Battleground

by Terry A. Adams

  “I will not allow him to go alone,” Hanna said.

  “The Holy Man will not harm him.”

  And she couldn’t tell if that was true or not; she cursed the drug that clouded her perception.

  “It’s all right,” Gabriel murmured against her ear. “I have to do this. This is what I’m here for. The others are monitoring us, aren’t they?”

  “They’re supposed to be,” she said softly. “I can’t tell!”

  “Do you trust them?” he whispered.

  “My team? Of course.”

  Kwoort said loudly, “Order him.”

  “We are not Soldiers, Kwoort Commander. My friend has the right to refuse.”

  “But I don’t refuse,” Gabriel said, and walked forward.

  He followed a thin beam of light to the building and Hanna stood silent while the door opened and closed, shutting him from her sight.

  There was a short, brilliant glow in the clouds, a louder sound of thunder from the dark. Hanna could not seem to stir, as if the weight of weariness her body did not feel had been diverted to her will. Kwoort came down the shallow steps from the doorway.

  That got her to move; she backed up. She tried to tell herself it was because of Gabriel’s warning—don’t raise the level of aggression—and knew that was not true. It was because she could not detect Kwoort’s intent.

  She said—it was not one of the questions she had meant to ask—“Are you unusual, Kwoort Commander, in your liking for the outdoors, even in the electric night?”

  “I am unusual,” he agreed. He walked not straight toward her, but as if he would pass her on his way to another destination. She turned her head, watching, and at the same time sought for Gabriel. She could not feel him.

  She had not shifted the light she held, pointing almost at her feet, but Kwoort, though he walked slowly, moved without hesitation. She said, “I think your eyes are superior to mine in the dark.”

  “Extinguish the light,” he suggested.

  She shrugged and turned it off. Then she thrust it into a pocket in case she needed her hands free to protect herself. The night became unrelieved black. The mutter of thunder, louder, drowned any sound Kwoort might make, but her unreliable extra sense told her he was now at her left and almost behind her. She turned toward where he ought to be. She felt unbalanced in the dark, with no visual cues. Then he really was behind her, and she turned further, uncertainly, and felt him stop.

  “This speaking to the mind,” he said. “Do you use it with your enemies?”

  “We have no enemies.”

  “You lie,” he said. “Everything that lives has enemies. Can you say that to my mind and not lie?”

  There have been enemies, she said, felt the drugged slowness, but she could show him the shadow of a battle in space in which she had taken part. We seek, always, peace, she said, or made him feel, and managed to show him, though dimly, the network of trade and reciprocity that characterized the Polity. Those five worlds, at least—Earth and Willow, Colony One and Co-op and Heartworld—had never fought each other.

  Her eyes were adjusting and she found that there was a little ambient light. She could just make out Kwoort, as a shadowy figure; at least she knew for sure where he was. She could see nothing of his face, but it hardly mattered. She knew little about the meanings of Soldiers’ expressions, she had not even asked Kit about them; telepathy was a surer guide. Or it had been, until tonight.

  He said again, almost a whisper: “Speak to my mind. This way of seeing would be useful against enemies.”

  “It can be useful, Kwoort Commander, but I will not—we will not—use it against your enemies. They are not ours. Is that the only answer you require?”

  “No, here is another. How can you be persuaded to use it for the Holy Man?”

  “I cannot think of any persuasion that would be sufficient.”

  “Then I would hear of your breeding,” he said. “How do you breed?”

  And she knew that the shift was not as abrupt as it sounded, but she could not see the transition, as she might have, with luck, if his mind had been open to her.

  She said, after only a little hesitation, “Any of us could have told you that. We are mammals, just as you are. Our young are born with immature brains and bodies; they suckle until they can feed themselves; they require unceasing care for several summers, and much care for some summers more. Maturity comes much more slowly than it comes to Soldiers.”

  “No! I mean, what is the mechanism of conception!”

  “Did our specialists in the body not offer that information? Males and females join sexual organs, and conception results. The role of the ‘facilitators’ among your people is unclear. We have nothing of the kind, and I do not know who they are.”

  “They are not a ‘who.’ They are a ‘what.’”

  There was a wave of fury and bitterness, a flash of what he felt like a jolt of static, there and gone. Hanna blinked.

  “We heard of their existence, but there has not been time to pursue the subject,” she said. “Nothing and no one plays such a role in our mating. Among us, a female and male mutually agree that they will mate, and develop a bond that may last for years, or even for life. They nurture, together with close kin, their own young. There are countless variations, but that is the basic model. It has proved optimally successful in the course of human evolution.”

  Kin did not translate, nor did evolution. It did not seem important.

  Kwoort had circled closer. “I do not believe in your ‘mutual agreement.’ Bloodless,” he said. There was a sound from the translator that suggested ambiguity. Hanna tried to reach into Kwoort’s mind, to find out more clearly what he meant. She failed. She put her hands to her face, moved unconsciously, needing more distance between them, stumbled and nearly fell. She had never, ever communicated with an alien without full command of telepathy, a potent tool to start with, formidable since her studies with Adept masters, and she could not rely on the translator either because it could not tell her when Kwoort lied. She was blinded by more than the night, and the thunder, coming closer, filled her ears.

  She tried to widen her perception, seeking the D’neerans on Endeavor, felt nothing; sought Gabriel, sensed him dimly. He was intent on something, perceiving no danger. But would he know danger before it had him by the throat?

  “I do not know what you mean by ‘bloodless,’” she said.

  “Is there no urgency? It seems logical! Planned!”

  “Logic often plays a part; often it does not. There may be planning, or not.”

  “It seems you know nothing of the body’s desire to mate! That is beyond understanding!”

  “I see I have given you entirely the wrong impression,” Hanna said, startled. “The part desire plays can hardly be exaggerated. Often it overrides both logic and planning; ultimately it is responsible for nearly all . . . breeding. Often, not always, there is love as well,” she said, thinking of her beautiful son and how he had come to be, and heard that not translatable chime. Kwoort could not know what she meant by love . . . which in any case came in many varieties that did not include sexual desire.

  “Desire,” said Kwoort, ignoring the untranslatable word. “So you do know it. And what is your reward in its fulfillment?”

  He had come closer still. The sky lit up and there was a boom of thunder, deafening; Hanna moved, stumbled, retreated, and had to turn again to face him, unnerved. Other conversations with other aliens had been just as strange, but she had been able to draw on their thoughts, glimpse their goals.

  She said, “At its best, there are long years of happiness.”

  But the last word did not translate.

  “Bloodless,” he said again, and again, unpredictably, the shutter flashed open and shut, and she saw that he meant immediate sensual reward.

  “You are speaking of the physical
pleasure of coupling, are you not?” she said.

  “You experience it, then?”

  “At its best,” Hanna said again. She had no intention of going into the exceptions now, but she was not going to say always either. Unqualified statements might come back to haunt her in accusations of evasion or lies.

  More thunder; a sharp crack this time, close by, and the charged air simultaneously was alight, then black again. Hanna was circling now, too. She thought: I have never hated a place as I hate this one.

  “Explain,” said Kwoort. “Explain to my mind. Make me feel what you feel when you breed.”

  “No,” Hanna said, an outright refusal. Because she could (if all her senses were working properly) summon memories of men she had known who had pleased her, let fantasy summon the first tremulous excitement and the building urgency, and convey it in some form to Kwoort. But it would be an act, though mental, as generous as willing intercourse. And I don’t like Kwoort.

  “Why do you ask these questions?” she said. “What is their importance to you?”

  Another crack of thunder, and she jumped, nearly lost her balance again.

  “Because if it is pleasure you seek, I offer it to you. In return for your service in speaking to the mind.”

  “What?” said Hanna.

  “You will know the facilitators,” said Kwoort, but more thunder drowned out his next words, and Hanna smelled ozone. In the flash of lightning she had seen that they were farther away from the building—from Gabriel—than she wanted to be, and she started back with a sense of horror that she did not think was all hers. Something was happening to Gabriel.

  “Hear me!” Kwoort shouted after her, but thunder boomed over his voice again, and the translator crackled deafeningly in her ears.

  There was nothing to steady her, no clear connection to a human mind, no sure ground underfoot, no certain light. There was crack after crack of thunder, gust after gust of wind, and the lightning that blinded her left her blind in the intervals of dark. Somehow she was at the door but it did not yield to her push this time, and she began to pound on it. She could hardly hear the blows herself as thunder overrode them, and it did not seem possible that Gabriel could hear them. Kwoort was beside her then, bending and yelling into her ear—something in her crippled mind came to life for an instant, and she knew that he yelled as much because so small an ear must surely be hard of hearing, as because of the thunder.

  “Think of it,” he cried, “every nerve in the body—!”

  And Hanna shouted back: “That is insane! Think! My organs are not yours, the brain’s receptors are not the same! This is a waste of time!” And you are insane, she thought, not caring if it got projected or not.

  The door gave way suddenly, and Gabriel stumbled out and nearly fell into her arms.

  She held him hard and he clutched her, rocking on his feet; she looked over his shoulder and saw the being Tlorr in the center of the bare gray chamber through the door, perfectly still. She recognized a smile.

  “Gabriel,” she said into his ear, her voice low, counting on pitch to make him hear it under the noise of the sky. He shook his head and his eyes were horrified, but he could balance now; she stepped back a little, still holding him, scanning him as best she could, and saw no blood or other sign of injury. She let go of everything but his arm and pulled him away from the door, down the steps and toward the pod, which was a shape from a bad dream in the flashes of light. Kwoort stalked beside her, shouting, but he did not try to touch her and she did not try to speak to him. If he attacked her they would be all the way out of luck. There was an endless interval of stumbling across the short distance while wind battered them in ever-stronger gusts. Gabriel held onto her arm but did not need it now for support; he might have felt the need for sane human contact too, but Hanna did not know, she could not hear his thoughts or sense what he felt. Only nightmares had been as bad as this deprivation; she seemed to have been robbed of all her senses at once.

  The pod responded to her voice in spite of the crash of thunder and the ramp came down much more slowly than she wanted it to. Time was skewed. Gabriel hung back and she thought, He is trying to get between Kwoort and me, he wants to protect me—and spared a curse for human males.

  “Go,” she said, “go!” and he went up the ramp quickly, turning to call to her to hurry, but she was right behind him and shoved. Kwoort was actually on the ramp, still shouting, repeating the obscene offer; she thought he was elaborating on sensual delight, and she sacrificed an instant to claw at the circuitry at her ears, trying to tear the translator away and failing.

  Kwoort fell back finally, the hatch closed behind them, and Hanna started the takeoff sequence before she was fully in her seat. She remembered that she had not called out to Metra for help, forgetting the communicator, and the thought froze her. Idiot! she thought. Another mistake; Kwoort could have attacked. It could have happened in a second.

  Then they were off the ground, and it took every skill she had and every force and sensor the pod possessed to hold out against the storm until they got above it.

  • • •

  She lied to the medics, told them she was hallucinating, got them to strip the chemical compounds of the stimulant from her blood. It took an hour, and it was too late, too late, she thought, because she lay waiting for the time to pass and there was nothing but the inner sound of her own brain’s electrical field where the complex mix of the medics’ thoughts should be. This is not possible, she thought, denying it, and refused to see anyone from her team because she could not bear to tell them. They must think she exercised the block she had used before, which they thought some little-known skill of the Adept; she would let them think it as long as possible. She did not tell Gabriel the truth, either, but she let him stay beside her and could not let go of his hand.

  By the time it was done she could barely move for exhaustion. She slumped at a table in a conference room on Endeavor—she could hardly have said which one, the thought required to place it needed too much effort—with Gabriel’s arm around her. There were people in the room—Metra and some of her officers—and people who were faces on the walls, one of them Jameson, projected from Heartworld III. Another was Andrella Murphy, also in space in a craft of her own, and a third Zanté, on Earth; Adair Evanomen was there, too, and again Hanna wondered why. The idea of trading with Battleground for anything was ludicrous.

  Real or virtual, all of them might as well have been only voices, because it was too much trouble for Hanna to keep her eyes open, and she could not feel the real presences telepathically. She kept trying to feel them, again and again, all the time holding down a tide of something that could become hysteria. She had seldom thought of what it meant to be a telepath, and now all she could think, obsessively, was that she had never sufficiently treasured what she had. The universe that was Hanna’s was multidimensional in a way a true-human’s could never be. We are aliens too, we look like them, have the same ancestors, but deep down they feel it . . . no wonder they don’t trust us . . . oh, God, don’t make me one of them!

  She managed to speak coherently, barely. She reported Kwoort’s offer, or proposition, or attempt to bribe or seduce, and saw shock and disbelief and maybe embarrassment in some faces, before she closed her eyes. Hanna felt none of those things. She was too consumed by fear to feel anything else.

  “Recommendations?” said Jameson’s deep voice.

  Subtle sounds of movement, as people thought of answers.

  “We need to find a different contact,” Metra said.

  Hanna put down the stifling fear once more and said with effort, “Won’t work. There’s nobody higher than Tlorr, and she and Kwoort are a team. He’s crazy as hell and she probably is too, and they’re both saner than the oldest one. Let’s get out of here.”

  And let me go home please please and maybe the healers can help

  Gabriel moved a little
. He said nothing, but Hanna felt agreement and lost the thread of conversation immediately; she had felt it, sensed it, oh, God, was she going to be all right? Something had happened to her breath; she turned her face to Gabriel’s shoulder and went still.

  Gabriel?

  And oh, yes, there it was, the sense of a complex personality, not yet strong, still dim, but unmistakably Gabriel.

  “Lady Hanna?” someone was saying, but she was reaching out: Bella? Dema?

  I’m here, what’s wrong with you . . .

  Me too, we could hardly feel you, it was like you were unconscious . . .

  And Joseph: faint. But there. And she could tell that Arch was asleep.

  They were asking Gabriel what the Holy Man had had to say to him, and Gabriel was saying it was nothing important.

  It had not been unimportant. The contact with Gabriel intensified. She knew there had been something that had shocked him to the core.

  Gabriel? Gabriel, dear?

  She was as unconscious of uttering an endearment as he had been.

  She opened her eyes and was looking into his. He shook his head. Something horrible: not clear, but it would not be at the best of times, because there were no words and no distinct images. He was not so much holding something back as holding it down, as Hanna still did with the hysteria that might, finally, slip away as she came back to being herself.

  She looked up and caught Jameson watching her thoughtfully. Because Gabriel’s arm lay across her shoulders? Jameson knew that D’neerans shared touch frequently and freely—with each other. Gabriel was not D’neeran, and Jameson also knew that Hanna did not allow true-human males to touch her casually.

  She drew away, surprised at herself, and reached deep down for a last reserve of energy.

  “I can’t talk with Kwoort any more,” she said. “I’m ineffective with him. That must be obvious now. I didn’t get any new information from him, no answers to all those questions. I suppose I could . . . try one more time . . .”