Battleground (35 page)

It was a coincidence that finally gave it to me. A Soldier came again who had been sent to me at an earlier time, after more than forty summers had passed. He had been badly wounded the first time, near the end of the years when my orders were to spend more time fixing than killing, and in order to restore his lung to partial functioning I had had to remove much damaged tissue. One portion of this was an organ that is seated next to and almost behind the lung, but which has no obvious function. It is only an irregular lump of flesh, no larger than the first joint of the thumb, about the same shape, a dull yellow in color. Because of its location there is rarely an opportunity to find out what happens if this organ is removed. An injury severe enough to damage or destroy it is almost always an injury that damages the lung or a heart or all of them together, and causes death. This Soldier had not died, because of my skill. And his injury the second time was not serious. This was my good fortune, because in that year, if he had been dangerously wounded, his surviving fellow Soldiers would have killed him before they left the scene of battle. The population had made up for those lost when the great weapon was used, and again preserving balance was the determining criterion, though I did not understand that was the reason until I came to This Place. But he did not die this time either, and when he reminded me that I had fixed him before, I remembered him with my other eyes, and I remembered everything I had done then.

I said it was good that he had had more summers to survive, and that he had remained in health for so long. He said he was in health well enough, but he missed mating. He said that his time had never again come on him, that he had not since felt the desire to breed. But this Soldier had suffered no injuries to the organs of reproduction.

It came to me as if a great light shone out what the answer must be. It came to me as instantly and completely as if the Soldier had said it to me aloud. I cannot describe that moment. I stood there and looked at him. He did say something, talking I think of the pleasures he missed, for which he considered the immense labor of the crèche small return, but his speech seemed to come from a great distance away.

I hurried him out and walked back into my rooms in a daze. Could it be so simple after all?

I looked, then, among those who came to me, for Soldiers and Warriors with injuries that would give me the chance to remove that organ from them. I thought I would do that and then follow them all the rest of their lives or mine, follow them without ceasing regardless of my own survival, to see what happened.

But only severe injury would give me that opportunity, and as I have said, that time again was one in which those severely injured were left to die or were killed. I had myself come to an age when the cycle had slowed. But it would be many summers before it stopped altogether, and so I decided to attempt the surgery on myself.

I am old, I come to the change. But here in This Place where it is safe to say these things, I will write down exactly what I did—

•   •   •

“The courage . . .” Gabriel murmured

Hanna slumped wearily on his bed. Soldiers knew about anesthetics and the Cutter simply said he had used as much as he could, but he had to have remained conscious, and the pain he inflicted on himself must have been excruciating. He had not dared to ask anyone for assistance, and what must it have been to guide his own bloody hands by their reflection in a blood-speckled
mirror?—while he manipulated his own organs, watched his own lung swell with breath, observed his own heartbeats?

Gabriel shuddered. She saw his eyes move faster, skimming over the cold clinical description of what the Cutter had done.

“He removed the ‘organ of calling,'” said Gabriel. “A gland, I guess, from the description. Does it secrete pheromones, maybe?”

“Something like that. Something that attracts the facilitators. Whatever they are, whatever they do.”

“There's nothing here to say.”

Finally Gabriel looked up. She felt the question he had not asked yet.

“Yes,” she said. “The ending's strange.”

“Nothing, he says . . .”

“Read the last part to me. From where he says
nothing
.”

Gabriel looked down again. “‘It is all for nothing,'” he read. “‘I am old and my end comes soon and it is all for nothing. I have seen others at the end-change but I do not think I learned this way of thinking from them. I think the end-change comes to us naturally and it is only seeing the truth. That it is all for nothing.'

“And there,” he said, “it ends.”

Nothing nothing nothing . . .

He went on, “This could explain why they don't reproduce at That Place, if they all undergo the surgery. But where do they do it? What with? Nakeekt didn't say anything about medical care, medical procedures.”

Hanna's eyes were on Gabriel, but he had the uncomfortable feeling he wasn't what she saw. He continued talking—to himself, he suspected.

“Of course, she wouldn't show us if she thought we might give the others in Rowtt and Wektt even a hint of what they're doing.”

“Armies,” Hanna murmured.

“What?”

“Armies of the breeding,” she said. “Descending on That Place. Massacring everyone there . . . There were a lot of areas we didn't get a look at. There's somebody in that little building. Remember? The one we could see from the landing field? Where Nakeekt didn't want us to go?”

He saw shadows under her eyes that should not be there, and it was not just the immediate lack of sleep that had put them there. He was beginning to feel exhausted, too. Everything about Battleground was oppressive. It was a weight on his thoughts, and how much more heavily must it weigh on Hanna, who had shared the beings' minds?

She said, “I wonder if Kwek could tell me who it is. What it's about.”

“What are you talking about? What's that got to do with the text?”

“I don't know. Whoever's in there was crying out and he was saying
Nothing, nothing . . .
I'm going to ask Kwek.”

“How? Well, she still had a com unit—”

“I shouldn't need it. I mean, I'll try telepathically first. In trance.”

She got up and went out without another word. It did not occur to him until the door closed that she might intend to attempt the contact immediately. He went after her then, and caught up with her in the hall.

“Yes,” she said to the unspoken question. “Now.”

“Aren't you supposed to have somebody with you when you do this?”

“This isn't official. Metra's not going to know about it. Mission protocol be damned.”

“Let me be with you, all right?”

“If you want.”

“What am I supposed to watch out for?”

“Well,” she said, “if I come out of it and beat you up there might be some cause for concern.”

He looked for a smile, and didn't see one.

•   •   •

It was morning, and Kwek thought she would be given something to do. She had been told there were many tasks, and she would work sometimes at one, sometimes at another. She could do other things, too, interesting things. But first Nakeekt and some others would talk with her about the things she remembered, and that was what they did immediately after the morning meal, when the sun had risen only a little.
What is the first thing you remember
, they said.
Do you know wher
e you came to life. Do you remember the crèche where you were born. What were you taught about Rowtt. What were you taught about the Holy Man and what were you taught about the Demon. Did you ever see the Holy Man of that time up close, do you remember what he looked like. Do you remember the first prayers you were taught.

“This is an interesting experience,” Kwek said. “No one has ever asked me questions like this before.”

“No,” said Pritk. “They don't do it anywhere else. And we will teach you to ask questions yourself, if you don't already do it.”

“Oh, I do. I asked a lot of questions in my last posting. But I only asked them of myself.”

“What was the posting?”

“I am Wektt's keeper of records.”

Their ears curled: intense interest.

“That is wonderful,” said Nakeekt. (Kwek did not know the word she used, as she had not known the word “dream” the first time she heard it.) “Did you study the records?”

“Oh, yes.”

“Were you discouraged from doing that?”

“I didn't tell anybody. Nobody asked about anything except which cities were growing fastest and how many Soldiers were in them, and where the battles were and what were the numbers killed in them. That was all I was supposed to put in them. I put in other things, too, that I heard. But I didn't tell anybody I was doing that.”

There was a moment of respectful silence.

“Why did you do that?” Nakeekt said.

“In case,” Kwek said, “the next record-keeper—had—interest . . .”

She was fumbling; the words did not sound quite adequate.

“I think you mean, in case the next one cared,” Pritk said.

“What?”

“Cared. That is a new word,” said Pritk, and the enlargement of Kwek's vocabulary began.

•   •   •

Gabriel watched Hanna. After a while, belatedly, he started to examine his motives, but he did not stop watching her.

He wanted to be with her in case something went wrong, but did some secret part of his mind whisper that here was a defensible opportunity to be alone with Hanna and just look at her?

He thought he ought to pray and he did not want to pray. He wanted to look. There was no harm in looking.

Rationalization.

His stomach began to growl. He had no idea what time it was at That Place, but it was lunchtime here.

Sublimation.

He was restless after five minutes. “Not much can disturb me in trance,” she had told him, but he was reluctant to move too much. He found that his gaze had moved from her profile to the swell of her breasts. He tore his eyes away and they fell on the holo of her son. He looked
at the child's exquisite, laughing face and tried to imagine Hanna with Mickey, this prickly woman's jagged edges softened, her eyes bright with love.

I will not think about that,
he thought, but it was too late. He wanted her to look at him with love too; he wanted to take the still figure in his arms. When she came to him after the dream of her own beloved he had seen how broken the invulnerable woman could be, how broken she had been; he wanted to tell her she could be whole again; he wanted to be the one to make her whole. He didn't want much, he thought, and then the massive wave of what he really wanted broke and drowned him: only everything.

Not just Hanna, as lover or friend, but everything else out here too: another life. One that he might have had anyway, if a family hadn't shattered with his parents' early death.

So he had made a decision after all, and it seemed that it had already been made months ago, even years ago, and recognizing it was all that had happened now.

Hanna's breathing changed, and her eyes opened and turned to him. The blue gaze was remote.

She knows I want her and she is angry—

“No,” she said. “I can't imagine being angry with you. I don't even know what you were thinking,” which sounded preposterous to Gabriel; surely he had shouted it. She seemed to shake herself a little. “I couldn't find him,” she said. “I think it's a him; I'm not sure.”

“Him?” It seemed to Gabriel that he was talking very slowly. Certainly his thinking was slow. “Not Kwek?”

“Kwek's busy,” Hanna said. “She was with Nakeekt and some other people, but they were all talking at once. There was too much going on. If I could understand what they were saying . . . I told everybody to learn as much of the language as they could, but nobody did. Including me. I will not make that mistake again.”

She sighed and rose from the floor in one fluid movement. If she sensed his agitation she had chosen to ignore it.

“So I looked for whomever they've got locked away in that little building, but I couldn't find him. ‘Nothing,' he kept saying, ‘nothing.' I think it's someone in what they call the end-change. Not many Soldiers make it to that stage. And if this one is there but hasn't yet gone over the edge . . . this is probably the only chance I'd have to talk to someone like that. I need to go back one more time. If Starr will let me.”

•   •   •

Hanna did not even try persuading Metra that a return to That Place could be productive. She thought of hijacking the pod and dismissed the idea. Not as immoral or even unwise; as impossible.
Endeavor
really was a first-class operation, its security impeccable. She would have to try to convince Jameson.

Contacting him, however, proved impossible. This time it was not the Arrenswood house's doing, but Metra's. While Hanna was at That Place Metra had unearthed a regulation that was ironclad, from Fleet's perspective, or at least she pretended to think it was:

You are authorized to initiate communication with the director of Alien Relations and Contact, and no one else. The director summarizes reports to his superior, the commissioner in charge. Commissioner Jameson is no longer the director. Mission protocol. No ex
ceptions.

Jameson had approved the principle—months ago, when it ensured that Hanna could reach him without interference from Edward Vickery. He had probably not thought of the implications since. That left Evanomen, who (Metra had informed her) had been appointed director as soon as Jameson was sworn in as commissioner.

He'll never agree,
Hanna thought, but when his harried face appeared she saw something like relief come into it and revised her opinion. He said immediately, “Did you know Norsa is trying to learn Standard?”