So another had fallen. The pain was sharp but brief; Merwen knew she had to concentrate. Something was not finished.
Realgar continued, “Our condition is that you and your followers will cease all resistance and cooperate fully with the Guard from now on.”
Merwen eyed him bleakly. “What can I share with you that I have not?”
“You must acknowledge the authority of Valedon.”
Authority: responsibility for oneself and others. What authority could Merwen ascribe to these sad children? Even Siderite was no selfnamer.
Then she caught sight of the returned sisters, still held fast by the other soldiers. They were not yet out of danger. She must not jeopardize their safety with a careless word.
She forced herself to face Realgar again, to look into the blank horror of a soul dead in life. “I respect your authority,” Merwen said, “when you show it.”
Realgar appeared to expect something more.
“When you behave as adults,” she explained. She knew as she spoke that she skirted the edge, but some things have to be said.
“It is not your place to judge our behavior. You will obey us or pay the price: more pain, more deaths.”
To obey meant to share will. How could she share this Valan’s sickened will? “What do you want of me, specifically?”
“Keep your sisters away from the garrison.”
“I will communicate your wish,” said Merwen. “I assure you, no Sharer within this system desires to go near the garrison.”
“Stop ‘lifeshaping’ your breathmicrobes to harass my troops.”
“That is a bad thing,” Merwen agreed. She had been disappointed to hear that other rafts had chosen such a response. “Again, I will share your wish with others.”
“You must go further, Protector. You must make your sisters obey us in all things.”
Her toes squirmed uncomfortably and she avoided looking at them. “Am I Shora, to share infinite will? I can’t even share the will of Weia and Wellen all the time, let alone that of all Sharers.”
“But you can convince them.”
Around her, sisters watched, hope and dread straining their faces. Uneasily Merwen considered her own gift of wordweaving; like all power, it contained its own peril. “I can share what I believe, nothing more.”
The soldier leaned back a step, his head tilted to one side. “Do you always speak the truth, under every circumstance?”
“If what I believe is true.”
“What is it that Sharers fear more than anything else?”
This shift was a welcome change from his impossible demands. Realgar wanted to trust her, she saw, despite enormous pressure against it. “I think we fear ourselves, most of all.”
Realgar seemed disappointed, but it was hard to tell; his head might have been carved of raftwood.
“That may change,” Realgar said. “Your sisters will soon tell you what you can fear from us.”
Abruptly the lost ones were free, and the soldiers were climbing into their helicopter. The big blades whooshed round overhead.
Greetings were shared again, more subdued than before. On the raft lay the two wrapped shapes of those who had ended their own existence. Their bodies would be sung for, then hung with coral deathweights and sunken to their final dwelling place. Their spirits had already flown through the Last Door, perhaps to return in daughters not yet conceived.
Someone must share this lesson…but that will be painful. Those had been the parting words of Malachite the Dead. How much Valan pain will we share, Merwen wondered, and how much of us will be left?
5
GENERAL REALGAR REPORTED the incident closed. But he was far from satisfied by his exchange with “Protector” Merwen; essentially, nothing had changed. Elsewhere around the globe, several bases still faced native “invasions” in various stages of resolution. Rumors of the purple-skin problem, and even “catfish transformation,” of all things, had damaged troop morale. And in some regions every ship and helicopter was grounded by weeds stuck in the engines—oil-eating weeds.
That Iridian major general was incapable of any initiative, and it would only cause trouble at the Palace to try to replace him. So Realgar set up permanently at Planetary Headquarters. His children back on Satellite Amber complained that he never saw them any more.
“We’ve cleaned out the clickflies,” Jade told him at last.
“Well that’s a relief. No more global uprisings over a couple of lost natives.”
“Yes, sir.”
Realgar leaned back from his desk and clasped his hands behind his head. “We have to get a handle on these natives. They must have a weakness.”
“It’s pathological,” Jade said. “They just don’t know what fear is.”
“They have a word for it.”
“They think they do, but it’s on a different scale from ordinary fear.” Wrinkles puckered between her eyes. “With the mindprobe, only one ill-defined concept brought a fear response anywhere near normal levels. Something hard yet empty, with a cold light.”
Realgar had no patience for riddles. “Go get some more prisoners and find out what makes them tick.”
“Yes, sir. By the way, have you kept up with Siderite’s reports?”
The desk screen lit up with a page of fine print, of which one paragraph was highlighted. The general read it, then barked at his monitor, “Get Siderite in here, now.”
Siderite was dragged into the office, his lab apron askew, a pair of surgical gloves dangling from his pocket. “What the—” He swallowed. “You can’t just hustle me out when I’m in the midst of—”
“Did you actually tell the catfish how to beat our riot-control gas?”
Siderite blinked and shifted his feet. “Usha would have figured it out, sooner or later. Scientific exchange.”
“Treason. I could execute you on the spot.”
“Execute me?” Siderite laughed unsteadily. “It’s not even wartime.”
Amazed, Realgar stared at him. “Just what do you think this is? An Iridian parade exercise? Doctor, you’re in big trouble.”
Siderite swallowed again and blinked several times. “I thought that—I thought you would be pleased. Sir.” His voice wavered. “In one day, I learned more about ‘lifeshaping’ than I expected to in a year.”
“Indeed. Well, you’d better sit down and tell me about it.”
A chair rose from the floor, and Siderite sank into it. “I didn’t tell Usha how to neutralize the gas. I just gave her a tip on its molecular structure. Then she modeled an antagonist, a sort of synthetic antibody, based on calculation by those remarkable insects. And finally we—that is, the lifeshapers—cloned an enzyme secretor to produce it I followed the whole procedure. Now I can tell you just which of the shrubbery in those tunnels is significant and what’s going on.”
“Then you could train an inspection team to actually inspect, for a change: to hunt out those enzyme secretors and…” And destroy, if necessary.
“In theory, yes. Still speculative. Of course, there are hosts of other sorts of lifeshaping that I’ve barely got a glimpse of yet. For instance—”
“Very well. I’ll suspend your execution. But from now on, doctor, you will take six guards with you, two of whom will not let you out of sight.”
“But General!” Siderite half rose, and a glove slipped from his pocket, a display of untidiness that intensely irritated Realgar.
“Would you prefer a selective mindblock?”
He looked at Jade, and his face blanched. He stood up, leaning his arms on the chair. “I’ve had enough. I can’t work under such conditions. I’ll return to the Palace today.”
“Sit down, doctor, sit down.” Realgar’s tone became smoothly persuasive, full of the intensity of his will. “You remain under my authority, and I do not choose to release you. Besides, you don’t want to leave—because this planet is the chance of a lifetime.”
Slowly Siderite sat down. His look was frankly hostile, but h
e said nothing more.
Realgar signaled to the guard. “Good luck with your experiments, doctor.” The guard led him away.
Jade said, “Let me have him. I’ll fix him for good.”
The general shook his head slightly. “If he cracks, the whole operation is doomed.”
“He won’t crack; he won’t even know it happened. In any case, there must be other plant breeders on Valedon.” She stepped closer. “Mark my words: if I don’t have him, they will.”
That touched a nerve, because of Berenice. But before he could answer, the monitor interrupted. “Trans-space relay from Palace Iridium, office of the High Protector. An audience is called today at nineteen hundred…”
The general stood at attention while the lightshape of the High Protector materialized. Talion sat up straight behind his immense desk, his gray face relaxed except for tiny alert ripples around his eyes. “It’s been quite some time, Ral. How’s life on the blue moon? You expect to wrap it up soon, get back down to staff reorganization?”
Acutely embarrassed, Realgar regretted his initial promise, that he would leave Operation Amethyst to Sabas and get himself back to the Palace within a week. It had been four weeks since then. He saw that he faced an uphill fight with Talion.
Realgar cleared his throat. “The first stage is indeed over, my lord.”
“Oh? What comes next?”
“My lord, I expected to find here a planet well charted and managed by traders, with native citizens who were peaceful and reasonably cooperative. Instead it’s a world of unknown diseases, unpredictable weather, weeds that strangle my equipment, and natives who are insane enough to throw their bodies in front of my troops. It’s not a pretty sight, and I’d keep the Palace Press away, if I were you. I need troops and equipment to do this job right.”
“An Iridian division and a satellite fleet are not enough?”
“A riot-control unit is what I need. Also prison facilities, to hold a hundred per base. Also—”
“Hold on, there. You’ve barely a hundred men at each base.”
“I need three more divisions, to put a base in every raft system. Only then can we hope to control the natives on a daily basis. A one-to-ten ratio: that’s standard, for occupation strength.”
“But they’re just naked women, Ral, not Azurite guerrillas.”
“They were crawling at our fence before we gassed them—and they came back for more. They’re incredibly dispersed, all around the planet, but if we take one prisoner the whole population is up in arms. And two prisoners killed themselves. Natives willing to die for their own turf are a damned nuisance, whether armed or not.”
Talion studied his hands. The pause went beyond interplanetary time-lag. “Troops cost ten times as much to maintain on the Ocean Moon. The expenditure you propose would approach that of the Pyrrholite campaign. And you say I can’t even tell the public what’s going on?”
Realgar contained his fury. Expense, public relations—that was none of his concern. It had hardly been his choice to take on this distasteful police job. “How badly do you want to control this planet? Is the ‘purple menace’ real or not? Siderite will take years to determine anything.”
“Oh, not that long.” Casually Talion leaned back and stretched his legs. “Months, perhaps.” Behind his offhand manner, Talion was watching the general closely. “In fact, Siderite thinks I may have been…premature to send you at all. He finds the natives perfectly cooperative, as far as science is concerned.”
The nerve of that lab-aproned trollhead. How had such notions slipped through security? Of course, Talion would have his own spies. And if Siderite had the High Protector’s confidence, there was no way to touch him. For a moment Realgar was tempted to throw in the towel, leave this Torr-forsaken planet behind him, forget the whole mess, and get back to real soldiering somewhere.
But the moment passed.
Realgar permitted himself a disparaging smile. “Siderite takes six armed guards with him on every visit.”
“I see. And that keeps his situation in hand.”
“For now.”
Talion swiveled in his chair. “Well. Short of outright war, I cannot accept your proposal. As you are aware, several Councilors have already called for me to wipe out the natives completely. They know of course that I can’t do that. But the point is, Ral, a war effort does at least raise public support, whereas a covert operation is nothing but a troll on my back.”
At last, thought Realgar, they might be getting somewhere. “My lord, a swift exercise of force would be less costly than a drawn-out occupation, and perhaps more humane in the long run.”
“One decisive battle?”
“It would certainly speed things up if I could call those natives soldiers.”
“To declare war, I need provocation,” Talion said. “Usually that’s no problem—there’s always a terrorist incident, a bomb in a post office or whatever. Do you propose to plant something? Malachite is no fool.”
Realgar doubted that Malachite would care, as long as his campaign succeeded. “There is the mental deathblock that all Sharers appear to have. This is a blatant and serious infringement of Patriarchal Law.”
“True. Nobody but trained assassins and subversives need deathblocks. What bizarre people those natives are.” Talion shook his head. “If they are people. I’m still not convinced. But Malachite is. So you see, Ral, I have to be wary of mass executions of unarmed women—they can’t even conceal a weapon, for Torr’s sake. It was different in Azuroth, where the guerrilla mamas cooked up explosives in their cottages. I have enemies, you know, ambitious lords who will seize any pretext to accuse me before the Patriarch.”
Now Realgar had to commit himself. “Sharers are in fact like Azurite women. They do conceal weapons, biological ones such as the breathmicrobes. They’re only biding their time, to gather strength for reprisal.”
“Are you sure of that?”
“Consider it yourself, my lord. A defenseless people could never show the fearlessness that Sharers do. They must have something in reserve, and I want my force to be ready to face it when it comes.”
For a long while Talion’s light-image peered at a point beyond Realgar’s shoulder. The image flickered slightly from static in transmission. Realgar gazed back so intently that his eyes began to ache.
Very slightly, Talion shrugged. “Suppose I declare war and send two more divisions.”
“Well enough, my lord.” Two divisions—right away! This was just what he needed. “The Sardish First and Second?”
“The Dolomite Fifth and Sixth. They’re itching for another campaign.”
“Dolomites, my lord?” Realgar picked his words with care. “They are excellent fighting men, although some do not believe in spaceships.”
“They learn soon enough, and they do as they’re told. Besides, they mobilize fast.”
Never mind; at least the Protector saw the truth now and was willing to back him up. Whatever tricks those catfish came up with next, they would get a good thrashing.
6
AN ACT MORE unthinkable than death-hastening, so inconceivable that the sea had never named it, was the invasion of a mind. Never named on Shora, by Shora—until now.
At the Gathering on Raia-el, Lystra listened with her sisters as the returned ones shared word of their ordeal. Lystra strained to hear against the buzzing of helicopters, metal arthropods that always hovered near. The will of this Gathering would carry great weight, since so many had come from far rafts to witness at the central soldier-place. Even their fingertips were still, and most of their faces showed stark disbelief at what they heard.
Who would believe that any creature could willfully force the door of a mind? That was to violate the very soul of a human, never mind one’s physical shell. It was to deny Shora Herself, for every soul is a part of Shora.
“There must be a mistake,” someone said. “Clearly you’ve shared ill treatment—force-fed, trapped in a cage without relief in the sea, bruis
ed and—well, it’s all shameful enough. But your mind is your own, sister. Even a lifeshaper can only bring mindstreams parallel—never intercept.”
Lystra knew the saying: A mind swims alone, as Shora came alone through the First Door.
But the released one, Lerion Nonthinker, stood quickly and waved her arms for attention. “Why do you think Raessa died after she warned us? She had to, her mind was broken. She told us so: foreign thoughts were put in her head, insane notions about Valans being stronger than Shora Herself. Raessa could have fled the Last Door then, but she waited to tell us. Then she went forever white.”
Lystra’s fingertips whitened just at the thought. Numbly she stared at the dried weeds before her toes. For some minutes, the entire Gathering was silent in respect for Raessa, who had lived in mind-death just long enough that others might know. Her name would live in ballads for generations to come, if anyone could bring herself to sing this tale of dread.
Something plopped in the dust beyond Lystra’s knee. It was a dead clickfly, its legs twisted up, a shriveled husk. Lystra winced and pulled her legs back.
Clickflies were dying all over the rafts, and piles of them mounted around the silkhouses. An unknown infestation was coming close to wiping them out. Usha sought tirelessly for the source, and surely other lifeshapers around the globe were doing likewise. But in the meantime, a fog of silence blanketed the rafts, isolating the Per-elion cluster. If every clickfly disappeared, learnsharing would be frozen, memory lost, and even time could not be measured. There were other memory banks, of course, memories that could not be lost so long as the last raft remained on Shora. But without clickflies to unlock those memories, life would become impossible.
Yinevra Nonforgiver stood at last, at a hand-wave from Trurl, who balanced would-be speakers with miraculous dexterity despite the size of the Gathering. Yinevra said, “It is time for us to stop sharing ignorance. Anyone with eyes and ears can tell what’s going on at the soldier-place. Anyone who twice shared poison can tell!”
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