It wasn't our job. All we were supposed to do was to pave the way for the Commerce Department mission.
But we weren't having much success. I tried another tack.
And that would have been too bad, even from the Dutchman's point of view. It's almost always cheaper to hire natives than it is to import even mechanical labor.
K'chat didn't wait for an answer; he gestured a goodbye and then left, shutting the door gently but firmly behind him.
Just ahead of the Dutchman's explosion.
"You stupid, brainless asshole—you came damn close to threatening Ahktah just now. And then you talk reasonably with K'chat? Fucking idiot."
"And what was wrong with that, Major?"
"I thought you were supposed to be a first john, not a greenie."
"Major, I've been in the service for almost six years—almost ten, if you include Alton." I was still a first lieutenant. Now, while promotions don't always come fast in the Contact Service—the Navy gives out new rank the way my mother's Aunt Anna used to hand out Christmas kroner—six years was none too soon to be promoted to captain. Hell, Manny Curdova was likely to get his major's leaves.
I didn't begrudge Manny his promotions, mind; I just would have liked a pair of bars and a TL ring of my own.
The Dutchman eyed me levelly. "If you're so fucking salty, Emmy, why are you acting like such a greenie?" Norfeldt propped his chins on his hands. "Talking reasonably with K'chat, trying to sell him, it doesn't make sense because he is reasonable—you were just preaching to the converted. You could have blown the whole play by yelling at Ahktah. Think about it."
"I don't know, Major. Maybe you're right." I walked over to my cot and stretched out, pillowing my head on my hands. It was hard to think straight; I was just too tired, feeling too old. Maybe my extra weight didn't bother me as much as the Dutchman's bothered him, but I didn't like it much. It would have been like home for Akiva Bar-El, who had been raised on Metzada, after all. But the Commerce Department people had decided that we didn't need the big weapons officer along.
Well, more accurately, they suffered from the misconception that someone who made violence his profession and specialty was a bomb always ready to go off. Now, it can work out that way—that was Kurt Buchholtz, all over—but Akiva had more self-control than anyone else I knew.
I stared at the rough, curving walls overhead. "I can't stand the little bugger, Major. 'Let's see what the gods say'—the damned hypocrite."
Norfeldt chuckled hollowly. "So you don't believe in their bullshit gods?"
"'Course not. It's idiotic."
"Not idiocy, kid: hypocrisy. But hypocrisy, greenie, is a fine social lubricant, suitable for many squeaky situations. You think K'chat believes in their gods?"
"He seems to."
"Precisely. And he may. But has he ever seen them?"
"No. Only Ahktah—oh."
"Right. Only Ahktah. Ahktah is the priest, Ahktah climbs Heaven, tracking the village's tithed wood and food—"
"Not tithed. It's one-twelfth. Base six, remember?"
The Dutchman dismissed the distinction with a wave of his hand. "Don't get technical with me, krautbrains. The point is that he trades a portion of their harvest to the gods, in return for their blessing. Understandable, considering that they must have had a vigorous trading culture before the freeze."
"It does not make sense, their giving away hard-found food and wood—and for what?"
Norfeldt shrugged. "Don't ask me. I'm not a believer. The question is, is Ahktah?"
"I suppose so."
"You really must have sauerkraut between your ears. You really think he just drags his sled up there and hands over the stuff to the gods? 'Here you go, nice godsies. and can I have a fucking blessing, please?' 'Why sure, Ahktah.' You think it happens that way?"
"Well, no."
"Finally, you're showing a bit of intelligence. Not much, mind, but some. Of course he doesn't, because there aren't any gods. He probably stashes the wood, has himself a nice warm fire and a good feed each trip."
Slowly, Norfeldt got to his feet and rummaged around the floor, looking for a fresh wine bottle among the empties. "Aha." He uncorked it and drank deeply. "Shit. I'm forgetting my manners." He held it out. "Want a hit, Emmy?"
"I don't drink that swill." Not that I'd turn up my nose at a nice Moselle, but the Dutchman seemed to think that the cheaper a wine was, the better it was. Hell, if I'd substituted wine vinegar mixed with Everclear he probably wouldn't have noticed. "I don't get your point. Major. You just confirmed what I'm saying, that he's nothing but a hypocrite."
"Right. And you, asshole, you keep threatening his power." He waddled over, dragging a chair along with him, and sat down. "Not that it would make much difference if you'd been clever enough to try to wheedle him instead of threatening him—the little bugger's smart, alas. Shamans always have to resist change; any change in a shaman-controlled society has to threaten their power, their position."
"Not al—"
"Always. Look at what the Catholic Church put the early Lutherans through. They had to: prospering Protestants proved that the Holy Mother Church didn't have a monopoly on capital-fucking-R Right. Or look at the way the Imams slaughtered the Bahais, for godssake. Or consider what the Fundamentalistas put the Humanists through. Emmy, the only shaman-oriented group I can think of that's never persecuted nonbelievers and outsiders is the Bahais, and they've never been in a majority in any room larger than a WC."
He took a slow swallow from the bottle, then belched disgustingly. "Ah. That feels better. Mmm, it would have been a lot easier if the poncharaire were either hostile or psi-pos. If they were nasty, we could just flatten 'em—and to hell with the economics of bringing in offplanet labor." He considered with relish. "And if they'd been psi-pos, a good comm officer like Ari McCaw or even that little suntan N'Damo could have persuaded Ahktah that the gods wanted them to deal with us—without Wolfie ever knowing."
"That would have been nice, but they aren't warlike, and they are psi-neg, and Donny isn't here, and . . ." I stopped myself. I'd been about to say that Ari McCaw was dead, killed in the line of duty, more or less.
But it's a custom in the Contact Service that you don't mention dead comrades, except when it's strictly necessary or when you're toasting their memory. It wasn't strictly necessary, and I didn't feel much like drinking. I felt more like vomiting.
"So?" I finally asked. "What are we going to do? We can't persuade Ahktah—"
"So, Emmy, we use more . . . primitive means." The Dutchman's heavy gunbelt landed on my cot with a solid thump. Our orders had strictly forbidden us firearms, but Norfeldt had violated them, as usual. Had he disobeyed the orders because he really wanted to have his Magnum handy, or was it just for the sake of disobeying orders? I'm really not sure; maybe even Norfeldt didn't know.
"If you can't reason with him," Norfeldt said, "then I'm sure you can figure out a way to keep Ahktah out of our way, nicht var?"
"Wait a minute—"
"Tomorrow, you follow the bastard up the slopes of Heaven, armed with both pistol and camera. You take holos of him snacking on the offerings, and then you flash him same. If he doesn't give in, if he doesn't agree to report that the gods strongly favor dealings with humans—"
"No."
"—the gods get themselves a four-legged sacrifice." The Dut
chman wrinkled his brow. "What's the matter? Squeamish?"
"How about you doing it?" I don't like killing, particularly when it's not in self-defense. Maybe Akiva Bar-El could have handled it easily, but not me.
Norfeldt shook his head. "God save me from greenies—"
"I've been an officer for—"
"—and those supposedly seasoned officers who still act like motherfucking greenies. Look: if we don't deal with the locals, they're going to die off, right?"
"Right, but—"
"Shut up. And if Ahktah interferes, that interference has to be stopped. I've got a few years and more than a few kilos on you, Emmy. I can't climb up Heaven; my heart probably wouldn't take it." Slowly, painfully, he pushed himself to his feet. "Now, since it's got to be done, and since one of us has to do it, and since you're the only one who can do it, you will do it. Understood?"
"Yes, sir," I said sullenly.
"And now, if you'll excuse me, I've got to go empty my gut. Something around here seems to disagree with me. Maybe it's the damn gruel; maybe it's a lieutenant whose first objection to a messy spot of killing was that he was going to have to do it."
He paused at the door, bracing himself in the doorway. "I didn't hear you acknowledge the order, Lieutenant von du Mark. Either you come to terms with Ahktah, or you blow him away. Acknowledge, scumbag."
"Aye-aye, sir." I tried to load my voice with sarcasm; either the Dutchman didn't hear, or he just didn't care.
Or both, of course.
II
It was easy to tell that it was the morning of a Heaven Day, as the poncharaire called it. On other days, they spent as much time as possible indoors, huddled around their fires, coming out only to gather wood from the stunted forests, reap a twelvedays' worth of food from the akla fields, or check their traps and deadfalls for the small animals that they used for leather and for food.
But on Heaven Day, everyone comes out: to make mud to fill the cracks in the walls of their houses, to carry clay wastepots out to the fields, to sweep the seemingly endless village streets with a local brush that looks like a miniature tumbleweed—to generally pretty up and repair the town. The basic notion is that a prosperous-looking village gets a better deal from the gods in much the same way that a rich trader always seems to come out on top in dealings with others.
As I plodded through the middle of the village, adults and young poncharaire alike scampered out of my way. It wasn't that I looked all that prepossessing; in fact, I was stumbling with the effort of carrying the extra weight of my climbing gear around.
No, it wasn't that they were afraid of me; they weren't. It was just that this was the Heaven Day that Ahktah was to climb Heaven to ask the gods' blessing for dealings with humans, and everyone in the village was expecting the priest to relay a loud and definite no.
I was too. Too bad that . . .
"Hey, Major?" I kept my voice low; we didn't know what the local opinion was on somebody talking to himself.
It took a minute for him to respond. "What the hell is it?" His voice was slurred, which was strange—I'd thought that he'd finished off the last of his wine the night before.
"Maybe there is a simpler way to do this—without Ahktah's cooperation. You remember the way we fixed the chiropterans?" The last we heard from that planet, it had been named Oroga; the first colony was already safely down on the northern continent.
"Don't be silly." An overloud snort sent my hands flying toward my ears, reaching for the phones. I stopped myself and forced my fingers down to my belt, turning down the maximum volume control. "That's fine for keeping a small area bright, day and night. But take a look to the north. What do you see?"
I craned my neck back. The gray bulk of the mountain the poncharaire called Heaven threatened to fill the sky, wisps of cloud obscuring the summit.
"Just the mountain."
"What's beyond that?"
"The glacier—oh." He was right, of course. "Damn. Sorry, Major."
"Right. We orbit some mirrors to heat things up here, we're gonna flood out the people we're trying to save. I thought you were the xenophile. I don't particularly like these folks"—the Dutchman didn't particularly like anyone or anything except food, wine, and cigars—"and even I wouldn't want to shoot craps with their ecology. Melting ice isn't like brightening an area, Emmy. It'd take big mirrors."
"But maybe, maybe if we use smaller orbital mirrors, just warm up the local area and—"
"Quit trying to wriggle out of it, Lieutenant. Even if we could do it that way, how's that going to persuade the locals to work for us? No. We do it standard; we sell them the heaters and the suits to go with them for outdoors, and they'll want to work for us. Then we bring in some analytical medicians, introduce the poncharaire to the concept of medicine—"
"—and video and euphorics and stims, and they'll do whatever the hell the Thousand Worlds wants, like a bunch of four-legged puppets dancing to our tune. Right? Just fucking wonderful, Major. 'Hey, Dad, what'd you do in the Contact Service?' 'Why, I helped enslave a brand-new race of sapients, son.'"
As I rounded the larger-than-normal, less-shabby-than-normal stone igloo that I thought of as the mayoral palace, the Dutchman chuckled.
"My fucking word, the kid's caught hisself a case of scruples." A belch followed, then the disgusting sound of him slurping more wine. "Where are you now?"
"Just about a quarter-klick from Ahktah's house." I looked up at the huge red sun, which was almost directly overhead. It was redder than Sol, and actually smaller, although Pon's relatively tight orbit made it look twice the size of my native sun. "And if he sets out at noon—"
"He has to. Tradition."
"—I should be able to follow him."
"If you don't stumble over your own feet and fall down the side of the mountain."
I wasn't worried about that, but it was vital that Ahktah not spot me, not until I had the holos in the can.
A cold wind blew up from the east. The heater in my rubbery, skin-tight coldsuit compensated, sending rivulets of warmth through the wires embedded in the black, rubbery fabric.
But my face, covered only by a woolen mask, was quickly getting numb.
The northward trail ahead of me went first past Ahktah's stone igloo, then twisted its way up the slopes of Heaven.
I skirted the old ones' settlement. Its scattered houses were inhabited by aged poncharaire who lived partway up the slopes, trading freezing on the lightly forested land for the ability to gather wild akla. Of course, the tradition was that they lived there because it was closer to the gods; like many traditions, it made a virtue of necessity.
Like the tradition of obeying orders, maybe. Maybe that was a necessity, sometimes.
I rubbed a gloved hand across my face and quickened my step, resenting the weight and the pressure of the gun inside my suit, the butt of the pistol carving a hole for itself just over my hipbone. The Dutchman's forty-four massed better than two kilos, and he hadn't offered to take in his custom-made belt for my use of it, which left me without a holster. I could have just tucked the Magnum in my belt, I guess, but you've got to be careful with pistols in cold weather. Parts tend to seize up.
Smoke rising over a hill showed me that I was nearing Ahktah's house; a clattering in front of me suggested that I might have cut it too close. As I topped the hill, Ahktah, his heavily laden sledge hitched to his midsection, was puffing up the trail away from me.
Back at the Academy, I always got top marks in orienteering. I studied every text I could get my hands on, and put it all to work—I guess my run-in with that bastard Brubaker had some positive results, after all. I set a record on the Triple-E course—Escape, Evade, and Elude—that stood for four years. It was finally beaten by an adjusted hundredth of a second by some Alsatian.
All of which is to say that as I followed Ahktah up the trail, hiding behind stunted trees, ducking behind boulders, it's not surprising that he didn't discover me.
You follow the little bastard up
to Heaven, watch him stash his haul and have hisself a nice feed, the Dutchman had said. And you snap his picture, and then you confront him—
Dammit, it just wouldn't work. Not the way the Dutchman wanted it. When you corner someone, he'll attack. When I proved to Ahktah that I could ruin him, he'd try to kill me, not give in.
I might as well just forget about trying to blackmail him; it would be more honest just to put the barrel of the pistol to his head, cock the hammer back, and pull the trigger—
"What did you say?" The Dutchman's voice crackled in my headphones.
"Nothing," I whispered back. That was bad. Very bad. I hadn't realized that I'd spoken out loud. Granted, there are a few worse things to do when you're on a stalk than unknowingly talking to yourself—like wearing a clown suit and banging on a big bass drum, maybe.
"What is it, Emmy?"
I didn't answer; Ahktah was looking around. I hadn't made much noise, but what else could he be looking for except me? All the poncharaire, even the old ones, were down in the village, prettying it up for Heaven Day.
When Ahktah started unhooking his harness, I lowered myself even further and answered, "He may have spotted me, Major." I kept my voice barely above a whisper. Let the Dutchman turn up the volume on his end. If Ahktah hadn't seen me, I wasn't going to risk it further. "He's loosened his sledge."
"Dammit, you must have spooked him. Get the gun out."
"I don't need—"
"Shut up. It works like this: I'm a major and you're a lieutenant. That means that you get to do what the hell I tell you to, which includes getting the fucking gun out. Now."
"But—"
"Further, he's used to this gravity, and you aren't. I don't want you to let him get close to you, Emmy. If he closes to springing distance, you point the gun at him, curl your index finger around the trigger, and then make loud noises until you hear only clicks. Understood?"
Emile and the Dutchman Page 16