Washen absently scratched an ear, then an exposed breast. On bare feet, she walked upon the greeting-mat laid out in the hallway, a complex patterns of fuzzy rings displaying the name and important history of Hoop’s family clan. The first of a hundred towering statues stood on both sides of the hallway, defending blocks of ceremonial soil. Treasured ancestors had been carved from a ruddy wood alien to both of their species. A thick oily scent hung in the air, dark and disgusting to a human nose. But Washen took a deep sniff before turning to her host. “Tidecold-6,” she said quietly.
Hoop gave no reply.
Then in his language, she named the tree. “Blood-twice,” she said, her diction surprisingly good considering her inadequate mouth.
The harum-scarum studied her ribs and that patch of soft tissue where a beating heart could be seen. Perhaps he had never been in the presence of a naked human. Devoid of armor, Washen would appear exposed and ridiculously frail to him – a reaction tied into his oldest instincts.
She returned to the standard human language. “Blood-twice trees are native to Tidecold-6.”
“Botany is an interest of yours?”
“It is, but I would have learned that anyway.” With a gesture of respect, she admitted, “I’ve done a respectable amount of research about you.”
He said nothing.
She started down the hallway, examining each of the life-sized statues in turn. The first ancestors were the most ancient, the pink wood gone pale and dusty dry. But at some point the statues darkened, every slice of the old awls still deep, each figure decorated with scraps of clothing and jewelry, spines and plates of armor that belonged to each of the men and women being portrayed. At that point, the hallway curled sharply to the right. More statues waited out of sight, but Washen stopped, kneeling down, pretending to exam the meeting-mat beneath her feet. With a quiet, thoughtful voice, she said, “You came on board my ship 2,507 years ago.”
Hoop watched her eyes, struggling to read the alien face.
“You came alone,” she said. “A young, relatively wealthy man off on an adventure. And you paid for your passage through a universal account established on your home world. Which was not Tidecold-6.”
Hoop opened a huge hand. “This world you keep mentioning . . . I have never seen it . . .”
She nodded agreeably, touching one of the elegant rings woven into the mat. The fabric was young and clean. Pushing against the weave, she felt the living fibers moving in unison, debating if she was a threat and if she should be contested.
“Twelve light-years,” she mentioned.
He was silent.
“When Tidecold-6 was abandoned, a portion of the survivors migrated to a hard little world twelve light-years removed. And to the best of their ability, they rebuilt. It was your clan that made new homes there and managed, I hope, to put the ugliness behind them.”
The alien’s spines straightened and the plates of armor pulled closer to his body, reflexively making ready to fend off any blow.
“That ugly war of yours,” she said.
Hoop’s eating mouth made a wet sound.
“A harum-scarum apocalypse,” she said.
“There is no such monster,” he replied, staring at the tiny creature kneeling before him. “My species aren’t crazy apes. We do not fight to oblivion.”
“Which makes your family history all the more tragic.” Then Washen made the same wet noise that Hoop had used, her human mouth offering the crudest possible curse – neatly underscoring the war’s unseemliness and the unbearable, unforgivable waste.
Their walk through the apartment continued in silence.
After the turn, they strolled past the final few dozen statues. Washen paused beside an empty slab of soil, wondering which ancestor was supposed to stand there. Suddenly her host pushed ahead, polite in a harum-scarum fashion, entering the greeting room before his feeble guest.
Heavily pruned blood-twice forests grew in long sapphire urns, and elegant furnishings meant for giants were scattered about the vast round space. The ceiling was a beautiful dome of polished green olivine. Light poured from everywhere, and nowhere. Some unseen functionary had recently delivered a fresh meal to a greeting table set in the room’s center. A dead meal, Washen noted. Meat had been peeled from an immortal animal, seasoned and then cooked to a human’s taste. In some other corner of the apartment, the meat’s source was now recovering inside its spacious stable, feeling a modest discomfort while eating its fill from the trough, damaged flesh rapidly patching the gaping wound.
The novice captain thanked Hoop-of-Benzene for going to so much trouble, and then she ignored the cooling feast.
“I have looked over your life,” she mentioned again.
Hoop regarded her for a long moment. “And what did you learn about me?”
“That I understand practically nothing.”
Another silent stare began.
When no question followed, she explained, “I do know something about the war. At least, I know one version of its history. Every few years, some young captain . . . someone even newer to his post that I am to mine . . . will pull me aside and ask, ‘Did you know this story . . .?’”
“And the story is?”
“My superior – the Submaster who refuses to be named – once served as the captain to a small colony ship. His mission was to deliver ten thousand eager humans to a little world perched at the edge of the galaxy. A harsh young world, as it happens, and a huge challenge for ignorant monkeys like us, since we had almost no experience terraforming such marginal places.”
Hoop’s breathing mouth opened and then closed again, seemingly forgetting to inhale.
“It was an unfortunate voyage,” Washen continued. “There were the usual problems with the engines and with life-support systems. But worst of all were the troubles between various colonists. Political difficulties. Personal qualms. Old feuds reignited in the quiet between the stars. The captain of any colony ship is responsible for his machinery and his human cargo, and this particular captain managed to keep the angry factions under control. But he lost his grip during the final decades, and a lowgrade war broke out in the hallways and habitats. Plainly, his ship needed help. Which was why he changed course, braking early and dropping into a low orbit around Tidecold-6.”
With a slow, almost musical voice, her host said, “Ishwish.”
“I haven’t mentioned names,” Washen reminded him. Then she sat on the edge of the greeting table, two fingertips riding up her bare stomach and sternum and neck. “The story that I have heard, and heard, and heard again, centers on the same few facts: Tidecold-6 was a large, mature world with oxygen and oceans and a vigorous biosphere. Two clans had lived there for eons. They were evenly matched, both in terms of population and resources. And that wasn’t an accidental coincidence. There had been half a thousand little contests during their shared history. What would look like quick wars to humans were little more than formalized pushing matches. Which is as it should be. Your species is innately conditioned to spit and pummel one another, but only to reinforce the status quo.”
Hoop stared at her face, watching the weak little bones floating beneath her thin, practically useless skin.
“This is a consequence of your heritage.” Washen smiled with genuine appreciation. “Your home world is relatively old, with worn-down islands and quiet seas and no reliable volcanism. Animals that evolve in those circumstances, where resources are scarce and growth must be slow, often tend to adapt in certain predictable ways.”
“Am I an animal?”
She nodded. “You are a spectacular animal. And your ancestors were exceptionally expensive collections of bone and armor, muscle and energy. Without volcanic activity, essential minerals are locked away in deep sediments. Soils are poor and the waters half-sterile, and it once took decades of slow, patient growth to wring enough calories and protein from some little patch of landscape, producing an adult as splendid as you. But evolution is nothing more, or less, tha
n a string of complex calculations written in gore. And you are a fabulous investment, and at the end of the day, you were a grand success.”
Hoop gave an agreeable click of a tongue.
“What most humans should realize, but don’t. . . if they are to work beside the Clan of Many Clans, they see aliens who are furious and quick-tempered. But much of what you do is for show. Not that what you do and say isn’t real; I wouldn’t claim that the noise and fuming is empty or that isn’t extraordinarily important. But in almost every circumstance, when your powerful minds see nothing but disaster looming, you will give up. You will give in. A sane and responsible citizen on any of your ten thousand happy worlds will instantly bow down, surrendering to whatever clan or species has the battle won.”
“How else should we behave?” asked Hoop.
“I agree. Every species in the universe should act this way,” she claimed. “I know my sad people need a dose of your humility and wise nature. Particularly when you consider those human colonists: there was a new world to build, yet they felt it was more important to murder their own kind. If the unnamed captain had been shepherding two clans of harum-scarums across the galaxy, I guarantee you, there wouldn’t have been any threat to ship. Or to the mission. Or to the man sitting up in the bridge, weighing his options.”
“Ishwish came to Tidecold-6,” Hoop said.
“To ask your species for help. Yes.” Washen waited a moment, then mentioned, “I’ve heard the story twenty times, and always the same way. The human asked for help, and it was given. But there were other players and another request was made, and after some very unfortunate luck, what should have been simple became terribly complicated, and what should have been finished in a few hours ended up filling most of eight days, butchering that poor world in the process.”
Hoop tightly closed both of his mouths.
“You must know a different version of the story, or at least a fuller telling. Am I right?”
“I know very little,” Hoop replied. “When this happened, my shadow hadn’t been cast.”
The naked captain said nothing, letting her silence work.
“But my mother,” Hoop finally said, his voice faltering for a moment. “When I was old enough, she told me the history. Which is exactly the same as your story, except for the differences.”
Hoop described the aliens’ arrival: a crude, ungainly starship suddenly plunged from deep space, fusion engines struggling to kill its terrific momentum. Ishwish was the first human voice they ever heard, and the first human face ever seen, and in a pose of perfect submission, he begged the ruling clans for help. They gave permission for him to move into orbit, but the machine struggled with even that simple task. Once a sun-blasted comet, the ship was a fancy set of engines rooted in black tar and porous stone, the entire contraption bolstered with hyperfiber girders and incalculable amounts of luck. Ten thousand humans, plus supplies and an army of sleeping machines, had been sent out to make a new world habitable. But the colonists were plainly inexperienced at terraforming. Dressing a newborn world in a breathable atmosphere and a drinkable ocean would require more bodies than they had, as well as a heroic patience. Yet what was most alarming to the Clans was that their crude starship had been damaged, and not by natural means.
“Internal explosions,” Washen said.
“From some flavor of fighting. Yes.” The creature stared at a distant point, watching events he could only imagine. “We made scans, and the scans were followed by probes. Probes gave way to diplomats. A civil struggle had broken out among the colonists, we learned. Two governments had coalesced around opposing ideals, each occupying a different portion of the damaged vessel.”
Washen nodded, saying nothing.
“Our world was relatively isolated,” Hoop continued. “None us had direct experience with humans. To us, your species were abstractions. Well-drawn abstractions, since we had collected substantial files about your history and nature. But until that day, no one imagined that we would become neighbors, much less that you would slink up to our front door, pleading for help.”
She nodded. “The ship captain made the plea.”
“To my father, yes.” Hoop extended a giant hand, palm up – a sign of charity to both of their species. “He was an Elder in my clan’s council. Others urged distrust. But my mother told me, more than once, that my father felt it would be wise to make friends with humans. You were a bold species, young and foolish, investing so much energy to place a few bodies on some ugly little planet that didn’t look at all promising to us. But he believed that he liked you. In Ishwish, he found qualities that struck him as . . . the concept does not translate well. . . but in his eyes, the human captain was sympathetic and pathetic, honorable and powerfully intriguing . . .”
Washen quoted a Clan truism, declaring, “ ‘Kindness is power; charity proves strength.’”
“Strength.” Hoop repeated the word several times, in both languages. Then the hand closed, a mailed fist turning slowly in the air between them. “My father led the delegation to meet directly with Ishwish. Captain and crew as well as the loyal colonists were gathered around the engines, while rebel colonists controlled the bow and most major habitats. The fighting was constant, but sloppy. So the ship was still intact. Only a thousand humans had died, and then only temporarily. Their battered little bodies were mummified and kept locked away, most held as prisoners, waiting for a winner to be declared and for the ship’s hospital to be reactivated.”
Washen imagined that nightmare as if she was sitting on a captain’s chair. “The situation was treacherous.”
“Chaotic and frightful, and to us, difficult to comprehend. How can two sides fight for decades and still not see two winners standing in the ruins?” The eyes focused on her face. “Yet once they were breathing the same air, my father was deeply impressed with the Ishwish creature. When he returned home, he told my mother that he had felt as if the human had been his friend for ten thousand years. The creature offered perfect words, often in our language. How he spoke was flawless and soothing. And the stance of his little body . . . well, his performance was superior to yours today, my dear . . . clinging to that filthy black floor, licking tar dusts and human blood, confessing to his guest that he was helpless to save his wicked, doomed ship.”
“That human had experience with your species,” she offered.
“In the old human wars, yes. Ishwish offered battles and dates that we found buried in our files, and in all the respectable ways, he proved that he trusted us, and that we could trust him too. With our sweet help, he would regain control over the starship. Then as final proof, Ishwish surrendered his name and wealth to my father, begging for our mighty clan to give him a few hands . . . just enough hands so that he could gain the momentum, defeating his enemies and finally winning this disgusting little war.”
Washen struggled to picture the man she knew – the arrogant Submaster – reduced to such a state.
Charitably, she said, “That wasn’t a large request.”
“A few hands, with the fighters attached,” Hoop agreed. “But of course, unknown to my father, a delegation of the rebellious colonists had made contact with our neighbor clan. Different humans begged in the same perfect fashion, requesting a few hands of their own, and with them, a little help that would win their noble struggle.”
Nothing here was new. Washen had always understood the essential history of the disaster. But she now saw possibilities that she hadn’t noticed before . . . subtle undercurrents that even a novice captain should have noticed, if only while listening to the gossipy chatter of her peers . . .
“Long after that day,” said the towering figure, “my mother took hold of me and crushed me against her body, whispering that this is where we should have realized what was true. Yes, your Ishwish had experience with us. Yet he seemed to be the only human with that distinction. We should have asked ourselves how the rebel leaders were able to speak and act with the same perfection, winning cooperatio
n as well as a pledge of loyalty from our neighbors . . .”
Washen took a breath, holding it deep in her chest.
“Even in our ignorance,” Hoop continued, “the situation was ours to control. We should have been able to stop our fighting after those first moments. You see, both clans sent the requested volunteers, and through what seemed like miserable luck, each attacked the other side in the same awful instant. Plasma weapons were used, which meant that every soldier was annihilated. Which is where we should have stepped back then, waiting for the blood to dry.” The mailed fist opened and dropped, fingers limp. “But the clans had made pledges, and both sides wished to earn respect from these newcomers. That’s why larger blows were inflicted, in quick succession. Suddenly the space above our world was bright with fighting.” The eating mouth pushed itself into a single hard point. “And then we came close to stopping again. After five days of mounting casualties, a pause erupted. A necessary rest began, and with that, an official truce. Bids of peace were even offered, and in a moment or a day, those bids would have been accepted.”
Washen stared his slack, empty hand.
“Three tritium bombs,” Hoop said. Then he paused, gathering himself before completing his story. “In the quiet of a truce, three sophisticated weapons in the one-hundred megaton range were delivered to three cities. In a single cowardly stroke, our clan lost one quarter of its population and much of its wealth. But even worse, the truce had been cheated. Which is never done. Ever. That abomination demanded a suitable revenge, which is why my ancestors built and used three equally powerful weapons. Which should have been the end, if our enemies were sensible. But they insisted on spreading lies, claiming that those first three weapons had not come from any stockpile or bad dream of theirs.”
The Mammoth Book of Extreme Science Fiction Page 31
