The Goda War

by Deborah Chester

  “He wastes a great gift,” Magstrus Pare said. “One which we need!”

  “Better to lose the use of that gift than to see it turned against us.”

  “Syllogisms!” snorted Magstrus Pare against the murmurs which rose around the council chamber. “He is a random factor which should be restrained. Or we shall all come to regret our leniency!”

  “We already do,” she murmured aloud, picking up an Obtar ruby box to see if she could find the trick of opening it. Puzzles were always mental exercises on Felca, designed to teach rather than to amuse. The confusion within her made it a relief to seek occupation for her hands.

  “Exquisite, isn’t it?” said a man’s voice in accented but fluent Held Formal.

  She turned in time to see the speaker step through a doorway where previously there had been only a wall of carved paneling. A panel closed silently behind him, and it was as though there had never been an opening at all. The opulent intricacies of Held culture did not distress her, but she was perhaps dismayed that so much energy should be devoted to the trivial. She put down the jewel.

  The man approaching her with an enormous, sleekly furred quadruped at his side was old-human. There were no physical or genetic differences between old-humans and newans. When the Held had encompassed this species centuries earlier, some had been able to adjust to the concept of there being other sentient life forms; others had elected to be placed in isolation. Thus, the Colonids had been shipped out to fringe worlds and cut off from Held culture. And now they had returned. The illogic of political idealisms did not interest her. But she eyed this man warily now, recognizing him at once from the holographs she had studied before coming. He was tall for his kind, with long flat bones. He had once been muscular, but now his body was soft beneath the tailored lines of his clothing. Jowls blurred his jawline, and his thick silver hair shone with almost metallic luster in the light from the glowtapes. He was Nls Ton, a man who had survived the tough climb from military service into the political arena. In his youth he had been known as Ton the Butcher.

  Something of that old cruelty still emanated along his mental projections. Although he wore, as did all Colonids, a device which protected his full mental patterns from being read, she could still pick up enough to warn her not to trust him. Power overlaid earlier patterns, but she could not keep herself from drifting slightly back in revulsion as he walked toward her.

  Again confusion distracted her. Could the magstrusi truly desire her to assist this man against one of their own kind? Brock is promadi, she reminded herself sternly and shook the distractions away.

  She was not an osmatic, but a sudden fear smell alerted her. Ton had stopped. The animal beside him blinked round tawny eyes. The tip of its striped tail twitched nervously. The false smile on Ton’s face faded. He stared at her.

  She realized with annoyance that she was drifting, subconsciously allowing herself to fade, and quickly corrected her appearance. He was afraid of her because she was not human.

  Deliberately she took a non-threatening position by sitting down. “You see?” she said in a soft voice designed on all tonal frequencies to be reassuring. “I am not really a spiritual apparition. I can sit on solid matter and not fall through.”

  The tense set of his shoulders relaxed slightly. He resumed the false smile, but behind it his eyes remained as wary as her own.

  “I am Governor Ton,” he said, coming no closer to her. His pet stretched itself out full-length on the floor with a yawn that revealed sizable fangs. “I understand you are here to assist us, Healer Ellisne. Forgive my suspicions, but why should you wish to do that? Felca is a full-fledged member of the Held. We are, therefore,” he said, baring his teeth in a delicate little smile, “enemies.”

  A stronger wave of distrust engulfed her. She closed it off, refusing to let emotions distract her at this moment when she needed all her senses alert.

  “Felca’s neutrality is well-known,” she said without inflection, speaking in perfect Imish. “And our healers visit the Imish Collective as frequently as they are permitted.”

  “To spy perhaps?”

  The monitor had moved imperceptibly closer. Ellisne avoided looking at it. She suspected the harsh, abrupt mannered Colonel Falmah-Al was watching this meeting through it. She wished she were dealing with the colonel directly. Falmah-Al dealt straight on. She did not layer every statement with subtle traps and altered meanings as the governor was attempting to do. Ellisne suddenly remembered that last moment with the promadi on the bridge, when he had been staring into her eyes, trying to convince her to believe his reasons. He intended to destroy her world. Why then was it so much harder to ally herself with Governor Ton, whose objectives were her own?

  “Sedkethrans are not spies, Governor Ton,” she said, her voice still containing reassurance. It did not seem to be having any effect upon him.

  “Your species is ideally suited for the job. My troops call you ghosts. How can we design surveillance protectors against ghosts?”

  “That does not change the facts.” She stared up at him. “You distrust my offer. Let me speak plainly. Felca is opposed to war in all its forms. Our dedication to the preservation of life leaves us no other position. Yet, because of the terrible escalation of hatred between your forces and those remaining within the Held, we fear goda weapons will be unleashed.”

  “Goda…excuse me. What sort of weapons?”

  His attempt at feigning ignorance was clumsy; Ellisne found herself becoming increasingly impatient with him.

  “I assure the governor that these terrible weapons are known to Imish military personnel. Perhaps the governor should seek information later from Colonel Falmah-Al.”

  The smile dropped from Ton’s face. His eyes flickered to the monitor hanging overhead. “Continue.”

  “The destruction would be terrible. Countless lives would be lost. Godas were built at the apex of Chaimu technology, and even at that time they were too frightening to contemplate using.”

  “Yet you have held them over us constantly as a threat! Do you know what it is like, Healer, to grow up under fear, never knowing if you live close to one of those weapons, never knowing when some Chaimu whim might detonate them?”

  She stared at him, longing to say yes and not daring to utter the word. “But you have ceased to fear them. You came—”

  “Yes, we came. Once we found out our worlds were not booby-trapped we came out! And we have won! We have beaten you!”

  She sat there with her hands folded in her sleeves, but her hands had become fists. He was toying with her, throwing war rhetoric at her to goad her into unwise words. Why?

  Couldn’t he understand what she was offering? She strove to uncurl her fists, and when calm was restored to her, she spoke into the silence:

  “We do not want the dire-lord to succeed in what he proposes.”

  “The dire-lord is a Sedkethran. So are you. Why betray him to us?”

  She suppressed a sigh. How many more times would he test her? “Brock is an outcast from Felca. Should he ever return to his home planet he would face severe punishment and retribution.” She paused a moment, then added, “Of course if I cannot be certain that we do indeed have the same objectives in this matter, and if I cannot have your assurance that the godas will be destroyed or rendered permanently inactive, then I will not help you.”

  Again a long silence stretched through the room. The animal began licking its paw with slow, self-absorbed swipes of its tongue. Ton clasped his hands at his back and began to walk slowly back and forth in front of her. He frowned as though seeking the right words.

  “I believe that our objectives are the same, if you are being truthful. However—” He paused, staring at her as she stiffened. “Healer? What is wrong?”

  She rose to her feet, rigid against that sharp burst of pain transmitted directly to her mind. The Disciplines came to her aid, numbing it, but she could hear the cry in her mind.

  “Healer Ellisne—”

 
“What are you doing?” she cried, turning fiercely on Ton.

  Flinching back, he drew a weapon, but she paid no heed.

  “You are torturing him, trying to make him talk! Are you mad? He will never tell you what you want to know. I can get you the information easily, painlessly. I have only to read his thoughts. I made you that offer openly, without tricks, and you still prefer to hurt—”

  “Stay where you are!” he said sharply. “We aren’t fools. Why should we trust you?”

  Fury scorched through her, rising up so strong even her inner reflexes could not hold it down. She glared at him. “Barbarian!” she shouted, and flicked to the detention center.

  As she materialized in the quarters she had been assigned, another burst of pain rocked her. She lifted both hands to her temples, locating Brock within the building, and flicked directly to his cell.

  The sight before her was appalling. For a moment she could only stare at the interrogation machine he was strapped to.

  “Where are the godas located?” blared a speaker overhead, startling her. A light blinked on the control bank of the machine, and Brock’s body jerked violently against the restraints. She reeled from his pain and braced herself, fighting her own immediate urge to grasp his arm and draw out his torment. But that wasn’t the way. She must first find out how to free him.

  “Where are the vaults containing the Held treasury?” blared the speaker. “How many Heldfleet ships escaped the battle? Where are the rebel bases located? Where are the godas?”

  The track cycled relentlessly. Brock lay there panting and limp, his wrists swollen and bloody from the jolts of power that threw him against his bonds. She was studying the control panel with desperate intensity when a relay clicked over and a different light flashed.

  “Method 7 ineffective,” announced the speaker. “Switching to Method 8. Mehedrine barbathol will be applied.” With a soft whir a panel opened in the central core of the machine and a hypo was extended.

  “No!” she cried and grabbed it from the robot arm.

  An alarm sounded with an ear-splitting whoop. “Intruder in Cell Nine. Warning. Warning. Intruder in Cell Nine.”

  She looked over her shoulder at the door, hearing the sound of running footsteps in the corridor. There wasn’t time to figure out the controls. But if she pushed the wrong one, something even more terrible might be done to him.

  “Brock!” She grasped his shoulder and shook it, steeling herself against the sensations which flooded across her empathy threshold. Grogginess, pain, disorientation…she pushed through them to reach him. “Brock! Tell me how to free you from this thing. Hurry! Brock!”

  His eyes swam open. He gasped, responding to her touch. “Left panel. The dial.”

  She pounced on it, and the straps released with loud clicks. There was a shout outside the cell door. It crashed open. She had never flicked another adult before, only children. She wasn’t sure if she could do it. But there was no more time. Ellisne grabbed Brock with both hands and flicked just as disruptor fire burned across her back.

  Her scream echoed after her through layers and layers of greyness. She spiralled dizzily, lost, not knowing where she was going, unable to grasp her senses enough to direct their impetus through interstitial time. Then through foggy mists of agony she felt Brock’s mind steady hers. He reached through her, became her, to guide them. And in that moment of oneness, there were no secrets on either side. She thought dimly, The magstrusi were wrong to punish him. He is not what they fear him to be.

  Then they were tumbling to the ground, safely back in the physical dimension once again. She landed on her knees and crouched there, gasping. It took a second before she became conscious enough of her surroundings to realize they were outside in the darkness of the night, buffeted by wind and slashing rain.

  “Ellisne?”

  His voice reached her faintly, muffled by the water drumming around them as though it meant to drown the world.

  “Ellisne?”

  She started as his lips brushed her ear, but she nodded this time in response.

  “Can you stand?”

  She nodded again, feeling oddly ashamed as his hands took her arm and steadied her. She was supposed to be helping him. “I am a poor rescuer.”

  “What?”

  “Nothing.” It was impossible to speak in such wild weather. Besides, she needed to conserve her energy.

  “This way.”

  He guided her along the street, weaving back and forth as they stumbled in unison, leaning on each other for support. His pain was fading; hers was stinging more and more fiercely. Gripping each other’s hands with flesh made slippery by the rain, they shared the discomfort, halving it, dissipating it by gradual degrees.

  “Here.”

  He pulled her suddenly to the left, and abruptly the rain was cut off. She could breathe again. She gasped, sinking down beneath the small shelter of a half-fallen structure, and wiped the water from her face. He crowded her, his body big and awkward in the small space. There was water beneath them, and she was beginning to shake as her body temperature dipped below even what was comfortable for a Sedkethran, but at the moment she was too grateful for the shelter they had found to find fault with it.

  “How bad is it?” asked Brock.

  She stiffened with a gasp as his fingers gently touched her back. “A graze, I think.”

  “I think so too. Otherwise you’d be down by now.”

  How matter-of-factly he spoke of being shot and cut down by weapons! Where had he learned such behavior? Why had he sought to learn it?

  “You changed sides a little late,” he was saying as she frowned at the water gushing over the edge of their shelter. “But just in time. Thank you.”

  “The Imish are fools,” she snapped, her anger returning. “I offered to obtain the information for them, and instead they tricked me. They are illogical brutes. It would have been painless, civilized—”

  “Suprin Utdi would have utilized your offer,” said Brock. “But you cannot expect Colonids to behave according to Held standards.”

  She bowed her head, ashamed to think she had made such a mistake. “The magstrusi expected it,” she said after a moment.

  “Magstrusi! Cuh!” He grunted an explosive Chaimu oath. “I hope you now see their blindness.”

  “I shall not speak against their wisdom as you do, with bitterness and hatred,” she said in rebuke. “I remain obedient to the Writings.”

  He hunched his shoulders. “And does that mean you intend to take me back to the Colonids as soon as the rain stops?”

  “No,” she said quietly, miserably torn by shame once again. Would he sense her lie?

  “You are thinking of Falmah-Al,” he said, his voice gritty. “You are thinking you can trust her even if Ton is treacherous. Who do you think ordered me placed on the interrogation machine?”

  “I am caught by a dichotomy,” she said, stung. “What they do is wrong, yet that is only because they are afraid. Their civilization is young, still half-savage. They exhibit many faults, but at least they understand that the goda destruction should not be unleashed. Brock, you must surrender this goal.”

  He was silent for so long she began to hope that finally the teachings of his youth were going to influence him. Surely he must see the truth of her argument. Surely he could put the sword out of his heart.

  “I held Suprin Utdi while he died, Ellisne,” he said at last.

  She gasped, appalled not only by the recklessness of such an action for one half-trained, but also by a greater fear. What had he seen in sharing death? What had he dared reach for?

  “That’s very dangerous—”

  “I know.” He shifted and she felt his eyes staring at her through the darkness. A thousand nuances seemed to play through those two words. “But I loved him as a father. I could not deny him, not even to obey my fear, not even to save the few things Sedkethran which I still honor.”

  She sat stunned by what he was revealing. Magstrus Pare
’s fears were true! Brock was daring to reach for the unattainable. We are not permitted to evolve, she wanted to say. Instead, she stumbled over the accusation and said, “Parents are put aside at Change. Why do you constantly seek to regress, promadi?”

  He laughed softly. It was a peculiar sound that startled and affronted her. Sedkethrans did not laugh; he was deliberately seeking to provoke her.

  “Regress?” he echoed. “Must you twist everything to fit the narrow restrictions set upon your mind?”

  “I have completed the training of a healer,” she said stiffly. “I have entered the round chamber of the magstrusi, and when I have learned the full measure of all the Writings then I shall—”

  “—aspire to be a mystic,” he finished. “Perfect. Your mind runs along each groove set for it in exact order. They must be very pleased with your progress.”

  She drew herself up. “Yes, I—” She stopped, suddenly aware that he was mocking her. Anger struck her sharply below the atrox.

  “Yes, indeed. That is why you were sent here as a control, isn’t it?”

  She felt robbed of breath. He wasn’t on that level. He wasn’t supposed to be able to discern such things!

  “But I can, Healer,” he said with anger. “Do the magstrusi truly believe that just because I fled the round chamber all those years ago I have remained frozen at that point? Do they truly delude themselves, hoping that I have learned nothing further on my own?”

  “Self-training is not permitted. It is error.”

  Again he laughed. “Of course it is.” He seized her wrist with such roughness she cried out. “Why won’t you listen? Why won’t you see? You’ve had enough training to know that we are nothing more than Chaimu creations—”

  “Blasphemy,” she whispered, her lips trembling at the magnitude of his error. She longed to tell him the truth, but managed to seal off the impulse. It was better if he did not know. She sought a way to move him farther along the wrong path.