Vahon, one of Tashto’s relatives from Garan, appeared on the comscreen in his room. “Greetings, Tashto,” Vahon said. “There is something that has been troubling me that I wish to discuss. Would you care to listen?”
Vahon had not been chosen to accompany the delegation as a spy. He was merely a bureaucrat, performing the tasks carefully selected for him by the Garanian Ministry of Engineering, with only a thin veneer of independence from the Ministry’s standard operating procedure. Tashto thought of Vahon as a dimwitted but genial kinsman, a man only suited to playing a part, which had little capacity for subtlety and guile. But the man could serve as a test subject, an example of how Garanians with less mental discipline and training would respond to the sophistry and emotional appeals of a Forlani. “Yes. Please tell me what’s on your mind,” said Tashto.
“I once believed the documents that we were given on the Forlani wholeheartedly. I thought them to be a weak, decadent race, rootless primitives with no principles and no culture. But lately I have been studying their technical advancement and cannot reconcile their rise with the old information. I was wondering if you had noted anything useful at the conference that may give me some enlightenment.”
Typical of Vahon to pay such little attention to the protocols on interstellar communication! However, in his bluntness, Vahon had not really ventured into anything like a security leak. Tashto could continue the conversation in a way that avoided any such breach. “I have been given evidence of such contradiction myself lately in the conduct of a young member of their delegation. Her words reflected devotion, respect, and honor. I feel that we have not tried sufficiently to understand the culture of the Forlani; perhaps this conference will grant us an opportunity to study and interact with them.”
“The Overseer’s guidelines caution us not to be awed by them easily. They are said, Tashto, to be skilled liars, masters of seduction and deceit, but still cowards at heart. They worship the strength of the Song Pai and feign to possess it themselves while having none. Their existence is supposed to be a misery of envy, for they are destined to spend it drifting between the powers of Earth and Song Pa. I was at first inclined to pay no heed to what happens in this conference, for they are destined to be mere dust in the vastness of space. Should I waste my brief time trying to understand them, if their continued existence is a dark mystery that serves only to drive the minds of Garanians mad?”
“Although your guidelines have merit, kinsman Vahon, I’m not sure I agree with them. The speech that I heard was not the speech of a coward. I feel there may be dimensions to the Forlani civilization that we have not yet comprehended. If I were you, I would do what research I can in order to be prepared for possible revisions in the future.”
“I may come to admire them if they are as you say, kinsman.”
“Do what you wish. But make an effort to not become too…sentimental about the Forlani. They may only disappoint you.”
“Duly noted. I will give your regards to the clan,” Vahon said, and turned off the link.
Tashto felt a very slight sense of disappointment in Vahon as his image faded from the screen. Although he had suspected Vahon had a weak mind, his words had proven that Vahon displayed a dearth of guile in the Garanian bureaucracy that slipped below his lowest expectations. But was he any better? To begin sympathizing with the loathsome Forlani after a single speech! Tashto would have to monitor his own delegation as closely as the Forlani, if fellow spies could be as easily misled by prejudice as Vahon had been. At least his kinsman had come to question his own certainties and to consult confidentially with his wiser relative. Tashto suspected that few of his spies would be willing to do the same. He had not realized how weak the undisciplined Garanian mind could be, and wondered whether it was shortsighted of his government to eliminate the Virtues of the Heroic Age from the knowledge of his people. Could the Virtues have provided a moral anchor for individuals as weak as Vahon? Perhaps if I succeed in this mission, the Ministry will allow me to see the documents where the Virtues are recorded, he thought. Then it would only be a matter of deciding what he would do with the knowledge after he had learned of the Virtues…
The next couple of days before the grand opening brought few developments. Each delegation was making hasty, last-minute preparations and adjustments. The pursuit of the Powl data thief yielded nothing new. Ayan’we’s sisters in the security cluster took turns trailing it everywhere it went and trying to monitor all possible communications. So far, zilch. Ayan’we began to be more and more convinced that those little tick things had arcane ways to communicate that other races didn’t know about. She spent a long time wandering the corridors of Varess, trying to get to know its layout completely. She often caught sight of that same foursome of meddlesome Phiddians, who seemed to be trolling about not only for her, but for all the other Forlani they could contrive to pass paths with. They had even approached Isshel once, but he had drawn a wicked-looking pointed thing from his belt, making them scurry away. He had smiled and then begun to clean his fingernails with it. Ayan’we had been pleased to meet Kee’ad the Newt of Tionar. She remembered to address him formally by the place name of his fiefdom. He proved to be a most gracious individual, showing a thorough familiarity with the songs about Entara and Klein that were sung in all the mahämes and in all the Forlani pleasure houses across the sector. His attempts to sing a few bars were pretty ludicrous, resembling as they did some beast croaking in a swamp, but Ayan’we had praised his pronunciation enough to make him grin broadly. He informed Ayan’we that his compatriot known as Fatty, who had helped Klein on Song Pa on one particular occasion, was still alive and well and now ran a large underwater construction group active on Earth in post-plague work.
Ayan’we tried to be alert for potential dangers as she walked around the station, but she noticed she was becoming bored. Aside from dodging the Gropers Four, it was mostly the same thing hour after hour. Phiddians hurried around when there was any hint of a party, but otherwise left the daily routine to their servants, the Powls and the Kholods. While the Powls were always whooshing by with some tool or meter to make a minor engineering adjustment, the dumpy-looking Kholods got the dirty work. Like the Powls, they were a sub-spatial culture with no ships of their own, but they signed on for work on vessels or stations where something needed to be toted, delivered, or cleaned up. They did a lot of cleaning up after the Song Pai, who made defecation a social sport and left a terrible mess in their quarters. Kholods plodded down the corridors two, three or four at a time, carrying boxes, machine components, files, or large dishes from the kitchen for some Phiddian soiree. They were somewhere between amphibians and reptiles, coming from a planet that had never undergone an extinction that wiped out such intermediate forms on planets like Earth. Ayan’we had read that even though Kholods were the most intelligent species on their world (which wasn’t saying much!), they were not specifically species-dominant and still had to deal with other planet-dwellers more formidable than themselves. They looked capable of speech, but never seemed to say anything to each other or anyone else. Maybe their vocal organs had atrophied. The only thing that bothered Ayan’we was that they literally were all physical duplicates of each other. Without any clothes or insignias, they could be distinguished only by what they were carrying. When they were dead-heading it back from some job with nothing in either of their pairs of arms, they were just so many iterations of the same model. Ayan’we wished they could at least have color tags to make it easier to tell individuals apart for security purposes. She actually suggested this to several Phiddian officers, who had just sneered and repeated, “How bizarre! No one cares about Kholods.”
Finally a communication came from Amanda on Earth. Ayan’we held a tremendous curiosity about Klein’s biological daughter and felt a special bond with her, ever since they met on Domremy for Klein’s funeral ceremony. This communication was not a live comlink, nor even a stored A/V display, but an old-fashioned paper letter redacted in Standard English.
Ayan’we could speak English rather fluently, but she was so non-plussed by having to decipher script that after the first sentence, she scanned it into her computer and let the voice mode translator read it aloud to her.
New Bremen Q-355B
September 14, ZD 3179
Dear Ayan’we,
Sorry to resort to this ancient method, but it was actually the fastest way to get a message off-planet, since comlinks are still reserved for official business in this sector. As you can see, we’ve moved from Greenland to the continent of Europe to work in the Weser Mixed District. Warm embraces to you and to all the sisters I met on Domremy. Also please give my greeting to your mother. Sven says to send his best, too. We have moved into a nice house that was abandoned and undisturbed. Being health officer in a mixed district means that I have to look over all sorts of humans; immune, unexposed, and carriers. There are still a few odd symptomatic survivors out beyond the perimeters, but they have their own clinic about 70 kliks south of here. Sven is almost alone in the forestry detail. A lot of the people are deeply involved with restoring a power grid. You’d never guess that Entara’s songs, edited for human ears, are popular here in the colony. The robotic clearing crews are still busy in the interior. It will be years before they’ve cleared remains up to the Alps. We hardly ever see them. There are some Newt crews working on the littoral restoration. They’re only here for a couple of weeks at a time, rotating up from their base in their Nile Delta Allotment. Many of the human natives have trouble coming to grips with the idea that this is going to be a more-than-one-species planet from now on, but for space brats like me, it’s no big deal. We need all the help we can get. I’ve seen some Blynthian lighters flying over to make supply drops to isolated groups in the interior. As for us, we’re just about self-sufficient now, except for some staple shipments that come into the temporary spaceport in Kent. There’s so much energy! I like it here. No walls. No rules, almost. Things to explore everywhere. So much to be done. I feel like I’ve just begun to grow up. Sven laughs at me and calls me a newbie, but I’m glad I don’t have a lot of pre-set ideas and expectations about this place. The only thing I miss is my mother, who is off some place in Ontario by now and talks about heading down to Mexico soon. They say conditions are still pretty rugged in most of eastern North America, but nothing seems too gruesome for her. Time to scrape together something to eat, so I’ll say goodbye for now. Let me know what you’re up to as soon as you can. Love, Amanda
PS: some aerial folks claim they have spotted a statue over by Berlin that might be of Klein! If it’s true, I’ll try to get you an image.
The letter from Amanda brought soothing refreshment to Ayan’we’s spirits. She tried to remember each phrase and then played the audio translation back a couple of times until she had committed it to memory. Of course, she could just punch it up any time she wanted from the computer. The voice print was just a translation, not Amanda’s real voice. But by memorizing it, Ayan’we could imagine the sentences just as her friend might pronounce them. That was worth the extra trouble. Which was no trouble, really. In fact, one of the most purposeful things in her life. One that was frank and fresh and clean of deception. So unlike the murky affairs of the conference and the dark possibilities of war that lurked around the corners of Varess.
2
F inally the day had arrived for the opening of the Interzonal Peace Conference. Ayan’we was one of the five individuals chosen to accompany Entara to the delegation seating area. When they arrived at the foyer to the meeting hall, they were surprised to see there was little in the way of formal organization, just a couple of Phiddian ushers motioning everyone in through the doors. It was a multi-colored spectacle, since each delegation had a uniform representing their civilization. The Forlani had had to give up their traditional diplomatic black capes because a minor delegation had chosen that first. Other colors would have caused internal problems, since each matriline had its own polychromatic design and it would be unfair to privilege one over the others. So Isshel, in a moment of inspiration amid observations of alien sexual psychology, had come up with come up with an elegant compromise of a black field with large white dots. The human delegation was clad in a red, white, and blue pattern, the Kael in rainbow body tights, the Coriolans in a fringed, silver sash, and so forth. The delegations settled into their places until only the Blynthians and the Phiddians were missing. The latter had, typically, reserved the right of final entry for themselves to try to gain the maximum attention. Nevertheless, all eyes were darting to the Blynthian area. The screens and construction gear had been removed and the floor-to-ceiling tubes were filled with a roily, cloudy substance. Then, suddenly, shapes appeared. Electric blue, four-meter-long segmented worms with many appendages. Even Ayan’we’s Forlani companions, whom she had coached from her own off-world experiences, could not help giving a gasp.
Everyone might have stared longer, had not a blare of brass instruments announced the entrance of the Phiddians. They came prancing in, wearing a circle of loose pink streamers that covered as little as possible of their bodies. Their supreme leader, who had come just for the éclat of the grand opening, made a pompous welcome speech that was generally devoted to the importance of Phiddia in the interplanetary scheme of things and managed to avoid any sensible topics. After this foolish person finished and went striding out of the hall with much waving of arms and musical accompaniment, there was an embarrassing silence as the delegates wondered how they were going to get the conference off to a decent beginning.
Fortunately the wise old delegate of the Newts, Kee’ad, signaled with his light and took the floor. He gave an impromptu summary of the reasons they were all gathered there. Succinctly, he outlined the Song Pai demands for new territory on aquatic worlds within the Blynthian sphere of influence, as well as the Blynthians’ time-honored exclusion of almost all alien individuals from that area. Without language that would justify a clattering of weapons by either party, he established that each was capable of releasing destruction on such a scale that it could not be confined to deep space encounters or even to fighting within a few specific systems. Thus, all interzonal races had something to lose if hostilities were allowed to break out. Kee’ad set a fine opening tone, citing several previous successful conferences and making just enough reference to the atrocious outcomes of various wars to underline the alternative without casting blame on any of the attendees. He concluded with an eloquent statement of his own race’s commitment to peace and its willingness to contribute to negotiations to the point of sacrifice, if necessary.
Chester Macdougal, chief human delegate, wasted no time in pressing his button to speak next and offered a prepared set of comments that repeated the word “peace” over and over again, without giving any indication of how it might be possible to achieve it. Ayan’we would have been grossly disappointed with this, had her mother not already told her how the vast majority of human leaders tended to favor a “feel-good” discourse over any illustrative or probing type of speech.
When Entara’s own turn came, she did not at all hide the Forlani loyalty to the Song Pai or the depth of their alliance. At the same time, she avoided assuming a polemical stance, speaking a good deal of her world’s history and about the types of compromises that had been essential to maintain its balance between the sexes and the matrilines. She succeeded in capturing the interest of the diverse audience, who knew little of the Forlani past or its ancient Disaster Period. Their racial struggle for survival against the threat of anarchy and environmental collapse was framed in a way to remind each delegation of its own trials and challenges. She finished with a cogent picture of Forlan’s recent progress and its potential for the future – a most optimistic ending note.
Ten more delegations went on to follow her example and to amplify the advantages of reaching a long-term agreement on interzonal political and military matters. The long-distance com-link participants such as the Weh having waived any opening statements, there only remained the tw
o major antagonists, the Song Pai and the Blynthians. The Song Pai stared down their worm-like opponents for a significant moment and then boldly demanded to speak. It was such a belligerent approach that, if it came from any species but the Song Pai, the conference members would doubtlessly have been convinced that any alternative to war was already futile and they would have adjourned then and there.
“We want to make clear that we are committed as of now to war. We will back down for no one. As far as we are concerned, the sole purpose of this meeting is to communicate that to all parties and to allow our allies, the Rokol and the Forlani, to make up their minds and state their intentions. We insist that these will in no way affect our own determination. Blynthians, be aware that we intend to take your water planets or die trying.”
The Song Pai then proceeded to recite from memory, taking turns within the delegation, their complete articles of war, which lasted nearly four hours. During this time they drew themselves up to an attack position, with their hooked tentacles raised to strike, and held that pose unflinchingly for the entire time, their color remaining the blotched blue of military attention. At the end of the presentation, they turned most of their multiple eyes toward the Blynthians, since at least one eye was always pointing backward in case of a possible ambush. They seemed to expect a similar bellicose diatribe from their adversaries.
The Blynthians did not take the bait. A single worm creature buzzed a quick reply that mechanically translated as, “Most interesting.”
Lest the Song Pai take occasion to feel insulted by this terse remark, the Coriolans quickly lit their intervention light and stated, “We are not used to assimilating such weighty matters on the spot. We compliment the Song Pai on their frank and complete statement and the Blynthians on their unbelievably quick reaction, but we lesser creatures need more time to understand all that has been said and to weigh the matter in our consciences. We think we speak for many other delegations as we suggest that in view of the late hour and the necessity for discussion before proceeding further, we call the session to a close today and agree to resume deliberations in the next cycle.”
Spy Station Page 4