Desolator: Book 2 (Stellar Conquest) (8 page)

Ezekiel smiled. “Mine’s just a little play on words. Like Jolly Roger.”

“Ah. You’re a space pirate.”

“Someone has to be.” Ezekiel rinsed his mug in the sea and hooked it back on the pot. “Is that gluster done yet? It’s starting to peep.”

“Soon.” Spooky rolled the spits once more over the flame.

“So,” Jill ventured, “I take it we’re going by submarine?”

“Spaceship, submarine, it’s all the same to
Roger
. In fact, he likes it in the ocean. Lots of interesting things to see and smell.”

Jill laughed. “Here in the twenty-second century and we’re back to animal transportation.”

The two men chuckled at her observation, and then they listened to the glusters’ songs as their shells began to open.

Trissk looked at the screen, on which the alien words showed:

“The first part seems clear – ‘We are organic sentients called
Human
, and what is Desolator?’ But the other part…do they ask what is the meaning of the
words
‘sane’ or ‘insane?’ The Meme equivalents are not so different, though their language structure is completely alien. Or do they mean what
thing
is sane or insane?”

“The latter, I suspect.”

Trissk arched his back suddenly, a gesture of surprised epiphany. “It all hinges on Desolator. It
must
. They do not know what it is. Even we sometimes speak of the ship and sometimes the AI. Of course they are confused. We haven’t explained very well. I’ll send this:”

Trissk eagerly clicked
send
before Chirom could comment.

“Perhaps next time we should compose a clearer, simpler message,” the elder chided. “We must speak as if to children, to communicate past the barrier of our own languages with only the aid of our enemies’ codes. In any case, let us see what they respond with.”

Abruptly the screen flashed and went blank. Trissk prodded at the keyboard, then spoke a vulgarity. “The feed has been cut, or the device destroyed.”

“Perhaps. Let us find out for sure.”

Ten minutes later Trissk was back in his suit in vacuum, holding the severed cable. He could see the device emplaced and apparently undamaged, except for the spool of connector wire, which was missing. Further vulgarities spewed from his mouth.

“Really, Trissk, such language is usually reserved for wounded warriors,” Chirom said over the radio. “Desolator must have decided it does not want us communicating with the aliens. Or perhaps it simply scavenged your spool of cable. At least we got through in those two instances. Come back inside before that relic you’re wearing springs another leak. We don’t want to lose your precious life code until you have a chance to be glorified by young Klis.”

Trissk coughed in irritation. “How is it unseemly to speak of my dam yet seemly to joke about my potential matings?”

“Because males are expected to joke at young males’ expense, but not at their elders, who have already experienced the glory of a female. You are so earnest that you forget this simple fact. Too few females and too many males means we must vie with one another for glorification, while the fairer sex is above such coarse jesting. If you were not an orphan and a pariah you would know this…but I do not hold it against you.” Chirom opened the inner door to help Trissk remove the awkward vacuum suit.

As they fought with the sticky fittings, the younger male asked, “Why is it there are so few females compared to males?”

Chirom stopped for a moment, then continued his task more slowly, opening the clasps that held the suit closed. “Trissk…I would like to tell you something. Many somethings that you do not know. But you must swear on all your ancestors that you will tell no one I revealed these things to you. I could be displaced from the council for it…but you and I already share secrets, and times grow desperate. Perhaps I must bend some of the old taboos so that all Ryss will not break.”

Trissk stepped out of the suit and hung it carefully inside a locker, then turned around. Reaching up to the fur of his own flat forehead, he gashed it with one extended claw, and held out its bloody tip. “I swear on my ancestors, I will keep all you tell between us only. My blood for yours.”

Chirom solemnly reached up and gashed himself, mixing the blood on his own claw with Trissk’s. Both Ryss then licked their claws clean of the mingled fluids. Impulsively Chirom reached out to embrace the younger Ryss. “Your dam and I…she was full with my litter when she died. You were just a mewling kit, barely weaned, and Mother B’nur took you in, even chewed your meat-plant for you herself. As you grew I tried to watch out for you, even as others older than you bullied and scorned you.” Pushing him back to arms’ length, he looked into the younger Ryss’ eyes. “You are the closest thing to my own kit I ever had.”

“Why did you not…did no other dam glorify you after that?”

Chirom’s grimace bled sorrow. “For which of these two questions do you wish an answer first? Both contain their own kind of horror.”

“Horror?” Trissk backed up and turned to pace, his tail lashing with agitation. “What can be so horrible?”

“Your mane is already starting to sprout. Adults must often decide between evils. Put off adolescence now: choose a question, and know.”

Trissk rubbed his paws together in the cold of the suiting chamber, his breath fogging as he snorted. “All right. The first question then. Why are there so few females?”

“As well you should rather ask, why are there so many males?”

“I don’t know. You said to ask, so answer me!”

“Grow up, Trissk, and think for yourself. I will help you to hunt knowledge but you must make the kill on your own. Again: Why do Ryss produce three males for every female, when other two-sexed species produce roughly equal numbers?”

“For the good of the species. Adaptive pressure ensures that only the fittest males win the right to mate and pass on their life codes.”

Chirom nodded. “So the books say. But the dams choose whom they will glorify, and that is not always the male with the fittest life code. And what is ‘fitness’ anyway? Is not ‘survival of the fittest’ a tautology? How do we know they are fit? Because they survive? Why do they survive? Because they are fit. But fit for what?”

Trissk replied, “In ancient times, before we became civilized, the winning male would take the female by force, to pass on his life code. This selected for fitness of strength in combat. Now we are more enlightened. Dams glorify males in turn, ensuring many more have an opportunity to sire offspring, and select more wisely.” Trissk spread his paws as if to say,
isn’t it obvious?

“So plausible…and so false. In the Beforetimes, if this were true, and simple force would win the day, the victorious males would have formed prides of many females and driven all other males away. That is how the animals do it. Our closest biological relatives, the moor-cats, drive off the secondary males once they reach majority. Why not the Ryss? What makes us different?”

More agitated now, Trissk paced back and forth, his forepaw-claws unsheathing and resheathing convulsively. “What is it, Elder? You tell me the writings lie, but what is the truth?”

“To find the truth behind a lie, you must first find the purpose for the lie. Why would you and the common folk have been taught these falsehoods?”

“To…to make us accept the way things are.”

“Precisely. And if you accept this…
perversion
as normal, what purpose does it serve?”

Trissk stopped, his fur arching. “Many males. Many warriors. Warriors to fight the Meme. That’s it, isn’t it? It must be. But how?” He paced again, then stopped as realization hit him. His paws came up to claw at his ears in disgust, and Chirom had to seize his wrists to keep the younger Ryss from mangling them. Trissk snarled, shaking his paws to try to loose them. “Life code manipulation is a Meme blasphemy. No Ryss would ever submit to it, or do it!”

“If so, why are you angry? Only because you fear to hear the truth. When the survival of the race is at stake…many taboos can be broken.” Chirom let go of Trissk’s arms, to pace up and down. “Sixteen centuries ago, when the Meme first attacked us, we were as all other related species, with litters of equal numbers by gender. But one dam can birth many kits, and the Ryss needed males to fight. Necessary things were done…and now you see the result.”

Trissk sat down suddenly on the floor, overwhelmed.

“You are beginning to understand.” Chirom waited, letting the young Ryss think.

In a voice full of hurt, as if every word pained him, Trissk spoke. “I read the histories. There were no social problems as the war with the Meme raged. Excess yearsmanes were trained and sent off to fight. Dams lived like the spoiled wealthy, choosing whom they wished, as males jockeyed for favor. This now seems oddly fortuitous to me, that we had so many willing to fling themselves at the Meme for the survivor’s chance to return to be glorified by a willing female.”

Chirom dropped to the deck to sit back to back with Trissk, seizing his own tail to still its twitching. “It is also debasing. It makes dams into pampered breeders and males into chattel studs, vying for their favor. It is a system fit only for war, but here and now, aboard Desolator, where is the war?”

“No wonder our numbers are dwindling. This is an ugly thing, but…could it not be overcome?”

“Yes, if Desolator were to help us energize and reprogram the robotic medical machines, and if those few remaining with the knowledge can overcome their taboos yet again. But what would be done? Birth more females? That may solve the problem for the future but what about now? Have you not noticed that all our females are either adolescents, or are old and decrepit? Where are those of bearing years? Where are the kits?”

Trissk curled into a ball and bit at the stump of his own tail, as if throwing a childish tantrum, then covered his head with his arms. A painful mewling issued from beneath his paws.

Chirom reached out to stroke the younger’s flank, as he would a child. “It is sometimes not pleasant to see the truth.”

“No. No. I do not believe it.” Trissk rolled suddenly to stand on all fours, like a moor-cat. “My dam? The others? We were told they died when Desolator fought to save us.”

“Ah. Therein lies still another evil lie…but again I ask: Where are those of bearing years? Where are the kits? Why have we yet to see our first litter born here aboard Desolator in twenty years?”

Trissk leaped across the ice-cold floor to hide beneath a broken console. For long minutes all Chirom could hear was a mournful yowling.

He will get through it. He is strong, and brave, with a true warrior’s heart – not just a fighter, but a thinker. He must…he must survive the knowledge.

The room shifted beneath them then, enough to tickle the inner ear but not enough to make them certain what happened. Checking Trissk’s computer, five minutes later Chirom was sure.

“Pseudo-gravity is decreasing.
Desolator
is slowing spin. Trissk, come out of there; that’s enough childishness,” Chirom said sternly. “Something is happening, and we have to be ready.”

“Go away.” Nothing of Trissk showed from the shadows under the console.

Chirom hissed in irritation. “I must go. When you have accepted what you already know, come find me.” Leaving the door open behind him, the elder hurried down the corridors toward the lift shaft and then the tap-room.

A knock at Admiral Absen’s temporary-cabin door roused him from slumber. Checking his watch, he realized it was five minutes before the time he had asked to be woken. Something unexpected? Tobias, his Steward and cybernetic bodyguard, was unnervingly precise about such things.

Pulling on his uniform, he splashed water on his face, and then opened the door to Commander Rick Johnstone’s expressive mien. Only nominally military, the man had been a civilian technician until EarthFleet had drafted him to do the same job – CyberComm officer. He’d inevitably gained rank over time, but Absen knew it was mere veneer.

“Come in, Rick,” Absen said, nodding past him at Tobias as the CyberComm officer entered. Shutting the door, he waved at the bolted-down chairs and sat in one. “What’s on your mind?”

“Sir, you said – well, you implied you might need someone to go with the Marines. Someone with a lighter touch than Bull.”

Absen grunted. “What do you know about ben Tauros?”

“Only what my wife told me. He’s a classic Marine officer – with everything that means. I’m not running down the man, just saying I have different skills and a less…belligerent viewpoint.” Rick’s hands fidgeted nervously, then stilled.

It’s not because he’s afraid of me,
Absen thought
. God knows we’ve worked together long enough through these bloody wars. He’s just scared I’ll say no.
“It’s all right. I understand, and I’m inclined to let you go. You’ve got a very flexible mind, and you have all those chips in your head, which I assume means you will be able to assemble some kind of auto-translate program to let you speak to these Ryss aliens, when the time comes.”

“Yes, sir. Already working on it.” Johnstone started to relax a bit, seeing the admiral was likely to agree with his offer.

“You’re also still a civilian at heart, no matter what you wear on your collar. No, don’t deny it, that’s not a bad thing. We military men tend to fall victim to the hammer-nail fallacy.”

“When you got a hammer, everything looks like a nail,” Rick agreed. “And I realize it looks like they attacked us, but we just don’t know –”

Absen held up a hand, palm out. “Already ahead of you, son. Remember, we were able to conquer this system and drive out the Meme precisely because I decided to extend the hand of friendship to the Hippos. I’m willing to wait and see in this case, too. So you’ll be my political liaison, with overall authority for the operation.”