Joseph shrugged. “Beats me. Unless they’ve been visiting at intervals—maybe waiting for the bio-toxins to disperse. I don’t know what they’re basing their claim on. Our archaeologists are unanimous about the fate of the native race—the bio-plague devastation was total and there is absolutely no evidence that any of the cultures extant had achieved space travel.”
“Could Velvet have been a colony world? The technology might have been developed elsewhere.”
“Doubtful.”
“So, they’ve no more right to be here than we have.” Danetta shrugged, spreading her hands.
“Which we intimated—insofar as one can intimate across a DT field. That was what this evening’s little display was all about—might makes right. They want us to know they have the power to remove us forcibly if need be.”
Danetta experienced an unsettling thought. “Maybe they removed the original inhabitants the same way. Maybe they figure Velvet is theirs by right of conquest.”
Joseph’s face went gray. “If they’re responsible for... Dear God, I hope you’re wrong.”
“Me too. Have you explained to them what moving a colony like this would entail?”
“We’ve tried. They seem to understand, but the demand hasn’t changed. They evidently want us all off the planet as soon as is humanly possible.”
“Is it humanly possible to leave Velvet?” Danetta asked. “Logistics aside, I’d be willing to bet there are folks here who’d rather fight and die than leave.”
Joseph Bekwe grimaced wryly. “I think you’re looking at one of them.”
“What do you do next?”
“The Tsong Zee have imposed what they call a Time of Silence—to drive the point home, I can only imagine. Then we’re scheduled to talk to them again. The DT should have a clearer sense of the language by then.” He shook his head. “It’s odd, Danetta, the language seems so simple to be coming from such an obviously advanced race of people. They have a high level of technology—high enough to transport them through space in large numbers, yet the language is almost... childlike in its simplicity.”
“Are they somebody’s pet pirates, do you think? Working under instructions they don’t really understand?”
He sighed. “I don’t know. I just know we’re at the mercy of that damned Translator. I know it’s worked just fine for decades. I know it’s got a track record like an Olympic decathlete. But somehow, in a situation like this, it’s so hard to put complete trust in a computer. There’s so much at stake. After tonight’s display, I don’t doubt their ability to immobilize or annihilate an entire city.”
“Don’t you have any linguists on staff here?”
“Everything but. There were a few here early on, but they all took off for greener pastures, linguistically speaking. There was nothing for them to do. The few little scraps and chips Dr. Kuskov and his cronies have pulled out of the ground have told us next to nothing about the last masters of Velvet. There was no written material at all.”
Danetta stared thoughtfully at her fingernails—pale gold this time of year to remind her that on Earth it was summer. “I mentioned a colleague of mine, a Rhys Llewellyn.”
“Several times.”
“He’s an anthropologist—by Divine Revelation, I think—and a linguist. He’s been a godsend to Tanaka in sticky situations with new peoples. I’d be willing to call him in on this.”
Joseph was shaking his head. “I don’t want to endanger anyone else. We’re a captive audience, but bringing someone new onto the scene—”
“Joseph, he’s a specialist. He knows how to deal with delicate situations like this. I just have a feeling he might be able to... fill in the gaps left by the translation program.”
He raised his hands against her sudden increase in earnestness. “I’m not convinced we can’t handle this with the people we’ve got. I’m just a little tired and frustrated right now. And if worse comes to worst, there’s a military outpost on Duet.”
“Military?” repeated Danetta, her alarm cubing. “Oh, please, let’s not have a war. I think this planet’s seen enough devastation.”
“Well, that sort of depends on them, doesn’t it? If they’d rather blow the place apart than let us have a piece of it...”
She leaned forward in her chair and put her hand on his arm. “Let me call in Rhys. He’s vacationing on Pa-Loana. He could be here in less than two days. Please, Joseph. He can make a difference.”
The governor glanced down at her hand, then met her eyes warily. “Sounds like you’re pretty sold on this guy. I’m surprised he’s not here already.”
It was his expression that brought Danetta into sharp focus on what his words really meant. She actually blushed. “Good Lord, Joseph! He’s about half my age!”
Joseph cocked his head to one side and brushed fingertips across the back of her hand. “That isn’t the big deal it once was, Danetta. Fifty isn’t even middle-aged these days. What’s a quarter of a century between friends?”
“Uh-huh. And that’s just what Rhys and I are—friends. Very good friends.”
He nodded, still not meeting her eyes, forcing her to stare at his curly mop of salt and pepper curls. “Right.”
“He’s a nerd, Joseph. A sweet, slightly mad, conscientious nerd. I have never understood nerds, and I feel slightly out of my depth whenever they’re around.” She leaned forward a little further. “Joseph...”
He looked up so quickly, they nearly bumped noses. “Let me call him in.”
“I’ll think about it.”
She patted his cheek. “Fine. You think. I’m going to eat. It’s been hours since lunch and I’m starved.” She got up abruptly and headed for the door. “You look like you could use a dinner break, yourself.”
“Couldn’t eat anything. Too tense.”
Danetta paused at the door and surveyed his somewhat rumpled form. “Rule number one of corporate negotiating: Never deal on an empty stomach.”
“This isn’t exactly corporate negotiation.”
“No, you’re right. It’s much more critical, isn’t it?”
He grinned ruefully. “Touché. I’ll have something brought up.”
“Good. Let me know when you want me to call Rhys.” She slipped through into the outer office, where she collected Astrid.
“There are some very nervous people on our dear governor’s staff,” her aide noted as they made their way down to street level. “One might almost say terrified. What’s the inside story—or can’t you tell me?”
“I haven’t been sworn to secrecy. The situation is about as we suspected.”
“Alien invaders?”
“Not invaders, precisely. I mean, technically speaking, we’re alien invaders on Velvet, too.”
Astrid’s neat brows arced toward her hairline. “Philosophy, she gives me. Come on, Danetta. Everybody’s an alien invader somewhere. What’s going on? What do they want?”
“Well, according to the DT, they want their planet back.” She felt a tiny charge of glee that she’d surprised her unflappable aide.
“Their planet? How so?”
“Evidently, they’re claiming it as a colony world... or part of their empire or—” She shrugged. “Who knows. The language barrier has made understanding difficult.”
“Ah. And how does Governor Bekwe plan on establishing the veracity of this claim—or is that a moot point?”
“It could be. If all their ships are as big as the two we saw and all their weapons as debilitating as that one...”
“And I suppose they want us off the planet, or else?”
“That would seem to be their intent. It’s hard to tell.”
Astrid rolled her eyes. “Oh, please hold that thought. I think you may have discovered a great new diet plan—absolute terror before dinner.”
Astrid’s tone was typically light and dry, but Danetta was watching her eyes and saw that the humor never reached them.
o0o
Another message from the Governor’s office
met them upon their return to the hotel. The man, himself, appeared in the holo-column, dressed in fresh, unrumpled clothing, but looking no less disturbed than he had earlier.
“Danetta,” he said. “Call me. Whatever time you get back—call me.”
She stepped into the link field immediately and did that; she was connected, without comment or question, direct to the Governor’s office. Joseph practically pounced at her image.
“What is it?” she asked. “What’s happened?”
“I need your help, Danetta. You’re a trained negotiator; you’ve had a hell of a lot more experience dealing with other races of beings than I have—than any of my staff has. We’ve got to strike some kind of understanding with these people. We’ve got to make them understand our position. We—”
“Whoa! Whoa!” Danetta held up both hands against his rapid fire assault. “Slow down. What’s happened?”
“If we don’t either give in or come up with something new to say to the Tsong Zee, they’re going to show us another display of their military might and I’d hate to think what that could mean. So far, no one’s been hurt, but—”
“Yes, I know. But, Joseph, I’m no expert at dealing with OROBs. My reputation is built on inter-Human relations; that’s what I do best. I keep telling you—it’s Rhys Llewellyn you want. He’s—”
“Danetta, the time—”
“Two days, maximum. He can be here virtually the moment he leaves Pa-Loana.”
“How do we stall them?”
“Tell them something new. Tell them you want to summon a special negotiator.”
“I’ve plastered them with negotiators already.”
Danetta rubbed her forehead, feeling a dull ache rustling there. “Look, who negotiates for the aliens—I mean, the OROBs?”
“There are four of them. They seem to be of equal rank. They have acolytes or, um, assistants of some sort, but the four seem to be equal.”
Danetta furrowed her brow. “No one spokesperson?”
“They take turns.”
“Turns. How? One speaks for ten minutes then passes the baton? How?”
“Er, they — they seem to alternate questions.” He glanced back over his shoulder to someone out of his column’s range. “Isn’t that how you’d describe it? Yes, alternating.” He turned back to Danetta.
“Wardrobe. What’s the wardrobe like?”
“What?”
“What are the four delegates wearing? How is it different from what their assistants are wearing?”
“They’re dressed in, uh, shinier stuff.” He nodded over his shoulder, again. “Yes, it’s a lot shinier—like their skin. Their skin is very shiny. And brighter colors. They seem to wear more reds and oranges. Things that contrast with their skin.”
Danetta nodded. “Okay. Acolytes, you said. What made you say that?”
“I meant assistants.”
“Right. But you said acolytes. What made you use that word?”
He thought about that for a moment, shaking his head.
She knew he thought she was asking completely irrelevant questions; he was only answering them because he trusted her—and he didn’t have anything better to do. Except sleep.
“Acolytes,” she repeated sharply. “Why?”
He made a frustrated gesture. “Veneration. Okay? They seem to venerate the delegates.”
“Ah. But not as grunts to commanding officers?”
Joseph cocked his head and gazed at her musingly. “No. Not like that at all. More like... acolytes or — or apprentices.”
There was a murmur of voices from out of sight. Joseph nodded. “Exactly. They didn’t just sit back and ignore the proceedings. They sat close to their delegates and watched everything with great interest.”
Danetta’s head came up from its thoughtful repose. “One acolyte for each delegate?”
“Yes.”
“Do they use the same word they use to refer to themselves in referring to you? Does it translate the same?”
“No. They call themselves, um, Speakers. They call me Administrator.”
“Tell them you wish to have a Human Speaker come talk to them.”
“Why?”
“A Speaker may be a holy man, a wizard, a high priest. Whatever it is, we need to produce one. Tell them our Speaker wishes to talk to them and that he can be here in one or two Velvet days.”
“Tson,” said Joseph absently. “They call the planet Tson.”
“Great. Fine. But don’t start using their name for it. Not yet. That’s implicitly granting their claim. Hear them when they call it Tson and make sure they acknowledge you when you call it Velvet. Arrange clearance for the TAS packet and I’ll get Rhys here as fast as the Spectrum will allow. Are we agreed?”
Joseph Bekwe nodded, seeming not to resent the way Danetta Price had taken control of the situation. She doubted he had the energy, even if he’d been so inclined.
“Fine,” she said. “And Joseph, get some sleep—as soon as you arrange for my message to get out. If you can’t sleep, I’ll send Astrid over with a mallet. Got it?”
He smiled. “I’ll drink a cup of valerian.”
“Acceptable. Good night, Joseph.” She cut the link.
“What are you smiling about?” Astrid stood in the door to her bedroom, a silky dressing gown hiding her woven twytex longjohns.
“I was just being idiotically shallow. Here we have an OROP menace hanging over our collective heads and I’m sitting here thinking that Rhys would be proud of me.”
“Good job, huh?”
Danetta shrugged. “Well, I think I asked all the right questions... I hope.”
“Well, then Rhys probably will be proud of you. Hey, if we all die tomorrow, you might as well go out on a high note.”
Danetta shook her head, her smile widening to a grin. “Thank you, Astrid. You are a true friend.”
“Yes, I am. Well, it was nothing. I’ll see you in the morning—sooner, if our hovering friends do something exciting. Good night.” She turned and swept into her room, leaving a yawn suspended in mid-air.
Two
Rhys Llewellyn sighed self-indulgently and sketched a loving salute at the profile of Pa-Loana that floated serenely beyond the broad viewport of the Time-Altered Space Vessel Ceilidh. It was not exactly a sigh of regret, for his vacation had reached that peculiar pass wherein the thought of going back to work elicits almost as much of a mental tingle as the thought of not going back to work. Given another week on Pa-Loana, he would be longing for the negotiating table again—yearning to bury himself under a pile of research papers and field reports.
“Sir? They’ve announced Shift stations, sir.”
Rhys turned and found himself looking down into the earnest face of his Junior Assistant, Yoshi Umeki. Yoshi’s face was always earnest and, though Rhys had tried to surprise in it any other expression, he had failed. The young woman smiled earnestly, worried earnestly, thought earnestly, and possessed the most earnest anger Rhys Llewellyn had ever seen.
He smiled at her and tugged the fat, blue-black braid that lay across her left shoulder. “Is Roddy battened down, then?”
She smiled back earnestly and nodded. “He never woke up from the Shift in, sir.” She leaned toward him, waxing confidential. “I think he overdid the local herbals at his last stop, sir. You know how he hates the Shift.”
Rhys nodded and escorted his assistant inward toward the passenger’s quarters at the ship’s core. Roderick Halfax, his Senior Assistant, was one of a mercifully rare group of people who found the Shift through the temporal spectrum of TA space extremely discomfiting. If awake, he suffered severe vertigo, nausea, disorientation, and hallucinations; if merely sleeping, he was beset by nightmares so disturbing as to be the envy of a horror novelist. Either way, the experience was always followed by intense depression. These days, he made the spectral transit from one set of space-time coordinates to another heavily sedated or not at all.
Rhys didn’t mind Shifting, although
he had to admit a certain sense of disarrangement (or derangement) if the duration of the Shift was more than a few seconds. For this Shift—a long one to Blue Seven—he would sleep, making use of an herbal tisane given him by one of the delightful natives of Pa-Loana, a Shaman named Pa-Lili.
He thought of her fondly as he took his potion, donned his Shift goggles, and lay down upon his bunk. He wore her fetish bag around his neck, carried a good deal of her wisdom in his heart and, if she had been human, very likely would have asked her to marry him. There had been times when he thought he might ask her regardless of their physiological differences.
When he awoke from his herb-induced snooze, seemingly only seconds later, he knew Pa-Loana was light-years away and was reliving the beginning of the past week. Well, that wasn’t strictly true. He was reliving the beginning of the past week light-years away from where he actually was when last week really happened. Well, that wasn’t strictly true either, because last week on Pa-Loana was still happening with him in it and he was really, at this waking moment, in two places at one time and it was really too much effort to muddle through temporal dynamics in his currently groggy state. He gave it up.
His bio-trace quietly announced that he was still extant and broadcast his vital signs across the holographic lenses of his Shift goggles. When the same quiet, efficient computer voice told him the bio-trace was complete and he could get up, he did, pleased that he experienced no vertigo at all. He was always pleased about that—had been every one of the eighty-some-odd times he had Shifted. It left him in a good mood to succor those less fortunate than he.
He let himself out of his cabin and went to check on his assistants. Both were fine. Yoshi took to Shifting quite as well as he did, and Rick Halfax had been too deeply unconscious to take it any way at all. He was cheerfully groggy during their twenty-hour orientation layover at Blue Seven, and went just as cheerfully back under for the last, nearly instantaneous leg of their journey—forward again to the Clear range, this time orbiting Velvet instead of Pa-Loana.
Rhys stayed awake this time, sitting upright in his darkened cabin, taking a certain enjoyment from the stretched moment of weightless, bodiless, careless, aurora whirl that was the Spectral Shift. A slow-motion explosion of color, it was; and he always came away from it certain he had seen hues and shades human eyes were not made to see. Since he could not describe them, the truth of that was irrelevant. But Rhys believed in the unseeable colors with the same stolid conviction he now felt about magic.
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