by Paul Chafe
When his brother was gone Ftzaal twitched his whiskers and keyed his own com. “Ktronaz-Commander.”
“Sire.”
“First-Son will have a kzinrette with him. I want her brought to me, alive at any cost.” And if what I suspect is true, the Black Cult will regret the day they expelled me. Unconsciously Ftzaal lashed his tail.
I do not advocate war for its own sake, I do not hold stock in munitions companies. I am not doing this for any personal ambition. I am doing this because it needs to be done. We need a final solution to the kzin problem.
—Assemblyist Muro Ravalla to the press
Most of Earth was in darkness as Tskombe’s shuttle fell out of Crusader’s belly and toward the planet. The aurora borealis drew a brilliant, shimmering circle around the sixtieth parallel, barely visible from space against the perpetual daylight of the arctic midsummer. Farther south it was night, with just the faintest hint of sunlight showing over the planet’s eastern limb. The pilots had the cabin gravity turned off and Tskombe floated easily between them, delighting in the rare privilege of being in the cockpit for reentry as they chatted jargon back and forth with approach control. There were cities up there beneath the aurora—Whitehorse, Reykjavik, Igloolik, Oslo—but it was impossible to pick them out. To the south it was easier to identify the geography. The continental coastlines of North and South America were thick luminous bands, the interior landmasses densely frosted with light, but individual cities were harder to find; even the sprawling superglomerate of New York was lost in the larger glow. Darker patches marked the Rockies, the Great Lakes, the Andes, and the Amazon Basin as they slid below, and then they were over the Atlantic, the globe looming noticeably larger as they spiraled down a great circle twisted into a reentry helix by their own motion and the Earth’s rotation. He understood the maneuver in theory at least—Ayla had taught him that—but as he watched the pilots perform the delicate orchestration he was glad he didn’t have to conduct it. The sun rose as they came around the planet’s curve, the solar terminator slicing Europe and Africa in half. Like the Americas, their night sides were brilliantly outlined in cities, but on the sunlit side the planet seemed uninhabited, no sign of civilization visible to the naked eye from his altitude. Ironic that the planet seemed most alive when most of its inhabitants were asleep. The town he was born in was down there, lost somewhere in the sea of light. He tried to spot it, tracing south from the prominent boot of Italy, but there were too many lights, and not enough time. The only clues to their streaking passage through the edge of the atmosphere were a few gentle accelerations and the steady return of weight. Their path would take them over the southern tip of Africa, and then back up over Southeast Asia to cross the wide Pacific, but the shuttle nosed up to take the reentry friction on her belly and Tskombe strapped into the jump seat behind the pilots with nothing to watch but the flashes of incandescent gas streaming past, shock-heated to thousands of degrees in a fraction of a second by the ship’s passage. An hour later they were back in darkness and in the atmosphere, back over land, nose down again, lining up on Long Island’s MacArthur Field, though they were still far back over the American desert, empty enough that the cities there formed only a glowing filigree on a black backdrop. Ahead the tracery blended back into the sea of light that made up the east coast superglomerate.
New York, New York! The city-nation, the world capital. How many years had it been since he’d left it behind to discover the stars? They fell lower and the luminous smear broke up into individual lights, buildings and the riding lights of gravcars, locked into endless streams by traffic control. He strained forward, and sooner than he expected the unmistakable skyline of the vast city appeared, gravcars flitting between islands of sculpted office towers reaching for the sky. He wasn’t sure what made the City special in the face of the vast, urban sameness that covered the continent. Perhaps it was the port, its piers extending far out to sea, where a thousand bulk carriers a day arrived from around the world, disgorging their myriad cargos to feed the insatiable maw of the four billion humans crowded close on the continent. More likely it was the dense concentration of government and corporate power housed in the core of the city, home to the UN since it began, center of world financial power since a century before that. Part of it was certainly the people, energized with a purpose that seemed to be bestowed simply by living there.
And I left Ayla behind. The thought constricted his throat and ruined the elation of the view. It was the primary credo of the infantry that no one was ever left behind. Regardless of personal risk you brought home your own, alive or dead or in pieces. He had lived it when he held the dropship down on the raid that failed to retake Vega IV until every last soldier in his scattered unit ran, crawled or was dragged back through the perimeter. He had lived that rule when he carried Lieutenant Nikorki out of the disaster at Chara B on his back with her blood soaking his battle vest. She had died, and he’d known she would die, and he took her out anyway, because she was one of his own. But I didn’t live it on Kzinhome, when I left Ayla Cherenkova a hundred meters away and boosted. It didn’t make it better that he’d had to do it to save her life, but it made it worse that she was his lover. I left her there, but I’ll bring her back. His throat was so tight it was hard to breathe. Tskombe clenched his fists, his fingernails digging into his palms hard enough to draw blood. The pain was good, punishment and reminder at once. I will bring her back or die trying.
There was a UNF colonel waiting for him when they grounded, and a completely unnecessary armed escort. Captain Detringer had transmitted his report ahead to UNF Command, but his arrival in person was highly anticipated. The colonel returned his salute and shook his hand as he introduced himself, a name Tskombe promptly forgot, and then they bustled him through the throngs at MacArthur arrivals. A flash of the colonel’s ident took them through customs without stopping, and on to a tube car. The ride was under an hour, their destination an anonymous station connected to some anonymous building in midtown Manhattan, a nondescript standard issue government office complex with tattered decor and faded lightpanels. He was given rooms in it, comfortable and more spacious than those he’d had on Crusader, but the elevator had a thumb-pad and it wouldn’t open for him. He was used to confined quarters, having spent much of his life on ships, but here he found the lack of freedom oppressive. The colonel shook his hand again and left his life forever. An orderly brought food and explained the room controls. Another came to look after the formalities that were a staple of military life, in clearance, medical clearance, transfer acknowledgment, net address update, next-of-kin forms. He was a hero, everyone kept telling him, but they treated him more like a prisoner.
He was thirty or forty floors up, he reckoned, certainly in the government district that surrounded the UN complex. The window gave an uninspiring view of a parking pad full of gravcars and an array of featureless windows on the building across the way. After a while a civilian came to interview him; he too had a name, but in his mind Tskombe just referred to him as the civilian, and he was as nondescript as it was possible to be. He was neither heavy nor light, tall nor thin, middle-aged with slightly thinning hair, his face the typical nondescript racial blend of the Flatlander. His jumpsuit was conservative but not expensive, his manner was tense but somehow ineffectual, and Tskombe found his very presence annoying.
“So tell me again what caused the attack?” The civilian’s voice was flat and wheedling, asking a question he’d asked before. The interview was hours old, and going nowhere.
Tskombe shrugged. “I haven’t told you what caused it. I’ve told you it’s a civil war, I know that much, what they call an Honor-War. Dr. Brasseur could tell you more, much more. We need to get my team back.”
“Your report mentioned that Ambassador Brasseur was killed.”
“Yes, it did.”
“So when you say ‘your team’ you’re referring to Captain Cherenkova only.”
Tskombe spoke stiffly. “In the military we recover th
e bodies of our fallen comrades, if it’s at all possible. Perhaps you’re unaware of that tradition.”
The civilian ignored Tskombe’s suggestion. It had become a bit of a game. Tskombe would suggest that they mount a rescue and the civilian would pretend he hadn’t heard him do it.
“And you say the Patriarch has been deposed.”
Tskombe sighed, resigned to one more time around the circle. “The Patriarch is dead, so far as I know.” He laughed mirthlessly. “Long live the Patriarch. We had the beginnings of a peace treaty, a dialogue at least, and he made a speech to the Great Pride Circle forbidding them to attempt conquest against us. Against any race, in fact.”
“And you believed him?”
“He’s Patriarch. Of course I believed him. Lying to an herbivore would be beneath him. He staked his honor on that speech, in front of every Great Pride in the Patriarchy.”
“Perhaps this whole civil war thing was simply staged to lull you into a false sense of security. Something to get our guard down before they attack.” The civilian questions trod the thin line between due diligence and actual paranoia.
“Why would our guard go down? I just told you, they’re having a civil war. The important thing is we have to get Captain Cherenkova back.”
“I’m afraid we have bigger things on our minds at the moment, Major.” At least the civilian didn’t outright ignore the point this time. “What’s your estimate of the size of the attacking force?”
Tskombe controlled the reflex to break the man’s nose, breathed deep to keep himself calm. “I’ve told you already, I have no idea. I saw perhaps a dozen landers go over, with a lot of drop troops coming in. I wasn’t everywhere on the planet.”
“You’re a military man, a commander. You must have a better idea than that.”
Tskombe let annoyance creep into his voice. “If I had one, why wouldn’t I be giving it to you? Isn’t that what I’m paid for? I was a fugitive; do you understand what that means? I spent most of the attack either hiding or running for my life. I didn’t have a lot of time to take notes.”
“There’s no need to display that attitude, Major.”
“That’s where you’re wrong.”
“What?”
“There is a need to display this attitude.” Tskombe leaned forward, meeting the interrogator’s gaze. “There may well be a need to display an attitude that’s a lot more problematic. I am not a hostile witness, I am not a prisoner of war, I am an officer of the United Nations Forces and there is absolutely no need for this cross-interrogation. Everything you’ve asked me today is answered in my written report. They’re the same answers I provided in my verbal report to Captain Detringer aboard Crusader, and both of those report were hyperwaved here when we cleared the singularity at 61 Ursae Majoris.” He pointed to the civilian’s datapad. “I’m sure you know what they say, and if there’s anything you don’t understand, I suggest you read it again. The answers will be the same tomorrow, unless I think of something important between now and then, in which case I will be certain to volunteer it, because that is my job to do so.”
“It’s my job to help you remember. That’s what this interview is about.” The civilian sounded defensive.
“Look.” Tskombe smiled, trying to defuse the situation. “I appreciate you’re doing what you have to, but my colleagues are still on Kzinhome. I need to talk to General Tobin as soon as possible.”
“That’s not my…”
“…decision. I know. It’s his. Just tell him I need to talk to him, and only him. And in the meantime, I would like it if you would get my data into the database, so that I can thumb for the elevator and actually leave this floor and get some fresh air. I am making the assumption that this oversight is simply due to bureaucratic incompetence and not actual malice.”
“I’ll see what I can do.” The civilian’s manner was stiff.
Tskombe smiled again, not really meaning it. “I would appreciate that.”
The civilian left and Tskombe waited, keyed up and bored at the same time. He took out the Sigil of the Patriarch that Yiao-Rrit had given him, turning it over in his hands. It was heavy, deeply embossed with a figure that might have symbolized a spiral galaxy, or perhaps a multi-bladed weapon. The reverse side was covered in the dots and commas of kzinti script, but not in a style he could read. Probably the Patriarchal Script. The Hero’s Tongue was a hard language to learn, and one of the hardest parts was the many variations of address, one for superior to inferior, another for inferior to superior, another for conversation between equals, between brothers, between father and son, between more distant relatives, the Patriarchal Form, the Noble Form, the slave command imperatives, and a dozen more subtle variations he had never learned. There were at least twelve scripts, the most common four of which he knew well enough to read. Kefan could read this. Except Brasseur was dead on Kzinhome. I’ll bring him back too, if I can. The Tzaatz had probably eaten him by now, and Tskombe’s fists clenched again. They’re wasting my time here with bureaucracy.
He didn’t hear anything further from the civilian, but the next morning the elevator opened to his thumb. He took it to the ground floor, went into the street. He was, as he had suspected, in the UN district. It was hot and humid, high summer in New York, and he took a slidewalk down to the waterfront. It had been a long time since he’d left Earth, with the ink on his commission scroll still damp and a galaxy in front of him to discover. He found a quiet coffee shop and sat down to scan the newsfeeds. If the UN needed him they could get him on his beltcomp. Most of the news was local—crime, sportvents, and scandal in equal measure—but he eventually found a hard news channel. There had been more skirmishes between UNSN ships and kzinti raiders around W’Kaii, and Secretary Desjardins was trying to balance factions in the General Assembly arguing for everything from ignoring the incursions as a colony problem to outright extermination of the kzinti for the continued safety of humanity. Public opinion on the matter was split, a result Tskombe found surprising, until he gave up on the newsfeeds and flipped through the entertainment feeds. Perhaps a quarter of the holos were war stories, where heroic UNF soldiers held off hordes of rapacious kzinti against desperate odds. The remainder were divided between fluffy and humorless comedies, steamy semi-erotica, and the bizarre and confusing productions of the new sensationalist school.
Public opinion was divided on the kzinti, he realized, because the vast majority of Earth’s twenty billion had never seen a live kzin. Their impressions were formed by cheap cubies where the kzinti were cardboard cutout villains. It had been centuries since they’d posed any serious threat to Earth, and the opinion any particular individual was likely to express in a poll was built on equal measures of misinformation and indifference and hence little better than a coin flip, which explained the split results. Even the debates by the representatives in the General Assembly had more to do with who would gain from military spending than with any reasonable assessment of the threat the kzinti actually posed.
He looked up from the holocube and watched the crowds streaming by. How many years had it been since he’d last left Earth, last walked Central Park? Enough that he had grown into a soldier and a commander—and Earth, he now realized, had not grown with him. The vibrancy he had remembered seemed nothing more than self-indulgent decadence now, what had seemed sophisticated now looked simply pretentious. The real energy was in the colonies, where people were carving out new worlds for themselves. There was corruption there, fear and greed, deceit and treachery, but at least people still strove for something more. They hadn’t allowed themselves to sink into self-satisfied and unquestioning complacency.
A ’caster was bleating on about a dog in Kuala Lumpur who’d gotten stuck in a storm drain. Intercontinental news. He flipped the cube off in disgust and went back to watching out the window, running over the problem of getting Ayla off of Kzinhome. Getting into 61 Ursae Majoris’ space would be difficult, actually locating Ayla harder still. If she’s still alive. The fear wouldn
’t leave the back of his mind, but he couldn’t allow himself to make any other assumption. She is alive until I find her body. The situation on Kzinhome would dictate the tactics they would use to find her. Kzinti would be essential on the rescue team, as interpreters, as guides, even as spies, if they had to operate secretly. They would have to be recruited on Wunderland; there were enough of them there, descendants of those left behind when the UN undid the original kzinti conquest. What is happening there now? Kchula-Tzaatz was dangerous, but was he still in power? The situation was too fluid to make predictions, and so they would have to go in ready for any eventuality. Two ships at a minimum, disguised as traders with kzinti pilots. Four would be better, plus another diplomatic mission, if the Great Pride Circle would accept one. What would the best approach be? Tanjit! He needed Brasseur to help him with this, to outline the best way to handle the kzinti. There was no point in pursuing that line of thought.
He went back to his quarters, slept fitfully, and spent the next day waiting for a promised interview with the civilian that never materialized. By twenty-one o’clock he gave up, took the elevator down to slidewalk level, and let the passing strip take him wherever it was going. He crossed to the high-speed center strip and looked down to the pedestrian level below. Around the UN district the area was pleasant, manicured lawns and gardens, tall and graceful towers built around green courtyards. Even at this hour the slidewalk was crowded, mostly government functionaries in somber jumpsuits with the occasional military uniform standing out of the crowd. Overhead gravcars streamed in nine levels, one for traffic heading to each of the eight prime compass points and one held clear for emergency services. Here and there a hoverbot patrolled, cameras swiveling. He took junctions at random and the neighborhood changed, the buildings becoming older and less well maintained. Garish advertisements floated in the air, cajoling him to eat, to drink, to buy or sell, either from the storefronts he was passing or from well-known global chains pushing well-known global brands.
