Counting Noses

by Kris Overstreet

Chapter 3

"Yes, he was here. Didn't you know?"

Chrysalis held on to her patience with her teeth, as she had to do oh so often with Occupant. Yes, he'd turned out to be far more useful than she'd ever dreamed, and he was doing a good job as the new official head of Changeling Space Program, but a useful idiot is an idiot still. "No, I didn't," she said in a tone of high-quality counterfeit sweetness. "That is, in fact, why I asked you."

"Well, he was here not long after we opened this space center," Occupant said. "He came over not long before Mission Six. He worked the VAB and launchpad for CSP-06, 07 and 08. After that he transferred to the gift shop, then the kitchen, then as bottle washer for Marked Knee. He was a tool-runner for one of the construction contractors for about a week. Then he became a gate guard and tour guide. And then he left." Occupant spent a moment counting the holes in his right leg, then nodded. "Yep, he was here about three months in total."

"And then he just vanished without a trace, right?"

"Um... no, and that's what confused me," Occupant said. "He put in for a transfer to the hive royal guard. The last time I saw him he was standing next to you on the chariot as you flew out."

"...... oh." Chrysalis attempted not to look embarrassed, and mostly succeeded. After all, a good guard was beneath a queen's notice, right? So not knowing one guard from another was nothing to be concerned about, right? "You have his file, right? Where's his photograph?"

Occupant shrugged. "I don't know if we got one of him," he said. "We didn't start making photo badges of people working here until after that thing with Flim and Flam. He left about a month after that, I think. Somewhere right after CSP-09. We didn’t have everyone badged up until CSP-11."

"Well, don't you remember him? You know what he looked like?"

"He looked like a drone," Occupant said. "You know we all look alike." He brought a hoof up to his prominent, squared-off buck fangs and sighed, "Well, almost all alike."

"There must have been some little something."

"No, there really wasn't," Occupant said. "He looked like every drone. Like any drone. Most lings forget him the instant they stop talking to him. The only reason I kept track of him is, I read all the paperwork on everything that goes on here. And the stuff about duty rosters, that's the part I actually read and understand."

"Really now?" Chrysalis asked. "And why was Paussus not a full-time infiltrator, with a talent like that?"

Occupant shrugged. "Maybe he just wanted to be a guard? I never asked. I don't know if I ever even spoke to him."

"Well, somebody must have," Chrysalis said. "And I'll find out who."

"Fossorius."

The changeling at the CSP Visitor Center gift shop counter, eyes totally focused on his book, didn't even twitch a fin.

"Fossorius!"

A hoof rose, slowly turned the page, and then returned to propping up its owner.

"POINTY!!"

Big glowing blue eyes, a little rounder than normal for a changeling, blinked and looked up. The drone smiled. "Chryssy!" he said cheerfully. "I didn't hear you come in! Would you like a seat?"

"Don't call me Chryssy. We're both long out of the hatchery." Where Keratin, aka McColt, had been of her mother's generation, Fossorius was of her own. The young generation of drones called him Uncle Pointy, and some of them might have called him Papa Pointy if the bug had had as much romantic sense as a lettuce leaf. His native curiosity, obliviousness, and thoughtlessness had avoided an early mass grave because, so far as Chrysalis could tell, ponies found him too adorable to be a threat- and she had tried, repeatedly, to use that for any sort of advantage, to little effect. "I'm in a hurry. What-"

"By the way, I finished reading all those books under your bed in the admin building," Pointy continued.

Chrysalis froze for a moment, then said in a distinct drop-this-right-now-or-else tone, "Fossorius, you are mistaken. I definitely do not keep books under my bed."

"Well, not anymore you don't," Pointy agreed, utterly missing the implied threat in her voice. "I had a nice bookcase knocked together by R&D's fabrication shop. Now they're all nice and neat on a shelf, alphabetized by author as they should be." He smiled a bit wider and added, "Did you bring any new ones with you? There's still space left on the shelves."

Five different responses struggled for control of Chrysalis's vocal cords at that moment, with the result that all she got out was a single strangled, "No."

"That's a shame." Pointy's ear fins drooped momentarily, then rose again. "You know, Merry Mare, the main character from Manehattan Nights? I think Tarnished Badge is no good for her. She'd be a much better match with Revolving Door from Hot Stables, don't you think?"

The traffic jam in Chrysalis's throat parted to allow one reaction to escape in a volcanic eruption of ranting. "This is not the TIME for this!!" she shouted. "And it will NEVER be the time for this! I don't know where those books came from, but they are not mine, and if you ever touch the books which are definitely not mine under my bed again you will never see another book again for the brief period of time I will allow you to live!! Do I make myself clear?"

"No need to shout," Pointy said, only slightly cowed. "You always were so sensitive."

"Don't try me any further. Now," Chrysalis said, regaining a bit of her composure, "what do you know about Paussus?"

"Paussus? Nice kid," Uncle Pointy said. "Not a big book reader, though. Such a shame."

"Can you tell me anything about him?"

"Sure. He didn't talk much, except to customers. Never said anything about himself. The first couple of days, he was all excited, wanted to see everything. But he never wanted to do anything twice. By the fourth day he was pretty much silent. He transferred out after a week."

"Was he lazy or something?" Chrysalis asked. It was a common condition among changelings, herself included, not that she'd say so out loud.

"I don't think so," Pointy said. "Anything I asked him to do, he'd do it instantly. It's just... the first time he did something, he really liked it. But after that, his eyes were always elsewhere. By the end, I think he finished his tasks quicker just to get them over with. Didn't make for good customer service, I thought."

That went beyond merely strange. On the one hoof, it was just barely possible that a spy wanting to investigate every function of Horseton Space Center would include at least a quick glance at something as insignificant as the gift shop. But why would a spy spend a whole week in one? And why would a spy risk calling attention to themselves by being obviously eccentric? Made no sense. And yet, this behavior from an ordinary changeling was... was... unfathomable.

"While you're here," Pointy went on, "I just finished this book right here. It was really fascinating. Would you like to borrow it?" A thick, academic-looking tome floated up in a cloud of green changeling magic.

Chrysalis glanced at the title: An Overview of the Descent of the Pre-Gustav Kings of the Griffons, Alphabetically Listed From G to G. She forced her eyes not to glaze over. "I'll read it on the train to Manehattan," she lied.

Trottingham wasn't a particularly large town, and its jail, from the outside, looked to Chrysalis more or less like a dozen other small pony town jails she'd seen both inside and out...

... except for the one cell which had curtains on the barred windows and the nameplate PARASOL bolted to the cell door. That was unusual, as was the fact that the prisoner occupying that cell pulled a key out of one of the holes in her leg, unlocked her own cell door, and let herself out to greet the queen on arrival. "Good morning, my queen," she said, giving a proper kow-tow to her. "What brings you here today?"

"You know I can't let her out right now," the town sheriff, who contrary to Chrysalis's hopes appeared to be a disgustingly decent and honest earth pony. "Politics from Canterlot, and all that rot. But the deputy's keeping up her apartment, keeping the flowers watered and so forth."

"I'm not here about that," Chrysalis said. Parasol was possibly the hive's most eccentric infiltrator, which was saying quite a lot indeed. Although her contributions were sometimes late, they were always above quota, despite the two major handicaps of (a) having been revealed as a changeling to the town for almost three years now and (b) being a clinical unconscious kleptomaniac who spent as many days in jail as out. "The hive is doing a census, and I'm collecting the data from the problem cases personally." She looked down and said, "You may rise, problem case."

"Thank you, my queen." Parasol stood up, smiling pleasantly. "How may I be of service?"

Chrysalis gave Parasol a form and a ball-point and said, "Fill this out. If you have any confusion about these very simple questions, ask before you write."

"Yes, my queen!"

The sheriff cleared his throat a little awkwardly. "Really, you don't have to treat her like that. Parasol is a very intelligent person for a changeling. No offense meant, of course."

"I would have to take your word for it," Chrysalis said, choosing to ignore those last few words. "Intelligent changelings might get outed, but they don't remain afterwards."

"Oh, but Parasol is a pillar of the community," the sheriff protested.

Chrysalis silently gestured to the nicer-than-regulation jail cell.

"Oh, I mean besides that tosh," the sheriff said. "She's quite useful, you know. Takes messages when I'm out. Keeps the other prisoners in line. She does community service and then locks herself back in, all right and proper. Why, she even solved that rash of burglaries last month without even leaving her cell. "

"Of course I did," Parasol said, not looking up from her writing. "It's bad to steal things."

Chysalis looked at Parasol, then at the sheriff. "Pillar of the community, is she?"

"Well, there's always some little idiosyncrasy in any pony," the sheriff said. "But apart from that one thing... and being a monstrous bug-pony creature, of course... apart from that, she's perfectly normal."

"Not from my side of things," Chrysalis said, then turned to Parasol, who was mostly done filling out the form. "By the way, you wouldn't happen to have heard of another drone named Paussus, would you?"

"No, I don't think so," Parasol said. "Name doesn't ring a bell. Here you go, my queen." The form levitated back to Chrysalis, who tucked it away under a wing.

"Very good," she said. "And the pen too, please. It's not like ball-points are disposable."

"What pen?" Parasol looked blankly back at her. The pen was nowhere in sight.

Chrysalis sighed. She'd been warned, she admitted in the privacy of her head, but... "The one I just loaned to you to fill out that form."

"Oh, did you? I hadn't noticed." Parasol began rummaging around in her holes. "You know, the strangest things just fall into my holes for some reason."

"Yes," the sheriff agreed with the lightest touch of long-suffering endurance, "we know."

With a yank Parasol pulled out a cluster of about thirty different writing implements. "Maybe it ended up in here," she said. "Is it one of these?"

The sheriff gasped, then looked at the writing stand on his desk, where a pen holder lay conspicuously empty. "My fountain pen!" he shouted. "That was a gift from the township for twenty years' faithful service! I signed the expenditures docket with it just this morning! How did you get hold of it?"

"Really?" Parasol looked as purely innocent as any changeling ever can. "Which one is it?"

Chrysalis snatched away her ball-point (and a couple of other nice-looking quills, with deliberate malice) and eased towards the door. "I'll leave you and your pillar of the community to work this out," she said. "I've got the train to Manehattan to catch."

She was looking forward to that, and to the book she'd left on her assigned seat. Whoever researched that book about ancient griffon kings had skipped the begats and gone straight to the spicy and scandalous stuff, and he hadn't been afraid to name names. She could think of some romance novelists who could take pointers from that historian, whoever he was...

It wasn't a penthouse apartment, but it was a lot higher, in a somewhat better class of Manehattan neighborhood, than Chrysalis would have expected from a construction worker's pay.

The door opened to reveal a matronly earth pony of middle years. "Er... may I help you?" she asked, looking obviously confused.

Chrysalis, back in her working-class Manehattan mare guise, pretended to be nervous and awkward. "I beg your pardon," she said, "but is this the Gandy Dancer residence? I, um, my business sent me to talk to him about some, er, paperwork."

The mare brightened immediately. "Oh, you must be Queen Chrysalis!" she said. "Come in, come in! I’m Rollerskate! Make yourself at home! How was the moon?"

Chrysalis's jaw waggled uselessly for a moment before she managed, "Er... big. And gray. And dusty." Rallying, she added, "And how did you know?"

"Oh, Gandy said you might come by one day," Rollerskate said, leading Chrysalis into the apartment, which managed to be both roomy and cozy at the same time. "He said if some strange mare who obviously had no business in the neighborhood came asking for him, it would be you in disguise, because he didn't talk to any other mares but me and Bobbie Sox."

Closing the door behind her, Chrysalis released her disguise in a wave of green fire. "When did he tell you?" she asked.

"Oh, we figured it out last year," Rollerskate said. "We were watching TV- we really love The Neighbors Upstairs, y'know?- and there was this episode where Cleptin tries to score some love by posing as a pony who just got killed in a traffic accident, but he feels all guilty about it and ends up confessing to the family."

Chrysalis made a mental note: her very next stop would be Honeybee Studios, where she would lay down some laws about vetting scripts for classified information.

"And Bobbie, she's such a bright filly, she said, 'Hey, that's exactly how Daddy acted when he came back from his accident.' And, well, I'd always thought the accident had made a different stallion out of him, but I hadn't realized just how true that was. I've got tea up, would you like some cookies?"

"Thank you, no," Chrysalis said. "But that was last year."

"What was?" the mare called from the apartment's kitchen. Ceramic clattered.

"You've known your husband was dead and replaced by a bug for months!" Chrysalis shouted. "And you're still here! And he's still here! And he still meets his love quotas every month!"

Rollerskate returned with a loaded tea-tray in her teeth. She set it down carefully on the apartment's coffee table, then said, "Gandy was a different stallion after the accident. I didn't say he was a worse one." She began pouring tea into the two cups, saying, "Before the accident Gandy lived for his work. After Bobbie was born his life- our life- was him coming home in the evening, eating dinner, going to bed, getting up before dawn, taking his lunch pail and going to work. He didn't have the smile, the energy, he had when we married.

"But after the accident, when he... when your Gandy pretended he’d lost his memory, that smile and energy came back like it had been saved up all those gray years. He started taking time off between jobs. He took an interest in Bobbie's schooling for the first time. He helped me with dishes." The mare, now seated in a comfy chair with a teacup held between her hooves, took a sip and said, "I should have suspected something was wrong when he started cooking dinner once in a while. The pony I married didn't know one end of a pan from another."

"But... he still wasn't really your Gandy Dancer," Chrysalis said.

"We've had six fairly happy years together," Rollerskate said firmly. "The happiest years we've ever had. About the only thing that would make it happier..."

Chrysalis interpreted the mare's longing look. "I don't want to know," she said, putting a stop to that. "I only came here to give him this," and she pulled out a copy of the census form, "and to ask if he met a drone named Paussus while he was working construction in Horseton."

"Oh, yes, we know Paussus," Rollerskate said blithely. "We'll miss him. It's almost a shame we're moving to Horseton permanently once Bobbie finishes her current grade of school. We were waiting for the new school to be built there, you know, and now that the population's grown-"

"Wait." Even speaking softly, Chrysalis knew how to put authority in her words that would make ponies stop talking. "You know Paussus? He's here? Where is he?"

Comments

[Black--Soul]

Triple updated?
Awesome

What a awesome cliffhanger ♡👍

[A.P.O.N.I.]

"Why, she even solved that rash of burglaries last month without even leaving her cell. "

Would this, perchance, have been by being in her cell?

Whoever researched that book about ancient griffon kings had skipped the begats and gone straight to the spicy and scandalous stuff, and he hadn't been afraid to name names. She could think of some romance novelists who could take pointers from that historian, whoever he was...

I blame Greengrass.

[Kris Overstreet]

11760129 No, Parasol was innocent. She is a genuine kleptomaniac in that she takes things on reflex, without even realizing she's doing it. Burglary requires intent and planning.

To be honest, the only reasons she goes to jail at all are, it makes the victims feel better, and it allows for supervision without the trouble of putting her into an asylum (which she'd probably break out of instantly).

As the saying goes, you catch more changelings with honey than vinegar.

[A.P.O.N.I.]

I feel that there's the potential for a movie here. Parasol and Jailbird (from Georg's work) are accidentally left off of a prisoner transport somewhere in central Equestria, and have to cross the plains, take a train, and move themselves (auto-mobile) back to incarceration.

[Furufoo]

She was looking forward to that, and to the book she'd left on her assigned seat. Whoever researched that book about ancient griffon kings had skipped the begats and gone straight to the spicy and scandalous stuff, and he hadn't been afraid to name names. She could think of some romance novelists who could take pointers from that historian, whoever he was...

Pffft Chrysalis can't help herself can she?

[mishun]

"He looked like a drone," Occupant said. "You know we all look alike."

Which brings another question: why can't Chrysalis issue 30000 IDs for "Changeling McBugFace" if Celestia wants them so much?

On the one hand, it was just barely possible...

Hoof

[Razzy]

I don't think that book's G-rated.

[Kris Overstreet]

11760506 Because Chrysalis has no faith that her subjects would be smart or loyal enough to keep up an "I am Spartacus!" gambit.

[Alondro]

He looked like every drone. Like any drone. Most lings forget him the instant they stop talking to him.

Ohhhhhhh, it must be Lyra Heartstrings, who is now a desiccated corpse on a hill in a world where the gods are crazy emo wankers.

Wait, I already blew up that universe for being too emo! HOW DARE IT STILL EXIST!!!! I AM OMEGA, AND MY WILL IS LAW!! (Alondro is watching the 3rd Doctor on Tubi, and is having even worse delusions of grandeur than usual. Trust me, I live in his brain, and it's BAD this time!)