Joshua, not waiting for answers, stood and got four drink bulbs from the refrigerator.
“Shall we begin?” Carl suggested.
The two Xool consulted.
“Why are we here?” Ene asked.
“To stop a war,” Carl said.
More consultation.
“Has it not already stopped?” Ene asked.
“A skirmish ended,” Carl said. “To end the war, many worlds must be released from slow time.”
Further consultation.
“What you ask cannot be,” Ene finally offered.
“That’s a difficult position for us to understand,” Carl said. And an impossible outcome for us to accept.
Amid yet more Xool consultation, Joshua netted, “On another subject, Ir believe Lua understands clan speak. On the walk from their cabin, he appeared attentive to hallway gossip.”
“Uh-huh,” Carl netted. “And it was at my request that there was audible gossip to be overheard rather than netting. It stood to reason our second guest would be Ene’s companion from the Moon or a colleague who’d spent ages monitoring K’vith. My money was on the latter.” Before the failed power grab that drove Arblen Ems into exile, they had been among the Great Clans. Any Xool tasked to watch K’vith was apt to have learned clan speak. “Ene and Lua will search for any opportunity to drive a wedge between us and the Hunters. Let’s keep to ourselves what we suspect.”
After a long Xool sidebar, Ene came up only with, “What do you propose?”
Carl took a sip from his drink bulb. “Explain why you won’t release our worlds.”
“I cannot,” Ene said.
“You can’t explain, or you can’t release our worlds?”
“Either.”
Carl said, “You won’t explain. That’s different.”
“Very well,” Ene said. “I lack the authority.”
Carl stood, stretching muscles already become tense. “I’m giving you the authority.”
“A moment.” Ene and Lua held yet another long conversation. “I … we will not. No one on this world will. Our families are below.”
Hostages? Carl wondered. Maybe that was being too anthropomorphic. Obedience to policy could be a matter of family honor, or some yet more esoteric behavior he could not hope to anticipate.
“Then contact the proper authorities on the home world,” Carl said.
“I cannot,” Ene said.
Because the worm had somehow disabled the base radio, Carl supposed. “You can use this ship’s radio.”
“You cannot either,” Ene said.
“This once,” Tacitus netted, “Ir don’t think the obstacle is recalcitrance. Remember, Xool World is a mirror. Apart from UV, it reflects virtually all electromagnetic waves across the spectrum. That includes radio waves.”
“How about a UV laser?” Carl netted, although he wasn’t optimistic. If the Xool could communicate by laser between moon and planet, they would not have sent a ship to report intruders. And then Sting would not have chased that courier to its doom.
“Insufficient information,” Tacitus netted.
“Ene,” Carl said, “I understand why radio is problematical, but the slow-time field seems to respond differently to ultraviolet. Can we speak by UV laser with authorities on the planet?”
“A moment.” Ene and Lua caucused. “Solar ultraviolet is absorbed to amplify the field. Ultraviolet does not reach the surface.”
Carl said, “I’ve heard more than enough about what we can’t do. Take us to the planet.”
“Nor is that allowed,” Ene said.
“Too bad,” Carl snapped. “Find a way.”
Or else, his words implied. Or else, what? We talk until you’re convinced? How long would that take—if it even worked? Torture? Distaste aside, torture might not work—and Ene, like his human agents, could have his own suicide bomb.
Carl’s gut churned. By his leniency toward the fleeing Xool crews—by taking those defenseless ships off the board—had he squandered his only leverage?
“Or else,” Joshua said, breaking a lengthening silence, “we can begin throwing rocks.”
“What the hell?” Carl netted.
“Look at them,” Tacitus netted. The two Xool were, suddenly, in urgent consultation. “They don’t much care for that idea.”
“So only I’m in the dark? Explain, please.”
“You had wondered about Xool ships pounding drones near the planet even after they were disabled. After analyzing the records, Ir have yet to see Xool ships stop firing until one of two things happened. One, the drone has been reduced to small pieces. That’s the typical case. Two, the drone, or a big piece of it, has been batted away.”
“Knocked out of orbit?” Carl netted.
“Perhaps not in the sense you mean. Bumped up to escape velocity.”
“But Sting came apart when it impacted the slow-time field.”
“That doesn’t mean nothing punched through, or that the field wasn’t in some way disrupted. Think conservation of energy.”
Ene waggled an arm tentacle for their attention. “What do you mean, throw rocks?”
“Just what you think,” Tacitus said. “Ir believe that, over the eons, someone diverted asteroids and comets that would otherwise have hit the planet. That preventing such impacts was a primary function of your nearby base and its ships. But give us a moment to consult.”
“No, I’m ready,” Carl said.
Conservation of energy—of a kind. Any external strike upon a slow-time field would somehow be compressed into the much briefer interval within, effectively intensifying the blow. The field might absorb minor impacts, but—judging by the dedication with which the Xool ships continued to target quite small infalling debris; judging from how they had sent railgun slugs, never more massive missiles, back toward the planetary field—any such protection could work only to a point. And the compression factor multiplying the effects must be up in the millions ….
That Sting might have struck a blow at the Xool buoyed Carl’s spirits.
Carl locked eyes with Ene. “Your choice. You can bring us to speak with your leaders. Or, we can lob stones until you change your minds.”
“No, you won’t,” Ene said. “Disturbing and redirecting the orbits of big asteroids will take years.”
Carl strode to the table, staring down at the Xool. “Not to anyone inside.”
His sensor stalks slumped, Ene said, simply, “We shall comply.”
CHAPTER 56
An army of robots took weeks to salvage an intact Xool ship from deep inside the collapsed lava tube. After that much anticipation, passage through the planet’s slow-time barrier was anticlimactic. One moment the squished sphere of the Xool ship hurtled toward its reflection; the next moment the ship was through. Below, an Earth-like world stretched before them, swaddled in blue sky and fluffy white clouds. It looked heartbreakingly normal until, glancing upward, Corinne took notice of the starless black heavens.
Pinched by a tight harness, brushing shoulders in one of the four jump seats shoehorned in along the aft bridge bulkhead, she could not wait to set down. Lord, but she was sick and tired of ships.
Joshua sat to her right. Carl sat to her left; seated to his left, arrived in-system by courier ship only the day before, just for this excursion, was the Foremost. Straight ahead, in the pilot and copilot seats, were Ene and Lua. Except for brief interactions with traffic control and one cryptic radioed notification, both Xool were silent.
(“A code phrase,” Tacitus netted apologetically about the notification, “without a meaningful direct translation. Perhaps it’s only ‘warning, manual landing.’ ”
“Or recommending a declaration of defcon 1?” Carl netted back.
Tacitus’ avatar just shrugged.)
Were the Xool happy to be home? Anxious about bringing interlopers through the barrier? Corinne wished she could better read their body language.
As the ship plunged into the atmosphere, she heard the first faint keening of re
entry. Sky glimpsed through the view port took on a tinge of darkest blue. Starlight did not penetrate the barrier, but sunlight, somehow, did.
“Weird,” Carl muttered, as outside the Xool ship the noise of reentry swelled.
“What?” she asked.
“Artificial cabin gravity. My eyes and experience insist we’re pulling several gees, but I don’t feel it. This is like a video game, not flying.”
“But it’s impressive technology,” Tacitus offered.
“No argument here,” Carl said.
The sky paled, and the panorama beneath started to flatten. Breaking through thin, wispy clouds, Corinne saw a patchwork quilt of greens: farmland, she supposed. They flew over a lake, its surface densely rippled, like corduroy. A weird wind, she decided. But what were those dark, roiling columns in the distance?
“Ene?” she said. “Ahead, about thirty and sixty degrees to your left. Are those fires?”
“Examples of your handiwork,” Ene rasped. “Crash sites. Scarcely four minutes have passed on Horua”—the proper name for Xool World—“since you people arrived. Less, for the ships reentering, many with battle damage, none with working computers.”
“Do not apologize,” Carl netted. “They attacked us. Rather than order those ships home, we could have blown every one from the sky.”
Leaving what to say? Corinne wondered. Acknowledgment that they, too, were flying seat of the pants, without a working computer? Because to have helped Ene’s compatriots scrub the worm from this ship’s computers would have taught them how to restore all their ships.
Tacitus broke the awkward silence. “Four minutes here to a month outside. That means a slowdown ratio of only about ten thousand to one.”
“Things would have been sped up,” Ene said, “upon the notification of your arrival.”
“So authorities here could better monitor the battle?” Tacitus asked.
“If need be,” Ene said.
“How about we stop distracting the pilot?” Carl suggested.
And so, in uneasy silence—Corinne wondering all the while if this ship would drill into the ground, if she and her friends were about to become the latest column of smoke and dust—they swooped to a landing at an eerily idle spaceport.
A long, sleek, ground-effect vehicle awaited them on the runway. All six from the ship climbed into the back. As gritty industrial cityscape sped past, Corinne wondered how there had been time to order a limo for them. Hadn’t it been only minutes?
The Foremost had had the same thought. Corinne understood Timoq’s question, and she sensed Lua did, too. But Ene, as far as she knew, did not know clan speak.
Tacitus could handle translations among English, clan speak, and, for the lack of a better term, Xoolish. Hearing everything two or three times had gotten old, so Corinne activated her implant’s latest software upgrade. It buffered non-English speech long enough for Tacitus to signal whether he would net a mind’s ear translation. If the signal did not come, her auditory cortex, none the wiser, received the speech just a few syllables delayed. In general, he would translate and, compared to the Xool, she would gain some quiet thinking time with every verbal exchange.
“Be honored,” came Lua’s answer in translation. “This vehicle is usually reserved for her Excellency, the Chief Administrator.”
Was coddling heads of state universal? Corinne wondered. “I suppose we are being brought to her.”
It was not a question, so maybe the absence of a response wasn’t entirely rude.
With escort vehicles ahead and behind, light bars flashing, they glided past a sprawling manufacturing center, a warehouse district, and a chemical complex. Tenement buildings, bland and blocky, separated industrial zones.
The escort cars, like their transport, had tinted windows. Corinne tried to put her finger on what about the tableau nagged at her. That honchos rode ridiculously sized vehicles in ostentatious motorcades, just like on Earth? That the Xool were that similar to humans? For a moment the resemblance felt like a piece of the puzzle—until she remembered who had had a hand, or tentacle, anyway, in shaping Earth’s cultures. Rather than Xool acting like humans, maybe humans mimicked the Xool. She found that a depressing inference—and yet not what continued to bother her.
So what was? Something outside the limo. Something about the long lines of traffic pulled onto the shoulders to clear the way for the racing convoy.
Trucks, hundreds of them, with Xool aboard! How quaint and unproductive to expend labor driving around cargoes! And given the Xool’s simple computers, such inefficiency would not be limited to hauling freight. Countless mundane and dangerous tasks on this world would get done by living workers, or not at all.
She netted, “So the discovery of the millennium is that Xool live in Dickensian squalor?”
“More like the drab tedium of Stalinist realism,” Joshua netted.
“I haven’t read either,” Carl netted.
“You wouldn’t enjoy Stalin,” Joshua predicted.
Industrial and commercial districts gave way to office parks and residential neighborhoods. Those, in turn, yielded to ever more of the grandiose ostentation Corinne suspected must characterize capital cities everywhere.
“We’re almost there, aren’t we?” she asked aloud.
“We are,” Ene said, his fringe band fluttering.
Corinne was willing to bet this time she did read body language: agitation.
• • • •
Carl was not surprised when, near the imposing entrance of an epically large and ugly edifice, Ene and Lua were ushered away. Of course, the Chief Administrator would hear her people’s report before meeting with the alien interlopers. But soon enough, armed guards led Carl, Joshua, Corinne, and Timoq down a long, high hallway lined with statuary to a conference room that was all swirled neon colors and plush scarlet furniture. The rear wall, all glass, overlooked an open-air promenade along whose mauve, mossy lawn ornate monuments and heroic statues stretched into the distance.
Nine Xool occupied ottomans on three sides of a padded rectangular table: four on one long side, four on the opposite side, and one at the far end. Ene and Lua perched on ottomans against a side wall, without a table. A smaller table and four ottomans near the door showed the visitors where to sit—though Timoq, to see and be seen, stood on his. Both tables and the spare ottoman beside Ene offered goblets and a carafe of water.
The Xool on Blue Moon all had gray-on-gray mottling patterns and stocky torsos. Of the Xool around the table many were of similar appearance, but four—among them, the lone Xool seated at the head of the table—were slender and had green-on-gray mottling. And the Chief Administrator, they had been told, was “she.”
Were the off-world Xool all males?
At the head of the main table, the Xool straightened. She spoke and Tacitus’ netted translation announced, “I am Wataninui Wue Tihotiho, Chief Administrator. These are my advisers.”
In parallel text, Tacitus netted: Do you want a distinctive voice for each aide?
Counting Wue, Ene, Lua, and themselves, they already used eight voices. Carl didn’t relish trying to keep straight eight others, especially representing nameless, faceless Xool.
Carl texted: For me, lump the aides (if any speak) into a common voice. But remember which aide says what, in case it matters later.)
As mind’s-ear audio to all his team, Carl added, “Now, our protocol explanation.”
Tacitus, hissing and rasping, with simultaneous netted translations, gave a short prepared statement that he would both articulate the views of, and silently translate for, his companions.
At the main table, sensor stalks twitched on two of the advisers. The Chief Administrator did not visibly react.
One by one, each voiced distinctively by Tacitus, the visitors made their introductions:
“Cluth Timoq, Foremost of clan Arblen Ems.”
“Corinne Elman, media representative of Earth.”
“Joshua Matthews and”—with a cha
nge in timbre—“Tacitus. Both of Earth.”
“Carl Rowland, representative of the United Planets.”
Wue spoke. “You should not have come. Having come, you should not threaten us.”
“You should not have played God,” Carl responded. “Release our people from slow time. Or show us how.”
Perhaps no one spoke so bluntly to the Chief Administrator. She took her time just to respond, “No.”
Carl tried again. “Help us to understand. Explain how we came to this point, why you shaped developments on our home worlds.”
“No,” Wue repeated.
“Then I’ll tell you.” Carl had wrestled with this puzzle since Ene’s first, grudging admissions, and the evidence supported just two theories. He would start—dearly hoping it was correct—with the possibility that might prove comparatively benign. “You set out to fashion the companion intelligences your explorers could never find. And you have! You’re not alone anymore. So why attack us when we come to talk? Why lock away humans and Hunters at home?”
“Because,” Wue said, “you mistake our purpose.”
CHAPTER 57
Joshua texted: I told you so.
To which Carl answered: I’m not surprised, just disappointed. You want to take it?
Joshua said, “Humans, Hunters, every species in InterstellarNet: we’re guinea pigs. The Xool spent 550 million years—to them, less than two decades—‘configuring’ their experiments. Culturing Petri dishes. Watching to see which samples run amok, and how.”
To which Wue said … nothing.
“Eleven Petri dishes,” Carl said. Because InterstellarNet had eleven members.
“Ir would suspect more,” Joshua said. “We found no record of genetically engineered organisms in their lunar base. To drive and shape evolution, to encourage intelligence to emerge, they would have relied on the blunt instrument of planetary-scale disasters. Who’s to say some interventions weren’t too disastrous?”
“Ene!” Corinne burst out in English. “You threw the rock that doomed the dinosaurs?”
With a jerk, Ene’s eyestalks retracted to a third of their usual length. “That was an accident,” he insisted. “We had sensors throughout the solar system, ceaselessly scanning for dangerous rocks. This rock came plunging in from way above the ecliptic. By the time the asteroid’s orbit was characterized and the computers decided to release us from slow time, it was too late to stop.”
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