He caught her eye in the rearview mirror, and a barely perceptible nod of her head drew his gaze to a thin line of smoke rising from behind the squat skyline to their right. Probably another bombing. Fernandez was asking approval to stop to investigate without including Hirokh in the conversation. Thomas had no interest in stopping, but at least it would make them late for the dinner party.
“Thank you, Lieutenant. Let’s not go straight to the Retreat. I would like to drive around a bit and see more of Doubletown.” Thomas turned to his ever-present companion. “Do you mind, Hirokh?”
“Of course not,” Hirokh answered, midlimbs raised in assent. He had likely deduced where they were headed but did not interfere. “I know you relish viewing Doubletown as much as I do, Envoy, though for different reasons.”
Thomas studied the low stone buildings through the car window and afternoon drizzle. Spitting clouds of smoke, a handful of other autos labored through the roughly cobbled streets. Phren children skittered between them, their exoskeletons yellow from malnutrition or radiation sickness. Thomas had viewed pictures of this place as the locus of a proud global culture, gaily painted, its people in perpetual celebration. Now the pale green of moss covered the crumbling buildings and streets, and he could see no other color but the burnt orange and, too often, yellow of phren shells.
Making no further pretense, Fernandez drove directly to the source of the smoke. Without a word, she exited the groundcar and marched to the scene, leaving Thomas and Hirokh little option but to follow. Thomas immediately felt his skin prickle with spores. The scabs on his arms began to itch.
“What reason could you have to enjoy Doubletown, Hirokh? I thought you hated the place.”
“How could you think I detest this place, Envoy, when you know it is holy land? I detest only its inhabitants. I take pleasure in seeing how few remain to kill.”
Thomas smiled. Most Solarans shared this sentiment, but few were so undiplomatic as to express it to him. In his two local years on Phrentyr, just over one terrestrial year, he had come to appreciate Hirokh’s bluntness.
The bombing had gutted a large, single-story structure, its roof partially collapsed, remnants glowing dully with the last sputtering flames. Thomas supposed it was a grocery; suicide bombers had recently targeted several Tokhin grocers who defied Solaran dietary restrictions. Fernandez disappeared directly into the wreckage, trusting her body armor to protect her, while Thomas and Hirokh walked along the outside.
Hirokh extended his midlimbs forward, the phren gesture for “on the other hand.” “You harbor the opposite hope, to save these people and resurrect their disgusting culture.” Thomas did not disabuse him of this notion, but in truth he had all but abandoned any such ambition. As cultural Envoy he was supposed to protect the Tokhin people from genocide. An awfully nice idea, but he now doubted he could do more than slightly delay the inevitable.
At the far side of the demolished building, the fire had burned out. A group of Doubletown residents cleared away debris, searching for survivors. If they rebuilt anything on this site, it would be only primitive mud huts.
Thomas glanced down at the book in his hand, the embodiment of the nearly destroyed Tokhin culture. He was antagonizing Hirokh by keeping it in plain view this long. “Have you never read The Word of Both, Hirokh?”
“If I wish to read about perverts, I will go to Chubbytown. They will give me pictures.” All phren spoke in a soft, literally nasal voice, yet Hirokh still managed to sound gruff.
“I have met many Tokhin who have read The Solara,” Thomas persisted.
“Greater fools are they, not to know the truth when they see it,” Hirokh answered.
As they slowly traced the perimeter of the destruction, Thomas studied the surrounding build-ings, many embedded with concrete slabs thrown from the explosion. Several charred groundcars lined the street, strewn inches deep with rubble. Most tellingly, moss was seared away from every facing surface and little had grown back even in the misty rain.
When Fernandez rejoined them, Thomas asked, “This was no pouch bomb, was it?”
“No, Boss. The blast radius and solid oxides in the debris suggest a powerful thermobaric weapon.” Fernandez glared at Hirokh as they walked. After a moment she switched her gaze to Thomas, clearly expecting him to confront Hirokh.
It was too obvious a giveaway. Solaran enforcers knew how to build a homemade bomb. They could easily have disguised this as another suicide bombing, absolving the government of responsibility. Instead they had deliberately used military-grade explosives, no doubt on Hirokh’s instructions, as if daring Thomas to do something about it. There was nothing he could do, of course, and he would not be made a fool trying.
Thomas might not have said anything at all but for Fernandez standing there fuming. He stopped finally and folded his arms. “Well, Hirokh, are you going to claim that you had nothing to do with this?”
Hirokh paused, midlimbs at his side. “You know I prefer to be direct, Envoy, but in my position I must sometimes withhold information.”
“You are direct, Hirokh, I’ll give you that.”
“I do not willingly pretend to be other than what I am.”
Thomas looked pointedly at the wreckage around them. “Yet you expect the Tokhin to do just that, to eat what you eat, to act like they belong to your culture and not their own.”
“For Tokhin, it is commendable to be of two natures. Life here in Doubletown would be intolerable to Solarans, but it seems to suit these people.”
While he spoke, Hirokh drew back a forelimb as if to strike a passing Tokhin, who cowered and shrank away. Thomas felt as much contempt for the Tokhin’s meek reaction as for Hirokh’s raw display of power.
“I fear,” Hirokh continued, “that you humans have much in common with the Tokhin. You seem to relish prevarication, professing to something different than your true nature.”
“What do you mean?”
“Envoy, why are we here? You investigate this site, but what would you do with proof that the Solaran Council ordered the bombing? Your government has declared that suffering the pervert-worshippers is a condition of further aid from your people. But is that threat an empty pouch?” An “empty pouch” meant a bluff, but to phren a bluff was never a clever thing.
Thomas suspected Hirokh knew the answer to his own question. Thomas’ orders were clear: due to the strategic importance of this system, no humanitarian concern short of imminent and absolute genocide of the Tokhin would justify withdrawal of human support to Phrentyr. This left him entirely impotent. He might find and catalog evidence of the Solaran Council’s violence and repression of the Tokhin, but could never act on it.
“It will take much longer to analyze the evidence here,” Fernandez interjected. “Can we cancel your appearance tonight?”
“No, Lieutenant. If you like, you can come back and poke around more after you drop us at the Retreat.”
“Yes, sir. I will have a report for you in the morning.”
“Great,” Thomas answered, as if he were actually going to read the damn thing. Thomas preferred Lieutenant Fernandez to most of the marines, if only because she better concealed her contempt for unenhanced humans, but her diligence was starting to annoy.
He followed a different thread of the conversation with Hirokh. “Even if you think humans and Tokhin are alike, Hirokh, you needn’t worry I will take sides in your world’s religious disagreements. You know I am an unbeliever beyond any possible redemption.”
“So you have told me, but I wonder how it is possible.” Atheism was nearly unheard of on Phrentyr. “Where did you turn for comfort when your wife died?”
Thomas made no secret that he was a widower, but he seldom mentioned Kayleigh’s death, and Hirokh had never before pursued the subject. It struck Thomas as bad form to do so here, in the midst of more violent death that
Hirokh had all but admitted orchestrating.
“I threw myself into my work,” Thomas answered. “You see where the hell that got me.”
He said nothing more until they were back in the groundcar, then asked Hirokh, “Were you ever married?”
Thomas thought Hirokh had not heard, the answer was so long coming. “Yes, Envoy. Before the war, I had a wife and daughter. Only my faith made it possible to live without them.”
“I respect that, Hirokh, but I also respect the beliefs of the Tokhin. And the Tokhin tell me they respect the teachings of The Solara. That’s what tolerance is all about.”
“Respect? Tolerance? The Tokhin read the wisdom of the Great One, then go back to worshipping their two deviants. Solarans who ‘tolerate’ the pervert-worshippers are just as bad, perhaps worse, for they are harder to root out. Not all phren who wear Solaran cloaks and carry valid papers truly serve the Great One.”
Thomas noticed Fernandez shaking her head, appalled at the asinine quarrels that could cost mil-lions of people their lives.
“Why do you describe the Two Gods like that, Hirokh? I haven’t seen any reference to sexual practices in The Word of Both or any other Tokhin text.”
“Two gods, both men. Figure it out, biped.”
“Would you prefer if one of the Two Gods were female?”
Silent for a moment, his midlimbs still, Thomas couldn’t be sure at first how much his blasphemy angered Hirokh. Lacking mimetic muscles, phren had no facial expressions, though they could cry with human-like tear ducts. Thomas had taken to trying to needle Hirokh out of his stoicism, but perhaps he was getting too good at the game.
“Envoy, if I kill you, the Council will execute me immediately,” Hirokh said. “Yet every day, you make it a difficult choice.”
Thomas smiled. He felt he had scored a point when Hirokh threatened bodily harm, even if he could not take such threats lightly. The largest phren Thomas had ever seen, Hirokh could certainly dispatch an unenhanced human being, despite his war injuries, and had doubtless killed many phren. Thomas was oddly gratified the Solarans had assigned their notorious Chief Enforcer as his watchdog. They seemed to fear Thomas might accomplish something. He wished he could agree.
Back when life was important to Thomas, Hirokh would have terrified him. But the apathy that had settled over him since his arrival on Phrentyr was at times a peculiar strength—Hirokh could not intimidate him because Thomas did not care what happened to him. He hated his work, having long since realized he could accomplish nothing meaningful as Envoy, and offworld a dead-end job is a dead-end life. Everyone on Earth he ever cared about was dead. In truth, the only person he really cared about had died before he left.
2.
They mounted the steps slowly, Hirokh from his injuries—walking only on hindlimbs was painful to him and he limped noticeably even using midlimbs—Thomas to avoid slipping on the layer of moss swiftly rising in the rain.
Thomas tried not to shiver in the early evening wind. Once ungodly hot, Phrentyr’s climate had cooled with nuclear autumn from the last, deadliest war between Tokhin and Solarans. Nearly ten phren years had passed since the war’s end, yet much of the world remained shrouded in smoke and ash. The cold was unpleasant for the phren and disrupted their agriculture, but ideal for moss.
The moss—actually closer to terrestrial mold, although unlike Earth mold it drew much of its energy from photosynthesis—had been the more frivolous of Thomas’ two reasons for volunteering to serve on Phrentyr. With so much of the world covered in a layer of green, he would seldom need to see anything red. Even local clothes contained little; gray dominated the Tokhin cloaks, blue the Solaran.
Big mistake. Thomas tried to ignore the moss, but found it impossible. You could put it out of your mind for a few minutes, maybe a few hours, but then like a glaring red light it hit you again all the harder. The prickling on your skin. The ubiquitous rancid smell and dull green color. The sickly sweet taste to all the food and drink, even the air. Better to stay aware of it, treat it as a familiar if unwelcome companion.
Director Pryz greeted Thomas promptly as they entered the Retreat, the central Tokhin meeting hall. He ignored Hirokh. The director introduced Thomas first to High Priestess Khorana and her son Khora, not quite old enough for his own name, then to the other guests. Thomas had met many of them before, but he suffered the director to announce everyone as if he were new to this world.
Pryz introduced him to the group as Envoy Thomas McFall, but as always found a new way to butcher his name, this time pronouncing Thomas more like “toads.” Correcting him politely, Thomas explained to the group that a “toad” on Earth was an amphibious creature, which he described as like an animal made of moss, a notion they found delightfully revolting.
Thomas endured an hour of small talk with Tokhin dignitaries, Hirokh always hovering over one shoulder, while a group of musicians sang ululating hymns to the Two Gods in the background. He could not concentrate on what anyone said, preoccupied with the desire to scratch. How the hell could he maintain diplomatic etiquette with a constantly itching crotch?
Finally the director herded the group into the food circle. The High Priestess chanted a short prayer and the crowd answered in unison, “There are Two!” Thomas pretended not to hear Hirokh’s blessing, which sounded more like, “Bugger them Both!”
The main course was grilled khaat, one of the few native foods Thomas could enjoy without dipping into his tin of horseradish and wasabi, salt and cayenne pepper and every other spice that might cut the mossy sweetness. Khaat, the two-legged beasts that roamed the plains of this continent, were muscled so that their flesh bulged in squares when stretched on a spit, the heat of the fire warding off the moss. As the meat cooked, individual nuggets burst free like popcorn, flying through the air to be caught and quickly consumed before moss could grow.
Phren delighted in the spectacle of the chunks of meat popping and soaring in every direction. They cheered with every good catch, with a special ovation for anyone who could use all their forelimbs and midlimbs to catch four at once.
Thomas had been to dozens of dinner parties on Phrentyr with Tokhin and Solarans, and the phren never grew bored with this game. Thomas found their childlike delight infectious and impossible to reconcile with the bloodthirsty hatred that so infused both cultures.
With the khaat as distraction, Thomas shuffled his way to the High Priestess, Hirokh shadowing him as always. Thomas knew Director Pryz for a worthless bureaucrat but held a slight, lingering hope for Khorana, the Tokhin spiritual leader.
He watched the priestess catch three morsels of khaat in succession. Squatting onto her midlimbs, she quickly passed them under her cloak to her short abdominal tentacles. From there the meat went into the moss-resistant pouch inside her abdominal mouth to be eaten at her leisure, but of course Thomas had never seen this happen. To look directly into any phren’s pouch would violate their world’s strictest taboo.
Thomas felt self-conscious nearing the priestess with the meal still in progress. Many phren were disgusted to see him eat through his face with what seemed to them an oversized nose. Apparently they grew accustomed to his large head, rigid limbs and hands with too many fingers, but still found it difficult to credit that he had no mouth in his chest.
Thomas snared two pieces of meat zipping past, impressing no one. He popped one into his mouth and quickly dipped the other in a tureen of spicy, creamy sauce made from skallow root. That bulbous plant had long been Thomas’ favorite local food, but he was getting heartily sick of it. Skallow sauce was impervious to moss, so for too long he had been slathering it over nearly everything he ate.
If you ate quickly you might not see moss growing on your food during a meal, but you would still taste it. In Phren, there is a word for moss that one can taste but not see, another for a thin yellow-tinted layer, another for a thick and fuzzy g
rowth, some two dozen words for moss altogether. To Thomas, they were all just moss.
Opportunities to speak with the High Priestess were rare, and he was determined not to squander this one. After a long series of failed attempts to spur the Tokhin into action gently and diplomatically, Thomas had resolved to become more direct, not that he believed it would do any good.
“High Priestess, your people are dying.”
Khorana turned to him and folded her midlimbs over her chest, an indication of focused attention. “Most of my people are already dead.”
“Most of the Solaran race died in the war as well, but their civilization recovers. They begin to rebuild with the help of my people. With our engineered seed, our techniques and equipment, they lose fewer crops to moss, reclaim some of the irradiated wastes. Yet the Tokhin refuse any aid but handouts of food and radiation meds. Am I to believe that the Solarans are so much more industrious?”
It was an unfair comparison. The Solarans had won the war. While Solaran civilization was merely devastated, the Tokhin were all but annihilated, their few survivors herded into Doubletown, the Holy City’s Tokhin ghetto. Resurrecting the Tokhin culture was an even more daunting task than helping the Solarans, but Thomas knew if the process did not begin soon it would be too late. Humans had arrived in this system shortly after the end of the war and provided relief aid to the ruling Solarans on the condition that they did not completely wipe out the remaining Tokhin. Once the Solarans were again self-sufficient, Earth would lose its leverage, and Solara would surely complete the annihilation of the Tokhin race.
Khorana thrust her midlimbs to either side in anger. Several nearby guests noticed her reaction and turned to listen.
“Have we not done enough to prove our industry?” she demanded. “For countless generations Tokhin and Solaran sought to destroy the other. It was no easy task, as we cohabited most of the world, but at last by our tireless efforts we succeeded.”
Writers of the Future, Volume 27 Page 17