by John Ringo
For his part, Guano busied himself with assembling metal pieces into a framework of sorts. The universal bonding agent the forge had provided made that task quick and easy, leaving only the faintest trace of seams where pieces joined. Guano knew the specs of the stuff, and knew that the seams were stronger than the material that was joined.
I wonder, he thought, as he matched one small section to another larger one and gently squeezed the tube of bonding agent to join them, I wonder if this stuff was ours or a gift of the Aldenata?
Surrounded by others of the crew and passengers, by no means all of them Christian (al Rashid, for example, was on the piano), Nurse Duvall belted out a heartfelt and moving rendition of Ave Maria, backed up by the Vexillatione Helveticus Chorus (Rossini, de Courten, Faubion, Stoever, and Affenzeller, dressed, respectively as: three wise men, one stable keeper, and a Star of Bethlehem. Lying nearby, Frederico, much to his disgust, had had several mattresses disassembled and the product therefrom glued to his body. (Though he had grown way, way too big for the part, he was supposed to be a lamb.)
Duvall sang:
"Ave Maria, gratia plena
Dominus tecum benedicta tu in mulieribus
Et benedictus fructus ventris tuis Jesus
Sancta Maria, Sancta Maria, Maria
Ora pro nobis
Nobis peccatoribus Nunc et in hora, in hora mortis nostrae."
One could hardly tell that this was the same hall in which the Switzers and the Posleen, Frederico and Querida practiced their battle and weapons drill. After all, the weapons were put up. To one corner stood an artificial tree decorated with ornaments the Reverend Guanamarioch had coaxed out of the forge, along with garland and tinsel that, all of them being 99.99 fine gold, would have set a Swiss banker's heart, if he'd had one, to racing. In another corner was a makeshift manger, containing figurines hand carved by the Reverend of artificial Posleen ivory. In the middle, a large number of people in various forms of dress enjoyed the music, sang as the mood and the ability took them, and quaffed down the spirits that Duvall had released from stores with free abandon.
Under the tree were presents, usually small things, some personal items regifted because, sad to say, there was no shop aboard the Salem. Guano, in fact, had been kept fairly busy by people asking for this or that to be made to give to some special friend aboard ship. Where he could help, he did. He'd even helped Dwyer come up with some material to have a new dress sewn by Querida for Sally. Von Altishofen, too, had asked for some earrings for Duvall. Yes, those, too, were pure gold.
Sally, shining in that gown, knew this and, despite the knowing, kept casting sideways suspicious glances at the kessentai, his great head, eyes closed in a state of religious rapture, weaving back and forth in time to Duvall's and the Chorus' singing.
The song ended, to much applause, and Frederico, to his great relief, was able to get up, move himself to an alcove, and begin tearing off the tufts adorning his body, throwing them to the deck with disgust. Even as he disappeared, Duvall and the Chorus took their bows, before launching into another number, this time in German:
"Stille Nacht, heilige Nacht
Alles schlaeft; einsam wacht
Nur das traute heilige Paar . . ."
Most of those in the assembly hall knew the song in one language or another; it had been translated, after all, into more than one hundred human tongues. About the time Duvall and company reached "Paar" the others, those who could, joined in.
Even Sally joined. Jewish or not, and the song in German or any other language, the singing was too beautiful not to take part in it. Perhaps it was the more beautiful still for being sung so deep in lonely space.
"Durch der Engel Alleluja
Toent es laut bei Ferne und Nah
'Jesus der Retter ist da . . . a'
'Jesus der Retter ist da'"
When that was over, Duvall and the Chorus looked directly at Dan Dwyer and began to chant, "Father Dwyer, Father Dwyer, Father Dwyer . . ."
Eventually, under the press, the priest stood up. Sally, too, stood and ran over to al Rashid and the piano.
"Do you know the song he's going to sing?" Sally asked, then leaned down and whispered a title in the imam's ear. "Christmas in the Trenches?"
"No . . . I've never even heard of it," the Moslem answered.
"Let me take over the piano then," she said. The imam, with good grace, slid aside on the bench, making room for the woman who was also the ship.
When Dwyer reached the low stage, he nodded at Sally. She began a musical introduction composed half of The Minstrel Boy and half of something else altogether. At the right time, Dwyer began to sing, in a good Irish tenor's voice:
"Oh, my name is Francis Tolliver; I come from Liverpool.
Two years ago the war was waiting for me after school . . ."[1]
By the time Dwyer was done ("And on each end of the rifle we're the same"), and had left hardly a dry eye in the house, Sally noticed that Guanamarioch was among the missing. A quick check of the ship showed that he was back in the quarters he shared with Querida and Frederico.
"Damn it to Hell that I can't see in detail anywhere I don't have cameras," Sally quietly cursed. "Especially since I don't trust the bastard an inch further than I could throw him."
Guano worked feverishly. He had to be done by morning, just had to be.
The nine major sections of the frame of his project fitted together reasonably well. He assembled seven of them, then took one and began bonding to it sections from which draped fine gold wire. There were one hundred and twenty such sections, each shaped somewhat differently. From each of those came about one hundred golden wires, fourteen or fifteen inches long. Before bonding, Guano emplaced each section to make sure it fit. Sometimes, he had to take his carving knife and make some minute corrections. There were just enough of these that a small pile of golden wire began to grow at his feet.
He attached the eighth section, fixing it in place with the bonding agent. The ninth, when he picked it up, he was not quite content with. The Posleen's claws were a blur as they wiped out imagined imperfections in the material. Satisfied, the kessentai picked up a white orb with a bluish center and fixed it in the ninth section. Another followed that one. Then a dab of the bonding agent here, another there and yet another there, and the composite piece was attached to the main assembly.
From there Guano worked his way down, adding carefully carved pieces that he had long since had checked by his AS for fit. Quickly, though it seemed to take forever, the project took on the shape he had intended all along. Guano went to the closet to get a very important section, hidden in among his son's old, no longer fitting, armor.
Sally could sense inside the Posleens' quarters, even if she couldn't see. And what she sensed she didn't like at all. A mass of material was growing inside that space, rapidly, as if from a kit or a clever plan.
There was no monstrosity she would put past any Posleen, excepting only Querida and Frederico who seemed to her to be merely ugly, scaly, quadruped people.
I am in danger, she thought. Me, me . . . the ship me . . . my passengers . . . my husband. And no one will listen. I can't let that centauroid bastard finish. But at the rate he's progressing, how do I stop him? Hand to hand? He'd tear me apart. And then probably chew my bones. The Armory, then.
Finally deciding that the time had come for direct action, Sally stood and, trailing the golden gown Querida had made for her, began to walk briskly out of the assembly and drill hall, down the corridor, down some ramps and around several corners, to the ship's armory. The armory doors, normally tightly locked, opened for her under AID control just as she arrived.
Inside, she glanced quickly over the various implements of retail death and destruction, finally settling on her husband's old large-caliber, American-made pistol. The bar holding the pistol in place sprang open, even as another door, this one for a locker containing ammunition, gaped wide. Grasping the pistol, Sally turned to the ammunition locker, withdraw
ing a box of fifty rounds and two empty seven round magazines. Tearing the box open and spilling the rounds to an adjacent flat space, Sally set down the .45 and began loading the golden-colored bullets into the magazines, one by one.
One by one, Guano applied bonding agent to twenty flay golden nails and set them in their proper places. It was delicate work, and difficult. They had to be just so, to get the proper effect. That done, he took thick golden loops, two of them, and affixed them to their proper places. Another, even thicker than the first two, had to go also in its own certain place.
And that was the last piece. He stepped back, to admire for a moment his handiwork.
As the kessentai stood there, looking for imperfections in his design, the cabin door whooshed open. He turned his head just in time to see Salem, sometimes called "Shlomit," the woman standing there with a weapon in her hand, the wide muzzle of the weapon fixed firmly on his own head.
"You bas . . ."
The woman never finished whatever it was she had been about to say. She lowered the weapon, even relaxed her grip on it so that it hung loosely in her hand.
Guano smiled, sadly. He was pretty sure what she had been about to say and very sure why the weapon had been pointed at him.
Instead of speaking through his AS, he spoke in his own halting and imperfect Spanish, knowing the woman could translate perfectly and instantaneously.
"Myyyy . . . eson'antai . . . myyyy sssooonnn . . . heee telll mmmeee . . . youuu . . . unhapppyyy . . . fffeeelll uggglllyyy . . . inn nnnewww bbbodddyyy. I . . . mmake . . . theeese . . . sssooo . . . youuu . . . fffeeelll . . . beautifffuuulll . . . agggaaaiiinnn."
Through tears of shame and regret, Sally saw finally what the Posleen's project had been. It was a statue, of her, a beautiful statue, lifelike if idealized, all gold and ivory and precious gems. On a second and more careful look she saw that it was not a statue, exactly. Behind the thing it did not match her body, but was concave. A quick and automatic check of her data banks told her that the concave matched perfectly the curve of the prow of the part of her that was the ship. Instead of a statue, the Posleen had made her a figurehead, to grace her bow and be the beauty she no longer felt herself to be.
Unable to speak, Sally turned away, fleeing through the door of the Posleen cabin to her own quarters. There, she dropped the pistol finally and flung herself onto the bed she shared with Dwyer, crying still in pain and shame.
Guano didn't understand at all. Human emotions were difficult things for him to grasp. He was pretty sure that he'd seen tears in the woman's eyes, but understood that tears could mean different things in different contexts. Briefly, he considered the possibility that Sally had hated the figurehead he'd made for her. Certainly that could account for the weapon and the tears. Briefly, too, he considered just smashing the thing and returning its elements to the forge to be used for some purpose she might approve of.
Best to ask her mate, first, I think.
"Holy shi . . ." the priest began when he saw the Posleen enter the assembly hall with the statue under one arm. He stopped and started again, "What the fu . . ." All the people in the hall looked at the priest, half in reproach and half in amusement.
I've spent way too much time surrounded by Marines¸ he thought.
He saw instinctively what Sally had had to consult her data banks for; a figurehead . . . no, a beautiful figurehead, to grace the bow of the part of his wife that was a ship.
"Wait til Sally sees this," he said to Guano. "She's going to be . . ."
"She's already seen it," the Posleen said, through his AS. "But I don't think she . . .
One of the doors to the hall whooshed open. Through it Sally walked, her face still puffy from crying. She went directly to the Posleen. Standing in front of him she felt the tears begin to flow once again.
Barely able to speak, she leaned forward and flung her arms around the scaly neck. "Thank you," she whispered. "Thank you, and please forgive me for being a bitch."
PART III
Chapter Twenty-seven
Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, before you were born I dedicated you, a prophet to the nations I appointed you.
—Jeremiah 1:5, New American Bible
Anno Domini 2024
Posleen Prime
The crenellated city walls, a lovely light crimson granite, had long since been rebuilt. The setting sun shone upon them, making them glow and leaving the gate toward which Tulo'stenaloor and Goloswin passed a dark half-ovoid by comparison.
There was no real practical need for the walls; the planet had no predators larger and fiercer than the People, and there were no other groups of Posleen against which a defense was needed. Nonetheless, on Finba'anaga's advice, Tulo had authorized the rebuilding to form a capsule of sorts, a boundary of in and out, to bind the People together as a community.
Whether it was the physical fact of the walls that bound the people, or whether the rebuilding had done so, or whether it was both of those things and the philosophy and religion of Finba'anaga that had done so, Tulo didn't know. He suspected it was all of those things together, and perhaps still more factors too subtle to be named.
Approaching the city, Tulo and Golo passed through fields of ripened and nearly ripened grain. It was the same grain they had found on the world remade to suit the Posleen, so many orbits past. Mixed in among the rectangular fields were other, fallow, fields as well as orchards of various fruit-bearing trees native—at least they thought they were native—to the planet.
Herds of normals walked the grain fields, under the supervision of cosslain. They wore baskets on either side of their torsos, into which they deposited the grain as it was harvested. The normals' progress was slow, as they ate the stubble from their harvesting down to the ground. This was fine, though, as the ripe grain would last quite a long time on its stalks, and the stalks themselves were more than adequate fodder for the normals.
Most of those normals were those with no other useful skills, under the current circumstances, and would eventually be turned into thresh themselves.
The path Tulo and Golo trod was a winding plank road, made up of harvested logs, sliced and covered with sand. The wood of the planks, themselves, was highly resistant to rot and wear, and thus made a good compromise between sinking knee deep in muck during the wet season, and abrading unhooved and unshod claws the rest of the year.
Most of the logs for the road had come from the once overgrown city.
"Two grat for one," Golo had called this. He said it again, now, as the pair passed through the gate and entered the lower town.
It wasn't completely rebuilt, that city. There were small pyramids for each of the kessentai, and stables for their limited numbers of cosslain and normals. Some of the temples—what were presumed to be temples, anyway; for all anyone knew they might have been museums, or factories, or kitchens—were rebuilt. Still others were not. Work on those proceeded slowly.
Flanked by small pyramids and flatter roofed stables, Tulo and Golo walked to the path carved from the base of the mesa that dominated the lower town to its top. Tulo stopped, as he did every time he passed it, to admire the three figure statue of the olden kessentai that Finba's party had found early on.
"What might we have become, Golo," the clan lord asked aloud, "if the Demons had never found us and perverted us?"
"We may have perverted ourselves, too, you know, Tulo," the tinkerer said, as the two began their plod to the top of the mesa. "In all this city, with thousand of statues and the dim traces of paintings, and tons upon tons of old bones, we have never found a single trace of a normal or cosslain. It may be that we did this, perhaps under Aldenata prodding and perhaps on our own accord to serve the Demons better."
"Well," Tulo sighed. "We are as we are, and Finba'anaga's attempts to make us as he thinks we were notwithstanding, we must do the best we can."
"That best has not been so bad, Clan Lord," the tinkerer whispered. "We are, after all, at peace. Our population gro
ws, slowly but sanely. And no one is trying to kill us."
The tinkerer whispered, yet not so lowly that Tulo's keen hearing couldn't pick it up. He clapped a hand to his friend's shoulder and said, "I, too, Tinkerer, find that I am happier here than I have ever been before."
At the top of the mesa, in a ring around their leader's pyramid, ten of the twelve landers were spread out along the edge. These, too, had grown into pyramids. Each was the quarters of one or two of Tulo's original closest followers or of a kessentai who had been selected to fill vacancies, as Finba had been selected, for example, to fill the vacancy left by the old Rememberer's death, a dozen orbits prior. The last two landers were there, as well, but these were kept un-built-upon, to maintain connection with the C-Dec and to bring groups of the People on such various journeys of exploration as Tulo had authorized.
The C-Dec, free of abat and grat since Golo had had it emptied for a time and opened it to space, kept a low maintenance orbit around the planet, always with at least two kessentai and a few weapons-skilled cosslain aboard, the minimum required to move and fight the ship, because one never knew . . .