The Marann (13 page)

“Interesting,” Adeline said, taking
notes.

“The room felt charged with emotion
when the proctor dragged me out,” Marianne added. “The Sural just
knelt there on the floor with his eyes closed, holding her, but
there was something else going on.”

“What kind of something?”

“I’m not sure, to be honest. When I
asked Storaas about it, he picked a flower and made a comment that
human senses are dull. I think he was being allegorical, trying to
tell me something was going on with them that he could see but I
couldn’t. I think—” Marianne thought back to the unfocused panic.
“When Kyza grabbed onto me, I felt panic. Now I wonder if it was
really hers.”

Adeline chewed on a lip, digesting
that. “That would suggest empathic projection.”

“That’s what I think.”

“If that’s the case, it’s the first
time we’ve ever run into any evidence of it. Most people think
telepathy and empathy are impossible
within
a species, much
less
across
species.”

“Most people think parallel evolution
is impossible, yet here it is, staring us in the face.”

“Good point,” Adeline said, almost
under her breath. She sighed and looked up. “Well, I have to go get
some work done for Smitty. Keep up the good work,
Marianne.”

“Talk to you tomorrow.”

<<>>

Two days later, Marianne wandered
alone through the library, thinking about the Tolari and what she
had learned of them in the five years she had lived on their
planet. She’d shared little of her current train of thought with
Adeline, and regretted what she had.

As she browsed the books of art
prints, looking for something to occupy her eyes while she thought,
the Sural joined her. He seemed the same as he ever did, calm and
impassive, which surprised her, though she couldn’t say why.
Perhaps she had expected him to be somehow changed by this
parental bonding
thing. Shaking herself out of her thoughts,
she shot him a smile. The smile he returned carried real warmth,
but then he seemed to look into her.

“Speak your thoughts,” he
said.

“I’ve done a lot of thinking about you
the past few days,” she said. “You Tolari, I mean.”

He motioned toward a table and took
the chair across from her, lacing his fingers together on the table
in front of him.

“You do a good job of hiding things
from me,” she continued. “You carry on as if you’re all a bunch of
cold, heartless monsters, but I’ve been here for five standard
years. Every now and then, something happens—or something slips—and
over time it’s added up.”

The Sural’s enigmatic smile appeared.
She ignored the deliberate attempt at distraction.

“It’s more than just coming to believe
you Tolari have a vivid emotional life,” she went on. “But the last
straw came when Kyza grabbed my leg a few days ago. I felt panic.
But it wasn’t
my
panic, I’m sure of it. I’m
sure
of
it. And Storaas ordered me not to touch her when she clung to my
leg. What could that accomplish? Why would anyone order me not to
offer comfort to a distressed child who clung to me?”

The Sural steepled his fingers under
his chin.

“I’ll tell you what I think. I think
you’re all empaths. Honest to God, for-real empaths, the kind our
scientists say can’t exist, and you don’t want every race in the
Orion Arm to know about it. That’s got to be why you don’t want
contact with other races—I bet we step all over your empathic toes.
But it leads me to wonder why you wanted to have anything to do
with humanity—whether or not you look like us—because we’re a bunch
of chatterboxes who couldn’t keep this sort of thing secret if your
lives depended on it—and they just might. My government uses
information, people, resources, anything, like weapons. If they
decide to start using you, they’ll just start using you, the way
they use me. Why did you let us in? Why am I here?”

“I do not fear your government,” he
said, his voice mild. His eyes didn’t stray from hers, and he was
very still.

“You should!” she exclaimed. “You
don’t even have air travel, much less space travel. Earth Fleet
ships could bombard you from above!”

He smiled and shook his head. “We are
not as primitive as we seem. I would never permit an attack on my
people.”

His words brought her up short.
“Eh?”

“I would never permit an attack on my
people,” he repeated.

“And just how would you manage that?”
She waved a hand around her. “Look at this. You live in an archaic
stone fortress. Forgive me if I give offense, but you haven’t even
split the atom, if you know what an atom is. We did that six
hundred
standard years ago.”

He chuckled and stood. “Come with me,”
he said.

He led her to the stronghold entrance.
To one side of the great doors, he pressed a panel which looked no
different than the others. With a stony sound, the wall opened,
revealing a large, open room. An ovoid crystal pod, perhaps four
meters long and three meters high, hovered over one of two empty
shafts in the middle of the floor. The Sural touched its side, and
the crystal melted away to form a doorway. He motioned for her to
enter it.

“What is this?” she asked, eyes wide,
as she stepped in.

“A transport pod,” he replied,
following her. At another touch, the doorway melted over as if it
had never been, and a small panel extended up from the floor in
front of him. “It is alive and dimly sentient. When I touch it, it
knows what I want it to do.” He placed his hand on the panel, and
the pod dropped.

Marianne uttered a little screech and
grabbed onto the Sural’s arm. He looked down at her, his
impassiveness gone and amusement lighting his eyes.

“You are quite safe,” he
said.

She swallowed and let go. Something
flashed in his eyes—regret?—but then it disappeared, and his usual
impassive expression slipped into place. A moment later,
reassurance filled her, as it had when Storaas had lain a hand on
her shoulder, except… no one touched her now. She glanced up at the
Sural. He studied the control panel.

The pod came to rest at the shaft’s
base. A long tunnel opened before them, bright as day, but she
could see no source for the light.

“We have an extensive network of these
tunnels beneath the surface of every province,” the Sural told her.
“It is how we travel.”

“You don’t need air
travel.”

He shook his head. “No. We have
control over Tolar’s weather, but even so, the skies are too
perilous. In the days when we traveled by air, too many of us died
in treacherous air conditions. This way is as swift and much
safer.”

The pod leaped forward into the tunnel
before them. They sped along for a time, until they burst into open
ocean.

“Ohhhhh,” Marianne sighed, looking all
around.

The Sural’s mouth twitched, and he
aimed for a school of small sea creatures, bursting through them
with an open smile. Marianne laughed. Then she realized, as the pod
swooped and dove, she didn’t feel the rolling or the
accelerations.

“Transport pods possess inertial
dampening,” he said.

“How did you know I was wondering
about that?” she asked.

“I am very good at reading
others.”

“Like Storaas?”

“He is more proficient than I,” the
Sural admitted, eyeing her. “More proficient than most, in truth.
He is a noted sensitive.”

Marianne shook her head. If he really
was an empath, at least he wasn’t the most sensitive of them. As he
guided the pod into deeper water he peered around as if searching
for something.

“What are you looking for?” she
asked.

“The hevalra migrate through the
waters off Suralia during the autumn,” he answered, and then
pointed with his free hand. “Look. There. A hevalrin. The largest
creature on Tolar.”

She looked. A shadow loomed in the
distance, and he aimed the pod for it. As they drew closer, she
realized it was enormous—a vast marine creature larger than a
terrestrial blue whale, with three sets of fins and a long tail.
Six limbs
.
Like the flutters
. The hevalrin seemed to
notice the pod.

Marianne gasped. “It’s coming toward
us!”

“Have no fear,” the Sural said. “She
means us no harm.”

“She?”

He nodded, and the pod stopped. The
creature approached until it hung in the water in front of them
like a wall.

“Greetings, old friend,” the Sural
murmured as the hevalrin bumped the pod. He put a hand on the wall
where the creature contacted it, and his hand sank through the
crystal until he touched its skin. Then he put his other hand on
Marianne’s shoulder and closed his eyes. “Just feel,” he
said.

Marianne drew a sharp breath. She
could
feel
the hevalrin, calm and deep and ancient. It
bumped its feelings against her, playful as a puppy. The Sural
smiled, his eyes still closed.

“She likes you,” he said. “Touch
her.”

“But I’m not an empath.”

“She is.” He took a hand and guided it
onto the crystal. Then he pushed, and her hand sank in as if
through half-set gelatin, until she reached the cold water and the
hevalrin’s rough skin. Her sense of the great creature grew clear,
a direct connection rather than feeling the ancient leviathan
through the Sural. To her surprise and wonder, the world faded, the
universe contracted to only herself, the Sural, and the hevalrin.
She felt as if a large, stately old dog, full of affection and calm
strength, licked her mind. She tried to return the warmth, and the
creature’s entire body shivered, rocking the pod. Delight surged
through the connection.

A distant call echoed. With a brief
flash of reluctance, the hevalrin broke the contact and backed
away. Flicking her six fins, she rocketed toward the surface and
breached, taking in a fresh supply of air. Another flick, and she
headed into the deep. As they pulled their hands back into the pod,
Marianne noticed her hand bore little trace of moisture. The Sural
had a fond smile as he watched the enormous marine animal disappear
into the depths.

“You know her?” she asked, as he put
his hand back on the controls.

“Oh yes,” he replied, his eyes still
distant, gazing into the deep. Then he turned a brief smile on her.
“She is a great matriarch of her kind. I have known her since I was
a boy.” He retreated behind his usual impassiveness and fell
silent.

Marianne let the quiet stretch as they
returned to the stronghold, but when the library door closed behind
them, she spoke.

“I can see why you don’t fear my
government,” she said. “Did your people invent those
pods?”

“Yes,” the Sural replied, nodding.
“What will you tell your Admiral?”

“I don’t know.” She knitted her
eyebrows. “I don’t know how to feel about this. I love my world—but
I don’t have any illusions about my government. They’re rapacious,
expansionist, greedy. I thought I needed to protect you from them.
I thought yours was a beautiful, primitive, pastoral world. But now
I’m wondering if I need to protect my world from you.”

“Your people have nothing to fear from
me unless you make yourselves my enemies. My people wish to pursue
their own arts in peace.”

“If I tell the Admiral what I saw
today, my government will either panic, or they’ll try to weasel
your secrets from you any way they can. Or maybe both. They already
use me to get information from you. It will get a hundred times
worse.”

He smiled. Then he grew serious. “I do
not wish to see your spirit clouded from deceiving your friends,”
he said. “Have a care what you do if you decide to take that
path.”

“Do I have any choice?”

“You have always a choice.” He
steepled his fingers under his chin. “What you do freely is of
great value to us. What you do under compulsion is of no
worth.”

“That’s why you wanted me to say I was
staying of my own volition, my first day here.”

He nodded. “Even so. I would prefer to
see you retain the clear spirit my people value, but it is your
choice. You can see there is no need for you to protect us, so you
may tell the Admiral whatever you like. He cannot harm us. None of
the space-faring races you know can harm us.”

“What if he calls me back to the
ship?”

“Do you wish to leave?”

She shook her head. “Not
yet.”

“Then you need not go. You may stay as
long as you like.”

“Do I really have that
choice?”

“Of course. You are under my
protection.”

Marianne chewed on her lower lip for a
moment. “Why do you put such strict limits on the human technology
you allow on Tolar?”

“It interferes with our own
technology.”

Marianne’s eyebrows flew
up.

“Perhaps the best descriptive phrase
for human technology is, ‘it leaks,’” the Sural added. “Phase
platforms more so than most of your devices.”