Shaman

by Maya Kaathryn Bohnhoff

  He didn’t wait to hear more, but vaulted from the lift, right into the midst of the clustered and waiting Tsong Zee.

  His timing couldn’t have been better—or worse, depending on who one asked. The driver of the Speakers’ vehicle, half in, half out of the long, silver-blue Tesla Grav Mark II, glanced from Rhys to the Tsong Zee and back again. He got out of the car and closed the door. The highly tinted windows reflected the faces of the Tsong Zee in warped clarity, making them look like elongated tar-babies.

  “You must be Dr. Llewellyn,” the driver said and flashed a smile that failed to reach his eyes. “Can I do something for you, Doctor, or have you just come to say goodbye?”

  “Actually, I think goodbyes would be a little premature.” Rhys turned to face Javar, who stood beside him watching the exchange with interest. “I think perhaps you should come back upstairs with me.”

  “Why?” asked Javar, stiffening. “What has happened?”

  “We think someone may try to —” Rhys’s explanation was cut off as the doors of the Tesla flew upward to reveal two armed men wearing half-masks.

  Ridiculous, Rhys thought, they look like raccoons. “Costume party?” he asked aloud.

  “Lynch party,” said the driver. “Get in the car—all of you.” His eyes took in the steadily staring Tsong Zee, who had barely reacted to the threat.

  Rhys realized their attention was riveted on the weapons as if they’d never seen anything like them.

  “Get in!” repeated one of the masked men, gesturing with the muzzle of his gun. Every Tsong Zee eye followed it.

  “I think you’ll find your plans have been changed, gentlemen.”

  Joseph Bekwe’s voice came from Rhys’s right, causing him to turn in unison with the Tsong Zee. The colonial governor was not alone. Half a dozen security guards had come out of the tubes with him.

  o0o

  Rhys Llewellyn paid scant heed to the dinner laid out on the small round conference table in Joseph Bekwe’s office. He slid into his seat between Yoshi and Rick, took a deep breath, and reached for a cup of coffee.

  “The Tsong Zee are on their way back to their ship. They wish me to express their gratitude for our intervention in their abduction. Although I’d swear Keere thinks we staged it.”

  “Are they grateful enough to leave Velvet and go home... or at least grant us squatter’s rights?” Joseph Bekwe took a long pull on his coffee, grimaced and sighed. “God, I needed that! I’m going to be an old man when this is over.”

  Danetta patted his knee. “Shall I get you a lap-rug, dear?”

  “I’m not quite ready for that, yet, but you could get me a solution to this crazy mess.” He looked over at Rhys, who was toying with the food on his plate. “Well, Dr. Rhys? How grateful are they? Enough to negotiate our staying on Velvet?”

  “Grateful enough,” said Rhys, staring at absently at the governor’s coffee cup, “to allow me to deal with them in kind.”

  Bekwe frowned. “What, precisely, does that mean?”

  “Well, it has to do with a... new style of negotiation I hope to learn.” He smiled wearily and explained the Trade.

  The governor’s reaction to the idea was emphatic, monosyllabic, and decidedly negative. Danetta’s was similar, though more protracted and laced with indictments of several of Rhys’s Scottish ancestors. Rhys wheedled, cajoled, pleaded, invoked the advance of scientific knowledge, and finally ended up at the bottom line.

  “The wall at our backs, friends,” he told them, “is that there may be a Collective force of unknown size on its way to us at this very moment. It could arrive at any time. We may be faced with a war we don’t want.”

  “They won’t come in blazing,” argued Governor Bekwe reasonably. “They’d assess the situation and —”

  “And if the Tsong Zee take their approach as a hostile act? What then? The Tsong Zee may very well respond with force and a battle ensue. Governor... Joseph, these people have been planning their return for two thousand years.”

  “If they’re telling the truth.”

  “All right, if they’re telling the truth. Do you think they’re just going to give up and slink off without a whimper because we haul out a mighty stick and shake it at them? I’m a Scotsman by blood. And I’m well aware of what it means to feel the sacredness of a bit of land. To feel it pull you, own you, demand your loyalty and, if necessary, your blood. The history of Scotland is rife with the push and pull between native and invader. We’re like the English here, Joseph. We’ve come to this goodly place and built up our castles and our villages, and we’ve not been invited. And just as when the English invited themselves into Scotland, ignoring the explicit invitation to leave may lead to bloodshed. We can’t turn a deaf ear to them.”

  “No one’s suggesting we do that,” objected Danetta. “And there’s one important difference here, that you’re ignoring. Your Scots ancestors didn’t abandon their lands, then come home expecting the new tenants to move out. Some of the Humans on Velvet are more native to it than the Tsong Zee. They were actually born here.”

  “Aye, granted. I’m just asking you to look at this from their point of view. They may have been physically absent from Velvet for two thousand years, but spiritually a good many of them have visited it every day. Their hearts and souls are here.”

  Danetta sighed in exasperation. “Dammit, this is absurd. You can’t... trade places with them, you’re not Tsong Zee. You’re Human. ‘East is east and west is west and—”

  “Now don’t you go mis-quoting Kipling to me, ma’am.” Rhys pointed a stern finger at his CEO’s nose. “Read the end of that scrap of rhyme and you’ll discern that it states the opposite of what folks usually drag it out to support. I’m going to try this thing.”

  “Why, Rhys? Because it’s never been done?” guessed Danetta.

  “Aye, well. That adds sauce to the meat. But its chief allure is that it can help settle this. If we can meet on common ground, if I can just see behind those beautiful, inexpressive faces, if I can convince them that we’re not so very alien...”

  “That’s such a long shot,” argued Danetta.

  His lips curled into a smile and she knew the cause of caution was entirely lost.

  “Aye,” he said, “I’ve rarely seen longer.”

  Six

  He was alone in the council chamber with Brasn and Javar—no apprentices hovered. The dimly lit room was decorated to Tsong Zee taste with items of ceremonial significance—totems and Tribal artifacts forming a circle around the two negotiators, Javar and Rhys, who sat cross-legged, face to face.

  Javar’s artifacts, which included a sense-cube, a huge hunk of purple crystal, a picture painted on fine pieces of dark, and shaved wood, were arrayed in a fan behind Rhys. Rhys’s—a set of pipes, a bodrun, a walking stick of Scottish pine, his purple fetish bag—were spread in the same pattern behind Javar.

  On his knees beside them, Brasn prepared to mediate. He lit a small brazier containing an herbal incense determined to be safe for Human inhalation, the effects of which were described as relaxing. There was a drink, as well—a barky-smelling liquid of deep amber that both parties sipped from a shared cup.

  The chamber flickered in the glow of Tsong Zee wicks, the incense curled between Human and Tsong Zee, the ritual drink warmed their bellies and loosed their thoughts, and Brasn began to chant.

  Rhys was feeling most relaxed, his academic curiosity sitting idly in some distant aerie, observing. The incense smelled fine, like burning pine needles and crushed cedar. The room was close and warm, and he loved the feel of his thick woolen kilt lying warmly across his legs like a great plaid cat, the sporran curled, kitten-cozy in his lap.

  He felt his left arm rise and thought absently that Brasn was lifting it. His hand uncurled, flattened itself, and pressed against a warm, yielding surface that seemed to fit it almost perfectly—another hand. His right hand followed, finding its own mate, pressing close.

  There was a darkness, a whirl of colors, o
f voices, of sensations. Hot sun, warm sand, bleached landscape. The crisp, winy tang of an arid wind. That gave way to vivid greens, a swirl of breezes laden with scents pungent and delicate. A ripple of laughter. Joy.

  The sequence repeated itself. The sepia world giving way to the world of rainbows. Joy. Here was home and that other place, that colorless place...

  But home was not as they had left it. It was inhabited now by delicate, multi-hued people who made their capitol at the base of the Holy Yanna Mountains and refused to leave. This was understandable. Tson was a beautiful world. But the Humans simply must understand that it belongs to us, alone.

  That small, distant academician, high in his objective roost, crowed with delight and shivered with pleasure. He was Javar T’lath-al Var of the Skycraft Guild of the Tribe Gondavar. His parents were T’lik and Luvar. His work and passion was the science of time and space. His mate-beloved was Slai Alau, a Music-craft Guilder. He’d grown up in a city called Brolath in the mountains above Kamorg’s capitol, Tsonvar. He’d studied to be Speaker and was elected to that illustrious station in his fifteenth year. The Return was his mission. His Tribe had a Key.

  This song. These notes. The Three Sisters.

  He had led the planning for the journey, so grateful to have been born to this generation—to the generation of Return. His father had tested the theories and mechanics, his uncle had built the ships and he had outfitted them—tuned their machinery and their magic, readied them for their journey down the corridor of time, across the distance between Kamorg and Tson. Shadayan, Shadavar, Shadamela, Shadarau. He knew a stab of anguish. There would be no Shadatrura. There would be only —

  Rhys’s dissociated self ceased its jubilation.

  Four ships—four unarmed ships.

  There was a whirl of sensation that left Rhys speechless and dizzy. He came to himself with an abrupt thump, his arms lying limply in his lap, his mouth agape. Across from him, Javar gazed back with a similarly ludicrous expression.

  “Holograms?” Rhys stared at the two Tsong Zee incredulously.

  They glanced at each other, Brasn’s eyes growing larger—if that were possible—than they already were. Javar lowered his head and nodded.

  Rhys barely noticed the Human gesture. “But the energy damping web —”

  “Is a purely benign tractor beam intended for moving freight pods. This is the first time we have ever used it as a weapon. It is, in fact, the closest thing to a weapon that we possess. Our arsenal, as you experienced, is empty. To put it bluntly: we are bluffing.”

  There was a sharp bleat from the room’s comlink just as Javar’s communicator emitted a hailing whistle. While the Tsong Zee dealt with that, Rhys answered the comunit by the door.

  It was Joseph Bekwe with a terse message. “Beneton’s message got through. The fleet’s in.”

  Rhys turned to face the Tsong Zee. He could tell they’d gotten the same message from their ships.

  “Good God,” Rhys murmured, “what now?”

  o0o

  Rhys Llewellyn gazed at the uniformed gentleman in the holo-column appraisingly. Admiral Sanchez was an imposing fellow—bison-like and bemused. So much was obvious from the peculiar train of expressions that chugged across his broad, bearded face.

  “You still maintain that you are not under attack?”

  “That is correct, sir. We are negotiating the situation very carefully so as to forestall that event. As Governor Bekwe indicated, the message that summoned you was not authorized by his office.”

  “Yet the message we received was urgent and quite specific. Velvet was under attack by hostile OROB forces. The visual evidence supports this. I can see the OROB ships for myself. Just as a casual observer, gentlemen, I’d say this planet was under siege... I was warned that the government had been forced to... cooperate. That I would find you reluctant to act.”

  Rhys and Bekwe exchanged glances; Beneton didn’t miss a trick.

  “I expect Mr. Beneton used a less neutral term,” Bekwe surmised. “Harris Beneton—the... gentleman who contacted Collective initially, is a private citizen with a large financial interest in Velvet. He felt his interests were threatened by the Tsong Zee and he... panicked. He violated the direct orders of this office and undertook to contact Collective himself. He has also subverted my lieutenant governor and attempted to kidnap the OROB ambassadors. And he has gone out of his way to foment discord and even violence among the colonists.”

  “Foment discord? I understood that Beneton was a military leader on Velvet.”

  “We have no military leaders on Velvet, sir. We have a colonial police force and a port authority. Mr. Beneton is not connected with either organization in any way. He is the CEO of BeneCon, a large Velvet-based consortium —”

  “And is there no chance that you’ve been influenced by the OROB, Governor?” Sanchez asked quietly.

  Again, Bekwe and Rhys brushed gazes. “The Tsong Zee—the OROB involved—claim that Velvet is their homeworld. They wish to reclaim it.”

  “They what? No, don’t repeat it. I heard you the first time. Sonofabitch. That puts a different complexion on things. Although it doesn’t change the fact that a Collective colony is under siege. I’m at your disposal, Governor. What would you have me do?”

  “While the Tsong Zee do have a rather large fleet,” said Rhys, superstitiously crossing his fingers behind his back, “they are loathe to use it—a fact easily explained once you hear the history of their race.”

  “We can muster enough firepower to handle them, if we have to.”

  Bekwe took a deep breath. “Let’s all pray that won’t be necessary.”

  “Beneton thinks it’s necessary now.”

  “Naturally. Harris Beneton doesn’t want the Tsong Zee to be able to prove this is their homeworld. He wouldn’t deed Velvet, or any part of it, back to the Tsong Zee if they could prove it.”

  “You mean they haven’t proven it, yet?”

  Bekwe glanced at Rhys. “I know what you say you experienced, Rhys, but I have to be honest here.” He turned back to the holo-column. “No, sir. They have not proven it to the satisfaction of this Administration.”

  “Then —”

  “However,” —he held up a restraining hand— “Professor Llewellyn is of the opinion that they are telling the truth. He... entered into, em, private negotiations with one of the Tsong Zee leaders and came away convinced of their sincerity.”

  “Sincerity isn’t a title to this planet, Governor. If they can’t do better than that—”

  “There’s a chance,” interjected Rhys quickly, riding a sudden wave of inspiration, “that they can. The form of negotiation Governor Bekwe mentioned may present a means by which the Tsong Zee can locate a particular artifact. An artifact which will prove their history to be more than fabrication. I beg the time to aid them in that.”

  Rhys felt for a moment as if the two pairs of eyes boring into him—one pair real, one holographic—would leave four neat, smoking little holes.

  “You’re volunteering to help the OROB? Any particular reason for this remarkable generosity?”

  “Justice. If this planet belongs to them —”

  “If it belongs to them, why aren’t they in possession of it?”

  “That’s a long story, Admiral. And there are any number of people who could share it with you. What I am asking, on behalf of the Tsong Zee, is the time and opportunity to prove that it does belong to them.”

  The Admiral’s eyes studied him long enough and unwaveringly enough to make him sweat. Wool is not comfortable when one is sweating and Rhys fought the unbearable urge to scratch such places as are not to be touched in company. He bit the inside of his lower lip.

  “I’d like to talk with this Mr. Beneton,” said Sanchez finally. “I assume you have him under arrest?”

  Joseph Bekwe nodded. “Quite definitely, Admiral. He won’t be making any more unauthorized TAS transmissions.”

  The Admiral’s brushy eyebrows swept upward.
“Always assuming he’s the only subversive you have to worry about. I wouldn’t be too certain that putting one man behind e-grid will restore order. If he’s got folks as scared as you say —”

  Bekwe grimaced. “Your point is well-taken, sir. How do you propose to speak to Mr. Beneton?”

  “I’d like to shuttle down. Just me and a handful of men. No weapons. Can you clear that with the OROB?”

  Bekwe glanced at Rhys, who shrugged. “We can but try,” he said.

  Admiral Sanchez faded from the column, leaving Bekwe and Rhys staring at a potted Terran evergreen.

  “I’d like to proceed, if I might, Governor,” Rhys said after a moment.

  Bekwe’s brow knit into a fabric of anxiety. “Rhys, the Admiral has a point about Beneton. He’s just one head of the BeneCon hydra. He hasn’t done all that —” He jerked his head toward the window behind them. “— all by himself. He’s got associates. He’s bribed at least one government employee—the Tsong Zee’s driver—and compromised another. I’m not sure I can guarantee your safety.”

  “I’m not asking you to.”

  Joseph Bekwe fell into his chair and rubbed a hand over his face. “Dear God, we stand to lose so much. All and any of us—Human and Tsong Zee.”

  “I’m hoping otherwise. I’m hoping we’ll actually gain from this... in a lot of ways.”

  “Care to clue me in?”

  “The Tsong Zee objection to sharing Velvet with us was that we’re... too different.”

  “You mean inferior.”

  Rhys inclined his head. “They believed, until today, that we were so alien as to be incapable of dealing in kind—trading places. They were wrong. I Traded with Javar and he with me. It wasn’t as successful a Trade as he might have done with a Tsong Zee, but that might be partly a function of inexperience on my part. I know that he came away with more of me than I did of him.”

  He didn’t mention that one of the things he came away with could change the entire complexion of the situation, and knew a gnawing guilt at the omission.