“I do none of this out of altruism,” Lalelelang explained coolly. “Everything proceeds from necessity.”
“I do not understand all of this.” The door guard wheezed. “We are not clever, and you must explain slowly and carefully so that we will comprehend.”
Lalelelang took a deep breath. “It is not that complicated. After I—killed—your agent, I knew that you might someday try to eliminate me, as a safety measure. I have subsequently caused to have placed a number of high-density storage beads containing everything I know, everything I have learned, in certain locations throughout the Weave. These worlds shall go unnamed.” The Lepar neither spoke nor reacted, listening quietly.
“If I die without sending to these locations certain specific transmissions at regular intervals, the scheme I have put in place will be activated. As a result, the beads will be forwarded to a number of incorruptible organizations noted for their independent dissemination of information. The secrets of the Lepar and of the Core will become known to all.”
The Lepar at the door responded. “What happens if you die accidentally? If you are struck by an out-of-control vehicle or expire of natural causes?”
“Eventually I will send a transmission to terminate the procedure. This will also wipe clean the storage beads. I am in good health—” She stared at the door guard in a most un-Waislike manner, “—and I expect to remain so. Meanwhile it would behoove the representatives of both the Core and the Lepar to see to it that I do not meet with any unforeseen accidents.”
“You ask us to do nothing, to react to this not at all.”
“You have no choice.”
“We are not happy about this,” commented the other Lepar, “but I must express my admiration. You defy all of one species and part of another.”
“I do not do this because I am so enamored of life,” she replied. “I have lived long enough to be displeased by much of what I have seen. But things are better now than when I was born, and may through understanding and awareness of the methods of the Amplitur and the potential regressive nature of Humankind become better still.
“I say again that I dislike all of this. I am by nature a solitary researcher.” She indicated the Human. “Pila’s people want the same things as you. It will serve the Lepar well to have a faction among Humankind they can trust. I think you can help each other, work well together. In any event, now you will have to.”
The assassins deliberated. Out of considerable bravery—or stupidity—the Lepar at the door said, “You cannot trust a Human.”
It was the soldier who responded. “You can trust us. We’re different. And we can’t mess with your minds. You’re more equal to us than anyone else, even the Massood.”
Careful to employ its empty hand, the first Lepar gestured toward Lalelelang. “Why do you not simply suggest her? Order her to reveal the details of the transmission scheme and the location of the threatening storage beads so that we can render it all harmless?”
The soldier grinned. “Don’t you think we thought of that when she first came to us? She set everything up in advance so that we can’t touch her. Any more than you can. Suggesting her would activate special redundancies she’s installed. That’s assuming it would work in the first place. She’s strong-willed. No, playing with her mind at this point is too chancy.
“Besides, what she says makes sense. We can use each other’s help. From my own standpoint as one of the Core, I know how hard it is to be isolated all the time, to always be looking over your shoulder.” She chuckled tersely. “We won’t show yours to anybody else if you don’t show them ours.”
“I believe I follow your meaning if not your syntax,” the Lepar replied. “You will keep the secret of our ability to resist Core and Amplitur mind-probes?”
“Yes. Provided you do the same concerning our existence. Together we’ll monitor my own rowdy kind as well as the activities of the Amplitur. You have easy access to people and places that are often denied to us, and vice versa. I think you’ll find us good friends as well as valuable allies.” She shrugged. “Anyway, it’s the only rational course of action the canary’s left open to us.”
The Lepar looked at one another. “We do not have the authority to sanction such an agreement.”
“Didn’t expect that you did. Convey everything that’s happened here to your superiors.” She nodded toward the contemplative Lalelelang. “You know how to find us, and we certainly know how to find you.”
“We are putting up our arms now.” Very slowly, the two amphibians returned their weapons to their respective pockets. When this was done the door guard performed a strange little bow in Lalelelang’s direction.
“You work great things here, Scholar. I personally would not have thought it of a Wais, much less of an academic.”
“Generalization is always dangerous,” she responded. “I am not your ordinary Wais.”
“On this point we are all of us present agreed,” the Lepar replied fervently.
“We are all something else,” she added, “or had you not noticed?” This time the Human as well as the Lepar eyed her questioningly. “The four of us here are all female.”
“What of that?” wondered the other Lepar.
“In addition to our professions we have the added responsibility of procreation. Leastwise the three of you do. I am too old, and sometimes I mourn for lost opportunities. As you go your separate ways I ask you to consider the future you will be leaving to the offspring you have not yet birthed. Do your utmost to bequeath to them a civilization of diverse peoples that is peaceful and true.”
“It seems we have little choice,” said the door guard.
“That’s right.” The Human soldier nodded by way of confirmation. “It’s no longer a matter of whether she lives or dies. She’s pushed everything beyond that. She’s taken herself out of the equation by making herself extraneous.”
“I understand you.” The Lepar at the door considered the Human. “Is it really true that your species has never known happiness or contentment?”
“Not from what I’ve seen of my history,” Pila responded. “We’ve always been good at war, but we’ve never been able to handle peace. Maybe you can give us some pointers. Bearing in mind that we have to keep a wary eye on the squids.”
The Lepar hesitated, then stepped forward and extended a lightly webbed, slick-skinned hand. “While not binding, I believe this is the proper mode of signifying agreement.”
Smiling, the soldier lightly gripped the proffered fingers with her free hand. Unlike the Lepar, she did not put aside her weapon, but this was to be expected and the Lepar was not offended.
Lalelelang briefly closed her eyes tight. No one had died, there had been no fighting. All had gone more or less according to plan.
“That is better. One thing I have learned from a lifetime of studying Humans is that peace is not a gift. It is like a building that is never finished. Such things are difficult to do without assistance. You will each contribute different talents to the process of construction.”
The Human and the Lepar turned to her as they parted. “What of you?” asked the amphibian. “Will you help?”
“Not in that process. You do not need me and there is little I can do.”
“You can teach us. About Humans. You know more about them than any other non-Human.”
Lalelelang trilled lightly. “Perhaps, perhaps. I am very fatigued. We will see. Meanwhile the Lepar are welcome to continue accessing my research. None of it is hidden.”
“You can interpret it for us,” the Lepar insisted. “Remember that we are not very smart.”
“Only if there are no other options,” she insisted wearily. “Only if you have no other choice.”
“I understand. We will try not to impose on you.”
“Same here,” said the Human. She turned back to the amphibian. “I am not alone on Mahmahar. Now that you and I have established a basis for cooperation, there are others of my organization who would like to talk
to you.”
Human and Lepar departed in tandem, making extensive use of their translators.
Lalelelang sat on her work nest in her silent office for a long time, not moving, meditating peacefully. After a long while she rose, turned out the lights, and left the building, looking neither to left nor right and not very intently straight ahead. If some Human or Lepar with homicidal thoughts on its mind lay waiting in ambush there was nothing she would be able to do about it.
She walked through the covered, soaring atrium with its fountains and flowers, deserted at this time of night, and exited onto the blue-green ground cover outside. Cream-colored night-blooming alarias filled the air with sultry perfume. An occasional worker or student sauntered past in a fog of undulating attire.
After a while she reached the crest of a rounded knoll. On her left, carefully trimmed fluel bushes formed a low hedge florid with phosphorescence. Tiny glittering bugs no bigger than dust motes danced among the leaves.
Activating the tiny player she carried in her side pouch, she stood perfectly still and listened to the music. The volume was set low and personal. The music was several hundred years old and had been composed by a Human. A very special Human. The first contact Human, William Dulac.
It rose and fell, rushed forward and slowed uncertainly. Very much like Humankind itself, she mused. Everything that infuriating, wondrous, terrifying, remarkable species was could be found in their music.
Eventually the neurotic cacophony grew subdued, the composition concluding in a whisper of woodwinds and muted strings. Fascinating sounds. Maybe someday she would be able to understand them completely. Emitting a soft, exhausted trill, she let her neck arch backward with a flexibility no Human, constrained by its powerful musculature and heavy bones, could match. Mahmahar’s lone moon had set and the constellations of her homeworld were at their most brilliant.
She had no way of knowing what the future would bring, but she did know that she’d done her best. Core Humans and Lepar would cooperate to keep watch, and to protect one another’s secrets. In light of that accomplishment the preserving of her own life seemed very much an afterthought. What matter one Wais more or less?
Her research awaited further codification, annotation, categorization. A lot still to do.
At least everyone had been polite, she reflected. Even the Human. Manners were indisputably the one great Wais contribution to galactic civilization.
She straightened and stretched, flexing and relaxing her crest and neck feathers before continuing on down the far side of the knoll in the direction of the university internal transport that would carry her home. She walked confident in the knowledge that she had left in her wake if not peace, at least a little understanding.
That, after all, was what scholars were for.
A Biography of Alan Dean Foster
Alan Dean Foster (b. 1946) is the bestselling author of more than one hundred science fiction and fantasy novels. His prolific output and accessible style have made him one of the nation’s foremost speculative fiction writers.
Born in New York City in 1946, Foster was raised in Los Angeles and attended ’filmmaking school at the University of California, Los Angeles, in the 1960s. There he befriended George Lucas, with whom he would later collaborate. Rather than trying to break into Hollywood, however, Foster took a job writing copy for an advertising firm in Studio City, California, where he remained for two years, honing the craft that he would soon put to use when writing novels.
His first break came when the Arkham Collector, a small horror magazine, bought a letter Foster had written in the style of suspense legend H. P. Lovecraft. Encouraged by this sale, Foster began work on his first novel, The Tar-Aiym Krang (1972), which introduced the Humanx Commonwealth, his most enduring creation. He went on to set more than twenty novels in the Humanx universe; of these, Midworld (1975) is among his most acclaimed works.
The Tar-Aiym Krang was also the first of the Pip and Flinx series. The hero, Flinx, is an orphan thief whose telepathic powers hold the key to finding his parents and understanding his identity. Foster has chronicled the adventures of Flinx, and his acid-breathing sidekick Pip, in fourteen novels, and has explored their universe in fourteen other stand-alone works.
In 1983, Foster began the eight-book Spellsinger series, about a college student trapped in a magical dimension. He also wrote the Icerigger trilogy, published between 1974 and 1987. In 1990, his stand-alone novel Cyber Way received the Southwest Book Award for Fiction, making Foster the first science fiction writer to win this prize. Foster has also found success writing novelizations of Hollywood films, including the Alien trilogy, Star Wars: A New Hope (in which he expanded Lucas’s idea into an entire universe), and the 2009 Star Trek movie.
In addition to creating imaginary planets, Foster travels extensively throughout our world. After finishing college, he spent a summer in the South Pacific, camping in French Polynesia and living with a family of Tahitian policemen. He has scuba dived on unexplored reefs, pan-fried piranha in the “green hell” of Peru’s jungle, and captured film footage of great white sharks’ feeding frenzies in Australia—which was used by a BBC documentary series. These and other adventures are the basis of his travel memoir Predators I Have Known (2011).
Foster is an avid athlete who hikes, bodysurfs, and once studied karate with Chuck Norris. Since taking up powerlifting—at the age sixty-one—he has won numerous world and regional titles. He and his wife, JoAnn Oxley, live in Prescott, Arizona, in a home built of brick salvaged from a turn-of-the-century miner’s brothel.
Foster with a lemur on his shoulder.
Drawings Foster made as a child, “when,” he says, “I should have been paying attention in school.”
Foster is a champion bench presser. In 2011, he won the gold medal in the RAW Eurasia Championships in Odessa, Ukraine.
Foster wearing a Tuareg headdress on one of his trips. Here, he is at the intersecting border of Burkina Faso, Niger, and Mali.
Foster with the late heavy metal singer Ronnie James Dio, of the band Dio, in 2003.
Foster with Tommy Remengesau Jr., President of the Republic of Palau, in 2008.
Foster standing in front of the Ukraine’s ruined Chernobyl nuclear power plant in 2011.
Foster using a Dayak blowgun in Sarawak, in northern Borneo.
All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this ebook or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.
These are works of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 1991, 1992, 1993 by Alan Dean Foster
Cover design by Amanda Shaffer
ISBN: 978-1-5040-4452-3
This edition published in 2017 by Open Road Integrated Media, Inc.
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New York, NY 10038
www.openroadmedia.com
ALAN DEAN FOSTER
FROM OPEN ROAD MEDIA
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