Battleground (8 page)

H
ANNA
HAD A SMALL
holo of Mickey in her cabin. There was none of Starr Jameson, because it would not be appropriate. Any other lover, yes. Just not the Director of Alien Relations and Contact.

There were no holos of any kind in the small conference room where she waited for now-daily voice contact to be established. It would have been an appropriate place for an image of the director, and Hanna was relieved there was none there. She would want to take it down every time she saw it. Or put it up again.

“Good morning, Hanna.”

She warmed to his voice in spite of herself.

“Good morning.”

“Status, please.”

“Temporary hold.”

“Why is that?”

Because it's not working the way it's supposed to, that's why.

“As you know, Communications and its Linguistics division have completed preliminary collection and analysis of available data and are producing prototype translators. The mission plan calls, at this point, for sociological and other specialist interpretation of the data while Contact team telepaths assimilate their findings prior to actual contact. However—”

She stumbled. When had she gotten so good at spouting this nonsense?

“However, data produced by Species Y societies appear to be, by a process of self-selection within those societies, restricted within narrow, narrow—”

You're laughing at me. I just know you are.

“—parameters, leaving,” she said abruptly, “the specialists with little data to interpret. Unless we reverse the sequence. Come up with something new, some less quantifiable information. Prior to contact. From out here. Telepathically.”

“I see.”

Silence. He had ghosts of his own.

(“There is a new sensor in operation,” he had said early in the search for Species X. “The telepath, the D'neeran child. She said perhaps she can come up with more, if she is alone.”

And someone had answered, “You sound as if you're putting her out to be a sort of gauge of what there might be to fear . . .”)

“Starr? Are you there?”

“Yes. Have you made a deliberate attempt yet? To carry out telepathic observation?”

“A few tentative tries, with no result.”

“You haven't reported that.”

“I haven't tried very hard. It didn't seem important until the scarcity of information available from monitoring became apparent. I believe it's time to make a serious effort at telepathic observation, but I wanted first to advise you that that is my recommendation. As the team's only Adept, I would be lead in this effort. With your approval, we'll proceed.”

After another, rather long silence, he said, “I suspect that ‘lead' in this context means ‘solo.'”

“Not necessarily. In theory.”

“But in practice?”

“In practice, Bella, at least, might be able to connect with a distant consciousness. But she does not have Adept skills; she cannot use the altered state of the
satya
trance. Any contact she made might be more easily perceptible to the subject.”

More silence. Finally: “Approved. Is there anything else?”

“No.”

“Until tomorrow, then. Endit.”

The voice sounded normal. Almost casual. Not quite.

•   •   •

Jameson looked at the river forty stories below. It was nearly a year since he had gotten the first tantalizing information about
Species Y from New Earth. Winter was near its end; it had come to Admin late but hard. There was unseasonable ice on the river, and a clear blue sky that did not hint at the merciless, knife-edged wind.

It was Jameson who had forced the original
Endeavor
to accept Hanna, and it was he, personally, who had sent her alone in search of Species X. He had seen exactly what they had made of her: a thing mutilated and unrecognizable. Even in these last months, though years had passed, there were nights when he had waked and called for light so that he could see the triumph of regeneration he held in his arms, and sleepy blue eyes opening without fear.

She's not alone this time, he reminded himself.

He kept telling himself that all day.

•   •   •

Hanna found a way to stay clear of the gravity well that was Mickey. Simple visualization and imagery, after all. But she needed
help to do it.

From their quarters, from the team's conference room, wherever the D'neerans could isolate themselves from true-humans, they guided her through a dream.

The baby sleeps, with love his watch and ward.

It's safe to move away. The baby sleeps.

Look back without fear. There's no danger to be seen. He's safe.

Turn away, turn to your work. He's safe.

It's all right to move away. It's safe to move away. The baby sleeps.

•   •   •

Endeavor Three
was quieter than usual. Nobody seemed to know why. People were awake as usual, alert as usual. It was just—

Funny,
I remember when my daughter was young,
a man found himself thinking.
Nothing could wake that one once she fell asleep, but I used to tiptoe, all the same.

•   •   •

She floats.

She has not been so deep in trance for many months.

Before, twice, she was holding hard to life.

First, her own. Succ
eeded because help was near and she held on long enough.

The second time, Michael's. Failed. Because no help could ever have been enough.

No emotion in trance. There, but distanced. Return when you choose.

She has searched in space for alien minds before, but not as an Adept, and those she found, the People of Zeig-Daru, were powerful telepaths, far more powerful than any D'neeran, and they were searching for her, too. That's not how it is this time.

But this will work, if she has the will to do it. In trance, emotionless, she has the will.

She knows how they appear in one another's eyes.

So . . .

Visualize those strange heads, the great ears, multiple eyes. Seek a match, look for images, slip behind the eyes that see other faces. Eyes that look into another's.

Feel something like an ocean, a susurration of thought.

Slip into it, float in it, let it surround—

Ah, a coalescence, closer, deeper, see the separate threads. Pick one. Follow. Look. Feel . . .

Look away from those other eyes to see a strip of beach.

Danger. But only alertness, no feeling of fear.

Expecting attack. Not from her. From everywhere, all the time.

A wily one, this one. Old.

Old! So old!

That was a shock.

No emotion in trance.

There's a place behind, some distance behind, out of sight. Underground.

Defend it.

Nothing ahead but hot sand, ocean to the left, dense foliage to the right. Orders. Break for cover as soon as Demon Soldiers appear.

A subliminal pulse of drumbeats.

Suppose in this skirmish they have guns? Because we only have spears. But maybe they only have knives, like the skirmish near the place where missiles are made. Then we were the ones with knives. But I survived, like the time before that and the year of the summer before that.

Who makes the decisions, about knives and guns and spears? The High Commander? The Holy Man? They have so many summers, their decisions must be right.

But I have many summers now, I wonder why I have a spear when some in some battles have weapons that spit fire or deform the hearts in the chest.

Why do I ask such questions, this year of this summer? The two hundred forty-sixth. But the Commanders have many more so they must be right, and the Holy Man has even more than the Commanders.

But two hundred and forty-six summers is something. It is something! All my crèchemates ceased surviving long ago but I survive. Maybe I will be a Commander one day—

“H'ana!” someone calls. The D'neeran form of her name. “Time's up. You agreed.”

Hanna opened her eyes, felt her metabolism speed up like a smooth machine. She was in her cabin. Carl and Glory watched her drink to ease her dry throat. Then she told them what she had learned.

They didn't believe her at first. The telepaths did.

•   •   •

“Status, please.”

“An important fact.”

“And that is?”

“They can live for hundreds of years. Standard centuries. Unless they die in war. Nearly all of them do. Maybe all.”

There was a silence. When the deep voice spoke again, it was as calm as ever. No shock.

“How sure
are you that your perception of time correlates one-to-one with theirs?”

“Positive.”

“What else?”

“This war appears to be religious, as our linguists thought. As you know, they tentatively assigned the words ‘holy man' and ‘demon' to certain terms—there's some confusion about which side is which. What I sensed confirms the working definitions. The subject also thought of a wide range of variation in weaponry. There'll be details in my full report.”

“And what else?”

“I'm not sure . . . I pushed the subject a little, questioning some underlying assumptions, but—they weren't quite new questions. He seemed to have been asking himself a few. The—oh, how can I explain it, the track, the trail, the connections, the circuits—the
pattern
of the thoughts I saw—they were already there—recent and faint, but that's why I went that way—they're questions he's never asked before, maybe doubt—”

Explaining this kind of intimate contact to true-humans was nearly impossible. She did as she always had, explained as best she could.

“All right. And what else?”

“Nothing else, I think. Not from this one contact.”

“Can you draw any conclusions about their society from it?”

“Only one. This contact was real-time, not a transmission from the past. It supports the hypothesis that war is ongoing. I don't know how they tell one side from the other, by the way. Insignia, facial appearance, racial characteristics—I had no impression of anything that would distinguish enemy from ally.”

“What is your recommended next step?”

“I'll do it again.”
And again, and again.

For once, the breath of a sigh. For once, the other voice. The one that says:
thou.

“I thought you would say that.”

“Until tomorrow?”

“Until tomorrow. Endit.”

•   •   •

After that it was easier.

This one—much younger. Reading something on a—screen? No, a bound book—that—she?— I think it's she—holds in her hand. Surroundings a gray blur, underground, aboveground? A building? A—tent?

•   •   •

“Status?”

“The linguists have seen no literature a
s we know it because there is none.”

“There are treatises on warfare, I understand. And religious texts.”

“I have found no trace of admiration for their form, nor contemplation of the art of making them.”

“Poetry?”

“No trace in any text extracted from the data. No trace in any mind that I have touched.”

•   •   •

She spent so much time in trance that it bled over into daily life. What she got in trance ground her down, outside it, with frustration. That first contact proved exceptional, a suggestion of riches that came to nothing. Nearly everyone on the planet, it seemed, walked t
hrough life without question or analysis. She learned rote details of an infinity of tasks, laid over equally rote consciousness of a distant, godlike authority; she drifted in an undercurrent that reminded her of rote prayer, borrowed ears to hear the hiss of rhythms that reminded her of drums, borrowed eyes that in the spaces between tasks fastened on video projections of war, speeches, and public assemblies.

Eventually she met with something different; and when she came out of trance, hated it.

•   •   •

“Status, please.”

“We have seen no transmissions of domestic life because there is none.”

“You told the social scientists there is a child-rearing structure.”

“I've seen it now. It's a structure for producing Soldiers for the Holy Man. There is no evidence of childhood or
parenthood as we know it.”

“Explain, please.”

“Wait. A moment.”

Jameson waited patiently through a silence that was longer than a moment. He wished he could see Hanna's face, but he was not yet willing to push the restrictions on voice-only, limited-data communications. When she spoke again the odd, remote quality of trance was gone, but she was choosing words thoughtfully, carefully.

“In this contact, I observed a dialogue between a male and a female. They are—filling a certain role in the life of the society of which they are a part. It is . . . in another society it would be a parental role, but the emotions we associate with that role are absent. The adults view themselves only as breeders. The structure is not familial, and is directed only toward physical survival of the young to maturity. There is no parallel in my experience. Except, perhaps, breeders of animal stock . . .”

She paused. Jameson was used to these pauses. He did not try to rush her.

She said at last, “The only Standard words that work here are ‘nursery,' or ‘crèche.' The male and female I was with are caretakers; they are two of many in this one place. The females primarily suckle multiple infants. The males see to supplying the females' enormous nutritional needs, and to feeding older children and keeping the complex organized. I don't know if this pair are the biological parents of any of the children there. It seems possible, in context with some of the things they thought about, but it doesn't seem to matter. My impression is that whatever connection there was, even to the female's identification of her own young, is weakening, and soon will be gone.”