The Symbiotes - James H. Schmitz, ebook, CALIBRE SFF 1970s, Temp 2
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THE SYMBIOTES
A symbiotic relationship is fine for the symbiotes.
But when they become parasites. . . !
JAMES H. SCHMITZ
I
Trigger had been shopping at Wehall's that morning, winding up with lunch on one of the store's
terrace restaurants. She had finished, lit a Twirpy, and was smoking it contemplatively when a tiny
agitated-sounding voice spoke to her.
"Good lady," it said, "you have a kind face! I'm a helpless fugitive and an enemy is looking for me.
Would you let me hide in your handbag un-til he goes away?"
The words seemed to have come from the surface of the table. Some-one's idea of a joke . . .
Trigger let the Twirpy drop from her fingers to the disposal disk and looked casually around, expecting to
discover an ac-quaintance. People sat at tables here and there about the terrace, but no one was at all
near her. And she saw no one she knew.
"Good lady, please! There isn't much time!"
She shrugged. Why not go along with the humorist?
"Where are you?" she asked, in a conspiratorially low tone. "I don't see you."
"Between the large blue utensil and the smaller white one. I don't dare show myself. The abominable
Blethro wasn't far behind me!"
Trigger glanced at the blue pitcher on the table, moved it a few inches back from a square white
sandwich warmer. Her eyes widened briefly. Then she laughed.
One of Wehall's advertising stunts! A manikin, a miniature male figure, crouched beside the pitcher.
Straightened up, it might have reached a height of eight inches. The features were exquisitely mobile and
lifelike. Blue eyes looked im-ploringly at her. It wore a velvety purple costume—the finery of an ear-lier
century.
"You really are cute, little man!" she told it. "A work of art. And just what kind of work of art are
you, eh? Protohom? Robot? Telecontrolled? Do you know?"
The doll was shaking its head vio-lently. "No, no!" it said. "Please! I'm as human as you are. Help me
hide before Blethro finds me, and. I'll ex-plain everything."
Her reactions were being re-corded, of course. Well, she wouldn't mind playing their game for a
minute or two.
"A joke's a joke, midget," she re-marked, drawing up her eyebrows. "But slipping you into my bag
just might be construed as shoplifting. Do you realize you probably cost a good deal more than I make in
a year?"
"They said no one would believe me," the doll told her. Tears in the tiny eyes? She felt startled. "I'm
from a world you've never heard about. Our size was reduced geneti-cally. Blethro had three of us in a
box in his aircar. We agreed to at-tempt to escape the next time he opened the car door ..."
Trigger glanced about. Halfway across the terrace, a man stood star-ing in her direction. She shifted
the blue pitcher slightly to give the doll better cover. "Where are the other two?" she asked.
"Blethro seized them before they could get out of the car. If I'm to find help for them, I must get away
first. But you believe I'm a toy! So I—"
And now the man was coming purposefully along the aisles toward Trigger's table. She cupped a
light hand over the doll as it began to straighten up. "Wait a moment!" she muttered. "Does your
abominable Blethro sport a great yellow mous-tache?"
"Yes! Is—"
Trigger swung her handbag around behind the pitcher, snapped it open, blocking the man's line of
 view. "Blethro seems to have spotted you," she whispered. "Keep down and pop inside the bag! We're
leav-ing."
Bag slung from her shoulder, she set off quickly toward the nearest door leading from the terrace.
Glancing back, she saw the man with the jutting yellow moustache lengthen his stride. But he checked at
the table where she'd been sitting, hastily moved a few articles about and lifted the top off the sandwich
warmer. Trigger hurried on, not quite running now.
A small sign on the door read We-hall Employees Only. She looked back. Blethro was hurrying, too,
not far behind her. She pushed through the door, sprinted along the empty white hallway beyond it. After
some seconds, she heard a yell and his footsteps pounding in hot pursuit.
The hall ended where another one crossed it. Blank walls, and nobody in sight. Left or right? Trigger
ran up the branch on the right, turned an-other corner—there at last was a door!
A locked door, she discovered in-stants later. Blind alley! Blethro came rushing around the corner,
slowed as he saw her. He smiled then, walked unhurriedly toward her.
"End of the line, eh?" he said, breathing heavily. "Now let's see what you have in that bag!"
"Why?" Trigger asked, slipping the bag from her shoulder.
Blethro grinned. "Why? Why were you running?"
"That's my business," Trigger told him. "Perhaps I felt I needed the ex-ercise. Unless you're
something like a police officer—and can prove it—you'd be well advised to leave me alone! I can make
very serious trouble for you."
The threat didn't seem to alarm Blethro, who was large and muscu-lar. He continued to grin through
his moustache as he came up. "Well, perhaps I'm a Wehall detective."
"Prove that!"
"I don't think I'll bother." He held his hand out, the grin fading. "The bag! Fast!"
Trigger swung away from him. He made a quick grab for her. She let the bag slide to the floor,
caught the grabbing arm with both hands, mov-ing solidly back into Blethro, bent and hauled forward. He
flew over her head, smacked against the locked door with satisfying force, landed on the floor more or
less on his shoulders, made an unpleasant comment and rolled back up on his feet, face very red and
angry.
Then he saw the handbag standing open on the floor beside Trigger and a gun pointed at him. It
wasn't a large gun, but its appearance was sleek and deadly; and it was held by a very steady hand.
Blethro scowled uncertainly. "Here—wait a minute!"
"I hate arguments," Trigger told him. "And I did warn you. So just go to sleep like a good boy now!"
She fired and Blethro slumped to the floor. Trigger glanced down. The doll figure was clinging to the
rim of the handbag, peering at her with wide eyes. "Did Blethro have friends with him?" she asked.
"No. He came alone in the car. But he'd indicated he was to meet someone here."
Trigger considered, nodded. "We'll put this away again." She slipped the gun into a cosmetics purse
she'd been holding in her left hand, closed the purse and placed it in the bag. Then she knelt beside
Blethro, began going quickly through his pockets.
"Is he dead?" the small voice in-quired from behind her.
"Not dead, midget! Nor injured. But it'll be an hour or two before he wakes up. Good thing I nailed
him first—he carries a gun. What's your name, by the way? Mine's Trigger."
"My name's Salgol. What are you doing?"
"Something slightly illegal, I'm afraid. Borrowing Blethro's car keys—and here they are!" Trigger
straightened up. "Now let's arrange this a little differently." She picked up Salgol, eased him into her
blazer pocket. "You stay down in there when there's anyone around. Blethro left his car and the box with
your friends in it on a lot next to the restaurant terrace?"
"Yes."
"Fine," Trigger said. "You point the car out to me when we get there. Then we'll all go somewhere
safe, and you'll tell me what this is about so we can figure out what to do."
"Thank you, Trigger!" Salgol piped from her pocket. "I did well to trust you. I didn't have much hope
for Smee and Runderin, or even for myself."
 "Well, we may not be out of trouble yet! We'll see." Trigger snapped the bag shut, slung it from her
shoulder. "Let's go before some-one happens by here! Ready?"
"Ready." Salgol dipped down out of sight.
A few people glanced curiously at Trigger as she came back out on the restaurant terrace.
Apparently they'd realized something was going on be-tween her and Blethro, and were wondering what
it had been about. She thought it shouldn't matter. Ev-eryone having lunch here would have finished and
left before Blethro regained his senses. She sauntered across the terrace, went along a pas-sage to the
parking lot, stopped at the entrance. There was no attendant in sight at the moment. She waited until a
couple who'd just got out of their car went past her. All clear now . . .
"Salgol?"
She could barely hear his muffled reply from the pocket.
"Take a look around!" she told him quietly. "We're there."
Salgol stuck his head out and identified Blethro's aircar as one of those standing against the parapet
on the street side of the parking lot—the seventh from the left. Then he dis-appeared again until Trigger
had un-locked the car door, stepped inside and locked the door behind her.
The car was of a fixed-canopy, one-way-view type. Trigger didn't take off immediately. The box in
which Salgol's companions were confined stood on a back seat, and she wanted to make sure they were
in there. She worked the latches off it and opened the top.
They were there—two tiny, charm-ing females in costume dresses which matched Salgol's outfit.
They stared apprehensively up at her. She lifted Salgol into the box and he spoke a few unintelligible
lilting sentences to them. Then they were beaming at Trigger, though they said nothing. Apparently they
didn't know Trans-linque. She smiled back, left the box open, sat down at the controls and took the car
up into the air.
II
The hotel room ComWeb chimed, and Trigger switched it on. Telzey's image appeared on the
screen.
"I came home just now and got your message," Telzey said. "I'm sorry there was a delay." Her gaze
shifted around the room. "Where are you?"
"Hotel room."
"Why?"
"Seems better to keep away from the apartment just now."
Telzey's eyebrows lifted. "Trouble?"
"Not yet. But there's more than likely to be! I ran into something un-usual, and it's a ticklish matter.
Can you come over?"
"As soon as you tell me where you are."
Trigger told her, and Telzey switched off, saying she was on her way.
There was a world called Marell …
Trigger said, "The Old Territory people who set up the genetic min-iaturization project did it because
they thought it had been proved there'd be a permanent shortage of habitable planets around. So that sets
it back about eleven hundred years, when they'd begun to get range but didn't yet know where and how
to look."
They'd discovered Marell, which seemed eminently habitable, and de-cided to populate it with a
human strain reduced in size to the point where a vast number could be sup-ported by the planet without
crowd-ing it. A staff of scientists and tech-nicians of normal size accompanied the miniature colony to see
it safely through any early problems.
On Marell, a plague put an abrupt end to the project before it could get under way. It wiped out the
super-visory staff and more than half of the small people; and no Old Territory ship touched on the planet
again. The survivors were left to their own resources, which were slender enough. They came close to
 extermi-nation but recovered, began to develop a technology, and in the course of the following centuries
spread out until they'd made a sizable part of Marell their own.
"Steam and electricity," said Trig-ger. "They'd got up to that, but not beyond it. One group knew
what ac-tually had happened on Marell, but they kept their records a secret. Some others had legends
that they were descendants of Giants who flew through space and that kind of thing. Not many believed
the legends. Then the Hub ship came."
It had been a surveyor ship. It moved about in Marell's skies for weeks before coming down to take
samples of the surface. It also took a section of a Marell town on board, along with about a hundred of
its in-habitants. Then it left.
"When was that?" Telzey asked.
"Salgol was one of the first group they picked up, and he was the equivalent of eleven standard years
old at the time," said Trigger. "That makes it fifteen standard years ago."
"Most of the people they took with them then died," Salgol told Telzey. "They didn't treat us badly
but they gave us bad diseases. They found out what to do about the dis-eases, and taught Translingue to
those of us who were left, and some of the Giants learned one of our main languages."
Telzey nodded. "And then?"
"We went back to Marell. They knew we had an electrical communi-cation system. They used it."
The Hub ship issued orders. Geo-logically, Marell was a rich world, and the Hub men wanted the
choic-est of its treasures. They were taking what was immediately on hand, and thereafter the Marells
would work to provide them with more. Quotas were set. The ship would return each year to gather up
what had been col-lected.
"How many Marells were there now?" Telzey asked.
Salgol shook his head. "That isn't definitely known. But when I was there last, I was told there might
be sixty million of the people."
"So, even with limited equipment, it adds up to a very large annual haul of precious stones and
metals."
"Yes, lady, it has," said Salgol.
"And you don't have weapons against space armor."
"No. The people do have weap-ons, of course, and good ones. There are huge animals there—huge
as we see them—and some are still very dangerous. And the nations have fought among themselves,
though not since the ship came. But they aren't like your weapons. One town turned its cannon on the
Giants when they came to collect. The Gi-ants weren't hurt, but they burned the town with everyone in
it."
Trigger said, "Besides, there were threats. The Marells were told they'd better be thankful for the
current ar-rangement and do what they could to keep it going. If the Hub govern-ment ever learned
about them, the whole planet would be occupied, and any surviving Marells would be slaves forever."
"Did you believe that?" Telzey asked Salgol.
"I wasn't sure, lady. The Hub people I've met before today might do it, if they saw enough advantage
in it. Perhaps you had a very bad government."
"Then why did you run away from Blethro? Wasn't that endangering your world, as far as you
knew?"
Salgol glanced at his companions. "There's a worse thing beginning now," he said. "Those they took
away before were to become inter-preters like myself, or to provide some special information. But now
they plan to collect the most physi-cally perfect among our young people and sell them in the Hub like
animal pets. I felt I had to take the chance to find out whether there weren't some of you who would try
to prevent it. I thought there must be, since you don't seem really dif-ferent from us except for your size."
Telzey said after a moment, "They'd risk spoiling the present setup with something like that?"
"It wouldn't spoil it, Telzey," Trig-ger said. "Blethro was acting as mid-dleman. He was to make a
contact today to sell the idea, with Runderin and Smee as samples and Salgol fill-ing in as their male
counterpart. If the deal went over, the merchandise would get amnesia treatment and be taught
Translingue before delivery to the distributor. They'd be sold un-dercover as a protohom android
 spe-ciality. They'd think it's what they were, and I doubt it would be pos-sible to disprove it biologically.
They'd be dead in ten years, before they could begin to show significant signs of aging. They were to be
treated for that, too."
Telzey remarked, "Developing self-aware intelligence in protohom products is illegal, of course."
"Of course. But if the results could be made to look like those two, somebody would find it
profitable."
Telzey regarded the tiny ladies with their beautiful faces, elaborate coiffures and costumes. They gave
her anxious smiles. Replaceable erot-ic toys. Yes, the exploiters of Marell might have hit on a quite
profitable sideline.
She said to Salgol, "Could you tell someone how to get to Marell?"
He shook his head. "Lady, no. I've tried to find out. But the Hub men were careful not to let me have
such information, and the people's astron-omy isn't advanced enough to estab-lish a galactic reference.
All I can say is that it took the ships on which I've been three months to make the trip in either direction."
Trigger closed the door to the suite's bedroom, where the Marells had returned to their box. "Well?"
she said. "How does it check out telepathically?"
"They are human," Telzey said. "Allowing for their backgrounds, they can't be distinguished mentally
from Hub humans. Salgol's near ge-nius grade. It's a ticklish situation, all right. How long's it been since
Blethro might have come awake?"
"Not much more than an hour."
"How well are you covered?" Trigger shrugged. "Blethro can give them my description, of course. I
dumped his car, taxied back to where I'd left mine, left that in a ga-rage, and taxied here. I really didn't
leave much of a trail."
"No. But we'll assume Blethro contacted his principals at once. That's obviously a big outfit with
plenty of money. And the matter's important to them. You could upset their entire Marell operation and
land them in serious trouble. They're probably looking hard for you."
Trigger nodded. "They'd try for a quick pick-up first. I figured our best chance to get a line on them
would be while they're still looking for me. In fact, it might be the only real chance for a century to find
out where Marell is. If they can't locate me and those three, they could dis-solve the project and wipe out
the evidence, and they probably will."
"Where do you want to take this?" Telzey said.
"Psychology Service, top level."
"That seems the best move. Why didn't you go directly to their city center?"
"Because I didn't want to have it fumbled by some underling," Trig-ger said. "I don't know the local
Ser-vice group. You do."
"All right." Telzey looked at the room ComWeb. "Better not use that. I'll call the center from a public
booth. They should have an escort here for you and the Marells in min-utes."
She left. Trigger returned to the bedroom, told Salgol what they in-tended. He was explaining the
situ-ation to the other two while she closed and latched the box. She put on her blazer, glanced at her
watch, sat down to wait.
Some three minutes later, she heard the faintest of clicks. It might have come from the other room.
Trigger picked up the gun she'd left lying on the table beside her, stood up quietly, and listened. There
were no further sounds. She started mov-ing cautiously toward the door.
The air about her seemed to sway up and down, like great silent waves lifting and falling. Trigger
stumbled forward into the waves, felt herself sink far down in them and drown.
III
"How do you feel?" a voice was saying; and Trigger realized her eyes were open. She looked at the
speaker, and glanced around.
She was sitting in a cushiony deep chair; there was a belt around her waist, and her hands were
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