“Why now? I mean, why not last year, or a week ago?”
“Up until now, everything’s been OK.”
“Hmph. Ask a silly question… Look, I don’t know how much you know about us, but we got some pretty serious problems on this little ball of dirt. Our workable technology is stagnant. Everything we build seems to do more damage than good, and in the long run all this labor-saving crap we make is slowly burying us in piles of indestructible garbage. Plastic. Medical trash. Radioactive waste with a half-life of ten thousand years. Hide-bound auto manufacturers with no interest in alternative fuel sources beyond lip-service. Quick fixes piled on top of mistakes that throw the whole ecology out of balance. Now, I figure that you’ve got some sort of fusion, given that you’re advanced enough to have inertialess drive, am I right?”
“Yes. The fusion reactor uses almost any mass, and is based on technology that is compatible with what you already have. It could be produced in quantity for not much more than the price of a week’s groceries, and sold at correspondingly low cost.”
“Well, I’m here to tell you that we could sure use it, old hoss. What do you think?”
There was a fairly long pause before the screen replied. “I understand your need, and I agree that your people would benefit greatly—”
“I think I hear a ‘but’ coming.”
“I’m afraid so. I am unable to give you this information.”
“Unable, or unwilling?”
“Unable. There are safeguards on that portion of my memory that prevent me from revealing the technology as long as I’m a representative of our parliament. If I could help you, I would. I’m sorry.”
About that time, there was a knock at the door. “That’d be Kermit,” Bubba said.
Kermit entered, carrying a tool kit and a long box, his camera bag slung over his shoulder. His eyes were still a little bleary, but he was excited.
“Where are they? They haven’t left, have they?”
“Nah, they’re in the living room watching ‘Celebrity Jello-Wrestiing for Dollars’ or some such rot. What’d you bring me, Mr. de Frog?”
“It’s a Racal-Vadic modem. Verrry fast, faster than factory specs as a matter of fact. I’ve done some tweaking.”
“Like with my car horn?” Bubba had picked up a programmable auto horn at a flea market and Kermit had fixed it somehow so that if anybody tried to program “Dixie” it would play the theme from “Shaft” instead. Bubba himself stuck with the opening bars of The Rites of Spring or the Rocky and Bullwinkle theme.
“Yeah. Listen,” his voice dropped conspiratorially, “what do they look like?”
“Stick your head around the door and look, son. They won’t bite you.”
“Yeah, but are they… different? I mean, I’d hate to walk in there and scream or something.”
“Don’t worry. They’re disappointingly humanoid. Don’t speak English too well, but it is their second language. Or their twentieth. Not to mention their mouthal equipment is a bit different from ours. Just keep your feet clear of the grasping tentacles of the wailing beast, is all.”
Kermit nodded absently and edged into the living room, still clutching his load. “Ummm… hi. Welcome to the Earth.”
Ollie smiled, raised his beer, and said “Rock and roll.”
Stan repeated the gesture and said, “I’m going to pull that over-stuffed blonde bimbo’s head off and spit down the hole.”
As Kermit tried to figure this out, Bubba called from the kitchen, “Hey, sounds like they been practicin’! Think we oughta switch ’em over to Masterpiece Theater?”
“No, I don’t think Alistair Cooke could stand it.”
“Aleister Crowley could.”
“He’s not on PBS.”
“Nope, A&E. ‘Magick and Mountaineering,’ Thursday nights.”
“That’s my bridge night. Jesus,” Kermit exclaimed. “I still can’t believe this is really happening.”
“Trust me, son. How about hooking some stuff up so we can get started?”
“Yeah, right.” Kermit opened his tool kit and began setting up the modem. “Where’s Mike? I need to look at his bus, or whatever he has.”
Bubba brought the screen over to the work table, and pointed out the connector that fit the slot in the ship. “That’s what we need to hook up to, and since I know exactly diddley about it, I’ll let you work it out together. I got another phone call to make.”
Kermit set out his tools and began to work.
Bubba walked back to the kitchen and dialed. It was answered after only two rings.
“Kirby, this is Bubba Pritchert in Virginia. Do you ever sleep?”
“Only from the neck down. What’s up, Bubba?”
“I may have something here that I need some advice on, and since you do legal work for Greenpeace I wanted to tug on your coattails about it.”
“Go ahead.”
“Let me give you a hypothetical situation, and you tell me what can be done. Suppose I got hold of some brand new, and very important, technology. Suppose further that it could change the face of civilization as we know it.”
“The face of civilization, huh?”
“As we know it, yes. How could I go about getting a patent?”
“I doubt you could, unless you could prove that you yourself had originated it. Patent law’s terribly sticky about that.”
“Well, I can’t say I invented it, no. How about if the information was given to me, or that I somehow acquired it, legally?”
“Hmm. Different situation entirely. What’s this got to do with Greenpeace?”
Bubba thought carefully, then said, “Suppose Greenpeace had the development and manufacturing rights to limitless, clean, cheap, non-polluting cold fusion? And technology that would make internal combustion obsolete?”
There was a long silence at the other end. “If this were anybody else, Bubba, I’d call you a crank case and hang up. What are we talking about, here? How cheap?”
“Bushman cheap. At the moment, I got nothing definite, and I ain’t promising anything. If I told you more, you would hang up, and I wouldn’t blame you.”
“OK, why don’t I do a little reading, and get back to you?”
“Fine as frog hair, Kirby. Keep ’em flying.”
“I do try.”
Bubba hung up and looked toward the workshop where the ship sat on his lift. He chuckled. “So do I, Kirbs, so do I.”
When he returned to the workshop, Kermit was still hard at work, peering through a lighted magnifier and delicately manipulating a soldering iron. He’d surrounded the area he was concentrating on with heat sinks, and was carrying on a lively conversation with Mike at the same time.
“OK I got that one. What next?”
“Solder a jumper from the next contact to the second blue component from your left. Make sure the three pinholes on top aren’t occluded.”
“No sweat, I’m good at this.”
“Yes, you are. We’re progressing much faster than I had anticipated.”
“How’s the heat?”
“Dissipating nicely. Once you’ve finished that, we can attach the cables to the modem. That will complete the conversion, and we can begin the translations.”
“OK I’m going to have to scrape those contacts a little. You’ve got them coated with something that doesn’t like solder. You know,” he said, turning to Bubba, “I’ve never had a patient talk back to me before. It’s refreshing to know just where it itches.”
“Just like ‘Spock’s Brain,’ huh Bones?”