Wynne laughed, and it echoed across the chasm around them. “Relax, Normie! Straighten your legs. Point your toes. There, perfect. Sort of!”
Norman gained speed as he straightened his legs. He didn’t want that at all, but just as vexing was Wynne’s laughter. He really hadn’t changed.
“What I want to know is,” Wynne yelled, “how the scaly bastards could sneak on board.”
“They’re not scaly,” Norman cried. “Rather bristly.”
“Oh, pardon me. They stink like hell, don’t they?”
“Only during their reproductive cycle.”
“How long can they last out of water?”
“Weeks.” They passed over the central lake, and approached the sun. Norman could smell ozone, this close. He lifted his wings into a V and dipped to a safer altitude. The wind changed direction as they crossed the midpoint, and now he could see their tiny shadows racing over the water below.
Wynne stayed with him. “How much damage have the pavos done to the station?”
“I’m missing eight people,” Norman said. “They’re locked in the cargo bay corridor, and they’re maybe wounded or dead. The bay is shot up rather badly.”
“Guns?” Wynne asked.
“Oh, yes. Gunpowder and lead shot.”
“Any other weapons?”
“Not that I know–” Norman’s voice caught in his throat. Wynne was here to kill the pavos, wasn’t he? Could Norman let that happen? “Why are you here?”
“Ah. So I’ve worn out my welcome.”
“Well–”
“You saw what happened. I’m here to collect information, formulate a strategy, and execute that strategy, so what happened to Embla never happens again. Trouble with that, Normie?”
Norman loved the pavos. How could he not, after studying them for twelve years? And yet he loved his own people too. Eight of them. Winstanley. Langer, who had only been here a month. Jurgen, who had fought like a hero. And he remembered the distress calls from the cruiser as it sped away. The screams.
Surely he must help this old bully. Norman was human, after all, not pavo. But his stomach tightened, and it wasn’t just the altitude. What colossal damage might Wynne do?
Whom should he betray?
They approached the safety mesh on the other side of the station. Wynne banked his wings, stalled, and came to a professional stop within arm’s reach of it. Norman didn’t even try. He simply crashed into it and grabbed handfuls. Wynne waited until Norman crawled to the ring and hopped through, then he followed.
They hung up their wingpacks. “How many people,” Wynne asked, “have actually seen a live pavo?”
“You mean face to face?”
“Yeah.”
“Some of us have come close, but no one before today. We’re usually very sneaky.” They took handholds down a long corridor to a supply room.
Norman pointed at an airlock door. It was rectangular, with an emergency-access handle to one side and a small window in the center. “There are three of them,” he whispered, “trapped in that airlock.”
Wynne nodded, looking determined. “Can we talk to them?”
“We can try. I’m relieved you’re not going to shoot them.”
“One thing at a time.”
Norman’s subdermal chirped, startling them both. He touched a spot on his wrist. “Yes?”
“Professor, this is Foster,” came a voice. “A whole fleet of CS warships just Schrodingered in. Their Admiral is asking for you.”
Norman looked at Wynne. “Your people?”
Wynne shook his head no.
“Okay,” Norman said. “Go ahead.”
“Jay Norman?” a woman asked.
“Yes.”
“Is there a 3V link where you are?”
“There is, yes.” Norman squeezed a second spot on his wrist, and a perfect image of a seven-foot woman appeared before them. Wynne stretched his body out, as if standing, and saluted her. Norman stared, mouth open.
“Dr. Jay Norman of the pavology research station, I am Admiral Brynna Tharsis, commanding the Council of Systems Defense Force.” She tugged on the sleeves of her blue-and-silver uniform. She had slender features and dark Martian skin, and Norman heard an Olympus Mons accent. She saluted Wynne, and he relaxed his arm.
“Commander Wynne,” she said. “I see the militia remains fleet-of-foot. Have you killed anything yet?”
“It’s still early, Admiral,” Wynne grumbled.
“Very good. I got here in time. Stand down, Commander. We won’t be needing the local militia.”
“With your permission, I’ll remain and observe.”
Tharsis gave Wynne a narrow-eyed smile that Norman didn’t understand. “So be it,” she said pleasantly. She looked around the supply room, by way of the 3V link, and noted the airlock door. “Doctor?”
“Ma’am?” Norman responded.
“Am I to understand our potentially violent pavos are behind that door?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“And you were about to attempt communication?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“You’ll do no such thing until I arrive in person.”
Wynne winced.
“There are eight of my staff,” Norman said, “in the corridor on the other side of this airlock. We need to reach them as soon as we can.”
Tharsis paused to consider. Her ebony hair flowed like filaments of a dark nebula. “Are you confident you can negotiate with them?”
Wynne patted his sidearm. “I’ve got a backup plan.”
Tharsis looked down at Wynne. “Commander...”
“These things are criminals, Admiral. They give up, or we kill them.”
“Things, Commander? The pavos are intelligent beings, and should be treated as such. We will not resort to violence simply because we seek revenge, or because the pavos are different from us. It is clearly in our best interest to understand them.”
Wynne scowled. “It’s not about revenge, it’s about deterrence. Otherwise they might kill us dead while you’re busy trying to–”
“They are aliens, Commander. You can’t know them. Doctor, proceed.”
Maybe the pavos in the airlock had a chance after all. Norman told himself that it would be all right. He approached the window in the airlock door.
Wynne stopped him. “Hang on, Normie.” Wynne swung himself to the wall and crept obliquely to the window. He peered in. “Nothing in there.”
A bullet bounced off the glass and Wynne jerked back. “Christ on a crutch!” He caught his breath. “Invisible?”
“Chameleonic,” Norman said. “And they can hide their guns inside their bodies.”
“Then that’s how they pulled it off,” Wynne said.
Norman slipped out his color patch, a circle of fabric the size of his palm, and tossed it to Wynne. “Stick that on there, please.”
Wynne slapped it on the window. “What’s this for?”
“Most of their language is sound,” Norman said. “Some of it is color. So we’ve been working on this patch. Computer, computer.”
“Yes?” said the voice of a cool stranger.
“Feed the audio from the darkside airlock to the darkside supply room.”
“Done.” Gentle whispers and squeaks.
Tharsis raised her eyebrows. “I hear them.”
“Run language ID program version nineteen,” Norman said.
“Done. The results are: the southwest-coastal dialect of the eastern continent.”
Norman nodded. The southwest-coastals were an aggressive group. “Both of you, please, no speaking.”
“Normie–”
“Not a word! Computer, run eastern-continent translator program version seventy-one.”
“Running.”
Norman approached the window again. Wynne moved to stop him, but Norman waved him off. He looked, and no more shots came. The airlock was empty.
Norman wasn’t fooled. He scanned along the lines dividing the walls, the consoles. There were
irregularities...
And he saw one. Then another! The shadows betrayed their perfect camouflage. Sections of the walls had grown lumpy and swelled out in unclear shapes. Norman said, “The day excels.”
The patch on the window turned a soothing green, and the computer emitted two clicks. In the airlock, parts of the walls stained themselves brown and red. Three pavos appeared. They looked like meter-long four-armed sea stars, thick with muscle and covered with cilia. One flushed a deep red, waved a few of its stiff lobster-antenna fingers, and whistled.
“The day doesn’t excel, because you’ve imprisoned us. Sacrifice us. We would eat the skylights if we gave hunger.”
Norman wiped his mouth, thinking fast. “We corral you to protect our children. You attacked us. We parry.” The green patch faded to brown, and the computer whistle-clicked his message. The speaking pavo’s redness faded, and the wormy finger at the end of each arm coiled and uncoiled.
“I won’t speak to a wall,” it said.
“‘You can’t change the weather,’" Norman replied, using a pavo idiom. "I don’t have a mouth. The wall speaks for me. Why did you attack us?”
“We saw the chance.”
Norman glanced at Wynne and Tharsis. Wynne frowned, but Tharsis nodded encouragement.
“You drew the blood of a cousin. Justify.”
The pavo turned red, then black. It blinked its four blue eyes and brandished its T-shaped firearm. “The skylights can’t speak of blood. Foes! You invade sky, land, and now speech. You’ll fail, because we’ll always fight you. I witnessed the explosion of the temple of the skylights. It gave glory. My friends destroyed the planet of the skylights. They gave bravery. Five-Arms prepares meals for us in Its house. If you surrender, you’ll give honor.”
Norman closed his eyes and sighed. “Computer, computer.”
“Translation program closed. Audio off.”
Wynne’s mustache twitched. “What territorial, bloodthirsty little bastards. ‘We saw the chance.’ Do all pavos think like these three clowns?”
“Well...” Norman began.
“I bet they do. If we don’t hammer them now, we’ll be fighting them for the next century. How far are they from making spacecraft?”
Norman shrugged. “It’s hard to say. They develop technology, and often they lose it again. They’ve got nuclear physics, of course; dazzling mechanics, and they’re on the cusp of suborbital rocketry.”
Tharsis lifted a slender hand. “I don’t understand. I found that exchange encouraging. May I ask about ‘the day excels’?”
“Good day,” Norman said. “Their language has no adjectives.”
“I see,” she said. “It’s clear they’re very primitive, although I wouldn’t call them bloodthirsty. They remind me of humanity, back in our days on Earth.”
“You’re feverish,” Wynne said. “Human beings never destroyed a planet.”
She turned her cool gaze on him. “What about Mu Arae Four?”
“That was an accident, not an attack!”
“My point is,” she said, “we can use their low technology to our advantage. A simple concession from us might mean everything to them. I think we can settle this issue easily.”
“A brain tumor! If you reward them for what they’ve done, they’ll never stop.”
“I would make reparations for our obvious transgressions, Commander. They call us skylights. I’m sure the pavos can see anything in low orbit. Can you imagine what a psychological invasion that represents? And the air cleansing tower I’ve heard about, a temple? We are guilty of religious blasphemy, gentlemen.”
Wynne’s eyes and mouth opened wide. “Only in their psychotic one-planet worldview! That tower was there to save them.”
“That’s your perspective,” she said. “Not theirs. Doctor, you are the expert. How would their people respond to a token of goodwill?”
“Yeah, Normie, just how warlike are they?”
Norman stopped to think. He held the fate of a global civilization in his hands. How dangerous could a token of goodwill be? No, no, he was a scientist. He had to tell the truth.
The truth was that Embla was a tomb.
“They respect force,” he said. “I think they would see a concession on our part... as weakness.”
Tharsis blinked. “But the pavo said surrender was honorable.”
Norman folded his arms and made himself speak. “That doesn’t fit their culture. It was a ruse.”
Wynne grunted. “Okay. I’ll get my command staff to construct a scenario on the eastern continent–”
“No you won’t, Commander,” said Tharsis. “We are a thousand years ahead of them and spread across twenty worlds. We can afford to appear weak. Doctor, can you offer these three a trade? Passage back to Avernus in exchange for access to survivors in the cargo bay?”
“What?” cried Wynne.
“I can offer,” Norman said, doubtful.
“Second, Doctor, bring the engines of this station on line. Move it out to a geostationary point over the equatorial ocean. That should settle the skylight issue. And get me in touch with your life support people. We’ll be transferring agricultural staples to the surface. What exactly do pavos eat?”
#
Norman didn’t think it would work. The pavos in the airlock should have been as willing to die as the ones on the cruiser. But they agreed.
Admiral Tharsis ordered armored and jetpacked CS troops to enter the darkside cargo reservoir, park a computer-piloted shuttle there, and back off. The pavos scurried out of the airlock and down the corridor, their bodies melting from shade to shade as they passed through light and shadow. The soldiers froze, doubting their eyes, as three shapeless ghosts floated across the reservoir to the shuttle. Once the shuttle door closed, troops rocketed down the corridor where the pavos had emerged, looking for survivors.
There were none. They had all been killed in the first assault. Now Norman understood.
Brynna Tharsis told Norman there must have been an error made by the translator, and she allowed the shuttle’s autopilot to begin the trip to Avernus.
I hope, I hope, Jay Norman thought. I hope this is the right thing to do. Please let there be no more death.
Thank goodness I’m here, Brynna Tharsis thought. Thank goodness cooler heads have prevailed. I may have just prevented a war.
I am commanded by idiots, Brutus Wynne thought. We’re appeasing the enemy, and we’ll pay for it in blood. And I stood by and let it happen.
#
As the shuttle receded, the glare from its drive flame obscured all but the tips of its airfoils. Norman watched through an enormous window as he floated alone in the station’s sports deck. Normally, scientists on down time crowded this place, playing tennis or skyball in the light of the pavo homeworld. It had been empty since the attack on Embla.
The shuttle’s drive flame shrank to a star-point over the gray horizon of Avernus. Then it winked out.
Norman frowned. The shuttle’s engines should have run longer than that. A violet glow drew his attention across the star-spattered sky. Light bloomed from the torch funnels of Wynne’s militia ship. It pulled away, its hull dotted with X-ray lasers and targeting telescopes. Where was Wynne going?
“Hey, Professor, this is Foster. Both Admiral Tharsis and Commander Wynne are calling. Can you see them on 3V?”
Oh, no. He touched his wrist, and a facsimile of Tharsis and Wynne appeared on either side of him. The 3V transmitted faint sounds of talk and activity from their respective starship control rooms.
Tharsis tugged on the sleeves of her uniform. “Greetings, Doctor. We’ve lost the telemetry signal from the shuttle’s autopilot.”
“Because the pavos shot the hell out of it,” Wynne said.
Norman swallowed. “Are they going to hit the surface?”
“We’re not that lucky,” Wynne said. “They’ll pass perigee on the far side of Avernus in twenty minutes, then they’ll rise back to the station. What do pavos know about
orbital mechanics?”
“A lot,” Norman said.
“Computers?”
“Nothing.”
“I’m thinking they’re learning now. If they figure out the manual controls, we’re all targets.”
“Commander,” Tharsis said. “You’re projecting again. You can’t know the intentions of alien intelligence. That is the Doctor’s job.” She turned to Norman and waited.
“I’d say...” he began. “We’re in danger.”
Wynne slapped his forehead. “Thanks, Normie. You always were the smart one.” Wynne turned away and spoke to an invisible crewmember. He faced Norman and said, “We’re in position to see the shuttle now. We’re detecting spurts from their torch. They’re tweaking their orbit.”
“Doctor,” said Tharsis. “I’m going to beam a com signal to the shuttle. Can you run your translator program and try to reach them?”
Four hundred scientists and their families lived on the station. If the shuttle struck it with enough speed, it could punch clean through. “Of course,” Norman said. “I’ll try.”
Norman hailed the pavos, but they didn’t answer. With no color patch, he was limited to indicative mood. He switched inflections. Then he ran a subroutine for archaic dialect, hoping to sound educated. Nothing. Minutes passed. The shuttle appeared on the other side of Avernus as a flickering spark. Wynne’s starship appeared behind it.
“We’ve got their course,” Wynne said. “They’ll strike the station in three minutes. I’m taking a shot.”
“Commander!” said Tharsis. “Don’t you dare!”
Wynne’s image vanished, leaving Norman alone on the cavernous sports deck with Tharsis. Her professional concern slipped away and for an instant Norman saw fury in her eyes.
The shuttle’s drive flame brightened as it closed on the station. Then it sputtered to nothing. No light came from the shuttle except an orange glow. White mist billowed from it and surrounded it in a swelling cloud. Wynne had pierced the water tank. As Norman watched, light from the sun, Delta Pavonis, heated and spread the cloud, and pushed it away in a thousand-kilometer comet’s tail.
Wynne’s battleship disappeared into the comet’s coma, and Wynne’s image returned to Norman’s side.
“Oh, that felt good, Beanpole. Righteous!”
Turing's Revenge and Other Stories Page 6