mountains. The Krolp strip-mined whole countries. Not much worth living on was left of Spain. The Krolp had found a big deposit of mercury under there, and they’d gone after it, and they’d got it. The environment? They worried about the environment on the homeworld. Not here. No, not here.

If they went after silver under northeastern Utah, they’d trash most of what was left of the free USA. What point to being President of an uninhabitable country? “That silver is ours,” Moffatt said. “You cannot have it.”

“I give you some advice, Moffatt,” Prilk answered. “Do not say ‘cannot’ to someone who is stronger than you.”

“That silver is ours. It is not yours,” the President insisted.

This time, vast scorn informed the Krolp’s gesture. “You cannot get this silver. You did not even know it was there. You will never get at it. We can. We will. For us, it is easy.”

“Stealing is easy,” Moffatt said bitterly.

“Not stealing. Taking.” Plain, a difference existed in Prilk’s mind.

“It is ours. If you take it, that goes against the treaty. I will appeal to your ruler.” Harris Moffatt III played one of the few cards he had. He was only too aware it was liable to be the three of diamonds. That could be worth something if it filled a flush. Most of the time, it was just the goddamn three of diamonds.

“Let me show you this, Moffatt.” Prilk could snap two fingers on the same hand at the same time. When he did, the map in the air between him and the President disappeared. He waved again. A document--an appallingly official Krolpish document--sprang into being in its place. Vrank had already told the ruler the silver was there. The ruler had told Vrank to go ahead and get it.

“I can still appeal. I have learned my rights,” Moffatt said. His three of diamonds wouldn’t fill a flush this time. His main right was to do as he was told.

“You will lose.” Prilk didn’t even sound regretful. He just sounded certain, the way he would if he talked about sunrise tomorrow.

The President still had one more card. “If you come after what is not yours, I can fight. The United States can fight.”

Krolpish laughter sounded a lot like human farting. “Well, you can try. Remember how much good fighting has done you up till now,” Prilk said.

“We are still free, here in this part of the United States. Most humans are not,” Harris Moffatt III said.

“You are free because you have not been worth bothering about. Now you have again something we want. Give it and you may yet stay free.”

“Free in a place where we cannot live,” Moffatt said. “What kind of freedom is that? Better to fight.”

“You will lose. Then we will take what we want anyway,” Prilk warned.

“We have a saying--‘Live free or die,’” the President said.

“I do not know about living free. If you fight, dying can be arranged. I promise you that.” This time, it wasn’t so much that Prilk sounded matter-of-fact. He sounded as if the prospect delighted him.

“I must consult with my superiors,” Moffatt said.

“I will give you a day. It is more than you deserve, but Governor Vrank wants as little trouble with you as he can arrange,” Prilk said.

“A day,” Moffatt agreed. “In the meantime, you are our guest. We will treat you as well as we can.”

“Oh, joy.” Prilk sounded as thrilled as a human explorer offered a big bowl of stewed grubs by some tribe in the back of beyond. That was probably just how he felt. Well, too goddamn bad for him. #

Grelch and Willig--another Krolpish renegade--sat in with Harris Moffatt III’s Secretary of Defense and Secretary of Alien Affairs. The latter’s predecessors had been Secretaries of State. The new title reflected the new dispensation.

The renegades could judge Krolpish likelihoods better than people could. Grelch’s tail lashed rhythmically: back and forth, back and forth. He’d had a good chew of snarfar, then. It might cloud his wits--but then, as the President knew, Grelch didn’t have much in the way of wits to begin with. He was a ruffian, a soldier, a deserter. He would never be welcome in polite company.

But he knew all kinds of things humans had never learned. That made him valuable, if not exactly welcome.

“If we fight, we’re screwed,” the Secretary of Alien Affairs said.

“If we don’t fight, we’re screwed, too,” the Secretary of Defense said.

Harris Moffatt III let out yet another sigh, a deep one. Once upon a time, somebody’d told him that two things that contradicted each other couldn’t both be true at the same time. He’d believed the poor, silly son of a bitch, too. He didn’t anymore.

The Krolp had found something here they wanted. They were going to take it. If humans didn’t care for that, tough luck for humans. The President turned toward the alien renegades. “How can we keep them from digging?” he asked.

Grelch looked at Willig. Willig looked back at Grelch. Reading Krolpish expressions might be guesswork for humans, but Harris Moffatt III had more practice at it than most people in the free USA. He didn’t like what he thought he read.

“Forget it,” Grelch said.

“Run north,” Willig agreed. “Maybe it won’t be so bad.” As if conferring a great boon, he added, “We’ll come with you.”

“Of course you will,” the President said harshly. “Your own folk sure don’t want you around.”

“You insult us?” Grelch’s rumble sounded ominous. Snarfar usually calmed a Krolp, but it could also enrage. It was a lot like booze--except it wasn’t. Grelch hadn’t carried any weapons into the meeting, but that might not matter. If a renegade killed another President of the United States . . .

Harris Moffatt III drew a Krolpish hand weapon. If he fired it, it wouldn’t just steam-clean Grelch. It would take out a big part of the building, maybe enough to make the rest fall down. Even so . . . “The truth is not an insult,” he said. “If your own people did want you around, you wouldn’t be here with us.”

He waited. Plenty of Krolp wouldn’t listen to anything from humans, even the truth--especially not the truth. Grelch was right on the edge of being one of them. His tail twitched faster, with a sort of boogie-woogie beat. Moffatt relaxed fractionally. That was a good sign. Most of the time, anyhow.

“All right,” the renegade said at last. “We are losers. So are you, Moffatt. All you humans, you are losers.”

“Now you have lost,” Willig added. “You can’t fight a stand-up fight against my folk.”

The President already knew that. He couldn’t very well not know it. Humans had tried again and again, and got smashed again and again. They’d learned a lot from the Krolp these past fifty years. They’d stolen a lot, too. They could annoy the aliens. They could harass them. It didn’t come within miles--it didn’t come within light-years--of being enough.

But there were ways to make war that didn’t involve stand-up fights. Before that drunken Krolp murdered him, Harris Moffatt II had made sure Harris Moffatt III soaked up some preinvasion history. Names rang inside his head. Vietnam . . . Iraq . . . Afghanistan . . .

“We do not want to fight a stand-up fight,” he said. “Or not a stand-up fight and nothing else, anyhow. But we’ve got . . . connections . . . in the rest of America. Can we cause your folk enough trouble to make them change their minds?”

He smiled at the Secretary of Defense. That worthy’s second cousin held a prominent post in the centauroids’ administration. They kept in touch with each other through some highly unofficial channels. The Secretary of Defense’s cousin didn’t love the cheesy-smelling aliens he worked for. There were humans who worked for him who didn’t love the Krolp, either.

Multiply such cases by a hundred or a thousand. If all those humans raised hands against the invaders or simply stopped doing their jobs or started doing them wrong . . . It would screw up the Krolp, without a doubt.

Would it screw them up enough? Doubt. Big doubt.

Grelch and Willig eyed each other. “Maybe,” Willig said, in tones that meant he didn’t believe it for a minute.

“If we do that and if we fight to keep what is ours . . . ?” Harris Moffatt III said.

One more glance between the two Krolp. This time, Grelch was the one who said, “Maybe.” He also didn’t believe it.

Of course, Krolp never believed humans could do anything. Half a century of occupation gave them solid reason not to believe it, too. Every once in a while, they did get an unpleasant surprise. That they’d got a few was the main reason the free United States remained the land of the free and the home of the brave.

Of the stubborn, anyhow.

Harris Moffatt III took a deep breath. “Well, we’re going to try it,” he said.

Willig and Grelch walked out. That pretty much ended the meeting. They had scant hope, or maybe none. Harris Moffatt III had scant hope, too, but not none. Not quite. Muttering under his breath, the Secretary of Defense also left. His men would have to try to stop the invaders. When the irresistible force met the movable object . . .