We Install by Harry Turtledove Page A

can always peel them out of the investigation later.”
    â€œOkay. We’re on the same page, anyhow,” Kling said. “I’ll make the contact. Boy, that’ll be fun. Fun like the gout, is what it’ll be. So long, Reiko. Talk with you later.” He hopped on his scooter and headed for the hospital.
    The Snarre’i investigator’s name was a collection of screeches and smells that don’t translate well into human-style phonemes. We can call her Miss Murple. The name is similar but not identical to that of a legendary human investigator. What she did was similar but not identical to what a human investigator might do, too, so Miss Murple works well enough as a handle.
    She didn’t want to be investigating just then. She was right in the middle of an exciting lifey. Again, the name is approximate, but it will do. Since it was daytime out, she’d told her windows to exclude most of the ambient light. She sat in her darkened living room, her eyes closed, her brain’s little hand wrapped around her left index finger.
    A special nerve patch there connected with the brain. The genetically engineered creature spun out the story, which was set in the Era of the Three Queendoms. They hadn’t know much about biology back then, but they’d had amazing adventures. She was living this one, with all her senses involved. When the character from whose viewpoint she was experiencing the action walked across the grass, she smelled it and felt it on the bottom of her feet. When the character got hurt, she felt that, too. And when the character mated, it was as good as the real thing—better, if you’d run into some of the clumsy males Miss Murple had met lately.
    She had to deliver the spice package before sunup if she wanted her love interest to keep blinking when. … “I’m sorry,” the brain said as it abruptly returned Miss Murple to the mundane world. “You have an urgent message from Investigation Thumb.”
    â€œA stench!” she said. Of course the brain stayed connected to the rest of the neural net while it entertained her. But why did Thumb have to come in right at the most exciting part of the lifey? She was an investigator. She knew why. Because things worked that way—that was why. Hadn’t she already seen it too many times? “Connect,” she told the brain resignedly.
    Instead of the trees of the homeworld, she saw the unlovely offices of the gripping organ of the Snarre’i self-protection agency. Her superior’s name was as unpronounceable as hers, so we can call him Sam Spud. “A Baldy requires communication with you,” he said without preamble.
    â€œA Baldy!” Miss Murple said in dismay. That was too much! The aliens didn’t communicate, not at any truly important level. That was a big part of what was wrong with them. “What’s this about?”
    Sam Spud’s pupils narrowed to slits, even though the offices were also darkened against the day. “A hoxbomb,” he answered grimly. “You’d better talk to the human, sweetheart. That’s trouble with a capital T.” Not quite the idiom he used, but humans don’t have the odor receptors they’d need to appreciate his to the fullest.
    â€œA hoxbomb? Used on the Bald Ones? Is someone out of her mind?” Miss Murple said. Antagonizing weird, dangerous aliens had to be a maniac’s game … didn’t it? She hoped so. Humans could do things with ordinary, boring inorganic matter that the Snarre’t had never imagined possible. They could blow up a world. They could, very possibly, blow up a star.
    Sam Spud waggled his ears to show he wasn’t kidding. The brain in his office caught the scent of his agitation and relayed it to Miss Murple through the neural net. “Yes, a hoxbomb. No possible doubt. I’ve seen the image. That’s one scrambled baby Bald One.”
    It showed up in his mind,