John Maddox Roberts - Spacer: Window of Mind (22 page)

The medic picked up the furry thing and wrapped it around her forearm, where it clung tightly. Kiril tensed, expecting pain or itch or some kind of slimy unpleasantness. Instead, the thing spread a pleasant warmth through the arm, and for the first time in days, the throbbing ache subsided and disappeared.

"This will heal you . . . much quicker," the medic said. "We test your . . . systems . . . grow this for right . . . chemistry."

Kiril flexed the fingers of her left hand. They worked better, and the movement did not send shooting pains through her forearm, as it had before. "This is much better," she said.

"Do not try . . . too much," he cautioned. "Pain is gone, but injury is . . . still there."

"I will remember," she said. The medic left and Aktla arrived for the day's language training. Kiril found that the absence of pain in her arm and the satisfaction of a full stomach did wonders for her powers of concentration.

And concentration was what she needed. This day's lessons involved what Aktla had called "abstracts," a word that was difficult to comprehend itself. Many of these were modifiers, expressing radical or delicate shades of nuance through changes in telepathic emphasis. A few of these were fairly simple; differences in emphasis along the lines of "some," "very," "extremely," and so forth. Others were far more complex, and

all too many were completely beyond her.

After two hours of intensive work, Kiril sat back, massaging her aching head. "I'll never get good at this," she complained. "Too much of it is just impossible for the human mind to take."

"Don't worry, Kiril," Torwald said. "Nobody expects you to become the Victor Hugo of the Dzuna language. You don't need to do more than get a few basic ideas across to them, like, 'Don't kill us,' and 'Let's call the war off.' And you have to do that convincingly."

"The ideas I can already express," Kiril assured him. "It's getting them to believe me that's going to be hard."

"Do you think they can tell when you're telling the truth?" Michelle asked. "That would simplify things."

"I think maybe they aren't sure," Kiril said. "After all, we're the aliens here. How would they know how to pick up stuff like that? Also, I can pick up some of the telepathic part of their language and understand it, sort of. But am 1 broadcasting it to them?"

"Ask your teacher," Torwald suggested. That made sense. She asked.

"Poorly," Aktla said. That was a word she had just learned today.

"It's a start," Torwald said with a shrug.

The lesson continued at an ever-increasing pace. As Kiril's powers of comprehension failed her, Aktla piled on the pressure, sending information at an increasing rate. Maybe this helps Dzuna students to learn, she thought, but it's no way to teach a human. Slow and patient is what I need. Nevertheless, Aktla bore on. She found that even when she couldn't understand a concept, it stayed in her mind, anyway.

Aktla broke off abruptly just as the medics returned with their evening meal. "This shall have to . . . do. Perhaps your . . . language skills are now sufficient. In any case, there is no more time. Rest now. We leave tonight." He left without elucidating.

"Leave?" said Torwald when she had translated. "Where to?"

"Did you think he'd tell us?" Kiril asked.

"We never figured they'd keep us in this backwoods base," Nancy said. "Maybe they're taking us in to talk to the top brass."

"I hope so," Torwald said. "They may be rough on us, but we'll do no good until we get to the head people here. The sooner the better.''

Kiril was awakened by a gentle nudge in her side. "They've come for us," Nancy said. Kiril sat up, rubbing her eyes. Moving quietly, a small group of Dzuna had assembled before their hut. It was dark outside, but they could tell that some were soldiers, along with the two medics and Aktla.

"Come out." It was the voice of Kantli, the commander. They crawled through the entrance, yawning and stretching. All around them activity was going on, a quiet bustle of Dzuna coming and going. A number of the big antigravity sleds had come in while they had slept, and things were being loaded onto them. A soldier walked up to their hut and fingered a dark patch above the door. There was a rustling sound as the rootlets withdrew from the ground, then a hissing as a mist escaped from the outer walls. The hut began to collapse and shrink.

"They're breaking camp," Torwald said.

"You will come with us," Kantli said. "We leave ahead of the others." Kiril translated this for the other three.

"Do we go now to speak with the Dzuna high command here?" she asked.

"You will have your chance," Aktli answered. "Come."

They followed him to one of the floating rafts and climbed onto it. It was an oval perhaps thirty feet long by fifteen feet in the beam. There was a soft deck surrounded by a low parapet and little else. On other, nearby rafts, they could see loads tied down by hairy vines which grew from the decks. The Dzuna squatted on the deck and the humans sat. Kiril recognized one of the soldiers who squatted near her. "Hello, Gimlil," she said.

"You have been learning to speak like us," he said. She saw that his expression was one of mild surprise. "Your accent is far better than when we first . . . conversed."

"I've done nothing else but study for two days," she aid.

"You have done extremely . . . well for only two days of study. Some . . . aliens never learn at all."

She translated. "So we aren't the first aliens they've run into."

"How did you recognize him?" Nancy asked. "I still can't tell them apart if they're dressed alike."

"! just can," Kiril said. "It's not in the face."

After a brief conference with some other soldiers, Kantli jumped aboard the raft, which shook with his weight. He spoke a few words and a Dzuna squatting in the bow ran his fingers over a control. The raft sped smoothly forward, going under the cover of the trees and easily avoiding the trunks.

On Torwald's instruction, Kiril asked if they were being taken to headquarters.

"There is no central headquarters now," Kantli said. "Since the . . . attack we have dispersed into hidden camps. Now we go someplace . . . else. We will find many of the high command in that place and there will be . . . duties for you to perform."

"Is it to be an interrogation?" she asked.

"Of sorts. We have found your ship and we are taking you there."

The journey went by in a state of nail-biting tension for the four humans. What would they find at the end? Kiril had asked what state the
Angel
was in, but Kantli was either unwilling or unable to tell her. Only Torwald seemed unaffected. He reclined with his back against the parapet and took it easy. He was a man who saw no advantage in worry. What happened would happen, and its effect would not be changed one way or the other by a lot of preliminary hair-tearing. For a change he didn't try to afflict the others with his philosophical musings on the subject.

Light began to stream through the trees, and Kiril woke up. She was surprised to find that she had fallen asleep. The craft swayed from side to side as it sped through the forest beneath the canopy, but so deft was the piloting that the passengers were barely aware of its motion. The craft made no sound she could hear, but there was a faint vibration, almost subliminal. She had been awake only a few minutes when the vibration changed and the raft began to settle to the ground.

The Dzuna soldiers jumped out and trotted purposefully to various positions surrounding the raft. Then the commander, the medics, and Aktla climbed down. The humans followed. The pilot remained where he was until Kantli said something to him, then he lifted the raft and took it away, back the way they had come.

Torwald scratched and yawned so widely that his jaw made popping noises. "Some things remain the same across the cultures," he observed. "Soon as you land, the foot sloggers set up security, then you send your vehicles off someplace where they can be hidden. They're too easy to see from overhead."

"Why don't they use that masking device?" Nancy asked.

"Good question," Torwald admitted. "We haven't seen a really small one. They had one around their ship, and around the settlement and the camp. Maybe the apparatus is too bulky to use on anything smaller."

The commander was deep in conversation with Aktla. "Kiril," Michelle asked, "can you make out anything they're saying?''

Kiril frowned in concentration. "Almost nothing," she reported. "When one of them is speaking directly to me, it's pretty easy. This way all I get is a few words now and then. I heard the word for 'ship,' and something that means 'supreme chief' or something like that. That's about all."

Kantli came over to them. "From here we walk. The area is . . . secured, full of Dzuna troops. Where we go is within our . . . perimeter, but without overhead cover. We move with proper precautions. Follow."

They went after him, a relatively small group of humans and Dzuna. Nearby but out of sight they could just hear the Dzuna soldiers moving through the brush. As before, the pace was easy. "These Dzuna may not be a hard-marching people," Torwald observed. "Or maybe they're just careful." This time Kantli turned and made a gesture which Kiril told him meant "silence." Torwald shut up.

The ground ascended in a gentle slope, and they crossed a long ridge beyond which was a wide valley. The floor of the valley was a long, flat swamp bristling with grassy hummocks. It was a nesting area for flying creatures, which could be seen wheeling in flocks a few feet above the watery surface. From time to time a flyer would dive to the water and come up with something struggling in its mouth. There was a rich odor of decaying vegetation, not entirely unpleasant. In the northern end of the valley they could just make out a humped shape on the swampy floor. It looked as if it didn't belong there.

In the relatively open vegetation of the ridge siope, they trudged their way north. Nobody said anything. There were noises nearby that didn't sound as if they were of native origin, and every so often they would pass the shimmery dome of one of the Dzuna camouflage fields. As they neared the northern end of the valley, they could see that a similar field had been thrown over the humped shape that rose from the marshy floor.

There was a low-voiced exchange in front of them. Aktli was speaking to someone they could not see. As they passed on, they saw a pair of sentries crouched behind bushes, their coveralls blending well into the background. This had to be an established routine, since precautions like this were of little use to a force bracing for attack from space. They passed through the wall of one of the camouflage fields and found a group of what appeared to be high-rankers. Several of them wore small jewels set in their harnesses in patterns. One of them was the dagger-wearing negotiator.

Aktla touched Kiril's shoulder. "This is Supreme Expeditionary Commander Kuth. You will answer all his questions. He has been told of all you have said so far."

Kuth looked at them without expression. "Come," he said shortly.

Following him, they passed out of the camouflage field, crossed a short space of open ground, and went into another, much larger field. He led them downslope to a last point of high ground at the edge of the swamp and pointed with the back of his hand towards the object that already occupied their undivided attention.

A mighty splash in the muddy swamp floor had thrown a circular wall of mud at least two hundred yards in diameter. The wall was twenty feet high, but from their point of high ground they could see into the crater. In its center
Space Angel
lay on her side, cargo hatch uppermost. From the disposition of the mud around her, it was clear that she had come in tail first. Either because of the softness of the ground or the disbalance of the thrusters, she had been unable to maintain an upright position and had toppled to her side, throwing up another, smaller wail of mud. Both inner and outer crater were slowly filling with water. It was plain that the
Angel
would not be spacing again without help.

Kiril was first to break the long silence. "Is anybody alive in there?"

"First you must answer . . . questions," Kuth said. He squatted on the ground and the other Dzuna did likewise, forming a circle. The humans sat cross-legged and there began the first real human-Dzuna council, with Kiril acting as translator. "You see that we have not . . . harmed the ship. This is not from . . . goodwill but from a . . . desire to learn. You claim that this ship did not . . . attack us. Prove this claim."

"You have an image of the attack," Kiril said. "Show me." Kuth signaled and one of his aides placed a wide plate, much like the teaching machine, before them. Kuth placed his hand on its surface and Kiril followed suit. The effect was far more overwhelming than that of the teaching device. Suddenly she was transported to the landing field where she had spent several tedious days. Only the alien ship was settled there, and she could see the alien colony in the distance. A small group of Dzuna, some in the sort of harness worn by Teacher Aktli, were on the field. They carried instruments and were taking some kind of readings. The time appeared to be early morning.

The image supplied sound as well as sight, for the air was rent by the sound of a ship coming in on thrusters. The team of Dzuna looked up without alarm. The ship that looked like
Space Angel
was coming in. Instead of landing, it hovered about a hundred feet from the ground Without warning, destructive fire exploded from the ship. From the row of slots around its midriff, sizzling, jagged beams of purple flame slashed out. One struck a settlement building, reducing it instantly to smoking ruin. Another snaked toward the Dzuna ship, but the shimmering field around it had changed. It now reflected light brilliantly from a thousand facets, and the purple beam was reflected away, broken down into a multitude of colored lights.