Battleground (36 page)

After a moment she felt a slow smile begin. She could just see her friend Norsa of Ell, whose tentacular fingers tied themselves in knots when he was frustrated.

“He never said anything about it to me. But I haven't talked to him since I left Earth.”

“I just did. But you couldn't call it a conversation.”

The smile got wider. “How is he? And his grand-selfings?”

“I have no idea. Naturally I asked, but I couldn't understand the answer. I'm not sure he understood the question. He would
not
use the translation program. Can you talk to him? I do think he said something about your courtesy in learning Ellsian. Is he being courteous in turn? That would be typically Uskosian, wouldn't it?”

“Oh, very typical!”

“Do you think you could convince him he has no aptitude for languages?”

“I can't talk to anybody but you,” she said, and explained the regulation. “I can't even talk to Starr unless he initiates contact.”

“That has to be changed. What if I'm not available?” Evanomen evidently did not intend to put Hanna on a personal unlimited access list.

“Thank you . . . Give Norsa my regards when you speak to him again,” she said. “Tell him I'll go to Uskos myself and teach him Standard, if he wants.”

“Would you?” Evanomen said, and stopped short, perhaps remembering that now he could order Hanna to do just that.

“Of course. If I'm ever done here,” she said. “By the way, there's a source of information I'd like to contact, but I need to go back to That Place to do it. Secretly, I mean; a quick midnight visit to someone who's sequestered from the others. I don't think Captain Metra will approve it without your authorization or Starr's.”

Evanomen frowned at her. Her tone had been casual and she made sure her face was guileless.

“Starr's rather busy,” he said.

Hanna discovered a developing talent for improvisation. “This person might be able to give us some background on the documents we've got. And I suppose we're going to Wektt soon, and then we'll be focused on what's there. I'd like to be finished with That Place first.”

“This would be you and Gabriel Guyup?”

“Just me. I don't think Gabriel has the—aptitude, to use your word—for secrecy.”

“How long would you expect to be down there?”

“An hour maybe? Less?”

He wanted particulars, which Hanna made up on the spot, and said he would give her a decision later. She was not hopeful, but half an hour later Metra interrupted her belated lunch with a summons and started by saying, “I don't know how you did it, but—”

Hanna had a hard time keeping her mind on the rest of it because she was thinking:
I did it by misdirection, manipulation, in short, deceit. I'm turning into an excellent true-human.

T
HE BEST SHE COULD DO
to be invisible was dress in black.

Endeavor
had come openly to Battleground, gifting Soldiers with images of human society, hiding nothing. The pod did not even have a camouflage program for its white skin and
Endeavor
carried no secretive devices to make a human body blur from sight; personal proximity shields were manufactured not for spying but for casual anonymity in public spaces, and in any case were based on the parameters of human vision and might be ineffective with Soldiers. So Hanna's approach had to be as stealthy as she could make it. Her descent took her first to the sea sixty kilometers from the settlement, and she approached the clearing chosen for touchdown on manual control, hugging waves and then treetops when she reached land, ports opaque and exterior lights quenched. She k
ept the pod at a hover over the small field for a few minutes, probing with invisible sensors, in case an insomniac Soldier had decided to take a walk. None had, apparently. She did not even know if the Soldiers of That Place ever walked abroad in black night.

Finally she let the pod settle into the clearing, killed interior displays, opened the hatch, and moved down the ramp. The air was warm and fragrant, and she hesitated, breathing in the night. She had not been alone on a planetary surface—no Soldiers, no Gabriel—since leaving Earth.

The seductive moment passed. The path to the settlement was clear, and she began to walk. One thing at least
Endeavor
had been able to provide: membranes covered her eyes' surfaces which moderated whatever ambient light there was, so that she could see without using a light. They gave a silver sheen to her eyes that would startle an unprepared human. But a Soldier would not know it was unusual.

The path was not straight but was easy to follow. It was banked and the earth trodden down, and the rain had ended soon after she and Gabriel left, so the ground had drained and she did not have to wade through mud. She moved along it silently. She had gotten permission to carry a sidearm in case she met with a large predator, and kept her hand near it. Big carnivores seemed to be absent from That Place, and perhaps from all of Battleground; some might have evolved, but it was not hard to imagine that centuries of war, destroying habitat, had driven them to extinction. The flora were another matter. The eat-anythings made Hanna nervous.

She had been walking for perhaps ten minutes when a flash of light startled her. It was peripheral and did not affect her modified vision, but she was horrified; it had come from her own hand, blue and beautiful and bright; from the ring that had become so much a part of her that she had forgotten it might give her away. She tried to wrench the lovely thing off but it did not want to go; she stood on the path for far too long, twisting it until it finally, reluctantly, allowed her to slide it from her finger. She stuffed it into a pocket and found herself sweating. Maybe it was the shock of knowing she might have blown her own cover with a stupid oversight. Or maybe it was fear of losing it if it was not on her hand.

Or maybe—and she realized then that she had felt exposed from the moment she stepped out of the pod—it was that since she could see everything around her, some ancient part of her brain could not acknowledge the reality that the rare moonless night hid her from other eyes. And, going full circle, it really did not. Even in this deep a darkness, a Soldier would see more clearly than a human would.

The realization paralyzed her for a moment, coming on top of the mistake with the ring and the tiredness that had underlain every thought and action for days. It seemed possible that the rest of the path would be lined with eat-everythings and their tongues would bind her like cords and wrest her to surfaces that would hold her as if glued while they began to digest her alive.

Hanna . . .
It was Bella; it was a mental croon.
You're not alone. Just let me at those nasty plants!

She relaxed a little, took a deep breath, and forced herself to move, though she clutched the sidearm hard. After a few paces it was easier, and Bella thought,
Some hero you are!
and Hanna finally smiled, herself again.

She tried to move even more quietly as she came near the cottage. Here it was necessary to leave the path and cross open ground; that part she did very quickly, in a sprint, and slipped behind the small building. She was alert for any attention directed her way, but sensed nothing.

If the cottage was meant to be a jailhouse, it was, at least from exterior evidence, a humane one. There were windows that would admit natural light, and at a height that would allow a Soldier inside to look out, though no face had showed at any of them when
Endeavor
's spyeyes had been watching. They looked dark even to Hanna's enhanced night vision, meaning no light shone inside. The place was larger than she had thought, with four windows at the rear, from any of which she could be seen. But there was no reason to think the occupant was watching.

And now, so close, she saw that the view from the windows was partially blocked by interior bars. It really was a jailhouse, then.

She crouched, nonetheless, in a tangle of creepers, and listened for sound. There was a whisper of wind, so little she had not noticed it until now, and a faint rustle of leaves. A whir of wings overhead that made her start, a hum of insects, scarcely audible: that was all. There were not even any sounds small animals might make in the brush. If any animals were there, her approach had scattered them or made them go still.

She focused awareness then on the enclosed space in front of her, expecting the immediate sense of a sentient mind.

Nothing,
came Bella's whisper.
Nobody there.

It broke Hanna's concentration. She said crossly,
Go away.

But she thought at first—pressing her cheek against cool stone, letting consciousness flow through it—that Bella was right.

A minute later she changed her mind. Bella was
almost
right.

Because the no one who was there had been a someone once. There was no strong marker of personality; there was less than she had felt in anyone, human or alien, infant or adult. It was certainly the mind of a Soldier. But this mind was a great, undifferentiated contentment.

It felt delicious to Hanna, stretched taut with tension for weeks.

She let herself ease into it.

•   •   •

Turquoise. And teal. It is water. It is above her, the transparent domed ceiling keeps it back. It is all around the circular room. And below the transparent floor. It is under her feet.

It shimmers and disorients. Shadowy halls open at angles, water-walled.

There is nothing but water and dim silence and moving light and shades of blue.

Soldiers—some of them, this one—lived under the sea once. She had not known that.

Not Soldiers,
this one said. He had already been ancient when he came here.
Those who made us. They say.

Who says?

There is a flicker of curiosity, so mild it is barely a trace. And no answer, but another question.

Who . . . ?

I am not a Soldier.

Then you are. One of those.

Those. Misty and ancient and vague. Does he remember, or does he only remember a story? A whisper? She cannot think of an adequate response. She can only show an image of stars, shimmering across black space.

They said.

Who?

They said.

Star-shimmer dissolves in water-shimmer.

That is what his mind is doing, too: dissolving.

So is Hanna's.

All that blue, trembling water, so peaceful. The other consciousness, so blurred, draws her in. It takes effort to rouse herself.

How many summers do you have?

She has not spoken aloud. But it is as if her voice echoes through blue spaces and turns to silver.

The only answer is blankness.

Her frustration nudges No One; he answers with irritation. And a little surprise: the surprise is at himself, finding that he is capable of feeling irritated. But nothing in this wordless exchange seems strange to him.

She repeats:
How many summers?

Finally he answers:
More than I can remember. Too many. They say.

•   •   •

WAKE UP.

That jolted No One—and Hanna, too; she stirred, feeling a cramped muscle in her thigh. She had said it to No One but Bella had said it to her first. It didn't seem that any time had passed.

You haven't moved for an hour. You're overdue.

Hanna tried to turn her attention to No One again.

Captain wants you back.

A little longer.

She said now. Conference scheduled. New orders.

Just a little.

Something's strange there—

You're telling me?

He's sick—

Not sick, I'd know—

Or drugged.

Hanna opened her eyes. Yes, maybe drugged. It had felt like a kind of unfocused trance. She felt it again, there on the other side of the wall.

Just a little.

She touched No One again, careful not to fall into that fuzzy cloud.

Are you drugged?

A slow affirmative bubbled out of the cloud.

Why?

Peace before dying.

Are you ill?

Peace before burning.

It was hard to get him to pay attention. She persisted.

H'ana, you must—

Just a little.

Pieces. She pushed and got pieces. Age, rage, disruption. Execution. Ceremonial cremation. Between the rage and the death, this time of being rendered harmless. The bits from his memory floated out of the cloud barely tinged with emotion.

H'ana!

She pulled away reluctantly from the cloud. She had to use her hands on earth and wall to get to her feet; she was stiff, and for a moment dizzy. Pieces of her own memories intruded, moments of contentment: Mickey sleeping on her lap as a tiny baby. Half-waking in the night, snuggling close to Jameson's warmth. A long-ago instant in a shadowy hall in Koroth, in her House, when she knew exactly who she was and that she belonged somewhere entirely—

Crying was inadvisable when nightsight membranes were in place.

One more question.

You are drugged. How was it you cried out in thought in the night?

She didn't expect an answer, but she got one. It was in pieces, too, and she did not put them together until she was back on the path to the pod. There was one day when the drug had not been given, the Soldier responsible for administering it distracted and forgetful, because the not-Soldiers had come.

•   •   •

“You're going to Wektt,” Metra said.

They were alone. Given Metra's adamancy about keeping telepaths out of Wektt, Hanna could understand why she did not want her officers to hear this conversation.

“When?” said Hanna, not inclined to waste words.

“Around oh-one-hundred hours, Standard time. Full morning at Wektt.”

Hanna tried again to get her mind around Battleground's attenuated day length. Wektt and Rowtt lay at approximately the same longitude, but in different hemispheres, with Wektt much closer to a pole than Rowtt. It would be the same time of day, or close to it, but there would be a seasonal difference. Early spring in Wektt?

“Do they know we're coming?”

“Of course. Communications made the contact a short time ago. It was much easier than it was with Rowtt. The Holy Man at Wektt already knows all about us.”

“What do you mean, all? That there's a spacecraft in orbit, or what?”

“Who we are, what we look like. You were asked for by name, and the monk, too.”

“What?
How?”

“Their Holy Man knows you personally,” Metra said, and Hanna said, “How could he?” and Metra said, “It's Kwoort.”

And Metra actually smiled.