The thranx exoarcheologist raised all four of his vestigial wing cases. Another thranx would have recognized the action as expressive of the absolute utmost seriousness. To Cullen, it was unfortunately only interesting from a morphological point of view.
“Do you really think I would joke about such a thing? What has happened here, to this expedition, fits with all that I have been telling you for many time-parts. The AAnn want your kind off this world. To accomplish that they are willing to do anything and everything to obstruct, inhibit, and damage your efforts here. Even, should it prove necessary, to kill. These incidents are disguised, with typical AAnn cunning and thoroughness, as accidents. When they occur, the AAnn are always right there ready to assist in any way they can.” He paused, clicking all four mandibles for effect.
“Consider, Cullen: You make a great discovery here. Word of what you have found begins to leak out. Following the breakthrough and initial follow-up, your crew begins to come down with a previously undetected ailment. Only nonhumans are resistant. How convenient for the AAnn.”
“We’re not abandoning the site,” the human reminded his visitor. “Our departure is only temporary, until suitable protection can be secured against the vector of infection.” He continued with his packing, wishing the thranx would leave but unwilling to order him out. Let him rant, the exoarcheologist mused. Soon enough he’ll run down and depart of his own accord.
“ ‘Temporary,’ z!!lnn! While you are absent from this place, the AAnn will go through it with an intensity they have so far barely managed to hold in check. Anything of significance that they find, they will keep to themselves. Most likely they have prepared other surprises, to keep you away from specific areas below or even from the surface itself, until they have accomplished all that they wish. Leave now, and your absence from the site will be as ‘temporary’ as the AAnn desire.”
Unable to stand it any longer, Cullen put his packing aside and turned to confront the agitated thranx. “Look, you’ve been bugging me”—the choice of verb was inadvertent on the exoarcheologist’s part—“with your AAnn conspiracy theories for weeks now. I said I would convey your concerns and your ‘findings’ to the proper authorities for further study, and that I’ll do. But as for myself, I’m sick and tired of it, understand? From now on, you keep your suspicions and your racial enmity to yourself.” He grunted testily. “As if I didn’t have enough to worry about.”
“They’ll drive you off the planet.” Pilwondepat gestured desperately with all four hands. “This is only one more in a long succession of incidents cleverly designed by them with that end in mind. You must resist! And you must not give them free and unsupervised access to this site. It is simply too significant.”
“And you are simply too paranoid.” Fed up, Cullen turned his back on the distraught alien. Among the thranx, he knew, the gesture was even more final a form of dismissal than it was among humans.
Remarkably, Pilwondepat persisted. “Then you will not order an end to the evacuation, or at least assign a few of your healthiest people to remain until the rest can return?”
“Absolutely not.” Resuming his packing, Cullen did not look back at the thranx. “I won’t trifle with the health of my staff, and I have confidence in Riimadu. You forget that I’ve worked with him even longer than I have worked with you.”
“Very well. I understand your position. I will trouble you about this matter no more.”
When he finally looked around, Cullen saw that the thranx had left. It was sad, he reflected, that two such admirable species as the thranx and the AAnn could not settle such long-standing differences. That could not be allowed to affect either human-thranx or human-AAnn relations, he knew. “ ‘Drive humans off the planet.’ “ The exoarcheologist might not be politically sophisticated, but he could recognize blatant propaganda when he heard it. He also knew what the insectoid’s most recent visit was really all about.
Pilwondepat was afraid to remain behind in the company of five AAnn. That fear, at least, was one that Cullen could accept. The thranx was welcome to join the humans in their evacuation to Comabraeth. It would give the insectoid exoarcheologist time to collate his own research.
All the rest of that day and into the night, Pilwondepat agonized over how to proceed. The AAnn and their transports would arrive tomorrow morning. What, after all, could he do to affect things in the limited time that remained? He was but one of the family Won set down among many humans and AAnn. If the leader of the humans would not listen to him, it did not matter if anyone else did. He could envision Riimadu, grinning contentedly, his sharp carnivore’s teeth glinting in the bright light of his quarters as he finalized strategy with his quartet of “well-trained” colleagues. Who among them had brought along and introduced the carefully cultivated spores into the excavation, there to fester and multiply and spread until the unsuspecting mammals were infected? What vital, important secrets had Riimadu inventoried that were to be accrued to the AAnn alone as soon as the overseeing humans had been evacuated? Isolated in his quarters, Pilwondepat sensed threat and smelled danger.
Very well—he was alone. Like a solitary male of ancient days, soaring high on his single glorious but brief mating flight, he would have to act. If he did not, others would, and his flight would be wasted. In response to a muted mandibular click, a chronometer appeared briefly before him in the hot, humid air of the room. He considered his options.
There was still time.
Along with everyone else in the camp except the seriously ailing, he was up early the following morning. Despite a lack of sleep due to undertaking the task he had set himself, he was alert and observant. He would sleep later, he knew. Sleep soundly.
Activity was picking up throughout the site as the evacuation gathered steam. Those too ill to walk were being assembled beneath a temporary field canopy that had been erected to protect them from the wind and the sun. Nonmedical personnel not assisting with the infirm were stacking individual baggage next to the landing area’s service shed. These were minimal, since everyone fully expected to return to work as soon as an appropriate treatment for the mysterious ailment was devised. No one would bother personal effects left in the camp. Not out in the middle of a place that ranked as nowhere even for a world as sparsely populated as Comagrave.
Pilwondepat took in all the activity, occasionally pausing to converse briefly with members of the staff he knew. He tried not to envision the dig where he and everyone else had worked so hard to make the great discovery overrun with gimlet-eyed AAnn.
He found Cullen Karasi in his quarters, packing a small travel bag with the trivialities that humans seemed to deem necessary for even short-term travel. Idly, he wasted a couple of moments attempting to identify the unfamiliar. The function of many of the devices was known to him by now. His time spent among the mammals had expanded his education.
“I came to ask you one last time to change your mind, cirraat.”
The supervisor glanced back and down at the hovering thranx. “Listen, I’m sorry about the tone I used with you yesterday, Pilwondepat. I was tired, and frustrated, and yes, angry. But not at you. At having to leave this place just when I feel I’m on the verge of answering the biggest question of them all.”
“Why the Sauun sealed themselves away the way they did.”
Cullen nodded. “I’ll lay out my hypothesis for you when we’re back in Comabraeth. I think you’ll find it interesting.” His thoughts wandered to distant visions of academic glory and professional acclaim. “I promise that everyone will find it interesting. But there’s no time now. According to Riimadu, the AAnn transports will be here any minute.”
“ ‘According to Riimadu.’ I’m not going back to Comabraeth, Cullen.”
Curious, the senior exoarcheologist frowned at his visitor. “You’re not? I know that, to all intents and purposes and everything the medical people have been able to determine, your kind is immune to this infection. And I can understand your not wanting to leave your work i
f you don’t have to. But I don’t see you being very comfortable staying here among Riimadu and the rest of the AAnn conservation staff.”
“You’re correct. I would not be comfortable. But neither am I going to the settlement.” Without hurry, he reached back into the pouch slung against his abdomen. “Nor are you.”
Cullen Karasi was not a man easily startled. He had spent too much time on other worlds, working and surviving in alien environments, to be surprised by much of anything. The gun that had appeared in the thranx exoarcheologist’s right truhand surprised him. No, he corrected himself. It astonished him.
He was too dumbfounded to be frightened. “So that is what happens when a thranx loses its mind. Very interesting. My first observation is that your people go about slipping into the pool of insanity more peacefully than do mine.”
“I am not psychotic. I was awake all last night, and though tired, I assure you I am in complete command of my mental and physical faculties. Would, sevvakk, that it were otherwise.”
Placing his hands on his hips and tilting his head slightly to one side, the unruffled scientist regarded his weapon-wielding caller. “What do you intend to do with that firearm? It is a firearm, I presume, and not an ingredient in some eccentric thranx ritual of which I am unaware?”
A steady thrumming noise was now audible off to the east. It grew steadily louder, heralding its approach with a deep, mechanical hum. Gazing past his deranged visitant, Cullen tried to see out the partially open doorway to the distant landing site.
“That’s our transportation arriving. Go or stay, I don’t care, but make up your mind. And put down that silly gun. I know everyone carries something when they travel outside camp boundaries to protect themselves in the unlikely but possible event of attack by one of the local inimical life-forms, but it hardly becomes your academic standing.”
“I’m staying.” Mandibles closed, and a soft whistle emerged from between flinty insectoid jaws. “So are you. Everyone is staying.”
Cullen inhaled deeply. “You realize that after this, there’s no way I can in good conscience recommend extending your permit to work here?”
“Of course I understand. If our situations were reversed, I should act in exactly the same fashion.” The thrum of heavy transports now permeated the walls and floor of the prefabricated structure. “The point is, as you humans are fond of saying, moot.” He repeated the word, savoring it. “Moot.” With a small c!k on the end, it could almost be a word in Low Thranx. “It is moot because of the pending AAnn attack on your camp here.”
Cullen’s pitying aloofness quickly gave ground to sudden anxiety. “What kind of nonsense are you talking? What AAnn attack? The AAnn are here to help us travel to Comabraeth. Why on Earth or any other world of your choosing would they want to attack an inoffensive, nonstrategic scientific site?”
Pilwondepat waved the gun with disarming indifference as to his surroundings. “Why indeed? I am certain that very question is going to puzzle many who will try to rationalize what is going to happen here. It would be interesting to be able to examine some of the explanations. Unfortunately, that will in all likelihood not be possible.”
The senior exoarcheologist’s gaze narrowed sharply. “What do you mean, ‘what is going to happen here’? What do you know?” Dawning realization began to transform his expression. Color drained from his face. “Good God, Pilwondepat—what have you done?”
The thranx gestured a first-degree expression of regret. It was heartfelt, and very lissomely executed. “I believe too strongly in the importance of this discovery to allow it to be turned over to the AAnn. I am convinced, without having to hear your nascent theory, that something on this world holds the key to matters of very great consequence. Too consequential to leave to the discretion of the scaled ones. Casting about for a means with which to ensure the continuation of the human presence on Comagrave and the possible expulsion of the AAnn, I find myself caught in a noteworthy irony: To secure both, I must make use of the techniques of the latter.”
The explosion that punctuated the thranx scientist’s somewhat cryptic explanation caused the shelter to shudder on its foundation. Cullen had to catch himself on a nearby cabinet to keep from stumbling as the earth heaved beneath him. Standing firm and foursquare on his quartet of trulegs, Pilwondepat experienced no such unsteadiness.
“That was satisfyingly loud,” he murmured softly. “More substantial than I had hoped.”
“What? What are you jabbering about?”
“The first AAnn cargo carrier attempting to set down at the camp’s landing site has been fired upon by the site’s occupants. A shocking and unprovoked attack. The AAnn will react instinctively. Among the AAnn, this takes the form not of query or discussion, but of returning fire immediately. Having been attacked in turn, your people will struggle as best they can to defend themselves. They will fail, of course.” He spoke so casually, so diffidently, that he might have been relating a minor point of relic dating taken from a recent learned journal.
“The AAnn are used to and expect conflict. Your staff here is drawn from scholars and students, not soldiers. They will all be killed. The only chance the AAnn will have to explain away the frightful misadventure depends on there being no human survivors to contradict whatever feeble story they will strive to contrive.” He gestured again with the gun, making Cullen flinch. “It doesn’t matter. Whatever fiction they fabricate will not be believed by your people.”
“How . . . ?” Cullen was struggling desperately to understand what was happening around him. The first explosion had been followed by a second of lesser magnitude, then a third. Shouts and screams in abundance could be heard echoing throughout the camp. “How can you be so sure of that? If we all die . . .”
“I programmed my own communications unit to transmit an alert via the camp’s automatic relay. It contains a full explanation of the treacherous assault by the AAnn, which they have carried out under cover of evacuating innocent personnel to Comabraeth.”
“What if they intercept it?” By now Cullen was too dazed to question anything but the abject reality he was experiencing.
“They can’t intercept. The alert was programmed to send as soon as the AAnn transports were detected approaching. It has already gone out.”
“Those explosions—can they really be firing on us?” Once more, the exoarcheologist tried to see out the door. Cries of confusion and despair filled the air outside with a general disharmony of desperation.
Pilwondepat’s sensitive antennae had twisted about to focus directly behind him. “Not at first. They are now. I told you I did not sleep last night. The last two detonations you heard were simple excavation charges, creatively positioned and designed to go off subsequent to the first. That one required a good deal more effort to get right. Shaped disinterring charges are not intended to be retrofitted with proximity programming. It took several time-parts to modify the instrumentation to where I was reasonably certain it would operate properly.
“The first vehicle attempting to set down at the landing site activated the sensor attached to the charge. Though not as suitable as military munitions, I suspect that the ensuing blast destroyed or damaged the alighting AAnn cargo carrier and killed or seriously injured many if not all of its occupants. Triillc, I certainly hope so.”
Wide-eyed now, but no longer with disbelief, Cullen started to push past his former colleague. “You are insane. You’d have everyone murdered, people you’ve come to know, people who have learned to trust and even like you, just because you want the AAnn off this world!”
“And humans to remain on it. Yes, that’s the intention. There are matters of significance at stake here, Cullen.”
“Well, it won’t work.” The furious supervisor was almost to the doorway. “There’s still time to put a stop to this madness. I’m going to find Riimadu. Together, we’ll get on the camp communicator and issue a statement on all frequencies explaining what has happened. With Riimadu translating, I’m sure we
can make the rest of the AAnn understand.”
“No, you won’t.” The muzzle of the gun in Pilwondepat’s truhand shifted slightly to the right.
Cullen glared pityingly back at the ludicrous insectoid. “What are you going to do, Pilwondepat? Shoot me in the back?” He turned to exit the shelter.
“I could not do that. It goes against everything my hive stands for,” the sorrowful scientist confessed. “But an AAnn would.”
The very tiny shell made a very loud noise and a very large hole in the middle of the stunned supervisor’s dorsal side, blowing a majority of his internal organs out through his flaring ribs. Pilwondepat did not have the opportunity to appraise the exoarcheologist’s final expression because the biped toppled forward onto his front, facedown on the packed earth. No doubt his countenance was as fully convulsed as the wonderfully expressive human face could manage.
“Primitive things, explosives.” Pilwondepat ambled past the wide splotch of spreading redness as he exited the shelter. “They have the useful virtue of being entirely non–species specific. As long as no identifying residue is left behind, it is credible that any idiot intelligence can assume responsibility for them going boom.” In Low Thranx, this concluding sentiment emerged as a long, drawn-out whistle marked by a single intermediary sharp click.
“The AAnn are not the only sentients capable of cunning, Cullen. I did like you. Very much. You forgot that for my kind, the safety and security of the hive comes first. Even if it is not our hive, but one that is of potential importance to us. Say for example, sr!iik, the human hive.” Dolefully, he ululated a final, forlorn whistle of farewell. “You might be willing to relinquish Comagrave to the care of the AAnn. We will not, I will not, the Great Hive will not let you. Not even at the cost of all our lives.” Clutching the tiny but lethal firearm in both truhands, he inclined forward to place his foothands on the ground. Supported now by all six lower limbs, he exited the edifice and surveyed the rising panic outside. He did not look back at the body lying on the ground behind him. Unfortunately, the proper expiration formalities could not be observed on behalf of his late colleague. There was simply no time for lengthy lamentations. He regretted that, but knew he had no choice.
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