Tall tales in Space. (5641 words)(12/05/2008)

To give credit where it is due. The idea for this story game from a short story 'PLUS X' by Eric Frank Russell. Other than a similar plot though this is 100 percent my own work.

Tall tales in Space. (5641 words)(12/05/2008)

Rewton woke up with a start, then as his brain became a bit more active, he let his head fall back to the ground. He new he wasn’t going anywhere.

‘I need a cigarette.’ he said to himself and closed his eyes again.

Eventually he groaned, rubbed his eyes and sat up. He was still in the same small metallic cell he had been in for the last week. Well, a week possibly, he had no way of telling the time these days. Not that he had ever had a watch or anything so primitive as that in the past, but all the cybernetic implants and diagnostics that the advanced human race was born with in this age had ceased functioning since his capture. He had not only lost the power to tell the time, but his motion sensing and direction finding abilities were also impaired. Still, all Naval Personnel were taught to function without them, to deal with situations just like this.

So. Captured. Rewton shuffled himself over to a wall and leaned his back against it. He had nothing to do but reflect. In space, armed forces personnel are rarely captured. Usually when a ship is hit, its destruction was pretty quick. There is no such thing as survival pods, not this far out and working alone. There would be no point. Rewton, as the chief technician on his ship, the Hermes, had been testing the Enviro-suits when the attack had happened. An enemy destroyer had then scooped him up. To his knowledge he was the first human prisoner the Illusians had taken.

It was a new war, but was not wanting in blood shed. After only six months of conflict a lot of lives had been lost. Some of them had been people that Rewton had liked. The Illusians seemed to be either new at the art of war or were very brutal. They attacked military and civilian targets with equal ferocity. They were as likely to destroy a hospital as anything of military worth.

The Illusians had slaughtered many human colonies with big bombs fired from space. They didn’t seem to understand humans, and appeared to want to clear them out, the same way a man would wipe out an ants nest. There was little to no diplomacy. There were no surrenders on either side and, as Rewton had already reflected, they seemed to take no prisoners. He often wondered at the reason why he might still be alive.

His cell was pretty bare. He slept on the metal floor using his shirt and trousers as a pillow. It was quite hot in here so he just wore his shorts. There was a large barrel of drinking water, and another bucket for him to go to the toilet in. There was a console in one wall but he had been told not too touch that. The light was dim, from a strip above him, about eight feet up. There were no windows and one door. He suspected there would be a camera watching him somewhere but he could not detect it.

He sat on the floor and looked at the console and wondered what the alien looking keypad might do. It looked like a typist’s nightmare, with enough keys for five pairs of hands and looping spirals of sensors and contact pads around the main area.

Time passed and he drank some water. Some more time passed and he relieved his bladder in the bucket, gazing at the strange console in thought as he did so.

He was leaning against the wall not thinking of much when the door opened and an Illusian walked in. Walking was as good as any word for the slow movement of a four legged alien with three arms and more elbows than Rewton could count.

The Illusians that had captured him had no means by which to communicate with him. He had not been addressed since his arrival but by gesture they had made it clear that he should not touch the console. He was surprised then when the Illusian seemed to say to him,

‘Hello, Rewton.’

He didn’t think Illusians could be considered good looking by anyone’s standards. They had a metallic quality to their skin. It seemed to be optional, or was decided by some process unknown to Rewton as to how many eyes and arms they had. This one had three arms, all ending in a clump of long fingers and jointed with probably a dozen elbows each. This one also had eyes to the number of six all clustered at the base of its head underneath a huge horn, or maybe some kind of snorkel. There appeared to be no mouth or ears. Its long low squat body had a stocky leg at each corner.

‘Ummm.. hello..’ He answered and scratched his stubbled chin.

The alien proceeded to produce a box from one hand and put it on the floor. The box was metallic and appeared to have a small speaker set into it.

‘From this box, we may communicate. You would not be able to understand my real name as it is composed of a series of modulated high frequency radio waves, but I have decided you may address me as Isaac.’

‘Oh right.’, replied Rewton.

‘First, formal statement of intentions and purpose. I am your interrogator and my function is to talk to you.’

Rewton didn’t know how to respond to this so waited in silence.

‘Tell me Rewton, do you enjoy passing water through your body?’

Rewton coughed in surprise, ’Well, enjoy may be the wrong word. I need to drink water or I will die.’

‘Yes, and you consume the packets of proteins and carbohydrates that we captured from your ship.’

‘Yes.’

Isaac seemed to consider this, although his face, or where a face might be, was so alien to be unreadable. He lowered himself down on his hind legs.

‘Communication protocols, runtime error, sequence, oh , oh sorry.’, Isaac's attention was suddenly drawn to the small box on the ground.

He started to say something, but a no more than a squawk came out of the box.

The alien considered the box for another moment, tilting his large head around like a dog looking at a bone. He then extended a long arm and cuffed it.

‘Mental note to self. Examine interpreter routines. Better.’

Rewton was utterly confused.

The alien then continued.

‘What purpose do the dead cells on your head serve?’

‘Huh?’

The alien extended an arm and touched Rewton's hair.

Rewton pulled back and said. ‘Er, none, it just grows there, its hair. Keeps my head warm.’

‘Biological. You have technological items within your body. These grow in you also?’

‘No, these are implants.’

‘Your hair serves no purpose connected to your implants?’

‘Err .. no.’

Isaac seemed to consider this and rocked back on his hind legs.

‘You have smaller hairs on your body, these are biological products of your evolution, maybe you evolved from more hairy animals. Animals that had a cold environment.’

Nothing in the modulation of the speech keyed Rewton into whether it was a statement or a question, but he answered, ‘Yes. You are right.’

Isaac seemed happy with this and tilted his head.

‘Well,’ Rewton blurted, ‘I don’t know if you understand what interrogation is all about, but these are not very important questions.’

‘You are probably right,’ replied Isaac, ‘But you are very alien. Has it been explained to you that you must not attempt to touch the console?’

‘Ah, yes.’

‘And you will not touch the console or in any way at all interact with it?’

‘Ah, no, no I won't touch it.’

‘I have had to learn my job quickly. I have learned as much as I can from broadcasts and communications with your species. This is a new method of learning information. And a new method of communication. Disturbing air molecules to cause vibration. Picked up from sound sensors. Most odd. Tell me about your race.’

‘What do you want to know?’

Isaac rocked back on his hind legs and slowly rubbed his elbows together then touched them together, much as a man would steeple his fingers.

‘Tell me about the U.P.’

So, Rewton started to talk about the United Planets. He saw no real purpose in hiding such basic facts and had never been trained in interrogation techniques or how to handle alien encounters. He was still a bit shaken up from watching all his friends die on the Hermes, and besides, like many of his race he was a free thinker and a bit of a pacifist.

In a fairly relaxed voice he revealed the following facts to his captor;

The UP, the United Planets, or sometimes the UFP, the United Federation of Planets depending on what area of space you lived in was a loose collective of several hundred planets and orbitals as well as a few thousand deep space facilities. It was all run from a central committee on a rugged planet orbiting Kochab, a star 126 light years away from Terra, the birthplace of mankind. How this came to be Rewton explained. As the human race, still fragmented into different factions explored the stars around them, such as Proxima Centauri, Tau Ceti, Wolf 359 and Ross 128 they met a more advance civilisation, the Tasters, coming the other way. By then Terrans had developed faster than light travel, the Tasters while older and more powerful still relied on generation ships to spread there genes around the galaxy. Here Rewton's knowledge of history got a bit vague, he suspected they may have had religious beliefs that disallowed travelling faster than light, as once you understood how to manipulated wormholes it was, while not easy, certainly doable.

There were wars at first, but soon the two cultures merged, with the seat of power on Kochab (known locally as My'her). Mankind flourished and spread throughout the Tasters Empire like a virus, soon taking over everything. One by one, the Tasters on the central committee were replaced by humans. Over the next few hundred years mankind came to totally dominate the empire and the U.P. was born.

But Taster ideology, politics and some religion remained. The style of government that suited such a wide area of space was known as ‘enlightened communism’ by some and ‘tyranny’ by others. The central committee was now in essence immortal due to longevity treatments and cybernetics. The duma had sat in session and not been dissolved for the last two hundred and fifteen years. No committee member had been replaced in over three hundred. The CC were more machine than man.

Freedom in the UP is restricted, Rewton explained, more so on some planets than others. Each planet has a governor in residence whose job it is to ensure tribute flowed back to Kochab.

Political officers on every planet in the UP watched over and guided the local councils and soviets encouraging correct political thinking. Capital punishment was encouraged, but not enforced on every system. Not everyone was happy with such a draconian style of government, but not much had changed since the days of the Tasters and seemed unlikely to with the CC so firmly installed.

And what had happened to the Tasters?

They had all vanished in a mass exodus four hundred years ago to the 'second arm', Terra, Kochab, even the Illusians, being in the third arm of the galaxy.

A very totalitarian communist style regime, yes, but one suited to the situation and much more enlightened than any form of government in history.

Certainly an improvement on the nearest alternative.

Rewton came to a natural stop in his monologue. He had done all the talking except for the occasional question from Isaac.

Isaac rolled back on his hind legs and said

‘Yes, tell me about the Empire.’

The human nodded and said , ‘The Empire. It’s like a nightmare. Out past Ross 154, about 100 light years towards galactic centre. Our border touches theirs there. I suppose we have always been at war with them. The only bits that we have ever seen are the slave planets. The actual empire itself is said to extend for hundreds and hundreds of light years, maybe all the way to galactic centre.’

It was funny, thought Rewton, like a ghost story for children, the Empire seemed to exist to scare the member planets of the UP into line. Like medieval stories of the devil, the fear of the dreadful alternative kept them all together.

Isaac seemed to wave a well elbowed arm in a gesture that might have meant Rewton was to continue.

‘Well.’, Rewton shrugged, ‘It could be all propaganda, I don’t know. I have seen pictures of who the rulers of the Empire are supposed to be. Big black nasty spiders, but you never get one on the border, we only hear stories from prisoners and released slaves. The tip of the Empire that we can see from our border maybe goes about a dozen systems deep and all of them are slave planets. In the war we fight other humans or genetic soldiers. We call the Empire Spiderspace.’ , Rewton shrugged, ‘What can I say? For us humans, it's our worst nightmare.’

He then chanced his arm,  ‘Those ration packs you found off the Hermes, did you happen to find any cigarettes as well?’

Isaac rubbed two of his elbows together for a while then said

‘I believe it is required that when I leave the room I must say goodbye. Goodbye.’

The alien rose up onto its legs and left.

‘Ah goodbye.’, replied Rewton with a half hearted wave.

He felt so awkward about the aliens attempt at manners and the interrogation, if you could call it that had given him a lot to think about. He walked around the room for an hour to stretch his legs.

After Rewton had slept he sat up and looked at the console. They obviously don’t understand human nature very well anyway, he reflected. Why not touch the console. What will happen? Is it electrified in some way? I suppose this is the nearest thing they could find to act as a cell for me? Perhaps an operator worked here doing whatever that console does. Do they understand that maybe my word that I won’t touch it is maybe not enough to stop me from doing so? They talk like computer programs.

Rewton doubted if he was terribly representative of his race anyway. His people, the people that lived on the man made satellites around Tau Ceti were a bit more free thinking and open minded than most in the UP. He had been conscripted into the Navy and when his term was served he would leave. He had seen many battles in the three years he had been in service but he would never be a military man. In two years assuming he was still alive and free, he would go back into civilian life. Maybe go back to Tau Ceti and get a job in one of the tech modules.

The next day, or what felt like the next day, Rewton could no longer stand the boredom of being locked in the cell and started to fiddle with the console.

He started to press keys at random, then pocked about on the odd looking sensors and swirling areas they felt like jelly to the touch.

He had expected a shock, but nothing seemed to happen. After a few more random key presses some of them suddenly lit up. One of what may have been a display area brightened, then went dark again. Without thinking he gasped and pulled his hands up to his chest.

Just as he was slowly lowering his hands back down to the console the door opened and Isaac lumbered in.

‘It was explained to you that you are not to interface with the console.’

Like a guilty school boy Rewton stepped back and put his hands behind his back.

‘Ah yes.’

‘Yet you did so.’

‘Sorry.’

Isaac moved up to the console and with clicking elbows extended several of his seemingly endless supply of fingers pressed several keys.

As he did so he said,

‘You understood the command when it was issued and yet a fault occurred. Your processing may be corrupt.’

‘Well ...’, began Rewton.

Isaac seemed to finish what he was doing, turned to the human and said,

‘This is a makeshift cell. The console is for an operator to monitor and control nanode fuel consumption on the base. You could have caused some serious damage.’

Rewton was amazed, ‘But why put me here, I am your enemy!’

‘Your processing was not seen as faulty.’

It began to dawn on Rewton that he was being treated like a piece of broken programming. He hoped that they were not going to debug him as harshly as he had done to some of the systems on the Hermes.

‘Why have a console at all? I thought you communicated via radio waves?’

‘Correct. For lights, doors, terminals and data stores. But not for secure systems.’

‘I understand. Humans can get implants to do these things as well.’

‘We are made like this.’, Isaac said as he left the room, ‘Goodbye.’

Very shortly after that, two more silent aliens arrived and dismantled the console.

Some time later was awoken from his thoughts by Isaac entering the room, giving a tantalising view of the corridor beyond, bearing an empty bucket, some food and the communications device.

‘Hello Rewton.’

‘Hello Isaac.’, he replied.

The whole of that day, as it felt anyway, Rewton had to eat two meals during it, the interrogation continued. Mostly it was about military matters. Early on Rewton found that he could deny knowledge of something and Isaac would take it as gospel that Rewton did not know anything about the subject under question. He knew a great deal about the weapon systems that had been on board the Hermes, as the chief technician it was his job. But once he had said to Isaac he knew nothing about it, as far as the alien was concerned, that was that. He was willing to answer more general questions, and occasionally he would ask one of his own, which Isaac would always answer in some way. Rewton had never been interrogated before, but he felt that, on the whole, Isaac was pretty hopeless at it.

Over the course of the day he learned a few interesting facts about his alien captors.

The Illusians were an escaped robotic race, their masters being long since dead. Certainly it was hard to tell by looking at them, they look more like large beetles than robots.

In terms of their own race, they appeared to be very adaptive and fairly peaceful. Any one Illusian could do the job of another one after only a few days training. It was also hard to imagine how one of these great hulks could get angry at another one. There seemed to be so little for them to argue about.

There is little crime, in fact they didn’t really understand the concept of crime. Occasionally an Illusian would behave in a manner dangerous to another. The wrong doer was seen as faulty and was ‘dismantled’.

They favoured democracy as the main mode of politics, Isaac could only explain the human races politics by their primitive modes of communication. He though Rewton very backward.

They communicated with each other via radio waves which had meant that someone had had to design and build a device to communicate with humans. Their large brains were apparently in their torsos.

The next day they talk about politics. Rewton argued that galactic communism is the only way to run a nation as big as the UP, but Isaac argued that democracy (something that humans saw as outmoded), freedom and leniency were the best way. This conversation went on for some time and Rewton got the feeling that Isaac enjoyed it.

The conversation gradually worked its way back onto more recent events and up to the destruction of the Hermes.

‘Tell me again how was it you came to survive?’ asked Isaac.

‘Lucky I guess. I was outside the ship, testing a suit. I still had a full tank of air when you nailed the Hermes.’

‘What is luck?’

‘Luck, you know, er.. liked I had a guardian angel looking after me.’

‘A guardian angel. What is that?’

‘Hmm, a spirit. A supernatural entity that watches over you and protects you.’

‘Do all humans have this?’

‘No ah, well. Hard to say.’

‘That is very interesting.’ ,mused Isaac.

The day after that Isaac brought up the Empire and Spiderspace again.

‘From overheard transmissions I have learned this human phrase,’ he said, ‘The enemy of my enemy is my friend.’

‘Sure yeah. Make friends with a bunch of nasty evil super-alien spiders.’

‘Evil is a human concept.’

Rewton sighed and leaned back, ‘They can’t be reasoned with. Don’t let me stop you though. They treat all other species as cattle. The pictures and newsreel I have seen.. I mean, they recycle human dead and feed it back to them. Not just humans though, other races too. Bread to be numerous and highly expendable. Working in mines, on farms or bread to be soldiers. If population gets to high on a planet, they just kill people off.’

‘That isn’t the correct way to deal with sentient beings.’, contemplated Isaac.

‘You said it pal.’

Rewton knew the UP could only withstand the Empire partly because of the vastness of space, and partly because of a slight technological edge on the side of the Terrans, but if the Empire and the Illusians were to get together? That would be the end for the UP wouldn’t it? He couldn’t see how they could fight two united enemies at the same time. He groaned inwardly, there wasn't much he could do about that where he was at the moment.

Another day, another talk. Isaac lent back on his hind legs, something that Rewton had began to think of as the Illusian version of how a human might lean back on a chair, then said,

'So, explain to my why we are at war?'

Rewton shrugged, 'Simple, you attacked us.'

'We attacked a base they you established on a barren moon in a star system that we inhabit.'

'According to the 1414 treaty we had every right to be there.'

'A treaty we know nothing about.’ replied Isaac

For about the thousandth time, Rewton wished he had a cigarette.

'Well, this is the way things happen. We are at war.', he said eventually.

Isaac contemplated this for a while, then said,

‘Tell me about the worm hole technology that allows you to travel faster than light.’

‘I don’t know anything about that, I just fixed the chicken soup machines.’ Rewton lied.

‘You’re aware of the dangers inherent in worm home travel?’

Rewton shrugged, ‘I don’t know.’

Isaac didn’t seem to mind Rewton’s reticence, and in fact was willing to share some information with his captive,

‘Illusian ships use anti-matter drives to go at very nearly the speed of light. We do not bend and crush the same way a human might under the forces of great gravity. The expansion of our race has been slow, but up until now it has not seemed to matter as we are very long lived.’

Rewton merely nodded and Isaac continued,

‘Up until now, that has not seemed to matter. But against a race like yours. Each unit is short lived, but the whole is driven by an inexorable drive for expansion.’

Rewton smiled and held out his hands in an apology, ‘It’s not my fault.’

‘Fault,’, replied Isaac, ‘Yes. Something is at fault here.’

Isaac sometimes seemed to talk to Rewton like he is a computer program he was trying to debug.

‘My superior as been discussing with me the idea of dismantling you. He is of the opinion we would would gain more information from you than by diagnostics.’

‘Oh really’, gulped Rewton, ‘I.. I don’t think that would be a good idea.’

‘I agree’, replied Isaac, ‘Communication through sound waves has revealed a lot to me over the last week. Even so, there will come a time when we have discovered all there is to know via this method. At some point we will need to reverse engineer you. Goodbye.’

Isaac stood and departed, leaving Rewton alone and very worried indeed.

‘Think man, think’, said Rewton to himself, biting his fingernails as his cigarette cravings hit hard.

He can lie, he knew that. Isaac, and presumably all Illusians seemed to find it very hard to tell the difference between the truth and a lie. They probably never lied to each other, he could see it, in such a well organised society.

Rewton thought back to the conversation’s he had had over the last week with his interrogator.

‘I really ,really don’t like the idea of being reverse engineered.’

He thought over all the conversations he had had with Isaac, surely there was something he could use.

He leaned over and opened a ration pack. There were some biscuits inside, they didn’t taste great but they reminded him of his childhood. They were called ‘Berty’s Originals’ although he had no idea why. They were sort of star shaped and looked a little like a human with either four arms or wings. When he had been a child they had all said how much the shape of the biscuits were like little angels...

Rewton smiled, he had had an idea.

Isaac entered to find Rewton had been busy. The human had been drawing on the wall with foodstuffs, a complicated circular design made from tomato sauce and chocolate spread. The human sat under it, his legs crossed and his arms held out on his knees, the index finger of each hand touching the thumb of the same hand. He was emitting a low humming sound.

‘What are you doing Rewton?’, asked the alien.

Rewton opened his eyes and stopped humming,

‘I am communicating with my Berty of course.’

‘What is a Berty?’

‘My guardian angel. It saved me, remember I told you?’

‘Your luck?’

‘Well yes. Now I am asking my Berty to send help for me.’

‘It can do that?’

‘Of course. Bertys are supernatural. They can travel space and time with ease. They are all powerful.’

‘Is it here? I cannot see it.’, said Isaac scanning the room with his six eyes.

‘Bertys are invisible.’

‘I cannot detect it by any means.’

‘Berty’s are non-corporeal.’

‘I don’t understand.’

‘Listen’, said Rewton, making it all up as he went along. ‘All humans have two components. They have a physical component, their body, and a supernatural component, their Bert.’

‘You are faulty.’

‘No. You cannot prove that what I am saying is not true. An invisible, non-corporeal entity that can travel through space and time to aid its host body cannot be disproved.’

‘You are correct. Please stop communicating with your Berty now.’

‘Too late. I have finished.’

Something occurred to Isaac as he wrestled with the idea of truth and lies,

‘If what you said is true, then why were you the only survivor of the Hermes? Didn't all the other humans have Bertys?’

Rewton had to think about that , ‘Ah.. they did. They were saved. That is why you found no human remains.’

‘Yes. Or it could have been because the ship was completely vaporised.’

‘It cannot be proved either way then.’

Isaac paused for a while, possible communicating with its fellow Illusians.

‘Goodbye.’ He said finally and left the room.

Rewton fought the urge to laugh, but let out a big sigh or relief none the less.

He hoped that little performance was enough to keep them interested in him for a while longer. Whenever the words ‘reverse engineer’ came up next he would make up something else just as silly.

A week passed, and Isaac did not come to see him. Rewton was beginning to think they had forgotten him, but finally he got not one but two visitors. One was Isaac, whom he recognised by his limb configuration and one was an Illusian he didn’t know.

Isaac placed a small machine down on the floor of the room and an image flicked into life.

‘Please watch this.’ ,he instructed.

Rewton saw what looked like the bridge of a star ship with a human sat on a seat close up to whatever was recording. He looked about in his fifties, was black haired and had a pencil thin moustache.

An electronic voice said,

‘You are Ambassador Krinn of Terra?’

‘Yes I am.’

‘I am a councillor of the Illusian Joint Committee for the Conduct of the War. You may refer to me as Jacob.’

‘Right.’, said the human curtly.

‘We have made contact with you to discuss certain things of concern to both of our races.’

‘Go on then.’

‘We wish to discuss the moon on the first system of..’

Here the recording appeared to be cut because it obviously skipped forward. A lot further forward in fact because Krinn seemed to need a shave, had obviously not slept in a long time and was nervously smoking a cigarette butt that had nearly gone out.

‘One more question on human biology’, droned on Jacob, ‘Can you confirm that all humans are part of a pairing between a physical body and a supernatural entity that is both invisible and non-corporeal and that can travel through space and time.’

‘What?’

‘Known as a Berty?’

‘You’ve lost me there buddy.’

‘Or as a guardian angel.’

Krinn’s face was blank, but then it dawned on him and he smiled, ‘Ohhhh riiiight. Sure guardian angels. We’ve all got them. Well known fact.’

Rewton watching, had to stuff his fist into his mouth to stop laughing. He felt like if he ever met Krinn he would give him a kiss.

‘Known to humans perhaps. Illusians are purely physical beings. It has often been a point of discussion by Illusian philosophers on the subject of the make up of biological beings but we have never gathered any empirical evidence on the matter. We are beings descended from machines, we know this, we know who made us, we know the limits of our being. We do not know the limits of sentient biological beings.’

‘Right, well, you’d better know about the .. ah.. pixies as well. They are like guardian angels but they are not linked to every human .. they, ah, go around doing good deeds.’

Careful thought Rewton, don’t over do it. But Jacob seemed to be swallowing it.

‘Are pixies like guardian angels?’

‘Very much so’ replied the Ambassador, ‘They serve a similar purpose.’

‘I see, what can you tell us about..’

The recording was cut here. Rewton looked up at Isaac.

‘Well?’, he said.

The other Illusian spoke,

‘This information has made the Joint Committee for the Conduct of the War reconsider its strategy. We cannot conduct a war against beings that have a supernatural component in their make up. It has been decided that a cease fire will be offered to your military leaders and the terms of our surrender will be discussed.’

Rewton went pale and was almost quivering with excitement,

‘Really? And me?’

‘A U.P. ship is already on its way to collect you.’

The unnamed Illusian rose and left the room, Isaac stayed.

‘Really, Isaac? I can go?’

‘Yes. When the J.C.C. got independent verification of Bertys, they decided there were now too many unknown factors and that pursuing a course of conflict was untenable.’

‘I’m.. I’m amazed.’, said Rewton. He couldn’t believe his story had in effect stopped the entire war.

‘Be glad. You and I, we do not like to see killing. This is the best for both our races.’

Rewton looked the alien in its six eyes, but could see nothing. No sarcasm or hidden meaning in his words?

‘Do you.. I mean, you personally, believe everything I said?’

‘Why would I doubt you? What does it serve to make statements that are not true?’

Rewton pulled on his lip, ‘Well, the war’s over for a start.’

‘I think that answers your question admirably then. Please follow me. Would you like to see the rest of the base before your fellows come to take you away?’

Sometime later Rewton met Ambassador Krinn, as he boarded a diplomatic vessel that was taking them back to Kochab.

‘Bertys huh?’, grunted the Ambassador.

‘Pixies?’

‘Ha! What can I say? You are the hero of the day though. You’ll have a big reward coming your way.’

Rewton smiled and said, ‘I would trade it all for one of those cigarettes in your top pocket.’

Krinn offered him one and even lit it.

Rewton took a long hard drag and blew a big cloud of smoke up into the gangway.

‘Don’t let the captain catch you smoking here though, he’s pretty old fashioned about that sort of thin.’

‘Reckon I’ve earned it,’ replied Rewton in between puffs.

‘You think they really fell for it. They believe in Bertys now I mean?’

‘I guess so. But I think one of them, Isaac, was beginning to suspect. But I don’t think he liked the war, so it suited him. Maybe they would have ended it anyway and I was just in the right place at the right time.’

‘Maybe that was just your Berty looking out for you?’, smirked the diplomat.

Rewton laughed, ‘You know, my mother always told me never to tell lies.’

‘Well, she’s going to have a hard time swallowing this story I think. Come on, I’ll show you to your cabin.’