by John Ringo
Guano couldn't even imagine the shrieks that would arise from human feminists if they could have heard that. On the other hand, Earth and its humans had many fewer feminists that had once been the case. Many, faced not with theory but with the hard reality of the war, had decided that, after all, perhaps men should be the ones to bear the brunt of the fighting. Still others, refusing to accept this, had been eaten in highly disproportionate numbers. The widespread adoption of polygamy had still further reduced both feminist numbers and influence. Humanity thought of itself as being very traditional now. Guano wondered on occasion if he could ever have fit in as well as he had, or if he might have made a better fit, in the society that preceded the one he had come to know.
"My wife is uniquely valuable to me." Unconsciously Guano's claw went to stroke Querida's back. Equally unconsciously, she leaned in against him.
"Yes . . . yes, I can see that," Finba said. "It is a very beautiful cosslain."
Not 'it,'" Guano corrected. "She."
Changing the subject (for the ideas of uniquely valuable cosslain or, worse still, cosslain with a sex distinct from a kessentai, were, at best, uncomfortable. And an unarmed, adult kessentai escorted by an armed cosslain and juvenile? Unthinkable!), Finba continued, "I am, in any case, here as your escort. Where would you like to go?"
Guano thought upon that only for a moment before answering, "Somewhere where there are kessentai and kessenalt in numbers, then, and perhaps even some cosslain."
"The Roga'a then," Finba said. "Certainly it should be crowded by the time we get there, anyway. Follow me."
Whatever it was that keyed Querida most emphatically not to trust their escort, Guano didn't know. He only knew that she kept softly whistling the danger signal, tugging at his arm, pointing at her sword, and making throat-slitting gestures while keeping her gaze fixed on Finba'anaga's twitching hindquarters. He shushed her by placing a single claw over her muzzle.
I understand, love," he said, even while thinking, your instincts in this may be good. We shall be careful but without committing murder.
As Finba had promised, the Roga'a was reasonably crowded by the time the party arrived. Most of the activity was mercantile, with bits of heavy metal changing claws in exchange for cloth, or harnesses, or thresh, or tools.
Guano stopped for a moment, to Finba's mild annoyance, to watch two cosslain bargaining over some fresh, which is to say still living, nestling. Their bargaining was non-verbal, but intense for all that. The cosslain in search of thresh pointed out two that seemed good to it. The other, the one running the shop, then put on a sort of chain mail glove and reached down to grab one of the nestling. The nestling spat and hissed and even got a toothy grip on the mail, but to no avail. The shopkeeper's mailed claws wrapped around it, pulled it from its pen, and dumped it in a smaller pen on the counter. She then did the same with a second nestling.
The second cosslain then reached into a pouch and put forth on the counter two small bits of heavy metal. The shopkeeper sneered until a third piece was added. This got rid of the sneer but also caused the shopkeeper to pick up one of the nestlings as if to put it back in the pen. At that the second cosslain hissed and began to reach for the golden bits. The shopkeeper then stopped, holding the thrashing, hissing, biting nestling above the pen.
When they finally settled on a price, five bits for the two nestlings, the shopkeeper took one of the nestlings and forced its head down to the counter. With its other claw it took what appeared to be a miniature boma blade, more handle than blade, and neatly sliced off the spitting nestling's head. In a few more seconds the second nestling had joined the first. Both heads and bodies were then wrapped in something that looked like a cheap kind of cloth and handed over to the shopper. The gold bits likewise were raked away into a claw and deposited into a pouch on the shopkeeper's harness.
"What's so interesting about a simple thresh purchase?" Finba asked.
Guano shook his head. "You don't know whether those nestlings would have become sentient or not," he answered.
"What difference? They weren't sentient when they were chopped, and they surely won't get any more sentient when they're eaten. I understand Goloswin is working on a way to tell the difference early, but that way is still imperfect."
"Seems wrong, somehow," Guano answered. "And they were big enough almost to begin to show a crest if they were going to . . . or to act like cosslain, even if not."
"Well, it's done now, anyway. Come, if you would see the Roga'a."
With a shrug, not of indifference but of helplessness, Guano began to follow again, Frederico and Querida in tow.
"What do you call that great massif looming over us?" Guano asked, pointing at the mesa that dominated the city.
"It doesn't really have a name beyond the upper city or the high city," Finba answered.
"Ah. Yes, that makes sense. The humans would call it an 'acropolis,' perhaps."
"I like that term," Finba said. "Perhaps we'll adopt it . . . if we adopt nothing else the humans have to offer."
"Well, I do hope the People may adopt something else the humans have to offer," Guano answered.
We'll see, thought Finba'anaga. He pointed at a raised square of some kind of whitish rock with veins of blue, pink and gold running through it. "If you wish to address the People," Finba said, "that's where you'll attract an audience."
Guano had thought long upon the problem, all the long months aboard ship. Truthfully, he'd been thinking about it since receiving his own call back in the ruined cathedral in Old Panama during the war. How in Hell do I even begin to catch their attention?
Now, as he took the few steps leading up to the platform Finba had shown to him, all his prior ruminations fled him. Instead he just stood there, flanked by his wife and son, and watched for a while as various of the people gathered. Some came to admire Querida's ancient, gem-encrusted boma blade, he knew. Still others gathered closely to glimpse and evaluate Frederico's halberd; he could hear that in their admiring comments. And perhaps a few even came closer to gawk at his clerical collar or the cross he wore about his neck.
His escort, Finba'anaga, watched, too. But that kessentai, Guano could see, was watching for the reaction of the crowd.
Well, that's both our interests, Guano thought. And then, for a while, he tried very hard not to think, but only to feel or, rather, to think about those things that raised feelings.
He thought about his subordinate, friend, and mentor, Ziramoth, sinking to the dirt, mortally wounded by a primitive arrow somewhere in the jungles of the Darien, in Panama, on Earth. He thought about his entire pack, massacred by the same Indian who had shot the arrow that killed Ziramoth, by him and by the jungle. It was a sadness he had rarely in his life since been able to face.
But what were those, compared to the five billion human dead, the fifteen billion of the People's dead, the races across half a galactic arm rendered extinct by the Posleen migration, the ruined civilizations, the waste, the destruction, the horror . . .
From his perch on the speaking platform, his head bowed down with the weight of genocide, Guanamarioch gave off an inarticulate cry of absolute despair.
Neither Frederico nor Querida had expected this. The boy asked, "Dad, are you all right?" The wife leaned into her mate and began trying to comfort him by rubbing the top of her muzzle under his chin. The question remained unanswered; the comforting touch gave no comfort. Soon, Guano's body began to shake and shudder with his sorrow.
That's bizarre conduct, thought Finba'anaga. Does he think to sway the People with madness?
Finba then saw, though, that several score of the People inched closer. A few called out "What grieves you, kessentai?" or "What is the source of your pain?" or, more dangerous still, "Can we help you, kessentai?"
I don't like this a bit.
"I grieve for you, brother," Guano said to one. "My pain is in your fate, friend," he answered another. "You can help me, philosopher, if you will let me help you," he said to a t
hird.
Turning to Querida, Guano asked, "Would you hold your boma blade up, hilt first, love?"
She did, making a sort of crucifix of the kind once understandable to Crusaders, the handguard of the weapon forming the patibulum and the blade the stirpes.
"I come," Guano said, "to speak to you of the one true God, He who created the universe, this planet, the planet I was born on, all the planets, all the stars, all the dust in between. He is the God who made us, not just we People of the Ships, but the Humans, the Indowy, all the races of the universe. He made us; He suffered for us; He died for us, and He was reborn for us. He offers us life eternal in a paradise beyond comprehension.
"And He doesn't ask much in return for it . . ."
Finba stood through the whole sermon, seething inside so badly he could barely refrain from charging Guano and ripping his throat out. And it wasn't enough that this pseudo-Rememberer was preaching of an alien god, half of what he said sounded precisely like the self-serving prattle of the Aldenata. "Peace?" "Love?" "Do unto others?"
Haven't we had enough of alien gods? Have we not seen enough ruin from alien dogma? I, at least, have. And I will not let you ruin my life's work.
Chapter Twenty-nine
White founts falling in the courts of the sun
—G.K. Chesterton, Lepanto
Anno Domini 2024
Posleen Prime
Dwyer saw Guanamarioch wander off with his wife and son, behind a Posleen whose gilt harness suggested he was something other than a normal kessentai. The minister had his wife and son for escort, as well. He should be safe enough, then, Dwyer thought. Or as safe as any of us are. Good luck to you, Reverend. We serve the same God, even if we take a slightly different path.
For the priest's part, and al Rashid's, who accompanied him under escort of Grosskopf's squad of Switzers, they were taking the fairly traditional Jesuit (and sometimes Islamic) approach of going to the top. Tulo'stenaloor awaited them, somewhere at the top of the high mesa that dominated the city below.
And so, too, Dwyer thought, glancing to his right to where the imam walked, do you. How fortunate that Sally was able to separate out for me the lunatics. On the other hand, lunatics might not be persuasive, Imam, and you just might be. Well, so be it. They don't call the Jesuit order "The Pope's Special Forces" for nothing.
"This way," the Posleen escort said, through his AS. "Hurry! The clan lord is not used to being kept waiting."
The escort's name was Koresnagi and he was, though he did not say so, an adherent of Finba'anaga, now the clan's chief Rememberer.
They look so puny and weak, thought Koresnagi, in looking over the priest and the imam. And that's even leaving aside the odd coverings they wear, the lighter one all in black and the swarthy one with a rag wrapped around his head.
Still, that only accounted for the religious pair. When Koresnagi looked over at the six armed and armored guards, he thought, Small, but definitely not weak. They carry themselves as if their weapons are a part of them . . . as if they were followers of the Path of Fury, the Way of the Warrior. They, perhaps, bear some watching.
Of course, the Switzers were not disarmed. Besides their halberds and baselards, each carried a large bore pistol loaded with frangible ammunition under his armor. If anyone of a reptilian bent was also of a mind to take their priest hostage it would be over the Switzers' dead bodies . . . and a whole bunch of reptilian ones.
Koresnagi noticed the way the armored humans' eyes darted to every corner and cranny, as well as the way their fingers regularly quested for the base where their armor stopped. Yes, they definitely bear watching.
He thought about demanding that they hurry again and would have except that no amount of prodding previously had had the slightest effect on the speed with which they moved. The leaders seemed determined to see as much as could be seen, while the guards were perfectly content to have the time to evaluate any potential threat along the way.
"It's because the humans are a threat, isn't it?" Golo asked. "I mean the reason you've agreed to treat with them?"
"If one group could find us, another could, too," Tulo admitted. "It's more than that, though. We are looking at a galaxy dominated by the humans or the Darhel. We're going to have to find a place in that galaxy, somehow."
"Tulo, we killed five in six, at least four in five, of every human in the universe. We killed the females their males seem to live for and the nestlings that those females live for. Do you really think they'll have any place for us except dead? Extinct?"
"I can hope, can't I?" the clan lord asked. "I can try to find us that place, can't I? Do I have a choice but to try?"
Golo sighed. "I suppose not. But what will it gain us if the humans spare us, but we lose our souls as a people?"
"Now that has soul," Dwyer said to al Rashid, pointing at the tripartite statue at the base of the mesa.
"May I look closer?" al Rashid asked of Koresnagi.
"The clan lord is waiting . . . but . . . go ahead. Quickly, though, please." The kessentai said it with a resignation that came through his AS' translation program; he had pretty much given up on getting the humans to hurry by this point in time.
"Laocoön," the imam judged, referring to the ancient statue, Laocoön and His Sons, by the three Rhodians, Agesander, Athenodoros and Polydorus. The statue, once in the Vatican, had been lost during the war. "The despair written in that face is pure Laocoön."
"Maybe," Dwyer half agreed. "But there's some of the Pugilist, and more than a trace of the Dying Galatean, too."
"A marvelous work, in any case," was the imam's judgment. "Can a people who could create such things be devoid of souls?"
"If I'd thought they were," the Jesuit answered, "I'd never have brought us here."
A thin trickle of water ran down one side of the steep trail. At the top of the rocky pass, the party came to a fountain, unadorned, save by nature.
"It was always here," Koresnagi explained, "though it was buried under debris when we found it. Finba'anaga says it's a sacred spring. Only the clan lord and his immediate entourage drink from it regularly. The rest of us do not, except at certain ceremonies. And, yes, before you ask, anyone given liberty to climb to the top may look at it, however closely they like."
"Were you here when it was found?" al Rashid asked.
"Me? Hah! I was born here, long after the People returned."
"A pure soul then," Dwyer said, in English.
"Indeed," al Rashid agreed. "As will be, one suspects, most of the Posleen on this planet. Whatever crimes against humanity some of them may have committed, others—most . . . maybe nearly all—will be guiltless."
"Do you ever feel guilty, Golo?" Tulo'stenaloor asked as the humans approached his pyramid.
"Do you?"
"Often, now, and more as I have more to do with the humans."
"You're just getting old," Goloswin chided. "Perhaps you should toss your stick and go study under Finba'anaga."
"Now that will never happen. For one thing, I'd have to believe in something."
Golo scoffed. Perhaps, Tulo'stenaloor, you have no faith in Aldenata or the ancestors or this new-old religion Finba'anaga is peddling. But you believe in the survival of the People.
Koresnagi wondered just what he'd have done if the humans hadn't obeyed his command to either stay outside with their weapons or leave the weapons behind.
Chop me into thresh, I suppose.
Still, it hadn't been an issue. The black clothed one, who seemed to be in command, simply said, "Corporal Grosskopf, keep both eyes and at least one ear open, but you and your men can wait outside."
The Corporal plainly didn't like it but orders were orders. He had his small squad split into two, one group to each side of the entrance to the largest of the pyramids.
"Look nonchalant," Grosskopf said, smiling. "Act friendly. Be prepared to kill any Posleen who comes by."
Dwyer overheard that but didn't correct the corporal. He just added, "Also be
prepared not to kill any Posleen who comes by." With that, he and the imam followed their escort up the ramp and into a large metallic hall.
Inside the hall were two kessentai. Dwyer thought he recognized Tulo'stenaloor by his harness. The other he had not met.
"Goloswin, sometimes called 'the Tinkerer'," the second Posleen introduced himself as.
"He's here," Tulo said, "as my chief advisor."
That means, thought Dwyer, that this one is very clever, if Tulo'stenaloor thinks he needs his advice. Best be careful. A quick glace to al Rashid confirmed that the imam understood.
"You are two opposed religions, so I understand," Golo said.