“Of what would occur?”
“That, and the identity of the Ktor.”
“Their stratagems and the flow of events we foresaw. Their identity was uncertain at best. We foresaw that the Ktor would attempt to destroy the Accord unless they could secure your cooperation. With you as a satrapy, the Accord could have been a legitimating structure for their ambitions. However, when you would not ally with them, they hoped you would either prove weak enough to be conquered, or savage enough to undertake atrocities that would make you pariahs. Like them. You have done neither, and they are not revealed. For the Ktor, the outcome is a stalemate.”
“So nothing has really changed.”
“Sometimes, when your adversary is trying to precipitate dramatic change, stability is the best victory. Besides, their stalemate is your gain. Your decision to desist from attacking the Arat Kur Homenest shall garner the humans of Earth the high opinion of the Dornaani and, I suspect, the Slaasriithi. Although provoked and holding apocalypse in your hand, you refused to unleash it. You are a promising species, after all. But history shows that you can also be mercurial at times, and wayward when it comes to following any single course for very long. Perhaps, this time, you will contemplate other species whose natural inclination is to quietly flourish in times of peace, rather than spectacularly soar in times of crisis. We shall see.”
“Well, you must have suspected, or at least hoped, we’d be capable of restraining ourselves,” observed Caine. “Otherwise, you wouldn’t have invested so much effort and faith in Nolan. You watched him, helped his heart resist the damage he had received. Which means you knew how he received the damage. Which means you knew about the Doomsday Rock. Which means you knew the Ktor were behind it. Which means you knew the Ktor had a particular interest in and fear of Earth. Which means the identity of the Ktor really wasn’t so uncertain, that they were likely to be huma—”
“Be still, Caine Riordan.” Alnduul looked about furtively and in that second, appeared to be anything but a super-being. “The moment of revelations about the Ktor is past. Leave it so, and learn not to speak of it. One is never so alone as one thinks. And, yes, we knew of the damage to Nolan’s heart, and what had caused it. And so we surmised what he must have seen, to become so fixed and certain in his purpose to lead your people to the stars. But those of us Custodians who had further suspicions had no proof—and still have none we can share—as to the intents and actual identity of the Ktor.”
Caine gaped. “But today, just minutes ago, you saw—”
Alnduul’s eyes closed. “Understand, Caine Riordan, amongst my people, particularly amongst my elders, I am considered what you would call a hothead: impetuous, prone to unwarranted conclusions, willing to act as much upon instinct as evidence. What was revealed here today cannot even become official information within the ranks of the Custodians, let alone the Dornaani Collective.”
“But—why not?”
“Because this knowledge, and indeed, the entire outcome of your war, is the fruit of a much-poisoned tree. Consider the procedural violations we committed in handling this conflict. We did not announce ourselves to the Arat Kur as soon as we landed upon your world. We provided your people—long before the war commenced—with the device in your arm, foreseeing this probable course of events. We enabled you to carry out a sneak counterattack upon the Arat Kur by using deep-space shifts. And we were willing to stand aside—or so it seemed—as you hovered above the Arat Kur Homenest, with the fate of their entire race in your hand.” Alnduul closed his eyes wearily. “At best, what was revealed here today about the Ktor will be whispered in the ears of those few volunteers who are willing to be more ‘proactive’ in their Custodianship. But it cannot be entered into the records, nor openly acknowledged.”
Caine felt nauseated. “Meaning that the Ktor are right in one regard. The Accord is founded, and runs, on lies.”
Alnduul closed his eyes. “If that is true, then you may say the same of being a parent. It is founded on the telling of lies.”
Again the paternalistic wisdom crap. “That’s just not—”
“Attend, Caine Riordan. Think of yourself as having an infant child—”
“I wish I could.” A vision of dying, pregnant Opal flitted through his mind, scissored at his heart.
Alnduul seemed to shrink inside himself. “Apologies. Profound apologies. Let me rephrase. Think of small children you have seen about you in Indonesia, and elsewhere. Children who are scared, are hungry, possibly even mortally wounded. And they ask their parent: ‘Progenitor, will I be safe? Will I be fed? Will I live?’ And the parent, knowing the truth to be in the negative—what do they say?”
Caine looked down. “They lie.”
“Just so. And they must. It is a kindness to the child, no less so than a palm placed upon a fevered brow, or lips upon a face streaked with tears. And so, Caine Riordan, do not answer now, but think upon this. Is no lie a justified means to a good end? Is existence so black and white as that? It would be comforting and simple if such were the case—but is it?”
Alnduul stepped back and his mouth puckered slightly: a melancholy smile? “Enlightenment unto you.”
Caine lifted his arms in response. “And unto you, Alnduul. I hope we shall meet again.”
Alnduul, who had started to turn after the farewell, half turned back toward him: “We shall. Indeed, we must.”
Chapter Fifty-Eight
Far Orbit, Sigma Draconis Two
Caine looked from Sukhinin to Downing as they rose. “Are you at least going to monitor the meeting?”
Downing shook his head. “The Slaasriithi specifically asked that their first contact with us be unrecorded.”
“And that it be with you alone,” Sukhinin said through his playfully malicious smile.
Caine found he was impatient for them to leave. It’s harder to act like I’m not nervous than it is being alone. He made sure his answering smile was lopsided, his tone ironic. “Yeah, that’s me: Speaker to Exos.”
Sukhinin picked up his briefing materials. “Better you than me, cheloveck.” There was a very slight tremor under their feet. Half out of the room, the Russian cast one eye back at the light over the airlock. The red light flickered, became yellow. “Well, they have arrived. Good luck. Don’t get eaten by aliens.”
“Hah, hah, Vassily. Go away.”
“I hear and obey, Gospodin Riordan.” A cough of laughter and he was gone.
Downing sounded more serious and more sympathetic. “Their representative should just about be ready. They breathe an almost identical mix of gases, so neither of you will need suits. When they signal that their representative has debarked and they have undocked from this module, our shuttle will leave as well. You’ve removed your transponder anklet?”
“And my collarcom. I don’t like that requirement, Richard. Did they give any explanation?”
“As to why there are to be no transmissions of any kind while the two of you are out here? No, but they were firmly, if gently, insistent.”
“Firmly but gently insistent.” That’s a pretty good descriptor for every one of our few, brief exchanges with the Slaasriithi.
Downing continued. “I suspect they just want to create an environment that is—for their species, at least—optimally private, even intimate.”
“Yes. Like two scorpions in one high-tech bottle.”
“Nonsense. They are simply very careful. They have suggested some general discussion before direct contact. The idea is that you acclimatize to their discourse first, then to them. Or so goes the theory.” Downing looked up sharply, beyond Caine’s shoulder.
Caine turned. The green light over the airlock had come on.
Downing straightened up. “Your show, now.” He smiled, put out a hand. “Try not to muck it up.”
Before he could rethink the reaction—before he could recall Downing’s lies, manipulation, withheld secrets—Caine had offered his own hand in response to the unpremeditated amity that he felt
in Richard’s gesture.
Downing’s smile widened, then seemed to falter, along with his eyes. He turned quickly, exited with a backward wave as the hatchway into the Commonwealth—or would it now be Terran?—corvette sealed with a shrill hiss. A moment later, Caine felt a slight shudder in the module, as though something were pressing down on the roof of the room: the counterspin boosters. The fractional centrifugal forces that had provided a faint pseudo-gravity diminished, were gone.
All alone in a can in space, weightless and adrift. But no, not quite alone. Caine looked at the iris valve at the other end of the chamber. No reason to be apprehensive. So far, the Slaasriithi were the most honest—if reclusive and enigmatic—allies that Earth had. It was beyond thinking that there should be any danger from them, particularly here. Their recently arrived ship was enveloped by the entirety of the human fleet, and fully exposed to the scrutiny of Alnduul and the Custodians. And yet—
“You are present, the-Riordan-called-Caine?”
Caine rose—and felt quite stupid. He was still alone, so for whom was he standing?
“I am.”
“And you are alone?”
“As you requested. May I ask to whom I am speaking?”
“My full name is cumbersome for your tongue and quite long. Perhaps you would consent to call me Yiithrii’ah’aash.”
I will if I can. “I am pleased to meet you, Yiithrii’ah’aash.” Caine had the sensation of his tongue being poised to stumble over the downhill slalom of syllables, was surprised to get to the end of the word without major disaster. “While I doubt I could pronounce it just yet, I would be happy to learn your full name and what it means.”
“This is most gracious and we appreciate it. However, we would defer this to some other time, if this is acceptable.”
I had good enough manners to try; he has good enough manners to let me off the hook. We’re off to a good start. “Of course, Yiithrii’ah’aash. I would appreciate knowing your title, however.”
“It translates quite imperfectly into your language, the-Riordan-called-Caine, and it is not so much a title as a denotation of present function. One term for it would be ‘facilitator’; another might be ‘liaison-symbiote.’ I do not know your language well enough to determine which more accurately reflects my role in this meeting.”
“You seem to know our language quite well—” And then Caine realized that the voice was not a machine equivalent. “Yiithrii’ah’aash, you are speaking to me without the benefit of a Dornaani translator?”
“This is correct.”
“How did you—?”
“The-Riordan-called-Caine, we, too, are a species renowned for our curiosity, so it is with regret that I must decline to answer your questions. I am under fairly restrictive time constraints. Suffice it to say that it was my honor to be selected to become fully familiar with the speciate self-reference materials that you presented at the Convocation.”
Good grief, that would mean—“You became familiar with all those materials?”
“This is so.”
“That was a great deal of work, Yiithrii’ah’aash.”
“It was a great honor and illumination. We Slaasriithi regret to have given you such limited information in return, and it is for this reason—among others—that this meeting was deemed advisable as soon as it was practicable.”
“I’m sorry. I do not understand.”
“My apologies. I will elucidate. It was our desire to communicate directly with you at the Convocation. However, in the months preceding that gathering, envoys from the Arat Kur arrived at one of the contact points along our shared border, urgently requesting dialog with our representatives. Their intent, plainly put, was that we should help them deny human admission to the Accord.”
Son of a—“But how could they do so without revealing details of our race, without violating the privacy stipulations of the Accord?”
“Your bafflement reprises our own. However, in telling us about humanity, the Arat Kur demonstrated that they had a far greater awareness of the ancient history and inhabitants of this region of space than we did. Based on their reaction to your candidacy for membership in the Accord, humanity seemed to be the epicenter of their species’ fears. When we refused to commit to an a priori rejection of your candidacy, we discovered that their fears of you quickly became fears of us.”
“Because you had indirectly supported us?”
“That, too, but subsequent information prompted us to reconsider the possible causes of the Arat Kur’s diminished congeniality.”
The end of the sentence dangled like a baited hook. “And what new causes came to light, Yiithrii’ah’aash?”
“There are several, but most share a common root. It is conjectured that, in some time past, your race and mine were, if not allied, then at least affined.”
Caine smiled at the archaic usage.
Yiithrii’ah’aash’s voice skimmed and glided in an oddly liquid fashion over the English phonemes and idioms. “As Convocation approached, we projected that any ready exchanges between us, or strong support for your candidacy, could make the Arat Kur—intemperate.”
Caine understood. “Because if they interpreted your friendship toward us as a prelude to alliance, they’d preemptively move to a war footing, escalating what might have been a salvageable situation.”
“Yes, this was our thinking. We regret and apologize for its profound flaws.”
“You couldn’t have known that they had already prepared themselves for war,” Caine pointed out.
“Embarrassingly, we did not even consider it a possibility. It was too uncharacteristically precipitous and aggressive for their species.”
“Convocation was beyond anyone’s power to salvage,” Caine said with a shrug. “However, I have since learned that your ships were commerce-raiding all along the Arat Kur border during the war, keeping more than a third of the Wholenest’s military assets tied up in fear of a large-scale incursion.”
“That is so.”
“Well, that was an immense help, and my leaders wish to express their immense appreciation for it. With this war behind us, we can initiate the kinds of cultural exchange I’m sure both our peoples would welcome.”
“This is a most interesting proposition, and one which we must discuss at some later date. However, our time now grows short. Perhaps it would be wise for us to conclude this dialog with a brief meeting.”
Or maybe not. I’ve faced enough anxieties, real and imagined, for one year, thank you. But Caine said, “Yes. I would like that.”
The green light above the airlock’s iris valve flashed three times and went out. The portal opened with a breathy squeal and Caine stepped forward, glad for the speed with which this was happening, that his mind had less than one second to spin within the maelstrom of primal fears that he had come to associate with first contacts. What will they look like? What will they smell like? Will I lose my composure, run gibbering into a corner because what I have seen is something that humans should never have seen, should never have encountered? Will I unwittingly insult them? Will I fail my race by seeming stupid, inept, rude, too aggressive, too passive, too silent, too loquacious? In short, how can you control the encounter and win the day, when the rules of the game change every time you play it?
However, Caine stopped in mid-stride—because there had been no way to be ready for what he saw. Because he did feel like running into a corner, gibbering, the universe tilting and making less sense with every passing second.
Yiithrii’ah’aash glide-walked through the doorway with precisely the same rolling gait as the natives Caine had met on Delta Pavonis Three. The familiar smallish and tightly furred head of that species—shaped more like a brazil nut than an almond—rode smoothly atop the equally familiar and improbably long ostrich neck. The body was closely furred and wasp-waisted. The long gibbon’s-arms swung easily alongside the oddly flanged hips and dog-jointed legs. Prehensile finger-tentacles extended in some form of greeting
and the knee-length bifurcated tail was shorter than those Caine had seen on Delta Pavonis Three. However, a few purposeful coiling and flexing motions indicated that it was still a functional appendage.
The Slaasriithi was not a Slaasriithi. It was a Pavonian. Or Pavonians were Slaasriithi. Caine wished he could close his eyes until the pointless debate in his head subsided. Whoever, or whatever they were, they were the same species. He opened his eyes—damn, I guess I did close them—and discovered that Yiithrii’ah’aash was holding something out to him. Caine, reached out to receive it. A small, recently harvested branch with small green leaves. It was subtly fragrant, familiar—
It’s an olive branch. Where did they get this? And is this a sign of peace? Or—and Caine could not tell whether his next insight was profound or paranoid—are you telling me you know many of our secrets, including my code name? Are you telling me you know the tale of how, when Odysseus finally came home to his own family and his own life, he returned to a bedroom which was built around an olive tree: a sign of life, hope, fruitfulness, closure? Caine couldn’t decide whether, in receiving this branch, he was being encouraged to see himself as coming full circle, his wanderings and wonderings at an end, or whether he was being pitched headlong into another odyssey of mysteries and risks. He looked from the leaves back to Yiithrii’ah’aash, and was surprised to find three irregularly shaped eyes staring at him from either slanted facet of the edge-on, furry brazil-nut that was his head.
Caine swallowed. “I know you. I mean, we—your people and I. We have met before.” How erudite.
“Ah, you refer to your experiences on Delta Pavonis Three.”
Okay, so I guess everyone knows about that “secret,” now. “Er—yes.”
Yiithrii’ah’aash’s tendril-fingers spread straight and flat to either side. The gesture of negation was so clear that Caine almost expected him to shake his head as well. “That was not us.”
Caine simply stared at the contrary evidence before his eyes.
Yiithrii’ah’aash’s tendrils unfolded into a slow-motion writhe of baby snakes. “Allow me to clarify. As Neanderthal is to you, what you met on Delta Pavonis Three is to us. We cherish it and call it ours, but it is not us.”
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