We Are Legion (We Are Bob)

Book 4: Chapter 21: Getting Involved

Book 4: Chapter 21: Getting Involved

Bob

July 2334

Arcadia River System

I sat up, water running off my fur and puddling around my butt. It was raining. I had a momentary surge of irritation, the kind of thing you get when you’ve been caught outside without an umbrella. This was followed by irritation that the AMI hadn’t alerted me to the issue. It had been raining for some time, judging from the level of wetness of, well, everything.

But the irritation was swept away as I remembered my current form. There was no chill, no feeling of shivering dampness. The Quinlan fur, with its waterproofing, kept me nice and toasty.

I gazed up at the sky. The rain clouds resembled rain clouds everywhere—gray, ugly, and wet. The striations might have been a little weird, because of the megastructure’s rotation, but then again maybe not. I wasn’t a weather expert, and my interest in cloud formations had always been limited to staying out from under the wet ones.

I examined the horizon in several directions. I thought it might be lighter to the west, but generally speaking, we were socked in in all directions. So, large weather systems—check. I frowned. I could have done without this particular reproduction of a planetary environment.

“Look at this,” Bridget said. I turned. I hadn’t realized she’d activated yet. She was pointing at some underbrush that had been crushed flat. “I think we were visited overnight. Something big. Maybe a loroush.”

“Uh …” I searched my memory. A loroush was kind of a big wolf, but with claws like a grizzly bear. It grasped its prey and held it while it tore off chunks. Not a fun date, for sure. “Why didn’t our AMIs alert us?”

“I don’t think it displayed any interest, Bob. The track doesn’t actually come into our nest. I think lack of odor and body heat threw it off. A night hunter isn’t going to be depending on sight, so the fact we only look like a meal probably wasn’t enough.”

I grimaced, glad that we had Bridget along to pay attention to this kind of thing. On Eden, my introduction to the local ecosystem had been gradual, and mostly from the safety of orbit. Now, I was in the middle of it, and I hadn’t yet internalized the studies.

Bill and Garfield sat up at that moment. Garfield looked at my face and Bridget’s face and said, “What’d I miss?”

Bridget laughed. “Let’s see about breakfast.”

“Fish on the hoof? No thanks,” I replied. “I’ll eat in town. Maybe a good Denver omelet with some hot sauce …”

“Sure, we’ll get right on that.” Bridget prairie-dogged and scanned the river. “Do we want to just float today, or should we put some hustle on?”

“As much as this feels like a vacation,” I replied, “it isn’t. Let’s get ourselves to a town.”

It took most of the day to find the next town, even with the group actively swimming downstream. With no witnesses to worry about, we were able to pile on the speed and ignore fatigue warnings, and in the water there was no danger of overheating the mannies. Bill spotted the town first.

“Coming up on the left, guys. Slow to flank speed.”

“Uh …”

“Don’t get pedantic, Gar. Slow to whatever is normal for a Quinlan, m’kay?”

I smiled to myself. Bill and Garfield sniped at each other constantly, but it was never heated. Marvin and I had the same kind of interaction. I realized it’d been a long time since I’d visited him. I didn’t even know if he was still working his way through all the fictional environments we’d read about. Maybe it was time to get over myself and rejoin Bobiverse society. While there still was one.

We swam up to the docks and climbed up the ramp in the acceptable manner. Best not attract attention.

The plaque at the head of the dock said Galen Town and included some helpful arrows to useful locations. We noted an arrow that said Market and headed in that direction. We still hadn’t worked out any kind of concrete plan, since we didn’t even have enough information to form one. The Skippies were still listening in with the spy drones, but they hadn’t come up with anything new. It wasn’t surprising, when you looked at the big picture. We still hadn’t come close to scanning the entire structure in detail, and even with the surprisingly large Quinlan population numbers, they were spread quite thin. Every single town couldn’t possibly have a “significant presence.” And we still needed to figure out what that might be. ??????s

“Let’s try not to screw it up this time,” I said.

“Let’s—excuse me?” Bill exclaimed. “Who was it that started a riot last time? Anyone? Anyone?”

“Picky, picky. Seriously, maybe we can make some headway today. You guys want to split up?”

“I think we have to, Bob. We’ll cover more territory.”

I nodded, gave a small wave (Quinlan style), and headed in a random direction. The point was to eavesdrop on conversations, and maybe try to start one and probe subtly for information. I had my concerns about that subtly part. I was far more familiar with The Art of War than the art of conversation.

Hmm, but where can you go where everybody knows your—no, but close. Liquor loosens lips. Or muzzles, or beaks, or haora as the Quinlans called their cakeholes. So, where would I find a pub and/or boozery?

I went up to the first person who was holding still. “Excuse me, is there a tavern nearby?”

“Yes, my brother-in-law owns the Growling Guppy. Down that lane, turn right at the house with the red door. You’ll see it. Tell them Gren sent you.”

I nodded my thanks and set off in the indicated direction. I was pretty sure Gren got a kickback of some kind, and I didn’t begrudge him. I might even get a break on the first beer.

“Brother-in-law” wasn’t quite the right translation for the relationship, I knew. The Quinlans had a complicated family system, but I got the impression that Gren and his pub-owning mate were on pretty close terms.

I arrived at the establishment in short order. It was, as advertised, easy to pick out. An outside patio with long benches and tables featured a lot of Quinlans holding beer steins. It seemed every hour was Happy Hour for Quinlans. Was swimming while under the influence a felony?

I sidled up to the bar and signaled for attention. To the barkeep I said, “Gren tells me I can get a beer here?”

The barkeep eyed me closely, probably checking his memory. Then he grabbed a stein, filled it, and set it down. “First one’s one copper. After that, two coppers.”

I pulled out the appropriate coin, set it on the bar, and grabbed my beer. I had a bad feeling this was not going to compare favorably with Howard’s red ales. Well, I could always turn off my taste buds.

I scanned the tables. I was looking for a spot where I was potentially within earshot of several conversations. I needed to have a much better picture of this society before I’d be ready to dive in and strike up a conversation. Especially after last time.

I plunked my butt down on a bench and hunched over my stein, trying to look like it was the center of my universe. Then I turned up my audio gain and relaxed into creepy eavesdropper mode.

“… can’t believe that Ginny wants to bring that fish-entrail-brained loser into the family …”

“… so he says to me, Berro, he says, I’ve got a right mind to …”

“… that’s just too funny. The guy really thought …”

“… claims to have been scattered twice. I mean, what are the chances …”

Wait. Scattered? There was that word. The Skippies hadn’t been able to nail it down beyond that it was something bad. This could be important. I filtered out the other conversations.

First voice: “… probably a troublemaker. You can get caught up in a scattering once by chance, but twice? No, Skeve had to be involved in whatever was going on.”

Second voice: “So if he starts up the same shenanigans here, our whole town could end up scattered.”

Third voice: “But that’s not fair! Why would we all suffer—”

First voice: “Fair isn’t part of the Administrator’s vocabulary, youngling. If they decide we’ve contravened the Limits, they will act.”

Third voice: “How do we stop that from happening?”

First voice: “We can’t stop the Administrator. But we can prevent Skeve from brewing more trouble and causing a scattering in our home.”

Second voice: “Whaddaya have in mind, Erol? Talk to him? Make him listen to reason?”

A laugh from First voice. “Sure, that’ll work. Or maybe he just ends up as fish food.”

Second voice: “I’m in.”

Third voice: “I’ve never killed anyone. But I can’t lose my family. I’m in.”

First voice: “Good people. So I’ll invite him here tonight for a beer and dinner to discuss things. Get him a little tipsy, make him think we’re on his side. Then, invite him to my place. And take care of business.” A pause. “You guys have to be convincing, though. He has to believe we’re ready to buy into his crazy ideas.”

I turned a casual eye in the direction of the voices. Two Quinlans were nodding as a third Quinlan glared at both of them in turn. Those were my marks.

Their conversation drifted off into more mundane subjects without shedding any more light on Skeve’s sins or the nature of the Administrator (I could hear the capital letter when they said it. Literally. The Quinlan language included an inflection to indicate proper names).

I listened for a while longer until I’d finished my, uh, beverage—it was every bit as bad as I’d expected—but no other interesting conversations offered themselves.

“You guys discover anything?” I said over the intercom. I hoped I had kept the triumph out of my voice.

“No, but it sounds like you have,” Bridget replied, dashing my hopes. “But at least I found a good hotel. Meet at the dock?”

Everyone signaled their agreement and I set off for the rendezvous.

“Okay Bob, spill. What’d you get?” Garfield asked.

“Let’s get a room and shut down,” I replied. “I’ll go over it back in virt.”

We made our way to the hotel that Bridget had found, negotiated with the proprietor, and in short order found ourselves in another small bunkroom.

“Someday we should try moving up the social ladder. I’d like to actually have room to turn around without elbowing someone,” Bill said.

“Why?” Garfield replied. “We’re just racking the mannies here. What’re you planning on doing?”

Bill glared at him but didn’t reply. We picked bunks and lay down, then deactivated.

I popped into my library and was just settling myself into my La-Z-Boy when the others arrived. Their favorite furniture was ready for them, since this was a long-term project and they’d be here a lot. Jeeves brought beverages, Spike picked a random lap to colonize, and we settled in.

“All right, here’s what I overheard.” I queued up the conversation from the tavern and played it back. When it was done, there were several milliseconds of silence.

Garfield was the first to speak. “So, scattering. Does it chase off the miscreants?”

“Mmm, it’s a little more than that, I think,” Bill said. “There was talk of collateral damage. Our whole town could end up scattered, he said.”

“So the Administrator, whoever he is—”

“It,” Bill said, interrupting Garfield. “The speaker definitely used a third person indeterminate. Or maybe they. The Quinlan language doesn’t differentiate between singular and plural for this declension.”

“Okay, whoever they are, they scatter a town if people get uppity. How, I wonder?”

“And what defines uppity?”

“We have to get to Skeve before the hit squad does their dirty work,” I said, interrupting Bill and Garfield’s discussion. “Ideas?”

“Let’s just be waiting at the tavern,” Bill said.

“Yum,” I replied. “More swill.”

I played with my fish soup, trying to pretend I was eating. Bill and Garfield were doing slightly better, and Bridget had tucked into it like a native. Biologists. Jeez.

We were beginning to get worried after several hours of waiting. The barkeep was eyeing us, since we weren’t drinking enough to pay for the seats. Garfield had finally had enough. “We need to consider the possibility that they changed their plans. Do we know what other taverns are around this area?”

Bridget leaned over and poked a neighbor with a finger. “Hey, friend, how many other taverns within walking distance?”

He turned with a frown, but his expression changed when he took in her three friends. Apparently deciding on courtesy as a tactic, he mentioned two other locations and gave us general directions.

I’d given the others a video image of our targets, so Bill and Garfield hurried off to check the other bars. Meanwhile, I bought our neighbor a beer for his trouble, and he became considerably friendlier, if a little perplexed.

“I’ve got them,” Garfield said. “They’re just leaving the Prancing Pralia. I guess they must have changed plans. We’re lucky we didn’t wait any longer.”

“Stay with them, Gar,” I replied. “We’ve got you on pings. We’ll get there as soon as we can.”

Bridget and I leaped up and sprinted for the door, as protestations and curses followed us.

A text from Bill indicated he was on the way as well. It was tempting to apply non-biological levels of speed, but that would have raised questions that would have required us to leave town—and might alert the Administrator if they had a properly functioning intelligence-gathering network.

Garfield waited at the entrance to an alley as we pulled up. Bill was still on his way. “Traffic jam,” he said. “I’ll be a while longer.”

“How do you get a traffic jam in a horse-and-buggy world?” I muttered.

“Maybe start a riot by peeking in the back of a wagon,” Bridget muttered back.

“I make one mistake …”

“We can’t wait for Bill,” Garfield said. “They’re significantly ahead of us.”

We rushed down the alley in single file. There was no sign of anyone, but there were also no alternative paths, unless our subjects had suddenly developed the ability to climb walls. I had a momentary image of Spider-Beaver in red and blue tights and gave myself a mental slap. Then I heard Garfield chanting, “Spider-pig, spider-pig …” and grinned. Bob is Bob, always and forever.

As we rounded a corner in hot pursuit, several figures leaped out of nowhere and tackled us. Our computer reactions were fast enough for us to realize what was happening, but unfortunately the mannies operated in physical reality, where inertia was a thing. We couldn’t do more than start to turn in the direction of the attacks, before we were all flattened.

The old mannies would have been too heavy to knock over, but the new models had appropriate mass for the subject species. So I found myself on my back, looking up at a very angry Quinlan, in the middle of bringing a knife down on me.

It was time to abandon any pretense of being bio. I pushed up, faster than the knife was coming down, and the Quinlan went airborne with an oof. I smacked him on the side of the head as he hit the top of his trajectory and sprang to my feet. If I’d calculated the force properly, he’d be stunned for a minute or two but not injured.

Two more Quinlans flew backward, and my friends climbed to their feet. Bridget had been stabbed—fake mannie blood was oozing out of a wound in her shoulder. And she looked pissed. I mean really pissed. I considered for a moment whether I’d have to protect our attackers from her.

Garfield pointed farther down the alley. “Something going on.” Without waiting for a response, he sprinted in that direction. Or, well, waddled quickly.

I examined our erstwhile ambushers. All three were in various stages of stunned, and there was no fight left. “You okay?” I said to Bridget. She nodded, still scowling. The internal nanites were doing their job, and the blood flow had already stopped. In another minute, there would be no sign of the wound, and even the fur would have grown back.

We build well in the Bobiverse.

The sounds of battle drifted back to us from the direction Garfield had disappeared. After a glance to make sure there was no further danger here, I went down on all fours and galloped off after him, Bridget right behind me.

When I got to the scene of the excitement, I found Garfield beating one Quinlan using another Quinlan as a bludgeon. It had a definite cartoon feel to it, and I stopped dead for a moment to watch. It was also physically impossible for a Quinlan, so there was a good chance that Gar had blown our cover.

“Ixnay with the Superman act, okay?” I exclaimed. Garfield stopped, abashed, and dropped his bludgeon. The other Quinlan keeled over slowly, like an inflated Santa when the blower is turned off.

“Do you think this was about Skeve?” I asked via intercom.

Garfield replied out loud, “I think that’s who they were attacking.” He motioned with his head. “He took off down that way. He’s injured.”

I nodded and headed in the indicated direction.

I found a Quinlan leaning against a wall, trying to block blood flow from multiple wounds. He kept moving his hands from one wound to the next, muttering under his breath. I suspected shock.

“Skeve?” I asked, and he nodded. I quickly removed my backpack and extracted my first-aid supplies. It was mostly bandages, but that was exactly what he needed.

It took only moments to fix him up well enough that he’d at least live to get to a doctor. As I finished up, Garfield and Bridget joined us. I took one of Skeve’s arms and Bridget the other, and we hoisted him to his feet.

“Thanks,” he said. “Are you with the Resistance?”

I opened my mouth to reply just as Skeve’s eyes went wide in surprise. And then I found myself facedown on the ground. I could see, out of the corner of my eye, Bridget going down as well, with two Quinlans piling on. Yet another individual stepped up, pulled something that looked very much like a handgun, and shot Garfield point-blank.