Fictions

by Nancy Kress

  “You don’t raise meat animals, is that correct, sir?”

  Obvious distaste crossed his features, but his reply was courteous. “That’s correct, yes. Treemon is vegetarian. We respect the souls of animals as well as humans, since of course humans are animals. Each species must keep to its own kind.”

  “Have you ever tasted animal flesh, then?”

  The woman burst out, “The very idea is blasphemous!”

  Interesting.

  “Not that we blame you for asking,” the farm woman went on more calmly, “you’re an outsider. I didn’t mean to yell at you. It takes time for everyone to reach the same level. We in Treemon respect biological integrity above all.” She smiled at Claree.

  Claree probed, although she already knew the answer. “But the enemy you’re at war with . . . the Ignati . . . they eat animal flesh?”

  “They abuse every aspect of the planet,” the man said. “Fields, water, air, life. All they know is exploitation and subjugation. They have no concept of biological integrity.”

  “So I read.”

  “I promise you this,” the woman said with a sudden return of vehemence, “once we’ve won this war, their whole society will be transformed. Once they know what freedom and respect are, they’ll naturally want them for themselves.”

  “I see,” Claree said. “Thank you.”

  “Anything we can do for you, ma’am?”

  “No, thank you,” Claree said, and got back on the bus. They had not asked her one thing about the place she had come from.

  The upland valleys were even more beautiful than the city. As the bus climbed, the temperature fell. Claree put on her warm, irradiated jacket. It still felt strange to be out of postulant uniform, to feel the cool air at the open neck of her soft shirt. She zipped up the jacket.

  The bus stopped at the lower-mountain village of Demar just before dark. It was a raucous, jolly place, full of inns and bars for the miners that came and went into this part of the mountains. The rough humor of such places didn’t offend Claree. She stayed the night, and in the morning followed her directions to the meeting place. An hour of gentle hiking, and there it was, the skimmer, in a small clearing. A young man dawdled in front of it.

  “I’m Claree Postulant,” she said formally.

  “Private first class Kel Servant.”

  Claree hesitated. “You’re not in uniform. And I was supposed to meet someone named Benn Ko.”

  “We don’t wear uniforms when we’re among the natives,” Kel said, looking surprised. “Didn’t they tell you that? This is a non-requested operation.”

  No one had told Claree much of anything, except the name of her contact. She didn’t want this supercilious man to know that. She said only, “I was told to meet Benn Ko.”

  “I’m supposed to take you to Yani. Maybe he’ll get you to this Benn Ko. The quee message only came in from your Novitiate last night—you do know about quee?”

  Claree merely looked disdainful. Quantum-Entangled Energy links for instantaneous interstellar communication was first-year stuff. She wasn’t sure she liked Kel.

  He repeated, “The message only came in last night. We were on black-out. Treemon isn’t militarily sophisticated, and they prefer to keep to themselves, but they’re not Industrial Age, either. They track everything they can, and they’ve got a few good satellites upstairs. Anyway, Yani couldn’t come, the operation developed a complication. He sent me to get you. But I have another job to do, too, so I’m just going to drop you off where Yani can pick you up.”

  He sounded harried, and the arrangements seemed unnecessarily complicated. But it wasn’t her place to judge. They would tell her what the operation was when she needed to know. Claree climbed into the skimmer, taking careful mental notes: Observation is all.

  IV. BRAK

  The skimmer flew low, behind mountains and barely above rivers, and after a while Brak realized that the pilot was doing everything possible to avoid detection. Who were these people? He didn’t dare ask, and even if he had dared, it would have been difficult. Besides the pilot, there were Julu, the two men, and the four small children, three of whom were now awake and screaming. The noise was deafening. The three adults tried to calm the children, completely without success.

  Finally one of the men shouted to the other, “Sedative?”

  “Yani says no.”

  “Christ.”

  The skimmer flew on.

  When it landed with a thump, they were far from Treemon, somewhere in the Eastern Scrub. Deep, dry canyons wrinkled the land. The pilot flew nearly into the mouth of one, making Brak clutch the sides of his seat. The sleeping boy woke up, looked at the strangers around him, and began to yell louder than the other three children, who now redoubled their flagging din.

  Julu opened the door of the skimmer and lifted the child out. He kicked her hard in the belly—Brak heard the sound of hard small boots on soft flesh—and she doubled over, setting him down. He ran off, tripped over a rock, and sprawled on the hard ground. Blood gushed from his face.

  The adults rushed over to him. Julu lay gasping. No one paid the slightest attention to Brak. He slipped around the skimmer, so its bulk blocked him from sight, and began to run.

  The ground was uneven here, so full of rifts and boulders and abrupt sheer, if small, cliffs, that he felt confident he couldn’t be followed easily. He would get as far as he could and then hide. They wouldn’t find him, they had their hands full with the small kids, there were a million places to hide. Brak could hold out until they left . . . and then what?

  He couldn’t think that far ahead. Gasping great lungfuls of air, he pushed himself to keep moving, keep climbing, keep sliding down the small treacherous precipices, don’t make too much noise if he could help it—

  He skid nearly on top of the cave hylut, sunning itself on the rocks.

  The beast woke and bared its teeth, two terrible rows of sharp angry knives. Brak drew a sharp breath and started to back away. No, you were supposed to hold your ground with a cave hylut . . . no, you were supposed to—

  The hylut sprang at him.

  Brak screamed. In mid-air the beast heard the scream, shivered, and fell senseless to the ground. Brak stared. Then he saw the girl holding the gun, and the hole burned in the hylut’s hide, still smoking a little. The stench of burning flesh and foul hylut odor wafted toward him on the breeze.

  “I got him,” the girl said in wonder. She smiled broadly. “Are you all right?”

  “Yes . . . thank you.”

  “You’re with Yani, right? Or Benn Ko? Here to pick me up?”

  Brak said nothing, trying to fit the pieces together. They didn’t mesh. She was younger than Julu, he saw now, not as pretty, skinny, and with short dark hair in frizzy waves.

  “I’m Claree. I’ve only been here a half hour or so, since they left me for pick-up. Is the skimmer over there someplace? Are you a postulant?”

  Something was clearly expected of him. Brak shook his head.

  Her eyes widened. “A Servant already? How old are you?”

  Again he just shook his head.

  She looked abashed. “I’m sorry, I didn’t realize I shouldn’t ask that. I’m new, you know, just a postulant assigned to Benn Ko. I’m . . . I’m still working on my akas.” Sudden doubt creased her features. “Why weren’t you armed? Out here, I mean. Even I . . . oh, gods. You’re not a Servant at all, are you? A local?”

  “Yes,” he answered, because if she didn’t realize that there couldn’t be locals where there was nothing local to farm or mine or gather, then it wasn’t his business to enlighten her. Could she be . . . oh, shit . . . an agent of the Ignati? Their women held the power positions, after all, they had no sexual equality at all. But . . . what would an agent of the Ignati be doing in the Eastern Scrubs?

  “The situation is this,” Claree said with sudden determination that looked to Brak as if it were partly desperation. “I probably just said too much. If you could not tell anyone you saw
me, or that I said . . . oh, gods!”

  He saw an advantage. “I won’t say anything to anyone if you tell me what you’re here for. I mean, I need to be sure my . . . my village isn’t in danger.” He was quite proud of this last invention.

  Claree chewed her bottom lip. “All right, but only a little. And only because everything I read said that your people, Treemon people, honor their promises.”

  “It’s the foundation of our society,” he said, truthfully.

  “All right. I’m a Servant of Peace, or at least I will be when I finish the training. We’re here to help bring the war between Treemon and Ignatus to peace. I don’t know any details, but we’re operating undercover.”

  Brak felt dizzy. The Servants of Peace! They were half legend on Treemon, which had prided itself on its curtailed communication with the rest of the galaxy. “We live lives of harmony with the planet,” his teachers all said, “and let less enlightened peoples choose their own path, as long as they leave us alone in return.”

  “You must know a lot,” he blurted.

  Claree blushed. “Well, not me, of course, I hardly know anything, but the Servants . . . you can trust us, Brak. Whatever this operation is about, it can only bring good to your people.”

  “But they abducted me. And four other children.”

  She frowned. “Abducted?”

  “They kidnapped me!”

  “I don’t know anything about that. But if . . . I’m sure it’s only temporary and for a good reason. They’ll return you to your . . . family?”

  “Mother and father and sister!” He was indignant now, and the reek of the cave hylut made it obscurely worse. “And you killed that creature.”

  “It was going to kill you!”

  “Well, yes. But it was just following its nature. Still, you were justified in the murder, I think.”

  “You’re a prig,” she said flatly.

  “I am not! I just think about things!”

  “In the abstract. Not the concrete thing itself. Only the concrete is real.”

  “Oh, dung,” Brak said boldly, and then was smothered in confusion. This girl was with the Servants of Peace. How dared he—

  “You don’t understand,” she said loftily. “But whatever the Servants need you for, you won’t be harmed, and it will be for the good of your people in the long run. Good is not corruption.” Suddenly her eyes widened and she let out a cry of delight.

  “What—”

  “Oh, I could kiss you!” Claree jumped at him and, before he could recoil, she did kiss him.

  Brak felt himself go scarlet. A second later anger flooded him, an anger he didn’t understand, and without even thinking about it, he took Claree’s gun from her slack hand and pointed it at her.

  “Brak—” she said, in honest bewilderment.

  “I’m taking this. And I’m leaving here. I don’t know why I was kidnapped, but it isn’t right. I have the freedom to go where I want! It’s a basic freedom we have and the Ignati don’t . . . to say the least! Now, I’m leaving you here—” But she would just run back to the people in the skimmer. Should he tie her up? With what? And what if another cave hylut came by and ate her? Brak could never, ever be responsible for a human death. Hopelessness flooded him. This was not the way a wamu was supposed to go.

  Claree said, sudden formal, “Brak, you don’t understand. The Servants of Peace are professionals. Our job is to manage violence, and our client is the entire galaxy. We observe carefully and then do what we can, without causing any violence ourselves. There isn’t any reward in it for us, except for promoting stability.”

  Brak considered. That all sounded good. He didn’t seriously weigh the idea that she might be lying, because she so clearly believed what she was saying. Also, Brak had not often been lied to, and he tended to believe what he was told.

  She went on, gaining momentum. “Stability is good, Brak! We keep societies from destroying themselves, or each other, so that all the good things that require stability can flourish. Learning, art, science, agriculture. You can’t have those things if the fields and cities are all torn up and bombed.”

  That, too, made sense. His parents stressed the beauty of calm, stable lives, lived in freedom and beauty.

  “The Servants of Peace don’t take stability for granted,” Claree said. “We have experience with all sorts of societies, and we know that human beings learn from experience, not abstracts.”

  And that, too, was reasonable. The Treemon education system was built on hands-on experience. Certainly Brak had learned more about soil management from working with old Mr. Garander than from any text software.

  “We’re here to help, not harm.” Claree said solemnly, her dark eyes shining, and Brak lowered his gun.

  “All right,” he said, feeling very mature. “I see your point.”

  She grinned happily. “Good. Can I have my laser?”

  He handed it to her, not without relief; his father violently disapproved of guns. In the distance he heard a clatter.

  Claree said, “I think they’re coming for me. Let’s go meet them, Brak.”

  He followed her, scrambling over loose rocks and uneven ground. He had chosen to follow her, to trust these people, yet he wished they hadn’t shown up so quickly after he decided that. It might look to outsiders as if he hadn’t actually made a choice.

  They were heading in the direction of the breeze, and he turned his head to avoid the foul stench of the dead cave hylut.

  V. CLAREE

  It was big, a much bigger operation than she’d expected. Big, and totally baffling.

  She was glowing from her persuasion of Brak to return with her. “Good work, Claree,” Yani had said when she finally met him. He was a big man, very dark, with a thick beard and eyes of a peculiar color, somewhere between gold and gray. Genemod, she guessed, and wondered how he’d gotten through the Treemon City spaceport. Although, she realized a moment later, of course he hadn’t come in that way.

  “Are you going to take me to Benn Ko?” she asked. “My Master said you would.”

  “Eventually. We have our hands full right here, as you can see.” He swept his hand in a wide arc, smiling.

  The cave was huge, and very deep in a low hill that, from the air, had looked like a thousand other low, barren, irregular hills. The inside had been coated with foamcast and fitted with air-renewing genemod micros. Powercubes cast light. There was foamcast furniture—a minimum of furniture, true, but someone still had had to transport enough compressed canisters to spray the tables and chairs into shape. Foamcast divided the huge space into three rooms: the all-use one that Claree stood in now, a closed one in the back that she hadn’t yet seen, and a nursery for the ten children.

  Ten children . . . all abducted from various parts of Treemon. Claree tried not to flinch from the word. Abducted, kidnapped. Yani had reassured her they would all be returned in perfect health to their families, and of course Claree knew they would. But. . .

  “Why are the children here?” she blurted to Yani.

  He smiled. “Did your Master ever make you observe things and find the patterns for yourself?”

  “Of course.” It was the basic method of instruction—surely Yani knew that?

  “Then do it now.”

  The tone of authority was unmistakable. So was the rebuke. Claree felt herself flush with heat. He thought she was stupid. She was as much a failure here as at the Novitiate.

  “You did do good work with that Treemon boy,” Yani said, smiling at her. “Now go on doing good work.” He stood and strolled away.

  She was reprieved.

  When the first team of two men came back a few hours later carrying an enormous plastic box between them, Claree stayed silent. She’d learned her lesson. Observation is all.

  They carried the box into the back room. Claree sat quietly with the infant, whom she’d offered to watch. A woman who seemed to be a nurse had accepted gratefully. Awkwardly, Claree held the baby up on her shoulder as the
nurse had showed her and walked around the main room in large circles, crooning a wordless tune. The baby seemed to like this, or maybe it had just been fed. Anyway, it went to sleep. Claree pulled a corner of its blanket over its face and pretended it was still awake, so she could go on pacing slowly, watching everything.

  There were only seven kids left in the “nursery.” Brak had vanished.

  All of the medical personnel, or what Claree had identified as “medical personnel,” were in the back room, which remained tightly shuttered. A girl called Julu, whom Claree had met and didn’t like, loitered at the closed door. She was armed.

  Yani was not in the cave.

  The skimmer was gone, and its pilot.

  Claree strolled, jiggling the baby, over to Julu. “Hello again.”

  Julu smiled. “Is it asleep?”

  “Not yet. Is this child next to go in there?”

  Julu shrugged. “They don’t tell me, of course. But I think they’re working down in age.”

  “Yes,” Claree agreed absently, crooning a different tune at the baby. “Do you like kids?”

  “No, not really.”

  “Me, neither,” Claree said, “although Brak told me he did.” She waited to see if Julu would catch the lie.

  “They do, the Treemon. In fact, they worship their children. Lucky for us.”

  Claree took a risk. “Well, not luck. Yani would have designed the operation differently if the Treemon were indifferent parents.”

  “Yes, you’re right,” Julu said. “I didn’t realize Yani had told you about it.”

  “We had quite a talk,” Claree said modestly. Julu was stupid. How had she even gotten through her Novitiate?

  “Well, he can be very good to new Servants,” Julu said, and blushed, and Claree saw her clearly. She was a type, and very pretty.

  “When will Brak come out?” Claree asked. Julu had said they were going down in age; Brak, who stumbled into the operation, was not really a child.