by R. M. Meluch
“Which in itself argues my point,” said Augustus, unruffled, rather bored. “As a true dictator, Donner controls all the media and all the dissemination of information. Given that he has suppressed any breath of criticism, the likelihood of discontent festering appears all the more certain. Totalitarianism may go over smoothly with those compliant muffins who pass for women in this species, but there must be a male somewhere on these three worlds who wants Donner’s job. The Archon has a lot of guards.”
“He does,” Farragut agreed.
Dr. Hamilton fell silent, and the other xenos set to reconsidering in a mutter-fest.
Augustus continued, “Just because you cannot see dissent does not mean dissent is not there. In this case, the complete absence suggests presence.”
Shown ridiculous, Pat Hamilton turned angry. “Leave it to a Roman to know about hidden, antagonistic subcultures working their machinations within an oblivious society!”
“I don’t believe the Archon is oblivious,” Augustus said evenly. “And I don’t believe it’s the subculture who is maintaining T’Arra secrecy in this case.”
“You used that word before, Augustus,” said Farragut. “T’Arra. T’Arraiet. What is all that?”
“The proper way to say Arran and Arrans. Just adding your own endings to words is typical American butchery of a foreign language.”
“Do what?”
“The T’ prefix indicates belonging in the same way an n ending does in English: Terran, Roman, American. The iet is a common plural. If you call yourself a Terran down there, they’ll think you’re from a place called Erran.”
“I don’t usually call myself Terran anyway,” Steele muttered. The Marine had a distaste for all things Roman, especially the Latin language. Terran was too Roman of a word for TR Steele. “Earthling is good enough for me.”
“Then call yourself a T’Earth if you want them to understand you,” said Augustus. And to Farragut, “Or a T’Kentucky. To attempt saying T’Terra does leave oneself prone to spitting.”
“So we are T’Americaiet,” Farragut said, to prove he got it.
“Speak for yourself,” said the Roman.
Farragut smacked the wall of the compression chamber with a flat palm. “Hey, Mo, get me out of here! I got things to do!”
“Be breathing deeply, Captain Farragut. “It will be going faster.”
Even in a quick decompression environment, the nitrogen had to bleed out of the blood before Dr. Shah could release any of the shore party into the ship’s atmosphere of fifteen pounds per square inch.
“I got a better idea, Mo. Reverse the decompression. Squeeze the whole ship up to Arran sea level.” Then, with a side glance to Augustus, amended, “T’Arra sea level.”
“If that is what you are wanting, sir,” said Mohsen Shah.
“I do. And patch me through to the control room.”
Calli’s voice responded in a moment. “Control Room, aye.”
“Calli, have Survey find some deserted real estate where we can put down a baseball diamond.” The population of the entire planet Arra was a mere thirty million. Next to Earth’s trillion, that was no population at all. “Some place the Arrans won’t even know we’re there. I want to get some dirt under our feet.”
“Aye, sir.”
“And a beach?” Steele suggested in a murmur at the captain’s side. “My dogs like water.”
“Mr. Carmel. A beach. And, what the hell, a ski run.”
“Aye, sir.”
The captain clicked off. “Okay, TR, walk your dogs. But when they aren’t playing, they’re flying extra patrols. Something is not right with all this and I won’t be caught flat-footed.”
“Yes, sir.”
The captain could trust TR Steele not to trust aliens.
And to the xeno team: “Gents. The T’Arraiet. I want to know where these boys are from—and what in Creation is a kzachin?” Back into the com. “Mr. Carmel!”
“Control Room, aye.”
“Pipe the Archon’s address to the nation into my quarters.”
“Aye, sir.”
Com off, Farragut turned around, “Flight Sergeant Blue.”
“Sir!” Kerry snapped to startled attention.
“At ease. It seems you may be in a position to gather some information for us.”
The xenos in the decompression chamber started altogether, aghast.
The captain gave a near shrug, answering their protest, “Donner asked for Flight Sergeant Blue.”
“He did not ask,” Jose Maria Cordillera revised.
“I noticed that.”
“Pretty uppity for a being whose empire comprises a population less than Spain.”
Ignoring Augustus, Farragut continued, “Flight Sergeant Blue, you can refuse this order if you don’t feel comfortable with it.”
Colonel Steele interrupted, “Respectfully, sir. I object to using my soldier—”
Kerry mumbled, “I’ll go.”
“—as some sort of Mata Hari. Flight Sergeant Blue is not a diplomat. You have no right—”
“I’ll go.”
“—to put her in jeopardy without advance recon. We know nothing about these beings, what they’ll do to her, what they want her for—”
“I’ll go.”
“Blue?” Steele looked down, as if just now realizing she was there.
“I’ll go, sir.”
Steele felt his mouth open. Mouth shut. Ice-blue eyes turned back to Farragut. “Permission to speak.”
“You’re already speaking, TR.”
“Sir.” The broad shoulders squared off properly. Abashed.
“So keep talking.”
With a soft chime, the panel lights turned green, the air within and without the compression chamber equalized at five atmospheres. Farragut turned his attention aside momentarily. “Open the hatch, Mo!”
The seals parted with a sucking sound. The hatch swung open, and Farragut ducked through first. “Flight Sergeant Blue. Go get some rest. TR, you were saying.”
Steele followed the captain through the corridor, a half-pace behind, for they were both big men and Merrimack ’s passages were not generous. “I was saying, this is a very bad idea, Captain. Flight Sergeant Blue has a ninth-grade education.”
“Only two less than Lieutenant Colonel Steele,” Augustus noted, behind them.
Steele shot a sharp glare over his taurine shoulder. With forced calm, he said, “That’s not true.”
It had been true at one time. True longer than it should have been. TR Steele had belatedly earned a GED instead of a high school diploma. It had then taken him eight years after that to earn a two-year associate degree. The armed services liked their officers degreed.
“Not exactly a Cambridge man, are you?” said Augustus. He knew a sore spot when he had his heel in one.
“Your point?” Steele snarled.
“Let the soldier do her job.”
Captain Farragut stopped, turned full round. “Augustus. You’re agreeing with me. Doesn’t that concern you? I thought you’d be sneering at my idea.”
“No. It’s a time-honored tactic. Use of a female operative actually has a high probability of success against an otherwise guarded male. In any sexual species, males become spectacularly unguarded around a female. They fly into your windowpane, run in front of your car, sing to your cat, bring your daughter home drunk. Donner’s vast intellectual superiority over females of his own species may leave him especially vulnerable to spilling information to Kerry Blue. I have to recommend for the operation.”
“And I recommend against,” said Colonel Steele. “Kerry Blue knows nothing of first contact protocol, diplomatic protocol, or any protocol. She’s not qualified.”
“She’s qualified recon, isn’t she?”
Steele bit on that one hard. Spoke thickly, “Not the kind of training we give our soldiers in recon. For the record, I want to lodge a formal objection.”
“So noted.”
“And off the re
cord, sir, be sure to buy her a red dress for her efforts!”
The captain stared after the Marine’s stormy exit, baffled at the vehemence. Steele’s scalp showed visibly red through his white-blond hair. Farragut cast an appealing glance toward Augustus, and then to Jose Maria Cordillera, who had been following, cat-quiet, after the three of them. “Is he—? Are they—?” he stop-started. “What the hell was that?”
“On or off the record?” said Don Cordillera.
“Either. Both.”
The learned man observed, “On the record, there is nothing to suggest the lieutenant colonel’s objection is not logical, well-considered, for the good of the corps and for the Marine in question.”
“Off the record.”
“Off the record, what I just said lies in steaming piles in the pasture.”
Augustus gave a slight nod with the lifting of his forefinger, as if accepting a bid from the auctioneer. He bought Cordillera’s second assessment.
Farragut frowned, troubled. “Is Kerry going to be all right? What do we know of Arran customs?”
Augustus scolded with a harsh laugh, “You’re a Boy Scout, John Farragut. Customs?”
“All right. What do we know about Arran sex?” he asked the real question.
“It is not violent,” said Jose Maria Cordillera. “Kerry is a seasoned veteran on that front, you must know.”
Kerry Blue. They called her the morale officer. They called her lots of things—oddly mean things, considering how much they all liked her. A good eighth of the Marine company and part of the Merrimack’s crew had liked Kerry Blue.
“I don’t mean that as an insult,” said Jose Maria Cordillera. “She is a coarse, loose, ill-educated young woman. I am personally fond of her. She has great heart. You are scowling, young captain.”
“That red-dress comment torqued me off.” Farragut cast a glower back the way Steele had stalked off.
“It was meant to.”
Still the captain fretted. “Is the Archon going to recognize the word ‘No’ if he hears it?”
“Not to worry,” said Augustus. “From all reports, I don’t think Kerry Blue knows that one.”
The Archon, in his address to the denizens of the Myriad, put his own spin on the encounter with the visitors from outer space. Not to miss the obvious chance for self-glorification, Donner painted the Earthlings in ferocious colors, swaggering marauders tamed by the Archon’s wisdom, his firmness, his fairness.
Captain Farragut watched the address on a monitor in his quarters as he changed clothes and oiled his baseball glove. Some of Donner’s assurances to his people revealed what the Myriadians feared most: Prospectors. As if Arra were the only heavy world in the galaxy, and beings traveled light-years just to come steal their mineral wealth. Donner let the Arrans know that he put a stop to any alien prospecting.
Donner also felt compelled to assure his people that the Earthlings were not agents from Origin. Apparently all was not serene between mother world and colony.
Farragut noticed a glaring lack of reference to any other starfaring race who might have brought the Original colonists to the Myriad. From the speech it was clear that the Earthlings were the first FTL power this species had ever met. Donner assured his people that Merrimack was not a shipload of Arran natives returning to claim their home world. That had apparently been the colonists’ biggest fear—that they had colonized someone else’s home. Someone with big ships and big guns.
Donner declared that the Arra and the whole Myriad belonged to the Myriadians, and by heaven, Donner had made sure all comers knew that. Donner the hero, the defender, the fearless.
All in all, a very human speech.
As eager as Dr. Watson to match his conclusions with Mr. Holmes, Captain Farragut sought out his patterner.
Farragut slid down the ladder to the storage level, tapped on Augustus’ hatch, let himself in.
The Roman was stretched out in his pod among the torpedoes, apparently sleeping. At Farragut’s entrance, Augustus rose swiftly to his full height. It was a long way up, and the motion made Farragut flinch—little more than the turn of an eyelash, but a flinch nonetheless. His eyes flicked down on reflex.
The Roman’s voice was cold, “I am going to take a piss. Did you think I was happy to see you?”
Augustus returned from the head to find John Farragut sitting on a torpedo. “What the hell do you want?”
“I like it when my crew says, “What the hell do you want, sir,” said Farragut.
“Then dislike me.”
The captain ignored the insubordination. His position of power was such that he could afford to ignore petty battles. If the antagonism escalated, if Augustus harmed so much as the lint on the captain’s braided cuff, there was a boatload of navvies and another two full companies of Marines on board willing—eager—to beat the altered Roman back into his component parts and send him back to Palatine in sorted pieces. Regulations made Captain Farragut sacred. Beyond that, John Farragut was beloved.
Farragut let the barb hang. “What do you make of Donner? It’s just so damned strange that he’s not stranger. I’ve had less comprehensible conversations with the French!”
“Yes, I imagine the French would find you incomprehensible.”
“But these are aliens. They ought to be stranger.”
“You would rather they buzz and clack mandibles at you?”
“No, I appreciate Donner’s not clacking. But he’s so human.”
“Will you be making some point here?” said Augustus.
“The whole thing contradicts chaos.”
“Do I look like a believer in chaos?” Augustus touched the gold pendant at his throat, a Da Vinci intaglio of the Human Body, the famous image of a man described within a circle.
Farragut had noticed the pendant before. “I thought that meant everything circles around your dick.”
Augustus nodded aside, allowing that. “Point of fact, it does. That aside, this is the shape of the intelligent, land-dwelling universe. The base unit is chordate. A trunk. A head with some sort of CPU in it. Symmetrical to the left and right but not up and down or front and back. Two arms, two legs. Dick/no dick, depending. Life comes in infinite, chaotic variety, but this is sovereign intelligence. Insectoids and exoskeletals rule by sheer numbers, but without thought, without creativity. The Hive is your sole agent of chaos, but its crude intelligence is adaptive, not initiative. So no, I do not find it surprising in the least that an intelligence should look like us, think like us, communicate like us, breathe like us, in short, be fashioned in our own image.”
“You’re an anthropist,” said Farragut with some surprise. The anthropic principle was not a very popular view in the scientific community. Not popular with anyone outside of Creationists. The anthropic cosmological principle held that life—intelligent life—was inevitable. That the universe was created for Man. “God, Augustus?” Farragut asked, surprised.
“I don’t know God. I know inevitability. Things that must be.”
“Must? Why must? By fiat? Let it be done?”
“Must, because it is. We are here. Therefore we must be here. Don’t try to speak Latin, John Farragut.”
“Well, the Hive exists, too. And I’m sure the Hive acts as if the universe exists only for it.”
“The Hive is wrong. We must destroy it.”
“No argument there,” said Farragut, though he could get one from a cult back on Earth which believed the Hive was the door to Heaven. And spake the Host: Eat of my flesh. Become one with me, for whom the universe was made.
Augustus continued with his own theory. “The parameters for the existence of life are so small, the universe as we know it so bloody unlikely, that the only rational conclusion is that life exists because it must. I must. And for some unfathomable reason, you must. Things happen the way they are meant to happen. Just as the Roman Empire rose again. It did so because it was inevitable. The time when was uncertain—and much later than anyone anticipated—but
the rise was inevitable. The Empire is meant to be.”
“Means you expect it to rise one more time,” said Farragut. “When all this is over.”
“Inevitably,” said Augustus.
“Not if I have anything to say about it,” said Farragut confidently. “So what makes it inevitable?”
“Destiny.”
“You’re implying God again.”
“And I told you, I don’t know God. I do know that I am conscious. Why suppose the force that brought us into being is not likewise conscious?”
“Couldn’t be accidental?”
“I have no problem believing you are an accident, John Farragut, but me? No. I was intentional. Was there something else you wanted?” Augustus asked, dismissal in his tone, though Augustus could not exactly dismiss the captain.
“Mo tells me you’ve been in the personnel medical files.”
“And?”
“Stay out,” Farragut ordered.
“Oh, I don’t care for the trivialities of your crew’s little lives. I went straight for your jacket.”
And the captain’s quills laid back. He was happy enough to draw fire to himself and away from his own. He became cheerful and easy again. “Am I interesting?”
“You have a titanium jaw.”
Farragut hesitated. His face lost animation. His answer expressionless, “I lost a fight.”
“You lost two fights.”
Farragut’s brow creased slightly. He answered, nettled, “If you knew, why are you asking?”
“To see how you would answer the question.”
Farragut answered with only a slight edge of defensiveness in his voice. “I can’t say there weren’t nights I didn’t wake up kicking, but I’m not going to beat myself up for losing a fight sixteen to one. Which was about twelve too many.”
Most men had a severe allergic reaction to the mere mention of such incidents. This man was merely annoyed at having his nose rubbed in it. He had dealt with it, got over it, and set a forward course, full speed ahead. He could look back if he must without hanging his head. Did not like to. Did not go back again and again, picking the scab to see how the wound was healing.
“What’d you do to piss them off?” said Augustus.
“What’d I do to piss you off?”