Diuturnity's Dawn

by Alan Dean Foster

  Briann listened in silence to the angry tirade, forbearing from interruption or reply. Twikanrozex did his best to memorize it all, down to the last sputtering slur. Neither man nor thranx was especially offended. They had heard it all before, though usually couched in flaccid overtones of false civility. Unusually, this human was unabashedly vociferous in his bigotry, not caring if anyone overheard. It was possible, Briann mooted, that he wanted to be overheard. Certainly those strollers within easy hearing distance, human and thranx alike, turned to stare in the direction of the diatribe. To their credit, most appeared embarrassed by the outburst of undisguised vitriol.

  Her dark green hair cropped fashionably short, the ranter’s taller female companion made an effort to calm her comrade. He would have none of it, disdaining her murmured words and twice shaking her hand off his shoulder. When neither of the targets of his interminable vehemence showed any signs of reacting, either to his tone or to his words, he began to advance in their direction.

  “That’s close enough.” Briann’s tone was decidedly sharp, sufficiently so to bring the man to a surprised halt. His countenance twisted into a perfect sneer.

  “Why, Padre, or whatever it is you degenerates choose to call yourselves, that’s hardly a spiritual attitude.”

  “You’re wrong, visitor. The spirit takes many forms. Hallowed also is the spirit of defiance.”

  Looking decidedly uneasy, the woman continued to badger her companion from behind. “That’s enough, Nevisrighne. We’ll be late for our . . . appointment.”

  The man gestured in her direction, evidently enjoying himself. “No, no, Pierrot. We have time. Time enough to instruct the degraded.” His attention shifted back to the quietly watching Briann. “Why, I do believe, Padre, that if I were to intrude too much on your personal space, you would physically push me away.”

  “I might.” Briann’s tone had not changed.

  “You might even take a swing at me.”

  “In a universe of infinite possibilities, all things are possible,” Briann admitted piously.

  “In which case I would be forced to defend myself. While it is true that we stand equal here in the number of witnesses, mine is human, whereas yours is only a lowly bug.”

  “Enough of this. Come away from here, Nevisrighne!” The woman was not distraught, Briann noted, so much as she was enraged.

  “Shut up, Pierrot.” The dark man’s sneer slipped smileward. “Just a quick lesson. In possibilities.” His right hand slipped toward the inside of his open shirt—and froze before the first finger could edge inside. His rage vanished, subsumed by a look of total surprise. It was focused not on Briann, but behind him.

  Twikanrozex held a gun in each gleaming, chitinous hand. All four of them. Faced with this entirely unexpected and formidable quadruple arsenal, the swarthy fanatic slowly drew his one hand away from his chest and let it fall back to his side. So shocked was he that it took him a moment to find his voice.

  “Very spiritual,” he finally muttered uneasily to Briann without taking his eyes off the unexpectedly heavily armed thranx. “Not only have you become personally debased, whoever you are: Your so-called holy organization is founded on hypocrisy.”

  “Wrong again. This must be your day to wallow in wrongness, my friend.” Briann did not have to look behind him to know what Twikanrozex had done. The thranx’s actions were reflected in the shorter man’s reaction as clearly as if in a mirror. “We who serve the United Church believe very strongly in always maintaining a sound defense against any who would do us harm. It is one of the fundamental tenets of our belief.”

  “What about turning the other cheek?” The ranter had forgotten whatever lay hidden against his left armpit. And wisely so.

  “We are always willing to do that. Twikanrozex, turn the other cheek for this man.” Behind him, the thranx obediently turned his head to the right. His astonishing peripheral vision still allowed him to keep that now subdued individual in view. At the same time, the muzzles of the four pistols did not waver.

  “An unsurpassed model of sarcastic religious miscegenation.” Retreating, the speaker rejoined his plainly exasperated companion. “If the Fates so decree it, we may meet again some day, Padre. I would enjoy having the chance to resume your education.”

  “And I yours, my friend. Enjoy the fair.”

  “Indeed, I will. More than you can imagine.” With that he turned and stomped off, making no effort to disguise his enduring furor, brushing aside the arm of his annoyed companion.

  Briann followed the curious pair until they passed out of sight behind a cluster of bobbing, transparent spheres that periodically paused to engulf unsuspecting passersby in an assortment of cleverly preprogrammed advertisements.

  “That was unpleasant,” he observed.

  “Yes.” Twikanrozex had slipped his quartet of weapons back into their respective pouches. “I’m convinced that if I had not intervened, he might have tried to do you an injury. A disappointing first for us.”

  “Maybe more than that.” Briann’s thoughts were churning. “Unless you have a specific destination or prospect in mind, I think I’d like to follow those two for a while.”

  Twikanrozex moved forward to join his friend. “Follow them? To what end?”

  “I don’t know.” The human half of the team rubbed the damp back of his neck. “That one was more than xenophobic. There was something in his gaze. Just a little wildness, maybe. Or perhaps a little something more.”

  “You are suggesting he is even more volatile than he appears?”

  “I’m thinking that, at least when he was looking at you, he bordered on the homicidal. I may be imagining things, but it wasn’t just him, either. The woman he was with? The longer he rambled on, the more agitated she became. And it wasn’t the kind of nervousness that someone exhibits when their companion is making a fool of himself. It struck me as more profound than that.”

  Reaching up, Twikanrozex touched his friend’s bare arm with a truhand. “Like you, I have no agenda for the remainder of this day other than to wander, to observe, to converse, and to learn.”

  “Then let’s track those two for a while. If nothing else, it ought to be educational.” He grinned over at his colleague. “While we’re at it, you can still realize three out of four.”

  It was not difficult to do. Outside the fairgrounds, their pairing would have made them conspicuous. Strolling along the shore of the great lake would have seen them stand out against the flat, unsparing surface. But lost among the bustling crowds that had begun to swarm the exhibition in ever-increasing numbers, they were able to blend in without being noticed. Acolytes of the Church received training in how to be inconspicuous as well as obvious.

  Though they spent some time wandering among the exhibits and made a show of feigning interest in several, it was evident to the pair of trailing Church representatives that neither the slim woman nor her excitable male companion were much interested in the components of the fair. They spent a lot of time looking around while expending a considerable effort not to be seen looking around. Once, they disappeared into a public rest room and did not reemerge for nearly thirty minutes, a visitation that suggested they were responding to a call that came from someone other than Nature. Not once did they pause to eat, drink, shop for souvenirs, ask questions, try out hands-on displays, participate in a virtual, or otherwise indicate that they were somewhere besides an ordinary city street.

  “I can’t figure them out.” His face blocked by a large cerise blob of calorie-free sugared air puff, Briann watched the peculiar pair pause in front of an exhibit on the undersea life of Cachalot. They managed to look bored and apprehensive at the same time. “If these are your standard-issue xenophobes, then why are they spending any time at all in the thranx-built zones of the fair? We’ve followed them through three already. Are they just eccentric, or is there something to them we’re not seeing?”

  Twikanrozex idly groomed an antenna, bending it forward and down with a foot
hand until he could slide the plumed prominence between his mandibles. Unlike Briann, he did not try to conceal his presence from the couple they were following. There was no need. Except at the diplomatic and governmental level, contact between humans and thranx was sufficiently infrequent that the majority of humans were convinced that all thranx looked alike.

  “I feel that I have spent enough time in the company of humans to know that the behavior of this pair is most unusual, crr!ll. Their actions do not strike me as those of a mated couple, yet that is the appearance they clearly are striving to convey. We have already observed several instances of interaction suggesting they do not especially even like one another.”

  Briann inhaled a portion of his air puff. “Among humans, that does not necessarily signify the absence of ceremonial union. But in this case, I happen to agree with you. None of their actions seem normal. Still, while interesting from an anthropological point of view, it’s not grounds for alerting the authorities.” He glanced surreptitiously in the couple’s direction. They were arguing again.

  “Let’s give this another ten minutes or so. Then I suppose we should get back to the tower and check its condition.”

  Twikanrozex gestured agreement. Five minutes into Briann’s proposed ten, something so extraordinary happened that all thoughts of abandoning the unobtrusive stalk were forgotten.

  Both padres saw the approaching thranx. One was especially large, with prominent wing cases and a deep blue sheen to his exoskeleton. Except for a possible passing glance of disgust from the humans, there was no reason to suppose the two pairs would even acknowledge each other’s presence. Absolutely the last thing Briann expected was for them to swerve toward one another. No, that was not quite right, he corrected himself. That was the second last thing. The first last thing occurred when they met in the middle of the busy pavilion walkway, pointedly inspected their immediate surroundings, and then fell into what could only be described even at a distance as casual conversation.

  Not only was the rabid antithranx human male palavering with representatives of the species he had a little while earlier professed to loathe, he was doing so without any sign of distaste. His taller female companion likewise participated in the conversation enthusiastically.

  “These are not strangers talking.” Twikanrozex was as spellbound by the unexpected tableau as was his soft-skinned friend. “They know one another.”

  “Or of one another.” Shielding his face as best he could, Briann watched the four-way conversation. “I am of the feeling that more than the preposterous domesticity of our couple is on view here. But what, I can’t begin to imagine.”

  “Nor I.” Twikanrozex inclined his antennae forward, but the voices of the nattering quartet were drowned out by the shifting, swirling babble of the crowd. “What can they possibly be talking about?”

  “Whatever it is, they’ve finished.” Briann pointed. “The party is breaking up.”

  As they looked on, the humans and thranx parted company. As if to cap the unreality of the encounter, they exchanged formal farewells before heading off in opposite directions. Twikanrozex started forward immediately.

  “You want to keep following them?” Briann trailed his friend for a moment.

  “Not them. It may be that we have, kuiit, learned all we can from the odd human pairing. I think we should follow these new thranx that they met for a while.” He glanced over at his brother-in-the-Church. “For reasons too convoluted to explain in a short time, and because of regrettable omissions in your cultural education, I must tell you that the two representatives of my kind are acting in a manner as strange as the humans’. This bespeaks eccentricities that go beyond individual iconoclastics. I should very much like to be enlightened.”

  Of like mind even though he could not be sure of his colleague’s analysis of the encounter they had just witnessed, Briann nodded and followed.

  Since any meeting between a group of apprehensive humans and an equally large clutch of edgy thranx was bound to attract the attention of curious fair-goers, Skettle arranged to have only Martine accompany him to the final pre-Armageddon rendezvous. Having been guided to the place chosen for the final meeting by Skettle’s followers Nevisrighne and Pierrot, Beskodnebwyl met them attended by, as agreed upon, one other single representative of his kind. On this, the fifth day of the fair, the two humans and two thranx drew hardly a glance as they convened in the farthest reaches of the joint human-thranx forestry pavilion.

  Giant tceri!xx from Willow-Wane grew side by side with tall kauri from Earth. Twisted kokerbooms shared the magnified heat of the day with lush gotulba from Hivehom. There were sequoias and serypta, volmats and ginkgo, diterocarps and the famous flowering eryouou from Long Tunnel that grew only in perfect circles from a common root.

  In nature, none of these formidable growths grew together in the same ecozone, and many of them came from different planets. As representative examples of their kind, they had been selected for individual elegance and overall appearance. Only through the application of advanced hydroponics could they share the same ground. Each had been carefully sterilized prior to transport to ensure that no unwanted fellow travelers accompanied them on their mission of education. Each had been rendered incapable of reproduction to make certain no seed or cone, no spore or shoot could take root in the untainted alien soil of Dawn.

  Into this impossible artificial forest, Beskodnebwyl and his companion wandered. Near the back, in the farthest reaches of the soaring pavilion with its transparent divisions, they found Elkannah Skettle sharing a hot drink with his collaborator Martine. Thranx and humans greeted one another formally. While the two leaders conversed, Martine and her thranx counterpart took up positions between them and the pathway. Deep in apparent discourse, they were paying as little attention to each other as possible while keeping their eyes on the pavilion’s transient visitors. Though expecting neither trouble nor interruption, they were fully prepared to deal with either.

  “Interesting, isn’t it?” Skettle ventured conversationally. “That in this time of instantaneous local and rapid interstellar communication we still find the best way to assure a private conversation is to meet in person?”

  Beskodnebwyl gestured agreement mixed with contempt, confident his human counterpart was incompetent to detect the latter. It amused him to so denigrate the unwitting biped. “Electronics are too easily intercepted, and voices imitated. Better to meet face-to-face.”

  “Even if you don’t have one.” Skettle smiled thinly. He was wonderfully content, secure in the knowledge that by this same time tomorrow chaos would have paid its long-planned visit to the fair, leaving death, destruction, and ravening hatred for the thranx in its wake. No doubt this odoriferous pest with whom he had agreed to temporarily cooperate felt similarly.

  “At least I know my face.” Antennae and truhands waved in Skettle’s direction. “It was thus when I was young, it will be the same tomorrow, and except for a darkening of color will be unchanged when I am old. Whereas yours will shrink and crumple like a fruit left too long in the sun, until it threatens to disintegrate from its own rotting loathsomeness.”

  Skettle’s smile slipped away. “I’m certain this happy little tryst is as disagreeable to you as it is to me. Therefore let us do our business so we can both be spared any unnecessary additional contact.” Glancing back the way he had come, he proceeded only when Martine acknowledged his wordless inquiry with a slight wave of one hand.

  Clicking a button on his handheld, he projected into the air between himself and a nearby tree a perfect miniature replication of the fairgrounds. There was no one else around to see, the nearest tourists being some distance away from the two alert scouts. As Skettle manipulated the elementary controls on the handheld, portions of the projection lit up accordingly.

  “My people will set to work where you see the red highlights.” As his fingers moved, so did the responsive lights. “We’ll be starting fires in the most vulnerable places. Each of my people has und
ergone extensive training and is dedicated to the cause. In the event of unforeseen interruption or capture, they are prepared to operate independently of one another. Their assignments are overlapping, so that if one or more are intercepted or otherwise detained, any other can strike their missed targets for them.” Using the controls, he rotated the projection and expanded individual sections, finally settling on one bordering the lake.

  “I myself will be seeing to the interfair communications facilities, and then sabotaging the relevant backup installation so that my original work will not be detected.” His voice had taken on a biblical tone that was lost on the thranx.

  “Deprived of a central command, the fair security personnel will be unable to properly coordinate any reaction with one another. Separated and assailed on all sides by both my people and yours, they will either flee in confusion or be cut down should they attempt to interfere with us. Long before reinforcements can be brought from Aurora, we will have completed our cycle of destruction.” He offered the handheld to Beskodnebwyl, who took it in a truhand. Having paid careful attention to the human’s hand movements, the thranx had no difficulty operating the straightforward device.

  “My followers will spread out from this central point.” Another bright light appeared in the air before the conversants. “Each will be carrying a small arsenal of compact high explosives as well as hand weapons with which to ward off the curious security personnel to whom you have already referred. As you have pointed out, by the time adequately armed forces can arrive from the city, my people will also have finished their work. Weapons and any other incriminating evidence will have been abandoned at preselected points, and my clan mates will have rejoined the pitiful surviving remnants of the panicked crowd. Any visiting thranx who happen to observe us at work will be killed. I am not worried about surviving humans identifying us, since it is well known the casual mammalian observer cannot tell individual thranx apart. In any event, the turmoil and disorder should be enough to blind even the most heedful of your kind.”