Imperative - eARC

by Steve White

  ’Sandro shifted, caught Wethermere’s eye.

  “You have a question, ’Sandro?”

  “You mentioned an increase in assets?” the big man inquired with a slow smile.

  Wethermere returned the smile: the career Marine’s focus on nuts-and-bolts practicalities was always a refreshing break from the wheels-within-wheels intricacies of dueling counterintelligence gambits. “Yes. The Woolly Impostor’s weapons and sensor suite have been upgraded to full milspec. The cargo bay has been converted for fast deployment and recovery of two integral fighters. And we’re adding to our running crew—mostly professional Navy, but a few folks with survey and prospecting credentials.”

  “Why them?” asked Tank.

  “Well, first of all, the opposition force obviously perceives a need for those specialists in their own roster of operatives. Given that we’re going to follow their path, I think we should have a few of our own, if for no other reason than to have an insider view of what they might be trying to achieve with those personnel. Secondly, we’re potentially heading into terra incognita. The PSU has a lot of systems under its collective flags, and it’s done a much better job charting warp-points than it has with space-normal astrophysical objects that are essentially low-value real-estate. There are lots of underutilized belts, rarely visited gas giants and moons. If our quarry—whoever that turns out to be—is habituating those out-of-the-way places, then it will be helpful to have some folks who are used to operating in precisely those environments.”

  “I think there’s one other asset we could use, sir. And in as much quantity as available,” commented Harry glumly.

  “And what’s that, Lieutenant?”

  “Luck, sir—lots and lots of luck.”

  Wethermere couldn’t help smiling, just as he couldn’t help that smile from being rueful. “I concur, Lieutenant. Emphatically. But I’m afraid ‘luck’ isn’t on any of my requisition lists. On the other hand, if you could initiate an effectual request based on your relationship with some deity—”

  Harry shook his head profoundly. “My relationship with deity wouldn’t get me off the hook for littering, sir.”

  Wethermere felt his smile widen. “Then I guess we’re just going to have to make do with the luck we’ve got.” Ossian looked at the gathered faces. “Any more questions, comments? No? Then we’re done here. We ship out in seventy-two hours. And as we say in the Navy, make ’em count. Don’t know when we’ll be back this way again.”

  If ever, he added silently.

  *

  Lentsul stared down into his bowl of poached Richthoffen Fish. It had started as an acquired taste, but it had grown on him over the past six years, as had many of Bellerophon’s features. Having been born on one of the First Dispersate’s immense generation ships, Lentsul had groused considerably about the many inconveniences and oddities of life on a planet. But over time, he had come to enjoy the feeling of sunlight on his still-wet skin after a long, gliding swim through the rolling whitecaps of Salamisene Bay, the smell of the plants that sent their pollen into the dew-wet dawn air, the change of seasons, and much of the local food. Many of his compatriots and birth-cluster-mates had expected him to be one of the many who could not (or would not) adapt to life on a planet: many of Illudor’s Children were now, first and foremost, creatures of deep space, of the immense habitats that had held dozens of generations before them.

  Much to his own and his peers’ surprise, Lentsul was not of this number, but, instead, was one of the Arduans who heard and responded to the call of a natural biosphere. And who was now, therefore, loath to leave it. “I fail to see why I am needed on this journey,” he sent as he half-hid behind the rim of his food bowl.

  Mretlak did not look up, replied with a calm that implied that he had been expecting just such a question. “You must travel with us because you have invaluable knowledge about the methodological details of our investigation, are intimately familiar with the many accountability checks each datum has received, and, above all, because you have the most skeptical mind among us. Where the rest of our group might relent in their suspicion, you will cling to it, and by that tenacity may well prevent us from racing over a precipice. You are coming because we need you, Lentsul, and because you are without peer.”

  “You are kind in your opinion of me,” Lentsul sent back with, he hoped, a convincing overlay of modesty. “And given your profound gift for foresight, Senior Cluster Leader, you will thus anticipate my greatest skepticism in regards to this entire enterprise.”

  “The humans. Again.” Mretlak let the air escape slowly from his vestigial gills.

  “Yes. But not ‘again’; always. And not all humans. Wethermere is different. He is—less savage.”

  “I think you mean he does not make his living preparing for close combat. And yet I hear he is not fearful of it. At all. And what of Janet Pietchkov? Is she, too, ‘savage’?”

  Lentsul rolled his sloping shoulders, let his arms and clusters roil slowly through the Arduan equivalent of a profound shrug. “She may not be savage, but she is subversive. Her words were what swayed the Council—and stayed my hand.”

  “And here we sit, in our new home, at peace. How were her words anything but a boon to us?”

  “I certainly cannot debate that,” Lentsul replied, while making sure to suppress his deepest, truest response: I cannot debate it because she is zhetteksh—a soulless, unreincarnative creature that makes intelligent noises. She may even be intelligent, I suppose—but still, she is not of Illudor, despite this strange pseudoselnarm which she possesses. Her comparative mildness may have helped stop the war, but it is difficult to remember if that was because her words were wise, or because they inveigled us into rationalizing our acceptance of a surrender which allowed us to avoid certain annihilation. Did she save us Arduans—or did she calm us so that we may be contained in separate communities on far-flung worlds, divided so that we may not merely be conquered but, ultimately, exterminated?

  Mretlak looked up from his own meal. “And even though you cannot debate the value of Jennifer’s intercession, you retain your doubts about humans?”

  “Senior Cluster Leader, there shall only be a dozen or so of the children of Illudor traveling with the many humans of this expedition. And several of these humans are the same ones who killed so many of my security team six years ago. And have since investigated matters concerning our people. How is it just or wise to give them such power and autonomy over our people and our affairs without us securing a corresponding measure of authority over them?”

  “Justice was not the determinative criterion in either the matter of staffing our investigation or in the matter of crewing and commanding the coming expedition. Indeed, it was not even a consideration. Rather, it was sheer pragmatism that guided our arrangement with the humans. Consider the investigational realities alone: at Metifilli and elsewhere, the humans were able to pass freely among their own kind, asking questions and observing conditions without attracting special notice. We Arduans could not have done so. We are still so rare outside our own enclaves as to immediately attract a great deal of attention.”

  Lentsul tried to ensure that his logical critique of Mretlak’s assertions was not tinctured by his reluctance to lose an argument. “Even if that extremely one-sided investigational protocol was necessary, should it continue now? How can we know that the humans will not twist these incidents to their own political purposes? Indeed, by allowing the humans to dominate the planning and control of the investigation, is that not equivalent to—what is their own expression?—putting the fox in charge of the hen house?” Lentsul was dimly aware that foxes were cunning terrestrial predators and that chickens were among their favorite prey.

  Mretlak had resumed eating, sent a wave of (calm) along with his response. “The humans could say the same of us, of course. When we commenced our investigation into the possibility of a fifth column of Destoshaz-as-sulhaji terrorists here in the Rim Federation, there were no humans involved in
either the planning or the field work. We were given complete autonomy.”

  “Yes, so long as we reported all our findings to them.”

  “Just as they are bound to report all their findings to us.”

  Lentsul switched a tendril in annoyance. “As if we have any means to determine whether they conceal information from us.”

  Mretlak radiated (mild amusement, amity). “True. But again the truth runs both ways: humans have no way of knowing if we are hiding something from them within our selnarmic discourses—discourses which they cannot even detect.” Mretlak finished his meal. “The imbalances between the human and Arduan components of this investigation have been nowhere near so extreme—or one-sided—as you seem to perceive, Lentsul. And in all cases, the necessary objective of building trust has intruded political considerations upon our investigational protocols.” Mretlak set aside his bowl and utensils. “From the first, preference has had very little to do with the choices we have made; they have been driven by pragmatism, by the drive to achieve desired results.”

  “Well, whatever balance may have existed is gone now,” Lentsul averred. “We three, along with the running crew and security staff of one ship, will be operating among dozens of humans. Some of whom were sworn to kill us only six years ago.”

  Mretlak wiped his mouth with the aid of his many tendrils, an action that humans reportedly saw as akin to pushing one’s face into a writhing mass of striking asps. As he wiped those tendrils off, he sent. “Lentsul, with all our clues and leads now pointing directly to Zarzuela, who do you suspect stands more to lose from whatever ploy Amunsit has set in motion: us, or the humans?”

  “Well…she will surely discarnate us as traitors to her vision of the will of Illudor.”

  “True. However, there are but a few million of us at risk and all blessed with the surety of reincarnation. Conversely, the human innocents number in the billions, none of whom have the hope of awakening into some later life if they are expunged from this one. So does it not make sense that the humans desperately need our help? I, for one, suspect we shall be among the safest persons aboard the Woolly Impostor and its new escorts, for we are the only irreplaceable crewmembers.”

  Lentsul poked at his soup again. “I suppose that is logical,” he allowed. But humans are not so much creatures of logic as they are creatures of passion, he added well beneath the surface of his selnarm. And no creature of passion becomes so unpredictable as when it becomes desperate. As the humans may become, if things go awry…

  *

  Moments after swearing to herself that she would not do so, Jennifer waved goodbye one last time as the command car lifted on half fans. It swung away from the outskirts of Melantho’s suburbs, aimed its nose toward the rolling green slopes among which they were nestled. “It’s not right,” she said through a knotty swallow that kept the tears to a minimum. She watched six-year old Zander dwindle beneath them, his godparents Roon Kelakos and Marina Cheung flanking him. “One of us should stay behind.”

  She heard Tank shift in the seat beside her, wondered why the hell she was poking at this oft-poked sore spot. Thankfully, his voice was gentle, almost a murmur, as he replied. “Orders, Jen. Nothing to be done about it.”

  It was wrong to push, she knew, but it was also wrong to maximize the chance that Zander would wind up an orphan. “You could have appealed the orders.”

  “No, Jen, I couldn’t.”

  “Tank, that’s crap. Ossian would have understood, he would have—”

  “Jen, the orders didn’t come from Ossian. He was just relaying them.”

  Jen started, turned to face her husband. He was staring ahead into the growing dusk cloudbank between them and the rest of their long flightpath from Melantho to Van Felsen Marine Aviation Base. His jaw was a stark line, the cheek muscles bunched up behind it in some muscular parody of mumps.

  “So who cut your orders?”

  “Admiral Yoshikuni. And Arduan Admiral Narrok, at the urging of Tefnut ha sheri.”

  “The holodah-kri? Since when do high priests start making military staffing requests?”

  Tank sighed. “Since the high priest in question also serves as the oldest member of the Arduans’ Council of Twenty. Who probably requested me personally since I didn’t kill him when we cut through to the Council’s sanctuary six years ago. I suspect Ankaht has been sending positive reports to the Council, too. No way to dodge this assignment, Jen. I’m not a civilian.”

  “Okay, Tank. Tie…and truce. You know I have to go.”

  “I know that Ankaht thinks you have to.”

  “And do you doubt her?”

  Tank’s jawline was obscured by a rippling play among the tense muscles there. “No,” he admitted. “None of the other human sensitives even come close to your abilities, Jen.”

  Which had, until now, been a source of quiet pride for Jennifer Pietchkov. And which had now transmogrified into a parent’s nightmare. Ankaht had anticipated Jennifer’s reluctance to accompany the expanded investigatory detachment. That’s why her Arduan friend had taken the step of showing her the latest results from the ongoing efforts to pair other humans who possessed pseudoselnarm with shaxzhu-caste Arduans. After years of work in some cases, they had barely made progress equal to that which Ankaht and Jennifer had made in their first four months of contact. It was simply not enough to help an Arduan navigate the interspecies communication barriers and understand human behavioral subtleties, as would become increasingly necessary when the investigation moved further and further into regions of space where Arduans were known only by reputation and report. And as had been proven in the extensive debriefing of Ishmael, the process of gaining information from an unwilling human subject and making all its nuances clear to an Arduan investigator would be hopelessly crippled if the translator was anyone other than Jennifer. Of course, the reverse was also true: if the investigation came into direct contact with Amunsit’s Arduans, then Ankaht needed Jennifer as her translational conduit back to the other humans, whether to help them interrogate or anticipate the actions of the Destoshaz-as-sulhaji of the Second Dispersate.

  “Don’t worry, Jen.” Tank’s voice was a murmur again. “Roon and Marina are the best; they’ll take care of Zander like one of their own.”

  “I know,” she murmured back. “He’ll be fine with them. Just like one long vacation.”

  They glanced at each other, smiled, stared back at the darkening horizon.

  Jen felt the smile slide swiftly off her face, peripherally saw the same happen to ’Sandro’s equally forced expression. Yes, Roon and Marina were the best. And that just didn’t matter a damn, not to her, and probably not to Tank. Zander was their only child, their beaming bright-eyed boy, and nothing would or could undo the wrongness of their leaving him behind, for whatever reason. Or make it feel any less miserable.

  Silent, they swept onward toward the approaching thunderheads on the horizon.

  *

  At Ankaht’s faintest selnarmic gesture, Temret, her guard captain and sometimes-confidante, drifted away as she walked through the arbor that was the entrance into the inner garden. As Temret’s young, vigorous, but somewhat monotone selnarmic echoes died away, a new pulse grew from in front of her. It was ancient, filled with the whorls and knots and textures that came from both a long personal lifetime and much journeying along others via the recollective pathways of shaxzhutok.

  As Ankaht emerged into the center of the concentrically arranged hedges and beds of the garden, the source of that wondrously complex selnarm turned to greet her: Tefnut ha sheri.

  “Eldest Councilor,” she sent, along with (warmth, joy).

  “My colleague and race-daughter,” he replied with (pride, delight). They brushed tendrils lightly and then, without any communication other than the shared habits of movement that allowed each to anticipate the intents of the other, they commenced a slow circumnavigation of the innermost hedge.

  They had almost completed their first half circuit before Te
fnut ha sheri sent (wry, mischievous), “You have not taken such melodramatic precautions to ensure our privacy since the last days of the war, Ankaht. Has my request made such waves among the human commanders that you must report the results in secret?”

  Ankaht reached out a selnarmic tendril that asked (patience, absolution): “Revered holodah-kri and model of my best behaviors, I must tell you that, after much reflection, I elected not to pass your request on to Captain Wethermere and the higher human command staff.”

  Ankaht felt a brief pulse of genuine disappointment emanate from the old Arduan, but then Tefnut’s waggish ebullience returned. “Ah. So you didn’t want to be carrying a weathered tough-hide like myself along on your adventures. Well, I’m sure there’s wisdom in that, too. Youth does not want to be slowed by the infirm—no, let us call it ‘measured’—gait of its elders.”

  “Tefnut, I am of middle age, myself.”

  “Which to me is still callow youth,” retorted the member of the First Dispersate who had lived the most years—but who had not been born on Ardu itself, as Sleepers such as Ankaht had. “But the seriousness of your selnarm tells me that this was a difficult decision for you, one fraught with many contending considerations. Come, my near-Firstling; what troubled you in reaching this decision?”

  Ankaht struggled for a moment: where to begin? “Revered Tefnut, the situation among our people is too sensitive for them to be without you at this juncture.”

  “You mean without both of us, Ankaht. But proceed.”