We Install Page 7

  Both Snarre’t showed their teeth in the gesture that meant they were amused. They had more teeth, and sharper ones, than humans. Their noses were three vertical slits in their round faces, their eyes enormous and reflective, as suited nocturnal creatures. They had big ears that twitched, ears that put the legendary Alfred E. Newman to shame. They didn’t wear clothes; they had gray or brown pelts. All in all, they looked more like tarsiers than any other earthly beasts … but they didn’t look a hell of a lot like tarsiers, either.

  “We would like to buy from you some meat,” the taller one said in—probably—her own language. The babelfish in Cravath’s left ear translated the word. The wider rictus on the other Snarre’s face translated the sarcasm.

  Thinking of Beverly, Cravath answered, deadpan, “I can give you a good deal on chicken stew.”

  He didn’t know exactly how the Snarre’t turned English into their tongue. Maybe a worm in their brains—and, with them, it would be a literal worm, not a gadget—did the translating. Maybe … Well, since he didn’t know, what point to worrying about it?

  The shorter Snarre’ said, “We are interested in trying the Model 27 two-seater. If we like it, perhaps we will also get from you some chicken stew.”

  They both thought that was pretty funny. Jack Cravath dutifully smiled. Were they a mated pair? Jack thought so, but he wasn’t sure. Among Snarre’t, females were usually taller than males, but not always. Their sex organs were neatly internal unless they were mating, and females had no boobs: despite the fur, they weren’t mammals, but fed their young on regurgitated food like birds.

  “A Model 27, you say?” the dealer echoed. Both Snarre’t splayed their long, spindly fingers wide: their equivalent of a nod. Cravath went on, “Well, come with me, and I’ll show you one. What sort of payment did you have in mind?”

  There was the rub. Humans had a burgeoning economy, and the Snarre’t had a burgeoning economy, and the two were about as much like each other as apples and field hockey. Each species’ notion of what constituted wealth seemed strange, stranger, strangest to the other. That turned every deal into a barter—and a crapshoot.

  “Knowledge, perhaps,” the taller alien said. “We have a brain that is getting old but is not yet foolish with age. This might be a good enough price, yes?”

  “It might, yes.” Jack tried not to sound too excited. How much good did that do? If they got a whiff of his pheromones, they’d know he was. Snarre’i brains intrigued human scientists the same way human electronics fascinated the aliens. Different ways of doing the same thing … He was pretty sure he could get more for even an old one than a Model 27 was worth. “Step into the showroom with me, why don’t you?”

  “We will do that,” the taller one said, and they did.

  He made his best pitch for the Model 27. He talked about its speed, its reliability, and its environment-friendly electric motor. “You don’t have to clean up after it, either, the way you do with your drof.”

  “We don’t mind. Drofshit is for us pleasant—more than pleasant—to eat,” the shorter Snarre’ said. Jack kept his face straight. You couldn’t expect aliens to act like people: the oldest cliché in the book, but true. They weren’t asking him to eat candy turds. A good thing, too, he thought. But they’d bred their animals to do that, which was not the sort of thing people would ever have thought of … he hoped.

  “May we test drive?” the taller one asked.

  “Sure,” Jack said. “Let me check the headlight to make certain it’s not up too bright.” In the human part of Latimer, people needed headlights when they drove at night. The kind of light levels humans preferred would have blinded Snarre’t, though. When the aliens had to go out by day, they wore sun goggles even more elaborate than the IR jobs humans needed to see at night without raising havoc among the Snarre’t.

  “Thank you for your courtesy,” both aliens chorused, and he could hope they meant it.

  The headlight was okay. Cravath asked, “Whichever one of you is driving is allowed to use a scooter? You are of the proper age and know how?”

  “Oh, yes,” the Snarre’t said together. The taller one pulled what looked like a caterpillar out of its fur and breathed on the thing, which glowed a faint pink. “You see?” When a Snarre’ asked if a human saw, the alien always sounded doubtful. To them, humans didn’t see very well, and being adapted to do best in daylight didn’t count.

  But Jack Cravath nodded. That response on that thing meant the same as a green light on a human computer reader scanning a driver’s license. He didn’t know why, but he knew it did.

  “Shall we try it, then?” the shorter one said. “Our drof is yours if we fail to return the scooter.”

  Jack wanted a drof like a hole in the head. But what could he say? “Go ahead,” he answered. “Come back in twenty minutes.”

  “Agreed,” the two Snarre’t said. The taller one got on the scooter in front. The shorter one sat behind. Jack held the door open for them. Out they went. They turned the headlight on. The orange glow was just bright enough to warn humans who weren’t wearing IR goggles. That was what interspecies law required, and they lived up to it … barely.

  Out on the street, the drof’s big eyes—much like those of the Snarre’t themselves—swung to follow the scooter as it purred away. How smart were drofs? Humans had acquired a good many, just as the Snarre’t had a fair number of scooters by now. It remained an open question, though. Some scientists maintained they were only bundles of reflexes; others insisted more was going on.

  As for the Snarre’t, they weren’t talking. Nobody human was even sure the question meant anything to them.

  Jack pulled his phone off his belt to warn Bev he’d be late. “What? You’ve got Furballs in the office?” she said.

  “Well, they’re taking a test drive now.” Jack was glad the two Snarre’t were, too. If their translator picked up what his wife said, they could nail her on a racism charge—or threaten to, and screw him to the wall on the scooter deal. The two races sharing Lacanth C didn’t have to love each other, but they did have to make nice where the other guys were listening. Cravath continued, “Anyway, I’ll get back as soon as I can. Go ahead and eat. I’ll nuke mine when I come in.”

  “Okay,” Beverly said. She was so freshly pregnant, she hadn’t even started morning sickness yet. Her appetite was still fine. “Don’t be too long.”

  “I’ll try not to. It isn’t just up to me. Love you, babe. ’Bye.” Jack stowed the phone.

  He looked at his watch. Naturally, the Snarre’t didn’t use hours and minutes; they had their own time units. Translators were usually pretty good about going back and forth with those. But if this one had screwed up …

  Nineteen minutes and forty-one seconds after they left, the two aliens drove back into the showroom. “It is a very different sort of conveyance,” the taller one said. “Less responsive than a drof—you cannot deny that.”

  “But peppier,” the shorter one said. “Definitely peppier.”

  The taller Snarre’s big googly eyes swung towards its partner or friend or whatever the shorter alien was. Jack didn’t know for sure, but he guessed that meant the same it would have with people. Don’t praise what we’re shopping for. You’ll run up the price.

  If the shorter one noticed, he—she?—didn’t let on. “The price we proposed before is acceptable?” the Snarre’ asked Jack. “For the scooter, our aging but still functional brain?”

  The babelfish translation made that sound pretty silly, as if the aliens would open up their heads and pour out whatever was inside. But Jack Cravath spoke formally: “Yes, the price you proposed before is acceptable.”

  “Draw up the contracts, then,” the taller one said.

  “How old is the brain you want to trade for the scooter?”

  “Six years. Six years of Lacanth C.”

  “Okay.” Jack spoke into the
office business system. It spat out contracts in English and in Snarre’l. Jack reviewed the English versions to make sure they had the deal straight. He signed all the copies, thumbprinted them, and added a retinal scan to each one. The aliens also signed in their angular squiggles. They pressed a special area on each contract to an olfactory gland under the base of their stumpy tails. Those chemical signatures were supposed to be even more distinctive and harder to counterfeit than retinal scans.

  “I will get the brain.” The smaller Snarre’ went out to the drof and stroked it. A pouch opened. If Baba Yaga were a kangaroo instead of a chicken … But the edge of the pouch had teeth, or something an awful lot like them. The Snarre’t discouraged drof thieves.

  Back came the alien. He—she?—put the brain on the counter. It looked up at Jack out of disconcertingly Snarre’-like eyes. Have to keep it in the dark, he thought. A tagline floated through his mind: and feed it bullshit. It was about the size of a basketball, with two little arms and four little legs. Its fur was molting here and there. It looked like something that had seen better days.

  “What do I feed it?” Jack asked.

  “Here is about ten days’ worth of brain food.” The Snarre’ set a membranous sack on the counter by the brain. “You can get more from any of our merchants.” Another, smaller, sack went by the first one. “And here, because you have shown yourself to be congenial, are some spices for flavoring your food. They are not harmful to your kind. It is likely—not certain, for taste is never certain—you will find them flavorsome. They are a gift. We ask nothing in return for them.”

  That was also polite. Even so, Jack said, “Well, thank you very much. Let me give you my stapler here.” It was the first thing he saw on his desk. He showed them what it was for, and threw in a box of staples.

  They seemed happy enough with the theoretically optional return gift. He wondered how they held papers together. Pointy twigs? Bugs with sharp noses? Something biological—he was sure of that.

  They took their copy of the contract. One of them got on the scooter. The other tethered the drof to the new purchase. Away they went. Jack got on the phone. “Made the sale. On my way. See you soon.”

  “Oh, good,” Bev said. “I didn’t start after all, but I was going to pretty soon.”

  “Back as quick as I can,” Jack told her. “’Bye.”

  His own scooter was parked out front. He eyed the brain, which was sitting on the counter. It looked back at him. Did it know it belonged to him now? If it did, what did it think of that? Rather more to the point, how was he supposed to get it home without hurting it?

  He found a cardboard box and put the brain into it. To his relief, it didn’t kick up a fuss. It said something in Snarre’l. The babelfish gave Jack gibberish. “It’ll be okay, honest,” he said in English, and hoped he wasn’t lying. Did the brain understand? Whether it did or not, it kept quiet. That would do.

  Jack set the box between his knees as he got on the scooter. That was the best way he could think of to keep it safe. As soon as he put in the key, the scooter’s electric motor whispered to life. Getting home to Bev made him want to speed up. Protecting the brain made him want to slow down. He probably ended up somewhere in the middle.

  He could tell the second he left Latimer’s mixed-race central business district and got back to the human-settled east side of town. Street lights became bright enough to be useful. He turned the rheostat on the headlight switch and lifted his goggles onto his forehead. Now he could really see where he was going. The Snarre’t might be nocturnal, but he wasn’t.

  The brain was. As the lights brightened, it made a small, whimpering noise. It was taking in more glare than it could handle. He put his riding jacket over the top of the box. The brain stopped whining, so he supposed he’d done the right thing.

  He stopped at a traffic light—one more reminder he was in the human part of Latimer. Another scooter pulled up alongside his. “Hey, Jack!” the man on it said. “How you doing?”

  “Oh, hello, Petros,” Jack answered. Petros van Gilder lived around the corner from him. He sold a rival firm’s scooters. They forgave each other their trespasses. Jack went on, “I’m tolerable. How’s by you?”

  “Fair to partly cloudy,” van Gilder answered. “What’s in the box?”

  “Snarre’i brain. I sold ’em a two-seater, and this is what I got for it.”

  “Not too shabby.” Petros stuck out his hand, which he’d kept in the pocket of his riding jacket. “Way to go. I had a near miss with the Furballs the other day, but I couldn’t close the deal. Congrats.”

  “Thanks.” Jack shook hands with him. “Yeah, that ought to make the firm a tidy little profit once I sell it to the right people. Some left over for me, too.”

  “There you go,” Petros said. The light turned green, and he zoomed off. Jack would have, too, if not for the brain in the box. He followed more sedately. Van Gilder would get home ahead of him tonight.

  He parked in front of the house when he did arrive. One of Lacanth C’s big selling points for human colonists was that it was roomy enough for every family to enjoy its own house and lot. That was one more thing the Snarre’t didn’t grok. Most of them lived in apartment warrens. They liked crowding together. Smells meant more to them than they ever would to humans.

  Come on now, dear. Let’s sniff the Hendersons’ butts. To humans, the talking dogs made a classic T-shirt. The Snarre’t wouldn’t have got the joke, because they really did stuff like that.

  Cravath carried the box to the house. He kept his jacket over it, because the lights were bright—if you were something (someone?) the Snarre’t had bioengineered. He unlocked the front door and let himself in. “Hi, hon!” he called. “I’m home!”

  “What have you got there?” Beverly asked. She was short and blond and plump, and worked for a quantum-mantic outfit that would have to learn to do without her before too long.

  He explained about the brain again. She was suitably impressed. He told the house to turn down the lights. “Now I can uncover it without hurting its eyes,” he said.

  He tossed the jacket on a chair. Bev peered down at the brain. “It looks so sad,” she said.

  “I thought the same thing. I’ll give it some food. Maybe that’ll perk it up. Would you get some water for it, too, please?”

  Bev did, in a plastic cup. The brain ate and drank. It still looked sad after it finished. Jack was happy after chicken stew and a bottle of beer. He tried some of the Snarre’i spices in the stew. He liked them. Bev stayed away from them even so, for fear that anything alien wouldn’t be good for a rapidly growing fetus. She didn’t drink any beer, either, and she liked it.

  They celebrated the sale of the scooter back in the bedroom. The brain stayed in its box in the kitchen. Did it know what was going on at the other end of the house? If it did, it couldn’t do a damn thing about it. Poor thing, Jack thought.

  Did brains mate with other brains to make more brains? Or did the Snarre’t clone them one at a time from a genetic template marked brain? Cravath had no idea. Was the brain in the box male or female? Or, if it was a clone, had the Snarre’t bioengineered all the complications of sexuality out of it? If they had … Poor thing, Jack thought again.

  Well, he was going to sell it to the humans best equipped to take care of it. How well would the Snarre’t have cared for an aging indoor cat? That comparison didn’t occur to Jack, or he probably would have thought Poor thing one more time.

  He got almost as much for the brain as he hoped he would. The retail price for which he would have sold the scooter to humans went into the firm’s account. The rest went into his. Were the tall Snarre’ and the shorter one making similar arrangements? Had they bought the scooter for themselves, or were their engineers tearing the tires and the powerpack to pieces, trying to figure out how they worked?

  That wasn’t his worry. Neither was the brain, not
any more.

  He and Bev used the extra credit in his account to take a South Coast vacation. They lay in the sun and swam in the sea. He drank drinks with plastic rocketships in them. She stuck to fruit nectars and occasional sips stolen from his mugs. She was being good for the baby’s sake. He admired her for that.

  When they got home, a genetics scan showed that it was a boy, and that it suffered from none of the 400 commonest genetic syndromes. That scan came free with their medical coverage. If they wanted to check for the next 400, they would have to pay for the test. Beverly looked up the incidence rate of syndrome 401. It was named for four twenty-first-century doctors, and occurred, the data net said, once in every 83,164,229 births.

  “What do you think?” she asked Jack.

  “Your call, babe. We can afford it if you want to do it,” he said. If, God forbid, anything really rare was going on, he didn’t want her blaming him for not looking into it.

  But she smiled and shook her head. “If you worry about odds like that, you probably snap your fingers to keep the elephants away.” Jack snapped his. They both laughed. The closest elephants to Lacanth C were a lot of light-years away, so snapping your fingers worked like a charm there.

  And that secondary scan wouldn’t have picked up what was going on, anyhow. Neither would a tertiary scan, or a quaternary. …

  The ultrasound very clearly showed the baby’s heart. As for the rest … The tech examining the image frowned a little. “You’ve got a wiggly kid,” she said. “He twisted himself into a really funny position.”

  “Is everything all right?” Bev asked.

  “Yeah, I think so,” the tech answered. “Maybe you want to come in for another check a little closer to term.”

  “Well, maybe I will,” Beverly said. But she didn’t. The tech didn’t make it sound like a big deal, and so she didn’t worry about it. Her OB seemed to think everything was fine. The fetal heartbeat came in loud and clear. Junior—she and Jack were going to name him Sean—sure kicked like a soccer player.