A Talent for War

by Jack McDevitt

  S’Kalian remained quietly attentive.

  What would sex be like with a female Ashiyyurean? What happens to mating habits when minds are completely open?

  “It’s all right, Mr. Benedict,” said S’Kalian. “This sort of thing invariably happens. There’s no need to be embarrassed. Thought is, by its nature, unpredictable and, even among us, perverse. You and I can bring anything into each other’s mind, in glittering color and full animation, merely by mentioning it.”

  “You’re not a retired officer, are you?” I asked, close to panic.

  He inclined his head. “Thank you. No. My function is to assist in communications, and to act as a cultural advisor. I’m trained to conduct conversations with humans. But not very effectively, I fear.” Again he smiled, reassuringly. I wondered whether that particular gesture might turn out to be universal among intelligent species. At least, among those physically equipped to produce it.

  “Can we talk about the Ashiyyurean perspective on some aspects of the Resistance?”

  “Of course,” he said. “Although I doubt that I know enough to help you. By the way, we call it the Incursion.”

  “Does that matter now?”

  “I suppose not. But perceptions are important. Some would even say they are the true reality.”

  “When you mentioned Christopher Sim earlier, you described him as a great man. Is that view generally shared by the Ashiyyur?”

  “Oh, yes. I don’t think there’s any question about that. Of course, if he had been one of our generals, we would have executed him.”

  I was shocked. “Why?”

  “Because he violated all the rules of civilized behavior. He attacked without warning, refused to meet his opponents in open combat, waged war in a thousand unorthodox ways. When the war was clearly lost, he nevertheless continued to sacrifice lives, both those of his own people, and ours, rather than admit defeat. No: many died in a struggle that was needlessly prolonged.”

  I laughed at him. In the exposed position in which I found myself, it seemed the only proper response. Still, he maintained his equanimity, and even chuckled lightly himself.

  “About the Corsarius,” I said. “Our records place it and Sim at the scene of various engagements which happened too far apart and within too narrow a time frame to allow him to travel the distance between. For example, the actions fought in the Spinners, at Randin’hal, the first engagements in the Slot, and Sim’s appearance at Ilyanda all occurred within twelve standard days of each other. The distances involved here are considerable. Hrinwhar in the Spinners is almost sixty light years from Randin’hal. If a modern warship were to succeed in re-entering linear space at precisely the target area—which is damned near impossible—it would still take three to four days to get from one place to the other. Sim appears to have done considerably better.”

  “Our records contain essentially the same time frames.”

  “There are other, similar, discrepancies. Other times and places. ”

  “Yes.”

  “How do your historians account for it?”

  His eyes slid shut. “Like yours, they can only speculate.”

  “And what are their speculations?”

  “That there were actually three other vessels masquerading as the Corsarius. This proposition will not come as a surprise to your own analysts. It is the simplest explanation, and consequently the most likely.

  “After all, who knows where he really was? All we can be sure of is that a ship with a supposedly unique symbol appeared in various places. Sim’s intention in creating that symbol was clearly to wage psychological warfare. It was never the act of simple bravado which has found its way into the popular consciousness. And it was effective: that vessel was seen everywhere, and the effect of its appearance became, in time, quite demoralizing.

  “You may be interested in knowing, Mr. Benedict, that there is a myth among our people that Sim was an alien. A true alien, that is, a member of a species unknown to us both.

  “It was this aura, even more than his capabilities as a strategist, as a psychologist, and as a battle commander, that made him so dangerous, and so widely feared.

  “Incidentally, there is reason to suspect that one of the duplicate Corsariuses was destroyed at Grand Salinas, and at least one, and maybe two, during the long series of engagements in the Slot.”

  “What you’re telling me is that nobody really knows.”

  “That is correct. I can confirm that our information tallies with yours in most essentials. In fact, your historians and ours have long since collaborated on these matters, despite a distinct lack of official enthusiasm. But we are talking about wartime, and there was considerable confusion. It seems likely the whole truth in these matters will never be known.” He shifted his position. “Is there anything else I can help you with?”

  “Yes,” I said, picking up the Extracts. “What do you know of Leisha Tanner?”

  “Early translator of Tulisofala. Quite good, by the way.”

  “She also opposed the war.”

  “I know. That is a position that has always bothered me.”

  “Why?” I asked, thrown momentarily off stride.

  “Because she had obligations to her species that outweighed the essential morality of the struggle. Once the war was underway in earnest, the risks for both sides were great, and the right or wrong of it, from a philosophical point of view, ceased to matter.”

  “Philosophers make the best generals,” I said, drily.

  “I understand the jest. But it is quite true. There comes a time when one must choose. Whatever we would prefer for ourselves, we must choose for the common good. Even if that means we must support an immoral cause. Had I been human, I would have fought with the Dellacondans.”

  This was all disconcerting. “You represent an organization dedicated to finding ways to keep the peace,” I said.

  “And we will. But it is not easy. If I can say this in all honesty, there are those on both sides who wish war.”

  “Why?”

  “Because many of us who have looked into your minds are terrified by what we see there. It would be very easy to conclude that our only real safety lies in reducing your species to impotence. And among your own people, there are many who believe, and perhaps rightly, that enmity with us is the cement that binds your Confederacy together.”

  I grunted some sort of response.

  He stood up, and adjusted the folds in his robe. “However that may be, Alex, you may be certain that you have a friend among the Ashiyyur.”

  X.

  Nine persons died on the Regal: her crew of eight, and Art Llandman.

  —Gabriel Benedict,

  Uncollected Letters

  . . . These wine-filled hours

  That will not come again . . .

  —Watford Candles,

  “Marking Time”

  I DREAMT THAT night: dark, savage dreams unlike anything I’d known before. Jacob woke me twice; the second time I lay a long while staring at the ceiling, and then showered and went out.

  I walked past houses subtly shifted in the moonlight, through a wind that was subdued, but cold. Gravel crunched satisfyingly underfoot, and after a while streaks of gray appeared in the east. I was down by the Melony, watching chunks of ice float by, when the sun came up.

  The community began to stir a short time later: people piled their kids onto the airbus, and lingered to talk with one another. Skimmers lifted into the sky and floated upriver, headed for Andiquar. Doors banged and voices drifted in the sharp air.

  It felt good. Reassuring.

  When I got home, Jacob had breakfast waiting. I ate too much, threw a log on the fire, and settled in front of it with a cup of coffee. I was asleep within fifteen minutes.

  This time, there were no dreams. At least none that I remembered.

  I spent the afternoon with Man and Olympian, and then went downtown to keep a dinner date with Quinda.

  If I needed any additional dose of ph
ysical reality to offset the experience of the previous day, Quinda supplied it. She was resplendent in white and green, her blouse and sash matching her eyes, her hair loose over her shoulders. Neither of us was immediately hungry, so we spent an hour strolling along the Riverwalk. We poked into bookstores and art galleries, and stopped to get our portraits done by one of the imagists who will scrawl your likeness on an electronic sheet and scribble a legend beneath it. I still have hers. She looks stunning, even in this three-minute effort. The eyes retain a kind of wistfulness; the lips are soft and full, perhaps a shade exaggerated from reality; and the hair curls against the long, lean throat. It is all that remains of her. The legend reads: “Once in a lifetime.” Curious that the artist should have said that.

  By the time we got to the cheese and wine, we were deeply engrossed in her favorite subject, and I was describing my reaction to Man and Olympian. She listened patiently while I babbled on, nodding encouragingly from time to time. “You’re coming to it late, Alex,” she said, when I’d finished. “I think they make a mistake using it in the schools. It’s not a book for kids; but if you discover it as an adult, without too many preconceptions, it can grab you by the throat.”

  “It’s not really about ancient Greece,” I said.

  Lights were coming on across the river, in private homes, in boathouses and piers and restaurants. “I’m sure you’re right,” she said. “He was writing about his own time. But then, that’s always true of a good history.”

  “Unity,” I said. “He was worried about the inability of the human worlds to confederate.”

  “I suppose.” Her eyes were lost somewhere. “I think it goes deeper than that. He seems to have wanted us to recognize a common heritage. To unite in some far deeper way than merely establishing a political bond. To recognize ourselves as Hellenes, and not simply Athenians and Corinthians.” An expression of sadness crept into her features. “It’ll never happen,” she said.

  Sim tells a story about two Greek colonies, I forget their names, that were planted on the African coast. They were surrounded by savages who regularly attacked both. Despite that, the colonies could never cooperate, and eventually they went to war against each other. There is a deep and pervasive spirit in our species, he says, which would far rather pursue the emotional phantoms of the moment than survive! And when you recognize that, you have grasped the heart of what sociologists fondly call group motivational theory.

  I refilled both glasses. Quinda raised hers. “To our days along the Melony,” she said.

  “To the little girl of those days. Did she ever find the sea?”

  “You remember.” She brightened with pleasure.

  “Yes, I remember.” We’d talked of building a raft, and following the river across the continent. “You got angry with me when I tried to explain why we couldn’t really do it.”

  “You promised, and then you took me back to the house.”

  “It never occurred to me that you would take it seriously.”

  “Oh, Alex, I wanted so much to make that trip. To watch the banks drift by, and”—Her green eyes fastened on me, and she smiled deliciously—“to have you with me.”

  “You were a little girl,” I said.

  “And I wanted to cry when you took me home. But you promised that when I was old enough, we’d do it. Do you remember?”

  “I remember.”

  She only smiled, and left it hanging. That’ll teach you, her eyes said.

  Later, we walked through the malls and gardens, mixing with late evening strollers, talking about the Talino Society, and my life as a dealer in antiquities, and how lovely the night was (the stars were bright in the plexidome). And about Gabe and her grandfather. “He always liked you,” she said. “He was disappointed when you left. I think he wanted you to follow in your uncle’s footsteps.”

  “He wasn’t alone.” Art’s image drifted into my mind. Round-faced, short, with a constantly bemused expression. Art Llandman had always looked as if he were trying to sort out some difficult puzzle. “I’m sorry if he was disappointed. I liked him: he was one of the few people who worked with Gabe who knew I existed. I was out with him on digs a couple of times: at Schuyway, and I think he was on Obralan. Yes, I’m sure he was. At Schuyway, he used to take time to walk with me through the ruins. He’d point out the treasury, and the scorched walls, and the place where they’d thrown convicts—and a few politicians—into the sea.”

  “That sounds like him,” she laughed. “ ‘And over here is where they chucked him in.’ When was that?”

  “Before your time. I was about eight or nine.”

  “Yes.” She stared through me. “He was happy then.”

  “He was unlucky,” she explained, later. It was almost midnight, and we were back at the house in Northgate, with a low fire sputtering in the grate, a bottle of wine in an ice bucket, and a Sanquoi violin concerto drifting through the warm rooms. She was looking at the assorted materials I’d acquired at the Talino Society and the Machesney Institute, and had presumably concluded (since I’d offered no explanation) that I was even more of a buff than she was. “They recovered one of the Dellacondan frigates, you know. He and Gabe. It was intact, the archeological find of a lifetime. My grandfather put fifteen years into the search. Toward the end, he got Gabe involved. And together they found the Regal.

  “It was lost at Grand Salinas.” Her eyes glittered with satisfaction. “To locate it, they pored over old records and calculated trajectories and God knows what else. I was just old enough to know what they were looking for, and to have some idea that it was very important. The trick was to reconstruct the engagement to the extent that you could calculate all forces, course, speed, impact, later attempts by the crew to compensate, and whatnot.”

  “Sounds impossible.”

  “They were able to narrow things down. Gramp told me there were literally dozens of ships blown in all sorts of directions, still drifting out there, and recoverable if you just knew where to look. But two hundred years is a long time. Things get pretty well scattered.”

  “Tell me about the Regal.”

  “The Ashiyyur hit it with an electronic pulse of some sort. It didn’t penetrate the hull, but it knocked out the ship’s systems. From what Gramp said, it was the crew that blew a hole in the forward section, trying to recover power. Five were sucked out. The other three were trapped and couldn’t get help. The research team found them in an airtight compartment.

  “But the ship itself was in good condition.”

  “Gabe told me about it,” I said. “There was an accident.”

  “Shortly after they got on board, it blew up. Someone on the team touched something. No one ever did figure out what happened. It never came out publicly, but Gramp said he thought the mutes were responsible. There was a man along named Koenig that they decided later was probably in the mutes’ pay. They thought he did it.”

  “Why would the Ashiyyur care about a two-hundred-year-old wreck?”

  She looked at me searchingly. Her eyes narrowed, while she made a decision. Then she said: “Gramp didn’t know, but I guess there’d been other incidents all along that implied someone did not want the expedition to succeed.”

  “What happened to Koenig?”

  “Died shortly after. Heart problem. He was still quite young, with no history of coronary disease.” She sipped her wine, and peered at the glass stem. “I don’t know: maybe there’s something to it.

  “But whatever the truth of that was, my grandfather was never the same. To have had that sort of prize in his hands, and have it slip away—” She sighed. “He died not long after Koenig.”

  “I’m sorry,” I said.

  “Gabe did what he could to help. I was never sure what caused more damage: losing the artifact, or getting laughed at by the entire profession. What frustrates me now is that I’ve gotten to know a lot of them as individuals. They aren’t vindictive people. But they never understood how he felt, or maybe they didn’t care because they
had problems of their own. But Llandman and his frigate made such a great story. It was as if Harry Pellinor had discovered the ruins on Belarius, and then forgot where they were.”

  The Resistance-era materials I’d been gathering were all stacked on a couple of tables in the den. She pored over them, nodding with satisfaction at the simul crystals and the Candles volumes and the other assorted pieces. “I didn’t realize,” she said, leafing through Tanner’s Notebooks, “you were so deeply involved in all this, Alex.”

  “It seems to have caught hold of me. Are you familiar with her?” I asked.

  “With Tanner?” Her face glowed. “Yes! One of the most fascinating characters of the period.”

  “She started out as a pacifist,” I said. “And ended up in the war. What happened? Do you know?”

  Quinda crossed one leg over the other and bent forward energetically. I could see Tanner would be a favorite subject. “She was never a pacifist, Alex. She felt the war was unnecessary, and wanted to see a serious attempt made to negotiate. The Sims weren’t much interested in that approach.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because they believed any attempt at conciliation, while the mutes had the upper hand—really had the upper hand—would be interpreted as a sign of weakness. Against a human opponent, they’d have been right. But against the mutes, maybe not. Tanner knew as much as anyone did then about the enemy, and she thought they could be talked to.”

  “How did she end up in Sim’s navy?”

  “That’s easy. Somehow, she got to Sim, I don’t know how, and persuaded him to let her try to negotiate with the mutes. The fact that he went along should tell you that she was reasonably persuasive.”

  “But obviously things didn’t work out.”

  “He agreed to let her meet with the mute commander, Mendoles Barosa.

  “The site was a crater on an unnamed moon in a fringe system that neither side cared about. Tanner was the only one the Confederates had who’d traveled among the mutes, the only one who could communicate with them, and, most important, the only one who could guard her thoughts against them.