Surf thundered against the cliff base far below.
For all that his motives in coming to this place were entirely prosaic, he thought his present position morbidly akin to that of certain protagonists in highly melodramatic tales of love and revenge. He found himself staring fixedly at the back of the Wais; at the long, lightly clad legs ending in sandal-clad three-toed feet; the highly decorated feathered body; the slim, flexible neck. She, too, was gazing at the migrating leviathans, the compact recorder clutched firmly in the flexible quill-tips of her right wing. He would be surprised if she weighed more than thirty kilos.
The Wais had lost the power of flight millions of years ago. If she were to topple over the edge, her residual feathers could conceivably slow her fall to the point where striking the rocks at the base of the cliff might not kill her. She’d referred half-jokingly to some minimal gliding capability. But she would certainly be stunned. And the Wais, like so many Weave races, could not swim. A single massive surge of water against granite would finish it quickly. No one would expect her to survive. The body would be pulverized, its fragments scattered.
There were no protective railings on the cliff point, no marked trails. A slip, a gust of wind could easily make a difference in the fate of so fragile a creature. It would be understood that he had tried and failed to save her. There would be censure, but no investigation.
If she resisted, which was almost inconceivable, a single twist of both hands could snap the frail neck as easily as a plastic tube. The all-concealing sea would obliterate the actual cause of death.
He glanced behind him. They were as alone as when they’d first arrived. His fingers flexed. Despite their physical proximity she hadn’t moved away from him. After all, she trusted him completely. Why shouldn’t she? What conceivable reason could there be for a human officer to want to do harm to a Wais historian?
The rationale was fixed in his mind; indeed, was an inseparable part of it. A part of whose existence and function she could not be allowed to suspect.
He knew that her triumviral sisters would miss her, but she’d told him that she was not mated and had no offspring. She lived on the fringe of Wais society. Far more professional than personal mourning would greet the news of her demise.
He took another step toward her. Far below, unrelenting waves crashed devouringly against naked rock. It wasn’t necessary to try and disguise the sudden movement, and he was expecting it when her head pivoted on her neck to look back at him. The large blue eyes started to widen and feathers quivered, a gesture no doubt full of meaning to another Wais.
His hands stayed tight at his sides. He had to know for certain.
“You’ve told me a lot about your work.” He sensed her nervousness and pressed on, using that part of his mind the secret of which he was simultaneously striving to preserve. “But I have this feeling that there’s something of particular interest you suspect or have discovered. Something you haven’t felt free to discuss with me despite all the talking we’ve done and all the time we’ve spent together.”
She wavered slightly on her feet, no more able to resist his mental probe than a Massood or S’van would have been.
“No, I …” She blinked, inhaling as if a timed-release injection of some powerful drug had suddenly dispersed into her system. “You are right, Colonel Nevan: there is.”
Here it comes, he thought tensely. It would be a simple matter to snap the slim neck, pick up the crumpled form and heave it over the cliff. A quick flash of iridescent plumage and sparkling beadwork and she would be gone. It would all be over within an instant, his fears and doubts swallowed along with her body by the all-embracing sea. Both he and Conner could relax.
But he wanted to hear it from her first.
“Well,” he prompted relentlessly, “what is it?” He loomed over her.
She was afraid now but somehow unable to move. It was as if her feet had suddenly melted into the stone, fastening her to the spot. She was dimly conscious of responding to his question. This was most peculiar because she hadn’t intended to tell anyone of her suspicions. They were potentially too dangerous, too portentous to reveal even to her own kind. If she told a Human she had a pretty good idea of what the consequences might be.
It didn’t matter that she was unburdening herself to Colonel Nevan. Despite the genuine concern he had shown for her welfare, something in his eyes, in his posture, still marked him for what he was. She could no more deny his ancestry than could he.
“My studies,” she heard another person saying clearly while realizing it was herself, “have led me to some very unsettling conclusions.” She tried to leave it at that.
He would have none of it. “Continue.” She wondered vaguely why she couldn’t ignore him.
Like water through a shattered earthen dam the old fears poured out of her. “It is something I came to realize only after repeated perusing of my accumulated research.”
“After you witnessed the encounter during the battle for control of the delta between Sergeant Conner and the squad of retreating Massood,” he offered with bleak helpfulness.
“That is certainly part of it.”
“Probably it all ties in with what you’ve learned from watching me,” he added fatalistically.
“Naturally.” He was standing so close to her, she realized, blocking out the sun. And he wasn’t even particularly big, for a Human. Powerful, flexible, killing digits flexed at the ends of his wrists. “Also with everything I’ve learned from observing Humans in combat, both here and on Tiofa.”
Uncertainty entered his voice. To a Wais it was as blatant as a change of color. “With everything?”
“What else?”
He took a step back, clearly confused. For whatever reason, she was grateful for his partial retreat. “I guess I don’t understand. Are you saying you found nothing exceptional or remarkable about Sergeant Conner’s encounter with the Massood, or in your observation of me?”
“They only confirm what I have augured from watching other Humans. Should it be otherwise?” Her own confusion increased.
“No. No, of course not,” he agreed, rather expeditiously. “Forget it. It’s not important. Not important at all. No more or less so than any of the rest of your observations.”
She took the suggestion. Naturally.
“Tell me about your conclusions, then,” he urged her, in a most peculiar tone of voice. “About what you’ve learned from examining us.”
She found herself rambling with an openness she did not suspect she possessed.
“Everything I’ve seen, everything I’ve witnessed, only confirms the hypotheses I had formulated before beginning my fieldwork.” Salt-laden wind ruffled her feathers. It was growing cold on the edge of the cliff. “Using my own personal observations of Human-otherspecies interactivity as a springboard, I devised a computer program to carry out some experimental extrapolations into which I also incorporated the work of others, both contemporaries and predecessors.”
It was as if she were lecturing a seminar consisting of a single student. She knew she was being entirely too revealing, both of herself and her information, but she couldn’t help it. Something was compelling her to unburden herself.
“I set myself to this fieldwork in the hopes not of confirming my conclusions but of disproving them.”
“You mean you’ve been looking for something here on Chemadii and before on Tiofa that would invalidate your life’s work?”
“Precisely.” She discovered that she could move after all. She was not fastened in place physically; only mentally. “I began to wonder what would happen if the Amplitur were finally defeated.”
“Not if: when.” Straat-ien spoke the good-soldier speak.
“Whatever,” she said impatiently. “Certainly it is coming. The tides of war turned significantly about two hundred years ago. Before that they were always able to develop some new weapon, some new strategy, with which to counterattack. With which to once more press upon the Weave.
“Two hundred years ago the Weave gained a new ally: Humankind. That has made the difference.”
“We’ve done what we could.” A by now thoroughly bemused Straat-ien wondered what she was getting at.
“What happens when the Amplitur have been utterly defeated? What happens when they can no longer wage this war of the Purpose against us or any other species? When all their subject races have been freed from the insidious genetic and mental manipulation to which they have been subjected?”
“I don’t want to sound simple,” Nevan replied carefully, “but I’d think that would mean that the war would end and there would be peace.”
“If I am correct then the two may be mutually exclusive,” she commented cryptically.
“Why wouldn’t there be peace if there’s no longer any war? Everyone will quit fighting and go home.”
“Everyone?” She was staring straight at him. For a moment he felt as if he were the one subject to mental paralysis.
“If you’re talking about my species, we’ll return to peaceable pursuits just like everyone else. And maybe apply for full membership in the Weave. We’ll go back to what we were doing on Earth before the Weave discovered us and involved us in this war.”
“You confirm my worst fears.”
“Come on, now!” he argued. “I’ve studied my own history. There was hardly any serious fighting taking place on Earth when the first Weave ship arrived there.”
“By whose standards? There has never been peace on Earth, just as Humans have only played at ‘peaceable pursuits.’ Before you began to fight the Amplitur and their allies you contested continuously among yourselves, the only ‘intelligent’ species to do so. These were aberrations of natural law engendered by your unique planet and your own evolutionary development.”
“We’ve outgrown that,” Straat-ien argued. “We’ve mastered our ancient history. You talk of early Humans making early mistakes. Our long association with the civilized species of the Weave has changed our society forever.”
“Yes, but has it changed it enough? Grant me a moment my thesis. When the Amplitur capitulate, who will you fight?”
“No one. There’ll be no one to fight.”
“I’m not so sure. I think there will be a brief period of peace, like a long exhalation, and then you will have to find someone new to confront. This isn’t a question of something in your society; it’s a matter of what is in your DNA. You enjoy conflict too much. There is a saying: ‘One human is a civilization, two an army, three a war.’”
By now Nevan had nearly forgotten the reason for their presence on the cliffs. He realized that she didn’t suspect a damn thing about Conner, about himself, about the Core, or about the particular talent the unwitting Amplitur had released in the minds of perverted Cossuut’s genetically altered human offspring. Instead, she had been carefully shielding a discreditable theory that she’d formulated long before she’d even arrived on Chemadii.
On the other hand, he was slowly coming to realize, if provable, her own suppositions could cause tremendous damage in an entirely different direction from the one he had been concerned with.
“You’ll turn on us, on the Weave.” This she declared with the certainty of the utterly convinced. “That is what my projections show. Because you now have other species to bicker with besides just yourselves, you will end up picking a conflict with the Wais, or the S’van, or perhaps even the Massood.”
“Why should we want to do that?” He was honestly baffled. “Why would we want to start a war with those who’ve been our allies for hundreds of years?”
“Because you can’t help yourselves. Development of your civilization has always been geared to and propelled forward by conflict. You’ve made your greatest technological strides in times of war. It’s all there in your history.
“It will not take much. A suspicion here, an imagined threat there. I predict you will battle the Massood first. That would be more satisfying for you than picking a fight with, say, the Hivistahm.”
“I think your conclusions are addled,” he told her firmly. “Remember: You’re deducing all this from the perspective of a Wais, a preternaturally sensitive species.”
“There’s nothing sensitive, preternaturally or otherwise, about the computer models I set up.”
“The equipment you’re using was designed by Wais or Hivi techs.”
“Now you’re being self-deceptively facile.” She chided him from behind the haze that still enveloped her thoughts. “Believe me, nothing would please me more than to see my theories demolished. Unfortunately, the evidence to date tends to accumulate in the opposite nest.”
He looked thoughtful. “I can see why you’ve been reluctant to tell anyone.”
Yes, and why am I now telling you? a part of her wondered. Why should I trust you? You’re not even an academic.
“What do your colleagues think of your theory?” he asked.
“I have yet to share my data with anyone else. I still have thoughts of disproving the constructed model. But I am less hopeful.”
Was he going to hurt her? she wondered suddenly. Perhaps even kill her? Was that why he had brought her to this isolated place? She started to shiver. She’d shepherded her research carefully. It was impossible to imagine that he’d suspected. She’d told no one, not even her two companions in triad. But he didn’t have to suspect, she realized. She’d just told him everything. Why? What had come over her? What had prompted his battery of irresistible questions?
If her theories were made public and subsequently confirmed by independent sources it could seriously damage Human-Weave relations. That would delight only the Amplitur, who would rush to exploit the internal divisions that had always threatened Weave unity.
The same thought occurred independently to Straat-ien. “Could the Amplitur have planted this idea in your mind in hopes of sowing dissension in the Weave? You know how they can ‘suggest’ anyone but Humans.”
“I have never been anywhere near an Amplitur, either alive or dead.” Her response was prompt and confident. “Certainly one has never visited my homework.”
“If one had, it could have ‘suggested’ that knowledge out of your memory,” he countered.
“Then why would I be telling you all this now?”
He couldn’t very well answer that one. Better to change his line of inquiry. “One theory at a time. I accept that your work isn’t Amplitur-inspired. You’re only one historian. Why should you be the only one to have reached these radical conclusions?”
“What makes you think that I’m the only one?” she replied demurely.
That took him aback. “You know of others who’ve come to the same conclusion on their own?”
“I didn’t say that. I merely suggest that others, perhaps working in different disciplines, may have reached identical ends via a different route and are maintaining their silence for reasons similar to mine.”
He picked up a rock and juggled it in his palm, finally tossing it over the cliff. It vanished into the mist and foam boiling up from below. “You know,” he told her softly, “ever since that first encounter the Weave has encouraged us to become better warriors than we ever were when we were isolated on our one world.”
She blinked then and swayed slightly before recovering her balance. “I suddenly feel rather dizzy.”
“It’ll pass,” he assured her absently. “You’re just not used to the combination of sea air and wind.”
“Yes.” The fog that had been hovering thick and confusing in her thoughts abruptly dissipated. “You have a saying, unsubtle as with most Huma but descriptive nonetheless. About having ‘a tiger by the tail.’”
He turned to face her, his hands jammed into the slit pockets of his thin jacket. “That’s right. And the Weave went out and found itself a tiger cub and force-fed it steroids so it could take on the Amplitur.”
“Just so. Soon we will have no more meat to throw at this tiger. I am firmly convinced that everyone is naive to be
lieve that it will willingly and easily switch its diet to vegetables.”
“Anything can learn to change its diet,” Straat-ien muttered.
She executed an elaborate Wais gesture of negativity. “Theoretically. But will it be willing to allow claws and teeth to atrophy? Or want them to?”
He had no reply.
“My greatest pleasure in life would be to disprove this hypothesis,” she told him.
He nodded. Just to be absolutely certain in his own mind he said bluntly, “Those of us who trace our ancestry to Cossuut have had even more reason than most of our kind to want to make use of our fighting skills.” He was watching her carefully.
Insofar as he could tell there was neither hesitation nor artifice in her reply. “I can understand that. As a historian specializing in Human affairs I am familiar with the actions of the Amplitur on that unfortunate world, though after a hundred years I would think that lingering hostility would have faded somewhat.”
“We have long memories,” he told her. He was convinced now. She neither knew nor suspected anything of the Core’s existence or the talents of its individual members.
He’d been on the verge of committing murder, of killing an ally and, indeed, a personal friend, for nothing.
Except that now she could as easily be slain to suppress the theory she had developed, for it threatened not only him and his relations but the entire Human-Weave relationship.
“Do you intend to disburse your theory?”
“Not yet. I am quite aware of the dangers inherent in doing so, and as I have said, I am still willing to be persuaded of its inaccuracy. Having devoted many years to its construction I do not think it will be easily demolished.”
In a half-wild moment he found himself saying, “Maybe I can help you.”
“Why should you help me? I would think … I would think you would want to stop me.” She shook her head. “I don’t know why I’ve even told you any of this after keeping it a secret for so long, even from my own colleagues.”
The Damned Trilogy Page 82
