“Your meeting is still on.” Sertoa looked pleased. “You’ll carry into it with you the extra benefit of added sympathy.”
Her mind stirred, roiled, thoughts and emotions crashing into one another before slipping away in opposing directions. “No I won’t,” she responded tersely.
Toroni blinked. “I’m sorry, my dear?”
The look in her eyes was very different from the one that had commanded her countenance only moments earlier. “I won’t be carrying sympathy or anything else into that meeting because I’m not going to be in attendance. I’m not going, Bernard. I’m finished here. Finished with Hivehom, finished with the bu—with the thranx, finished with everything.” She turned away, until all she could see was the aerogel support. The portion in front of her face opaqued when she closed her eyes. “I want—I need to go home.”
The ambassador considered. In the course of his distinguished career he had been faced with similar situations before. Some had even been inflected with highly emotional overtones. But never before anything like this. Never. That did not keep him from pressing forward as he knew he must.
“Fanielle,” he told her as tenderly as he could, “you have to do this. No one else here at the mission has managed to achieve as intimate a rapport with our hosts. No one else is as facilely comfortable with their ways, with their habits or mannerisms. You are the best qualified to take this meeting. That’s why you were given the assignment of trying to secure it in the first place. It’s your moment of triumph. You have to take it.”
From the vicinity of the aerogel came the agonizingly stillborn response. “I don’t want it anymore.”
Hating himself, Toroni refused to let it, or her, go. Both were too important. “It’s not a question of you wanting or not wanting it. You have to do it because no one else can do it as well. This is a highly sensitive moment in the development of relations between our species and the thranx. Perhaps even a milestone. We won’t know until we see the fruits of our labors begin to blossom. The fruits of your labors, Fanielle. Do you really want to cast aside everything you’ve worked for here?”
“I’ve already cast it, Bernard. Find somebody else to go. Find somebody else to take my place.”
Swallowing determinedly, he leaned toward her, careful not to initiate a significant disturbance within the highly responsive aerogel. “Don’t you think, Fanielle, that if I felt someone, anyone else, was sufficiently qualified I would have assigned them to the task already? Before coming here to see you?”
Deep within, a certain component of her shattered self was pleased by the sincere words of a man she greatly respected. But like so much else that was Fanielle Anjou, that part of her was hiding now, isolated and shunted aside by the nightmare that had overwhelmed her life.
“I told you, Bernard. I don’t care. It’s not important anymore.”
He nodded slowly, even though she was not looking at him. Or at anything else. The ensuing silence lasted longer than its predecessor. Once again, it was the ambassador who broke it.
“Program failure. Transport capsule drive fields just don’t go into reverse. The system is replete with fail-safes—every one of which failed. The engineers are working on it, working hard. They’re good people, but they’re baffled. They cannot afford to be, because we must know what caused the accident. If we don’t know, then we cannot with any certainty prevent a repetition. Of the accident. If,” he concluded concisely, “it was an accident.”
It was enough to turn her head. “Bernard?”
Sertoa took his turn. “Fanielle, you know as well as any of us that there are elements, some of them with substantial backing, both among the thranx and our own kind who will do anything to prevent the kind of union between our species that the enlightened among us seek. I’m not talking about the great mass of undecideds on both sides. I’m talking about the kind of blatant, old-fashioned fanaticism we thought we had evolved beyond.”
Slowly, she digested what her colleague was saying. Contemplated it from an assortment of viewpoints. In the end, every one of them was equally ugly.
“You think someone deliberately reprogrammed that cargo capsule to reverse and smash into the one that was taking me to the airport?”
“We don’t know that.” Toroni was relieved to see some small flicker of alertness return to his junior colleague’s expression, even if it was thus far focused entirely on concern for something unconnected to professional interests. “At this point it is only speculation. But I am not the only one to have considered it. Azerick Authority is pondering the possibility with utmost seriousness. If, and I caution if, the hypothesis should turn out to have any basis in fact, it would mean that our entire modus here will have to undergo the most strict review. We will continue to press forward with our work, of course. More fiercely than ever. But we will have to do many things differently.”
She heard everything he said, but in manner muted. Her own thoughts were churning. “Somebody would kill a dozen innocent people just to get to me, to keep me from a stupid meeting?”
“Not stupid.” The strength of her response allowed the ambassador to employ a stronger tone of his own. “Highly important. Possible milestone.”
“And maybe it wasn’t someone,” Sertoa added. “Maybe it was some thing.” He eyed her sternly. “The thranx have their own fanatics, remember.”
“But to resort to killing a diplomat . . .” Her voice trailed away into disbelief.
“Why not?” Turning, Sertoa began pacing slowly, waving his hands to emphasize his words. “If successful, they set back our efforts until we can find someone else capable of achieving your kind of personal rapport with their kind. If discovered, word reaches Earth that thranx have carried out a mass killing of humans here on Hivehom. Either way, they achieve at least one of their ends.”
“Which is why,” Toroni went on, “no word of our suspicions is being allowed to go beyond Azerick. Officially, there was a programming failure. A transport accident. Nothing more. Unofficially, desperate unease is being bounced between worlds at high speed and without regard to the cost.”
She was silent for a moment, wrapped in a cocoon of conflicting concerns. “What will you do if the investigating authorities determine that the crash was no accident, and that thranx were responsible?”
Bernard Toroni had been in the service all his professional life, had ridden the currents of diplomatic ebb and flow until all the rough edges had been knocked off him long ago, leaving him polished and smooth. Nothing surprised him; nothing could crack his learned demeanor; nothing could get a grip on his emotions. For the first time since he could remember, maybe for the first time ever, he was shaken.
“I don’t know, Fanielle. I don’t think anybody does. The reaction on Earth, among the colonies . . .” He swallowed hard. “It would result in . . . a setback.”
She nodded, the movement a barely perceptible stirring against the aerogel. “If it’s true, then someone—” She glared disapprovingly at Sertoa. “—someone, will go to any length to keep me from meeting with Eint Carwenduved.”
Toroni’s face betrayed nothing. “To keep you from doing so, yes. You specifically, Fanielle.”
She gazed back at him evenly, more awake now than at any time since the two men had first entered the room. “You’re a very cunning man, Bernard Toroni.”
He shrugged, his face a perfect blank. “I’m a professional in the diplomatic service, Fanielle. Nothing more.”
She turned her gaze to the ceiling. It displayed a soundless, peaceful holo of drifting clouds. In the distance was a small rainbow. She did not see it, just as she no longer saw peace. That had been taken from her. Forever? She chose not to think about it. Forever was a very long time.
“How soon will they let me out of here?”
The ambassador’s tone was glib, controlled. “In a day or two, if you like. Then there will need to be a period of rest. You are one bipedal contusion from head to toe. But nothing significant was damaged. Nothing wa
s broken.”
“I wouldn’t say that,” she whispered wearily. “So . . . I will follow through with the lie, and make the meeting. You must be pleased, Bernard.” Seeing the look on his face finally gave her the means to again consider the feelings of others. “I’m sorry. That wasn’t fair.”
“It doesn’t matter.” He rose from the side of the bed. “I’m used to it. It’s part of my job.” He hesitated briefly before continuing. Noting his superior’s expression, Sertoa nodded solemnly and left the room. “There is one other thing. At least you will no longer have to worry about lying when you refer to the Bryn’ja request.”
She did not reply: just stared up at him.
“The staff here knows nothing is broken or damaged because when you were brought in from the wreck you underwent the most thorough medical scan the facilities here are capable of rendering. I am more sorry than I can ever say, Fanielle, but there is no point in keeping it from you. Truth always seems to emerge before it is convenient for us to have it do so. When you meet with Eint Carwenduved you will be able to do so as someone who has not obtained an encounter on the basis of a prevarication.”
She examined the implications of his words from a distance. It only made her that much more determined to confound those who might have done this to her. To her, and to one other, and to a future that now would never have the chance to be.
Her voice as taut as duralloy stressed to the point of destruction, she gazed up from the bed out of damp eyes and asked him softly, “Do they know how long I’ve been pregnant?”
5
It certainly was a lovely world, Elkannah Skettle reflected as he and Botha took their ease along the shore of City Lake. New pathways had been laid to accommodate the anticipated tide of guests. Transparent lobes thrust out over the lake’s surface so that visiting children could experience the illusion of walking on water while delighting in the play of native and introduced aquatics swimming just beneath their feet. A multitude of chromatic-winged flyers swooped and darted above the shimmering splay of water, making fearless dives to pluck small, wriggling creatures from the depths. They filled the air with an unexpectedly sonorous honking, surprisingly tolerant of the increasing numbers of visitors who had begun to throng the lakeshore prior to the official opening of the fair.
Too bad it all had to be marred by the presence of thranx.
For all that he had devoted much of the previous decades to decrying humankind’s intensifying relationship with the insectoids and then taking his philosophy and intentions underground, Skettle had seen very few thranx in person. Observing them on the tridee was no longer a problem. The disgusting creatures were all over the media. You could hardly find one delivery source out of the thousands available where they were not eventually to be encountered; all bulging compound eyes, wriggly antennae, and obscene multiple mouthparts. If anything, meeting them in person was even worse.
He could sense the same robust revulsion in the shorter, darker man who matched him stride for stride. Botha was not especially talkative, ill at ease in get-togethers even of his own kind. But there was nothing subdued about his dislike of the bugs. Equipped with poor social skills, he had to be watched over constantly lest his deeply felt feelings manifest themselves in ways that could be dangerous to his friends as well as to himself. Skettle had taken it upon himself to do this, which was why he had insisted that the engineer be paired off with him today. Hatred is healthy, he had assured Botha on more than one occasion. But it must be moderated by wisdom. To be effective, ruthlessness must be appropriately timed.
So when they passed a mated pair of the creatures, all suffocating scents and pearly aquamarine exoskeletons, he shifted his weight just enough to nudge Botha off stride. Wearing a hurt look, the stumpy engineer blinked up at him in confusion.
“What was that about, Elkannah?”
“Keep walking. Keep looking at the wildlife on the lake. That’s better.” When he was certain they were well out of earshot of any other visitor, and after checking to make sure that his individual privacy field was at full strength, Skettle absently placed an open palm in front of his face to confound any possible distant lip-readers and proceeded to explain.
“How often must I remind you, friend Botha, to conceal your true feelings toward the bugs?”
The smaller man’s expression changed to one of honest surprise. “I wasn’t! . . . Was I?”
“Your face is pure plastic, Piet.” The older man stroked his beard. “I at least can rely on these long gray whiskers to hide emotions that might otherwise escape. If you will persist in using a biannual depilatory, you must be prepared to monitor every wrinkle of your lips, every arch of your brow, every twitch of your cheek muscles.”
Botha replied while considering something on the ground—which also allowed him to conceal his lip movements from potential far-seeing viewers. “I’m sorry. You’re right—I need to be more aware. Especially now, when we are so close to accomplishing something really important. But is it really necessary to be so careful, every minute? We’ve both seen non-Preservers who obviously feel as we do yet aren’t afraid to express themselves visually.”
“That’s because it doesn’t matter if somebody confronts them, or questions them.” Raising a hand, Skettle waved at a passing couple. Charming little girls they had with them, too. “Without appearing effusive, we must seem to be among those in favor of closer, not more distant, ties to these bug beings. We must not merely deflect suspicion; we must embrace it, engulf it. Then it can be safely disposed of, the way targeted eukocytes kill cancer cells.”
Botha nodded understandingly. Except for the thranx presence, which would not begin to become truly onerous for another day or two until the full panoply of the fair was thrown open to the public, he was quite pleased with how things had been going. The weather, the freshness of the unspoiled atmosphere, the subtle tingling tastes and aromas of a new world: all were meant to be enjoyed.
Several times that day they tarried to eat something, or sit and have a drink. These many pauses allowed time for reflection. They also allowed Botha, through the sophisticated instrumentation woven into his attire, to coordinate the actual final layout of the fairgrounds with the multiple schematics he had spent nearly a year preparing. The inconspicuous display that occasionally flashed onto the organic readout that floated atop his left pupil would have gone utterly unnoticed by anyone but a very attentive lover.
By late afternoon they had covered a good deal of ground. Having studied stolen diagrams of the grounds for months prior to actually arriving on Dawn, they were able to avoid dead ends and cover only those areas it was absolutely necessary for them to visit and confirm in person.
“We could do another quadrant.” Botha had perfected the art of reading the optical display without squinting. “They won’t close for another hour yet.” When the fair opened officially, they both knew, the grounds would remain accessible to visitors around the clock. This was very convenient for their own purposes, which did not include nocturnal sight-seeing.
“No need to rush things.” Skettle was sitting in a chair floating above a small pond. Trained leeshkats, local amphibians, popped up in cleverly choreographed rhyme-time to spit sparkling fountains into the air. Despite the seeming randomness of their alien exertions, not a drop of water fell on giggling, appreciative patrons of the small snack bar. Flowers flush with streaks of pink and vermilion swayed atop flexible aqueous roots. “We’ll come back and finish up tomorrow.”
“Fine with me. Everything matches up with the charts we’ve been using. I haven’t seen anything yet that will complicate our planting of charges.” Frowning abruptly, Botha spun in his seat. His chair rocked playfully with the sharp movement. “What is that awful screeching?”
“Poetry reading.” As he pointed with one hand, Skettle took a sip from the self-chilling glass of his tall, teal fruit drink. “Watch your expression, Piet.”
From atop a rotating mobile platform drawn by picture-perfect simulac
ra of eight-legged covuk!k from Willow-Wane, an ornately attired thranx was declaiming melodiously. Enchanted by his exotic appearance, quaint mode of transportation, silvery clicks and whistles, and a wafting fragrance redolent of crushed orchids, a sizable crowd trailed behind. They hung on the poet’s every gesture and sound. Though the majority of the entranced entourage was human and could understand little of the actual meaning of what was being said, they were fascinated nonetheless. The few thranx tourists in the procession endeavored to translate as best they could, and to convey some sense of the trenchant artistry that underlay the courtly performance.
“Look at those people, slavishly hanging on that filthy bug’s wretched croakings!” Botha had to turn away from the noisome spectacle, so repellent did he find it. “What’s wrong with them?”
“They have not been educated.” Far more in control of himself than his companion was, Skettle took a longer swallow of his drink, then eyed the nearly empty glass appreciatively. “This is very good. We will have to try and take some concentrate back with us. It is the task of such as ourselves, Piet, to educate them. That is why we are here.” He listened for another moment as the procession wandered out of earshot. “Desvendapur.”
“What?” Botha blinked at him.
“That was the thranx poet who escaped from their treacherous outpost in the western Amazon. Before your time, really—but I remember it quite well. I spent more time than it was worth trying to see what even a few disoriented, misguided humans found in his so-called poetic random barks and gargles. None of it ever made the least sense to me. Absolutely worthless drivel.”
“Apparently not to a bug,” Botha commented.
Skettle emancipated his empty glass, watched as it carefully negotiated a path between diners and drinkers on its way back to the kitchen. “Who knows what a bug thinks? Who cares? Let’s get back to the hotel and find out how the others did.”
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