by Timothy Zahn
Prr't-zevisti had gone over the scene probably a thousand times since then, wondering what he could have done that would have saved him from this. Should he have paid more attention when he'd first started looking around, putting more effort into avoiding detection? Should he not have dropped down into the grayworld, hiding like a frightened child, after he'd been spotted? Seventeen cyclics too late, of course, but should he have allowed the technics to take that second cutting? Another cutting, nestled in a pyramid on another of the eighteen worlds, might have been open to him.
Or should he perhaps have taken the ultimate gamble? Should he have simply stayed at the length of his anchorline and let the Humans close the metal on his fsss cutting?
It was a thought that had occurred more and more frequently to him these past few fullarcs, and it was a thought that had never yet failed to send a chill through the core of his being. The anchorpoint effect of the fsss organ had been known among the Zhirrzh since prehistoric times, whereas the double-anchorpoint of a fsss plus a fsss cutting had become practical only twenty cyclics ago. Barely enough time for the Zhirrzh people to become comfortable with the idea; far too little for a situation even remotely similar to this one to have come up. It was possible, he supposed, that if he'd let them cut him off from his fsss cutting, he would simply have hung out there in space until the Prr-family shrine had cleared the shadowing metal and he'd been drawn back home.
It was possible. But in Prr't-zevisti's opinion, it was vanishingly improbable. It was far more likely that, like an Elder whose fsss was destroyed, he would simply have died.
Would have died.
Which was really why this whole line of thought was so unnerving to him. The fact that he was even thinking such things implied a desperation far out of proportion to his situation. Eight fullarcs of imprisonment should not be enough to lead anyone to thoughts of suicide.
From across the room came a muffled clang. Prr't-zevisti started, darting across to the upper corner by the door and dropping deeper into the grayworld. The door clanged again and swung open, revealing two Humans.
Prr't-zevisti was outside like a shot, easing past the stacks of metal and out into the open air. The sun was shining brilliantly out of a clear blue sky as he stretched out to the length of the anchorline. Maybe this time Dharanv and the family shrine would be within reach.
But no. The anchorpoint-sense wasn't there. Either he was being absurdly unlucky here, or else the piles of metal combined with the angles of Dorcas's rotational and orbital movement had managed to create a permanent shadow in Dharanv's direction. And unless he was willing this time to risk death...
He was back to his fsss cutting well before the Humans shut the door, sealing themselves and him inside the metal room. He drifted up into his corner again, hiding himself in the mist of the grayworld, a fresh shiver running through him. That was what bothered him about this, he suddenly realized. Not the fact that he was contemplating his own death, but that the decision was never really over and done with. Each and every time the Humans opened that door, the choice and the risk were again before him. The question of whether this time a slim chance at freedom was worth the probable risk of death.
He didn't want to die. A fatuous statement, really; he didn't suppose anyone ever really wanted to die. The First Eldership War of a thousand cyclics ago had been sparked by that reluctance: the common Zhirrzh demanding the same right to this postponement of death that their clan and family leaders were already enjoying. The desire to maintain and continue one's life was probably as close to a universal instinct as was possible to get.
Zhirrzh warriors had the knowledge of Eldership to comfort them through the dangers of war. Did the Human warriors, he wondered, have anything similar?
Across the room one of the Humans was saying something. Cautiously, Prr't-zevisti eased up toward the lightworld again. The Humans were standing beside the torn and barely recognizable body of the Zhirrzh warrior that had occupied the center of the room since shortly after Prr't-zevisti's cutting had been brought in. At first he'd assumed the mutilation had been the result of some barbaric attempt at torture, and had hated the Humans for it. Only as he'd watched them work had he grudgingly decided it was probably more likely a medical dissection on the body of a Zhirrzh who'd been raised to Eldership in battle.
But this fullarc they weren't working on it. Instead they were carefully maneuvering it into a long translucent bag they'd apparently brought in with them. They finished the job, using some kind of sealing strip to close the bag, and together lifted the body to a rolling table. With one of the Humans at either end, they pulled it across the room. The one in front opened the door, and they began to pull the table outside.
They were taking the body away. And when it was gone, they would be leaving Prr't-zevisti there.
All alone.
"No," Prr't-zevisti whispered to himself, a ripple of panic flickering through him with more intensity than he'd felt from any emotion in the seventy cyclics since being raised to Eldership. To be sealed in here alone - maybe forever - without even the Human's occasional visits to break up the monotony...
And in that beat he finally recognized the truth that he'd been trying to avoid ever since his capture. The truth that there were indeed some situations worse than facing the dark and frightening unknowns of death.
And it was time at last to make the final decision.
He eased to the top of the doorway and rose to the edge of the lightworld, nearly trembling as the panic turned to a grim resolve. All right. He would do it. As soon as the Humans had their burden all the way out, he would go. And this time he wouldn't come back. No matter what. The back wheels of the table dropped to the ground outside with a muffled thud; bracing himself, Prr't-zevisti moved around the corner -
And abruptly stopped. Off to one side, accompanied by two more Humans, was a second rolling table with another Zhirrzh body laid out on top of it. The first table cleared the doorway; without losing a beat, the other Humans began pulling the second table inside.
Prr't-zevisti retreated back to his corner again, the panic and resolve draining away and leaving only fatigue in their wake. Fatigue, and the painful recognition that he was indeed near the end of his rope here. If he didn't find something to keep his mind occupied, he was never going to make it through this.
But what could he do? Run through the memories of his life? No. He'd done that often enough during the dull times on Dharanv. Here it would only depress him. Try to replay favorite books or poems or movies? No; he didn't have nearly that good a memory for such details. Hold imaginary conversations with his friends and family and descendants? Hardly. Borderline insane, and any kind of insane was exactly what he didn't need right now.
Or should he finally quit all this whining and self-pity and get busy doing his job?
He looked down, feeling a mixture of embarrassment and frustration, as one of the Humans closed the door with its unusual muffled clank. Yes, he'd been a warrior once, serving both the Dhaa'rr clan and the Overclan Seating with honor and distinction. And warriors of the Dhaa'rr clan had never been known for neglecting their duty. But that had been a long time ago, back when he was a physical living in the lightworld. He was an Elder now, with all the limitations that came with it. What in the eighteen worlds could he do?
The Humans had moved to either side of the table, speaking quietly to each other as they laid out a neat row of surgical instruments. All right, Prr't-zevisti told himself. Maybe he couldn't fight like a traditional warrior. But he was in the middle of enemy territory, with the enemy apparently unaware that he was still there. That had to be good for something.
All he had to do was figure out what it was. And in the meantime he would set himself to becoming better acquainted with the Humans' language.
Moving to a spot beside the room's ceiling light source, Prr't-zevisti came up as close to the lightworld as he dared. He'd had a short but intense briefing on the Human language by the Elders from the Base
World 12 group before the expeditionary force had hit Dorcas, plus a fifteen-fullarc course in the Etsijian language way back before he'd landed with the expeditionary forces in that war. Minimal fluency, equally minimal linguistic expertise, but he'd once been fairly good with languages. At least it gave him somewhere to start.
One of the Humans reached a hand to a small black box on one corner of the rolling table. "Doctor-Cavan-a," it said, its voice echoing faintly from the walls. "(Something) fifteenth, twenty-three-oh-three. Assist (something) by (something) (something). Prepare (something) for second (something) on (something) (something)."
Doctor-Cavan-a. A startlingly Zhirrzh-type name, even down to the -a female suffix. Coincidence? Undoubtedly. Still, it gave Prr't-zevisti his first solid verbal anchor to these aliens. And, paradoxically perhaps, it somehow made him feel not quite so lost and alone here. Maybe these aliens could be understood, after all.
Settling in, gazing down on the enemy as they began carving up another of his people, he began to listen.
6
For a while it had looked like Thrr-gilag's hopes of visiting his parents were going to evaporate without effect or trace. Shortly after the decision to send an expedition to the Mrachanis, the Speaker for Dhaa'rr had insisted - "strongly recommended" had been the words he'd used - that none of the study group be allowed even to leave the Overclan complex, let alone head off on a four-thousand-thoustride journey across Oaccanv. A fairly worthless recommendation, in Thrr-gilag's opinion, since none of the searchers would have much to do until the ships and supplies had been gathered together.
Still, the Overclan Prime had seemed inclined to listen to the Speaker's argument; and it was to Thrr-gilag's surprise, therefore, when he reversed himself at the last beat, stipulating only that Thrr-gilag be back at the complex at least a fullarc before the expedition was scheduled to leave.
Five hundred cyclics ago, when the Overclan Seating was first established, the trek from Unity City to the Kee'rr clan's ancestral territory would have been a serious and difficult journey. Two major mountain ranges lay between them, as well as the ancestral territories of forty to fifty other clans. Clans whose suspicion toward outsiders had always been high, who with the carnage and devastation of the Third Eldership War fresh in their minds would have been even less hospitable toward strangers than usual. The last thing any of them would have believed was that a time of peace was even possible, let alone near at hand.
But it had happened. They'd pulled it together, all of them: the clan and family leaders first, the common Zhirrzh afterward. The Third Eldership War had been Oaccanv's last, and within two hundred cyclics even minor border skirmishes had all but disappeared. It had taken a special breed of Zhirrzh, Thrr-gilag had always believed, to have created such a future from the ashes of war. A unique group of visionaries, drawn together by destiny and necessity alike, who had risen above the traditional patterns of the past and found a way to bring the rest of the Zhirrzh race along with them.
Gazing out the window of the suborbital transport, Thrr-gilag stared at the lush green landscape beneath them. And wondered if, even with those same visionaries available to advise them, any Zhirrzh leaders since that time would have been able to pull off such a miracle.
The transport put down at the landing field outside Citadel, once the main stronghold city of the Kee'rr and still the clan's political and cultural center. The Thrr-family territory and shrine were three hundred thoustrides farther on, perched on the edge of a line of hills between two small branches of the Amt'bri River. A supply transport was getting ready to leave Citadel for the region; with a little fancy wordwork and judicious waving of his Overclan-complex pass, Thrr-gilag was able to talk himself aboard. Ten hunbeats later they were in the air.
"Heading home, eh?" the pilot commented as he brought the transport to its cruising altitude and leveled off. He was a middle-aged Zhirrzh, with age wrinkles around his eyes and an interesting crack-scar on his mouth. His tunic threads placed him as a member of the Hgg, the same family the current Speaker for Kee'rr belonged to. "Getting out of the fast pace for a little while, eh?
"A very little while," Thrr-gilag told him. "I have to be back in Unity City in a few fullarcs."
"Ah," the pilot said, throwing him a speculative look. "I hear the Overclan Seating's going crazy back there over this Human-Conqueror thing. You involved with any of that?"
"The whole Zhirrzh race is involved with it," Thrr-gilag said, marveling yet again at the sheer speed of the Elder information network. Less than a single fullarc since the Overclan Prime had coined the term Human-Conqueror, and here was a pilot on a minor supply run four thousand thoustrides away already using it.
"Involved right up to our tonguetips, from what I've heard," the pilot agreed darkly. "My grandfather was telling me about it last fullarc. Vicious warriors, nasty weapons, plus lots of Elderdeath stuff they're not shy about using. You know anything about that?"
"I've heard some of those same rumors," Thrr-gilag said evasively, wishing he knew exactly how much information the Overclan Seating had officially released to the general public. The last thing he wanted to do was toss more rumors into the general mix, especially considering the trouble he was already in. "Was your grandfather with one of the survey ships?"
"No, but he got it pretty straight," the pilot said. "One of his old co-workers has a friend who'd talked directly to the first cousin of an old warrior friend of one of the Elders on the mission."
"Sounds pretty straight, all right," Thrr-gilag conceded. If the Elders were talking, it was all over the eighteen worlds by now, official release or not. "I wouldn't panic just yet, though. We've got some pretty good weaponry, too, you know."
"I suppose," the pilot said. "I just hope we haven't sliced off more than we can eat here. This isn't just three planets' worth of Chig this time, you know."
"The war wasn't exactly our idea," Thrr-gilag reminded him, a twinge of almost-guilt tugging at him. Pheylan Cavanagh's insistence that the Humans hadn't started it... "Don't forget, they fired first."
"Yeah, that's what they say," the pilot said doubtfully. "Course, they might say that anyway."
"I suppose that's possible," Thrr-gilag murmured, turning to look out the window and putting his own doubts resolutely out of his mind. In a couple of tentharcs, with a little good luck, he'd know the truth about that battle.
The Kee'rr clan's ancestral territory extended across most of the fertile Kee'miss'lo River valley, from the river delta nearly to its source in the Phmm'taa Marshes. With few if any natural barriers to protect their land against outside aggression, the Kee'rr clan had been forced by necessity to become the dominant military power in the region. Political power had inevitably followed, bringing the Kee'rr up against neighboring clans in the ever-shifting patterns of alliance and betrayal and conflict that had formed the backdrop to much of Zhirrzh history. The political clashes had necessitated still more military might, which had created more political clashes, and so on.
Most of the clan and family leaders from that age had perished when their fsss organs had been destroyed in the Second and Third Eldership Wars. Thrr-gilag had often wondered what they would have thought of the changes their successors had created.
He smiled sourly to himself, thinking back to the passengers on that suborbital transport. Members of fifty different clans, traveling freely and without restriction to and from Kee'rr territory. No, the old clan leaders wouldn't have liked this new Oaccanv at all. They probably would have reacted rather violently to the whole idea, in fact.
Was that the same social structure the Humans were now living under? Had their attack on the Zhirrzh been a reflection of the same single-minded desire for territory that had driven the Zhirrzh themselves during Oaccanv's feudal period?
"Where exactly you heading this fullarc?" the pilot asked into his musings.
"To the family shrine, to see my father," Thrr-gilag told him, turning back around. "Then out to Reeds Village to visit my mo
ther."
"Reeds Village?" the pilot echoed, frowning at Thrr-gilag. "That's way over in, what, Frr family territory?"
"That's right," Thrr-gilag said.
There was a short pause, with the other clearly waiting for further explanation. But Thrr-gilag remained silent, and after a few beats the pilot turned back to his controls with a shrug. "All right. Well. I'll go ahead and drop you off at the Thrr shrine, then."
"You don't have to do that," Thrr-gilag said. "I can take the rail over from Cliffside Dales."
"It's no problem," the pilot insisted. "There's a landing field just outside the predator fence gate - I'll put you down there, and you can walk right in. At least it'll save you the rail trip one direction."
"I appreciate the offer," Thrr-gilag said. "But you have a schedule to meet, and I can't let you - "
"Yes, you can," the other said firmly. "Like you said, we're all in this together. I served my stint with the Etsijian encirclement force when I was younger; I want to do my bit on this one, too."
It was a little under half a thoustride from the predator-fence gate to the Thrr-family shrine itself, its towering shape partially blocked by the darker bulks of the twin protector domes that sat on either side of the ceramic-pebbled path ten strides in front of it. Twenty or more Elders popped into view at one point or another as Thrr-gilag walked toward it, looking at the visitor with expressions ranging from hopefulness to suspicion to simple curiosity. One or two of them - probably members of his branch of the family, though Thrr-gilag didn't recognize them offhand - greeted him by name before leaving. The rest simply peered at his face, decided he wasn't there to visit them, and vanished.
He was perhaps five strides from the domes when the one on the left slid open a door and a tall Zhirrzh carrying a laser rifle stepped into view. "Stand fast," he said, "and speak your name."
"I obey the Protector of Thrr Elders," Thrr-gilag gave the ritual response, stopping beside the rack of kavra fruit that stood beside the path. "I am Thrr-gilag; Kee'rr."
