He knew every shade of her voice. He did not ask what she meant. He only waited.
“Somebody else made Soldiers,” she said. “To fight, maybe. Well, of course to fight. What else can they do? Somebody took a native mammal—if Soldiers are even native—and bred a sentient species just for that purpose. The physiologists told me there are traces in the genetic makeup. That was the first hint I got. And there’s other evidence. Memories of artifacts that don’t have any referents in this civilization. Whispers handed from Soldier to Soldier down through centuries. A portrait in an ancient, overgrown—something. Maybe a temple, or an administrative structure. I said ‘ancient,’ but it’s not all that old if Kakrekt’s people could just stumble on it. The face in the portrait wasn’t a Soldier. It wasn’t like anything else we’ve ever seen.”
He saw the implications immediately. “Are you sure?” he said, but it was not necessary. He knew her; he knew she would not have said so if she was not sure.
She nodded, and watched his eyes lose all warmth. A few minutes ago she had been talking to a man. Now he was all commissioner.
He did not move while she described the physiologists’ findings, the overgrown structure Kakrekt had shown her, the stories Nakeekt had compiled. His attention did not flag. He would retain every word.
She finished, “What kind of creatures would do that? Why would they need enormous numbers of completely expendable fighters who aren’t afraid to die, who only live to die? The creators didn’t care what might happen when Soldiers got old, about the increase in intelligence and self-will, or maybe they didn’t even know. They might have expected Soldiers all to die before they reached that stage. Possibly, if they didn’t die, they were slaughtered. I don’t think,” she said, “we want to meet beings who would do that.”
But humankind was moving inexorably outward, and Hanna knew as well as he did that an eventual meeting might be unavoidable.
Jameson’s gaze turned inward. Hanna did not have to read his mind to know what he would think, because she had already thought it. That meeting should be avoided as long as possible.
And the creators, even if they had been gone for centuries, might return to Battleground. There must be not even the slightest trace of humankind there for them to find.
After a while Jameson said, “We’ll have to get back everything you left behind. Kakrekt has the communicator you gave Kwek. What else?”
“Gabriel left a translator at That Place. That’s all. We went into Wektt the last time with nothing but the clothes on our backs. And not nearly enough rations,” she said with some resentment.
“Are you sure that was all? Kwoort took a weapon from you when you arrived. We know what happened to that. But you had com units, didn’t you? And he took those too?”
“Yes. I forgot . . .” Hanna rubbed her face. She still tired easily. It seemed she could not trust her memory yet, either. “Maybe Kakrekt can put her hands on them. She might not want to return them, but I suppose . . . I suppose you can get them one way or another.”
“Mmm,” he said, already thinking of something else.
Hanna said it for him. “Equipment is tangible. There is also memory.”
He met her eyes across—again across, still across—an official desk, their positions unchanged.
“How many do you think you will have to assassinate?” she said.
He heard accusation in her voice. Instead of answering directly, he said, “You were prepared to collaborate with Kakrekt in eliminating Kwoort, were you not? How is that different, except as a matter of scale?”
“I never really had to decide,” she said quietly. “Events made it unnecessary in the end—and Nakeekt cheated anyway. What she sent Kakrekt wouldn’t have killed Kwoort.”
“But you considered it.”
“I considered it.”
Something hurt in her chest. She heard Arch say: Does the word ‘corruption’ mean anything to you?
“You wouldn’t have to kill anybody,” she said. “Kakrekt . . . Nakeekt . . . Tlorr . . . they’re all aging. They’ll forget soon.”
“Maybe in Wektt and Rowtt. But at That Place?” he said. He watched her closely. He would know there had been time, in the journey to Earth, to think the situation through. “Nakeekt will be writing everything down, filing it away in her archives. And what of her lieutenants? What of the rest of the Soldiers there? Soldiers don’t go to That Place unless they’ve reached a certain level of development. You can be sure that even if Nakeekt is gone, others will remember. And they’ll write things down too.”
Silence stretched between them. Jameson would not break it.
Hanna said finally. “I thought what you’re thinking. But then I thought, there’s another way. Could you bring them here, the people from That Place? If not to Earth, to a colony. New Earth, perhaps?”
“Nova. They’ve decided to call it Nova, at last report. Unless they’ve changed their minds again.”
Hanna ignored the digression. “You want to study Soldiers. If it’s that or killing all of them . . .”
A longer silence this time, while he considered the possibilities.
Finally he said, “There would be problems, but advantages too.” Hanna only nodded, but she felt herself relax a little. It was enough that he was willing to consider it, and she did not doubt that if he approved, he would be able to convince the rest of the commissioners. And she thought that on reflection he would approve. Thousands of living subjects who could be studied in comfortable surroundings would be a tempting prospect.
It was not ideal. All the Soldiers who lived at That Place would be torn from their home, their way of life dissolved; they would be sundered from the younger peers who might have joined them one day. There was a chilling parallel to the history of Hanna’s own ancestors, exiled from Earth.
But it would forestall mass murder. Hanna had not been able to think of any other course that would.
She had one more thing to say. She had to, though she said it without hope.
“Starr . . . I want to go home.”
“Go, then.” He smiled. “Zanté and Thera insisted on showing it to me. It’s beautiful, and you’ve hardly seen it.”
“No, I mean home, to D’neera. I know I can’t stay, because of Mickey, but—just to be free to go there, to leave Earth when I choose—Do you think the Commission would pardon me now? Haven’t I earned it?”
He took in a long breath and let it out. He said almost helplessly, “Oh, my dear . . . you’ve earned it, certainly. But after what you’ve just told me, especially . . .”
It was not going to be good news; she knew that before he got up and came to her. He held out his hands, wanting her to stand up so he could hold her, but she did not move, and finally he let his empty hands drop.
“Battleground will be interdicted,” he said. “We would have done that in any case, because Soldiers’ inability to travel in space is sufficient reason for withdrawal. We meant to continue dealing with Kakrekt, though. Now . . . whatever we do there, we’ll have to do it and get out as quickly as possible. If there’s a chance of the creators returning, humans will not go near Battleground again. Maybe, if there are results from the research someday, we’ll be able to present the mission as a qualified success. But not yet. The best we’ll be able to say for some time to come is that it wasn’t a complete failure. And your part . . .”
Hanna looked back at the river. She was not going to meet his eyes.
“They’ll tell me,” he said, and there was genuine sadness there, “that you didn’t really play a large part in what success we can claim. They’ll tell me you just did your job.”
Neither of them moved for some seconds that felt like years. Finally Hanna did get up. She was preoccupied with thoughts of captivity, the varieties of it. She meant to walk away from Jameson without another word, not for the first time but maybe for
the last.
He said behind her, “Are you sure you ought to be alone? I could come with you—”
“I won’t be alone.” She turned to face him, to speak after all. It was a large room. She seemed to be looking at him across the space of light-years again. “Thera and Mickey are there. And Gabriel. I want Gabriel to go through my program and then I want him working for Contact. He’d be the perfect liaison for a group of displaced exiles on Nova. I trust you have no objection? I can have that reward, at least? And he’s going to live with me until he’s ready to move on. I’m not even going to ask if you object to that.”
She turned once more, and was gone.
Chapter III
THE DOMICILE HAD TRANSPARENT walls and its highest levels seemed to float in a bower of trees. It spilled down a river bluff and was located next to a great park that bordered, on the opposite edge, half an hour’s walk away, Starr Jameson’s property. The place had been purchased by Province Koroth at considerable expense, justified by the argument that many D’neerans would like to see Earth for themselves but did not go because there were no telepath-friendly accommodations. Evidently the price Hanna must pay for a home of her own was to become an innkeeper. If it meant the company of D’neerans, she was all for it. None seemed inclined to come immediately, however. It would take time for D’neerans to get used to the idea.
Mickey learned where the doors were, and the words to open them, at once. Gabriel programmed the doors to respond to a particular sequence of barks, and the Dog learned how to open them almost as quickly as Mickey. The Cat just sat by the wall wherever it chose and said Meow until someone came and picked it up and put it out. Sun and moonlight poured in from all sides; in the daytime it was seldom necessary to use artificial light.
Even so, Hanna spent much of her time outdoors, and did much of her work there, conversing, analyzing, posing questions to her students and answering more while she ran after Mickey and the Dog and went after the Cat when its transmitter said it had gotten too far away. She once delivered part of a lecture on F’thalian dual-brain communication while halfway up a tree, attempting to coax the Cat out of it. Adair Evanomen was stunned by the expense of the mobile holo unit that accompanied her, but was afraid to deny it. She was easier to get along with than he had expected, and she never went over his head—but she might.
This in spite of the fact that she rarely saw Starr Jameson. He survived A.S. again—alone—and resumed an old pattern of sporadic, short-lived affairs. After each, however, he came to see Hanna, each time asking, essentially, Now? She saw the loneliness that echoed hers (though no one else did) and her answer eventually changed from No to Maybe next year or the year after that, so perhaps his hope was justified. And she never did take off the ring.
She was known, among the few people who paid attention, for her choice of venue for seminars covering Battleground. For these sessions Gabriel, until he left Earth for Nova, was not a pupil but stood beside her. She conducted them at Admin, indoors, in tiny windowless rooms that felt unbearably confining. Her students consequently did not devote much attention to Battleground. Hanna said that was all right. The small population on Nova could not reproduce and soon would die out, and the civilization on Battleground, she told them, was not going to last long enough to warrant attention.
But at irregular intervals, she went to see Kwoort where he lay on the edge of life, the shell of his body retained for undisclosed reasons even though the researchers on Nova had specimens enough. What do you do there, she was asked, and answered: I talk to a ghost.
But the ghost was not Kwoort’s, as people supposed—except that once, and only once, she said: I read the papers, the ones you kept in that sack, the only memory you could count on keeping. I read what you needed to write down.
Mostly, though, she looked at her life at these times; she acknowledged that she remained the Polity’s tool; and the ghost she talked to was her own.
this is not the life we wanted, one of them said.
it’s what we have. it’s not bad
can we change it
no we can’t
do we want to
i don’t know
i don’t either
any more
Battleground Page 52