Battleground (16 page)

He was not interested. He said nothing.

Hanna had never imagined having to search for a topic of conversation at a first contact. Puzzled, she said, “We can discuss that, if you wish. I requested this meeting partly to find out what you might want to tell and ask us. Do you want to ask me or tell me any particular thing?”

“The not-Soldier female I knew in that other place—does she survive?”

“No,” Hanna said, thinking the question, out of all those he might have asked, an odd one. The irrepressible Mi-o, dead more than a century, kept inserting herself in the present. “Our lives are short compared with yours. Hers was long, for our kind in that place and time—” Hanna hesitated, decided Soldiers were unlikely to care about human A.S. treatments, and went on. “She had eighty summers. But she did not survive.”

“Did she die in battle? I saw no fighting there.”

“There was none. There has never been any fighting there. Not-Soldiers almost always prefer stalemate to active war.”

He understood the words of that last statement—as words; what they meant together utterly escaped him. She almost saw them wing past the great ears and away.
No context,
she thought.

“How was it,” she said, “that Soldiers went to a world of my people? It's clear from their records that war was not your intention.”

The upper eyes opened again. She saw no other change in his face, but she felt his mind race. Searching for the memory.

He said slowly, “It was an experiment. There was no war then . . .”

He was silent for so long that she prompted, “Why did war cease for a time?”

The continents melted to flowing rock . . .

The quickest of visions. Hanna shook her head, shaking it off.

“You remember the molten lands,” she said. “Do you remember what happened after that?”

Later she would know that was her first mistake on Battleground. Even then she wished instantly that she could take back the last words, because she saw questions form in Kwoort's mind, as startled and sudden as an alarm:
How does the not-Soldier know of the weapon we used? And how does the not-Soldier know I forget?
She said quickly, “We cannot aid you in war. Knowing that, will you allow us to stay? Prookt Commander did not seem to find us—interesting. He does not care if we stay or go, I think.”

“It does not matter what Prookt thinks,” Kwoort said. “The Holy Man desires that you stay for a time. She will desire it even more after this meeting.”

“That is our desire as well,” Hanna said; and now she wanted to end the interview as quickly as she could, because she saw Kwoort focused like a laser on her slip of the tongue. How could she have—

How could you be so stupid
, Bella said—

“The Holy Man,” Kwoort added, “hopes to obtain new weapons from not-Soldiers.”

She tried another way of saying
No
.

“Kwoort Commander, I do not think we have any weapons that you do not have, or could not build, if you know how to manipulate the forces of the quantum reality, and to travel the stars as we do.”

All Kwoort's features rippled. “Wherever there is something new, there will be a new weapon,” he said. “We hoped to find something in the monstrous vessel orbiting that other world, larger than any vessel we thought could be built, but we could not proceed with our plan to remove it. We did not have enough power; we could not take it and generate enough power for our return.”

He remembered that, all right. The wind blew harder; Hanna raised her voice a little. “There were no weapons on that monstrous vessel, host.”

“Knowledge is a weapon,” he said. “What knowledge do you have, guest, that might become a weapon? You say you studied Soldiers from space, but I think you may have a surveillance system previously unknown. Such a system could be a weapon, you must agree.”

There was another gust of wind, strong as a physical push. It was time she left for
Endeavor.
Before he began to equate “surveillance system” with telepathy.

“I am recalled to my spacecraft, Kwoort Commander.”

Kwoort Commander said in that language so pleasing to the human ear, “Very well. We will talk again. And I will hope to hear about new forms of surveillance.”

E
VERYBODY WANTED TO HEAR
about it—Hope Metra said—and called a c
onference. It was not enough that every word had been transmitted to
Endeavor
; they wanted to know what Hanna thought—Metra said. Hanna found that Metra lied. They just wanted to talk about it without end, this meeting between the telepath (her report suspect, needing to be dissected and corrected and revised) and the nonhuman Commander. Why had she said such-and-such? Why hadn't she said thus-and-so instead? They wanted to critique, that was what they wanted, Metra most of all, but Kit Mortan was not far behind.

Hanna said as little as possible, and Bella, at her side, said nothing. Neither did Kaida Aneer, who thought (but did not say) that Hanna had been splendid. Hanna doodled, a habit of Jameson's she had picked up to see her through conferences, which she disliked. His doodles were precise geometrics. Hanna drew trees and flowers. She had no artistic talent and the trees and flowers might not be recognizable to anyone else, but she liked them. Jameson was present at this conference because he could not be left out, but only partially; his head and shoulders appeared near the head of the table more or less life-size and more or less at the right altitude; he was in space, traveling to Heartworld, and there was a malfunction in his spacecraft's holo systems. Andrella Murphy appeared to be with him, but her image was fully formed and three-dimensional, and so was Adair Evanomen's. Like Bella, Evanomen did not speak. Metra and her officers were voluble, but Jameson and Murphy were not, though when they did speak it was to the point. Hanna could not say that about anyone else. Dema was not even visible, her voice patched in from the crèche where she and her companions were working. Hanna was also aware of her telepathically, and knew that Dema had begun to feel, after hours in the crèche, that the underground spaces were closing in on her.

It was Jameson—when the critics had begun repeating themselves—who said, “The salient point seems to be that Kwoort Commander should be our contact until and unless we can gain access to the Holy Man. Hanna, please pursue further contacts with Kwoort. Try to work your way through him to his superior. Secondly, Prookt consented to the original team's current visit without difficulty, but he has authorized a lower-ranking officer to be his contact with Captain Metra, and this officer balked when he was asked if other teams could come to the surface. See if Kwoort will be more receptive to our landing more personnel.

“There is one caveat.” He said it without emphasis, but Hanna knew his voice better, probably, than anyone else alive, and she looked up quickly from the image she had just mutilated. “I don't like Kwoort's notion that we have a capability that could be a useful tool for war. It seems he might suspect the existence of telepathy.”

Hanna had confessed uneasiness at her reference to something she should not have known. None of the others had paid much attention. It was typical of Jameson to see the hazards of that single slip.

“It would take more than one incident for him to think of it,” Hanna said. “He would have to have a background of knowledge that admits the possibility of telepathy to come to that conclusion, unless it happened several times. I think technology was at the back of his mind.”

“Avoid the whole subject, if you can. We weren't planning to keep telepathy a secret in the long run, but we might have to, and certainly for the present. I don't want Kwoort focused on it, or God forbid, thinking seizure of a telepath would be the equivalent of capturing a weapon. We'll amend mission protocol with a formal directive that no one is to refer to it in any way until further notice.”

“That will diminish my people's usefulness—”

Hanna broke off. She had felt a ripple of anxiety from Dema.

“Will they be of any use at all?” Metra said to Hanna. Her voice implied that she doubted it.

“Just a—wait, Dema. I think we'll be safe enough if we restrict ourselves to passive observation, but we'll be much less effective—”

H'ana!
Dema was almost frantic now.

“What, Dema?”

Dema gave it to Hanna in one powerful burst: her direct declaration to a Warrior that she could perceive thought.

Hanna said softly, “All right. Repeat that, please. In words. Dema, you didn't do anything wrong. Go ahead, please. Tell them.”

Dema said, “We wanted to start asking direct questions, telepathically, of one of the females, so I explained what we were going to do. We practiced a little so she could get used to it—questions like, how many Soldiers have you given birth to? What is this one's name? We've only asked simple, innocuous questions so far. But she knows exactly what we can do and what it feels like when we're doing it.”

Murphy said, “Just the one?”

“So far, yes.”

“So this female is the only being on the entire planet who knows this.”

Every head in the room swiveled in Murphy's direction. Hanna saw Jameson nod thoughtfully.

Will they discuss assassination later? When no one else can hear . . . ?

If they did he would not tell her about it. There would be other things he would not tell her about as the powers and decisions of a commissioner's role embraced him once again. He would even share control of Intelligence and Security, with its reputation for ruthlessness: I&S, which still pressed for Adjusting Hanna even though Uskos had intervened.

He can be ruthless, and I have watched that part of him gain strength this last year . . .

She was better at governing her expression than most telepaths, but when Jameson looked at her he hesitated perceptibly before he spoke. But his own expression did not change, and his gaze was impersonal.

He said, “You'll stop direct communication by telepathy, of course. Dema, if the female questions it, you don't have to give a reason. These people call themselves Soldiers, think of themselves as Soldiers, have built a military society. They appear to be good at taking orders.”

Hanna was watching him recede, drifting away through a lonely future. She said with an effort, “Dissension does not exist, from what I've seen. Mostly they don't even think about the orders they carry out.”

“Then if the woman questions you, Dema, simply tell her to forget it. Would she confide in anyone, do you think? A spouse, for example?”

Dema said hesitantly, “Oh, spouse. There's a male who might be her mate, or one of her mates—we haven't even gotten started on that. Whatever they have is not—I don't think it's
anything
like human relationships. I can't even give you a glimmer of what it is.”

Jameson said, “Try to find out if she is on emotionally intimate terms with that male or anyone else. Do you have any sense of that?”

“My impression is that she isn't, with him or anyone; far from it. But I just don't know.”

sounds familiar,
said the ghost, suddenly at Hanna's shoulder.

of course . . . touching a mind so strange there are no referents . . .

he was good to us,
said the ghost, changing the subject.
good for us

for a while. only a while

“If
you can find out, using only translators and passive observation, we need to know. Urgently,” Jameson said. “If there is nothing else? No? We'll issue the directive about telepathy at once. Captain, please see to it that all personnel are notified without delay. Hanna, you'll report immediately if you or any of your team have information on whether or how far this knowledge might spread on Battleground.”

He looked at Murphy, who shook her head. Jameson said, “Endit.”

K
WOORT COMMANDER WAS AWAY
from Rowtt again.

“Is the Commander often calle
d to unexpected battles?” Hanna asked Prookt Commander from a station in Communications. She had not been relegated to a lesser officer as Metra had, and Metra regarded it as a personal insult. Hanna's favored status presumably was Kwoort's doing, by order or influence.

“Often, yes. His rank is high. He is second only to the Holy Man.”

“I wish to meet with him again if he returns,” Hanna told Prookt.

“Very well. I will so inform Kwoort Commander.”

And Hanna had to be satisfied with that, to the disgruntlement of the scientists aboard
Endeavor
, who reminded her of animals at an exotic zoo as feeding time approached. All that knowledge waiting down there! All those questions to ask, specimens to examine, discoveries (and reputations) to be made! They were viciously jealous of Dema and Parker and Mercado, who moved to a second crèche and then a third. They clamored for the team to undertake work for which they were not qualified, studies in—everything: engineering, physiology, archaeology, botany—botany? How, when they were confined to multilayered subbasements? It was Metra's job to refuse them, not Hanna's, to Hanna's profound relief.

The team was overloaded as it was, holding to Rowtt's diurnal cycle and using stimulants to override their bodies' demands (and counteragents to override the stimulants so they could sleep in the intervals on
Endeavor).
Parker and Mercado showed no ill effects, but Dema rejected the stimulant after the first trial—“I felt
strange
. Distant. Fuzzy,” she said obscurely—and somehow kept operating in a haze of exhaustion. Hanna was not in much better shape, awake and available whenever the team was on Battleground. And some of the scientists managed to bypass Metra and get their demands through to her.

“Theology,” she said to Jameson wearily. “I don't know whose idea that was. There aren't any theologians aboard.”

“It might be helpful to have one.” It seemed that he meant to say more, but she was too tired to care, and did not ask about what he might mean to say next.

“I guess that would make somebody happy, but I don't know who! Endit,” she said. Prematurely, as she soon found out.

She did not bring up the fate of the Warrior who knew about telepathy, either. Presumably the Warrior was still in the original crèche, nursing successive broods. If she had spoken to anyone else about the not-Soldiers' strange way of communicating, Hanna did not hear about it from Prookt.

•   •   •

Days passed, and still Prookt Commander did not cooperate. Hanna repeatedly
asked permission for other teams to go to the surface, and she requested meetings between Battleground experts in many fields and their human counterparts. Prookt Commander was not hostile, merely indifferent (and maybe lazy). When Hanna tried more insistently to get him to stir from immobility, he said something that translated infuriatingly to “By and by, perhaps.” Accustomed as Hanna was to being in space, she was not used to staying on board a ship when there was a habitable planetary surface down there. Like Dema, she felt walls closing in.

After a week of this, the Soldiers in Rowtt's equivalent of Communications began to inform Hanna that Prookt was not available to speak with her. On the other hand, she decided, no one had said she could not simply go to Rowtt and make her way to the Commanders' headquarters by herself. Perhaps Prookt had not thought to issue orders prohibiting it.

Hanna flew to Rowtt in the same pod she had used before. Metra, wanting results, agreed to notify Rowtt that she was coming only after her departure from
Endeavor
. Hanna made no effort to notify Jameson. She didn't want
him
prohibiting it.

•   •   •

A figure stood on the field exactly where she had first landed and did not
move as she circled before touching down. One of the Soldiers Prookt commanded? She reached out, a gossamer touch that ought to be imperceptible to its object, and knew at once who it was. She whipped the pod around the figure—an unnecessary flourish—completed the landing, and went out to Kwoort Commander. The air felt electric; the climatologist had predicted storms and Hanna had timed her arrival to get there before them.

No formal greetings this time. She said, “Prookt Commander told me you were away.”

“I returned a short time ago,” he said. “Prookt did not at once report your recent requests. But I was with him when he received word of your approach. He could not avoid telling me of your possible motive.”

“Prookt Commander,” Hanna said, “is being obstructionist.”

Obstructionist
was an excellent word. It translated almost one-for-one between human and Battleground tongues.

“Prookt is very young,” said Kwoort.

“At three hundred and fifty-four summers?”

“He is also somewhat slow. But he has survived.”

Hanna looked thoughtfully at Kwoort. The sky was overcast and a haze obscured the field, some of it dust kicked up by her flashy landing. Kwoort's face, in the featureless gray light, appeared dimmed. Hanna attempted no probe. Still, something seemed to settle in her bones: a sense of long, stretched, time.

“Kwoort Commander,” she said, “what is it like to live for so long a time? The oldest of my kind survive only a fraction of the summers you yourself now have. What is it like, looking at lives so short?”

“They are flares, they are flashes,” he said, and he said it dismissively. “Do you think yourself exceptional? If you are, perhaps your life will blaze like a meteorite across the night sky—but it will last no longer. Most are like sparks from a fire in the night.”

“How does Prookt appear to you, then?”

“An ember,” Kwoort said. “Enduring, but with little light.”

“And you?”

“I? I burn.”

Something leaped out of him, a desperation he held tightly to himself and could not know she saw. Her breath caught.

Kwoort Commander said, “I will instruct Prookt to make all the arrangements you desire.”

“I note your intention,” Hanna said. “And might you and I talk of long life? I believe you would show human beings a perspective we have never known before.”

“Another time,” he said. “I am not at liberty this hour.”

“Survive, host,” she said, turning back toward the pod, deciding that at their next meeting she would probe this being's thoughts mercilessly, relying on her skill to stay hidden.

She looked back when he said, “A request.” Literally, order-with-option-to-refuse. “Disable your translation device.”

“Why, Kwoort Commander?”

“I wish you to say your name and then I will say it back to you. You will know how it is heard here.”

Oddly uneasy, she did as he asked. He said:
“Haknt . . .”

The first syllable was a brutal outrush of breath, the second a dull click. She had heard her name on other alien tongues, and it had never sounded so unspeakably strange. For a moment she went quite still.

Then she reactivated the translator and said again, “Survive, host.”

“Survive, guest.”

She knew he watched her until the pod disappeared in the overcast, and that he thought of her for some time after.