"Now this instant, mammal! he yelled back, and added something in his own language. I didn't understand it, of course. Nobody else could hear it, either, because the talk-between-ships circuits don't carry very far. So I guess I'll never know just what it is he said, but honestly, Mom, it surely didn't sound at all friendly. All the same, he'd passed.
So I ordered him to null his controls, and then I called in his test scores to the master computer on 43-G. About two seconds later he started screeching over the TBS, "Vile mammal! What have you done? My green light's out, my controls won't respond, is this some treacherous warm-blood trick?
He sure had a way of getting under your skin. "Take it easy, Torklemiggen, I told him, not very friendlily- he was beginning to hurt my feelings. "The computer is readjusting your status. They've removed the temporary license for your solo, so they can lift the suppressor field permanently. As soon as the light goes on again you'll be fully licensed, and able to fly anywhere in this system without supervision.
"Hah, he grumbled, and then for a moment I could hear his heads whispering together. Then-well, Mom, I was going to say he laughed out loud over the TBS. But it was more than a laugh. It was mean, and gloating. "Depraved retarded mammal, he shouted, "my light is on-and now all of Cassiopeia is mine!
I was really disgusted with him. You expect that kind of thing, maybe, from some spacehappy sixteen-year-old who's just got his first license. Not from an eighteen- hundred-year-old alien who has flown all over the galaxy. It sounded sick! And sort of worrisome, too. I wasn't sure just how to take him. "Don't do anything silly, Torklemiggen, I warned him over the TBS.
He shouted back: "Silly? I do nothing silly, mammal! Observe how little silly I am! And the next thing you know he was whirling and diving into hyperspace-no signal, nothing! I had all I could do to follow him, six alphas deep and going fast. For all I knew we could have been on our way back to Fomalhaut. But he only stayed there for a minute. He pulled out right in the middle of one of the asteroid belts, and as I followed up from the alphas I saw that lean, green yacht of his diving down on a chunk of rock about the size of an office building.
I had noticed, when he came back from his trip, that one of the new things about the yacht was a circle of ruby- colored studs around the nose of the ship. Now they began to glow, brighter and brighter. In a moment a dozen streams of ruby light reached out from them, ahead toward the asteroid-and there was a bright flare of light, and the asteroid wasn't there anymore!
Naturally, that got me upset. I yelled at him over the TBS: "Listen, Torklemiggen, you're about to get yourself in real deep trouble! I don't know how they do things back on Fomalhaut. but around here that's grounds for an action to suspend your license! Not to mention they could make you pay for that asteroid!
"Pay? he screeched. "It is not I who will pay, functionally inadequate live-bearer, it is you and yours! You will pay most dreadfully, for now we have the black holes! And he was off again, back down into hyperspace, and one more time it was about all I could do to try to keep up with him.
There's no sense trying to transmit in hyperspace, of course. I had to wait until we were up out of the alphas to answer him, and by that time, I don't mind telling you, I was peeved. I never would have found him on visual, but the radar-glyph picked him up zeroing in on one of the black holes. What a moron! "Listen, Torklemiggen, I said, keeping my voice level and hard, "I'll give you one piece of advice. Go back to base. Land your ship. Tell the police you were just carried away, celebrating passing your test. Maybe they won't be too hard on you. Otherwise, I warn you, you're looking at a thirty-day suspension, plus you could get a civil suit for damages from the asteroid company. He just screeched that mean laughter. I added. "And I told you, keep away from the black holes!
He laughed some more and said, "Oh, lower than a smiggstroffle, what delightfully impudent pets you mammals will make now that we have these holes for weapons-and what joy it will give me to train you! He was sort of singing to himself more than to me, I guess. "First reduce this planet! Then the suppressor field is gone, and our forces come in to prepare the black holes! Then we launch one on every inhabited planet until we have destroyed your military power. And then-
He didn't finish that sentence, just more of that chuckling, cackling, mean laugh.
I felt uneasy. It was beginning to look as though Torklemiggen was up to something more than just high jinks and deviltry. He was easing up on the black hole and kind of crooning to himself, mostly in that foreign language of his but now and then in English: "Oh, my darling little assault vessel, what destruction you will wreak! Ah, charming black hole, how catastrophic you will be! How foolish these mammals who think they can forbid me to come near you- Then, as they say, light dawned. "Torklemiggen, I shouted, "you've got the wrong idea. It's not just a traffic regulation that we have to stay away from black holes. It's a lot more serious than that!
But I was too late. He was inside the Roche limit before I could finish.
I almost hate to tell you what happened next. It was pretty gross. The tidal forces seized his ship, and they stretched it.
I heard one caterwauling astonished yowl over the TBS. Then his transmitter failed. The ship ripped apart, and the pieces began to rain down into the Schwarzschild boundary and plasmaed. There was a quick, blinding flash of fall-in energy from the black hole, and that was all Torklemiggen would ever say or do or know.
I got out of there as fast as I could. I wasn't really feeling very sorry for him, either. The way he was talking there toward the end, he sounded as though he had some pretty dangerous ideas.
When I landed it was sundown at the field, and people were staring and pointing toward the place in the sky where Torklemiggen had smeared himself into the black hole. All bright purplish and orangey plasma clouds-it made a really beautiful sunset, I'll say that much for the guy! I didn't have time to admire it, though, because Tonda was waiting, and we just had minutes to get to the Deputy Census Director, Division of Reclassification, before it closed.
But we made it.
Well, I said I had big news, didn't I? And that's it, because now your loving son is
Yours truly,
James Paul Aguilar-Madigan,
the newlywed!
SPENDING A DAY AT THE LOTTERY FAIR
All writers have favorite themes and return to them over and over-even when they don't intend to and perhaps, as in my own case, don't realize quite how often they've done so until it comes time to put a collection of stories together. Their excuse (which I do dearly hope you will find justified in the present examples) is that a new treatment, a new setting, a new angle of attack can refresh an argument-especially an argument that seems worth making in the first place. At any rate, this story came about in the summer of 1982, when curiosity led me to Knoxville to see how they were doing with their first-ever world's fair. I am no great connoisseur of world's fairs; I'd only been to three before Knoxville-the pair in New York City a generation apart and the 1970 event in Osaka, Japan. Knoxville was a much smaller spectacle. Still, it had a lot of interesting exhibits and a holiday-carnival atmosphere; I had a good time. The locals I talked to seemed to be enjoying it a lot less, and when I asked them why so glum, they reported that it was losing money by the fistful and pot. What then (I wondered) was the reason for having it? Echo gave me an answer, and so I went back to my hotel room and began writing this story.