The Devil's Eye ab-4

by Jack McDevitt

  I'd gone maybe a dozen strokes when I noticed a group of Mutes at the water's edge. They were waving, too. I casually returned the gesture, thinking how I was making a breakthrough. One of them, a male, abruptly charged into the water and began swimming after me. Or at least in my direction. I'll confess that was a scary moment. I wondered whether I'd broken some social convention. In any case, I turned away and set out again for the raft. I'd almost reached it when I became aware that my pursuer was still with me. He was splashing and kicking the water and trying to get my attention. Now, I'd had time to get accustomed to my Mute hosts, but having that thing coming after me, and better equipped to move in the water than I was, was unsettling. I tried not to turn it into a sprint for the raft, but I guess that's what I did. He responded by hitting the water. Hitting it in my direction. Then he was coming again. He caught me as I got to the ladder and tried to haul myself onto the raft. Grabbed my ankle and pulled me back. It wasn't a joke anymore. I looked at the beach and saw that if the Mute planned on having some fun with me, I wasn't going to get any help. I kicked free and he stared at me. Then he jabbed one of those cold gray fingers at the shoreline. I hauled myself up. Almost fell back in because the rungs were too far apart. Two more Mutes started into the water. One was a female. I stood on the raft and looked back at the guy in the water. "What?" I said. He bobbed up and down, making expressions I couldn't read. But he didn't retreat. He showed me his fangs. Great. I held up my hands and thought Go away . Leave me alone. Then, to my horror, he grabbed hold of the ladder and started to climb it. He stepped onto the raft, pointed at the water, and showed me a mouth full of teeth. He pointed at his bicuspids and pointed again at the water. I got the message. It explained why nobody was on the raft or in the ocean. He began making false starts back toward the beach. Let's go. I looked around, half-expecting to see a fin. But there was nothing.

  Let's go.

  Well, let it never be said a Kolpath can't take a hint. I dived in and struck out for shore. He came in behind me and stayed with me. When we got to the beach, the Mutes froze as they are inclined to do on celebratory occasions. They were all looking at us, and I knew they were talking to him. It was an eerie experience, and it ended simultaneously for everyone. As if someone had fired a gun. They simply dispersed. I walked over to the Mute who'd come after me and formed the words thank you as clearly as I could. He looked back at me and cringed. By then, I'd been around them long enough that the cringe didn't surprise me. But I wondered whether he understood the message I was trying to send.

  Later that evening, when I saw Selotta, I told her about it. She said yes, there'd been a sighting of a school of vooparoo during the early morning. Of course, she added, I was free to translate the word any way I liked. A vooparoo was a creature very much like a coelenterate, or jellyfish, with a soft gelatinous structure and long, trailing tentacles. It varied in size from near-microscopic to about ten meters. The ones seen in the vicinity of the beach had been big, and a warning had been issued. Even the very small ones, she explained, delivered a painful sting. The bigger ones were lethal to Mutes. Nobody knew how such a bite would affect a human, but I was pretty sure it wouldn't have been helpful. "I guess," she said, "the people on the beach didn't want you to be the first to find out."

  Selotta's home was a white-and-gold villa at the edge of town. The walls were dark-stained to a degree that most people would have found oppressive. The furniture was large, the rooms were wide, and the ceilings were high. I found myself constantly climbing up onto armchairs. Even Alex was lost in the

  vastness of the rooms. The villa had an enclosed deck, with several chairs and a table. The evening of the vooparoo , I was out there with Selotta while the kitchen made dinner. Alex was, as usual, buried in Mute ancient history. Kassel hadn't come home yet. He'd been involved during the last few days in a political squabble over commercial licensing, so he'd been late getting in every evening. "Don't let him joke with you," said Selotta. "It's always like that. He pretends to be annoyed, and keeps saying he won't stand for election next term, but I've heard all that before. He likes being mayor, and the voters seem to like him. So I guess he'll be at it for a while." She'd been preparing special meals for us. Despite her best efforts though, and those of the AI, the food tended to be much the same thing every day. But it was digestible, and that was all that mattered. She had an order in somewhere for food that she said would be more to our liking, but the delivery had been delayed. It was a long way to Khaja Luan, the nearest human world. We were talking about Kassel when Giambrey called. "I got some good news," he said. "The Assemblage is going to issue a statement tonight, in a few hours, declaring a cease-fire. Our people in the Confederacy expect them to respond in kind."

  It called for a celebration.

  Selotta had neighbors who, believe it or not, wanted to meet us. So they came over that night, six of them, plus a couple of older children. Equipped with voice boxes. Things were somewhat tense at first until we all got used to one another. Mostly we talked politics. How life would be better if we could, as one of them said, "stop the nonsense." In the end we raised glasses of fruit juice to ourselves, Mutes and people, one for all and all for one. Mutes, by the way, do not toast happy occasions with liquid beverages the way we do. That may be because they've never discovered alcoholic drinks or anything else that distorts awareness. Maybe alcohol wouldn't work on them. I don't know. Alex thinks it's because of their telepathic dimension, that it would be bad form to introduce confusion into someone else's mind. Selotta had no idea why we would bother with such a pointless exercise. She added that she couldn't see that I had an explanation for it either. But they all played along. The neighbors thought the raising of the glasses a quaint custom, and I suspected if they could laugh, they'd have been doing so. So we drank to Ilya Frederick, who was our woman in the Confederacy and who would, we all hoped, be able to talk sense to the politicians. A female looked my way. She was young, and did not have a voice box. She and Selotta exchanged something. Then Selotta looked at me: "Kasta says it is all right for me to tell you this. She thinks it is a pity that there are not more humans like you and Alex. She thinks you are the exceptions. And that your brothers and sisters cannot be trusted." It didn't matter. They caught on, and we toasted everybody. After we'd drunk to Salud Afar, one of them, the biggest Mute I'd ever seen, offered his hope that something could be done for that unhappy world. "As they have done something for us ." "And what have they done for us?" Selotta asked, knowing the answer, I'm sure, but wanting it said aloud. "Why," he said, "they brought us Chase and Alex." He was a giant, and his name came out as Goolie, or something like that. He lived alone in a stone house just off the beach, Selotta explained. He'd been a teacher at one time, but now simply spent his time reading.

  Kassel arrived while things were still going strong, and he happily joined the celebration. He'd heard the good news about the announcement from his own sources. We partied into the night. Dancing was something the Mutes didn't do well. In fact, they didn't do it at all. Their music didn't encourage it, but eventually Alex invited me onto the middle of the deck and we danced under the stars while the Mutes watched with whatever reactions they might have had. Later, in private, Selotta told me they'd grown somewhat alarmed because they'd feared it might be the prelude to

  a sexual encounter. In plain sight. After all, she added, who knew what humans were capable of? "But," I said, "they would have been privy to everything we were feeling. How could they think that?" "That's the whole point," she said. "We did know what you were feeling." "Oh." "So who knew where it was going to lead? And, by the way, we have nothing against sex, even occasionally in public, but I don't think anyone would have been quite prepared for a display by two humans." "Right." "I'm sorry. I see I have offended you." "No, Selotta. Not at all." The neighbors had gone home, and Alex and Kassel were outside on the deck doing man talk. "It's good to have you here," she said. "Thank you." "You will forgive me, but humans are sometimes hard to understand
. I know you would not willingly harm anyone." "That's so." "Are you a standard type?" "Beg pardon?" "Are your attitudes more or less typical of everybody?" "I think so. You've visited Earth. What do you think?" "It's too confusing to try to sort out a crowd." I looked at her for a long time. "I think most individuals are reasonable. And have no inclination to harm others." "Then how do you explain your history of wars? And criminal violence? I don't understand it-" "I don't either. We tend to get together in groups, tribes , and we do things, and support actions, that we would never think of doing if we were alone." I looked across at her. "It's a characteristic we've never been entirely able to shake off." Well," she said, "now that I think of it, I don't guess we're that much different."

  The AI maintained a search of the news channels for word that the Confederacy had reacted. The response came just before we retired for the evening. There wasn't much of it Alex and I could make out. Just a formally dressed Ashiyyurean seated comfortably in front of a mountain-scape portrait looking across the room at us while music played in the background and Selotta and Kassel picked up whatever message was being relayed. We knew it had become official when they turned and looked directly at us. "Very good," said Kassel. "The Confederates will observe the cease-fire, and they express their hope that it will be possible to achieve a more permanent arrangement. They've even offered reparations for the Monsorrat incident." The current round of fighting had been triggered by the destruction of the Mute cruiser Monsorrat with its escort at Khaja Luan. It had been carrying a diplomatic team when it was destroyed with all hands. Three of the four destroyers serving as its escort had also been damaged or destroyed. The attack appeared to have been inadvertent, the result of a communication breakdown, but that hadn't mattered very much. It seemed as if everything militated against a peaceful relationship. I mentioned the tribal theory to Alex that night as we were heading to bed, and he agreed that there was probably a lot of truth to it. "Sometimes I think," he said, "there has to be an Other , an enemy against whom the tribe can rally. Check Haymakk Colonna," he said. Colonna had famously remarked that peace between the Confederacy and the Mutes would come on the day they found a common enemy.

  It was a bright hour in what had been an unrelentingly dark few months. Alex elected to forgo his daily visit to the museum. Maybe because Selotta was not scheduled in-or she'd taken the day off, I don't

  remember which-but we were all seated out on the deck in weather she described as unseasonably cool. The windows were down, and the heating system was on. Giambrey had arrived just before breakfast, but he was consumed watching for more news and exchanging encrypted messages with his contacts on Rimway. They were, he said, waiting for an announcement from the Confederates that the fleet was being dispatched to help at Salud Afar. That would be seriously big news. "They've still not committed themselves formally," he said. Clouds drifted out of the west, the sky was growing dark, and rain was coming. "High-level discussions are apparently under way," he continued, barely able to contain his enthusiasm. "We're hearing that Dellaconda, Seabright, and Camino are unhappy. They don't trust the Ashiyyur." Alex admitted he understood their concerns. "It's the same story you told us," he said to Selotta. "Politicians have been telling them for decades that the Ashiyyur can't be trusted, that they're savages. Now the politicians are telling them it's okay. We were just kidding." He shook his head. "They're border worlds. If there were an attack, they'd be first to be hit." The stakes were high. Either side was easily capable of taking out entire worlds. Selotta turned in my direction. "You're absolutely right, Chase," she said. I hadn't said anything, but I was thinking how irrational it all was. The rain started and turned quickly into a downpour. A cold wind swept in off the ocean. Kassel called to ask whether we'd heard anything more. His sources wanted to know what the Confederates were going to do. There was talk the Ashiyyur might demand a summit meeting with the Executive Director of the Confederacy, Ariel Whiteside. That would allow them to determine his intentions. The rumor had apparently reached the Confederacy. Giambrey watched the story come in and closed his eyes. "They won't permit a summit," he said. "Whiteside's given his word it won't happen." "Why not?" I asked. "That seems like a simple solution to the problem. Let the Chief Minister see for himself what Whiteside is thinking." "That's exactly why they won't do it, Chase. They're arguing that telepathic skills give the Ashiyyur too much of an advantage." "That's sheer lunacy," I said. We watched the storm beat against the windows. Alex leaned forward. "Not really," he said. "They have a point. At some stage, somebody's simply going to have to take a chance." Giambrey reacted to something he'd just read. "What is it?" asked Alex. "Toxicon's rep walked out. Don't know why." The evening wore on, and the storm showed no sign of abating. Rain got swept against the house. Kassel got home late again and came in drenched. He arrived with a recommendation that we take a few days and do a tour. "There are all sorts of historical and natural sites within easy reach of Provno. The Kaiman Cliffs look down into the deepest known canyon on any-" The discussion was cut short by another message to Giambrey. He read it, and smiled. Not an ordinary smile. But a wide grin with his fists in the air and his eyes blazing. "Yes!" he said. And before anyone could ask: "The Confederacy just voted to send assistance to Salud Afar." That ignited a celebration. We hugged each other and screeched and generally carried on until the neighbors called over to ask what had happened. I visualized the fleet setting out, a thousand ships to the rescue, cruisers and destroyers and patrol craft and support vessels of all kinds. Even then it might not be enough, but it would damn sure give Kilgore a fighting chance. I don't know that I had ever felt more ecstatic. It was the high point of my life. It was the reason Alex and I had gone to Salud Afar. No, more than the reason: We'd gone to solve a mystery, and maybe save a few lives, if it turned out that anyone was actually in danger. I think we had both suspected that Vicki had developed a mental problem, and that in the end we would go back with only that knowledge for our trouble.

  But this- We were watching while people moved to save a world ! Of course there's a lot to be said for waiting until the money's in the bank before you start making announcements. The neighbors showed up, and the screaming and hugging started again. There was a fresh round every time somebody new came to the door. They were all wet, most were drenched, but it didn't matter. We embraced them anyhow. During the course of all this I asked Selotta why it was happening? "Why are your neighbors so involved?" "Because," she said, "they'd like the constant wars to stop. But there's something more." "And what's that?" "They've shared everything you've seen and felt. They've been on Salud Afar, too. Through you. They've seen the children and the crowds in the streets. And they've tasted the fear." We were still celebrating when Giambrey caught our attention. But this time he looked shocked. One of our visitors spoke through his voice box. "What's wrong, Giambrey?" "The Confederates are sending eleven ships. Eleven . Cargo and transport vessels. And that's all. The announcement was just made." "Eleven?" I said. "What the hell do they expect Kilgore to do with eleven?" Alex sank into a chair. Kassel simply stared out at the rain. "A token force," Kassel said. He looked at his wife. A silent message passed between them. Even now, they do not trust us.

  Maybe especially now.

  THIRTY-EIGHT

  In the end, everything is politics.

  - Nightwalk

  There were rumors that, despite the announcement, there was strong disagreement with the decision. That a dozen worlds, led by Toxicon, were strongly opposed. That Whiteside might even be overruled by the Confederate Council. But the following day, the Director spoke from the Hall of the People on Rimway. He sat behind the plain, battered desk that was part of his image. He looked lost in thought, his dark blue eyes peering past us into the distance. Public figures traditionally sit straight during these events, but Whiteside was supporting his jaw on one fist, his elbow planted on the desktop. His mustache, as always, was unkempt in a way that was intended to suggest a man of action, a decision-maker who could be counted on.
He shook his head, as if dismayed by events, inhaled, and finally focused on us. The chair creaked as he leaned forward, reminding me that the omicron carried sound. "Citizens and friends," he said, "you are all aware by now of the desperate situation that has developed on Salud Afar. Administrator Kilgore is doing everything he can to alleviate the situation, but in fact there is little that can be done. The scale of the approaching disaster is simply too great. "Too great by far. "He has appealed to the Confederate Worlds for assistance. I am proud to say we are responding with all the resources at our disposal. Hundreds of ships, many operated by private corporations, and in some cases by individuals, are on their way as I speak to you tonight. Administrator