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FIVE
The Proprietor

"Take my side arm, sir," the major offered. "I can always draw another from the armorer."

The redheaded Marine officer pulled her Witness from the synthetic Webb weapons belt slanting across her hips, let the muzzle roll backward, past her extended thumb as the pistol pivoted about her trigger finger, and executed a practiced, casual wrist-snap which ended with the automatic's broad backstrap thrust toward her superior.

"Careful, sir, there's one up the spout."

Irritable with preoccupation, and a little short of breath, Gutierrez shook his head. He and Reille y Sanchez hastened down a maze of identical roofless corridors, trying to keep up with Aelbraugh Pritsch, who was faster on those parrotlike feet of his than he looked. Overhead, beyond a screen of overhanging foliage, for the first time since they'd arrived on 5023 Eris, they could have seen the yellow "sky" darken as the asteroid rotated into night—corridor walls glowed to make up the deficit—but neither of them looked up to see the change.

"Thank you, Estrellita," he puffed. "I understand that you're paid to be paranoid. I'll even grant that paranoids live longer. But I don't think going armed to this meeting would be a very auspicious way to start official relations with the Proprietor. Do you?"

Life was difficult enough, he thought. Nothing about this expedition was going according to plan. Their shuttlecraft were parked inside the asteroid, more or less, instead of out, which saved on valuable consumables, but involved them with an advanced technology they didn't understand, meaning that they required local cooperation to get back outside, which placed them at the mercy of their hosts.

Vivian Richardson, his vice-commander and captain of one of the three shuttles, had become, well, not a vegetable, exactly, since she appeared to be subject to unpredictable outbursts of violence. The fact that, over the many months the voyage had lasted, he'd come to believe the colonel was a covert KGB observer (in a manner of speaking Empleado's second-in-command, as well as his own) made things nice and complicated. Hell, maybe Empleado was her second-in-command.

Worst of all, any claim they made here would now be disputed. One item of news he hadn't discussed with Kamanov, and not just because Empleado had insisted on hanging around, was the detailed report he'd radioed Earthward soon after his three spacecraft had been bedded down, via the antenna provided by their hosts. Also the resulting orders he'd received from Washington, and certain conspicuous differences between them and the equivalent orders Moscow might have issued.

"I guess not, sir." With reluctance she didn't bother disguising, she flipped the grip of the pistol back into her palm in a maneuver known for two centuries in her part of the country as the "road agent's spin," shucking the 11.43x23mm Lenin into its Kevlar holster and refastening the flap. As Gutierrez struggled to remember what it was he'd asked her, he realized the holster was balanced neatly by the big wire-cutting Bowie she wore at the offside of her waist in a matching scabbard. "But it might be a good deal safer, sir," she added, earning her pay. "Isn't anyone going with you, sir, not even our political officer or one of his four—?"

"Hoods? I had that out with Art not five minutes ago." The general dropped his heels, out of breath and suddenly heedless of how the dinosaurlike bird-being outdistanced them. "I won't repeat the same argument with you. Thanks, Estrellita, for caring, but I was invited to this party by myself. I'll go by myself and fill Arthur in later, for the edification of his bosses. He needn't worry about my leaving anything out. The crime that got me sent here was saying too much, not too little."

He resumed his forward motion, but not the previous pace. Beside him, Reille y Sanchez nodded, but offered no immediate reply, first of all, he suspected, because he was correct in his assessment of the political realities, and she knew it. Second, because she probably didn't wish to contemplate whatever crime had gotten her volunteered for this expedition. Third, he thought, there was always the possibility that even Estrellita had bosses outside the normal chain of command to report to. Instead, she seemed to wait for what felt to him like the regulation decent interval for changing the subject in conversations with a superior officer.

"As you will, sir. I'll be back at the Dole." She tossed him a salute and turned to go.

"You do that, Major. On your way, look in on Dr. Kamanov. He's restive in durance vile and considers you decorative."

For that matter, he thought, watching the rakish slant of her pistol belt as she retreated down the corridor, her fighting knife slapping at her thigh, so do I. Enjoying a reflexive moment of guilty feelings about his wife, he began taking longer strides, pivoting to follow the Proprietor's assistant around a corner. That obviously impatient individual now awaited him at the end of a passage where it T-junctioned with yet another.

"You mustn't be late, General," the avian fussed when twenty such strides had brought him even. The man resisted an urge to rub his eyes, seeing motion, or thinking he saw it, near the base of the birdlike being's neck, a flash of turquoise and perhaps the slender whip of a reptilian tail. "At the end of this passage a pressure door and a flight of stairs lead to the Proprietor's quarters. Don't be alarmed to find them awash with a colorless, odorless liquid."

Gutierrez stopped again. "What?"

"Oxygenated fluorocarbon. Some of our staff here substitute it for the marine environment they're naturally adapted to. My security party, for example, the individuals you call `lobster people'?" The bird entity gave the flapped holster an unconscious pat where it hung at his belt. Gutierrez experienced a momentary doubt about having rejected Reille y Sanchez's side arm. Hadn't officers and diplomats once worn ceremonial swords on occasions like this?

"Yes?" the man asked, struggling to gather up loose ends of thought and recapture the subject at hand. Maybe Vivian wasn't the only victim suffering from culture shock. "What about them?"

"You may have noticed the protective membrane they all wear," replied Aelbraugh Pritsch. "In some respects, it's like your own spacesuits, I'd venture to guess, devised to retain moisture, temperature, and pressure necessary for their survival. Off duty, they inhabit quarters similar to those of the Proprietor."

Gutierrez hadn't noticed, now he mentioned it, and couldn't blame Pete or the major for failing to take in this minor detail earlier. There was just too much here, all at once, to see and wonder about. What did Aelbraugh Pritsch do, for instance, about the way his gun belt seemed to crush the feathers at what should have been his waist? Pressure, too? That hinted at an even more advanced technology than he'd imagined. It did explain the silvery appearance of the quilt-thing he'd seen himself. "I take it your boss isn't one of these lobster people?"

"Dear me, no!" The creature actually clucked like the barnyard fowl he resembled. "Great Egg, the Proprietor's no crustacean! Like them, he simply happens to have evolved in a saline medium. The artificial liquid I referred to permits him to remain comfortable, while others, land-evolved organisms such as you and I, may confer with him under more convenient circumstances than water would afford."

More confused than ever, Gutierrez shook his head. "I don't get you."

"You will, General, here we are."

This passageway terminated in a dead end. The oval panel before them was the first real door Gutierrez had seen in this place, and fifteen centimeters thick. At Aelbraugh Pritsch's touch it swung aside on heavy hinges, allowing a faint scent of iodine to waft outward. Within a well-lit roofed-over chamber, a steep flight of plastic-coated stairs disappeared into a clear, mirror-surfaced liquid.

"Down there?" Recognizing a pressure lock when he saw one, Gutierrez laid a reluctant hand on the door-frame, turning to confront his strange guide with an expression, more than skeptical, which he wondered if the nonhuman could read. "What the hell do I wear, scuba gear?"

There it was again, that blue-green flash amidst the powdery gray-white of scaly feathers. Aelbraugh Pritsch blinked at him. "If you refer to mechanical breathing apparatus, not at all, sir. The liquid's fully charged with oxygen, every bit as breathable as air, and rather pleasant to the tactile senses. Nor will it damage anything you wear or carry with you, even the most primitive electronics. In that sense, it's quite inert. However, I do advise you to exhale completely before you take your first breath, as an uncomfortable cramping, owing to bubbles trapped in the respiratory system, may otherwise result."

The general braced both hands against the door-frame, like the family dog, he realized, reluctant to be bathed. His ostensible purpose was to lean in for a better look. "Let me get this straight: I'm supposed to walk down those stairs, duck my head, take a breath, and—"

The Proprietor's assistant raised a long, slender, admonitory finger. "Remembering to exhale thoroughly first."

This time Gutierrez blinked. "Remembering to—remind me to take you sky-diving some time. You're not coming along?"

The dinosauroid's scaly plumage fluffed out around his body, as if in alarm. In vain, Gutierrez watched for another glimpse of the turquoise-colored symbiote or parasite, wondering why it seemed so important. "Oh, no, sir! Not at all. This interview is to be private. Besides, I've other business to attend."

"I'll bet you do." Feeling a good deal less jocular than he hoped he sounded, he trod down the steps. "Well, my GI insurance is paid up. Here goes nothing!" He entered the liquid, which surprised him with its warmth where it lapped his ankles, his knees, his thighs up to the crotch, the waist, and at last his chest. It wasn't entirely odorless, but the odor wasn't entirely unpleasant. With all the trepidation in the world, he exhaled hard and ducked his head.

A moment passed.

A small string of bubbles rose to the surface.

Unable to overcome a lifetime of reflex, Gutierrez crashed back up through the wave-chopped liquid without having taken a breath of the stuff, coughing, his lungs aching for no reason he knew.

"Do keep trying, General, please!" Aelbraugh Pritsch stood, a single amber eye peeking around the door at the top of the stairs. Another pair of eyes, black and tiny in their turquoise settings, glittered down at Gutierrez from the feathered creature's shoulder. The avian's voice echoed in the bare-walled chamber as he raised it over the man's spluttering. "The first breath's the hardest!"

Gutierrez wiped liquid, not entirely tasteless, from his eyes. "That's what they told the guy in the gas chamber!" Nevertheless, he set his jaw, exhaled, and took two steps in a single, inexorable bound, surprised to find himself breathing. As with water, he discovered he was quite nearsighted. It gave him a shut-in, claustrophobic feeling. Hand on the rail beside him, he approached another door, placed his free hand as he'd seen his guide do upstairs, let it swing before him, and stepped through.

It closed behind him, plunging him into darkness.

For more than a moment, this time, he regretted having turned down Estrellita's offer of her pistol. No expression he could think of was adequate to describe the utter blackness that enveloped him, after the cheerful glare of the pressure chamber upstairs. He was blinded, cloaked in silence as absolute as the darkness. Adjusted now to the surrounding liquid, its smell, its taste, its temperature, his sensory deprivation was complete. Nameless fear of the unknown rode his spine in waves which threatened to paralyze his mind altogether.

Concentrate! he ordered himself. What is there left to feel? The floor still retained its tackiness. The liquid medium in which he stood was less dense than water. Faint currents he could feel running through it didn't prevent him from maintaining an upright posture. When thirty seconds had crawled by, he began to make out blue-gray outlines. This wasn't an empty room, something was moving around him! Panic almost overtook him before he realized that the moving objects were marine plants, undulating with the gentle motion of the liquid.

Despite his fear, Gutierrez stepped forward, slowed by the fluorocarbon which made it all seem even more like the nightmare it was beginning to remind him of. Another slow-motion step. In the distance, blurred and exaggerated by refraction, he could make out the faint sparkle of colored lights. They twinkled at the far end of the chamber like pilots on a console, winking on and off at apparent random, appearing, disappearing, replaced by others which winked on and off in turn. They formed a pattern, he thought, like faraway Chinese lanterns strung on a line, bobbing in a breeze.

A few more steps brought him closer, but not to any better understanding of what they were. Darkness seemed to lift by stages as his eyes adjusted. The room, more and more visible in shades of gray-on-gray, began to assume dimensions: a ceiling low and oppressive overhead, enclosing walls more palpable than seen. Humped amorphous shadow-forms lurked about him. The blackest, most shapeless lay ahead. The chill he felt wash through his body had nothing to do with temperature.

Without warning, the darkest of the shadows pivoted before him with a low moan and a grating noise. Moved by a reflex he hadn't known he possessed, he slapped at his thigh, feeling liquid stream between his outstretched fingers, clawing for the weapon he wasn't carrying. A tangled mass of thick, writhing, fleshy ribbons squirmed toward his unprotected face, each illuminated along its undulating length by row after row of the bioluminescent spots he'd first seen a moment before.

A deep voice boomed. "You are the human leader, General Horatio Z. Gutierrez?"

The general gulped the sour taste of panic, prevented from mindless flight by nothing more than the density of the liquid around his body. He opened his mouth, only to discover that whatever knack speech required in this medium, he didn't have it. In front of him, the thrashing horror grated closer, the obscene mobility of that portion nearest him somehow limited by a grotesque, massive object at the rear.

Unbidden, the surrealistic image came to him of landed eels: horrible, slimy, maddened by barbed hooks in their tongues, squirming to regain the water, yet cruelly fastened by their tails to a granite tombstone grinding across the bank behind them.

Above the unthinkable junction where the tentacles found root, a pair of cold, golden, luminescent eyes regarded him, englobed in glassy corneal spheres and slitted, like those of a jungle cat. Behind them, the meter-thick tube of the monster's gigantic body disappeared into a vaster spiral-coiled shell that might have garaged a small automobile.

Somehow, Gutierrez found his voice, deepened by the liquid medium he forced it into.

"You're . . . the Proprietor?"

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