Alliance of Exiles

by Caitlin Demaris McKenna

  Again, the scene coalesces in her brain: an open-air pavilion in the Terran encampment, earlier this same day. An enviro-suited Terran is demonstrating how to inflate and reinforce an emergency prefab bubble—handy for the rare times when a Drevl Char might be caught unawares by a sandstorm. She recognizes the tall, solid figure of Major Henry Kincaid. Pri has learned in her conversations with Del that the man’s title indicates a position of some importance. Since he seems only loosely affiliated with the scientific activities of the Terrans, Pri has never been able to figure out what Kincaid’s occupation is . . . though for some reason, it involves exercising near-total control over the distribution of Terran tech to the Stone Hearths.

  «Excellent,» says Dur’s voice. «These prefabs will be a great help to us. I thought I might also ask for something to improve the signal of the communications devices you gave us.» Dur’s experience with the devices carries over into the memory space: the text-based messaging terminals have shortened communication times between Hearths from days to seconds, though her people are still figuring out how best to use them. At the moment, weather reports, philosophical discussions, and jokes are the main traffic of their fledgling planetary EM band.

  «Your message terminals cover incredible distances in clear weather,» the memory of Dur says, «but they’re useless during a storm.»

  “That’s because the sandstorms here play havoc with the magnetic field. We have similar storms on Earth that hinder communications.” Kincaid’s tone reminds Pri of one of the Scholar Line expounding knowledge.

  «Bef and I discussed that.» Dur glances at the trader beside him. «He suggested perhaps you could equip the Hearths with hailing devices that use the . . . that use quantum entanglement.» Dur stumbles on the unfamiliar concept. «Like the kinds your starships use to hail each other. That could bypass the problem.»

  The suited Terran doesn’t answer for the time it takes him to unlock the prefab’s struts and collapse the bubble.

  “Not a bad idea.” The color of his thoughts reveals surprise at the Drevl Char’s astuteness in grasping the principles of Terran tech so swiftly. “Problem is, the only Relativity Defiant transmitters we’ve got are installed on our own spacecraft. To make more, we’d need the assembly on Rosetta.”

  «Why must you go to Rosetta to obtain them?» Dur asks.

  «You told me it doesn’t require a whole factory to build an RD transmitter. The Gnosis probably has an adequate workshop.»

  Bef is pushing at his mind, wary of offending the haughty Soft One, but Dur’s momentum carries him onward. «It should be simple for you to replicate the transmitters. I thought your people reverse-engineered them many years ago.»

  “We did.” The major’s reply is curt and immediate, but Dur catches something at the bare edge of the Terran’s mind, like a flash of sunlight reflected in water. He plunges into the reflection, curious—

  Inside a white-walled room, several Terrans in white coats crowd around a small table with implements held in their paw-like hands. On the table sits a sleek gray cone scored with iridescent black bands, identical to the RD transmitters Dur has seen in the Terrans’ base on Charel. A woman approaches the device with a monofilament saw in her hands. She carefully slices down one slope of the cone, over the apex and down the other side.

  A curved plate of material peels off in the woman’s hands, revealing a hint of intricate inner workings inside. The Terran scientists lean closer, thrumming with excitement—and then with dismay as, impossibly, the cone splits itself in two. As though an invisible assailant has taken a stone cudgel to the device, huge cracks fracture the conical transmitter into smaller and smaller chunks under the stunned gazes of the Terrans, until at last what had been an RD transmitter slumps into a pile of fine dust.

  Dur retreats from the memory slowly, wary of alerting the dulled Terran mind to his presence. It would be a disastrous time for Kincaid to develop a little mental sensitivity. Because now Dur is determined to probe him again.

  “I should get out of this sun for a while,” Kincaid says. Dur shadows the Terran’s strides toward the shade of a large carbon-shell awning, signaling the puzzled Bef to follow.

  «The People of the Sand are lucky to have teachers,» Dur sends. «I can only imagine the trials your people had to overcome on Rosetta, where all you had to go on were ruins of a people already gone. Yet you were able to understand the remains, and build working machines from them.» Dur dredges up every drop of admiration and wonder he can; a hefty push of those feelings into the oblivious Soft One’s head will ensure that Dur’s words ring true.

  “Wasn’t easy, that’s for sure.” Kincaid folds himself into a crouch under the awning. “I was the military liaison then, too.

  The scientists unearthed these perfectly preserved machines—what we thought had to be machines—but no one was left to tell us what they were or how to work them. They moved on to other worlds, I guess, or died out . . . though I doubt it. I don’t think there’s much a civilization like that couldn’t handle. We’ll likely never know—”

  «—what they were like?» Dur leaps, sending his mental feelers deep.

  “That’s right. With nothing to go on—” But Dur isn’t listening. He’s lost in the new image breaking over him, and through him, over the Drevl Char gathered in the Stone Hearth.

  A four-limbed biped coalesces in the hazy memory space, leaning against a wall of smooth white metal or ceramic. As sentients go, the being in Kincaid’s memory is more Terran-like than any Mose has ever seen. The creature stands perhaps a meter and a half tall. Its arms and legs are Terran in proportion and shape, though the fingers and toes look longer and bonier. A simple white skirt is the being’s only clothing, and its exposed skin is light brown and hairless. Two small mammary glands adorn its narrow torso.

  Kincaid’s gaze lingers on the being’s face. Its head is oval, lacking apparent ears and covered by a thatch of fine, almost feathery yellow hair. The features are simple to the point of being bland: a mere slit of a mouth below a flat nose, just two vertical nostrils with a ridge of flesh between them. The two wide-spaced eyes are the most interesting and disturbing, so Terran are they in their lidded ovoid shape and colored irises—green, in this case, surrounded by a sclera that is not white but jet black.

  The alien is completely alive in the man’s memory; Mose can see the steady rise and fall of its breathing and the way its eyes track Kincaid’s. The memory is more than visual: He can feel the summer heat in the air and smell a faint musky odor, coming perhaps from the being resting against the wall. Every detail has the tang of unquestionable reality. And beyond the creamy curve of the building, Mose glimpses Rosettan towers rising to the sky, sheathed not in rust and decay but in gleaming pelts of silver and white.

  As one being, the circle of Drevl Char in the chasm twists itself out of Dur’s projection. Pri rocks backward, swaying on her eight legs as though from a physical blow, her spiracles panting in exhilaration. Mose feels dizzy, wishing fervently that he had some way to pause and rewind Pri’s schema, to track the memories-within-memories nesting together like a folded paper box. He can see connections coalescing, yet receding ever farther into the unimagined past as he gropes toward them.

  «Pri.» Dur’s clipped thought tone brings her alert. «You and the others have seen exactly what I did when I explored the mind of this Terran, Kincaid. As the first xenologist of the People of the Sand, how would you interpret these memories?»

  «It is Rosetta,» she sends tentatively, «but a different world than the one the Terrans described to us. I have talked at length with Delicia Baker about the archaeological expedition to that planet. In her descriptions, Rosetta was always a dead world.»

  A Stone Hearth leader leaps in with excited gesticulations of her arms and antennae. «That is what they have told us as well.» Affirmations from the assembled leaders swirl around the rocky space: Always in their dealings with the People of the Sand, the alien visitors have stressed that Rosetta held no
thing more than dust and ancient machines.

  Dur turns in place, meeting the forward eyes of all the People whom he has gathered before him, the voices for thousands more. «The Terran Major Kincaid is not a man of imagination. Others here who have dealt with him for the benefit of their Hearths can verify this. These images are not some fantasy created out of boredom—they are real experiences. Ones which reveal a Rosetta that is completely different from the Terrans’ representations of that world. Because they are covering up the truth.»

  «What truth?» Pri sends faintly.

  «I think it is clear from the memory that the Terrans didn’t learn to build those machines on their own. The Rosettans must have helped them. They must have been there when the Terrans arrived. You all saw a being in Kincaid’s memory, real as life. What was that if not a Rosettan?»

  «And you think the Terrans are hiding that assistance?» a Hearth leader asks in an incredulous thought tone. «If the Rosettans helped them, why not acknowledge it?»

  «Why indeed?» Dur says. «They know the People will eventually travel the stars with their assistance, and we will surely visit Rosetta. Why would they say the Rosettans—or whatever they called themselves—are gone when we will learn the opposite as soon as we visit?»

  Pri is first to draw the conclusion for the group. She signals Dur her intent to speak, and he cedes the floor to her with a sweep of one tendril. «Rosetta likely is ruined,» she sends. «But if the civilization was alive when the Terrans visited, then whatever happened to them happened when the Terrans were there.» Mose can feel his real body growing cold. Or perhaps it is Pri’s body, in the dream; there seems to be less and less difference. She looks around at the Hearth leaders. «A few weeks ago, when we met to talk of making an alliance between our peoples, I sensed an outpouring of—intense emotion—from Del when I brought up Rosetta.»

  She allows their mental space to flood with the fragment of memory; for a few moments, the soundless sound of Del Baker begging forgiveness pervades their minds like an echo.

  «To whom is she talking?» one of the Hearth leaders asks into the following silence, sounding shaken.

  «It’s prayer,» Pri says. «A kind of talking to oneself. It isn’t important. The emotions beneath are. What did you sense?»

  «Grief,» says a different leader.

  Another: «Guilt. Toward you and the others, for lying to you. But also for something in the past.»

  «Something in the past involving Rosetta,» Pri sends, each thought heavy as million-year-old sediment. «A world that was alive when the Terrans came, and is now a ruin.»

  A wave of apprehension sweeps the assembled Drevl Char, strengthening amongst the shared minds in a frenzied feedback loop. They accept Dur’s visions, and in turn are beginning to believe that those fragments of memory might be the only remaining evidence of a history their Terran allies dearly wish to stay hidden. Mose can feel the force of the Hearth leaders’ conviction massing like smoke on the horizon of history. Around the circle, outrage and agitation surge in equal measure:

  «We must confront the Soft Ones about Rosetta.»

  «That time is past. They’ve had five years to tell the Stone Hearths about this.»

  «They are powerful as well—much more than us. There may be danger in confronting them with what we know.» A Hearth leader waves his antennae in a conciliatory gesture. «Perhaps if we conceal our knowledge and refuse cooperation, they will withdraw.»

  «Inaction may be the worst thing we could do,» another answers, limbs crossed over her thorax in negation. «What if the civilization on Rosetta thought the same way? Clearly passivity didn’t save them.»

  Pri pushes her presence forward into the circle again, quieting the other minds. «These Terrans are small in number—two ships in orbit and a single ground encampment. We could take them unawares. An ambush using some of their supersonic craft might be sufficient.»

  Dur stares hard at Pri. «An attack on the Gnosis? I would remind you and everyone here that there are some of our People on that ship.»

  Pri crosses her limbs over her smooth, unscarred thorax.

  «Not to destroy . . . to disable. The planes can be flown on autopilot using telepresence rigs. With the expedition trapped on Charel, perhaps the Hearths could receive some real answers. About Rosetta—about everything.»

  One by one, Pri feels their surging emotions calm, streaming into a single channel of consensus as the assembled leaders accept the logic of her proposal. It is bold, it is unlike any previous action conceived by the People of the Sand, and it will be incredibly dangerous for their People aboard the Gnosis. But Dur’s revelations have convinced her that it is also necessary.

  «Are we agreed, then?» It is Dur again, and his thought tone is cold. «To strand the Terrans on this world and force them to admit the truth about Rosetta, though it may mean a loss of lives to the People of the Sand?» The resonant yes that runs through the throng of minds is like the voice of a single being.

  Dur plunges on, buoyed by the sense of purpose around the circle. «Then we shall plan immediately. Afterward, I want each of you to fly back to your Hearths in ones and twos. I leave it to you how much to tell them.

  «For my part, I’m going to tell my own Hearth everything.

  «We do not keep secrets from each other. We are not Terrans. We are Drevl Char.

  «I wish you all the utmost luck.»

  Like a kaneshi’s caress, the tendrils of the dream release Mose, spiraling into the black of true sleep. Wearily, he lets it go, lets his buzzing mind dissolve into the void. For an immeasurable time, he knows nothing.

  Chapter Fifteen

  The Damyata rendezvoused with the ’stream gate out of Polaris System at 3:04 A.M. GMT, the culmination of twenty-six hours of slow-time travel from Greenwich Hub to the outskirts of the system. At 3:07 A.M., Mose rose from his fitful sleep and proceeded to the cruiser’s tiny cargo bay for final preparations and launch.

  As the Project’s technicians ran checks on the sleek black capsule in the launch cradle, Alex Vernsky ran his final checks on Mose, using the Damyata’s medical crèche. As he waited for the doctor to finish his readings, Mose reviewed the mission details a final time: orbital insertion into Teluk airspace, landing, and rendezvous with his contact. Until landing, the capsule craft’s AI would do the hard work. After he made planetfall, it would be up to Mose to get in touch with his contact as soon as possible; otherwise, Project Intelligence could not guarantee his safety.

  As if they could anyway. He’d been told his contact would be Veerten, which was interesting. He held onto the small, known details, trying to distract himself from the pre-mission sickness that roiled in his stomach. It felt sharper than usual this time, more urgent. He would be confronting his target on his homeworld, and that target—Shomoro—knew he was coming. For once, he had nothing in his mission experience to draw upon to prepare; the future was a fuzzy emptiness in his mind.

  There was a tap on his shoulder. “You got this?” Vernsky asked softly. Then, even lower, “I mean, are you going to be okay, Mose?”

  He uncurled from inside the medical crèche, waiting to get all four feet on the ground before replying. And when he did, it was with a question.

  “You mean, do I think I can do this again?”

  A nod.

  Mose shrugged. “I don’t know. I’ll find out, I suppose.”

  There wasn’t anything Vernsky could realistically say to that. It wasn’t the right time to bring up what was on his mind—but damnit, there might be no better time. Jan had called him just two days before. He’d noticed the same masking expressions Vernsky had picked up in Mose during the briefing, and had coaxed Vernsky into probing for what they masked. This might be his only chance to do so for . . . for a while, he finished that thought firmly.

  “I know something happened that night, after you vanished,” he said quietly. “Something you’re not telling me.”

  Mose’s pupils dilated by a hair.

&nb
sp; “I’m going to ask you what, when you get back,” Vernsky finished.

  A pained laugh escaped the Osk. “You really think I’m coming back? You want to know what happened? Then call off this mission. I know you can do that, even now. Don’t send me to Teluk.” His fist caught at the air, as though snatching at an invisible thread. “Please.”

  Vernsky snatched the glasses off his face and rubbed the bridge of his nose. He suddenly felt bone-tired in a way that had nothing to do with the time displayed on the cargo bay’s chronometer. He pictured calling the mission to a grinding halt, hanging the considerable material assets and agents already invested out to dry in Teluk space, to satisfy a curiosity that might be based on nothing.

  “You know I can’t do that,” he said.

  Mose’s lips tightened and went pale. “Won’t, you mean.”

  That, too. Rather than agree, Vernsky kept silent as he escorted his patient to the waiting capsule craft. The slim ovoid shell, one half of a cylinder, rested in a shaped metal cradle set into the bay’s floor. The techs had cracked its casing open; the narrow shaded interior was just big enough to accommodate a full-grown Osk. It would fit Mose like a glove. Or a coffin. The thought entered Vernsky’s mind before he could bite it off.

  Mose settled himself into the interior of the capsule craft, into the bed of acceleration-cushioning jelly exuded by the craft’s smartwalls, and let one of the techs take his arm.

  “You’ll be making several jumps,” the tech explained as he slid the hypodermic past the gray skin of Mose’s elbow. “It’s a winding road from here to Teluk. The sedative will keep you under during the actual hyperstream transits, with wake breaks in between so you can eat and so on.”

  The Osk nodded, then lay back into the cushioning substrate and stared at the ceiling. After what seemed like an age to Vernsky, the two techs exchanged a thumbs up.