Battleground

by Terry A. Adams

  She was waked by a hand on her shoulder so gentle that she whispered, “Starr?”—she must tell him about the forgetting, he would be interested—before she opened her eyes to see Bella’s grin.

  “So you dream about the man! What’ll you give me not to tell?”

  D’neerans by definition were not subject to blackmail. The word had no meaning in a society where people read minds, and telepaths did not take it seriously. Except for Hanna, who knew that a discreet form of the crime was a useful part of Jameson’s political strategies.

  Bella got a glimpse of that, and her smile wavered.

  Hanna sat up, feeling as if she had not slept at all. “What?” she said.

  Bella’s good humor returned, a little forced.

  Message from Rowtt. The mighty Kwoort will honor you with an audience.

  Hanna blinked at the flippancy. She thought there had been a time when she had a sense of humor, but she couldn’t remember it. Jameson said she had never had one—

  “When?” she asked.

  “Evening our time. Afternoon theirs. Dema’s on the surface now. I mean under it. Her team went hours ago.”

  Hanna did not answer. She caught at dream-fragments. Dreams could, unnervingly, be trusted. Except when they couldn’t.

  But there was nowhere that last fragment could have come from, except Kwoort.

  She climbed out of bed, shedding the twisted sheet.

  So Kwoort Commander was afraid of forgetting his past. Was he going insane too? Were they all crazy?

  • • •

  The Soldiers and Warriors who cared for the crèche at Rowtt’s easternmost extension did not understand some of Benj Parker’s questions, and his frustration began to run high. He wondered if someone who’d been through the Contact Education program could do better. Then he started to wonder—to his credit, not all his colleagues would have wondered—if it was time to take advantage of the presence of a telepath. That was why Dema Gunnar was there, after all.

  Parker was one of Endeavor’s sociologists, a native of Co-op and at the height of his career at some one hundred twenty years of age. He differed from most true-humans in being reasonably comfortable with D’neerans. He had gotten that way doing ethnographic fieldwork sixty years ago on D’neera, not long after the Polity reestablished formal relations with the telepaths. The place had been an ethnographer’s dream, as he had expected it to be. Its people, largely cut off from mainstream culture for hundreds of years, had developed all manner of charming folkways. Parker had gotten a few decent papers out of the experience. He could have gotten more if only they hadn’t just shaken their heads at his ignorance and reverted to telepathy so often. You could footnote a thought somebody aimed at your head, but he hadn’t wanted to push it too far.

  He switched off his translator and said to Dema, “Are these answers making sense to you? Mentally, I mean. So to speak.”

  “Do you mean are they coherent? Yes, they are.” Dema quoted Hanna, her teacher and mentor: “You have to forget about thinking like a human.”

  “All right. Where am I thinking like a human here?”

  Dema was no Adept, but she was good. The Warrior who was the subject of this interview was suckling an infant, and Dema could feel the female’s sense of her strength pouring into the newborn.

  “What is troubling you, Benj?”

  “This—woman—told me that this—baby—will be on solid foods in a couple of weeks, our time. You heard that, didn’t you?”

  “Yes. And it’s true,” Dema added, feeling Parker’s disbelief. “I got an image of the infant marching not long after, too.”

  “Marching?”

  “Walking, then. But I didn’t see much . . . transition. A few steps—then he marches—”

  “There’s got to be something wrong with the timing!”

  “Not necessarily. Look at her, Benj.”

  “All right, I’m looking.” And it’s not a pretty sight.

  “How many breasts do you see?”

  “Too damn many!”

  “Benj . . .”

  “All right. Four. There might be more under that coverall, for all I know. I can’t even tell the males from the females except at times like this.”

  “She’s in crèche mode, so, yes, there are more.”

  “Crèche mode being—”

  Dema explained carefully: “She reached a point in a biological cycle where it was time for her to come here. She’s here—and so are the other adults, for the same reason—specifically to reproduce and to nurture more Soldiers. They mature quickly, and my sense of the adults is that they’re devoted to the process, not the young. They know others will take over the children as soon as they’re walking, and they know most will be killed in battle, many as soon as they’ve reproduced, so there’s the absolute minimum of personal attachment. A short infancy makes sense, reduces the chance of strong bonding. They wouldn’t have the kind of hormones that promote parental bonding in us, either. When my son was born, they put him in my arms right away and oh! I’ve never felt anything like it! I—”

  “No baby stories! I’m not interested! Why can’t this—female—just tell me this, instead of going on and on about Abundant God?” said Parker.

  “Translation only goes so far,” Dema said, not insulted. “I don’t think it’s Abundant God that’s the imperative—it’s the biological cycle, and that’s just their way of explaining it. That’s how all the religions start out, that need for an explanation. It’s something I can sense that you can’t. You’d work it out for yourself eventually, but I know now.”

  The Warrior stood up and went out. She returned with a second infant; Parker knew it was a different one because its hair—if that was hair—was reddish, and it was smaller. She opened another compartment in her garment and the baby, if that was a baby, began to feed. Parker felt sick.

  “All right,” he said. “The translator’s just not working here, not well enough. Can you just think to her? And to me?”

  “Oh, yes,” said Dema. What else has H’ana been trying to tell you all these years? she thought wearily, but she did not project it to him.

  “But I will have to tell her what I’m doing,” Dema said. “I don’t want to walk around in someone’s mind—not even an alien someone’s—without telling her how deeply her privacy, her self, is going to be invaded.”

  “I thought that’s what Hanna’s been doing all along?”

  Dema suspected Hanna paid only lip service to the scruples D’neerans were supposed to have, but it might not be good to tell Parker that. She said more or less truthfully, “That was just for background. Anyway,”—Dema was on surer ground now—“she’s the only one of us good enough to do that consistently without the subject knowing, and even she slips up sometimes. So I need to tell this woman what I’m going to do.”

  “Then tell her!”

  “You, too, Benj. I’ll need to open up all the way. If your mind wanders I’ll know where it’s wandering. Forget about having secrets.”

  Parker stared at her, and felt himself shrink. Dema Gunnar, when he forgot she was a telepath, was a beautiful woman. Tall, buxom, stately—just like his spouses. When she smiled she appeared to glow. A possible wife number four—well, no. A telepath, after all. Maybe an interesting interlude, though.

  “And I know exactly what you’re thinking right now,” Dema added. “I wouldn’t have to be a telepath to know that. So forget about being embarrassed.”

  Parker wished he could hide behind the redness of his face. But D’neerans were pretty tolerant of lustful thoughts. He knew that from personal experience. He remembered certain other personal experiences from his days in the field—one field in particular, a riot of flowers—one telepath in particular, he had never forgotten her face—or the rest of her either—

  He felt his face get even redder. Dema had star
ted smiling at him; now she laughed out loud.

  “All right, all right,” Parker said. “Tell her, and let’s get started.”

  • • •

  It was better than the first landing site, that field riven by explosives. At that, it was not much: only a roughly flat space on an island in a river that snaked over and around the underground city, the only structure a low block of a building made of crumbling and neglected concrete. Trees grew spottily around it, not much taller than the building. They might have been ragged pillars, except that yellow spikes of leaves thrust into the air from their tops; when she went close to one Hanna saw that its bark had a wounded look, as if enemies had slashed at it randomly with machetes. The shallow river was flat as a gray sheet in the clouded, windless day. The air was thick and hot; an oncoming storm was less than an hour away.

  “You’re sure this is the place?” Hanna said to the communicator on her wrist.

  “This is it,” said Kaida Aneer.

  No boat or aircraft was in evidence except Hanna’s pod, though Communications swore they had defined Soldiers’ time measures accurately. Perhaps they were wrong, or perhaps Kwoort Commander was just late—accidentally, or on purpose as a sign of authority—or maybe he had forgotten—

  Or, or, or, said Bella, oddly nervous, as if she were the one on the ground. You’re supposed to know what you’re doing, you know—

  A door opened in the front of the shabby building, and Kwoort came out. He flowed down the narrow steps in front and stopped. Superior officer’s prerogative: Hanna would have to go to him.

  She walked toward him, smelling dust, though the ground cover that caught at her sandaled feet was damp.

  “I am Kwoort Commander,” he said. “I have seven hundred and twelve summers. I greet you in the name of Abundant God.”

  Hanna, at Metra’s insistence, had memorized a greeting of her own.

  “Thank you,” she said, knowing Kwoort heard it as I note your intention. “I greet you in the name of my fellow human beings (not-Soldiers). Our desire is to maintain peace (stalemate) with Soldiers and to exchange knowledge. We are glad (it is pleasant) that Prookt Commander has permitted not-Soldiers to observe a crèche. We would like (it would be pleasant) to visit other sites. We are prepared to exchange many kinds of knowledge.”

  There were no beeps or buzzes from the translator. Communications had done its usual superb job.

  Kwoort said, “I note your intention. I have some knowledge of not-Soldiers, because I once observed your world. It was interesting.”

  “That’s what brought us here,” Hanna said, “the knowledge that you visited a world where not-Soldiers live, though it is not the only one. There are many, and I will tell you of the others if that is what you desire. You prepared for the possibility that we would come, did you not? Is that the reason for the surveillance devices in your solar system?”

  Until now only the lower pair of Kwoort’s eyes had been open—not exactly without pupils, as Maya Selig had reported, though the darker segments, arranged in a regular pattern in each eye, certainly did not work the way human eyes did. Now he opened the others. It was the first time Hanna had seen the phenomenon, and suddenly she understood the nature of those eyes’ field of vision, which had puzzled her when the Holy Man opened hers. They appeared different from the others only in having more of the darker dots, but they saw, literally, memories.

  “I had . . . I had the satellites set in place . . .” he said uncertainly, and stopped for a moment. Then he went on firmly, “They are there to give warning if our enemy again achieves the ability to attack from space.”

  The upper eyes closed. He had not exactly lied. He had tried to remember the time of the satellites’ building and launching and found nothing. The memory was gone; he had seized on the most likely explanation, and he would now be sure that it was true.

  The hot air stirred. The storm might have speeded up. Hanna had dressed for the heat in a skimpy top and long gauzy skirt, and the skirt fluttered wildly in a sudden gust. The ring she had taken back, as if it had decided to be a weather-teller, emitted one of its unpredictable flashes of blue. Kwoort noticed. He said warily, “What is the purpose of that device?”

  “It is decorative—” Chirp, said the translator. “It is pleasant to look at,” Hanna hazarded. “That is its only function.”

  “What does the light mean?”

  “I don’t know. The stone came from a place where one great intelligence lives, and they think it is alive in some way. It flashes for reasons they do not understand and we do not understand.”

  “I do not know what you mean by ‘one great intelligence.’ And you say ‘they.’”

  “Both descriptors are true. It would take a long time to tell you about it. I spent the years of two summers studying this intelligence, and there is still much to learn. There are other not-Soldier beings on other worlds who are not like you and not like us.” She paused, thinking he would pounce on that. It ought to have been the most interesting statement Kwoort had heard in his life.

  He was not interested. He said nothing.

  Hanna had never imagined having to search for a topic of conversation at a first contact. Puzzled, she said, “We can discuss that, if you wish. I requested this meeting partly to find out what you might want to tell and ask us. Do you want to ask me or tell me any particular thing?”

  “The not-Soldier female I knew in that other place—does she survive?”

  “No,” Hanna said, thinking the question, out of all those he might have asked, an odd one. The irrepressible Mi-o, dead more than a century, kept inserting herself in the present. “Our lives are short compared with yours. Hers was long, for our kind in that place and time—” Hanna hesitated, decided Soldiers were unlikely to care about human A.S. treatments, and went on. “She had eighty summers. But she did not survive.”

  “Did she die in battle? I saw no fighting there.”

  “There was none. There has never been any fighting there. Not-Soldiers almost always prefer stalemate to active war.”

  He understood the words of that last statement—as words; what they meant together utterly escaped him. She almost saw them wing past the great ears and away. No context, she thought.

  “How was it,” she said, “that Soldiers went to a world of my people? It’s clear from their records that war was not your intention.”

  The upper eyes opened again. She saw no other change in his face, but she felt his mind race. Searching for the memory.

  He said slowly, “It was an experiment. There was no war then . . .”

  He was silent for so long that she prompted, “Why did war cease for a time?”

  The continents melted to flowing rock . . .

  The quickest of visions. Hanna shook her head, shaking it off.

  “You remember the molten lands,” she said. “Do you remember what happened after that?”

  Later she would know that was her first mistake on Battleground. Even then she wished instantly that she could take back the last words, because she saw questions form in Kwoort’s mind, as startled and sudden as an alarm: How does the not-Soldier know of the weapon we used? And how does the not-Soldier know I forget? She said quickly, “We cannot aid you in war. Knowing that, will you allow us to stay? Prookt Commander did not seem to find us—interesting. He does not care if we stay or go, I think.”

  “It does not matter what Prookt thinks,” Kwoort said. “The Holy Man desires that you stay for a time. She will desire it even more after this meeting.”

  “That is our desire as well,” Hanna said; and now she wanted to end the interview as quickly as she could, because she saw Kwoort focused like a laser on her slip of the tongue. How could she have—

  How could you be so stupid, Bella said—

  “The Holy Man,” Kwoort added, “hopes to obtain new weapons from not-Soldiers.”


  She tried another way of saying No.

  “Kwoort Commander, I do not think we have any weapons that you do not have, or could not build, if you know how to manipulate the forces of the quantum reality, and to travel the stars as we do.”

  All Kwoort’s features rippled. “Wherever there is something new, there will be a new weapon,” he said. “We hoped to find something in the monstrous vessel orbiting that other world, larger than any vessel we thought could be built, but we could not proceed with our plan to remove it. We did not have enough power; we could not take it and generate enough power for our return.”

  He remembered that, all right. The wind blew harder; Hanna raised her voice a little. “There were no weapons on that monstrous vessel, host.”

  “Knowledge is a weapon,” he said. “What knowledge do you have, guest, that might become a weapon? You say you studied Soldiers from space, but I think you may have a surveillance system previously unknown. Such a system could be a weapon, you must agree.”

  There was another gust of wind, strong as a physical push. It was time she left for Endeavor. Before he began to equate “surveillance system” with telepathy.

  “I am recalled to my spacecraft, Kwoort Commander.”

  Kwoort Commander said in that language so pleasing to the human ear, “Very well. We will talk again. And I will hope to hear about new forms of surveillance.”

  Chapter IV

  EVERYBODY WANTED TO HEAR about it—Hope Metra said—and called a conference. It was not enough that every word had been transmitted to Endeavor; they wanted to know what Hanna thought—Metra said. Hanna found that Metra lied. They just wanted to talk about it without end, this meeting between the telepath (her report suspect, needing to be dissected and corrected and revised) and the nonhuman Commander. Why had she said such-and-such? Why hadn’t she said thus-and-so instead? They wanted to critique, that was what they wanted, Metra most of all, but Kit Mortan was not far behind.