Into the Light

by David Weber

  “I will speak to you again soon.”

  . II .

  PUNS OUTREACH,

  SARTH PLANETARY ORBIT

  “Weird looking buggers, aren’t they?” Brigadier Rob Wilson mused, leaning back in his chair and nursing his beer as he and Dave Dvorak watched the take from one of the stealthed drones hovering ten kilometers above the city of Dianzhyr, capital of the Republic of Dianto.

  Other drones had been deployed to every other national capital on the planet, and smaller ones zipped quietly about, closer to the planetary surface. Unlike the drones the Shongairi had brought to Earth with them, these drones’ counter-grav units were undetectable even by humans with sophisticated sensors looking for signatures that no one on the planet Sarth had ever heard of. They’d been scurrying around Sarth for three months now, updating the sadly out of date data in the Hegemony’s survey files. It wasn’t as far out of date as it would’ve been for a bunch of humans, but the Hegemony’s last visit had been more than a thousand Sarthian years—almost three hundred Earth years—ago, and there’d been definite changes.

  “We don’t need any species-centric prejudices around here,” Dvorak scolded.

  “Didn’t say a derogatory word about them as a species,” Wilson replied with a grin. “Hell, they may be a perfectly nice species! But, from a human perspective, they are sorta weird looking. Tell me they aren’t!”

  “To be fair,” Dvorak said in a more serious tone, “I agree they’re going to take some getting used to, but there’s a certain … I don’t know, grace to them.”

  “Sorta like velociraptors from Jurassic Park?”

  “Actually, that’s not too shabby a comparison, for a mere Space Marine.”

  “I try not to let my knuckles drag on the deck too obviously.”

  “Trust me, most people never even notice. And those of us who do are far too polite to mention it.”

  “Oh, thank you. But getting back to my original point, these really are weird beasties in a lot of ways.”

  “You’ve got a point,” Dvorak conceded. “The hardest part for me’s been wrapping my brain around the gender distinctions. And that’s something I’m going to need to be really careful about in my role as suave, sophisticated, cosmopolitan, interstellar diplomat and all.”

  “If anybody can carry it off, you can,” Wilson said, bracingly. “Trust me. I wouldn’t lie to you about something like this. The mere fact that your fragile ego might require shoring up to permit you to function in waters so far beyond your depth could never induce me to exaggerate my respect for your ability to deal with this situation.”

  Dvorak raised one hand, second finger extended, without ever taking his eyes from the holo display.

  To call the Sarthians “weird beasties” was putting it mildly in some ways. They were bipeds, and they walked upright, and that was about the only thing their physiology shared with that of humanity.

  They were shorter, on average, than humans, but that wasn’t apparent just by looking at them, because they were built on much more of a “long and lean” model. In fact, Wilson’s comparison to the velociraptor wasn’t that far off, in a lot of ways, because to a human, they looked distinctly “saurian,” and they were toe-walkers. Their limbs were jointed differently from humans’, as well, providing a subtly different arc of motion, and their hands and feet were long and narrow compared to humanity’s. That was largely because they had only four digits, but to make up for that, two digits on each of their hands were mutually opposable and opposable to the two middle fingers, as well, which gave them an awesome level of manual dexterity.

  Although they bore living young and lactated, making them closer to Earth mammals than anything else, the saurian simile was inevitable. The fact that they were scaled contributed to that, but what made it truly inevitable were their heads. As bipeds, they carried those heads very much as humans did, with a very similar range of motion, and the eyes were together on its front—the binocular vision of a predator, not the “widescreen” vision of an herbivore—but they also bore a pronounced crest, very like the one which had earned the dinosaur Lambeosaurus the description of “hatchet-crested.” That crest rose a good twelve to thirteen centimeters above the cranium, as much as seven or eight percent of a typical Sarthian’s total height, and ran all the way down the back of the rather long and slender (by human standards) neck to the shoulders, tapering as it went. It was also the only part of their skin which wasn’t scaled. Instead, it was covered in a fine, almost feathery down whose color was gender-linked. They had no ears; instead, the crest contained an acutely sensitive bony structure which extended their hearing to frequencies the human ear simply couldn’t detect. In fact, he’d wondered if that audio acuity of theirs might not let them “hear” the counter-grav humans no longer could, but there was no sign that they were able to detect it, either.

  Their facial structure rather resembled Lambeosaurus’, as well, aside from the eye placement, and they had no real equivalent of human facial muscles. What they did have were prominent nostrils with broad, highly mobile flaps, and they used flap placement in ways which were just as expressive as any human smile or frown. Of course, Dvorak didn’t have any nasal flaps, which was likely to make face-to-face negotiations interesting. On the other hand, he had a databank full of Sarthian expressions, and the translating software they’d acquired from the Hegemony had been tweaked right along with most of the rest of the Hegemony’s software. It now included a function which could be enabled or disabled that injected expression of tone into the translation, flowing both ways. So far, it had worked perfectly with every human language group, but they hadn’t had the opportunity yet to see how well it would work for a nonhuman species. Hopefully, the emotion-reading add-on would cover his ass if the tonal interpretation turned out to be less than perfect.

  Facial expression wasn’t the only anthropomorphizing landmine he’d have to look out for, however, because Sarthians were tri-sexual, and that had a profound effect not simply on their language but on ways in which their entire societal construct had formed. So while there were useful parallels between human societies and those of Sarth, he had to be careful about pushing any of those parallels too far.

  Two of the Sarthian sexes produced gametes, but they required the third sex to combine them into a zygote. Externally, there was no structural difference at all between the gamete-producing sexes; even their genitalia were identical, since both of them had to be capable of impregnating the third sex, which actually gestated the zygote. Fortunately, there was one external differentiator, and it was fairly obvious: the color of their crest down and the matching scale colors and patterns which covered the backs of their necks. Actually, the patterns ran down as far as their shoulder blades and across their chests, as well, and Sarthians defined genders in terms of those colors. “Males” bore red and black scales in a diamond pattern which reminded Dvorak of a terrestrial rattlesnake and had red crest down. “Females” were scaled in yellow on black, but with a distinctly different pattern of bands, more like a coral snake than a rattlesnake if he was going to stick with serpent similes, with yellow crest down, while the third gender was scaled in white-on-black chevrons with white down.

  The existence of that third gender colored every Sarthian attitude and had a profound effect upon their languages. For translation purposes, the software used the masculine for the Sarthian male, the feminine for the Sarthian female, and—somewhat to Dvorak’s surprise—the Old English “ou” for the third gender. It took some getting used to, since every Sarthian noun or pronoun was gendered, and hearing “ou” instead of “he” “she,” or “it,” for example—or “oum” for “him” and “ouself” instead of “herself”—still sounded decidedly odd to his ear, although he’d immersed himself in the process for the last couple of months.

  There were a lot of other implications. Humans tended, by and large, to think in binaries where parenting was concerned, whereas Sarthians, for obvious reasons, thought in triads. Th
e third gender—the translator software had assigned the Latin “neutro” to it—was also referred to as the “bearer” by the Sarthians themselves, especially in terms of procreation, and Sarthian births were almost always multiples. In fact, less than ten percent of Sarthian births were singletons, and a full eighteen percent of them were quadruplets. The neutros not only bore the young, but they also nursed them, and their hormonal balance changed radically during gestation and lactation. From what Dvorak could see, and with all due respect to his beloved wife and the mother of his children, even the most pronounced mood swings a human woman experienced during those processes were only a shadow of those a Sarthian bearer experienced. Fortunately, given the size of their “birthings,” most bearers produced only one or two birthings in ous lifetime, at least in more technologically advanced societies. Which was probably a good thing in a lot of ways. Producing that many young had almost certainly been a useful survival mechanism for the species as it evolved, but it could have rapidly led to catastrophic overpopulation once the child mortality rate declined and average lifespan increased.

  Also fortunately for the poor bearers, Sarthian young matured quickly. Their “baby teeth” came in in only about six Earth months, at which point they transitioned rapidly to solid food and any of the three parents could—and did—take on “mommy duties.” The gestation period was about forty-two Earth weeks long, so the entire process from conception to weaning lasted only about seventeen Earth months, although Dvorak suspected it seemed far longer to the bearer and ous long-suffering spouses.

  One thing he found especially interesting about Sarthians was that while the neutros had enjoyed something like the protected role of the female in the Sarthian equivalent of chivalry, they’d never been restricted to “hearth and home,” even in preindustrial societies. In fact, in many ways their social position was more dominant than either of the other two genders. For example, the bearer was the “anchor member” of any Sarthian marriage. Sarthian surnames combined the first syllables of each member of the triad’s first names, and in every single Sarthian nation, the bearer’s name always provided the surname’s first syllable whereas the male and female names were added in the order in which they’d joined the triad.

  There seemed to be a lot of reasons for that, despite the fact that bearers were significantly smaller and more delicate than males or females (there was no sexual dimorphism between those two genders). For one thing, males’ and females’ normal hormonal balances made them significantly more aggressive, and the neutros had always occupied the role of arbiter between them. For another thing, almost all Sarthian societies had practiced primogeniture, but the inheritor was the eldest neutro. As on Earth, primogeniture had been abandoned for most purposes by more advanced Sarthian societies—the Sarthian equivalent of the “Third World” still clung to it—but titles of nobility continued to pass through the neutro even in their First World nations, and neutros tended to be elected to the higher political offices, probably as a reflection of their historic “arbiter” role.

  A lot of that had been part of the initial survey data from the Hegemony, although there’d been significant social evolution, hand-in-hand with the technological advances Sarth had achieved, over the past three Earth centuries or so. What hadn’t been part of the survey data was how the geopolitical situation on Sarth had developed during that same stretch.

  The planet orbited its K5v primary at approximately fifty-six million kilometers, which was only about 0.374 AU, but the system’s stellar components orbited their common barycenter in 659 years with a mean separation of eighty-four AU, so 61 Cygni B’s closest approach to Sarth was well over twelve billion kilometers, close to four times the distance from Earth orbit to Neptune. Which was handy, because 61 Cygni B had a considerably more active flare cycle than its more sedate sister.

  The planet’s radius was actually about fifty kilometers greater than Earth’s but its gravity was only about 0.85 as strong, which argued for a considerably less dense planet. That made sense around a K-type dwarf, and the fact that its mass was so much lower than the giant exoplanets whose existence had been confirmed in other star systems prior to the Shongair invasion was probably the reason no one had spotted it from Earth. Despite how closely it orbited its primary, its mean temperature was only about eighteen degrees Celsius, three and a half degrees warmer than Earth’s. In addition, its axial inclination was only about eight degrees, around a third of Earth’s, and eighty-two percent of its surface was water, with multiple smaller island continents, both of which had a profoundly moderating influence on its seasonal variations.

  Its orbital period was just over a hundred Earth days, but it had a rotational period of sixty hours. That meant a Sarthian year lasted only about forty-two Sarthian days. For obvious reasons, they used a base-eight numerical system, and they divided each day into more manageable day-quarters and day-halves. The local version of chlorophyll—it wasn’t chlorophyll, but it did the same thing—was considerably darker than Earth’s, and Sarth’s vegetation was a dark green-black that produced leaves and grasses which were almost velvety looking.

  By far the most advanced of the planet’s continents was Sanda, and Sanda was also the source of a geopolitical rivalry which was almost comfortingly familiar to a pugnacious primate, despite the distinctly Sarthian variations which had been rung on the theme.

  The wealthiest and arguably most advanced single nation on Sarth was the Republic of Dianto, a classic thalassocracy which had originated around the Gulf of Dianto in southeastern Sanda. It was, in many ways, Sarth’s Athens. And, predictably, if there was an Athens, there had to be a Sparta. That role had been taken by the Qwern Empire, on the other side of Sanda, beyond the Yaluz Mountains in southern Sanda and the Cruel Peak Mountains to the north, and whereas Dianto was a thalassocracy, the Empire had evolved out of the steppe nomad tradition of mounted warriors. The modern Republic was heir to a tradition of global maritime exploration, trade, and occasional conquest; the Empire was heir to a tradition of nomadic raids, overland expansion, and frequent conquest.

  If Sanda was Sarth’s First World, most of the Second World was composed of daughter nations of Dianto or indigenous nations which had embraced an industrial age in competition with their Diantian-descended neighbors. Those indigenous nations tended to acquire their military hardware from the Qwernians and aligned their foreign policies much more closely with the Empire than with the Republic, which produced quite a few … uneasy relationships, and there’d been several messy proxy wars, although none in the last twenty Earth years. Border incidents, yes; outright wars, no. Dvorak wasn’t sure if that was a good sign, or a bad one.

  Sarth’s patterns of expansion and nation-building were also inextricably linked to its concept of clan. Like humans, Sarthians didn’t fit precisely into the Hegemony’s neat psychological groupings, although Dvorak had to admit the system fitted Sarth much better than it had Earth. But whereas the Hegemony’s herbivores and omnivores tended to think in terms of herd to define social relationships and most of the carnivores the Hegemony had encountered tended to think in terms of pack, Sarthians were an interesting intermediate step between the Hegemony’s “herd” species and humanity’s focus on the individual family unit, because Sarthians thought in terms of clan, although that included rather more than just the familial relationships with which humans imbued the noun. It also embraced geographic and territorial connotations, and it was central to any Sarthian’s sense of identity.

  Throughout Sarthian history, the pattern had been for weaker clans to be absorbed by more powerful neighbors. Quite often, that had been by intermarriage and gradual amalgamation, but the more frequent pattern had been conquest and military defeat. After such a defeat, the conquered clan simply ceased to exist. That didn’t mean its members had been systematically slaughtered by the victor—although that had happened upon occasion—but rather that the defeated clan, in a mechanism which resonated with the Shongairi’s concept of submission, disa
ppeared into the identity of its conqueror. There was usually quite a bit of cultural appropriation involved in the process, but the defeated clan’s name and identity were relegated to history. Indeed, every Sarthian nation was named for its dominant clan.

  Except one.

  The Republic of Dianto was the only nation state on Sarth which was named for a geographic feature, the gulf around which it had originally taken shape, rather than for its dominant clan. And that was because in Dianto, clans didn’t disappear into their conquerors’ identity. Oh, once upon a time they had, but the clans of Dianto had outgrown that centuries—Earth centuries, not Sarthian ones—ago, choosing to cooperate with one another and to maintain their separate identities. It gave them a rather more fractious body politic, but Dvorak suspected it also had a lot to do with the Republic’s role as one of the—indeed, probably the single most—influential nations on the entire planet.

  It was certainly the wealthiest one, by a substantial margin, which was one of the many bones the Qwern Empire and its allies in Western Sanda had to pick with the Republic and its allied Kingdom of Shanth, in East Sanda. Over the years, the Empire had attempted to settle accounts with the Republic militarily more than once, but without success. Both nations had effectively expanded up to their natural frontiers along the mountainous spine of the continent they shared, and every pass through those mountains was covered by fortifications which would have turned André Maginot green with envy. The thought of butting one’s head against those sorts of defenses was undoubtedly … unattractive to even the most belligerent general, and while the Qwernian Alliance was considerably more populous and had a much stronger land warfare tradition, the Diantian ability to dominate the seas and the amphibious doctrine which seemed to come naturally to it, coupled with astute diplomacy, had kept the Empire in check for the last eight hundred Diantian years.