The Eternal Enemy (8 page)

“Not long. Do you understand now?”

“No, but I understand more. When you said you would take us home, you meant to your homeworld, didn't you?”

The old Haber showed crimson.

“And you're not native to this planet. You've had the ability to leave at any time. And I thought you were natives here, that your whole race was going to be wiped out by Van Pelt. Is this right?”

Crimson.

“What was the point to all of this, then?”

“Finish the crystal and you will understand.”

“Why let me go through all of this to save a planet that wasn't originally yours?”

“We, we needed Gandji until now, Markos. Finish the crystal and you will understand more.”

He picked up the prismatic piece of rock and looked at it. “How old is this? When was this record made?”

“Time is a difficult medium for us, us to use in communication. The crystal you hold is the first of many events that took place long before we, we met the first one of your kind.”

“How long before?”

“Generations. They explain about the change we, we will not survive. It is our, our hope to understand how to deal with the change.”

Markos showed red. There was little more he could get out of the Old One yet. He gripped the smooth crystal in his hands and let his mind drift down beneath its surface.

Markos thought of the countless complications an alien ship created, but Yulakna did not. Markos was shocked as he realized the true problem the Habers faced as a race. They were totally incapable of conceiving what conflict was. It was beyond them. They lacked the
capacity
to understand. This became patently obvious as Yulakna approached the landing ship with childlike innocence and expectations. How could these creatures have survived at all?

If it had been Markos there, he would have been more cautious and returned to the landing craft. He would have lifted off the planet's surface and observed the aliens from the safety of distance. He would never have put himself in that kind of physical jeopardy.

But not a Haber.

The ship settled to Red's surface, and the winds quickly dispersed the dust and dead vegetation the landing kicked up. The ship was ten meters high, about twenty meters long. From the angle that Yulakna approached it, Markos could see it was shaped like a bunker.

Before the ship's exterior cooled, while the metal skin of the ship pinged, a door opened.

The Haber scouting party showed green and waited.

A row of creatures filled the doorway. They were smaller than Terrans, a little taller than Habers. Either they wore protective armor, suits designed for fighting, or nothing at all. They had shiny black coverings, smooth and polished like an ant's exoskeleton. Their heads were round and a little smaller than what human proportions demanded. White and red markings, bands of color, surrounded their heads. Their torsos were divided in half, much like the thorax and abdomen in an insect. The thorax supported two thin arms that were normally proportioned. Beneath the arms were hundreds of thin, short bristles coming out of their torso. Clamped in each pair of hands was a weapon, pointed directly at the Habers.

Their abdomens were a third larger than their thoraxes. Three legs extended from the abdomen and supported the creatures like a tripod.

The Haber nearest the ship showed green again.

The aliens responded with their greeting: First an overpowering smell, and then heat lasers.

There was no more recorded on the crystal.

He opened his hands and dropped it to the floor. It landed with a dull thunking sound. The children were silent, staring at him with their clusters of tiny eyes. The Old One was silent, too, patiently waiting.

It was all starting to make sense to Markos.

“Give me the other crystal you had,” Markos said.

“Do you understand now?”

“I think I understand more than you do, Old One.”

He held out his hands and the Haber dropped the other crystal into them. Entering and experiencing what it held was far easier this time and almost instantaneous.

Misty ground fog, the stillness of death.

He stood in line, facing a glowing patch of light about five kilometers away. Habers were linked together, their hands joined, creating a calmness and serenity as they waited, facing the oncoming death. They preferred to die as a group.

The planet's name was Darkness with a Dull Orange Glow. They had been born there, as had those who had given them life. This planet was theirs, settled many generations ago. They had become a part of the soil, part of the planet's food cycle.

The Habers belonged now.

The line of Habers knew what the glow was. There had been a village there. They waited to see if they would survive this change on Darkness.

The aliens would arrive soon, before the swollen red sun rose to burn off the ground fog, before the deep-biting chill in the air was gone.

Markos shared the body of the Haber holding the crystal. Tansak knew they would not, could not survive this change. There was a glimmer of an idea that had spurred him to grab the crystal and its device—the Habers on Homeworld might be able to see this change. They might be able to understand it. They might be able to give birth to Habers capable of surviving the change the aliens forced upon them. And even though he knew they would not understand any better than the Habers on Darkness understood, he did all that he could do.

What else was there?

They stood and waited for the aliens to arrive and show them the change.

They did not have long to wait.

Even in the darkness, through the misty distance, the wave of advancing creatures was easily discernible. They were silent in their approach.

Twenty meters away the advancing black line stopped. One creature, a little taller than the rest, made some noise and the air was suddenly filled with an overpowering odor. The aliens depressed the activating switches on their weapons.

Markos unclenched his hands, dropped the crystal, and tried to stop trembling. His heart raced and his skin prickled with pain. That feeling of standing in line, waiting for death, was strong and haunting. It lingered like a bad aftertaste. He sat there telling himself it was okay, that he was here and not on Darkness with that line of Habers.

He understood a little more now of how the Haber mind worked. His frustration had come from not understanding at all, from thinking that ideas and concepts could be easily communicated from race to race. Well, that obviously wasn't true. His attempts to incite them into fighting for Gandji had been doomed to failure from the start. It was beyond them. They didn't have the vaguest idea what fighting was.

“How many …” he started to ask, then stopped as he concentrated on keeping himself calm. His emotions were not suited to this body. He had to do what he could to maintain some level of control.

He stood and walked around the cave, trying not to think of the smell and the noise the aliens created right before the end, trying to let his mind assimilate the things he'd learned about the Habers. He stopped, looking at a glowing wall.

Well, okay then, he thought. Put everything in order. A pod, manned by some poor Terran, is captured by the Habers as it enters the Tau Ceti System. They establish contact and touch the guy and learn about the Terrans. And meanwhile they're suffering attack from some other race, from some other star system—my God!

He turned quickly, facing the Old One. “How many more crystals do you have? And are they all from the same time?”

“We, we have many crystals,” the Old One said. “And there are some being made right now, on other planets that are undergoing this same change.”

“How long has this war been going on?”

The Haber showed yellow tinged with blue. “War?”

This could get tough. “These unnatural deaths recorded in these crystals.”

“There is nothing unnatural about death. There is life, which is change, and the final change, which is death.”

“Yes,” Markos said, “the act of dying is very natural. It is a natural change. War has little to do with the process of dying or the process of living, though. War is not a
natural
process—it's a process started and maintained by free will.

“This series of changes—each one has some things in common. The change is always the same, you never survive it, and it is not natural. The creatures themselves are the change you don't survive.”

“Yes.”

“That is war.”

The Haber showed lemon yellow tinged with blue.

“Never mind. What are these crystals doing here? How did they get off the planet where they were made?”

The Haber explained about the device. Each scouting party, landing party, and colony had a set of crystals. A matched set remained on the homeworld. The attached device transmitted the changes the Habers made in the crystal, where they were duplicated in the matching one on the homeworld.

“These crystals were given to us, us so that we, we could change on Gandji enough to understand them.”

Mutate toward an aggressive Haber? It would sure answer a lot of questions. Gandji as a huge test tube, each Haber a virus capable of mutating toward the answer they need to survive the change. From what Markos had seen, they would never really understand it.

But the children he had with him should understand.

He looked at them, their faces poised, silent, waiting with the patience of a Haber.

They were loyal, aggressive, and only part Haber: A Haber who could deal with the change.

And that was why the Old One had risked everything, including compromising his own views on life by eating. It was to ensure the ten children got back to Homeworld.

“Come on,” he told them all. “I understand now. We're going home.”

7

The rocks the Old One had changed provided the light they needed as they made their way through the twisty tunnels into the depths of the mountain. They had left the cavern behind and needed to be careful of their footing; the floor of the tunnels left a lot to be desired. Even with the light the rocks provided, the going proved tiresome and slow.

The tunnel suddenly ended, emptying into a large underground cavern. Markos could make out the glint of polished metal a little over ten meters away. He turned to his left, then to his right, then stared up into the blackness trying to judge the size of the cavern. It had to extend at least fifty meters over his head and kept on going into total darkness. He stopped generating light, finding it easier to see without the local interference.

He had a good idea as to where they were, what they stood before, and what they were doing there, so he waited for the Old One to explain. He, for once, was in no rush.

The ten children stood by the Old One, motionless, waiting. One child, a little larger than the others, stood a stride closer to Markos.

The Old One walked forward and stopped before the metallic shape. He touched it with his palms, and the dimensions of the shape became obvious as it began to glow with a soft, dull green light.

It was a large wedge-shaped ship. They were standing before it, looking at it head-on. Its was divided into two identical hulls, joined at the stern by a bridge. The underside of the ship was flat, resting on the cavern floor. Viewed from above, Markos figured, the ship would have looked like a bottom-heavy H the crossbar lowered to join the two hull sections.

Even though he'd figured the ship had to exist and he had been relatively certain of where the Old One was leading them, Markos was still awed by it. This piece of metal was no product of an agrarian, nontechnological civilization, that much was for sure. He knew that the technology needed for the development of space travel, especially for faster-than-light space travel, hadn't been mirrored in the Habers' existence on Gandji. But then their existence on Gandji had never mirrored their civilization.

Gandji was their test tube, a place where the race could regress, leave their advances behind, mutate toward a more aggressive type of creature. He had no idea of how long they'd lived on Gandji, how far a Haber like the Old One had already regressed, but he knew their plan had been doomed to failure. It probably would have failed completely if it weren't for the humans.

As he stared at the glowing Haber ship, he realized that their plan might still fail if the aliens had already reached the Habers' homeworld. But they had to travel the distance, find out what had happened in that sector of space, and do what they could for whatever Haber population remained alive.

The Old One touched the ship again, and a black line appeared on the side of the hull, outlining a large rectangle that became a door, hinged at the top. It opened with smooth, mechanical precision. Markos approached the opening and looked in. It was a large bay area. The Old One stepped up and walked inside, then flashed an orange and blue combination, telling them to follow.

Markos noticed an interesting difference in himself as he walked aboard the ship. Had he still been a Terran, he would have been looking around the ship for machinery that could be used on the
Paladin
, compatible systems, or simply the level of the Habers' technology.

If he'd been a pure Haber, walking aboard the ship would have represented a step toward the safety of home. The Old One was bringing back a solution to a problem no Haber had ever been close to solving.

As the solution itself, Markos felt the alienation from the Old One reinforce itself.

Now his concerns about the ship were practical: How well could the ship maneuver? Were there any systems on board that could be used as weapons? How fast would the ship really go?

He noticed that a portion of the bay deck had been discolored, scarred, as if something had been scraped across its surface. To his left, the top of the bay slanted downward, meeting the forward bulkhead a meter and a half off the deck. He figured there would be forward storage compartments beyond the bulkhead, running up the sharp front edge of the wedge's hull.