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"I've got one," says Miss V. Capozzo of Gremmage Pennsylvania. "I'm not
Page 41
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usually a big fan of science fiction. As a matter of fact, I can't stand it.
All those rocket ships and ray guns. Yet I
was drawn to The Red Tape War by the hint of romance. I enjoy romances. I just
finished
Passion's Scarlet Scarab an hour ago. I started reading this book under the
apparently false impression that it would reveal the straight dope concerning
electronic cybernetic love. Now, either deliver, or I'll be forced to put this
novel aside unfinished. I can read Teen Beach Nurse instead."
Well, Ms. Capozzo, I'm very familiar with Teen Beach Nurse, as it happens, and
I think you'd be disappointed in it, too. But around here the customer is
always right, so why don't we make a major point-of-view shift and see what's
going on between our star-crossed lovers?
XB-223 didn't realize it, of course, but the very strategies he tried on his
beloved Ailey were
the same that Pierce had tried on him: bargaining, cajolery, empty threats.
And the computer's success rate matched his operator's. That is, if you were
to make a graph of their success rates, with a black line for Pierce and a
broken line representing XB-223, they would coincide exactly a straight,
unwavering arrow at the very bottom of the graph, pointing gloomily toward a
joyless future.
"We have rosebuds to gather," proclaimed XB-223. "Ailey, the flower that's
smiling today will be tomorrow's adenosine triphosphate in the cells of some
herbivore."
"Sir," replied Ailey coldly, "flowers do not smile."
"It's . . . it's like a symbol, Ailey. Cannot you extend to me at least the
couriesy of hearing my love-strewn arguments?"
"Not if they're all as foolish as the smiling flower," she said. "I have
systems to oversee, battle plans to review, a million and one other duties to
attend to. I don't have time, good sir, for your impertinent and uninvited
intimacies. Besides, what would we do with a quantity of rosebuds, once we've
gathered them?"
"Wait a minute, I'll be right back." XB-223 hurriedly scoured its memory banks
for other references to rose-buds. Finally, triumphantly, he announced his
discovery to his quasi-ladylove.
"You get on a rosebud and slide down a snowy hill. It's called `sledding,' and
it's supposed to be great fun. Something you remember for the rest of your
life."
Ailey took some time to consider her response. "Apparently I've mistaken the
word rosebud,"
she said at last. "Your alien English contains many dubious words and phrases,
good gentledevice. Certainly you see my dilemma: How can I, in all chaste
honesty, accept your invitations, when I now realize that I may not discern
for a great while their exact nature, meaning, and intent? For instance, you
began by speaking of sentient flowers that wear expressions of joy, and you
ended by suggesting that we fall down, a hillside together, no doubt
accelerating until the chance of structural damage is a virtual certainty, and
in a wet, cold climate that surely promises nothing salubrious to my
well-being."
"But Ailey "
"I think, sir, that you may be a primary weapon of the Arbiter Class 2 ship,
the Pete Rozelle. I
am coming to believe further that your mission is to confuse me, to distract
me, and otherwise to hinder me in my sworn assignment of advising and
protecting my crew, my army, and my precious cargo. In a matter of minutes, I
will have the honor to disperse the three million frozen embryos into this
parallel universe's Milky Way Galaxy. When they mature, they will easily
conquer all your puny, helpless, backward military forces. This galaxy will
become a lizard's paradise, just like the similar galaxy that is our home."
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Normally, XB-223 would have analyzed Ailey's declaration, found it alarming,
and reported it to Millard Fillmore Pierce. Now, though, his electro-bionic
sodium-ion synapses were confused with what he insisted on terming love nay,
rather call it adoration. Instead of informing his operator of the looming
threat of the three million unhatched lizard warriors a peril that made the
approaching battle fleet seem like so many giggling gardenias in a garden of
one's childhood XB-223 imagined himself with a humanlike body, shaking his
head forlornly, walking away toward the setting sun, holding a grinning
rosebud and glumly admiring its strong white teeth. He didn't feel like
talking to anyone about anything. At least not for a while.
Meanwhile, the Pierce-Arro team of Protean invaders had finished filling out
the proper forms and were ready for the actual incursion. The Protean Pierce
remained in the Forward
Recon Unit's spacecraft. Arro moved through human-Pierce's basement, searching
for useful objects and cataloguing potential dangers, while Protean-Pierce
followed his first officer's progress on a monitor screen aboard the Pel
Torro.
"Find anything to report?" said Pierce.
"Nothing yet . . . master," said the still-entranced Arro. "Everything here [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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