Conquerors' Pride

by Timothy Zahn

  The tongue flicked out again. "You not leave we."

  "Can we at least walk, then?" Pheylan persisted, pointing over to the forest about sixty degrees to the left of the domes and pyramid. "I'd like to take a look at those trees."

  There was the usual pause as the translation came through, and another moment as Svv-selic and Thrr-gilag consulted among themselves. "We go," Svv-selic said at last. "You not leave we."

  They started off toward the trees, crunching through the loose red dirt surrounding the complex and raising small clouds of dust with each step. Thrr-gilag and Svv-selic stayed close beside him, with Nzz-oonaz still hanging back. "You-Thrr-gilag," Pheylan said.

  The shorter alien looked up at him. "Speak."

  "How come you never talk to me?"

  Thrr-gilag's corkscrew tail picked up its pace a little. "Not understand."

  "You never talk to me," Pheylan repeated, throwing a glance toward the domes and pyramid and shifting his path a couple of degrees in that direction. "Neither does Nzz-oonaz, for that matter. It's always Svv-selic who does the talking. Don't you two want to be here?"

  Thrr-gilag looked past him to Svv-selic. "Too'rr rights," he said.

  "Who or what is Too'rr?" Pheylan asked.

  "Svv-selic Too'rr," Thrr-gilag said.

  Svv-selic Too'rr?Pheylan ran the two words around his mind a couple of times. Was Too'rr a family name? A title? A military rank? A caste designation? "I don't understand," he said, easing a couple more degrees toward the domes and pyramid. "Is Svv-selic an expert at this type of alien interrogation?"

  A pause. "Not understand."

  "Is he expert at talking to non-what do you call yourselves, anyway?"

  Another pause, and another short conversation between the two aliens. "We Zhirrzh," Svv-selic said at last.

  Pheylan tried it out. It wasn't as hard to pronounce as their names, actually, though the word tended to buzz unpleasantly against his tongue. "So is Svv-selic the resident expert at talking to non-Zhirrzh?" he asked again.

  Abruptly, Svv-selic's hand snaked over to grip Pheylan's upper arm. "Not go," he said.

  "What?" Pheylan frowned as he stopped.

  "Not go," Svv-selic repeated. His tongue jabbed out to point at the domes and pyramid Pheylan had been easing them toward.

  "What do you mean, not go?" Pheylan asked. So his gut feeling had been right: the domes and pyramid were something important. "I just want to look at the trees."

  "We go," Svv-selic said, pointing with his tongue at a group of trees ninety degrees away from the domes.

  "I want to seethose trees," Pheylan insisted, pointing again near the domes. Sneakiness hadn't worked; time to try bluster. If it didn't work, it would at least give him the chance to test out his obedience suit's capabilities. He hoped that they hadn't overestimated human physique when they'd designed the thing. "I'm going, and you can come with me or not. Your choice."

  He started off toward the trees, watching Nzz-oonaz out of the corner of his eye. The Zhirrzh had raised one hand toward him, and he could see a small black device nestled in the curled fingers. The obedience trigger, or else a weapon. "Not go," Svv-selic said.

  "Don't worry, I'm not running away," Pheylan called over his shoulder. "Where would I go? I just want a closer look at those trees."

  "Not go," Svv-selic repeated, more insistently this time.

  Pheylan ignored him. Nzz-oonaz was still pointing his black gadget at him, but so far nothing seemed to have happened. Setting his teeth together, Pheylan took another step, wondering whether it would be an injection or an electric shock and wishing irritably that whichever it was they would get on with it. He took another step-

  "Nzz-oonaz: kasar!"Svv-selic called.

  It was indeed painful, but not in any way Pheylan had anticipated. From somewhere over his shoulder came a faint hum; and suddenly his legs jerked together and his arms were yanked to his sides and he toppled forward to slam face first into the ground.

  For a long minute he lay there, feeling the feathery stalks of the local grass-equivalent prodding against his cheek and fighting to get some air back into his stunned lungs. So that was what they'd come up with. No risky drugs, no potentially dangerous electrodes, just a few strategically placed electromagnets designed to completely immobilize him. Simple, elegant, and very safe, provided he didn't break his neck when he fell. Carefully, trying not to let the effort show, he tested the magnets' strength. He might as well have saved himself the effort.

  The humming behind him stopped, and he was once again free to move. Laboriously, he got his feet under him and stood up again. "You not go," Svv-selic said.

  "I get the message," Pheylan agreed, rubbing his cheek and jaw where they'd hit the ground. "I wasn't going to do anything, you know. I just wanted to look."

  "Why go?" Svv-selic asked.

  "Because I was curious," Pheylan told him. "We humans are curious people. It's probably our most distinguishing characteristic."

  Svv-selic jabbed out his tongue toward the domes. "Curious not good," he said emphatically.

  Pheylan looked. A triangular-shaped door had opened in each of the three domes, and a Zhirrzh was now standing just outside each opening. All of them held long gray sticks with thin rectangular muzzle openings and lots of small but sharp-looking edges arranged around the business end.

  And all three of the sticks were pointed at Pheylan.

  "You not go," Svv-selic said again.

  "You're getting repetitious," Pheylan grumbled. There seemed to be a strange shimmering deep inside the muzzles, like some kind of eerie pilot light. Maybe it was just his imagination. "But you make your point. All right. We'll go look at the trees over there instead."

  Pheylan had hoped for a chance to examine his new obedience suit more closely, but the Zhirrzh weren't naive enough to leave him alone with it any longer than they had to. They escorted him back to his cell after the brief exercise period and Svv-selic ordered him to strip the thing off. Pheylan did so, they opened the dog flap for him to put it outside, and then they and it disappeared back through the back door.

  Pheylan put his old jumpsuit back on, trying to make sense of what he'd just seen. It was clear now that the three domes out there were guardhouses, not the weapons clusters he'd first thought. Their arrangement, furthermore, made it equally clear that what they were guarding was the white pyramid.

  The question was, why?

  It was too small to be a house, at least for anyone the size of a Zhirrzh. Could it be a tomb? But again, the proportions were wrong for a Zhirrzh, and there was no reason why a tomb should be guarded that way in the first place. A monument? Again, he couldn't think of any reason why a monument would need a three-man guard on it.

  Except that they were aliens. There were no guarantees that they would think or behave anything at all like humans. No guarantees that Pheylan could even hope to understand their reasons and motivations.

  He shook the thought away. No. They were vicious, cold-blooded killers; but they'd brought him here, given him food and clothing, and so far seemed to be doing all they could to keep him alive. Whatever alien quirks their psychology and culture might have, there was enough overlap here for him to figure out what was going on.

  Something flickered at the edge of his vision. Pheylan turned, but as always he was too slow to see anything. Outside the glass wall of the cell one of the Zhirrzh techs, attracted by his movement, looked over at him. Pheylan looked back, and the alien turned back to his work.

  So what was the pyramid? If not a monument, could it be something technical? A transceiver, maybe, for that instantaneous communications system of theirs? Or something even more esoteric?-a terminal, say, for some kind of broadcast power?

  But, then, why wasn't it taller? Or inside a building or protective shell where it would be out of the elements? The Commonwealth's experiments with broadcast power, he knew, had been notoriously finicky with regard to atmospheric factors. Unless the pyramid shapewas its protect
ive shell.

  Pheylan shook his head. On the face of it, he had to admit, this was a pretty ridiculous waste of mental energy. The pyramid could be any of a thousand different things, from a planetary communications beacon to a traffic-control signal for the landing area. It could be the Zhirrzh equivalent of a torus music system, a wind-powered computer, a piece of government-mandated artwork-

  Or a weapon.

  Pheylan looked out at the Zhirrzh working at their consoles, his mouth suddenly dry. An unknown, guarded device in the middle of a Zhirrzh base. A base with no obvious ground-to-space or ground-to-air weapons clusters.

  He went over to his bed and lay down on his side, folding his arms across his chest. There had been innumerable late-night bull sessions back at the Peacekeeper academy centering on the possible science and technology of the mysterious CIRCE weapon. One of the more intriguing ideas Pheylan had heard had been that it was a field-effect gadget of some sort, requiring two to five electromagnetic poles and an equal number of resonant-locked tachyon generators. The resultant radiation cascade was theorized to occur at certain specific intersection points between the field contours, supposedly unaffected by any matter elsewhere in the area.

  Such as the fighter squadrons at Celadon. Or the atmosphere of a planet.

  Did the Zhirrzh have a version of CIRCE? Was that white pyramid one of its poles?

  All right, Cavanagh, settle down.First question to ask was whether this place was a forward military base or a colony or a major Zhirrzh world. Presumably they wouldn't bother setting up a CIRCE on just any old world they happened to land on. Second question was whether the pyramid out there was unique or whether it had lots of brothers nearby. Third question was whether the pyramid was fixed in place or had mechanisms for transport or aiming.

  Good questions, all of them. Problem was, he couldn't think of any way to get any answers.

  Outside the glass wall two of the Zhirrzh had gotten together and were consulting on something. Pheylan watched them, wishing that Aric were here. He, Pheylan, had always been the physical one of the family; Aric, in contrast, had been much better at manipulating words. More than once Pheylan had watched in secret awe as Aric had finessed information out of their father that he'd flat-out said he wasn't going to tell them.

  Pheylan had admired that ability. Admired and envied it both, though he'd been careful to hide that from his brother. In their youth Aric would simply have taken such an admission and found a place for it in his arsenal of verbal abuse, a sport he already got far too much pleasure out of. And after they'd both become adults, the subject had somehow never come up.

  Pheylan wished now that he'd said something. Now that it was very likely too late.

  He swore under his breath. Thoughts like that weren't going to do him any good here. So he wasn't a wizard with words? Fine. He'd get out of here without them. He had a brain, eyes, and muscles, and it was time he started using them.

  And the first step was to learn every square centimeter of this place. Every square centimeter, and every move his captors out there made.

  His arms still folded across his chest, Pheylan got started on a set of what he hoped were indiscernible isometric exercises, and began to memorize the room.

  9

  The narrow Granparra street was about as crowded and noisy a place as Aric had ever seen before in his life. Hundreds of pedestrians in rough, colorful fabrics were crammed into the area, pushing and jostling their way along in both directions and in and out of side streets. The flow eddied back and forth, with parts of it sometimes coming briefly to a complete halt as someone paused to examine the wares displayed in the window-front shops or stopped to greet a friend or neighbor. The cacophony of shouts and shouted conversations assaulting Aric's eardrums included at least three different languages; the odors coming from stoves and shops were varied and exotic and made him want to sneeze.

  "How much farther?" he called to Quinn ahead of him.

  "I don't know," the other called back over his shoulder. A few heads turned at the sound of English words, and Aric noted with some uneasiness that not all of the expressions on those faces were friendly. "The numbering system here isn't always as clear as it could be."

  There was a blood-chilling shriek from above him. Reflexively, Aric ducked, glancing up just as a troop of monkey-sized grooma scampered past on the living vine lattice that covered the entire city a few meters above their heads.

  Covered the city, and most of the rest of the island. "What do you think of the mesh?" Aric asked, moving up close behind Quinn where he wouldn't have to shout. "Sentient, or not?"

  "Not," Quinn said firmly. "The Parra's a plant. Plants aren't sentient. Period."

  "I'm not so sure," Aric said, looking up at the vine mesh uneasily. Had anyone ever established whether or not the thing had auditory senses? He couldn't remember. "It does seem able to sense what goes on around it."

  "So do sunflowers, if you want to get technical," Quinn said. "There are a lot of other plants that react on a chemical level if you poke or cut them. No one claims those are sentient."

  "Except that the same reaction doesn't occur when the vine is cut naturally by lightning strikes," Aric pointed out. "The chemicals in the outer skin don't change, and the grooma don't go nuts. It's only when someone tries cutting the vine back that it counterattacks that way."

  "Could be a chemical reaction to the metal in the cutting tools," Quinn said. "Or a reaction by the grooma themselves to the noise and commotion. The point is that no one's ever come up with even a candidate for a nervous system. Let alone enough of one for sentience."

  Overhead, another chattering troop of grooma passed by, their claws digging small air and sunlight punctures through the tough outer surface of the vine as they traveled. The Parra seemed to need those punctures, just as it also needed the mineral-rich body oils the grooma paws left behind. In return, the grooma ate the large red buds that the Parra seemed to grow specifically for their benefit.

  For their benefit alone. Any other herbivore that started eating sections of the vine would quickly be met by crazed troops of grooma that would usually drive off the intruder in short order. Whether or not it was chemical changes in the red buds that drove the frenzy was still being hotly debated in high academic circles, as was the whole question of Parra sentience.

  For the people who lived here, of course, the subject was far from academic.

  "Here's our street," Quinn said, breaking into Aric's musings. "Bokamba's place should be at the end of it."

  "I'm right behind you," Aric assured him. Following Quinn, he eased his way out of the traffic flow and into the narrow street.

  And nearly bumped into Quinn as the other came to an abrupt halt five steps later. "What-?"

  He strangled off the question. Ten meters ahead four tough-looking young men were drifting from the sides of the street to positions blocking their path. Four men with expressions set in black stone. "Uh-oh," Aric murmured.

  "Fair assessment," Quinn murmured back. "Let's wander back to the main street and try it from the other direction."

  Aric glanced over his shoulder. Just inside their side street three more men had appeared, cut in the same mold as the four ahead of them. "Too late," he told Quinn. "I think it might be time to call for help."

  "Going for your phone wouldn't be a good idea right now," Quinn said. "The police couldn't get here in time. If they came at all."

  Aric swallowed. Quinn had warned him before they landed that the people of Granparra had no love for NorCoord or NorCoord citizens. It was starting to look as if he'd understated the case a bit. "So what do we do?"

  Quinn shrugged fractionally. "We see what they want."

  He started walking toward the four men now standing in a line across the street in front of them. "Hello," he nodded. "Nice day."

  The two men in the middle glanced at each other, but aside from that there was no reaction. Quinn kept going, aiming for the gap in the middle; the four men respo
nded by pulling closer together to block it. Quinn walked to within a meter of the group and stopped. "I wonder if my friend and I might pass," he said. "We have an appointment with a gentleman farther down the street."

  "NorCoord," one of the men said, his English thickly accented. "That is right, is it not? You are NorCoord."

  "Why do you ask?" Quinn countered.

  One of the men spat on the ground. "You are NorCoord. Don't deny it."

  "I'm not denying it," Quinn said. "I just want to know why you care."

  Another of the men growled something in a fluid-sounding language. Aric eased a little to the side, not wanting to get too far away from Quinn but also not wanting to get in his way if this thing exploded. He glanced back at the three men still blocking their escape, hoping fervently that the Peacekeepers had found time to teach their elite Copperhead pilots something in the way of hand-to-hand fighting.