Diuturnity's Dawn (6 page)

“I appreciate the consideration,” he told the alien dryly. “My feet hurt plenty as it is.” The AAnn did not react, taking the comment at face value. Well, Cullen mused, one couldn’t expect every witticism to make the whimsical jump between species.

The ability to espy hazardous camouflaged fauna was something he had come to expect from Riimadu. He told the AAnn so as he thanked him more directly.

“You humanss are alwayss looking up, or ahead,” the exoarcheologist commented. “Anywhere but where you sshould. On a world like Vussussica you need to keep your attention focussed much more often on the ground in front of you.”

Vussussica was the name the AAnn had given to Comagrave. It was rumored that certain elements among the Imperial survey services had never fully relinquished their claim to the distant world humans had begun to explore long before the first AAnn ships had arrived in orbit around its sun. Subsequent to the conclusive imprinting by both sides of the formal agreements regarding Comagrave’s future status, it was presumed that these dissident elements had been suppressed. Certainly no one had mentioned them to Cullen or to any of his staff. To Riimadu they were of no consequence. “A hisstorical footnote,” he had called them when asked to expound his own feelings on the matter.

On an entirely practical level, Cullen did not know what he would have done without the AAnn’s help. It was Riimadu who had suspected that the eyes of the Mourners held a secret, and it was he who had triangulated the gazes of the twelve monoliths and chosen this site for excavation. That they had so far failed to find evidence of anything more significant than local subsurface life-forms like the spine shooter did not mean the site was barren of potential discovery, only that they had more work to do and deeper to dig. Certainly the preliminary subterranean scan had generated some interesting anomalies highly suggestive of the presence of unnatural stratification. Digging proceeded by hand only to protect the topmost layer of whatever they might uncover. Thereafter, once they knew what they were dealing with, more advanced excavation tools could be brought into play according to the fragility of the site. They knew they were onto
something
. They just did not, as yet, know what.

Patience, he reminded himself.

A thickly bundled figure was lurching clumsily along the western edge of the main excavation. Setting his hopes of discovery aside, Cullen spared a brief rush of sympathy for the awkwardly garbed Pilwondepat.

Despite making use of all six legs for locomotion, the thranx scientist was still tottering. The humidifier that was wrapped around his b-thorax covered his breathing spicules completely. It was not quite silent and made him sound like he was wheezing even though the source of the sound was entirely mechanical. Though the device drew moisture from the air, there was not enough in the atmosphere of Comagrave to satisfy even the hardiest thranx. The humidifier’s draw had to be supplemented by the contents of a lightweight bottle that rode on the scientist’s back. Coupled with leg and body wraps that helped to retain body moisture, Pilwondepat resembled a child’s toy engaged in a clumsy and ineffectual attempt to break free of its packaging.

Only the scientist’s head was completely unprotected, allowing him to observe without obstruction. The chafing of his chitin from the dryness of the air was plain to see, even though Cullen knew the exoarcheologist employed several specially formulated creams to maintain his exoskeleton’s shine and character. The site administrator had often wondered what awful blunder the thranx had committed to get himself assigned to Comagrave. He had been shocked to eventually learn that Pilwondepat had actually requested the assignment.

“What are you?” he had asked in an unguarded moment. “Some kind of masochist?”

Pilwondepat had clicked to the contrary. “The love of self-suffering is a human trait. I simply felt the opportunities here too intriguing to eschew. Like you, I want to know what happened to these people—to their cities, and to their dream of space travel that was never fulfilled despite their having apparently achieved an equivalent level of technology in all other aspects of science.”

“But to volunteer for duty on a world so blatantly inhospitable to your kind . . . ,” Cullen had continued.

The visiting scientist had responded with a cryptic gesture the human had been unable to access in his pictionary of thranx gestures. “This is the world where the Sauun lived. As a field researcher, you must know yourself that recordings and records are no substitute for working on site.”

Cullen recalled the brief but instructive conversation as he watched the thranx totter to the edge of the excavation. If the eight-limbed academic’s dedication did not exceed his own, it certainly matched it. Despite the appalling conditions, his hard-shelled counterpart rarely complained. As he put it, the fascination of the Sauun enigma helped to moisten more than his curiosity.

Advancing in front of Cullen, Riimadu approached the thranx from behind and addressed the scientist in his own language. “
Srr!iik,
you musst be careful here, or you will fall in.”

Pilwondepat looked back and up at the AAnn, who loomed over him, though not by as much as would the average human. “I have six legs. Have a care for your own footing, and don’t worry about mine.”

“I worry about everyone’ss footing on thiss world.” Leaning forward, Riimadu peered into the excavation. Neatly partitioned with cubing beams of light, the hole was now some thirty meters in diameter and seven deep. At the bottom, humans labored in thin, lightweight clothing, exuding salt-laden body water as they worked. Their skins, in a variety of colors, rippled unsettlingly in the light of Vussussica’s midday sun. Unlike AAnn or thranx, their epidermal layers were incredibly fragile. Why, even a feeble thranx could split them from neck to ankle with a single sharpened claw!

They were very quick, though. Agility was their compensation for lack of external toughness. To an AAnn or thranx, the human body seemed composed of lumps of malleable material, stretching and squashing unpleasantly in response to the slightest muscular twitch. Their anatomy had no gravity, no deliberation. The AAnn would have found them amusing, had they not been both gifted and prolific. And dangerous. The Pitarian War had revealed their true capabilities. To the AAnn, who had remained neutral throughout the conflict, the war had been exceedingly instructive.

Lurching forward, he leaned his body weight against the thranx’s right side. Pilwondepat’s foothands slid over the edge of the excavation, dirt and gravel sliding away beneath them as he scrambled to retain a foothold. Under such pressure, a biped would have taken a serious tumble into the open excavation. The thranx’s four trulegs kept him from falling.

Turning his head sharply, the thranx’s compound eyes glared up at the AAnn. “That was deliberate!”

“I kiss the ssand beneath your feet if it wass sso.” Gesturing apologetically, the AAnn exoarcheologist stepped back. Sharp teeth flashed between powerful, scaly jaws. “Why would I do ssuch a thing? Esspecially to a fellow sstudent of the unknown.”

“Why do the AAnn strike and retreat, hit and retire?” As he regained his composure, Pilwondepat held his ground, determined not to give the AAnn the satisfaction of seeing him flee. “Always testing, your kind. Always probing for weaknesses—not only of individuals, but of worlds and alliances.” The thranx gestured with a truhand. “I don’t even blame you, Riimadu. You can’t help yourself—it’s your nature. But don’t push me again. I may not be as strong, but I have better leverage than you.”

The AAnn was visibly amused. “Colleague, are you challenging me to a fight?”

“Don’t be absurd. We are both here as guests and on sufferance of the human establishment,
crrllk
. They are not fond of either of us, and must regard our presence here as an imposition and distraction from their work.”

“Not the human Cullen.” With the tip of his highly flexible tail, the AAnn gestured to where the human in charge was descending the earthen steps that had been cut into the side of the excavation. “He knowss that it wass I who found thiss ssite, and I can assure you that he iss properly grateful.”

Pilwondepat turned away. He knew the AAnn was right. The human Cullen Karasi owed the AAnn his gratitude. Pilwondepat possessed no such leverage with the human, or with any of his coworkers. Stumbling to and fro among them, weighed down by the humidifying equipment that kept him alive if not entirely comfortable, he noted their sideways stares and heard their murmurings of disapproval. The archeological team represented a cross section of humanity, though a well-educated one. There were among them some who actively espoused closer ties with the thranx. They were opposed by those who fervently desired that the two dissimilar species keep their distance from one another. The majority listened to the diverse arguments of their fellows and tried to make up their as-yet-undecided minds. Pilwondepat feared that his personal comportment under trying circumstances was insufficient to elevate the status of his people in the humans’ eyes. At every opportunity, he did his best to counteract the sorry image he was certain he was presenting.

If only he could get rid of the awkward, encumbering survival gear! Within his private dome he could do so, and actually relax. But those few humans curious enough to pay him a visit did not linger. Coupled with the temperature on the plateau, the 96 percent humidity Pilwondepat favored within his living quarters soon drove them out. There was nothing he could do about it. If he lowered the humidity in the dome to a level humans would find comfortable, that would leave him miserable all of the time, instead of just when he was working outside.

So he tried to learn their language, a form of communication as slippery and fluid as their bodies, and make friends where he could. Meanwhile he was forced to watch as Riimadu strolled freely about the site, interacting effortlessly with the humans, sharing the same basic body structure and single-lensed eyes, and positively luxuriating in what for the AAnn was an ideal climate.

Had
the reptiloid deliberately nudged him in an attempt to send him tumbling over the edge into the excavation, or had it been an accident? One could never be sure of anything except their innate cunning where the AAnn were concerned. They would gesture first-degree humor while cutting the ground out from beneath you. Yet he could not complain. The humans, who had far less experience of the AAnn than did the thranx, continued to remain ambivalent in their attitude toward them. Humans, Pilwondepat had noted in the course of his studies, had a tendency to react against assertions they themselves had not proven. Accuse the AAnn, insult them, insist on their intrinsic perfidy, and well-meaning humans were likely to leap to their defense.

It was infuriating. The thranx knew the AAnn, knew what they were capable of. Humans did not want to hear it. So the insectoids had to proceed discreetly in all matters involving the scaled ones, whether in personal relationships or at the diplomatic level. Humans would have to learn the truth about the AAnn by themselves. Like others of his kind, Pilwondepat only hoped this education would not prove too painful.

For their part, the AAnn were being more patient and proceeding more slowly in their developing relations with humankind than the thranx had ever known them to do with any newly contacted species. This knowledge allowed Pilwondepat to smile internally. Having to proceed with such unaccustomed caution must be causing the AAnn Imperial hierarchy a great deal of discomfort. He certainly hoped so.

Meanwhile, he was but one representative of his family, clan, and hive, isolated on a world of great mysteries, dependent on the unpredictable humans for continued permission to work among them and, indeed, for his very survival. That many of them viewed his presence among them with suspicion and xenophobia he could not help. He could only do his work and try, when the opportunity presented itself, to make friends. For some reason he enjoyed greater sympathy from human females than from the males. This, he had been told before embarking on his assignment, was a likely possibility, and he should be prepared to take advantage of it.

It had to do, he had been informed, with the thranx body odor, which nearly all primates found exceedingly pleasant. More than once, human workers had commented upon it, and he had been forced to resort to his translator to ascertain the meaning of strangely emollient words like
jasmine
and
frangipani
.

With a sigh, he started around the edge of the excavation. It was time to do some work among the human field staff. That meant making his way to the bottom of the excavation. In the absence of a familiar ramp, he would have to cope with human-fashioned “steps.” It was uncivilized and awkward, but he dared not ask for help. Special treatment was the one thing he was determined not to request. Many humans did not realize that thranx, built low to the ground, were terrible climbers despite boasting the use of eight limbs.

A young worker named Kwase saw the scientist struggling at the top of the first step. Putting down his soil evaporator, the young man turned and vaulted up the earthen staircase to confront the alien. Smiling encouragingly, he made a cup of both hands in front of his own legs. Quickly discerning the sturdy biped’s intent, Pilwondepat gratefully dipped both antennae in the mammal’s direction before carefully placing one foothand in the proffered fleshy stirrup and resuming his descent.

Brr!!asc
—we make progress! he told himself with satisfaction. The annoyed look on Riimadu’s glistening face as he observed the human voluntarily assisting the thranx was even worth a few deep breaths of inadequate, desiccated air.

The bottom of the excavation was no familiar homeworld burrow, he mused when he finally hopped down off the last step, but it was far more calming than the wind-blown, lonely surface.

4

Fanielle watched the Hysingrausen Wall slide past beneath the aircar’s wings. Running east to west across this portion of the central continent, the immense, forest-fringed limestone rampart was interrupted only by a succession of enormous waterfalls that spilled over the three-thousand-meter rim. Despite the heavy flow, most evaporated before they reached the ground. Only a very few, the offspring of mighty rivers that arose in the northern mountains beyond the Mediterranea Plateau, thundered against rocks at the base of the wall.

The majestic geologic feature had kept the thranx from making anything more than cursory explorations of the high tableland. Humans were delighted to be allowed to establish themselves in a sizable region the thranx had ignored, and many thranx were pleased to see humans making use of an uplifted portion of their planet that was to them the perfect picture of a half-frozen hell.

She sealed her field jacket as the aircar, once clear of the strong downdrafts that raked the wall, commenced a gradual descent. The afternoon temperature at Azerick Station was sixteen degrees C. Bracing to a human, unbearably frigid and dry to a thranx. Azerick did not receive many visitors from the heavily populated lowlands. Most of the thranx who were assigned to help facilitate the station’s development stayed down in Chitteranx, in the rain forest, where the humidity and heat were pleasantly overpowering. A few unlucky souls were assigned permanently to the human outpost. Being thranx, they rarely gave voice to their displeasure. Only someone like Anjou, who had learned to interpret many of their gestures, could tell how unhappy they were.

In less than two weeks she would have her meeting with the eint. She intended to be forceful but congenial. There were years worth of particulars that needed to be discussed, lists of individual items that needed to be addressed in detail. She would have to pick and choose carefully so as not to offend, or bore, or isolate her estimable audience. Haflunormet was a good soul, but during the time they had worked with each other he had been able to offer little more than sympathetic encouragement on issues of real import. Working at last with someone who could actually make decisions promised to be enlightening as well as effective.

There was so much to prepare. She worried about overwhelming the eint with minutiae before paradigms could be agreed upon.

The aircar set down gently amid the quasi-coniferous forest that covered the plateau. While the trees resembled nothing arboreal on Earth, at least they were green. Jeremy was waiting for her. They embraced decorously. Other moves would have to wait for greater privacy.

He took her bag as they walked through the terminal. “I hear you finally got your meeting with a higher-up. Some of us were beginning to wonder if any of the diplomatic staff here ever would.”

“You know the thranx.” They turned a corner, squeezing past chattering travelers outbound on the aircar that had just arrived. “Caution in everything.”

He made a rude noise. “It’s more than that. It’s deliberate. They’re trying to stay friends, close friends, without committing themselves to anything definite. The Pitarian War was an exception, brought on by exceptional circumstances. Now they’ve reverted to the hive norm.” Outside, he placed her bag in the transport capsule. In seconds, they were racing along a grassy trail split by the glistening metallic strip of a powerguide.

“I don’t think that’s the case at all, Jeremy.” Leaning back in the seat, she watched the forest whiz past. At this speed, details vanished in a green blur, and travelers could almost imagine they were speeding through the far more familiar woods of Canada or Siberia.

He shrugged diffidently. “Well, if anybody should know, it’s you, Fannie. You’ve spent more time among them than anyone else on staff. Personally, I don’t see how you stand the climate and the crowding inside their hives.” Reaching out, he took one of her hands in his and with a fingertip began to trace abstract designs on the back. “I’d rather have you spend more time here, you know. It’s not real great for my ego to think that you prefer a bug’s company to mine.”

She smiled and let him toy with her hand and fingers. Little sparks seemed to materialize with each contact. “Unfortunately, while humankind has conquered deep space, cured the most serious primitive diseases, and spread itself across a small portion of one galactic arm, we have yet to solve the unfathomable complexities of the male ego.”

His fingers jetéed up her arm. “Chaos theory. That’s the ticket.”

The darkened capsule arrived at Azerick with both passengers considerably relaxed in mind and body. Jeremy bid her a reluctant farewell, leaving her to compose the report she would present in person to the ambassador. Upgrading the embassy here to full settlement status was one item on the crowded agenda. The humans wanted it—for one thing, it would mean promotions all around—but the thranx were reluctant. Granting such status implied recognition of a condition existing between the two species that they were not sure they were prepared to acknowledge.

She showered and redressed, leaving off the field jacket since the station was heated to an Earth-ideal standard of twenty-two degrees, with humidity to match. Ambassador Toroni was anxious to hear her preliminary report. Details could come later.

Smiles and congratulations awaited her in the main conference room. Outside, the forest of the Mediterranea Plateau, as the resident humans had come to call it, marched away toward distant high mountains. A smattering of applause greeted her rising. She did not blush, was not uncomfortable. The acclaim had been earned.

Spreading a brace of viewers out before her, she folded her hands and waited as the ambassador rose. There were eight other people in the room, most of whom she knew well. Living in an outpost on an alien world left little room for people to be strangers.

“First,” he said, “I want to extend my personal congratulations to Fanielle Anjou for securing what we had come to believe might never come to pass: an appointment to discuss, and to present, multiple items of diplomatic importance on which we have all been working for years. While the method of finally obtaining this long-sought-after meeting may have been unorthodox, I think I can say safely that no strenuous objections will be raised at higher levels.”

“Especially since ‘higher levels’ have no idea what a Bryn’ja request is,” Gail Hwang observed tartly.

“Funny, you don’t look pregnant.” From his seat next to the ambassador, Jorge Sertoa grinned down at her. “Who’s the father?”

“Probably that thranx she’s been seeing so much of,” someone else put in quickly. Laughter rolled the length of the table.

“I don’t think so.” Aram Mieleski pursed his lips as he rested his chin thoughtfully on the tips of his fingers. “The delivery mechanism involved is so different that . . .”

“Oh, shut up, Aram,” Gail chided him. “I swear, if ever anybody needed a humor transplant . . .”

“Emotional conditions cannot be transferred between individuals,” an unruffled Mieleski calmly observed, by his words confirming the necessity of her observation.

“What will you do,” Enrique Thorvald asked seriously, “if the thranx continue to inquire as to your condition?”

“They’ll be informed that I lost the multiple larvae prior to giving birth.” Anjou held one of her readers before her. “I’ve worked it all out. If anything, that should gain me even more sympathy. And it doesn’t hurt that Eint Carwenduved, with whom I am to meet, is female.”

“Yeah,” Sertoa muttered. “You can compare the glaze on your ovipositors.” While basically a good guy, Jorge Sertoa was among several outspoken members of the outpost staff who were less than enthusiastic about cementing deeper relations with their hosts.

“And I bet you’d like to be there to see that.” Her rejoinder prompted more laughter and defused what could have been an awkward moment. Putting the jovial banter to rest, she hefted the reader and commenced delivering her formal report. They would all receive copies in due course, but this way questions could be asked as soon as they were formulated. Ambassador Toroni was a firm believer in encouraging staff interaction.

When she concluded, less than an hour later, there were fewer queries than she had anticipated. Her accomplishment in securing the official meeting was duly applauded once again, but most of the questions thrown her way concerned maintaining the security of the ruse she had invented to gain the appointment rather than what she was actually going to discuss when it finally came to fruition.

“It all depends,” she commented by way of summation, “on how much authority I’m given going into the meeting.”

All eyes shifted to Toroni. Running a hand through his shock of white hair, he leaned back in his chair and considered. For an ambassador appointed to what was arguably the most important nonhuman populated world known, he was casual in manner and laid-back in his work habits. It was an attitude much appreciated by those who labored under him. Azerick was a lonely enough place to be stationed without being forced to toil for some inflexible martinet.

“If it were up to me, Fanielle, I’d give you permission to vet and sign treaties. But you know I can’t do that. I don’t have that capability myself. As soon as we adjourn here, I’ll get on the deep-space communicator and find out just how far the authorities on Earth are prepared to let you go. One thing you can be sure of: You won’t be allowed to negotiate anything controversial.”

“I already know that,” she responded.

“But we might be able to procure more authority for you than you think, by trumpeting the importance of this meeting, how it’s likely not to be repeated for some time, the sensitive nature of relations between you and this Eint Carwenduved—I intend to call in every favor and promise I’ve been stockpiling.” He leaned forward. “I want you to have as much autonomy going in as we can manage. This is the first real breakthrough we’ve had in months, and I don’t want to squander it.”

“Even so, sir,” Sertoa began, “we don’t want Fanielle to agree to anything hasty.” He smiled deferentially at her. “Careful perusal and dissection of any potential covenant is demanded before the authority to sign can be conferred.”

“Loosen up, Jorge,” she told him. “No matter what I manage to get the eint to agree to, I don’t think you have to worry about some thranx sharing your bathroom anytime soon.”

It was an exceedingly mild put-down, but whether for that reason or one unknown, Sertoa said nothing more for the duration of the meeting.

“I’ve been working on proceeding to the next step in securing a stronger alliance among our respective species.” Holding up her reader, she touched a contact and waited the couple of seconds necessary to transfer the relevant documentation to everyone else’s handheld. “If the eint doesn’t dismiss it out of hand, I intend to at least broach a number of possibilities for future discussion.”

“Such as what?” Hwang asked with obvious interest.

“A lasting, permanent alliance. Nothing held back. Military presence on one another’s worlds, mutual command of tactics and weaponry, joint colonization of which this plateau and the Amazon Basin are only the most preliminary sorties.” Someone whistled.

“You don’t want much, do you, Fanielle?” Genna Erlich observed.

“You’re talking about the kind of treaty that would require not only a vote of the full Terran Congress, but approval by majorities on all the settled worlds.” Mieleski’s tone was somber. “It’s a very adventurous program.”

“What are we here for, if not to press for closer relations?” Toroni smiled paternally. “Though you’ve certainly chosen an ambitious agenda for yourself, Fanielle.”

“Everything depends on the eint’s reaction to my prefatory suggestions,” she replied a bit defensively. “Depending on how things go, I might not even have the chance to make known my more elaborate proposals.”

“Quite right.” Rising, Toroni indicated that the conference was at an end. “I look forward to reading all the details of your report, Fanielle. With luck, we should within a couple of days have some guidelines from Earth detailing how you will be allowed to proceed. I myself am optimistic, and intend to frame the request for those guidelines in the most anxious manner possible.

“In the meantime, we all of us have much to study, and to digest. I take it you are amenable to criticisms and suggestions, Ms. Anjou?”

“Always,” she replied, at the same time hoping there would not be too many. Putting what had previously been an informal succession of guidelines into presentation format was going to take most of the time she had remaining until her meeting with the eint. The last thing she needed was a flood of well meaning but essentially superfluous advice.

Only when word came back from Earth that she was to have essentially a free hand in making proposals—though she could not commit to anything more significant than, for example, the Intercultural Fair about to get under way on the colony world of Dawn—did she realize how truly important the encounter would be. Though usually an island of calm amid her often frazzled colleagues, she finally had to take some minor medication to still her nerves.

I am going to go in there, she told herself, as the chosen representative of my entire species, knowing that I have gained that access on the back of a lie. But while the burden was making her increasingly uneasy, she would not have turned the meeting over to one of her colleagues for all the suor melt on Barabbas.

As the time for her to return to Daret drew near, she found herself relying more than ever on Jeremy’s strong, self-assured presence. A microbiologist, he had no diplomatic ax to grind, nothing of a professional nature to gain from her success or failure. He was interested only in her and their future together; not in her mission. It was a gratifying change from the characteristic infighting and arguing that took place within the highly competitive diplomatic hierarchy.

When the day scheduled for departure finally did arrive and she had little to take with her but her hopes and anxieties, he took time off from his lab work to join her for the brief journey in the transport capsule that would convey her to the settlement airport.