The Damned Trilogy

by Alan Dean Foster

  One of the males was comparatively tall, but none of the three was especially massive. All were larger than any Wais, or Hivistahm, or S’van, but the Massood were generally taller and the Chirinaldo bulkier. Their fluid lope was familiar to her from years of intimate study. Primitive muscular bulk made their uniforms bulge in numerous unexpected places, and she fancied she could hear the grinding of their heavy, dense skeletons. Hunter-killers with intelligence. She started to tremble ever so slightly and immediately steadied herself by reciting an appropriate mnemonic.

  Nervousness gave way to expectation as she aimed her recorder. Her entire career had been spent in preparation for this moment. If her colleagues could see her now, they would be shuddering with fear.

  One of the Humans noticed her, stopping to point. They conversed briefly among themselves. Then the two males departed down a side concourse. The sole female headed in her direction.

  From an academic standpoint she would have preferred one of the males and so was slightly disappointed. Conversely, the female was little taller than herself and therefore far less physically intimidating. Coincidence, she wondered, or diplomatic foresight?

  The female halted at a politic distance and spoke through her translator. “You’re the historian Lalelelang. I’m to be your liaison while you’re here on Tiofa. My name’s Lieutenant Umeki.”

  A naked, smooth-skinned, five-digited hand was thrust toward Lalelelang. Aware that it could smash right through her rib cage, she flinched instinctively, her carefully prepared greeting completely forgotten. Immediately apologetic, the human retracted the gesture.

  “Sorry! I forgot that you Wais are a little less … direct.” She proceeded to bestow on her charge an excellent example of the wide, feral Human grin. No doubt it was intended to be reassuring.

  Fighting to steady herself, Lalelelang ignored the unutterably uncultured, blatant display of cutting teeth and extended the flexible tips of her right wing. “It’s all right,” she said in perfectly inflected Huma. “My fault.”

  Fingers brushed against her gripping quills. The bare skin was warm and the flesh beneath deceptively flexible. This time a determined Lalelelang did not so much as twitch. Suddenly she was glad that neither of the males had been assigned to greet her.

  She fluffed her feathers, those on her head and the back of her neck erecting to the proper height. It was a cultivated automatic response to the handshake, and completely lost on the Human.

  “If you’ll come with me?” The officer turned and started back down the concourse. As she complied, Lalelelang observed the easy, rolling gait, perfectly fluid despite the taut internal bracing of thick ligaments and heavy tendons. The shuttle hangar, her last tenuous link with real civilization, receded rapidly behind them.

  “I’ve been looking forward to meeting you.” The Human Umeki’s speech was utterly devoid of the civilized overtones and inflections that so graced even the baser Wais dialects. “I’ve done a fair amount of liaison work, but it’s always been with Hivistahm or S’van. Techs and logistics specialists. We’ve never had a Wais here before.” She glanced in friendly, reassuring fashion at her guest, blissfully unaware that her eyes burned. Like any number of inherent disconcerting characteristics, it was something Humans couldn’t help.

  “I understand that you’ve been studying us?”

  “For some time.” Lalelelang explained carefully. “It is my field of specialization.”

  Umeki chuckled. “I know something about Wais society. Your friends must think you’re slightly daft.”

  “More than slightly. Your unpopularity among us does not trouble you?”

  “Nah. We’re pretty much used to it. Most of the time it’s just amusing.”

  “Knowing as much as I do about your kind,” Lalelelang replied, “I expect to get along quite well.” She’d already discarded the rituals of greeting she’d prepared and had slipped into the Human conversational mode, which favored directness and brutal familiarity above all else. There was precious little room in such uncouth interaction for even minimal interjections of appreciation and courtesy.

  For all that, the Human seemed eager to relax and reassure her. Lalelelang listened politely, discarding the clumsy conversational chaff while retaining that information which might later prove useful.

  “Your Huma’s better than mine,” Umeki said in a bumbling attempt at flattery, “but of course linguistics are your people’s specialty. It’s nice not to have to use the translator. Last Hivistahm I squired around needed two minutes to figure out anything and five to reply.”

  “I also dislike the distance mechanical devices interpose between individuals,” the Wais replied politely. The Human was deliberately shortening her stride and slowing her pace to enable Lalelelang to keep up with her. But then, Lalelelang reminded herself, this individual was experienced at liaison work. The average Human would not have been so thoughtful.

  She turned off her recorder. Umeki was not a useful subject for detailed study.

  “I am also familiar with the majority of current Human colloquialisms.”

  “You don’t say?” Umeki led the way around a corner. “Is that important in your work?”

  “It can be. I am a social historian. I study not only how Humans interact with other species but with each other.”

  “Same thing our own sociologists do. Everybody wants to know something about everybody else, don’t they?”

  At ease now with the Human conversational mode, Lalelelang was able to overlook the casual, unthinking insult. “In the crudest sense, yes.”

  “We’ll check on your luggage. I understand you Wais like to travel with a lot of luggage.”

  “You will find me difficult. I came prepared for my destination as well as my work.”

  “So much the better.” She stared at Lalelelang appraisingly until she became aware that her guest was starting to fidget uneasily. “You know, you people are the most beautiful little things. Your personal decoration, your natural coloring … makes one want to take you out in the sunshine and just admire you.”

  Realizing that the comment was intended as a compliment and not an unforgivable breach of behavior, Lalelelang was able to accept it as such. The more time she spent in this Human’s company, the more at ease she felt. Years of intense study were paying off. The combination of offhand affronts, verbal and physical directness, threatening gestures, and unsympathetic posture—not to mention body odor—would have by now reduced any unprepared Wais to a quivering wreck.

  Perhaps her visit wasn’t going to be such a debilitating proposition after all. She felt a socially acceptable quotient of pride.

  They drew plenty of stares as they penetrated farther into the complex. She saw no other Wais, nor did she expect to. The attention she was receiving came not only from the increasing number of Humans, but from Massood, Hivistahm, and even dull-visaged Lepar, who wondered at the presence of a fragile Wais in such company.

  They must be speculating furiously on my intentions, she mused. In that respect their reactions were no different from those of her friends back home.

  “I’ll show you around the complex once we get you settled,” Umeki was saying. “Won’t take long. It’s pretty compact. After that and at your leisure, I’m directed to take you any place you want to go. The storage facilities here are extensive, and weapons upgrading and repair is interesting. Lot of O’o’yan and Hivistahm at work there. There are also the R-and-R facilities.”

  “I want to visit the front lines.”

  The Human halted with an abruptness that nearly caused Lalelelang to trip over her own feet. Though she was intimately familiar with such acute gestures from her studies, it was still something to experience it in person.

  “You want to do what?” Umeki gawked at her.

  The sudden shift in tone, the overwhelming aura of accusation, the implication of possible attack inherent in both timbre and movement finally set Lalelelang to shaking violently. To her credit Umeki recognized what sh
e’d done and hastened to rectify the mistake.

  “Sorry, take it easy. I didn’t mean to spook you. I know you’re easily startled.”

  The exercises began to work their magic. “Yes. We certainly … are,” Lalelelang replied.

  “It’s just that your request startled me. I can’t take you to the front.”

  Lalelelang mustered her reserves. “You just stated that you have been ordered to escort me anywhere I wish.”

  “That’s true, sure. But a Wais in a combat situation … you’re serious, aren’t you?”

  “Entirely. It goes to the heart of my research.” She was astonished to find herself speaking forcefully to a Human. An untrained Wais would not even have been able to respond. “It is what I came here for and it is what I want to do.”

  Accusation crept back into the Human’s tone. “I don’t like this. I’m personally responsible for you while you’re here. If anything should happen to you …”

  “I do not intend that it should. I am only here to observe and record. You do not need to worry about me picking up a weapon and charging off to rage among the enemy.” The comment, much less the attendant dark humor, would have been impossible to execute in any of the genteel Wais dialects.

  Umeki considered the unexpectedly obstinate ornithorp. “You sure as hell have prepared yourself. No wonder your request to come here was approved. I’ll have to double-clear this with my superiors, but if it’s what you want, and you’ll sign the appropriate waivers, I guess I’ll have to take you.”

  “I think you will find that all the necessary forms are already on file. I do not want to waste time dealing with the bureaucracy.”

  “Oh, I think you’ll have enough time.” The lieutenant looked thoughtful. “There’s constant skirmishing on the Kii Plateau. Secondary theater of operation. We’re pushing them back there, but it’s slow going. That should do for you.” She paused as if waiting for an objection. When none was forthcoming, she added, “If you’re sure this is what you want?”

  “Quite sure.”

  Umeki looked her up and down, merely another breach of courtesy in a list grown long. By now the historian had become adept at ignoring them.

  “We’re going to have a helluva time finding proper field dress for you.”

  “Do not trouble yourself. There is no military gear for Wais. Even if we could improvise functioning equipment I would not be able to make use of it. It would be wasted on me.”

  “That’s true.” This observation, at least, was a statement of fact and therefore not insulting. “We’ll have to devise something in the way of attire, though. Nothing confining. You’ve got feathers, you don’t need much in the way of insulation. Get rid of your jewelry, for a start.” She waved into the distance. “You’re not gonna be very comfortable out there.”

  “I do not expect to be. If I wished to be ‘comfortable,’ I would not have come to this world. If I wished to be comfortable, I would not be talking to you now.”

  Umeki was nodding slightly to herself. “Yeah, you know the language, all right. Everything you say sounds like it’s coming out of a musical instrument.”

  Lalelelang accepted the crude compliment, knowing that there were less than a dozen individuals on all the Wais worlds who would even have considered trading places with her.

  “You also seem to know what you want.” The lieutenant started to put a guiding arm around the historian’s thin shoulders but thought better of it, and rightly so. “I promise you you’re going to find it.”

  III

  They draped her with some cursory, loosely secured folds of the most flexible protective weave they could find and put her in a heavily armored air-suspension vehicle heading north. She had an ill-fitting seat forward, right next to the pilot and away from the Human soldiers clustered in back.

  To see them in full battle armor, dripping weaponry and related means of destruction, would have been for an ordinary Wais something out of a particularly bad nightmare. Lalelelang was not only familiar with their appearance; her studies enabled her to identify by name and function many of the destructive devices they carried. Even so, she found proximity to so many of them more than daunting. As usual, the exercises helped.

  Every soldier in the transport was larger than Lieutenant Umeki, and some were truly massive. She kept her distance from them while they ignored the fluttery alien dropped in their midst.

  Strange to see the comparatively diminutive female Umeki decked out in similar gear, with less armor to allow for more freedom of movement but wearing fully functional double sidearms and a brace of concussion darts. Lalelelang recorded it all for posterity and future study.

  Before leaving the base she’d dosed herself with a duet of stabilizing drugs, knowing that exercises alone would be insufficient to protect her stability should she find herself in an actual combat situation. It was entirely possible she was the first of her kind to intentionally place herself in such inimical surroundings.

  From a social standpoint the information she expected to gain by being a part of the experiment instead of merely an observer ought to prove invaluable. Already she had secured enough data to have made the long, difficult journey from Mahmahar worthwhile. In her mind’s eye she could envision the reaction of her professional colleagues.

  Hopefully she might even see enough to allow her to retire the unpleasant theories that had from the very beginning served as the main impetus behind the expedition and indeed, behind her choice of career.

  The terrain visible through the armored transparency that fronted the troop carrier changed from grassland to scrub-covered hill country as they advanced. Occasionally she saw other vehicles accelerating past them or whizzing by in the opposite direction. Some were considerably larger than the transport in which she rode, and boasted frightful arrays of destructive technology. Once, one of them fired repeatedly at a target out of her range of vision, and later something deadly and unseen sent a fountain of soil and gravel blossoming skyward not far to port.

  A terse shiver ruffled her feathers. So this was combat, she thought. This was the tactile actualization of one intelligent species attempting to destroy another: what the Amplitur had finally resorted to in their attempt to bring the members of the Weave into their all-encompassing Purpose. The unnatural act the representative species of the Weave had been compelled to embrace in order to preserve their independence.

  Praise to all Elevated Spirits for the existence of the prolific Massood, who had been one of the founding members of the Weave and who had carried the burden of actual fighting for so long. Praise also to the legendary Massood explorer Caldaq, whose team had first made contact with the disagreeable but invaluable Humans, who were at long last turning the tide of battle against the enemy.

  The single enemy miss did not upset her as much as she thought that kind of encounter might. Easy enough to mentally classify it as kin to a natural calamity, like a bolt of lightning or a meteor falling from the sky. Terrible to contemplate but relatively simple to abstract.

  The transport slowed as it entered a forest of taller trees, flora different from that of home. Tall and straight-boled, their branches were dense with long, pointed shapes instead of leaves. Surprisingly few bushes sought the shelter of large, glacially polished boulders.

  Umeki materialized next to her, flipping a coppery colored visor down over her face. “Get ready.”

  Anxious but excited, Lalelelang rose from her seat, awkwardly adjusting her own modified visor. Umeki helped her with the improvised face shield, grumbling as she did so.

  “You’re not fully protected, but this is better than nothing. Try to keep your head down.”

  “I am somewhat familiar with the conventions from my studies. I will be careful.” Lalelelang checked her recorder and its backup, far more concerned with their condition than with something as peripheral to her desires as body armor.

  Umeki took a step back. “You don’t look like you’re very comfortable in that getup.”

/>   “I am not, but I will manage.” She considered upping the level of medication in her bloodstream but decided against it. Higher concentrations posed the possibility of debilitating side effects, which could affect her work. Besides, she felt as much exhilaration as fear.

  “You really are remarkable, for a Wais.” In full light field armor the Human female looked quite intimidating. “Not that I’ve dealt with that many.”

  “I am only doing what is necessary to fulfill my work.”

  Umeki nodded, a typically brusque and unsophisticated Human gesture. “You ought to get plenty of that out here.” She drew a sidearm, a compact and thoroughly wicked-looking contrivance of plastic and metallic glass.

  “As soon as the squad has taken up its assigned position we’ll follow. This is a standard reconnaissance-and-destroy sortie in an area that’s already been partly secured. Shouldn’t be any serious trouble.”

  She nodded in the direction of the Massood pilot, who was folded intently over his instrumentation. “He can’t hang around too long. The transport’s too big a target. This plateau’s full of patrolling shapeseeker drones.”

  “I understand.” It meant that she would be stuck in this place for the duration of the sortie with nothing but Massood and Humans for company, until such time as it was deemed strategically viable for the group to be withdrawn.

  She checked to make sure her equipment was running as she recorded the squad’s efficient and rapid deployment, looked on admiringly as they took up positions between trees and rocks. Her aural resonator was full of closed-channel communications. The soldiers were conversing in clipped, professional tones, and she had no trouble deciphering their sometimes slang-filled exchanges, whether they took place in guttural Huma or the more sophisticated high and low Massood.

  Language was a matter of sorted sounds, of which there were always a finite number. Translating was simply a cataloging problem. For reasons the Wais had never been able to quite comprehend, all other species seemed to find this difficult. Like the rest of her kind she felt sorry for those who were forced to rely for communication on simple, primitive systems—which meant every species that was not Wais.