Kaisho’s whisper sounded over our receivers. "Why would I want to do that?"
"To keep from pissing me off," Festina told her. "One. Two. Three…"
Like sand spilling through an hourglass, spores began to tumble off the Fasskister in front of us — clearing the tips of his uppermost arms and slowly sliding downward, leaving behind bare metal and plastic. I didn’t know which was more mind-boggling: that all these flecks of inanimate moss were moving of their own accord, or that Kaisho, way back in Jacaranda, could know which particular Fasskister we were looking at. And that she or her Balrog joyrider had some way of telling the spores in front of us, "Please, clear off, thanks so much."
The spores continued to fall. Suddenly, one of the Fasskister’s metal arms gave a twitch. Its wrist rotated through a complete circle, then its first elbow twisted most of the way around too, till the glass sensor on the hand’s thumb pointed directly at Festina and me. From the robot’s chest, a deep male voice said, "Humans?"
"Greetings," Festina said with a slight bow. "We are sentient citizens of the League of Peoples. We beg your Hospitality."
The Fasskister swung his arm and nearly took off her head.
Festina didn’t just duck; she deflected the swing with a quick little forearm block that flicked over and turned into a grab. Almost instantly she tugged on the robot’s wrist, pulling the whole Fasskister forward. At the same moment, her knee came up hard. The effect was the robot getting yanked into a very nice knee strike that landed CLANG against the machine’s metal chest.
On a human, the blow would have broken ribs. On the robot it didn’t leave a dent, but I could hear something go THUNK. It sounded like the flesh-and-blood Fasskister smacking against the walls of his robot housing.
I jumped forward to help, grabbing two more arms (one light and spidery, the other wide and chunky). Festina yelled, "Lift!" and together we heaved the Fasskister off the ground. He didn’t weigh much, but he’d started to wave his limbs wildly — not trying to wrestle us, more like a panicked attempt to get away, but I still got clonked a few good ones.
Festina snagged another of his arms with her free hand and shouted at the egg-shaped torso, "Settle down, or we’ll throw you into the moss. I mean it. We don’t want to hurt you, but if you can’t behave, we’ll toss you and find someone who can."
The Fasskister continued to flail about. Festina met my eye, and together we swung him back for a big throw, the way kids do when they’re about to chuck someone into a swimming pool. "Last chance," Festina said to the Fasskister. "That moss sure looks hungry."
For once, the Balrog decided to play along — the patch of moss in front of us flared up fiery bright, like hell flames leaping to catch another sinner. The Fasskister gave a mousy shriek and went completely limp.
Slowly, regretfully, the Balrog settled back into its usual dull glow.
"That’s better," Festina said. Keeping a tight hold on the robot’s arms, we lowered it until its feet touched the ground. Bare dirt — the Balrog had pulled back a few paces so we had a little circle of clear space in the middle of the village square. "No place to run," Festina told the Fasskister as she let go of the robot’s wrist. "You be nice, and we’ll be nice."
"He’ll be nice?" the Fasskister asked, pointing at me.
"Sure," I answered, confused by the question. "Why wouldn’t I be nice?"
"I know you," he said. "You are definitely not nice."
Festina opened her eyes wide in surprise. I was surprised myself; but then I remembered how the Fasskisters on this orbital had been booted off Troyen for causing trouble, back before the war. For all I knew, this guy might have been stuck inside a queen robot on that first night, when Sam got me to crush the crystal globe and discombobulate them all. Or he might have been one of the many Fasskisters who’d been banished personally by the high queen, while I stood solemn-faced beside Verity’s throne. He might just have despised me because I was tied to the whole system of monarchy, or because I was Diplomat Samantha’s brother — the Fasskister community never liked her much either. All kinds of reasons why I might not be popular with this fellow.
"I’ll be nice," I told him. "Really."
The thing about Fasskisters is they’re all locked up inside those robots, so you can’t read the expressions on their faces. They don’t even have body language unless they deliberately make the robot shake its fist or something. Even so, just standing there like a lump, this Fasskister pretty well communicated he didn’t trust me a bit. "Good," said Festina, "we’re all just the peachiest of friends. So tell me now, one pal to another: where did this fucking moss come from?"
"Humans," he replied. "And one of the Gragguk."
Gragguk was a Fasskister word they considered so obscene, their language circuits never translated it. Gragguk was also the word they used for Mandasar queens. "How long ago?" Festina asked.
A pause. "Twenty-four of your standard days," the Fasskister answered. I did some calculations: I’d been on Willow ten days from Troyen to Celestia, then two days hanging off Starbase Iris, a day on Celestia, and another ten days coming back here… so Willow must have visited this orbital just before picking me up from the moonbase.
The Fasskister was still talking. "They came from over there," he said, gesturing toward the docking port with one of his smaller arms. "A Gragguk and four humans. All wearing uniforms of your navy."
"Black uniforms?" Festina asked.
"No. Two in dark blue, two in a shade of green."
Dark blue meant the Communications Corps; the "shade of green" was likely olive, for Security. Just the sort of party Willow would have sent to meet with aliens, if the ship’s Explorers had already been left behind on Troyen.
"What did the group want?" Festina asked.
"Revenge!" The English word came out calmly from the translation circuits, but I could hear a sort of shriek inside the robot. The real Fasskister had screamed the word in his native tongue. "The Gragguk claimed she was the last of her caste, and she wished to apologize for the trouble caused by Verity’s old regime. What she really wanted was to infect us with this!"
He spread all his arms at once, waving toward the moss surrounding us. "It appeared as soon as the Gragguk left. Her blatant attempt to destroy us."
Probably true: your average queen is more keen on smiting her enemies than apologizing to them. If that Queen Temperance was leaving the Troyen system and thought she might never come back, she could have given Willow some story about wanting to make peace with the Fasskisters; then she’d dumped some Balrog spores on the ground when neither humans nor Fasskisters were watching.
"Where do you think the queen got the spores?" I whispered to Festina.
"From Kaisho herself," Festina answered. "Our beloved companion stepped on the Balrog twenty-five years ago, before the war started. When human doctors couldn’t help her, the navy brought in a Mandasar team — the best medical experts available. They took spore samples back home with them, so they could research ways of separating the Balrog from its host… not that they ever came up with any answers. The samples must have stayed in some test tube on Troyen, till the queen from Willow got her claws on them."
"If she only planted the spores twenty-four days ago," I said, "the stuff grew pretty fast."
"Like lightning," the Fasskister told me. He began to walk toward one of the crystal huts. Grudgingly, the Balrog slipped out of his path; Festina and I followed along behind.