Battleground

by Terry A. Adams

  “They don’t do this in Rowtt,” Gabriel said to Nakeekt. “I don’t know about Wektt, does anyone do it there?”

  “Only here.”

  “I have not done it,” said Kwek wistfully. “I have never thought of doing it. I wish I had.”

  Gabriel, I feel rejection of her forming . . .

  “But you like flowers, don’t you?” Gabriel said to Kwek. “Didn’t I hear you put them where you work?”

  “Yes . . .”

  ...good, the right answer . . .

  “Do you put flowers in rooms here?” said Kwek with the first enthusiasm Hanna had ever heard from her.

  “Yes,” they said, and Gabriel said, “Do you do other things just because they are interesting to look at? Show us.”

  Chapter III

  WE’RE GOING TO BE HERE longer than an hour or two, Hanna thought later—several Standard hours later. That Place, which looked like something underfunded human colonists might throw together with little enthusiasm and few resources, was more different from Rowtt than she had expected it to be. And she left most of the talking to Gabriel, because she learned almost at once that some of the answers he was getting to his questions were evasions, half-truths, and outright lies, and her job was to decide which was which.

  • • •

  Gabriel had requested what amounted to a tour. Nakeekt, it seemed, had gotten such requests before; Hanna saw a route ready to use in her thought. Environs first, Nakeekt thought, in effect, and led them to a shallow freshwater stream with fishlike creatures in it.

  Gabriel said, “These little swimmers are pretty—”

  Translating as “interesting.”

  “There was a report from our geoecologists . . .”

  No translation.

  “...that this world’s oceans are dead in places.”

  “Not these streams.”

  “Do you just watch them swim?”

  “Sometimes. Sometimes we catch and eat them, too.”

  “Do they taste good?”

  “The taste is pleasant enough, but . . . they have one greater advantage.”

  “And that is?”

  “They do not taste like vegetable-based protein food.”

  “Is that all that is eaten in Rowtt?”

  “Nearly all, and the same is true of Wektt. Some of us here are from Wektt.”

  “When you started This Place—who started This Place?”

  “The founder has gone to the True God.”

  She has not. She is standing in front of us.

  “Is that the same as Abundant God?”

  “Of course.”

  No, it is not.

  “When you say gone to the True God—do you mean that some essence survives though the body does not?”

  “Yes.”

  But she doesn’t believe it.

  “I had no opportunity to discuss continuing survival with the Holy Men I met. Of what does this life consist?”

  “All who die become like Holy Men in one way. They are free of the cycle of reproduction. But unlike Holy Men, they enjoy its sensations at will.”

  “Is that believed elsewhere, or only here?”

  “It is the belief everywhere.”

  “Do you reproduce in This Place?”

  “It is as the True God wills it.”

  An evasion—there’s more to it . . .

  “It seems that the continuing life must be much like This Place. There are no children, for one instance.”

  Careful, Gabriel, that’s a sensitive issue . . .

  Nakeekt just said, “Perhaps it is.”

  • • •

  Single file on a path. Kwek lingered behind, talking with Pritk and Genkt. Enormous, neatly tilled garden plots gave way to groves of twisted trees that would not, to an eye accustomed to human orchards, look healthy, but bore fruit year-round. Their branches—but Hanna was not really sure they were branches—vines, perhaps, big around as her waist, twisted and entwined, and the globular fruit grew directly on the skins. Or barks? The skins, or barks, were an unhealthy-looking greenish-yellow. The fruits were black.

  “Very nourishing.”

  Caught a thought from Gabriel: If you say so.

  “And do these taste pleasant?”

  “Try one.”

  “Yes—”

  Gabriel! That hasn’t been tested! It could be toxic!

  “Umm, I note your intention, but no. What does it taste like to you?”

  “Not like vegetable-based protein food. Thank the True God.”

  “I would like to know more about the True God.”

  “Well, it may be called Abundant God elsewhere, but we do not think it very (chirp), as it is conceived there. Why are you interested?”

  That word, she means “beneficent,” I think . . .

  A slight hesitation, as Gabriel absorbed Hanna’s thought. “I am supposed to be a man of God among my own kind. It’s natural that I should want to know whom you worship.”

  “Is your god not Abundant God?”

  The conversation seemed casual, but Hanna was on the alert.

  “I have not, really, been able to get any answers about the nature of Abundant God. I have met with a Holy Man that was, who seems to have gone on into some other place of the mind, and with a Holy Man that is, who told me of horrors (chirp) associated with attempts to prevent reproduction. I have not—”

  Careful, Gabriel!

  “—learned anything about the actual attributes of what is called Abundant God. I understand that Abundant God calls for war.”

  “We think those who say that are wrong. At least we wonder. And here we have no war.”

  Gabriel, ask her again . . .

  “How did This Place begin?”

  “That is unknown.”

  Nakeekt lies.

  • • •

  There were things along some paths that looked like untidy heaps of vegetation, as tall as Hanna. She thought they were probably—she pulled something out of the recesses of memory, an image or a reality she had seen, some agrarian settlement, even, perhaps, Gadrah—haystacks? Fodder for domestic beasts? Though they had seen none.

  She was standing beside a stack, listening to Gabriel and Nakeekt—

  “How do you spend your time?”

  “Growing food, collecting food. Making things that look interesting—”

  And some other things she doesn’t intend to talk about—

  —when the stack she stood beside set up a rustling. She glanced over absentmindedly and watched it extrude a meter-wide yellow—

  “Oh, my God,” she said. “Is that a tongue?”

  “It is called the eat-everything plant. It is harmless, except to insects,” said Nakeekt, “and careless small animals.” This seemed an odd combination of prey, until Hanna lifted from Nakeekt’s mind an image of the things’ other, hidden “tongues,” which were thin and flexible and strong and moved very, very fast. She stepped away quickly, and looked around to make sure she knew where all the stacks were. Kwek, she saw, was not in sight. She quested and found Kwek; but Kwek was only getting her own tour, and was not alarmed or agitated. There was nothing to worry about. If you didn’t count Nakeekt’s lies and evasions.

  • • •

  More hours, and they were not even at the middle of the long Battleground day. They were given slow, exhaustive tours of one huge building after another. Gabriel conversed, commented, asked polite questions. The people of That Place—Nakeekt was accompanied by others who came and went—recognized the questions as polite (translating as “not unpleasant”). “Interesting” was a freely used word, accepted as a compliment. Hanna said little out loud, but communicated with the telepaths on Endeavor, making her own comments. Nothing but “interesting” translates. Not “beautiful,”
or “lovely . . .” “Colorful” translates. “Skillfully worked” translates.

  This Place is all gray cubes, just like Rowtt, only extending up not down, Hanna told them; she told Gabriel that too, and felt his disagreement, but she did not know why he disagreed until—eight hours into the visit, when Nakeekt said it was time for a meal—Hanna said that she and Gabriel would return to their landing craft to refresh themselves and eat their own provisions.

  The pod felt confining, and Hanna thought of suggesting that they picnic outdoors, but the day had turned gray and she had conceived a dislike of clouds in her visits to Rowtt, so they ate inside.

  “It’s not just that they’re not underground. They build in windows,” Gabriel pointed out, explaining his disagreement, munching—his appetite had returned. His spirits were lighter, he was enjoying the day, and he enjoyed looking at Hanna. “And there were representational pictures painted on some of the walls.”

  “Well, yes, not very good ones . . .”

  “You spent a night in Rowtt, early on. Your report said there was a place for you to lie down. A standard billet, you said? What was it like?”

  “Very plain. No furnishings but the bed and a bench. A few shelves, empty. There were pegs on the walls, maybe to hang uniforms on, and a video terminal I couldn’t turn off. None of those here.”

  “So what have you seen in these billets that’s different?”

  Hanna smiled. “You really are a teacher, aren’t you? Let me see . . . the rooms Nakeekt said were occupied had uniforms hanging up—well, not really uniforms, parts of them, like they wear here. They were in different colors. Not exciting ones, but they’re not gray. And . . . tables or desks,” Hanna said after a pause. “Things on them sometimes, but I didn’t look closely. Flowers, some fresh, in vases. Ceramic, I think, and rather nicely made. Some dried. A few growing plants in pots, close to windows . . . I can’t think of anything else.”

  “Stones,” Gabriel said. “Small stones with striking shapes or textures. And somebody was making what looked like a necklace, drilling holes in white pebbles and stringing them on a cord. There’s a major conclusion to come to here. Nakeekt showed us a sculpted—whatever it was. Want to take a guess?”

  “You do it.”

  “These people are inventing art,” he said.

  Gabriel reached for another sandwich and Hanna said, “You might want to save that. “

  “What for?”

  “I think,” Hanna said slowly, “we might be here a little longer than I thought. The pod has survival supplies, but the quartermaster didn’t load much in the way of fresh rations. The original plan didn’t call for much.”

  Gabriel gave her a look of incomprehension.

  “How many times did I alert you to a lie?” Hanna said. “Or something Nakeekt was ducking, or some background context that wasn’t clear but that she didn’t intend to talk about?”

  “Why do we have to know about those things?” Gabriel said. “There’s an alternate society here, it’s obviously tolerated by the mainstream; why do we need to know the things they want to keep to themselves?”

  Hanna said, “I have never before felt that we ought to go away and leave a society alone. Completely alone. Here, I do. I think it’s got something to do with the things Nakeekt isn’t talking about. Come outside, Gabriel.” She got up, restless, scattering crumbs.

  They went out and Hanna sat down on the ramp, in no apparent hurry to go anywhere. She said, “The storm’s coming. Look at the sky.”

  It was flat with cloud; there would be no more sunlight today. The overcast was solid, and the earlier slight breeze had picked up. They sat watching what they could see of That Place, buildings mostly, each housing two to five hundred people. The peaks looked chaotic from here, as if a new decision on the optimal pitch of a roof had been taken with the construction of each one. One building of four stories was structurally unsound and was not used, Nakeekt had said (telling the truth). It was made of sand-colored stone that might have been quarried on this isle, but the doors were sealed with some flat white synthetic substance. Hanna had looked at the covering closely enough to know that it could not have been manufactured here. Evidently relations with Rowtt or Wektt included some tangible aid. The ground floors of the buildings were given over to storage and food service and workshops of many kinds. There were spaces on some of those levels that they had not seen. Those areas were more of the same, Nakeekt had said—but about that, she had lied, at least in part, and Hanna wanted to know what else they held.

  She was silent for so long that Gabriel finally glanced at her and saw that she had turned her head to look at something.

  “What is it?” he said.

  “See that? That little thing?”

  “Can you be more specific?”

  “That smaller building. The one that just about qualifies as a cottage. I think it’s a domicile of some kind. The others, I don’t know, storage for agricultural tools? But someone’s in that one, I can feel it—I think. They haven’t shown us any of those.”

  “Maybe they just haven’t gotten around to it yet.”

  “Let’s go look.”

  But they had only gone half the distance when Nakeekt intercepted them. “Are you rested?” she said. “Come, then, I will show you the fields.”

  And the interception had not been an accident. Nakeekt had seen where they were headed and deliberately steered them away.

  • • •

  After a while Hanna found her feet aching for the first time in her life and mentally moved her next A.S. treatment—it would be the second—higher on her list of priorities. Thinking of that, unfortunately, made her think of Starr Jameson. She had not had one single, solitary instant of trouble with the anti-senescence procedures. One slightly uncomfortable but mostly boring afternoon and she had, even at twenty-eight, found herself with more energy, needing less sleep . . . no immune system crashing, no hydra-headed carcinomas springing up overnight, no brain cells disrupted, no arteries bursting, no coma that might be the final sleep, no painful struggle back to health, pushing it with dangerous haste because it would not do to be out of sight too long and risk knowledge of this weakness spreading—pitting a little more time against early death, over and over again—

  Concentrate, she told herself—

  At least she felt herself, for the first time on Battleground, part of a natural landscape. Surfaces that were bland masses of green from above, and hidden from view at ground level by blocks of buildings, opened into hills and valleys; mist softened the farthest hills. Green, close up, was touched with gold or deepened toward blue, and stooped Soldiers dug tubers from the ground and brought up shapes of russet or ruby red, bright purple or orange. The “fields” were rough clearings, and here, finally, there were birds, looking much like their Terrestrial counterparts, though with long flickering tongues instead of rigid beaks. They did not sing audibly, but sometimes they opened their tiny mouths and appeared to sing; Hanna could only suppose their songs went past the limits of human hearing.

  Nakeekt was proud of the agricultural arrangements: These red ovoids, you see, must be milled and then boiled because in their natural state they are poisonous. We make them into cakes. The cakes have different tastes, depending on what is baked into them. We send them sometimes to Wektt and Rowtt. The mill is behind the warren where I live . . .

  Tracks of carts and barrows showed in long grasses, winding toward the settlement. So one of those smaller buildings, Hanna thought, is only a mill. That one, at least, is no dark secret.

  What is brown-red is pleasant roasted, and is often eaten with a substance that we make from fruits gathered on an island we go to when tides permit. We have not been able to grow those fruits here, so far.

  They walked on a path beside a stream—another curve of the stream they had seen at first—and found a rough pavement of rocks laid for footing in
a hollow that was always muddy.

  Sometimes we walk these paths, alone or with others, only to look at what is around us, because it is pleasant.

  Hanna had seen Kwek in one of the clearings, bending to harvest russet tubers among waist-high stalks with silver-edged leaves, learning about the work done here. Kwek had looked up with the expression that meant a smile, her ears had waved gently, and Hanna had waved a hand and turned away. She wondered if they were telling Kwek lies, too.

  • • •

  The sun was low when they got back to the settlement. Hanna and Gabriel had been awake for more than twenty-four hours, and the long afternoon of walking weighed on them.

  “Perhaps we will return tomorrow,” Gabriel said to Nakeekt.

  “I think,” said Hanna, “we will stay here tonight, if Nakeekt agrees. Perhaps there are rooms where no one lives, where we could sleep.”

  She felt Nakeekt’s uneasiness at the proposition. But Nakeekt said, “Very well, if that is what you wish.”

  • • •

  This time they brought food from the pod and ate with their hosts in a communal hall. It was the first time Hanna had seen so many Soldiers together in one place. They did call themselves that, Nakeekt said when Hanna asked. The word, with all its connotations, meant “people” on this world. But they look different from those in Rowtt, she thought, but could not think why.

  After the meal she and Gabriel were shown to rooms on the sixth story of the warren where Nakeekt herself lived, rooms near hers, but they did not go to sleep right away.

  • • •

  Gabriel satisfied himself that his room—billet, Soldiers called it—was clean, that the padded platform was comfortable enough, and the lightweight spread on it sufficiently warm for a night in this climate. But he had a question for Hanna, and he found his way into a hallway and around two corners to her door.

  Come in! she said when he tapped on it, and he did not hear audible words but felt that odd sensation of something inside his skull being touched, and a ripple of melancholy he thought might have brushed him along with the words, and he pushed the door open and went in.