Battleground (39 page)

“Yes,” she said. “I love you—as a friend. But only that. That would be enough for me, if we became lovers for a time. I don't know if it would be enough for you.”

They were almost whispering, hands still clasped, the barest touch.

Time to take some risks . . .

“I'm willing to find out.”

He leaned forward finally. “One kiss,” he said, “just one,” and touched his lips to hers. She let go of his hands and cradled his face, her fingers like feathers or tender new leaves, and his hands on her back were light as shadows, a communion of cells. Light flowed over them and through them, caressing. They kissed softly for a long time, and he found his inexperience no burden; he had, it seemed, a natural talent for kisses.

•   •   •

The door closed and Hanna turned back into the glimmering room, feeling very young. She had forgotten the sweetness of being regarded as a precious treasure; she had almost forgotten what it was to feel this heat. Now she knew she could desire Gabriel as he desired her. She had said,
We should take this no farther
and he had said,
But only not now
and she had said,
It would only be a little, for a while,
and he had said,
I don't mind.
And maybe, she thought, he would not.

Reluctantly, aware of time pressing, she turned her attention to the mission and thought of what she might do with the hours that were left before the descent to Wektt. Seek information, she thought. That was the only thing she could do, and there was only one way to get it. She would have to do it in secret, though; in trance.

She moved through the glowing model and spoke the command to shut it down, and darkness fell.

Now there was nothing but the slight glow from the base of a wall, too dim to cast shadows. She sank to the floor and in the dark bowed her head and reached for the inevitable: Kwoort, of course.

H
E IS PACING.
Is this—

Is this the same restlessness that afflicts Kwler?

A strange gait, the extra joints, of course, but I've known kinetics as strange. He is studying maps, I see, some animated, some material and stacked, but all flickering—in reality? No, in his sight.

Rowtt has nothing like this encircling web of ways. Rowtt is smaller in extent and it does not go so deep either, near all of Rowtt is occupied and much here is deserted. A Soldier could lose himself in the old outer ways and Kakrekt Commander could lose me too in the depths, if she took me that way. I must learn all of them! And look even harder at these surface maps too, not Wektt but Rowtt, all Rowtt's territory. Troop dispositions and details, points vulnerable and points building, significant sites and command personnel. Kakrekt knows them thoroughly, but I will not leave it all to her. Tlorr did not leave all of i
t to me, the study of Wektt. And I cannot trust Kakrekt—

How odd, the images blinking—

I cannot shut my eyes, the eyes of now or the past-eyes. I do not know what I see and all of it tangles together. That globe half-buried in ruins long past on Continent Three, the color deep and rich, Soldiers do not make such things, what could have been its purpose and what made it and why do I think of it at all—it was the color of that not-Soldier's eyes, I think—not-Soldiers have no past-eyes, they have less to remember—

I do not like it that he thinks of my eyes. Does he feel me watching?

Saw the shining thing when I was young, saw it in a desert where there was nothing left to destroy because whatever had been there, was long dead. Would not-Soldiers make such a purposeless thing? Would they make it on that world where they lived?

New Earth.

Those who are here now could tell me—no, that is the kind of thinking Kakrekt does. I only have to find out how they perform the speaking to the mind, can we do it. It cannot be taught, the female not-Soldier said, was that true. If it cannot be taught, how, then—

How explain the New-Human Project, and how it might parallel his origin? What good would that do?

Tlorr said I must find out the means they use, she wanted me to use their seeing of the mind. A trick, a way of spying, I must initiate surprise, Tlorr said. We are too obvious she said, if we do not make more surprises even young Soldiers will see the truth, and they will not want to die if no Demon threatens them with hunger, if no fire of the god waits for them. And then soon they will eat each other.

How small is this cadre that knows death is the object? How long has this gone on? Push a little, just a little . . .

How long has this gone on? Records risk too much, truth cannot be written down for any Soldier to find. Was more of this world once green, like the one where not-Soldiers live? There are others, she said, are they green? Past times there must have been others like me. Writing frantically, hiding what they wrote. Commanders turning Holy Men as the truth and the end come near. But so many disappear before they come to the time I have come to now.

Disappear—?

Disappear, we say. Destroyed in battle, lost on reconnaissance, gone prematurely to Wektt, we say. But Kakrekt says none of those I knew came here. Kakrekt says commanders vanish from Wektt too. But I know that none came to Rowtt. If that is not what they do, then I know what it was, I have thought of it myself more than once. Slipped away from a billet, slipped into a company by night, there to die in battle and come to an end. Or—I think of Xtaapt, I think of Wtentkagt. Assassinated we said, but weapons near their hands and no assassin to be found. Because there was none. Real assassins proceed with circumspection, sow the end-change in food, death in drink. I know what they did to themselves, those two, and others as well, I have almost done it to myself.

He thinks of a recent past, his own past, but what of—

All the countless summers. Generation on generation, dying before they grow old. Before they begin to think. Bleeding, dismembered, burned, disemboweled, crushed, vaporized, eager to live in god's fire forever. This is what we tell them in the crèches, this is what we tell them as they are trained, as they yield to the facilitators, as they feed the young and train them in their turn. This is what we believe summer after summer, surviving. Until we have survived so long that the past-eyes open and the mind begins to move and will not stop. And one by one we drop away. Killed by enemy action, if we are fortunate, before the first questioning swells too far. Killed by the facilitators' will if questions go that dangerous way, killed by order of the Holy Man if we look like turning assassin. Oh, knowing another's mind would be useful there!

Think of—

Are you here, not-Soldier?

And before Hanna could stop herself, she thought,
Yes.
She had gotten an overload of information and become—

Careless!
she thought, and
Yes, you are
, said Kwoort; and if she did not understand the words he formed, as he could not have understood the Standard
careless
, the meaning was clear.

I can
, thought Hanna,
communicate full meaning in this way. I have done it before—

She slid into a contemplation too diffuse for him to follow. Stay inside the protective shell of trance?—she had lost its concealment when her concentration slipped; maybe she wasn't as good as she thought she was. Run to Communications, switch to the translation program, open a voice dialogue, with the distance from emotion speech enforced? Or—

She let go of trance. It was like taking off all her clothes.

You want to know about speaking to the mind?
she thought without words.
Here it is.

They regarded each other bleakly.

Are there assassins around me?

How would I know? I would have to examine each individual that comes into your presence. And why do you care? Don't you want to end it in any case?

Not today. Duty compels me today. It compels me to consider the possibilities I see in you.

Not words. Hanna stirred, aware of the people of
Endeavor
around her going about their lives, in a space that for once seemed warm and comforting, while she stood outside them, outside humanity, and this alien considered her.

Your Commander agreed to send you here. Come now. Why wait?

Whenever I come, I think I will come armed.

There is no need for arms
, he thought, not in words, and Hanna sighed. He meant it—now—but he was volatile, changing. She would like to go armed. But she did not think Metra would allow it.

C
LOUD.
Always. This time, all the way to the ground.

There was a beacon, a pulsing whine to the ear. It did not get louder as they neared it, but the pod spoke mechanically during the descent, counting off Ks. At point-one Hanna expected to break through the cloud at any moment, but seconds passed with no perceptible change. And when the naked-eye monitor showed something besides fog, they were so close to the ground that it seemed possible to open the hatch and simply jump out, onto a surface that made the cratered landing field at Rowtt look sophisticated, and the little island in the river, lush.

The pod set down, and Hanna and Gabriel looked in bewilderment at what was on the monitor. They were some distance from Wektt's chief city, but they had expected some sign of habitation, even though advance observation had found none. But there
was nothing here: only dust and desert and outcrops of rock, gray-brown in the fog, and livid patches of moss.

More bewildering still was the figure that stood next to Kwoort, as tall as he, gray uniform blending with the surroundings just like his. Hanna thought she was seeing double for an instant, until she extended a tendril of awareness and met a hostility that made her open her lips to cry
Abort!
—then the certainty came that the hostility was not directed toward her; that there was indeed another Soldier with Kwoort; and that the hostility was that of the two for each other.

Her wariness had seeped out to Gabriel. He said softly, “Who's that?”

“I've no idea . . .”

God only knew how the aliens had gotten to this desolate spot; there was no sign of conveyance. Something that looked like a large satchel was slung over Kwoort's shoulder, and another hung carelessly from the other's hand. Next to them was a cone-shaped artifact, wider at the base and tapering toward the top, a bit over half a meter high. Hanna eyed it distrustfully until she realized it was the beacon.

She muttered, “If we'd come in blind we might have landed right on top of them.”

“Accidentally squashing a couple of aliens wouldn't look great on your CV.”

“Is that supposed to be a joke?”

“Displaced anxiety. Kwoort's never brought anybody with him before except a Holy Man, and he
is
Holy Man here. So who's this?”

Kwoort did not, evidently, intend to wait for them. He began walking toward the pod, and without hesitating, the other did too.
Female,
Hanna thought, watching the figure move. She shook herself and got up and went to the hatch. Then they were outside, and the sense of seeing double vanished as the pair came close and their faces were clear.

“I greet you, host,” she began, but Kwoort interrupted.

“I am your guest.
We
are guests. I could not avoid telling this fellow-Soldier of your arrival and your origin. She insists she must show you something and show it to me too. We will go in your aircraft.”

We will?
Hanna thought, but she was not going to refuse. She could tell without effort that Kwoort was in a rage; and there was a keening impatience in the other.

Gabriel was oblivious. He said easily, “I greet you, fellow-Soldier of Kwoort! My name is Gergtk, and yours?”

“I am Kakrekt Commander,” she said. “We will go now. Unless this
Holy Man
—” the translator could not convey a sneer, and Hanna could not read it on the Commander's face, but she felt it—“has deceived me about your willingness to do his bidding.”

It was not until much later that Hanna remembered Kakrekt had not stated her age, but by then she had seen that many other things were different about Kakrekt.

•   •   •

“There,” Kakrekt said. “Do you see where a landing place has been cleared in the vegetation? I send workers to maintain it. There.”

“A waste of Soldiers who could fight,” Kwoort said.

“It is not waste. These not-Soldiers will see that even if you do not.”

For some time they had moved slowly over a solid mass of green, at treetop level, assuming those were trees down there. They had flown for an hour to get there, after nearly three hours of consultation with
Endeavor
, and finally broken free from cloud near the end
.
Kakrekt had brought detailed coordinates in her satchel, but
Endeavor
's navigators had had their hands full adapting the script to human terms and programming the pod to follow them. They had stayed in contact through the hour of flight, too, hovering in spirit, making Hanna hope she would never be as over-anxious a mother as thes
e navigators were for their charges—and giving her no chance to draw back in silence and delve into the bitterness she felt between Kwoort and Kakrekt. She had ventured only one question—“Kakrekt, what is your position in Wektt?”—and Kwoort had answered for Kakrekt: “She is my High Commander. My High Commander!” with a fury that made Hanna blink.

She thought it would be a relief to escape from the pod, but they got out of it into vicious heat. Hanna's face poured with sweat before she had taken three steps. So did Gabriel's, and so, Hanna saw, did the aliens'.

But Kwoort just said, “Pleasant,” and smiled.

“Aren't you hot?”

“I have been cold since coming to Wektt. This is pleasant,” he said, and Kakrekt made an untranslatable sound that might have been the equivalent of a snort.

They walked a cleared path that was a suffocating tunnel walled and roofed with trees and vines. The air was swollen with humidity. Kakrekt walked swiftly, leading them; Kwoort followed more deliberately, and Hanna and Gabriel slowed to his pace. Tough creepers caught at their boots and in places rose to Hanna's knees. Kakrekt's workers had not been here for some time, or the undergrowth reclaimed territory quickly no matter how brutally it was cut back.

The narrow trail wound between lofty, rounded green mounds which Hanna began to suspect were overgrown ruins. Kakrekt was soon out of sight, but they could not mistake the path. Kwoort walked in silence; his legs appeared to ripple, with a strange boneless quality, when he wanted to avoid especially dense tangles. Hanna and Gabriel swerved with less grace. Then the track took an abrupt right-angle turn, and they faced an opening that might once have held a door. Vines had been clawed away on either side but were trying to take the portal back, thrusting out new shoots that waved, questing, as Kwoort followed Kakrekt through them into darkness. He went in silence, in no mood for speech. Hanna felt him think angrily of the humans, anticipating how they would react to what they approached. Kwoort had not even seen it yet, but he had already made up his mind—

Hanna hesitated an instant, glanced at Gabriel. They followed Kwoort into the dark, just in time to see a flare of light.

Kakrekt stood before a panel of newly polished copper inset with bright gold, holding the light. Hanna was too startled to speak. But Gabriel whispered: “Is this a temple?” (
Chirp
, said the translator on the last word.) He hesitated and went on, “How old is this place?”

“No one knows,” Kakrekt said. “A scout found this, I think it must have been a city, by accident. I came myself, I found this structure myself, I found the way in myself.”

She stroked the surface of the panel, fingertips lingering here and there, as if she could absorb information from it. Hanna moved closer and saw that the panel bore the image of a face, half life-size. It was not stylized; the individual would be recognizable if he walked into the chamber now. A series of written characters framed it.

But it was not the face of a Soldier . . . assuming those slits were eyes, that protuberance a nose, the rounded appendages at the top ears, that fleshy blob at the bottom a mouth.

“Can you tell me what the writing says?” Kakrekt was saying. “This Holy Man says you have experience, can you tell me what that not-Soldier is—”

Hanna could not speak. She had even stopped thinking.

Presently Gabriel said very quietly, “There's nobody.”
Nobody that looks like that.

“No.” By now Hanna had gone through the same sequence of images that Gabriel had—as if she had not known immediately, as if flipping through the mental catalog, like a child's picture book, would make it not so. No F'thalian looked like that, no Zeigan, no Uskosian. No Girrian, and Girritt had not developed spaceflight anyway.

She looked finally at Gabriel, and then at Kakrekt. She said, “I don't know what this is. Have you found other artifacts like this?”

“There are other such images in the deeps below Wektt. I want to know what they are.”

Hanna turned away with an effort. She said, “I didn't know you speculated about such things. I didn't know anyone did. Isn't it forbidden? Why have you been permitted to do this?”

“There was no one to tell me not to,” Kakrekt said. She swung around and looked at the silent Kwoort. “There is still no one,” she said.

Kwoort erupted, at that. “Do you think I cannot fight this war without you?” he shouted. “You are mistaken!”

Kakrekt took her hand away from the wall. She said nothing, but Hanna felt the oddest conviction in her: that Kwoort would not stand in her way for very long. She could not tell why Kakrekt thought that, but eyed her thoughtfully.

She said, “What does this place—its maintenance, its investigation—have to do with your war?”

“It has nothing to do with war,” said Kakrekt, and Kwoort snarled, “This Warrior only found it because she was left to her own devices too long, and that was the fault of Tlorr.”

“Tlorr! How does Tlorr come into it?”

“Prookt was next senior after me in Rowtt. Now that I am gone, Tlorr is left with Prookt as High Commander. She resisted that necessity, she postponed it again and again. My departure for Wektt was delayed much too long, summer after summer after summer. And for all those summers while Quokatk descended into madness, this Warrior has refused to become Holy Man and has done as she pleased, ignoring the directives of the god, with no one to prevent her, because Tlorr did not want to let me go.”

“I don't see—oh. Prookt.”

“Yes. Would you like to rely on Prookt as your High Commander?”

“He is—a little lacking in imagination.” Translating as
foresight.
“So–”

“This Warrior—”

Kakrekt interrupted. “This
High Commander
chose to investigate the report of the site. I shall continue to investigate. Look at it! What do you think? Do not-Soldiers have sites like this?”

Hanna began, “There are many—” but Kwoort had swelled with fury again at the interruption.

“It's of no importance what they think! I will have the place destroyed! And if this Commander has made records of it they will be destroyed too!”

Kakrekt said very calmly, “I am sure there are other places like this. They will be reported to me.”

“It does not matter. In time you will forget. In time it will all be forgotten,” Kwoort said with dreadful satisfaction.

But Hanna said softly to Kakrekt, “One of our people said to me that he thinks all your crèches are built on bones. Layers and layers of bones, he said.”

“Yes,” Kakrekt said. “But I do not think they need to be.”

“It has always been that way!” Kwoort's voice was loud and got louder, he trembled and seemed almost to vibrate in the dark. He shouted, “It will always be that way!”

Hanna held her breath; she thought he would strike Kakrekt, but he did not. The passageway was stifling and except for the radiant wall everything seemed black. Kakrekt turned suddenly and moved deeper into the passage, and Kwoort hurried after her as if afraid to let her out of his sight. There were more of the ceremonial panels, but Kakrekt's Soldiers had not cleaned the rest. Copper was crusted with green oxidation, gold with layers of grime. The passage dead-ended in rubble after only a few meters and all of them stopped. Kwoort did not turn around. Hanna suddenly backed up a pace and bumped into Gabriel. He put his arms around her but he did not seem to be aware that he was doing it. Hanna touched Kwoort's mind and found that he was staring at the rubble with hatred, and that Kakrekt was staring at it too—but she was absorbed in contemplation of what might lie beyond the rubble, the knowledge there.

Hanna said very quietly, “We could help you learn more.”

Kakrekt whispered (Hanna felt the leap of hope), “How could you do that?”

“Not-Soldiers know a great deal about their past. The civilizations that led to the present have been traced in detail, cities like this excavated, the lives of rulers and ordinary people examined. We have done this through the cooperation of many sciences. We could teach you the sciences; we could help you reclaim the past.”

Kwoort said, “It is of interest to no one. Except to the few who live too long.”

The dark weighed heavily, stone and earth and riotous jungle overhead, and Hanna wanted to break for the outside. She resisted the urge to run and said, “Why is it of no interest? What is the authority that says Abundant God forbids the study of history?”

“The Holy Men say so, they have said so forever. Always, it is remembered and written down again, everywhere in every time, in the holy books found in Rowtt and here too. Only, I wonder if those Holy Men said it because they knew they would forget, that all forget.”

“The end-change, the forgetting—”

“Don't speak. I do not wish to talk any more. Go away. You too,” he added to Kakrekt, but Kakrekt did not move.

Hanna was glad to obey. She turned and urged Gabriel before her back through the passage, dimly visible in reflected light; they turned a corner and saw the opening to the outdoors, and went to it and stepped with relief into the tropical day.

The heat seemed to have gotten even more stifling in the minutes they had spent inside the mound. The air felt thick, like liquid, and it was hard to breathe. There were sounds, bird sounds, Hanna supposed, though the birds she had seen had been silent to human ears, but she did not hear the calls she might have expected somewhere else. She heard small moans like intermittent cries of pain. Gabriel started to say something but she put a hand on his arm and said, “Hush.”