“Well,” the captain said, “that’s actually what I was calling you about. I have been talking with our Guardian prisoner almost continuously for the last five days. She’s told me something . . . something I don’t feel comfortable keeping secret. But I also don’t feel comfortable making the decision to share it entirely on my own. I’m not asking you to share the responsibility for the decision, only to listen to the information yourself and give me your reaction.”
Haykuz closed his eyes and breathed deeply.
“Mister Haykuz?”
“Yes, Captain. May I have a quarter hour to refresh myself and then meet you?”
Haykuz met the captain at the door to the ship’s officers’ lounge and meal area, which the humans called a “wardroom.”
“I want to brief you on what we’ve found out in the last five days,” the captain said, “in a general sense, anyway, before we go in to talk directly with our prisoner.”
“Is that really necessary?” Haykuz asked. “For me to speak with it directly, I mean.”
“It’s a she,” the captain said. “I think, for your own peace of mind, you should hear the main item directly from her. I’ve asked my chief engineer to join us as well. He may think of some questions I haven’t. We can wait for him here.”
Captain Bitka gestured through the door. Haykuz entered the wardroom and sat at the table the captain indicated.
“I’m having coffee,” the captain said. “Would you like something? The stewards can make you some redroot soup.”
Every human seemed to think every Varoki loved redroot soup, spent their lives gulping it down, probably because that was the only Varoki beverage most of them had heard of. E-Lisyss would have taken umbrage at the obvious stereotype, would have done so expertly. No one could wring advantage out of an adversary’s inadvertent, or even imagined, misstep like e-Lisyss. But why? These people weren’t his enemies. The offer of a popular Varoki beverage was actually a thoughtful gesture.
“Mister Haykuz?”
“Oh. My mind was wandering. Yes, Captain, I will have some redroot soup. Thank you.”
The soup came in a strange hard white mug without handles. The soup’s sharp, salty aroma made his stomach rumble, reminded him he had not eaten the midday meal. He took the mug in both his hands, felt the warmth spread through his palms, and he sipped. Not very good redroot soup, but . . . not all that bad either. He drank half the mug before putting it down.
“We’ve found out a lot about the Guardians the last few days from Te’Anna, our prisoner,” the captain began after sipping his own coffee. “There are still lots of frustrating gaps in our knowledge, though. I don’t know if you’ve heard, but the Guardians are immortal.”
“The steward mentioned it. I assumed it was a wild rumor. This is true? You are certain?”
“Dr. Däng is certain, and she explained the genetics to me. Made sense, although I don’t think I could explain it back. She could probably answer any questions you’ve got but, yeah, it’s true.”
Haykuz thought the captain was telling the truth, but he could not be sure. He had never even been good at knowing when Varoki were lying to him, and he understood that humans were much better at it. He could ask Dr. Däng later, but he disliked talking to her, facing her obvious contempt, and who was to say she wouldn’t lie to him as well? Still, he thought this was the truth.
“They must be like gods, then.”
“I’ve never heard a Varoki speak of religion before. You worship gods?”
Haykuz shook his head. “I don’t. Some do. Historically many did, but spiritual sensibilities change over time. We do not discuss it often, but in ancient times our notions of immortal and powerful gods were very like your own myths. What is that like, I wonder? To be a god.”
“Our prisoner is very interesting to talk to,” the captain answered, “but also disconcerting. At first, she struck me as scatterbrained, sort of simpleminded, easily distracted. The more I talk with her, the more impressed I become with her intelligence. Her curiosity is absolutely insatiable, sometimes to the point of being annoying. She absorbs and understands information very quickly, and I think her tendency to mentally wander is the result of a mind interested in everything new.
“She claims not to remember much beyond the last several hundred years, and I believe her. Within that span, however, her memory is extensive and detailed, and she’s told us a great deal about the civilization we’re facing. It encompasses an enormous swath of territory out along this spiral arm, as many as a thousand star systems, all controlled by Guardians originally. Some of them have died or simply left.”
“Died? You said they were immortal.”
“Well, they do not age but they can be killed. They also sometimes end their own lives out of boredom. As far as Te’Anna knows, all of the intelligent species inhabiting those worlds were raised up from lower animals through genetic manipulation by the Guardians. The New People in this system, the ones we called Desties, were raised up eight hundred years ago—a little over a thousand Earth years. They believe they are much older than that. The Guardians invented a history for them.”
Haykuz thought about that: intelligent beings with space travel and a complex technological society who had existed as a species for only eight hundred years!
“Why?” Haykus asked.
“Why raise them up? As servant races, a labor force.”
“Yes, but to what end?”
“Satisfying the material and technological desires of the Guardians,” the captain answered, and his mouth twisted as if he tasted something sour.
“That is all? This whole species, the New People, was created to serve the wishes of . . . how many Guardians?”
“Originally just two, named P’Daan and M’Eetos. They were later joined by others. P’Daan and M’Eetos left at different times but there were seven Guardians in the system when we arrived. Three are dead, one is our prisoner, and three more are out there somewhere. A message was sent by their equivalent of a jump courier to the nearest Guardian system once they understood we were not Guardian-raised species, had not in fact ever heard of the Guardians. We still don’t know what sort of reaction that may provoke. After what happened on Destie-Four . . . well, it’s hard to imagine we’re all going to end up pals.”
“Why did they bring us here?” Haykuz asked. “Or did they? And if so, how?”
Captain Bitka looked at him for a moment, his expression impossible to read.
“She’ll have to tell you that. Here’s Lieutenant Ma now. Let’s go.”
* * *
Haykuz had seen images of the alien. Her physical presence was a different matter, but although he found her gaze unsettling, he did not feel intimidated by her. How strange, since he felt intimidated by so many others. He had been told she was intelligent, and he believed it in an intellectual sense, but on an emotional level he could not consider her a person. Sharing the room with her was like sharing it with a large, clever animal, but not at all like an equal, much less a superior, being. That made it easier, at least at first.
“But I have already gone over all this,” she complained, rather like a petulant child, Haykuz thought.
“I told you before,” the captain said patiently, “Mister Haykuz should hear this from you, in order to judge its truth. He is unlikely to believe it coming from me. If you do this, I will let you ask me any question you like and, provided it does not compromise the safety of my ship, crew, passengers, or home world, I promise to answer it.”
She turned her gaze from Captain Bitka to Haykuz.
“No. I want to ask the Varoki a question. That is how you say it, yes? Varoki? I will answer his questions, but then afterwards he must answer one of mine.”
Haykus felt a thrill run through him, but not of fear so much as excitement. “Which question?”
She did a strange head movement, ducking the chin and stretching her neck, then turned her head to look at him from a slightly different angle. “I do not know y
et.”
He took a breath and then spoke. “I agree. First my questions. Did you bring us here?”
“Did I? No.” She cocked her head slightly to the side and looked at him as if she were examining a specimen.
“Some device forced us to come here. Was it a Guardian device?”
She sighed, very much as if growing impatient. “I think it must have been, yes?”
“How was it possible for a Guardian to communicate with our jump drive? We have never, to my knowledge, shared its secret with anyone.”
“Oh, you really do not know, do you? You have a Guardian star drive. Its signature is unmistakable, which is why the New People showed no alarm at your arrival. As to who brought you here and why, I have a theory. Would you like to hear it?”
Haykuz sat for a moment trying to understand what she had just told him. How could they have a Guardian star drive in this human ship? He ignored her and turned to the ship’s engineer.
“Who . . . who manufactured this jump drive, Lieutenant Ma?”
“AZ Kagataan,” he answered immediately. “The documentation says core was manufactured thirty-one months ago on Hazzakatu, delivered to Earth, and then installed in Cam Ranh Bay at the International Space Dock in Earth orbit twenty-seven months ago. We’ve gone over every record we have, and it all checks out. I can’t actually examine the jump core, because of all the security traps you people put on it, but from the outside it looks like every other Varoki-built drive I’ve ever worked with.”
Haykuz looked back at the alien.
“This officer confirms that the drive was built by the Varoki trading house AZ Kagataan.”
“I do not dispute that,” she said. “But it was Guardian-designed.”
“Perhaps independent discovery . . . ” Haykuz began, but she leaned forward and opened her eyes even wider.
“Then how did our device bring you here? Coincidental discovery of a scientific principle is quite believable. Coincidental invention of the entire mathematical language which controls the operation of the device itself? Impossible. Each of our drives has an identity tag in its control code, unique to the Guardian owner. I have not examined yours, but the New People detected the ownership tag associated with M’Eetos, one of the two original Guardian patrons of this star system. Would you like to hear my theory now, little Varoki-thing?”
Haykuz stared at her but hardly saw her. His mind was too full of speculation, calculation, warring possibilities. “Yes,” he finally said.
“Somewhat over four hundred years ago, M’Eetos left this star system. I do not know why; I think it was before I came. I remember seeing M’Eetos, but I can no longer be certain my memory is not of hologram images. It is said he became restless. Somewhat later, P’Daan wished his return and so sent out a series of remote devices which would scan possible star systems for traces of the identity tag of his drive and then reprogram it to return to this realm system, which you call Destination. Your star drive is obviously a slavish copy of the one in M’Eetos’s vessel. One of P’Daan’s devices must have arrived in your system, scanned you, found the looked-for tag, and completed its mission.
“I believe that answers all of your questions. Is that so?”
“Yes,” Haykuz heard himself say, although he could not remember deciding to speak. He certainly had no further questions to ask, only answers to absorb and make sense of.
“Then I will now ask my question. When we raise up a race, we often invent a history for them stretching back into antiquity. Some of us are better at it than others. I have heard M’Eetos particularly enjoyed that aspect of the process.”
She leaned forward and stretched her neck out until her face came very close to his, her large gray eyes seeming to see through his flesh and bone all the way into his soul. When she spoke, it came out as an insistent whisper.
“None of the other races of your Cottohazz had any evidence of your existence prior to three hundred of your years ago. How certain are you that four hundred years ago M’Eetos did not raise your people up from some swamp-dwelling creatures, and simply invent your supposed history?”
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
One day later, aboard USS Cam Ranh Bay, running dark,
outbound to Destie-Seven
19 April 2134 (sixty-two days after Incident Seventeen)
Sam’s commlink vibrated as he left the lift and began walking through the habitat wheel to the passenger meeting. He pushed his pointless ruminations about Cassandra aside and squinted up the ID tag: Haykuz. When the Varoki official left Te’Anna’s quarters yesterday, he’d seemed in shock. All he had said to Sam was, “We will have to speak later.” Maybe this was it.
“Mister Haykuz. I am glad you commed me. How are you feeling?”
I am sure you must know that I am shaken, Captain. The revelation concerning the jump drive, and then that creature’s insinuation . . . all very troubling. I see you released the summary of information concerning the drives to the passengers and crew. After much thought, I confess I believe her account of the origin of the drive. I see no other explanation which matches all of the facts as we know them. I agree with your decision to share that knowledge.
“Thank you, Mister Haykuz. I think if the crew and passengers are going to help us think this through, they need to have all the facts.”
Yes, Captain. I appreciate that you did not share her suggestion that we Varoki . . . are somehow less than we had thought. I must ask you, Captain. Do you believe that about us?
“I believe the part about the origin of the jump drive. But the part about you being raised from a lower species by genetic manipulation? No, I don’t believe that. I think she was just messing with your head. I think she likes doing that, seeing what it takes to get under our skins. But what difference does it make? How you got to be who you are doesn’t change anything. You still are who you’ve always been.”
Ah, but in a sense, we are not, Captain. Even if we have independently evolved, we have always seen ourselves as the benefactors of the other five intelligent species, the only ones capable of inventing the jump drive. Now it seems all of that is a lie. I will tell you, Captain, if we return to the Cottohazz, a large part of my people will never accept this as truth. They will dismiss any evidence as an insidious fabrication. Technological supremacy is too important to our self-image to abandon.
“It didn’t keep you from believing it,” Sam said.
Nothing is very important to my self-image. We will speak again later, Captain Bitka.
Sam couldn’t even imagine a Cottohazz without the Varoki on top. How would the other species take it? Even without a war, the legal ramifications were staggering. Did all those Varoki star drive builders owe three hundred years of royalty payments back to everyone who’d paid them under false pretenses? Somebody must have committed fraud at some point. Or maybe some sort of reparations payment. Who knew? It was going to be a hell of a new world, assuming they managed to get back with the news.
Sam heard the babble of voices before he got to the meeting area. Almost a hundred people, most of the civilian passengers, filled the broad corridor in front of the enlisted crew’s exercise room on Wheel Deck Two, the inner layer of quarters and living area on the habitat wheel. They filled it with their physical presence and with the nervous murmur of their voices and with the faint odor of their fear. He made his way through the press, acknowledging their greetings.
As always, the geometry of a habitat wheel struck Sam with its oddness but also its unintended utility in a moment like this. The corridor seemed to rise up to each side and eventually merge with the ceiling. Today that meant he would not have to stand on a platform to be seen by the crowd; everyone could see everyone else’s faces, as if standing in an amphitheater tipped onto its side.
He looked at their faces and he saw fear and anger, not much hope. He should have done this sooner. Addresses over the commlink network and recorded briefing summaries weren’t enough for people whose fates were entirely in his hands,
his and his crew’s.
Ensign Clarence Day waited for him with a data pad, going over his notes. Day had started as their “handler” for the VIPs, but had grown into liaison officer to the civilian passengers in general. No one told him to; he’d just seen the need and filled it. Sam recalled that he and Running-Deer had picked Day for the job because he was “entertaining and nonessential.” They’d been about half right.
“I’ve screened the questions, sir,” Day said, “and I’ve tried to pick ones that are representative. Per your orders, I haven’t skipped the tough ones.”
“Good,” Sam said, “not that I like tough questions, but we don’t want them going away without the answers they care most about. Okay, let’s get started.”
Ensign Day raised his hands above his head and whistled, one loud, sharp blast. The low babble of conversation died out.
“Can I have everyone’s attention? Good. Thank you for showing up for our first Q and A with Captain Bitka, and thanks to those of you who submitted questions. When I call on you I’m going to cue your commlink through the wall speakers in this corridor so everyone can hear, okay? If English isn’t a comfortable language, don’t worry. Just use the language you’re most comfortable with. I’m running it through autotrans so everyone will hear the question in English. For those of you whose English isn’t very strong, you might want to reset your own commlinks as well, but you probably have, right? Otherwise I’m just going blah-blah-blah up here.
“Okay, first question is from Alice Tan Li. Please raise your hand so everyone can see you.”
The woman appeared to be Chinese, in her fifties, or perhaps sixties if she had taken care of herself. She wore a tailored suit of elegant cut in a tasteful gray with iridescent panels in the body of the jacket, fashionable among business types. Her drawn face and disheveled grey-streaked hair, loosely confined in a bun, stood in stark contrast to her clothing.
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