A Talent for War

by Jack McDevitt

  “I have a better idea: let’s both go.”

  I was tempted. But my instinct was that someone should stay with the ship.

  “They’re all a long time dead, Alex. What’s the point?”

  “Talino,” I said. “And the others. We owe something to them. The truth should have some value.”

  She looked dismayed. “What am I supposed to do,” she objected, “if you get in trouble? I won’t be able to come down after you to bail you out.”

  “I’ll be all right. If not, if something happens, go for help.”

  She sneered, thinking how long it would take to make the round trip. “Be careful.”

  We ran through the various systems checks. “Don’t go to manual until you’re down,” she said. “And probably not then. The computers will do all the tricky stuff. You’re just along for the ride.” She’d been staring at me.

  I reached for her, but she stiffened and drew away, shaking her head. “When you come back,” she said, so softly I could barely hear.

  I climbed into the vehicle, pulled the canopy down, and secured it. She rapped on it twice, gave me a thumbs-up, turned quickly, and left the bay. I watched the lights change over the exit door, signaling that the chamber was sealed.

  Her image popped onto my display. “All set?”

  I smiled gamely and nodded.

  Red lamps in the bay went purple, then green. The deckplates opened beneath the capsule, and I was looking down at wisps of cloud and a gem-blue ocean. “Thirty seconds to launch, Alex.”

  “Okay.” I locked my eyes on the instrument panel.

  “It’ll be late afternoon when you get down there,” she said. “You’ll have about three hours until dark.”

  “Okay.”

  “Stay in the capsule tonight. You have no idea at all what sort of place this is. In fact, you should probably stay aloft. Keep off the ground altogether in the dark.”

  “Yes, Mom.”

  “And Alex—?”

  “Yes?”

  “Do what you said. Keep the cameras on. I’ll be with you.”

  “Okay.”

  The capsule trembled as the magnets took hold. Then I fell away, down through the clouds.

  It was raining over the ocean. The capsule descended into gray overcast and leveled off at about a thousand meters. It turned southwest on a preset course, which would parallel the overhead track of the Corsarius.

  There were thousands of islands scattered through the global ocean: no way I could hope to search them all. But Corsarius had been left in orbit.

  I was certain now that there had been a conspiracy. Its shape and form was unclear, but I had no doubts who the principal victim had been. But why abandon the ship? To torture him, perhaps? Or as a sign they would come back for him? Whichever it was, the conspirators, with an entire planet to choose from, would have placed him somewhere along its track, close beneath its orbit.

  Within the womb of the bubble cockpit, I felt warm and safe. Rain splattered in large sluggish drops on the plexiglass.

  “Chase?”

  “Here.”

  “Islands ahead.”

  “I see them. How’re you doing?”

  “Ride’s a bit rough. I don’t know what this thing’ll be like if it gets windy.”

  “The capsule’s supposed to be reasonably stable. But it’s small. They really don’t expect you to go joyriding in it, Alex.” She still sounded worried. “You might want to cut the search area down.”

  I was planning to look at everything in an eight-hundred-kilometer-wide band centered on a line drawn directly beneath Corsarius’s orbit. “It’s probably too narrow already.”

  “You’re going to be busy.”

  “I know.”

  “You’ll run out of sandwiches long before you run out of islands. You’re lucky you don’t have to track across the continent.”

  “That wouldn’t matter,” I said. “It’s too cold there.” It must have seemed a cryptic remark to her, but she didn’t press me.

  The first group of islands lay dead ahead. They looked sterile, sand and rock, mostly, with scattered brush and a few withered trees.

  I flew on.

  Toward sunset, the storm had fallen behind. The skies purpled, and the sea became smooth and transparent and still. A school of large, black-bodied creatures glided below the surface; and towers of sun-streaked cumulus drifted on the western horizon.

  The ocean was studded with white, sandy reefs; lush, ferncovered atolls; and ridges, bars, and islets. There were thousand-kilometer-long island groups, and solitary fragments of rock lost in the global sea.

  Chase’s voice, exasperated: “If I knew what you were looking for, maybe I could help.”

  “Sim and the Seven,” I said. “We’re looking for Christopher Sim and the Seven.”

  I saw no birds anywhere, but the skies were filled with schools of floaters. They were bigger by far than their cousins on Rimway and Fishbowl, and indeed larger than any I had seen anywhere. These living gasbags, variations of which could be found on so many worlds, gamboled through the air currents. They rose and dived in synchronized movements, and swirled in wild chaos like balloons in a sudden gust.

  All the floaters I’d ever heard about, though, were animals. These seemed different, and I learned later that my first guesses about them were correct. Their gas sacs were green; and they possessed a vegetable appearance. The larger ones tended to be less mobile. Long tendrils trailed from a stem and, on the more sedentary creatures, floated on the surface. I saw no indication of eyes or any of the extrusions associated with animals. I suspected this was one of those ecologies which produces animates, species not possessing the clear distinction between plant and animal which adheres on most living worlds.

  A few approached the capsule; but they could not keep up, and though I was curious, I resolved not to slow down. Keep moving. Tomorrow maybe.

  I passed over a group of desert islands while the last of the sunlight was fading. They were strung out at remarkably constant intervals, alternately to my left and right. Footprints of the Creator, Wally Candles had said of a similar chain on Khaja Luan. (By then, I had become something of an expert on Candles.)

  Candles and Sim: how much had the poet known?

  Our children will face again their silent fury,

  And they will do it without the Warrior,

  Who walks behind the stars

  On far Belmincour.

  Yes, I thought: Belmincour.

  Yes.

  I crossed into the southern hemisphere in the late afternoon of the following day, and approached a wedge-shaped island dominated by a single large volcano. It was a place of luxuriant growth: of purple-green ferns and broad white flowers and vast green webs that clung to every piece of rock. Placid pools mirrored the sky, and there was a fine natural harbor, complete with waterfall. It was an ideal site, I told myself, setting down on a narrow strip of beach between the jungle and the sea.

  I climbed out, cooked my dinner over an open fire, and watched Corsarius pass overhead, a dull white star in a darkening sky. I had a steak that night, and beer. And I tried to imagine how it would feel if the capsule (whose cabin lights glowed cheerfully a few meters away) were gone. And if Chase were gone.

  I kicked off my boots and walked beneath the stars toward the sea and into the surf. The tide sucked the sand from around my soles. The ocean was very still, and the immense isolation of that world was a physical thing I could touch. I activated the commlink.

  “Chase?”

  “Here.”

  “I can see the Corsarius.”

  “Alex, have you thought about what you’re going to do with it?”

  “You mean the ship? I’m not sure. I suppose we should take it home.”

  “How? It has no Armstrongs.”

  “There must be some way to manage it. It got here. Listen, you should see this beach.”

  “You’re out of the capsule,” she said, accusingly.

  “I�
��m sorry you’re not here.”

  “Alex, I have to watch you every minute! Do you have anything down there to defend yourself with? I didn’t think to pack a weapon.”

  “It’s okay. There are no large land animals. Nothing that could be a threat. By the way, if you look at the sky a little to the north, you’ll see something interesting.”

  I heard the sound of movement over the commlink, and then she caught her breath. Wally Candles’s wheel. The cluster of stars seemed almost to spin in the heavens: a blazing halo dominating the night, a thing of supernal beauty.

  I went back to the capsule and extracted two blankets from the utility box. “What are you doing, Alex?”

  “I’m going to sleep on the beach.”

  “Alex, don’t do it.”

  “Chase, the cockpit is cramped. Anyhow, it’s lovely out here.” It was: the surf was hypnotic, and the moving air tasted of salt.

  “Alex, you don’t know the place. You could get eaten during the night. ”

  I laughed—the way people do when they want to suggest that someone is being unnecessarily alarmist—stood in front of one of the capsule’s cameras, and waved. But her concern was sufficiently infectious that I would probably have retreated back into the cockpit, if I could have done so graciously.

  With a suspicious glance at the black line of jungle which was only a dozen or so meters away, I spread one of the blankets on the sand. The spot I’d picked was only a few quick steps from the capsule. “Goodnight, Chase,” I said.

  “Good luck, Alex.”

  In the morning, I crisscrossed the island for an hour, but there was nothing. Disappointed, I set out again, over a wide expanse of unbroken ocean. About midmorning, I ran into a sudden squall. I went higher, to get over the storm. There were patches of heavy weather throughout most of the rest of the day. I inspected more sites, sometimes in bright sunlight, sometimes in cold drizzles. There were plenty of floaters, which sheltered from the storms under trees or on the lee side of embankments and rock walls.

  My instruments were most effective at shorter ranges, so I stayed within fifty meters of the surface. Chase urged me to go higher, arguing that the capsule was subject to sudden violent air movements, and a sharp downdraft could easily drive it into the ocean. Still, there was no sign of turbulence, despite the numerous storms.

  I looked at probably twenty islands that third afternoon. None seemed promising. I was approaching one more (which was big, and a lot like the island with the volcano), when something odd caught my eye. I wasn’t sure what it was, though it was connected with a cloud of floaters which were milling aimlessly just off the surface, about a half kilometer north of the island.

  I switched over to manual, and cut air speed.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “Not a thing, Chase.”

  “You’re losing altitude.”

  “I know. I was looking at the floaters.” Several of them reacted in a way that suggested they were aware of my presence, just as they had the day before. But they must have decided I was no threat.

  No wind blew. The ocean was calm.

  I could not shake the feeling that something was wrong in the picture: sea, sky, animates.

  A wave.

  It was on the far side of the floaters, approaching: green and white, its crest breaking and reforming, it rolled through the silent sea.

  The island was long and narrow, with a high rocky coast at the eastern hook, sloping down into bright green forest and white beach. Quiet pools lay within sheltered glades.

  “My kind of place,” said Chase, not without irritation.

  I drifted down through the heavy afternoon air, and settled onto the sand just beyond the water line. The sun, approaching the horizon, was almost violet. I pushed the canopy back, climbed out, and dropped to the ground. The surf was loud.

  I looked out across that ocean over which no ship had ever sailed. It was a lovely, warm, late summer day, with just enough bite in the salt air. Here. If there was an appropriate place on this world for the conspiracy to come to its climax, it should have been here.

  But I knew it was not so. The scanners had shown no evidence of previous habitation. No one else had ever stood on that beach.

  Out beyond the breakers, some of the smaller floaters played in the air currents.

  The wave kept coming. It was somehow not in sync with the surface: too symmetrical, too purposeful, and perhaps too quick. It was in fact accelerating.

  Curious.

  I walked down toward the waterline. A couple of huge shells, one almost as big as the capsule, were lolling gently in the shallows. A small creature with a lot of legs sensed my presence and burrowed swiftly into the sand. But it left its tail exposed. Something else, a quick flicker of light, moved in the water and was gone.

  Some of the floaters turned toward the wave, and it dissipated. They exhibited uncertainty. Most drifted as high as they could without lifting their tendrils out of the ocean. A few, smaller, brighter colored, probably younger, were nudged loose altogether and rose into the afternoon sky.

  I watched, fascinated.

  Nothing happened.

  One by one, the floaters settled back toward the surface, until, eventually, almost the entire herd was down on the water again. I assumed they were feeding on the local equivalent of plankton.

  The ocean stayed quiet.

  But I could feel their uneasiness.

  I was about to return to the capsule when the wave reformed. Much nearer.

  I wished I’d brought the binoculars with me, but they were in a storage bin behind the seats, and I didn’t want to take the time to go back to the aircraft, which was about two hundred meters down the beach.

  The wave was headed directly toward the floaters, approaching on a course more or less parallel to the coastline. Again, it seemed to be gaining velocity. And getting bigger. A thin line of foam developed at its crest.

  I wondered what sort of sense organs the floaters had? Anything with vision would have been clearing out, but they only bobbed nervously about on the thin strands that resembled nothing so much as tethers, as if the creatures were tied to the ocean.

  The wave rushed toward them.

  There was a sudden squeal, a shrill keening that seemed just on the edge of audibility. The floaters erupted skyward simultaneously, in the manner of startled birds. They were apparently able to pump air through the central gas bag, and they were doing that vigorously, trying to gain altitude, but the larger ones were slow.

  Nevertheless, the entire colony would, I thought, be well clear of the water when the wave passed; why then did their cries sound like panic?

  The wave acquired a sharp angular shape as though its essential fluidity had hardened. And it passed, harmlessly, I thought, beneath the retreating floaters.

  But several of the creatures were abruptly jerked down toward the surface, and were hauled twisting and flailing in the wake of the disturbance. Two got tangled in each other’s tendrils. And the wave changed direction again. Toward shore.

  Toward where I was standing.

  Chase’s voice: “Alex, what the hell’s going on?”

  “Feeding time,” I said. “There’s something in the water.”

  “What? I can’t get a good look at it. What is it?”

  Her questions were coming closer together, tumbling over one another. The onrushing wall of water climbed higher. It was long, almost as long as the beach itself, which would have taken fifteen minutes to walk across.

  I broke for the capsule, which seemed impossibly far away. The sand was thick and heavy underfoot. I churned through it, fixing my eyes on the aircraft, listening for a change in the dull roar of the surf. I lost my balance and pitched forward, but came up running, pumping wooden legs.

  Chase had gone silent. She would be watching through the videos, and that thought caused me to reflect (as if everything were happening in slow motion) that my dash across the beach displayed a degree of terror that would embarrass m
e later. If there was to be a later. I could sense her holding her breath; and so my flight became even more frenzied.

  I rehearsed what I would have to do to lift off. Open the canopy. (My God, had I shut the son of a bitch? Yes! There it was, dead ahead, gray and gleaming and closed.) Activate the magnetics. Energize internal systems. Pull back on the yoke.

  I could activate from where I was by whispering the instruction into the commlink, but I’d have to slow down to do it, get my breathing under control. That would lose time, and anyhow my body was running on its own. No way I’d be able to stop it.

  The wave was entering the breakers now. But it was enormously higher, and heavier, than the combers it rolled over. Goddam tidal wave. But there was an odd lack of fluidity to it: the sense of the thing was not that something enormous lurked within, but that the wave itself was somehow alive. The water that composed it seemed a deeper green than the ocean, and, in the sunlight, I discerned a dark, fibrous strain. A network. A web.

  Through all this the shrill ululation of the entangled floaters had been rising in pitch, but diminishing in volume. As, presumably, they were dragged into the churning water.

  There were tidal pools near the capsule. Thick brown water ran into them, and they began to overflow their banks. A long, slow mud-colored wave broke on the shore and rolled high up the beach. It came my way, and I splashed through it. It clung to my boots, pulled at me, and tried to suck me into the sand. I broke free and ran on.

  I ran blindly. Something hissed past me, a thin fibrous strand. The beach made for slow, ponderous going. I couldn’t get my breath and fell headlong. Some of the water got onto my right hand: I felt a stab of pain that brought tears. I wiped the flesh against dry sand, and ran again. Ahead, the tide swirled over the skids and around the ladder. I was slogging through it, one heavy step at a time, wrenching each boot free before moving on.

  In the shallows, the wave broke, and roared across the beach.

  Only one of the trapped floaters was still in the air. It whipped in tight little circles, squealing ceaselessly, fueling my own panic.