We Install by Harry Turtledove Page B

which meant it showed up in Miss Murple’s. She winced. He wasn’t wrong. A baby that distorted was good for nothing but euthanasia. “A hoxbomb,” she agreed. “All right, we need to get to the bottom of this before the humans break out in assholes.” A Snarre’ who said something like that meant it literally. Reluctantly, Miss Murple went on, “I will activate my telephone. You may—I suppose you may—give the code to the Bald One investigating.”
    â€œRight.” Sam Spud would have given it to the human anyhow. Miss Murple knew that. And he would have overridden her if she tried to keep the telephone inactive. He was her boss, so he had the right. And he was a son of a bitch, so he would have used it without compunction. He broke the connection.
    A very little while later, the telephone made a horrible noise. Gingerly, Miss Murple picked it up. It didn’t quite fit her hand. It felt unnaturally smooth and slick. It smelled funny, to say nothing of nasty. Even with shielding, its little screen lit up too bright to suit her.
    The human who appeared on the screen was, like any human, a bad caricature of Snarre’kind: bare face, tiny eyes, pointy beak with only two round breathing orifices, small mouth with niggardly teeth. “I greet you,” it said in Snarre’l.
    â€œHello,” Miss Murple replied in English. How were you supposed to get anything important across when all you could use were sound and sight? She didn’t know, but she’d have to try. Returning to her own language, she said, “A hoxbomb?”
    His translator—a mechanical thing, cousin to the mechanical thing she was holding—must have worked well enough, for he said, “That’s right.” That was what her translator said he said, anyhow. It gave his impoverished speech all the overtones it would have had in Snarre’l. Whether those overtones were really there in English … was a question for another time. The human went on, “The victim’s mother and especially father dealt with Snarre’t about the time the pregnancy began.”
    â€œYou don’t know one of us used the hoxbomb,” Miss Murple protested.
    â€œI didn’t say I did,” the human replied. “But that’s more your kind of weapon than ours. And even if it was one of our people who did it, you’re liable to be better than we are at tracking it down. And I hope you want to help, because you know our news media will start screaming it was all your fault.”
    He might be ugly—he was ugly. He might—he did —speak an impoverished language. Impoverished or not, he made too much sense in it. From everything Miss Murple knew of human news reporters, they were at least as simplistic and sensational as those of her own folk. She couldn’t think of anything worse to say about them, especially when their yattering might help uncoil an interstellar war.
    She sighed. Another Snarre’ would have smelled the resignation coming off her. Not only would she not have a chance to finish the lifey any time soon, but she would have to work with this alien. For its benefit, she had to put what she was feeling into plain old ordinary words, too: “I’ll do what I can.”
    Miss Murple wanted to put on eyecovers and go out by daylight the way she wanted to come down with the mange. What choice did she have, though? Crime happened when it happened, not when it was convenient. More resignation poured from her, not that the human could notice. “I’m coming,” she said, and hung up. She didn’t deactivate the telephone, though. She knew she would have to keep using the stinking thing.
    Hospitals gave John Paul Kling the willies. Maternity wards were supposed to be better than the other units. Happy things happened there. Mostly healthy women went in, and they mostly came home with healthy babies.
    Yeah, mostly. Not this time, though.