Battleground

by Terry A. Adams

  There was a small electric light next to the bed-platform, its glow just visible in the fading light from a large window. Hanna sat on the edge of the platform, a corner of the coverlet held carelessly in one hand as if she had started to pull it back and forgotten what she was doing. Her face was serious. Gabriel had come to ask why they were staying the night—she had not offered a reason to Nakeekt—but the question vanished. Hanna had taken off her boots and trousers and loosened her hair. Her shirt was long enough for decency—barely. One leg was tucked under her, but the other extended lightly to the floor, gleaming and graceful, and abruptly she was not his First Contact expert, she was not the iconoclast whose work he had studied with admiration; she was sensuous and provocative and unbearably desirable. He couldn’t find breath to speak, and then he could, and the words came out of some other man’s mouth: “Would you like some company? I mean would you like, would you like me to stay with you tonight?”— aware of the ambiguity of the words, the ambivalence of his hope.

  He understood much later that the long following pause came because she was bringing her mind back from somewhere else—from a bed she would not sleep in again. At last she smiled. It was a gentle smile. She got up and came to him and kissed him once, quickly, on the cheek, and then she just shook her head and said, “No. Thank you.”

  “Ah.”

  He did not know if what he felt was regret or relief. He said humbly, “I’d be terrible at it anyway.”

  “Why do you think that?”

  “No experience,” he explained.

  But she shook her head again. “You have a loving and generous heart, Gabriel. That’s a fine starting place. Besides, I would tell you exactly what to do.”

  He was halfway back to his own room when the last words sank in—I would tell you exactly what to do—

  The images they conjured made him dizzy all the rest of the way, and he forgot that he had never asked his simple question.

  • • •

  So once again Hanna lay on a platform in a place inhabited by Soldiers, weary again, and again it was night. Rowtt, a place of war, had never slept. There had been Soldiers awake to greet the first team of human observers; sentinels and workers had gone about their tasks, crèches demanded care regardless of the hour, and only the Holy Man, whom she now knew as Tlorr, had clearly been preparing to rest. Here the community’s day wound down like an Earthly day toward night.

  She had not had time to think of the difference between people here, and people in Rowtt, that she had felt upon arrival. Now she could attend to it, and her circumstances, like a refined mirror of that first night, showed her the size of the difference.

  These might as well be a different species, she thought. It does not seem right to think of them as Soldiers. They are more like Kwoort than like the others. But not like him either.

  She was not in trance, and could not, she thought, afford to go into it. It had one thing in common with the stimulants she could not use: the body would eventually claim what was owed, and the press of fatigue she felt was too strong to be safely put aside for long. She meant to do some snooping before the night was over, but not telepathically, and meanwhile it would be good and advisable to sleep. There was plenty of time; the inhabitants of This Place would sleep hours longer than she would. They might post a sentinel or two, but those could be perceived and avoided. There had been no locks on any door she had seen, and opening those she was curious about should be a silent matter.

  For now she lay passive and receptive, catching fragments of thought like snatches of conversation, waiting for sleep to come when it would.

  • • •

  The first inner voice she heard was Gabriel’s, and he thought of Hanna. She should have veered away quickly from these private thoughts, but surprise held her for a moment: he was thinking that he understood now how carnal love might be holy. An act of worship, he thought, worship of creation and the Creator, a reflection of His love.

  She wrenched away, inexplicable tears coming to her eyes. What a strange man, she thought. First I’m an occasion of sin, now a potential—what? Partner in worship?

  Ego tempted her to see what else Gabriel thought about her; loneliness tempted her to stay near his amiable spirit; simple humanity tempted her too; she was so convinced there was nothing good on Battleground that she did not want to let herself slip through Soldiers’ thoughts again. She had been in This Place long enough to know that the idyll Nakeekt wanted her to see was illusory. And secrecy implied fear.

  This opportunity could not be wasted, because there might not be another, and she emptied her mind again.

  Thoughts of roughing out more clearings. Difficult: there is a limit to the number of metal tools available, it will be some time until more can be procured from the mainland, and the wood of some trees is so hard that other tools are made from it, and can only be worked with metal.

  One of the differences she had sensed came into focus: problem-solving was not a habit of the average Soldier of Rowtt. And this was not one exceptionally aged or clever mind; several of Nakeekt’s people were discussing it.

  Thoughts of sounds-in-an-orderly-sequence-of-tones.

  Someone thought of music. They were inventing that too.

  Someone despaired. It’s near, now’s the time to withdraw and prepare, better than my friend’s fate, he waited too long and now waits to die in numbness, in near-sleep, would he wish mine or Nakeekt’s to be the hand of death—

  Hanna sat up. She found herself shivering, she had seen a flash of the structure Nakeekt had kept them away from, where someone waited for death. Why? How? She wanted to probe. Reminded herself it would not be wise. But who—?

  She lay down and composed herself again. The room was silent. Slowly she moved toward sleep. More flashes, but now they were perceptions of Soldiers performing routine tasks, concrete, simple, and relaxing.

  Cleaning dishes in great openwork baskets passed from one vat of hot water to another, mixing batters for cakes for the morning meal, tipping food scraps from barrows in outdoor enclosures for compost.

  It was soothingly reminiscent of duties she had performed in rotation for her House.

  But now there was:

  A clear image of lowering, yes, a polished coffin, into flames, and smoke rising to the sky until the coffin and what it contained fell to ashes.

  Not burnt offerings, then, but cremation. She would remember that, but sleep was winning. Now, finally, Nakeekt—no, not Nakeekt, it was one sitting next to Nakeekt and he was talking with Nakeekt in a low voice, as if afraid of being overheard by outsiders—That would be us, Hanna thought, but drowsily. They talked of a room, and hidden things in the room. And I think I know where that room might be, and that is why we stay the night, Hanna thought as she slid into sleep, and hours passed.

  • • •

  She woke with tears in her eyes and didn’t know why they were there. She might have been dreaming of something left behind: D’neera, Michael. Innocence or Mickey. Even Starr. There were so many possibilities.

  Whatever it was, the novelty of this bed, this deeply dark room, brought her quickly to wakefulness, and she dried the tears with her sleeve and made herself think of what she had to do.

  The chronometer in her com unit told her it was late evening on Endeavor, and past the middle of the night at This Place—far enough past it for the Soldiers here to be in the deepest sleep of the night, as they proved to be when she opened her mind. Many of them were dreaming, too. She had not touched many dreaming minds from space, and she had not realized then that the very rarity of it might be significant. Here, apparently, it was the norm. That must be significant too.

  Dreaming is a function of the unconscious mind, as we understand the term, she thought. What is the connection? And now too, more alert than she had been when dinner was taken, she could pin down the visible difference between these
people and the common run of Soldiers. She had seen them most often with the organs she called past-eyes open. It was the exception in Rowtt, but not here. There is a connection there too, she thought.

  She slid off the platform and dressed in the dark. Her room was on the perimeter of the building. Gabriel’s, the first one they had been shown to, opened on an inner hallway, and did not have a window. There was a steady sound of rain from outside, and she went to the window and looked out. She had given up hope of avoiding another Battleground storm, but this one was gentle. The breeze had died with nightfall and the rain fell soft and straight; it was not lashed by wind, and she heard no thunder. From here she could make out the fronts of two more buildings, and angled portions of two others. Light shone in a ground-floor room in the warren that faced her window, and there was another light farther away, on the third or fourth floor of a structure partly visible. The lights shimmered behind the quivering curtain of rain. That didn’t mean no one was awake in dark rooms. She had filled some of the time on Endeavor with more reports, and her guess that Soldiers saw well in the dark had been right.

  She stood there for a little while, deciding where to go. She dearly wanted a look inside that cottage where someone’s friend might wait for death, but the conversation sensed just before sleep seemed more important. She had a clear impression of the interior areas Nakeekt had avoided, and when she turned from the window she thought she knew exactly where she was going. She would get wet, and it worried her. It meant she would leave a trail of footprints when she entered the building she wanted.

  She had brought a light from the pod, slipping it into a pocket when Gabriel turned away because she suspected that the planning of furtive acts would trouble him. She put the translator on, though she hoped she would not meet any Soldiers tonight, and folded the coverlet over her arm; her white shirt would glow like a lamp to Soldiers’ eyes, and she would cover it with the darker substance. She found the way from her room to an interior well with zigzag ramps piercing the center of the building, and moved down them to the bottom silently, using the light at its dimmest. She heard no doors opening and sensed no one stirring. The ground floor was uninhabited, but she and Gabriel had gotten a thorough look at it. This warren housed none of the hidden places. She veered into a side hallway, well away from the major entrances, and went out a lesser way into the rain.

  The buildings were set in no regular pattern. The one she had left was at the outskirt of the settlement; she wrapped the coverlet around her and made for one nearer the center, keeping close to walls when she could, the light off now, mud making for uncertain footing. The coverlet kept off the rain and she was glad for it; the night was not as warm as she had expected.

  Once inside the warren she had targeted, though, she stopped. She had used a subsidiary door here as well, and coming in this way, she could not get her bearings. The door opened into a hallway that showed her only other doors in the darting beam of light, one facing this entrance and others to its left and right. One of those might open onto yet another hall leading to an area Nakeekt had bypassed, but she could not guess which one.

  There was nothing to do but open door after door: at first, the wrong doors. The spaces behind them were small. Some of the things in them were homey and familiar: one held towels and clothing and other things made of fabric, folded neatly onto shelves, seen quickly in fast, thin stabs of light. She thought they had all been made here; there had been looms in the work areas, electric-powered. She left the coverlet there, where it did not look out of place. In another room there were neatly racked tools; in another, broken ones tumbled helter-skelter, waiting for a day of repair that might not come. Some dust, in that room. Unused furnishings were wedged into still another so tightly that the door closed, when she closed it, with difficulty. (She could almost hear someone say, human-like: I am sure one more will fit . . .) More dust, there.

  It did not seem like anything she shouldn’t have been allowed to see.

  She had started with the first door, the one that faced her, and moved down the hallway to her right. When she was done with that direction she went back and opened the door just to the left of center.

  She stepped into a much larger space.

  Every door on this end of the hall opened into it. She faced a series of tables, one long line of them, running the width of the room. When she went closer she saw that there was a parallel row of benches behind them. The tables and benches were identical to those in the hall where she and Gabriel had eaten with their hosts. They were without decoration, and there was nothing on the tables. Behind those, solidly built into the wall, were cabinets or cupboards.

  Hanna went through a gap in the tables. Closer now, she saw that the cabinets were really ranks of shallow drawers, and they filled up all the back of the room, floor to ceiling. The bank was made of wood that gleamed almost black. She thought it was painted, but when she touched it, changed her mind: the wood was not painted but worked to a smoothness that mimicked polished metal, and the design was utilitarian in the extreme. A single hollow was set into the face of each drawer, the depression topped with an overhanging lip to use for a handle. It had the pure beauty of simplicity.

  She chose a drawer at random. It was so well made that the pressure of one finger drew it out.

  Inside lay a few sheets of something that might have been paper, though it had nearly the flexibility of fabric. She took the sheets out and put them on the nearest table, and turned them over one by one. There were five in all. One had half a dozen lines of script on it; the second was almost covered with writing; the others were full, with a note at the bottom of each that might be a numeral.

  She could not read any of it. She had not learned to read what Soldiers thought worth writing down.

  She put the sheets back and began moving along the columns of drawers, opening them at random. Some were half-full, none more than half, and others were empty; most held sheets of the vellum-like substance.

  She picked one that was covered with script top to bottom and looked at it carefully, holding the light close. The lines were not evenly spaced, and other telltales made it evident that the text had been written by hand. Using what?—she looked back at the tables and saw that drawers were built into them too, and when she opened one, there were writing implements and small ceramic containers that gurgled when she picked them up. Ink, she guessed.

  The pages were important, she supposed; they must be, if Nakeekt was anxious to keep them hidden; but why hidden from alien visitors? They were unlikely to have to do with war, which apparently did not engage the people of This Place; but whatever they were about, if they were important enough to hide . . .

  Hanna sighed, and called to the D’neerans on Endeavor. They were awake and they were bored. Get Communications to stand by for incoming data, she told them, and ordered the communicator to another mode. She began transmitting pictures of page after page.

  After a while she heard: They say some of it’s in code!—Joseph, gleeful at a mystery.

  Then tell them to decode it!—she wondered if she was wasting her time. Possibly, but it was worth some effort to find out what was written here. Battleground’s people were such a puzzle that she wanted a solution any way she could get one. She tried to remember if any alien species had ever been so opaque to her understanding before, and decided none had. Of course, she had never before pretended not to be a telepath, either, and had found other beings generous with their thoughts—

  She checked the chronometer, decided she could risk an hour or two for this task and still have time to investigate that outbuilding—and a boring, repetitive task it was, too, turning pages, sending images, more pages, more images—time went on.

  • • •

  Glitch.

  Nothing serious, the telepaths said. A short interruption in reception, Metra radiating fury, someone would pay for this. Stand by, they told Hanna. She shrugged, kept stor
ing images.

  • • •

  Gabriel’s communicator uttered a series of plaintive beeps. He was not, for once, sleeping like the peaceful dead, and the sound woke him. He took the thing off and talked to it, and it informed him that it was working just fine, thank you, except that at the moment it was not able to communicate with anything. Shaking it did not make it change its mind.

  He sat up and looked around. The displays were indeed working, and gave enough light in the windowless room for him to find the switch for the electric light like the one next to Hanna’s bed. The room seemed comfortless, and he suddenly realized that if the communicator was not working, he was cut off from Endeavor.

  He got up and started for Hanna’s room. Maybe she had woken at a cascade of tones, too, but maybe not, and if she did not know what had happened, probably she ought to hear about it.

  Going through the dark hallways was unnerving; he powered up the communicator’s light source just enough to allow him to shuffle along. The halls were completely silent, like the abbey’s in the small hours of the morning, and the swish of his footsteps sounded very loud. At Hanna’s door he called to her softly and then, when there was no response, more loudly; he knocked on it, too, and finally opened it. She was not there. There was no sound except a susurration of rain outside. He turned on the light and waited a little while, wondering if she had gone to use a communal lavatory, but time passed and she did not return, and he began to worry. There was no cover on her bed and no sign of it in the room, and he could not imagine what had happened to it or to her. The communicator still did not respond; there was no one to ask.

  Could she have gone back to the pod and tried to raise Endeavor from there? Possible.

  He told himself: She does not need my help, whatever she is doing. He had never faced real danger in his life, if you didn’t count Kwoort and the Holy Men, and they had not attempted physical harm. Hanna—he knew now—had been born with or developed an immediate, sometimes deadly response to danger and had survived several different kinds of it.