by Wil McCarthy
# These ones are strange to you? We believed #
# that they and you had completed. Is there #
# newness? Are we obligated to destroy? #
Indeed? Malye thought. This explained the Gateans' uncharacteristically obsequious behavior of late. And suddenly she had to revise her opinion, that the Waisters had nothing useful to tell her. How to use this knowledge? Not now, that was how. She needed time to think, to put things together. What she said, a little angrily, was, “There is no obligation to destroy anything. We do not approve of all your destruction! This Queen and I have fought, and she has surrendered to me. That does not mean I understand her.”
# I comprehend. #
There was silence for a few moments, but then, without warning, Crow sat bolt upright on his couch, and then Wende did the same, and the Dog jumped up from the floor and began barking. Malye watched Plate produce a green jewel from somewhere, and press it against his head. He lowered it after a moment, and fixed his anxious eyes on the Waisters behind the glass partition.
By now, Malye was accustomed to this Gatean excitability, but there was something different about it this time, something altered in the focus of it. They were not, she perceived, upset about anything she or the other refugees had done or said. Nor were they upset at the Waisters. No, she had the distinct impression they were receiving news somehow from a remote source, and the news was bad.
As if the mood were infectious, the Waister Queen suddenly stiffened as well, her face pudging inward and outward, expressing nameless emotions. She began to bob up and down, her thick, short legs flexing and straightening, flexing and straightening, much too quickly for the gravity and the bulk they had to support. And then the Workers caught the hysteria and began imitating her actions.
“What is happening?” Malye asked, of no on in particular.
Plate looked sharply at her. “Take your people and go,” he said quickly. “Return to your quarters and stay there, please! For your safety.”
“What's happening?”
He fixed her with a blank copper stare that nonetheless conveyed a sense of urgency and fear, white as static in Malye's synesthetic brain. “It's the Waister fleet,” he said. “I do not believe this. I do not believe this. Somebody is attacking the Waister fleet!”
CHAPTER NINETEEN
217::23
HOLDERS FASTNESS, GATE SYSTEM:
CONTINUITY 5218, YEAR OF THE DRAGON
“Show me,” Malye said without hesitation. “Put it on this flatscreen of yours.”
Wende had gone glassy-eyed, her face limp as a mask, a red jewel clenched in her huge, meaty fist.
Plate was shaking his head. “No, no, you've got to get out of here. We're too close to the surface. Go!”
“Show me! Do not give us orders, Plate. Show us what's happening.”
Anxiously, casting glances over his shoulder at the still-entranced Wende, Plate hurried to the flatscreen, put his hands on the back of it. He, too, went blank and distant for a moment.
“Who would attack the Waisters? Why would they?” Konstant asked the empty air. On his face was a look of horror, a reflection of all he'd been told about the fall of Sirius, through which he'd been fortunate enough to have slept.
But it was Viktor who answered: “I suppose it makes sense, in a way. Stand up and be recognized, force the Waisters to deal with you rather than Finders ring and a bunch of human refugees... Assuming you survive the encounter, I suppose, and that's a big assumption.”
The flatscreen came to life, opening out like a window on the depthless void of space. Against a backdrop of stars hung a long, irregular world, its shadow side gridded with lights, the Beeward and Ayeward faces reflecting harsh, blue-white sunlight. Artya. Holders Fastness. Around and in front of it hung the smaller forms of the Waister ships, oxide-red and phallic in design, like the Gatean ferry but clearly much, much larger. Seven kilometers? It was hard to say for sure, but the shadow of one was clearly visible on Artya's surface, giving a feel for the range and relative size, and certainly it was no small thing against this Lesser World.
Malye wondered where the rest of the fleet was; she'd had the impression there were once again hundreds of ships swarming into Sirius system, but here only five of them were visible. The space around them flashed and flickered. Malye thought of the passenger ferries, dying one by one as they fled a shattered Tyumen. But these things, these dying things too small for her to see on the screen, were not fleeing but attacking. Did it matter? Could they have any effect at all?
Apparently so; the surface of one Waister ship flared brightly, a searing pinpoint near its stern that faded slowly, leaving behind a red-hot smear down the side of the hull, fully as large as the Atrium of Tyumen.
“What are we seeing?” Malye demanded of Plate, who had taken his hands off the flatscreen's back but who still looked vague, as if he were listening to something she herself couldn't hear.
Behind the glass partition, the Waisters, too, had gone limp and unresponsive, something turned inward in their attention.
“At least eight rings are involved,” Plate replied distantly, without looking at Malye. His troubled eyes had wandered back toward Wende, whom Crow was now caressing briskly, as if he meant to clean her shiny-smooth skin with his hands. “Warders, Watchers, Testers... I don't know who else. Activity is scattered throughout the system, and only some of the information is coming to us FTL. Slowlight images are trickling in out of sequence, which has caused confusion. This view you see is from an ansible repeater station in trailing libration behind the Fastness.”
“What are they doing, these eight rings?”
“They've commandeered all the weapons of Gate system. All of them, the product of fifty Earth-standard years' labor. The waste is unimaginable.”
“Are they winning?”
“No. They have destroyed one ship, and they are demanding the Waisters' surrender, but the clear advantage is against themselves. Every minute, a year's production is destroyed, and sixes of lives along with it. Oh, the resources they are squandering! This conflict will resolve within the hour.”
At least the battle seemed more equal this time, Malye thought. A handful of individuals, probably no more than ten thousand, and they were managing to punish the Waisters as all the hapless billions of Sirius had not. A military debacle, no doubt, but as an act of defiance she had to admire it, and the waste be damned.
But behind the glass, the Waister Queen appeared more puzzled than frightened or upset. Her movements were slight, tentative.
“They have destroyed another ship,” Plate reported. “Their last, I think; the greater part of their weaponry has been incapacitated.”
The image on the flatscreen told a different story, though; the damaged Waister ship had been struck twice more by whatever weapon had burned its hull initially, and now its drive motors, clearly identifiable, had begun to flow and melt like ice sculptures left beside a heating vent. And the flashing around the other ships had intensified, as if the Gateans had called in a wave of reinforcements, a wave of new ships lurking silently in the space around Holders Fastness.
How would they look, like ferries, like miniature Waister ships? Like small, stealthy rescue pods with escorting swarms of automated weaponry? Or perhaps they were simply fogs and jewels. Perhaps a fog of tiny surgical machines was disassembling those drive motors—that certainly seemed a more Gatean way of handling the problem.
But presently, the character of the battle shifted in some subtle way. The flashes went on as before, but the pattern of them had altered, so that Malye was certain something important had changed, some turning point had come, but just what it might be she could not discern.
“The rings are surrendering,” Plate said. “Finally. What is wrong with them?”
The Waister Queen seemed to come to life. Her little brown eyes swiveled and focused on Plate, and she spoke to him. The flatscreen blanked for a moment, and then said:
# Your rings do not s
tack? There are as many #
# of you as there are rings? Comprehension #
# begins. A surrender occurs, despite #
# completion, because completion does not #
# apply universally. #
Plate said something back to her in Waister, but the translator had not been equipped to respond to his voice, so the next thing it relayed was the Queen's reply:
# You are not this group. Neither newness nor #
# completion applies. We are the superior #
# force, and yet this occurrence is of no #
# consequence to us. Response appears #
# limited. #
And Plate spoke again, and the Queen said to him,
# This strangeness shall be resolved through #
# its removal. Piling of stones beside the #
# water, the first steps in spatial and #
# material manipulation. You and we are #
# complete, and practicing the #Hua# instinct #
# of #Pfeesh# between us. These others have #
# removed from that process. Instinct does not #
# obtain, but variegated logics indicate that #
# we will remove them from processes #
# universally, for convenience. This #
# capitulation completes nothing. #
“If they want a fight,” Viktor said, translating the translator's message, “they can have one to the death. Serves them right for mucking up the peace process, I suppose. Not that my opinion matters, but I agree with you, Hthw: sometimes aberrant behavior calls for more than censure or punishment.”
With those words, he glanced very deliberately at Malye, forcing her to recognize his point. What to do with dangerous criminals? See, how the Waisters accommodate us? Malye looked away.
Plate appeared neither happy nor unhappy at the Queen's words, but simply calculating. How would this affect his plans, he seemed to be thinking. How would it affect Wende's, and those of Finders ring as a whole? Thoughtfully, he pressed the green jewel to his forehead.
On the screen, the flickers and flashes had taken on a distinctly different look, for now the Gatean forces were fleeing, and the Waister ships had begun to pursue them in a lackadaisical manner, turning and accelerating and turning again, as though it were the easiest thing in the worlds, as though hunting down every last Gatean weapon were a necessary chore, but one that required no great attention from them.
The Waister Queen turned her eyes on Malye.
# These ones listen too much to the counsel of #
# their Drones. They are operating always #
# within the anxiety of newness. They relate #
# that they have copied our minds, but they #
# have copied our minds of war, our minds of #
# newness. Did they think us capable of no #
# other emotion? You small ones are superior. #
# #Hua# contain much that interests. Do they #
# obey you? Can this be arranged? #
“Cease a moment,” Plate protested, his attention drawn back, albeit reluctantly, to the Interface Station around him. He shot Malye an angry look, then fluted something long and complex at the Waister Queen.
“What are you saying to her?” Malye asked.
“Nothing of your concern,” he snapped back.
“What did you say to her? I can ask her, if you like, but I'd rather hear it from you.”
He sighed in a very ungatean way, and looked at her as though avoiding offense had been a great strain for him, which he would now put aside in favor of untempered honesty. “I told her to stop upsetting our balance of influence,” he said. “Her presence in this world, and yours, have already disrupted our society intolerably. The idea that humans should command Gate system is absurd. No one commands here, least of all a small, ignorant group like yourselves.
“And she insults us, additionally, by refusing to acknowledge the extremes to which we have gone to accommodate Waister goals and ideals within our society. If she finds us so irrelevant, I told her, then she is free to speak to you without our assistance. As far as I'm concerned, she is free to take you back to the Waist of Orion with her.”
Malye allowed herself a slight smile. “You're so much more human than the rest of your kind, Plate. I've always liked that about you. If it makes you feel any better, I wouldn't dream of doing this without your help. Peace? I'd rather they simply leave us alone, but if they insist on talking, better that you are here. I mean you, specifically, as an individual. That's one thing you people don't do well: recognize the individual. You've made all this possible, haven't you? Without you, we'd all still be frozen, probably forever.”
“Do you have a point to make?” he snapped, his tiny mouth frowning, copper eyes narrowed, smooth, gray brows furrowed beneath sprouts of blue-green hair. His frustration sang through her, almost refreshing.
“Not at all,” she said. She glanced at the screen, on which only one Waister ship was now visible, the space around it silent and still. “But Gate is presently being stripped of its weapons, it seems, and this small, ignorant group of humans is on better terms with the enemy than you are yourself. If word of this gets out, it could be very upsetting to your poor, unstable society. You should remember this while you see to our comfort.”
“Word has already gotten out,” Plate said darkly. “Finders ring remains a contributive force for Gate's betterment. We do not operate in secret.”
So much for leverage, she thought. Her smile fell away. “That's unfortunate.”
“Yes,” he agreed. And then he crossed his arms as any human being would, and simply scowled at her. What are we to do? he seemed to be asking.
But Malye was far from home, operating with little guidance and no clear goals, and Ialah damn her if she knew what to do now.
~~~
Plate found some other images of the battle for them to watch, but by now it had wound down considerably, and there was not much to see, except when the Waisters tracked a group of their attackers back to a tiny world which none of the refugees recognized. #Hthw#, apparently in contact with the Waister forces, asked Plate whether any noncombatants lived there. He denied it, and soon the Waister ships were carving the world to pieces with the beams of their drive motors.
“Gamma ray lasers,” Viktor explained. “Very powerful. Most of the worst destruction at Sirius was accomplished with those.”
“Thank you for letting us know,” Malye growled at him. Who was interfering with the peace process now?
But the little world was all rubble and molten fragments in a very short time, and once again the fight against the renegade Gateans was too slow and subtle to be observed well on a holie screen. Conversation with the Waister Queen started up again, in a grudging and desultory manner. Probably, it was too soon for any of them to be doing this, to be attempting any sort of negotiation at all, but really, what else did they have to do? She wasn't about to sit around Holders Fastness, begging the Gateans for food and other necessities. No, it was better to have a job, even an awful one.
Dispirited, she even let Viktor try his physics questions again, but the results this time were not appreciably better. The Waisters seemed sometimes like insane or fevered children, unable to focus, prattling and raving about imaginary worlds that worked by strange imaginary rules. At other times they were more like withered geriatrics, wise but slow and sullen with years.
Eventually, Malye called Viktor off, and asked Sasha if he'd like to try some questions about biology. This worked a little better, eventually bringing forth an intelligible comment about food: theirs was wholly synthetic, but reminiscent of “dead things beside the water.” The Waisters also explained, with painful indirectness, the vast number of “life places” they had encountered in the galaxy, all wildly different and yet somehow all the same.
The exchange was slow and difficult, but at least it proved that meaningful dialogue was possible, with these creatures who had destroyed so much without a
ny communication at all. Old Nikolai, thus encouraged, voiced the opinion that religion should be the next topic of conversation. What did the Waisters know of Ialah? Of origins and creation in general? But Konstant insisted that political and social organization should take a much higher priority.
“Obviously, they don't really organize the way the Gateans do. There must be important differences, and understanding these may prove crucial to our survival.”
Malye had opened her mouth to retort, just on general principle, but at that moment she noticed movement out of the corner of her eye, and turned to see a small, irregular hole closing up in the doorway behind them, as if an invisible hand had passed through the membrane. No, not invisible! She could see a kind of smear moving along the floor, like an irregular lens, or a blob of extremely transparent gel. Or a fog. Yes, it looked very much like the security fog that surrounded Wende, that was so nearly invisible that Malye barely noticed it anymore.
“Hey,” she warned, standing and pointing. She had a bad feeling about this. “What is that thing? What is that?”
Plate, who in his foul mood had gone back to stand by the silent Wende and Crow again, now peered and squinted, stepping forward to inspect the intruding substance.
“That's,” he said, squinting. “It's a low-grade surgical fog, but the model has been—”
Suddenly, Plate was falling, his legs collapsing under him, his arms flying up in the air, and for a moment it seemed a hole had opened up in the floor and he was disappearing through it. But there was no hole, and he was spreading as he fell, as if his flesh were melting on a hot surface. The blood was bright red, like any blood, anywhere, and a wide, irregular pool of it splashed out around him as his body dissolved. His mouth opened to scream, his copper eyes wide with alarm, but the head had fallen nearly to the floor already, the last bit of him, and in a fraction of a moment that was gone as well, dismantled, dissolved, and there was nothing left of Plate except the splattered crimson pool. And a barely-visible mound of fog at its center.
