“Got much? What do you think they’re trying to get?”
Veda shrugged. “I imagine they want to know more about us. More than they can learn from living in this — unusual enclave of ours. They seem better equipped to understand us than the other Tofa, the ones outside — but they’re inside, and can’t observe the way we usually live. So they’re doing what they can.”
The two women rounded back toward the buildings. Veda sped up again; Laura, making a last effort, matched her and then pulled in front, and the two of them race-walked to the compound.
The day was warm as well as sunny, the first such day in months. Anyone who could be outside, was. In a courtyard outside the dining hall, Ra-ten-tis, Tofa nurse, stood surrounded by children. Most of the children were Tofa. The humans present were spectators: they were not equipped to participate.
Laura, passing by, recalled her childhood games of pat-a-cake. They had seemed intricate and challenging enough at the time. She had never imagined the marvelous complexity that could be achieved when each player had four hands to use. She wondered if the elusive fifth hand was ever brought into play.
As each young Tofa came forward for his turn, Ra-ten-tis would start slowly, with two hands moving at an easy speed to follow. Then the third, then the fourth hand would join the pattern, and faster and faster, while watching friends shouted encouragement, until finally the youngster would put a hand wrong and step back, whistling, to join the audience. And another would step forward, and the game would begin again, first slowly. . . .
When all the Tofa Twin-Bred had learned the first game, Ra-ten-tis demonstrated a game that a Tofa could play alone, using left hands against right. Now all the Tofa could play at once. They spread out to avoid striking each other or the human children.
Tired of standing and watching, Peggy turned to leave. Ren-tak caught her arm and said, “Wait! Watch Li-sen. Watch his left hands. You do those, and I will do the right, and we can play together.”
With some false starts, and much giggling and whistling, the twins adapted the solitary game into a game for two. Seeing them, other pairs of twins dragged each other out of the circle and followed their lead.
Ra-ten-tis looked around at the excited pairs, and then at his remaining audience. He dropped his hands. “That is enough for today.” Ignoring protests, he headed inside. Passing one pair, he paused and waited for their attention. He spoke to Ren-tak.
“Why have you changed the game?”
Ren-tak looked at his twin, then back at Ra-ten-tis. “I do not understand. Naturally I wanted to share the game with my sister.”
Ra-ten-tis stood a moment longer, then turned and strode into the compound.
Chapter 20
The Chief of the NivPourn police department was staring blearily at her desk. Her message device blinked frantically, telling her that it had reached its capacity.
Her deputy knocked on her open door. “Chief! And I thought I was here early. Some damn Tofa was blowing a whistle outside my house, and I couldn’t sleep. Woke up half the neighborhood, I’d guess. Tried to get it to stop, but it wouldn’t, and it had friends. Thought about calling in, but I decided I’d just come here in person. What brings you here two hours earlier than usual?”
The chief looked puzzled and annoyed. “That’s strange. And not good strange. Something like that happened to me, too. Not a whistle — some sort of machinery. There was a group of Tofa carrying it around and cranking it. Made the damnedest racket. And look at this machine! What you want to bet that every call is from an angry citizen who couldn’t sleep last night?”
The deputy put his face in his hands and groaned. “Great. Just great. This is going to get nasty in a hurry. And then what?”
The chief's prediction was correct. The reports poured in. Banging on metal. Antiphonal shouting back and forth. Attacks on chicken coops. Every odd and unwelcome kind of activity short of personal attacks, the common denominator being that they deprived the nearby humans of their sleep.
The chief rang up the mayor. He was not in his office, having tried to sleep in. The concealed recording of tearing metal, somewhere near his apartment, had shut off an hour after dawn. The chief pulled on her coat and went to wake him up. She left her deputy to round up the borough chiefs.
The borough chiefs struggled to get their priorities, goals, ethos and tactics in order. Should they be planning reprisals? Armed conflict? Negotiation, despite the obstacles? None of these decisions, nor the decisions that would have to follow them, were made easier by lack of sleep.
B.C. Simmons plucked at the bandage where he had cut himself shaving. “Someone at the university has to be able to talk to these — people.”
B.C. Nehru lifted her head out of her arms. “They’ve got two profs out there that claim to be experts. But the last I heard, no one had ever seen them actually talk to a Tofa — that is, get one to talk back.”
“Then we’ve got to get the central government involved. What’s the Council there for, if not to help out when a problem’s too big for the local bodies?”
B.C. Skarsgaard looked skeptical. “Right. And we’ll see how big they think our problems are. But by all means let’s try it. Maureen, you’re the best at talking to these types. Will you?”
B.C. Nehru nodded glumly.
“OK, then. Let’s all go home and try to get some sleep.”
The clangs, sirens, horns, whistles and gears started up again at noon.
The next morning, the Mayor left to confront the Council in person. He could not be expected to return that day. The others were far from sure that he would return at all until he could be sure of a good night’s sleep in his own bed.
That day was the regional semi-final competition for high school marching bands. The local band’s star Color Guard member suffered a concussion when she missed catching her rifle on a seven-count toss.
By Day Three, bands of enraged citizens were roaming the streets at night. Their night vision and coordination were substantially sub par. The groups of Tofa simply faded away from them and gathered again nearby. The exhausted police force had no better fortune.
During Day Four, some of the locals did catch up with a Tofa banging a metal pipe on a street lamp. The local hospital patched him up as best they could and sent him to the nearest Tofa enclave in a copter. The racket neither intensified nor diminished.
On Day Five, the Council Chairman put in a call to the Project.
Mara paced back and forth between desk and window. “It’s so frustrating, Levi! They’re coming to us, asking for our help, deferring to our expertise, and we’ve got nothing to give them. We’ve never seen anything like this among our own Tofa.”
“And when you told the Chairman as much?”
“How could we be so unhelpful, what have they been paying for, and on and on.”
“Did she have any more concrete suggestions?”
“She wants us to send the children. They’re only eight! It simply isn’t feasible to send them out into the world at their age, before they’ve been properly trained. If only this had happened a few years from now. . . .”
“Doubtless it will. Or something else equally troublesome. But back to the evils of the day. The Chairman found your response unsatisfactory?”
Mara kicked the wastebasket into the wall. “She threatened to close us down. The whole Project.”
“Unpalatable choices. What will you choose?”
“To stall. Hope that whatever is happening stops happening, before we have to try. It’s much too soon. But we don’t have any choice, if it comes to that. We can’t let them close us down. The children have nowhere else to go.”
Day Six did not dawn peaceful, but the roving Tofa disappeared soon after daybreak. The exhausted humans lingered nervously for an hour or two, and then went to bed, sleeping lightly, starting at the slightest sound.
They braced themselves for the night-time cacophony. It did not come. The police made the rounds and found nothing.
/> Whatever had happened was over. For now.
* SECRET *
CLEARANCE CLASS 2 AND ABOVE
LEVI Status Report, 7-1-90
Executive Summary
Consideration of Accelerative Techniques
Due to the intermittently continuing incidents of interspecies friction, including the prolonged NivPourn incident from 5-10-90 through 5-15-90, Council staff gave consideration to, and discussed with Project staff, the possibility of applying experimental techniques to accelerate the maturation of the human and Tofa test subjects. Objections were raised on the scientific ground that accelerants would introduce a confounding variable, significantly reducing the validity and value of various data to be collected in the future, particularly where continuous data sets have been anticipated. Objections were also raised on the ground of prudence, given the relatively sparse data on the effects of the accelerative techniques. Those objecting on this ground included Project staff senior enough that the matter has been tabled for the time being.
Mara looked around the conference room. “I believe it’s time to start — but we’re missing a couple of staff.”
The Meetings Secretary looked around. “I think everyone who’s coming is here already.”
“What about Ter Lo-ta-se?”
A commissary technician looked down with the embarrassment of a subordinate confronted with the failings of one of higher rank. “Ter Lo-ta-se left three weeks ago. Just packed up, thanked her assistant and walked out.”
“With no explanation? Or stated destination?”
“Not that I’ve heard. No forwarding address, and her link is inactive.”
“And of course we can’t replace her. The host mothers aren’t replaceable. Has anyone asked the others if they know what happened?”
The Technical Maintenance Coordinator cleared her throat. “The others are getting rather thin on the ground. It started months ago. Not all the sections had Tofa host mothers on staff, but four of the ones that did, don’t. Same story — a pleasant and uninformative farewell. And most of the Tofa nurses and such have been leaving as well.”
“How did I miss this? I should have known. . . . Did anyone try to stop them?”
“I gather they didn’t seem interested in talking about it, and without knowing why they were leaving, no one had much chance of talking them out of it.”
“And we could hardly hold them here against their will. Even if we could do it, it’d have a huge potential to blow up in our faces. Did we remind them about confidentiality?”
“I don’t know. But Tofa don’t seem to forget very much.”
Mara felt the internal pressure that signaled Levi had something to contribute. She took a deep breath and let her mind go blank for a moment: some hint might drift in from his territory. The thought that surfaced had his flavor to it.
“Has anything changed lately in the Tofa political scene? Any shift in alliances, or any new tone in our relations with them, locally or otherwise?”
“I wouldn’t have heard, unless it was something drastic — and I haven’t heard about anything like that. The Tofa Relations folks might have some information.”
“All right, let’s get on with the meeting.” Mara prepared herself to feign interest and hide her concern. She pushed the record button on her tablet, in case something was said to which she should have paid attention.
Mara sat at her desk, doodling a cartoon of a Tofa host mother striding away from a crowd of gesticulating humans. “Levi, I got your message and I’m meeting with our senior Tofa Relations man in a few minutes. What exactly are we looking for?”
“Mara, if there is ever a time when we know exactly what to look for from our Tofa neighbors, you and I will have retired on the ample pension of a grateful planet. But yes, I have a few thoughts. What makes Tofa host mothers different from all other Tofa?”
“Leaving aside the Tofa Twin-Bred for a moment — the host mothers understand humans better. Our speech, our expressions; maybe more fundamental things. They can work with us, to some extent. And the host mothers don’t have the traces of human behavior that we see in our Tofa twins.”
“So what might we be looking for, in Tofa relations, if the missing host mothers have returned home and insinuated themselves into Tofa governance?”
“We might be looking for — is it the dog that didn’t bark? We might be looking for the absence of events, for fewer misunderstandings, even for helpful overtures. Not that it looks that way so far.”
“Next question, sis: if any of this starts happening, should we be pleased?”
“Since it’s your question, I assume a simple Yes is the wrong answer. . . . The host mothers didn’t come to us and say, ῾We can be of more use among our own kind, we can help humans and Tofa live together.’ They just left, with minimal ripples. There has to be some reason for that.”
“What gets harder to do if people know you’re doing it?”
“Maneuvering. Manipulation. So — however smoothly things seem to be going —”
“They’ll be going in directions you can’t see, and didn’t choose.”
Mara took a moment to rest her head in her hands. Then she straightened up and opened the door to wait for
her Chief of Tofa Relations.
Chapter 21
The gray-haired man with stooped shoulders was a regular at the Happy Hangout. His grumbling monologue was becoming regular as well.
“We shoulda wiped ‘em all out when we first got here. The ship coulda done it. Planet woulda taken a beating, woulda been less hosp -- hospitable, but we coulda done it, and that woulda been it. Woulda been worth it.”
He drained his mug and slammed it down. “Shoulda followed Hager’s 3rd Law. You meet aliens and you got the edge, you take ‘em out while you can. Just take ‘em right out. No more problems.”
The younger man at the next stool decided he’d had enough. “You’re crazy, and Hager was crazy. A bloodthirsty crazy fella. They locked him up, didn’t they?”
“Hager was no crazy. They railroaded the poor son of a bitch. He was smart as hell, and he told ‘em the truth, so they railroaded him. He knew what he was talking about. We didn’t get rid of the damn Tofa when we had the chance, and now they can spy on us and find out how to do what we can, and catch up. Then we’ll all really be in the shit. And all you types will be looking around and whining and saying, “Hey, how’d we end up in this shit?’ And I’m telling you how. We shoulda wiped ‘em out.”
“You wanta go outside and say that?”
“Gentlemen, gentlemen!” The bartender said a short and silent prayer to be forgiven the inaccuracy. “Let’s bring it back down here. You bust each other up and you won’t be able to sit straight and enjoy your beer. Now who’s ready for a refill?”
Mara sat at her desk, writing and whistling.
“ ‘I whistle a happy tune…’ That’s a new one.”
“Peggy wrote it. It’s called Tofa Laughing.”
“You could whistle almost anything and attach that description. But the name is particularly apt for this one. And it’s pretty.”
“I do get the occasional double-take when I whistle it. It’s kind of funny.”
“How refreshing, to see my serious sister messing with people’s minds! Carry on. . . . By the way, we should discuss the upcoming elections.”
“For Council seats? Is there anyone we can’t afford to lose?”
“That depends on what our erstwhile allies might be willing to do to prevent losing. And you might want to take a look at who might be joining them.”
On the news, Councilwoman Fuller pugnaciously assured the voters that she would singlehandedly put an end to the unspecified pseudo-scientific boondoggles that were all that stood between them and eternal prosperity. Evidently, she had not forgiven Mara’s opposition to sending out eight-year-old Twin-Bred negotiators, or else force-maturing them into early adulthood. Mara changed the channel and found Council candidate Tunnet’s ominous montage of
backlit Tofa, in numbers greater than they were accustomed to assemble, followed by the brave declaration that next time, humans would not be intimidated, so long as they elected him.
Mara swore under her breath, grabbed her sketchbook and drew a quick cartoon of Fuller holding a tablet upside down and scratching her head, while Tunnet hid behind her shaking his fist. Then she closed her door, switched her phone to a secure channel, turned on her scramble field, and called the private investigator.
“Yes, good morning. I’m calling back as we agreed. I have your confidentiality agreement in hand, and I assure you I would be most unhappy if it were not strictly adhered to. I assume you received my initial retainer, and that it was satisfactory.
“Good. This job could be particularly easy, in the event that you are already doing it for other interested parties. I need everything you can find about a few Council members and candidates. I need to know information that could assist me in any future situation where persuasion is called for.
“Thank you, but I can’t take full credit for what you’re so kindly calling foresight. A — a consultant of mine thought it advisable. Given the ephemeral nature of political commitments, and the somewhat longer timeline necessary for certain scientific projects.
“Of course, I’ll pay in full. Even if any of the subjects fails to win election or re-election. After all, there’s always next time. Yes, I may have similar commissions in the future — if your performance proves satisfactory. I’ll arrange a secure method of receiving your report.”
She sat back in her chair. That should take care of the likely troublemakers. She wondered for a moment if she should expand the P.I.'s assignment to the rest of the current Council. But she had only so much room in her budget, and the larger the item, the harder it would be to bury it. She shrugged and went back to work.
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