Authors: Alan Dean Foster
“But you would perssonally ssupport ssuch an exchange?” For a moment, his interest struck her as going beyond the professional. Here was a matter in which the AAnn envoy took a specific interest.
“Of course,” she lied facilely. “Why not? The regions you refer to are to this day little utilized or visited. Why
shouldn’t
the AAnn have the same rights of reciprocal settlement as the thranx?”
His tail switched from side to side. “It sshortenss my journey to hear you ssay that.” Had he believed her? She couldn’t tell. “Truly, if only your people would recognize what to uss is sso blatantly obviouss. That we have far more in common with one another, both in sshape and attitude, than your kind ever could with thesse pesstilential bugss. That we sshare sso very many ultimate aimss and interessts. That a closser alliance between our peopless would permit the resultant political force to permanently dominate this one modesst portion of the cossmoss, to our mutual benefit. Perhapss, with time, thiss may come to pass.”
“Perhaps,” she responded noncommittally. It was not a lie. Who knew what the future would bring? No one could predict the course of interstellar relations. The way contact between humankind and the thranx had developed—accidentally, unpredictably, and in defiance of careful diplomatic procedures—had already proven as much. That she intended to do everything in her power to prevent the scenario Preed had just laid before her from ever coming to fruition was something she kept wholly to herself.
His unannounced nocturnal visit only served to confirm everything she already knew or had ever heard about the AAnn. They were sly and cunning, skilled sycophants, adept students of other cultures. All of which made perfect sense. One did not have to be a professional diplomat to realize that if one species wished to dominate another, learning everything there was to know about one’s quarry was a prerequisite for ultimate success.
The AAnn were devoted scholars of other cultures. She had no doubt that Preed was well versed in the fragmented, frequently unseemly history of humankind. Like others of his kind, he would employ that learning to exploit any discernible divisions within human government and society to the eventual benefit of the People of the Sand. She did not condemn him for this. It was his job as well as his nature. Feint and retreat, test and examine: That was how Haflunormet and the other thranx diplomats she had spent time with had told her the AAnn operated. That was the AAnn way. Avoid far-reaching, open confrontation. Poke and probe and wait for the victim to bleed to death.
That was not going to happen to humankind, she knew. Any chance of that, any naÏveté on the scale of interstellar relations, had vanished in the macabre upheaval of the Pitarian War. What might have happened had her kind first encountered the subtle, duplicitous AAnn and not the Pitar, she did not know. The most dangerous, the most ominous explosives did not always produce large, easily visible fireballs in space.
He was playing to her, ever the urbane and accomplished diplomat despite his rather fearsome appearance. Gazing back at him, she did indeed see a being much closer to her in appearance than any thranx. Only when one looked deeper did one begin to discern the insidious nature and intent that lurked beneath every AAnn and that, insofar as she had been able to discover, was absent among the thranx. What was it the ancient writer Melville had written? “Better to sleep with a sober cannibal than a drunken Christian.” In the context of future relations, of humankind’s ultimate destiny, she had become convinced some time ago that the interests of her kind would be far better served by lying down with oversized, aromatic insectoids than upright, sharp-toothed reptiloids. If there was one lesson her people should have learned since venturing into deep space and making contact with other intelligent species, it was that physical appearance counted for nothing.
But all too many of her kith and kin had not yet mastered that lesson. Hence the continued need for diplomats, for subterfuges, and for the kinds of lies she was all too often forced to live.
“I wonder,” he murmured, interrupting her thoughts. “I wonder truly how much of what you have jusst told me you believe, and how much you have sscribed for my benefit. Equivocation and invention iss, after all, your vocation.”
“As it is yours—truly.” She met his stare unwaveringly. Let him accuse her of lying if he wished. He could prove nothing. Her only real fear was that, having tracked her down with such apparent ease, he might somehow also have become aware of the meeting she was due to have tomorrow with Haflunormet and their arriving friend. Though he had given no indication of cognizance, she knew the possibility would trouble her until the meeting was concluded.
Concentrate on the moment, she told herself. One small galactic step at a time. For right now, it would be enough to get him out of her room.
“We undersstand one another, then.” Gesticulating gracefully with both hands, he tilted his head down and slightly to one side. “As before, I sstand in admiration of your sskillss, and can only hope that all you have told me arisses from the inner depthss of your true sself.” Straightening, he approached until he was standing closer to her than formal diplomatic protocol required. She held her ground. Easier to do in the room than elsewhere, she reflected nervously, since there was a wall not far behind her and she could not retreat anyway.
His bright yellow eyes with their vertical pupils peered down into her own. He was of average height and build for an AAnn, slightly taller than she but not proportionally as massive as a comparable human male. But there were those teeth, bequeathed from a wholly carnivorous ancestry, and those hooked, knifelike claws.
Reaching up, he let the sharp, pointed tip of one talon graze her right cheek. His hissing voice was a singular whisper. “Sso profoundly, abssurdly pliant. It is a curiossity to uss how your sspeciess ssurvived ssuch fragile integumentss long enough to develop intelligence. Truly, the universse iss full of wonderss.” To her considerable relief, he let the clawed hand drop, holding it in front of his chest parallel to the other in the familiar resting position of his kind.
“I hope we can meet and talk like thiss again. I have already sspoken of you to otherss of like mind. Their interesst matchess mine.”
“I have no objection to meeting with or talking to anyone,” she admitted truthfully. “Provided that next time, certain minimal courtesies are observed.”
He acknowledged her outrage without argument as he backed toward the door. “Truly. Until then, I wissh you, Fanielle Anjou of Earth and not of Hivehom, ssafe sstriding and ssmooth ssurfacess under your feet.” As the door responded to the shrouded covert electronics that had gained him entrance, he added, “And may your pending offsspring emerge into the world sslick of sscale and free of blemissh.”
He was out the door and gone before she could ask him how he knew of her pregnancy. But of course, she realized when he had left, he could have found that out from the garrulous Sertoa, or many others at Azerick Station. One hand dropped unconsciously to her upper belly as she saw the door shut. She resecured it as best she could. To her surprise, she found that her heart was racing and her lungs were pounding against her chest. All the tension, all the pent-up anxiety engendered by the AAnn’s unexpected appearance, now raced to the fore.
Stumbling into the bathroom, she rummaged through her gear until she found the bottle she wanted. One—no, two—of the pills accompanied by hastily gulped water slid down her throat. Leaning back against the glassy wall, she wondered if she ought to change rooms. That would not be easy to do. Not in the middle of the night, on a thranx world, in an establishment dedicated to providing adequate accommodation not only to visiting humans but to representatives of many other species who frequently had very different lodging requirements. Besides, if Preed could gain entry to one room, there was no reason to assume entering another would present him with any insurmountable obstacles.
In the end she settled for the bath that had been her initial goal. After a while she managed to stop glancing in the direction of the outer room and the doorway beyond. She needed to be rested and alert for the meeting tomorrow. Haflunormet would want to know all about the intrusion, of course. Steps could be taken to prevent a recurrence.
Raising a hand, she touched her cheek where the diplomat’s claw had lightly depressed the flesh.
Did rather well at that moment,
she complimented herself.
No shuddering, no trembling.
Toroni and the rest of her colleagues would have been proud of her, standing up to a carnivorous AAnn like that, alone and unarmed. She smiled hesitantly, relishing once more the memory of the small triumph.
Then it all hit her at once, and she finally began to shake.
14
“Don’t tell me—it is not possible.” The short, dark human was gazing at the two padres with eyes that were a little too wide and muscles that were taut to the point of twitching. His chest had begun to heave. “It is not bad enough to see untainted humans congregating in this place and mixing together with filthy bugs and dirty bug activities: Now you are trying to get people to worship with them! What will come next? Bugs teaching human children? Preparing our food? Sleeping in the same rooms with us?”
Briann listened in silence to the angry tirade, forbearing from interruption or reply. Twikanrozex did his best to memorize it all, down to the last sputtering slur. Neither man nor thranx was especially offended. They had heard it all before, though usually couched in flaccid overtones of false civility. Unusually, this human was unabashedly vociferous in his bigotry, not caring if anyone overheard. It was possible, Briann mooted, that he wanted to be overheard. Certainly those strollers within easy hearing distance, human and thranx alike, turned to stare in the direction of the diatribe. To their credit, most appeared embarrassed by the outburst of undisguised vitriol.
Her dark green hair cropped fashionably short, the ranter’s taller female companion made an effort to calm her comrade. He would have none of it, disdaining her murmured words and twice shaking her hand off his shoulder. When neither of the targets of his interminable vehemence showed any signs of reacting, either to his tone or to his words, he began to advance in their direction.
“That’s close enough.” Briann’s tone was decidedly sharp, sufficiently so to bring the man to a surprised halt. His countenance twisted into a perfect sneer.
“Why, Padre, or whatever it is you degenerates choose to call yourselves, that’s hardly a spiritual attitude.”
“You’re wrong, visitor. The spirit takes many forms. Hallowed also is the spirit of defiance.”
Looking decidedly uneasy, the woman continued to badger her companion from behind. “That’s enough, Nevisrighne. We’ll be late for our . . . appointment.”
The man gestured in her direction, evidently enjoying himself. “No, no, Pierrot. We have time. Time enough to instruct the degraded.” His attention shifted back to the quietly watching Briann. “Why, I do believe, Padre, that if I were to intrude too much on your personal space, you would physically push me away.”
“I might.” Briann’s tone had not changed.
“You might even take a swing at me.”
“In a universe of infinite possibilities, all things are possible,” Briann admitted piously.
“In which case I would be forced to defend myself. While it is true that we stand equal here in the number of witnesses, mine is human, whereas yours is only a lowly bug.”
“Enough of this. Come away from here, Nevisrighne!” The woman was not distraught, Briann noted, so much as she was enraged.
“Shut up, Pierrot.” The dark man’s sneer slipped smileward. “Just a quick lesson. In possibilities.” His right hand slipped toward the inside of his open shirt—and froze before the first finger could edge inside. His rage vanished, subsumed by a look of total surprise. It was focused not on Briann, but behind him.
Twikanrozex held a gun in each gleaming, chitinous hand. All four of them. Faced with this entirely unexpected and formidable quadruple arsenal, the swarthy fanatic slowly drew his one hand away from his chest and let it fall back to his side. So shocked was he that it took him a moment to find his voice.
“Very spiritual,” he finally muttered uneasily to Briann without taking his eyes off the unexpectedly heavily armed thranx. “Not only have you become personally debased, whoever you are: Your so-called holy organization is founded on hypocrisy.”
“Wrong again. This must be your day to wallow in wrongness, my friend.” Briann did not have to look behind him to know what Twikanrozex had done. The thranx’s actions were reflected in the shorter man’s reaction as clearly as if in a mirror. “We who serve the United Church believe very strongly in always maintaining a sound defense against any who would do us harm. It is one of the fundamental tenets of our belief.”
“What about turning the other cheek?” The ranter had forgotten whatever lay hidden against his left armpit. And wisely so.
“We are always willing to do that. Twikanrozex, turn the other cheek for this man.” Behind him, the thranx obediently turned his head to the right. His astonishing peripheral vision still allowed him to keep that now subdued individual in view. At the same time, the muzzles of the four pistols did not waver.
“An unsurpassed model of sarcastic religious miscegenation.” Retreating, the speaker rejoined his plainly exasperated companion. “If the Fates so decree it, we may meet again some day, Padre. I would enjoy having the chance to resume your education.”
“And I yours, my friend. Enjoy the fair.”
“Indeed, I will. More than you can imagine.” With that he turned and stomped off, making no effort to disguise his enduring furor, brushing aside the arm of his annoyed companion.
Briann followed the curious pair until they passed out of sight behind a cluster of bobbing, transparent spheres that periodically paused to engulf unsuspecting passersby in an assortment of cleverly preprogrammed advertisements.
“That was unpleasant,” he observed.
“Yes.” Twikanrozex had slipped his quartet of weapons back into their respective pouches. “I’m convinced that if I had not intervened, he might have tried to do you an injury. A disappointing first for us.”
“Maybe more than that.” Briann’s thoughts were churning. “Unless you have a specific destination or prospect in mind, I think I’d like to follow those two for a while.”
Twikanrozex moved forward to join his friend. “Follow them? To what end?”
“I don’t know.” The human half of the team rubbed the damp back of his neck. “That one was more than xenophobic. There was something in his gaze. Just a little wildness, maybe. Or perhaps a little something more.”
“You are suggesting he is even more volatile than he appears?”
“I’m thinking that, at least when he was looking at you, he bordered on the homicidal. I may be imagining things, but it wasn’t just him, either. The woman he was with? The longer he rambled on, the more agitated she became. And it wasn’t the kind of nervousness that someone exhibits when their companion is making a fool of himself. It struck me as more profound than that.”
Reaching up, Twikanrozex touched his friend’s bare arm with a truhand. “Like you, I have no agenda for the remainder of this day other than to wander, to observe, to converse, and to learn.”
“Then let’s track those two for a while. If nothing else, it ought to be educational.” He grinned over at his colleague. “While we’re at it, you can still realize three out of four.”
It was not difficult to do. Outside the fairgrounds, their pairing would have made them conspicuous. Strolling along the shore of the great lake would have seen them stand out against the flat, unsparing surface. But lost among the bustling crowds that had begun to swarm the exhibition in ever-increasing numbers, they were able to blend in without being noticed. Acolytes of the Church received training in how to be inconspicuous as well as obvious.
Though they spent some time wandering among the exhibits and made a show of feigning interest in several, it was evident to the pair of trailing Church representatives that neither the slim woman nor her excitable male companion were much interested in the components of the fair. They spent a lot of time looking around while expending a considerable effort not to be seen looking around. Once, they disappeared into a public rest room and did not reemerge for nearly thirty minutes, a visitation that suggested they were responding to a call that came from someone other than Nature. Not once did they pause to eat, drink, shop for souvenirs, ask questions, try out hands-on displays, participate in a virtual, or otherwise indicate that they were somewhere besides an ordinary city street.
“I can’t figure them out.” His face blocked by a large cerise blob of calorie-free sugared air puff, Briann watched the peculiar pair pause in front of an exhibit on the undersea life of Cachalot. They managed to look bored and apprehensive at the same time. “If these are your standard-issue xenophobes, then why are they spending any time at all in the thranx-built zones of the fair? We’ve followed them through three already. Are they just eccentric, or is there something to them we’re not seeing?”
Twikanrozex idly groomed an antenna, bending it forward and down with a foothand until he could slide the plumed prominence between his mandibles. Unlike Briann, he did not try to conceal his presence from the couple they were following. There was no need. Except at the diplomatic and governmental level, contact between humans and thranx was sufficiently infrequent that the majority of humans were convinced that all thranx looked alike.
“I feel that I have spent enough time in the company of humans to know that the behavior of this pair is most unusual,
crr!ll
. Their actions do not strike me as those of a mated couple, yet that is the appearance they clearly are striving to convey. We have already observed several instances of interaction suggesting they do not especially even like one another.”
Briann inhaled a portion of his air puff. “Among humans, that does not necessarily signify the absence of ceremonial union. But in this case, I happen to agree with you. None of their actions seem normal. Still, while interesting from an anthropological point of view, it’s not grounds for alerting the authorities.” He glanced surreptitiously in the couple’s direction. They were arguing again.
“Let’s give this another ten minutes or so. Then I suppose we should get back to the tower and check its condition.”
Twikanrozex gestured agreement. Five minutes into Briann’s proposed ten, something so extraordinary happened that all thoughts of abandoning the unobtrusive stalk were forgotten.
Both padres saw the approaching thranx. One was especially large, with prominent wing cases and a deep blue sheen to his exoskeleton. Except for a possible passing glance of disgust from the humans, there was no reason to suppose the two pairs would even acknowledge each other’s presence. Absolutely the last thing Briann expected was for them to swerve toward one another. No, that was not quite right, he corrected himself. That was the second last thing. The first last thing occurred when they met in the middle of the busy pavilion walkway, pointedly inspected their immediate surroundings, and then fell into what could only be described even at a distance as casual conversation.
Not only was the rabid antithranx human male palavering with representatives of the species he had a little while earlier professed to loathe, he was doing so without any sign of distaste. His taller female companion likewise participated in the conversation enthusiastically.
“These are not strangers talking.” Twikanrozex was as spellbound by the unexpected tableau as was his soft-skinned friend. “They know one another.”
“Or of one another.” Shielding his face as best he could, Briann watched the four-way conversation. “I am of the feeling that more than the preposterous domesticity of our couple is on view here. But what, I can’t begin to imagine.”
“Nor I.” Twikanrozex inclined his antennae forward, but the voices of the nattering quartet were drowned out by the shifting, swirling babble of the crowd. “What can they possibly be talking about?”
“Whatever it is, they’ve finished.” Briann pointed. “The party is breaking up.”
As they looked on, the humans and thranx parted company. As if to cap the unreality of the encounter, they exchanged formal farewells before heading off in opposite directions. Twikanrozex started forward immediately.
“You want to keep following them?” Briann trailed his friend for a moment.
“Not them. It may be that we have,
kuiit,
learned all we can from the odd human pairing. I think we should follow these new thranx that they met for a while.” He glanced over at his brother-in-the-Church. “For reasons too convoluted to explain in a short time, and because of regrettable omissions in your cultural education, I must tell you that the two representatives of my kind are acting in a manner as strange as the humans’. This bespeaks eccentricities that go beyond individual iconoclastics. I should very much like to be enlightened.”
Of like mind even though he could not be sure of his colleague’s analysis of the encounter they had just witnessed, Briann nodded and followed.
Since any meeting between a group of apprehensive humans and an equally large clutch of edgy thranx was bound to attract the attention of curious fair-goers, Skettle arranged to have only Martine accompany him to the final pre-Armageddon rendezvous. Having been guided to the place chosen for the final meeting by Skettle’s followers Nevisrighne and Pierrot, Beskodnebwyl met them attended by, as agreed upon, one other single representative of his kind. On this, the fifth day of the fair, the two humans and two thranx drew hardly a glance as they convened in the farthest reaches of the joint human-thranx forestry pavilion.
Giant
tceri!xx
from Willow-Wane grew side by side with tall kauri from Earth. Twisted kokerbooms shared the magnified heat of the day with lush
gotulba
from Hivehom. There were sequoias and
serypta
,
volmats
and ginkgo, diterocarps and the famous flowering
eryouou
from Long Tunnel that grew only in perfect circles from a common root.
In nature, none of these formidable growths grew together in the same ecozone, and many of them came from different planets. As representative examples of their kind, they had been selected for individual elegance and overall appearance. Only through the application of advanced hydroponics could they share the same ground. Each had been carefully sterilized prior to transport to ensure that no unwanted fellow travelers accompanied them on their mission of education. Each had been rendered incapable of reproduction to make certain no seed or cone, no spore or shoot could take root in the untainted alien soil of Dawn.
Into this impossible artificial forest, Beskodnebwyl and his companion wandered. Near the back, in the farthest reaches of the soaring pavilion with its transparent divisions, they found Elkannah Skettle sharing a hot drink with his collaborator Martine. Thranx and humans greeted one another formally. While the two leaders conversed, Martine and her thranx counterpart took up positions between them and the pathway. Deep in apparent discourse, they were paying as little attention to each other as possible while keeping their eyes on the pavilion’s transient visitors. Though expecting neither trouble nor interruption, they were fully prepared to deal with either.