No names for the children. I’d heard they aren’t given names until they reach sexual maturity, though they have nicknames for each other.
Sarah said, “No male children?” Good. Curiosity drawing her out.
Shrêhht regarded her levelly for a moment, then said, “We sell them all, dear.”
Pang of uneasiness. Where had Shrêhht learned to speak with such human condescension? From me? From all of us. To her, humanity was divided into two classes, soldiers and burdars.
She said, “We’ve gone to great expense to import a supply of human food for you, my friend! I hope you appreciate the result...”
o0o
Midnight on Kkhruhhuft.
Sarah and I lying together in a vast, oblong padded nest meant for a single Kkhruhhuft, a nest dug into the stone floor of a room the size of a small hangar, huge unglazed windows open to the darkness, wind blowing in stirring the gauze tented over our bed, lifting the curtains out from the wall, dark rippling in currents of air.
I remembered lying with Alix in a room filled with my childhood artifacts, watching my mother’s hand-made curtains blow just like this.
Sarah sleeping, huddled against my side, mouth open slightly, face like a child. Sarah wanting to talk and talk, overexcited by the newness of it all, the barbaric splendor of this place and its people, the very words she used, to my surprise. Pausing while we made love, growing feverish in my arms, crying out as sunset flamed in the sky. Then talking again, asking me about the Kkhruhhuft and their place in the universe. Finally asking me for stories about the Invasion.
So strange to imagine that. Here was a sexually mature human woman, more or less an adult, who’d never known that old world. Never sat an enraptured child, before a long weekend of interactive 3V. Nothing to prepare her soul for a life of adventure between the stars. Nothing but reality.
Hard, too, to make a connection between the excited, chattering girl, the angelic sleeping child, and the female thing I’d had kneeling before me on the bed, looking down on her exposed primate rump, ready for me and waiting.
I disengaged from her sleeping arms, tucked a silk-like sheet around her, brought it up under her chin, smoothed her rough-feeling hair with my hand, listened to the whisper of her breathing. Stood finally and went out through the gauze, found a pair of boots, put on my long, hooded terrycloth robe, walked out through the open arch of the doorway into night.
Stars overhead, thousands of stars, stars in unfamiliar patterns, patterns whose names I’d never know. The steady wind was cool, playing with the front of my robe, blowing it open around my legs, and there were faraway sounds. The loud rattle-rustle of the low vegetation, something moaning softly from the river, a dark shape floating by Shrêhht’s waterfront, the oily slop of the water itself.
Black mountains in the distance, jagged peaks blotting out stars near the edge of the world. Night air so hard and clear. No haze. No clouds. Without the wind, it might have been an airless world.
A peaceful tension in me.
A sharp awareness of myself.
One long, happy moment.
I could stand forever like this.
Flash. White light dazzling my eyes. Flash. Flash. Light spilling up from some mountain valley, picking out the peaks around it for just a moment, lighting their craggy edges against the black of the sky. I blinked and let my night vision return. Waited for more. Nothing. Just a reminder that I’m not alone in this world.
Climbed up on the low wall surrounding the place, something a Kkhruhhuft could step over with ease, walked along the river front, up toward where the wall turned inland, where a little spit of sand went out into the river, like a little detached beach.
Someone down there in the starlit darkness, gray Kkhruhhuft shapes not quite in shadow. Two females nuzzling close to one another, whispering soft cadences of untranslated growling. Little yearning sounds, tiger-like, with a delicate, almost whiny undertone. Shrêhht, I realized, and Zváiroq. A world of meaning in that term house-mate. The two of them down there now twisting around each other like lovesick cats, nuzzling here, nuzzling there. Shrêhht’s breath suddenly chuffing loud as Zváiroq did something particularly right...
I sat quietly on the wall and watched them make love.
o0o
Daylight, Kkhruhhuft’s sun hard and bright overhead, Shrêhht and I standing together on a crag in the mountains I’d seen flashing in the night, which she called the Arriôt Hills, looking down on a broad, bowl-shaped valley. Sarah had been a little upset to be left alone, back at Hánáq, left in the care of Zváiroq, whose vocoder was a much simpler, smaller model than the one hanging off Shrêhht. As we walked away, they were standing together on the patio, and I heard Sarah call her Zvai...
The valley below was filled with tall, thick-trunked trees, obviously the same sort of trees from which Shrêhht’s rafters had been hewn, stout, red-bodied boles with short stubby branches covered with hard, shiny brown leaves, a narrow, silvery stream winding among them, splashing down from a cliff-front spring.
There were several armored Kkhruhhuft down there, working beside one of the large trucks, it bed-doors swung open to reveal what appeared to be a well-equipped machine shop, welding beams asparkle, glaring and hard to look at even in daylight.
She said, “I hadn’t intended to conduct any business while you were here, there are so many interesting things to do and business is all we conduct... out there. But I thought you might be interested in this.”
“I saw those flashes last night. Handbox weapons?”
Featureless eyes regarding me silently, the she said, “Among other things.”
“Cannon?”
Her head dipped to one side. “First re-delivery was just a few days ago. We were taken by surprise.”
“Trouble?”
“There’s nothing on the Net. No word from up in the Hierarchy. I don’t think so.”
So the Master Race, which had taken back its guns when the Xú were finished, was handing them back out again. “Human Spahis? Saanaae?”
“I... don’t know. You haven’t been in service very long. Not the Saanaae, certainly. So far, it’s just us and the Sinnott.”
Sinnott were one of the few species reliably rumored to have been attached to the Master Race longer than the Kkhruhhuft. Not quite the same sort of mercenaries. Far fewer in number. Brought in when a need was felt for very tough shock troops indeed. Unprepossessing as Hell, like little black spiders the size of big dogs. They were the ones who’d dropped on Kkhruhhuft, seventeen thousand years ago.
I said, “Where do you suppose the older races go?”
She looked at me. “Die out maybe. Tired. Old. Used up. Displaced.” She looked down at the flaring torches of the armorers, and said, “No one really believes the myth of the Master Race Eternal. Sinnott said, when they found us, they’d been in service for maybe ten millennia. Said they’d been taken by a species my that much older again, people calling themselves the Raighn, now gone...”
Thirty-seven thousand years ago? That was back when fully modern humans were first getting well-established, not long before the gentle holocaust of the Chatelperonian would push the last Neanderthals aside. Where do the old races go?
I said, “At the rate they’ve been moving, wouldn’t take them much longer than that to spread across the whole galaxy.”
“No. No much longer than that.”
We went on down then, to take a look at the new weapons, watch skilled Kkhruhhuft artificers, body painted with the special devices and sigils of their own honored caste, integrating them permanently into Kkhruhhuft combat armor. I wonder why they’re doing this. Well, when I got back I’d see if they were giving them to humans as well, or just to time-honored trustees like the Kkhruhhuft and Sinnott.
o0o
Another dark time, far up in the windswept passes of some much higher mountains, night air cold all around us. Shrêhht’s breath was a vast cloud of steam pounding from her mouth, jetting from her nostrils. Sh
e had an atlatl and heavy spear in one clawed hand, shaft a good ten centimeters in diameter, head of some glassy, obsidian-like stone, bright starlight glittering off its facets. In her other hand she was holding Vshât on a short leash, fat brown duck hopping from one wide foot to another, borking softly to himself, shivery with excitement.
Shrêhht rattling his chain earlier, as we’d set out on the trail, hours ago, just as the sun set bright orange behind the mountains, hissing laughter, keying her vocoder and saying, “Keep the cute little bastard out of trouble...”
Startling growl in the distance, deep, heavy, like a big diesel engine at idle. Sudden, angry “...warkwarkwark...” of those other males. Closing in. Teasing the damned thing.
I put the stirrup of my old-fashioned windlass crossbow on the ground, wound up against its four-hundred-kilogram pull, snapped the massive quarrel into place, locked it down. Looked at Sarah, bundled up in a heavy white parka, starkly visible in the darkness, impossible to lose, face lost in shadow, only her eyes glittering from inside the hood, breath a faint flag of moisture in the cold.
“Stay close,” I said.
“Don’t worry.” Voice hardly audible.
“...WARKwarkwarkwark...” commotion in the distance, Vshât squirming by Shrêhht’s side, whining, pulling on the chain, borking away like mad. But in a whisper. Smart enough to know he didn’t want that growling thunder to come his way.
I’d been surprised when Shrêhht’s retainers brought out those other males in coffle, not much bigger than Vshât and his brothers, but leaner, meaner, stronger, starved-looking, bodies corded with muscle. Voices deeper, sharper. Hard, angry brown ducks.
The thing in the distance screamed, sharp, rising in pitch, like a cornered Siberian tiger, echoed by a sudden squeal, brown duck in agony, and “...WARKWARKWARK!!!” Another agonized scream, a quick yelp, a metallic whine, this time from our cornered friend.
Shrêhht said, “Let’s go...” dragging Vshât on the end of his leash.
When Sarah saw it, she said, “Oh, fuck.” Voice flat. Stunned.
It wasn’t really all that big. Not even as big as Shrêhht. But still. Shining violet eyes, like fiery holes in the darkness. White fangs that seemed to glow with a light of their own. Black claws. Humped, muscular back, crouching over the corpse of a dead brown duck, yellow blood streaming from a gash in one flank.
Rabble of ducks around it, going “...warkwarkwark...” Dashing forward, cowering back. Daring the thunder of its growl.
The ducks, at least, seemed happy.
Shrêhht put her husband’s chain under one foot, anchoring him in place, said, “On three...”
She counted, we fired, thud of missiles striking home, howl of angry despair, then the ducks closed in.
o0o
Later, the campfire crackled, midnight air filling with the petroleum smell of cooking alien meat, Shrêhht’s retainers coming forward to butcher the dead beast, limbs rotating in the flames, spit turned by some unpainted servant. Sarah and I sat a little to one side, while our field rations heated over the little camp stove we’d brought along.
It was hot near the big fire, stones sweating around us, naked Kkhruhhuft basking in red firelight, turning first one side, then the other to the flames.
“You let the heat accumulate inside,” said Shrêhht, “and it can last you ‘til dawn.” She was squatting beside little Vshât, feeding him crisp gobbets of cooked fat, patting him on the head between times, almost cooing as he sat up prettily to beg. “... later, little one. Ah, there’s always later...”
The other males were back in their coffle, staked down a short distance from the fire, eyes glowing in its light, gobbling hot, raw entrails from big stone bowls the retainers had set out for them, growling in their throats, snapping at each other.
Retainers watching them, hissing, shoving each other good-naturedly. Saying things to that made Shrêhht laugh, but nothing we could understand, nothing anyone would translate.
Sarah handed me a packet of steaming lasagna, a can of hot chocolate, and Shrêhht said, “One those things really smells odd.”
I held out my meal and let her sniff.
“The beverage, I think.”
Sarah said, “I don’t see how anyone could smell anything, with all this gasoline stink...”
Getting bold, my little one... She said, “Why didn’t you bring Zvai along? I like her.”
Silence from Shrêhht, then, “Zváirog? She would not be happy here. It’s not the sort of thing... her kind enjoys.”
Her kind.
“Besides which...” Shrêhht slid to the ground, lying on her side, looking at us, and pulled Vshât against her belly. He curled up in a fat little ball, purring softly, a ridiculous sound, a Donald Duck snore.
o0o
Still later, stars overhead, fire dying down, retainers retired to a game of some kind, sitting huddled in a circle beyond the fire, snarling softly to each other. Males quiet now, collapsed in a dark heap, sated with food. Sarah and I finished with our meal, reclining against a rock, still warm from the fire, radiating its heat on us. Shrêhht curled up around her little husband.
She said, “Very far away, the Masters’ empire now. Far away, all those ancient battles...”
And newer battles as well, the ones we joined together. Familiar stars overhead. Painfully familiar. No star visible in this sky that had not belonged to the Master Race since humans huddled in caves and waited for the glaciers to recede, or wandered the pluvial plains of Africa, living in little huts of stick and grass.
I thought of Solange, growing up by the edge of some vast mountain range, growing up on the desert those plainsmen had left behind. I had a moment of longing, wishing she could be here instead of Sarah.
Shrêhht said, “Sometimes I dream of what it might have been like, had there been no Master Race.”
An easy dream to dream. But useless. “Where would the Kkhruhhuft be now?”
Hiss of amusement. “No more than right here, my friend. When the Sinnott came, Hánáq was already an old city. We had our weapons of glass and our cities of stone, our beasts of burden, our crops and our males,” she ran her delicate wrist tendrils over Vshât’s back, watching him stir and preen. “What more could anyone have wanted?”
I gestured at the sky overhead. “Humans already had those when you folks showed up.”
“So did the Saanaae.”
I said, “Do you feel bad about the Xú?”
“Should I? There are a few of them left. Maybe they’ll go hunting with us, one day.”
“Maybe so.” I could picture a Xú here. Or a Saanaa. People with whom I could form a friendship. Like my friendship with Shrêhht. Like my friendship with Solange. I remembered Marsh suddenly. Marsh and Sandy, gone to cold graves.
She said, “The Xú have nothing to be ashamed of. That’s more important than... some other things.”
Maybe so. The warrior’s credo. Not something a soldier ought to believe. I said, “So why are the Kkhruhhuft still here?”
No answer.
o0o
Still later, the fire had slumped to a dimly-glowing heap of sullen red coals, the smell of burning oil faded away to a faint alien tang.
I lay huddled in my sleeping bag, holding Sarah clutched to my naked chest, buttocks settled against the tops of my thighs, my hand down on her lower abdomen, drifting in and out of her pubic hair, reaching lower, feeling the moistness of her, drifting away, back again, teasing.
Mostly, we were watching Shrêhht. Shrêhht and her little Vshât. She had him pinned now, rolled onto his back, little brown duck peering out from under her in the night, moon-eyed, gasping softly, “...borkborkbork...” to himself, something like blood-red foam gathering between them.
I pushed Sarah’s legs a little bit apart, reached between them and pulled my erect penis forward so it could rub in the wet.
“BORK!”
Like a scream from Vshât, suddenly struggling under the heavy weight of his wife, Shrêh
ht growling now like an angry lioness, grinding down on him hard.
“BORK!”
Irritated little murmur of “...warkwarkwark...” from those other males, chained together in the darkness.
I could feel Sarah shaking against me, trying to smother her own giggles, holding one hand over her mouth.
“Shh,” I said. “You’ll bother them...”
“I can’t help it, Athy. They look so damned silly...”
Shrêhht was collapsed on top of her man now. We heard a smothered bork or two from Vshât, then they were silent.
Nineteen. Another Night on Kkhruhhuft
Another night on the world of the Kkhruhhuft, another night up in the mountains, in a warmer clime now, standing on a high plateau not far from some scummy equatorial sea, night wind washing us with its summery breath, carrying a scent of flowers, but no flower-scent I’d ever met before. A sharp, acrid, sweet smell, the better-living-through-chemistry smell of ersatz pheromones, of perfume tailored to leach a man’s will.
Shrêhht and I and a few others, painted Kkhruhhuft all, soldiers from her garrison, officers I thought, stood on the edge of a black abyss, a deep canyon cut down through ages of solid stone, a Grand Canyon-like place that would have looked splendid by daylight.
Zváiroq and Sarah were left behind at the encampment, though we’d brought them along on other outings, all the little males as well. Just us. Just soldiers. This was, so Shrêhht told me, a special sort of thing.
Overhead, the stars were thick and bright, like swarms of glittering fireflies, gathered thickly in one part of the sky, less so in the other. Kkhruhhuft is far enough from the galactic plane that the Milky Way loses its definition, spreading out, diffuse, over half the sky. In recompense, the galactic core begins to be visible, a vast knot of bright stars, dusty and reddish looking, painted against a thick slice of night.
Now, Shrêhht stood beside me in the almost silence, wind whispering behind us, so close I could smell the faint, oily sharpness of her scaly skin, other Kkhruhhuft pressing in close beside us, behind us, crowding close to the edge of the canyon.
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