by Matt
"I do not complain. Nor do they," said Shane, extending his hand toward the screen. "I only report what is. The human spirit has awakened and realized it will be no tame beast for any other people. You and yours must take the consequences of that awakening."
"You continue to speak as if you, not we, have the strength," said Lyt Ahn. "What can your hundreds down there, or your thousands, or even your billions counted on all the surface of this globe, do against us?"
"It is not what we can do, it is what we will do," said Shane. "We will drive you off, or die."
"You mean you will force us to kill you? All of you?"
"If you will not be driven off, there is nothing else." Now it was Shane that looked up at him for a long moment of silence. "I tell you, even if we had the vessels in which to flee from you, that this world here is our home, and here we will drive you out or die."
The air in the room was suddenly so charged with emotion that it was as if the two of them were enclosed in a solid medium. Lyt Ahn did not move and no expression of his face or gaze changed; but the difference radiated from him to Shane.
"You dare say this!" said Lyt Ahn.
"I neither dare nor do not dare," said Shane. "What can you do to prevent my saying what I wish? If you find what I say uncomfortable, you can only kill this body before you and then wonder, for the rest of your life, what other truth you might have heard if you had not acted too quickly."
"Hear this from me then," said Lyt Ahn. "Without cattle to work it, this world is of no use to real people such as ourselves. If what you say was true, and I do not believe that to be so, perhaps we might leave your unwell race to die of its own sickness in its own time; or perhaps before we leave, we might put you out of your pain—all of you."
"You will do what you will do," said Shane. "No one doubts that the Aalaag could destroy all life in this world. But is this the way of the Aalaag, to destroy something without sufficient reason? And is it sufficient reason that those who inhabit this world are of no use to you?"
He paused. Lyt Ahn looked back at him and said nothing.
"Moreover," went on Shane, "there is no reason to tell me this, since I am not of flesh and blood and therefore will be unaffected by what you do. If you destroy all humans, I will remain with you. If you do not, as long as there is a human alive I will be in him or her—man, woman or child. But also, is this the mind of the Aalaag that speaks to me, through you? A mind that out of sheer affront, because another people cannot be what they are not, chooses to destroy them? Is this the Aalaag mind that thinks killing a people will negate the words their spirit has said? The questions their spirit has raised? Will the fact that humans choose to stand and die change the fact that the Aalaag ran and survived?"
The silence was long. And it was a silence in which Shane's words might as well have been painted in the air between him and Lyt Ahn; painted there, never to be erased.
But the moment came finally when Lyt Ahn, who had gone as hard and immobile as a mountain, relaxed. Only a human that knew the First Captain as well as Shane could have read the tiny changes in physical appearance signaling that relaxation—but Shane did read them; and for the first time since he had begun talking, a small hope crept into his mind.
"We ran, only so that we could return and win," said Lyt Ahn; but he said the words almost as if he had repeated and repeated them countless times, until the original emotion and meaning was all but lost. "Do you know why I have listened to you this long, Shane-beast? For in spite of all you say, it is as a beast called Shane that I think of you."
"It does not matter why, only that you listened," said Shane.
Lyt Ahn made a gesture with one large hand as if brushing aside some floating mote of dust in the air before him.
"I have sat for the last eight hours," he said, "listening to talk very like yours. Indeed, one group of speakers has said something very like what you have just said. I was in my Council of Captains, with the Commanders of the various Districts of this planet; and they were disturbed. As the First Captain, the one who must decide eventually, I only sat and listened; although had I not been First Captain, I would have sided with those who considered this Expedition to have failed. In other words, since I was chosen First Captain and since I give the orders, I am saying that I have failed, in leading the Expedition here."
He glanced for a moment, almost musingly, out at the crowd, then back to Shane.
"We studied you for nearly a hundred of your years before coming here," he said. "The physical world itself seemed good. Your breed seemed promising cattle. I had few doubts when I ordered the Expedition of which I had been chosen leader to settle here."
"I have told you," said Shane, "that on first contact even the human people did not understand what would come of it, if they and the Aalaag tried to coexist."
"There were two main bodies of thought expressed at that Council just past," Lyt Ahn went on, as if Shane had not spoken. "There were those who felt that this world and its beasts had shown too small a return for our efforts and that we should look elsewhere. Then there was the other opinion—led by the sir Laa Ehon, who now will attend only one more Council, since your report that he wishes an unacceptable change—a change that could lead to an unwell deviation from our eternal purpose to retake our home worlds. In thinking so, he, himself, proves that he is unwell. But the opinion he led at the Council was that we should set up a much stricter control of all cattle and look to a change in our leadership here— which would inevitably mean that if the other Captains felt likewise, I would offer my resignation from the post of First Captain, which post he might otherwise have been one to fill."
The dark Aalaag eyes focused on Shane.
"What you say echoes much of what was said by those who thought this Expedition should look elsewhere for a world and cattle. Though none there spoke with the words you have spoken."
He paused.
"For the first time—" Lyt Ahn's deep voice seemed to echo against the silence in the room. Seemingly absentmind-edly his right hand moved slightly in the air; and a depressed but now noticeable volume of sound came from the screen, a murmur of the voices and movements of the crowd there. "Yes, for the first time, it occurs to me that this world of yours might also be a world of unwellness; a planet that it might not be good for Aalaag to inhabit."
He looked back at the screen.
"You may go," he said.
"I am not Shane-beast and I do not go," said Shane.
Lyt Ahn looked back at him.
"Must I destroy you here and now?" he asked.
"Not unless you think it wisest to," said Shane. "I have pointed out that destroying me would leave you in the future wondering what else you might have learned."
"I have learned nothing so far since you announced yourself to be other than Shane-beast," said Lyt Ahn, "except that you are subject to delusions and unwell."
"That is incorrect," said Shane. "You have learned to take into your decisions the factor that the people of this world might, after all, be untamable."
Lyt Ahn considered him.
"You speak with great certainty," he said. "I spoke of delusions and un wellness."
"But, being Aalaag, you must consider the possibility that you are wrong, and that what I tell you is true."
The silence was longer, this time.
"How did you come to know so much about the Aalaag?" Lyt Ahn said, finally.
"If I tell you, it will offend you," said Shane.
"Tell me."
"Because, in too many ways we are similar, we humans and you Aalaag. I think, even if we were not untamable, our similarities are so close as to bring our differences eventually into conflict; and both our peoples would come eventually to a moment like this one, no matter what any of our peoples did in their effort to live usefully together."
"You were right," said Lyt Ahn. "You are offensive."
"You asked to be told."
"Yes."
Once more Lyt Ahn looked at the sc
reen and then back at Shane.
"You are ready to die if necessary, Shane-beast?" he said, then checked himself, something Shane had never seen an Aalaag do before. "No, I will try to call you by that unpronounceable name of Pilgrim, as you wish, because you show the courage that—well or unwell—is needed for a willingness to die a necessary death."
It seemed to Shane as if he looked into a great, cold emptiness; but to his own surprise, he was still not afraid. Long since he had told himself that if ever an Aalaag caught him being guilty of an offense that by their laws would condemn him to death, he would physically attack the Aalaag who caught him, in hopes of a quick, rather than a slow, death. He realized now that the quick death he had envisioned would have come, if it came at all, not because of a reflex of an attacked individual, as a human might react; but because of Aalaag approval of a creature that had the will to attack even though it knew it could not possibly win.
Nonetheless, he found a real satisfaction now in the thought that when he went out, it would be attacking the First Captain with his empty hands. He could do that much that was tangible.
"So I will do what I must, as my duty as First Captain requires," said Lyt Ahn.
He looked at Shane; and Shane believed he read tiny signals of a genuine sadness in the other.
"Why should I pay attention to anything you say?" Lyt Ahn went on quietly. "You are a beast and unwell. This I know. Your talk about your fellow beasts being ready to choose death to our own kindly service—and it has been kindly, Pilgrim... I cannot make that unmanageable sound ... it has been kindly, Shane-beast."
"I know that," said Shane, "as it is the intent of an adult to be kindly when he thinks to protect the small feet of a child by putting them into his own oversize boots. Kindly, but in error."
"Nonetheless, your words that your fellow beasts choose death to service are only that—words, and from you alone. I am not convinced that this is so. It has not been so in the past."
"In the past the Pilgrim was splintered among billions of people. Now the Pilgrim is one, here with you and in all humans who know of you."
"I do not believe you," said Lyt Ahn. "It is unwellness speaking in you; or magic, and magic is a delusion. It does not exist."
"You are in error. It is neither unwellness nor a delusion of magic," said Shane. "What I tell you is simply the truth."
"Why then have you and your kind never produced proof of it?"
Shane drew a deep breath.
"Now it is you who are right," he said. "I have been hesitating—because the creature before you is Shane-beast, and Shane-beast does not wish to happen what must happen to prove what I say. But you are right and only proof will reach you."
They had been saying all this while facing each other, with the screen beside them. Now Shane turned to look into it and down into the square—not only at the people in their pilgrim robes, but those in the three lines of uniformed Guards.
Lyt Ahn turned also, so that they looked together into the screen.
Shane drew another deep and bitter breath.
"Order your Guards to clear the square," he said with effort, on the exhalation.
There was neither sound nor movement from Lyt Ahn. Shane looked up, and saw the First Captain looking down at him.
"And why should I give such an order?" said Lyt Ahn. "I have told you that those down there must be destroyed, but they need not be destroyed just yet; and if I order the Guard to send them away and they do not go, then the Guard must destroy them. Nothing else can happen."
"You should give the order to learn the truth," said Shane.
Lyt Ahn looked into the screen.
"Colonel-beast," he said.
The face and shoulders of a lean-featured man in his mid-forties, with a tight, pinched look on that face, all but filled the space of the screen. To either side of him, the backs of armed Interior Guards and parts of the shapes of those in pilgrim garb beyond could be seen. The Guards Colonel would be talking, Shane knew, to a three-dimensional image of Lyt Ahn; and it was probable that only once or twice before, if at all, would he have gotten an order directly from the First Captain, instead of having it passed down to him through the chain of command.
"Yes, immaculate sir?" replied the Colonel.
"Clear these cattle from the square before my House," said Lyt Ahn. The Colonel stared at him, pale-faced. After a second Lyt Ahn added, "You may use your own native customs in the executing of that order."
"Yes," said the Colonel hoarsely, "immaculate sir."
He turned away and the view of the screen pulled back to show not only the crowd and the three lines of armed Guards, but the Colonel in conversation with a small handful of other Guard officers, all of them standing on the slight elevation that was the top step of the brief stairs to the still hidden main entrance to the building.
After a second, one of these other officers stepped away from the group and faced the square. He spoke to the crowd over the heads of the three lines of Guards; and his voice was amplified, no doubt by some alien device, though Shane saw nothing in his hands or on his person, so that his words echoed off the walls of the buildings surrounding the square.
"You are ordered to disperse!" his voice roared. "All those not accredited to be here, leave the square. I repeat. Clear the square! All of you. Clear the square!"
The crowd rippled like the surface of a sea when the first puff of an oncoming wind strikes it. A low mutter swelled up from it. It did not begin to disperse.
"This is a second and final warning!" The voice of the officer speaking, for all its loudness, seemed to Shane's ear to crack slightly on the last two words. "Clear the square at once!"
The mutter rose to a volume that approached the amplified voice of the officer.
"Leave! Leave now!" cried the officer over it. "We don't want to have to fire on you, but if you don't start clearing the square immediately, we will be forced to. There is no exception to this order. Clear the square!"
The crowd roared and rippled again, this time forward.
"Ready weapons!" cried another voice, also amplified, but with the growing noise from the crowd, possibly only barely heard by the most distant of the armed Guards themselves.
For the first time there was movement among the Guards. Some unslung their weapons and lifted them into firing position; others only made part of the motion. They looked at each other.
"Observe their faces, First Captain," said Shane to Lyt Ahn. "Look at the faces of the Guards armed with weapons."
The point of view of the scene shown in the screen changed. Suddenly they were looking from a point above the heads of the front line of the crowd at the three ranks of black-uniformed, weaponed men.
Their faces showed every range of expression from the grim to the frankly fearful; but most simply looked pale and uncertain. None of them, thought Shane, had in all probability ever been in anything resembling a war. Nearly all had most certainly never fired the killing devices they held at anything other than a paper target.
"Why did you ask me to look at these?" asked Lyt Ahn. "I see nothing different about them. There are no marks upon them, nor any other change visible."
"The fault is mine," said Shane, angry with himself. "I had forgotten something. You are aware that humans claim to read—" he paused. There was no word in Aalaag for "expression." "—feelings in the shapes and movements of each other's faces."
"I have heard that," said Lyt Ahn. "Did you expect me to see such in these Guard-beasts?"
"Yes," said Shane. "I had forgotten that even an Aalaag as perceptive as yourself—as Shane-beast has found you perceptive—might not perceive such things in the faces of what you call cattle."
The scene returned to a view of the square from above and behind the uniformed men.
"READY TO FIRE!" cried a human voice, its volume of amplification now raised again until it dominated even the ultimate roar of the crowd.
Shane made himself stand still and watch. Lyt Ahn would watch;
and no Aalaag would understand the emotion that would cause a human to turn away. Shane stood, held in the grip of his own will. Lyt Ahn gazed curiously at the screen.
"FIRE!"
The scene became a heaving, disorganized mass of bodies as the crowd rolled forward. Of those Guardsmen who had lifted their weapons into anything like firing position, perhaps three out of ten actually pressed the triggers of their weapons, and of those weapons fired more than half sent their light, poisonous missiles either over the heads of the crowd or into the pavement at their feet—where, unfortunately, they splintered and their broken parts did their killing mission after all. But this was only in the first few seconds. Those in the front of the crowd fell as they advanced, but those behind clambered over the fallen bodies and kept coming until they reached and swept over the three lines of Guardsmen, and the black uniforms vanished under a pressing mass of colored robes and flailing staves.