Asimov's Science Fiction 12/01/10

by Dell Magazines

  The Warriors had accepted the itiji as their equals and, in return, the itiji were supposed to help them stand against the armies of Lidris of Drovil, the ambitious conqueror who had subdued four of the smaller cities the tree people had erected along this section of the Great River. Lidris coveted the iron mine possessed by the Warriors of Imeten because his own source of iron was located a full four day march from Drovil.

  Every successful raid on that long, vulnerable road would reduce the Drovils’ supply of iron and free the itiji slaves who dragged the Drovils’ ore sleds. But the raids didn’t have to succeed. They were winning a victory if they merely forced Lidris to patrol that vast expanse of forest.

  The member of the Five who liked to “chase down the numbers” had summarized the overall strategy. “Every Drovil who is forced to guard the road is one less Drovil who can attack Imeten. We don’t have to take major risks. We can produce a major effect with a minor effort.”

  So what could Vigdal say? His own people had worked out the strategy. Jila-Jen was right. They didn’t have to attack the iron road. An attack on a patrol would have the same effect on Lidris’ army.

  Did it matter that no itiji would be freed from toil? Should he start an argument merely because two of his closest friends had been captured by the Drovils and were now hanging in nets, dying from starvation at a pace determined by their tormentors?

  “You don’t have to scream at me,” Vigdal said. “We will do what Nama-Nanat decides. But I know how my warband feels. I know how I feel. We all started this march seeing the faces of the people we would free. The suffering of our mindkin nags us like a thorn that pricks every move we make.”

  Jila-Jen’s fur relaxed. He had been assigned to communicate with Vigdal precisely because he had some capacity to work with others without basing the entire process on punishments and rewards. By the standards of the tree people, he was an individual with a remarkable ability to share the feelings that motivated other minds.

  “Nama-Nanat hasn’t abandoned the attack on the iron road,” Jila-Jen said. “We may still attack the iron road if the attack on the patrol goes well.”

  Jila-Jen’s face hair fluttered. “But the attack on the patrol must receive your best support. We must destroy them.”

  “And what of the two prisoners dying in the nets?”

  “I have told Nama-Nanat that is important to you. He knows he must keep it in mind when he makes his decisions.”

  The night was never quiet. In addition to the chatter and movement of all the creatures that flew through the trees and prowled the darkness, they could hear the sounds that formed a constant background to every itiji’s thoughts: the songs the itiji sang as they went about their rounds. Small itiji huntbands still ventured into this region, in spite of the danger they would be captured by the Drovils.

  Vigdal’s warband fanned out at the front of the advance. Behind them, most of Nama-Nanat’s Double Eight flowed through the trees. Three Warriors rode on cargo frames carried by pairs of itiji, as Nama-Nanat had ordered.

  Jila-Jen rode on the frame Vigdal carried with one of the younger—and stronger—itiji in the warband. Vigdal could have avoided the labor, given his position, but that would have weakened his influence. He had agreed to carry the three Warriors, but he didn’t believe it was necessary. Jila-Jen could have maintained contact from the lower branches of the trees.

  The two captives who were hanging in nets near the iron road were conserving their strength, but they raised their voices when the need became unbearable and the itiji huntbands roaming the forest passed their messages through the night. The captives were trying to last as long as they could but they were obviously resigned to death. Mostly they sang their names and the names of their relatives and mindkin, living and dead.

  Remember us, they sang as they finished each branch of the name tree. Remember us.

  And now and then, faint and far ahead, Vigdal’s sensitive ears could detect something that was almost as disturbing—an itiji singing in a language no member of his species had ever developed. The Drovils had invented a code and forced their captives to relay messages for them.

  Jila-Jen maintained a disciplined silence while he was being carried, but he started talking the moment Nama-Nanat ordered a rest stop. Jila-Jen had never admitted he no longer believed in the Goddess who supposedly ruled Imeten, but Vigdal had concluded Jila-Jen’s worldview had been shattered by the coming of the humans. He was obviously fascinated by Vigdal’s casual attitude toward the gods.

  “We have a northern thinker called Kladen ev Grada,” Vigdal had told Jila-Jen. “He said the gods have their world and we have ours. They have their affairs, we have ours.”

  “But how do you know how you should act?” Jila-Jen had said. “How do you decide right and wrong?”

  “I don’t need a god to tell me I need to get along with my friends. I know I would starve if I had to roam the forest by myself.”

  “So you obey your laws because you think you will benefit. Do you believe you can break your laws any time you think you’ll be better off?”

  “It’s not a law. It’s a feeling. I want to get along. It’s the way we are.”

  Jila-Jen had heard the itiji singing in the code the Drovils had created. It was the first thing he mentioned when he slipped off the frame and broke the silence.

  “They’re helping your enemies,” Jila-Jen said. “You can hear them doing it. Is that right? Wouldn’t you all be better off if they didn’t do it?”

  “They’ll be killed if they don’t.”

  “Shouldn’t they be willing to die before they’ll help your enemies?”

  Vigdal had stretched out on his side with his head resting on a tree root. He had taken advantage of the release system on the frame the moment Jila-Jen had touched the ground.

  “There are thinkers who claim they should behave that way,” Vigdal said.

  “So why don’t they? Aren’t their feelings strong enough? Isn’t that what happens when you obey feelings instead of laws? Doesn’t it mean you can do anything you feel like doing?”

  Vigdal could understand Jila-Jen’s confusion. He had just become the father of a winsome, stumble-legged daughter when the first descriptions of Harold and his wife had spread through the forest. From nowhere, without a whisper of warning, two creatures walked through the forest on their hind legs alone, with both hands free, pulling a cart equipped with the round things they called wheels, and armed with a two-handed weapon the male called a bow. Vigdal’s whole life had become engulfed in a dream. Visions of other worlds had flooded his mind. Couriers had roamed the forest singing of the weapons and armor the humans were creating for the itiji. Strike back. Join us. Fight for your children and your friends. Our time has come. The world has changed.

  And if it dazed him, what must it be like for Jila-Jen? For generations, before the oldest trees in the forest had taken root, the tree people had been using their dart-blowers and nets to turn itiji into pack bearers and sled draggers, ripping husbands from wives and children from their parents. From the day he first opened his eyes, Jila-Jen had been told that was the way things were supposed to be—the way the Goddess who ruled his city had proclaimed they should be. And then, in one violent moment, this strange creature from beyond the sky had killed the champion of the Goddess. And every Warrior of Imeten was supposed to believe the Goddess had reconsidered her position and decided the itiji should, after all, be treated as equals.

  “I don’t know what they believe, Jila-Jen. They could have rules and strict gods just like you. But I think the rules that last are rules that help us get along with each other. Harold says the humans have a theory very much like the theory many of our thinkers advocate. Different things come into existence. And the things that help us survive and raise children tend to last—including feelings. You should ask Harold about their theory. He uses it to explain why we have two kinds of talkers on our world. And only one kind of talker on the world he comes from.”

/>   “My people aren’t just talkers.”

  “His theory explains that, too.”

  They halted and reorganized in assaulting distance of the Drovil patrol. The itiji slithered under the armored blankets Harold the Human had helped them create. The stiff animal skins trapped too much body heat and irritated the skin around Vigdal’s front shoulders, but they covered him from head to tail and they would stop venomed darts.

  Vigdal slipped toward the enemy camp with two of his warfriends clinging to his steps. The glow from a single fire pot marked the spot in the middle branches where the Drovils would be sleeping. Sentries would normally be posted about thirty itiji strides from the pot, in a rough circle, with a full Eight assigned to each watch.

  Vigdal had learned to look at the trees through the eyes of a Warrior of Imeten. The sentry located in the direct path of Nama-Nanat’s advance was posted about where Vigdal had expected to find him. The sentry was crouching against the trunk of a tree, on one of the highest branches that would hold his weight. To an intruder in the trees, equipped with the eyes of his own species, he was positioned so he would blend into the bulk of the tree trunk. From the ground, to a prowler with the night vision of an itiji, he could be identified by the glow of the starlight filtering through the leaves.

  The tree people fought their wars in the trees. The Drovils were still learning they had to watch for scouts and ambushers who used the ground as fluidly as they used the trees.

  One of Vigdal’s companions had a weapon strapped to a harness on his back—the cumbersome item Harold called a crossbow. He and his partner were both so young they would have been placed in separate bands, where they would mostly watch and learn, in the days before the humans disrupted the world. One of them still hadn’t reached his full sexual maturity. They had been chosen for their task because they seemed to have a flair for the mechanical devices Harold had created for them. The loader could pick up iron darts with his teeth and insert them in the groove with the speed and finesse of a hunter who could take his prey with a single snap at the throat.

  Vigdal raised his right front paw and waved it from side to side. The loader stared at him. He maintained silence, but he obviously disagreed with Vigdal’s decision.

  Vigdal slid out of position and crept back to Jila-Jen. “We’ve found the sentry, but he’s too high for a crossbow shot. The angle is too sharp.”

  He had already translated the sentry’s position into a description Jila-Jen could use. He had learned to think in three dimensions. He had taught himself to see the pathways and visual guides the tree people would use as they navigated through their world. You had to know which branches would support their weight, which gaps they could leap across.

  Jila-Jen memorized the description as he listened. He recited it once, to make sure he had it right, and scurried up a ladder he had attached to a bottom branch. Vigdal wondered if Nama-Nanat understood the intellectual effort behind his description. Jila-Jen understood some of it.

  Vigdal returned to his position. Above him, somewhere in the branches, a lone Imeten Warrior crept through the dark with a dartblower.

  A fruit bounced off the branches on his right—the signal the Imeten dartblower was about to shoot. Vigdal counted to eight, twitching his right front paw with every count, and let out a single sharp yelp on the last twitch. He flowed to his feet and ran forward with his two companions stretching out beside him.

  The Imetens knew Nama-Nanat would have them tormented and killed if they broke silence as they assaulted through the trees. There was a long moment when Vigdal wondered if they had heard his signal. Then he heard the first shouts from the enemy as the Imetens fell on the camp.

  A chorus of itiji voices mingled with the din in the trees. Nama-Nanat had given the itiji two tasks. They were supposed to watch for any Drovils who tried to escape and finish off any enemy wounded who dropped from the trees.

  The tree people could build cities and weapons but they could never create anything like the complex structures a band of itiji could raise in their minds. Vigdal felt—as always—as if the words flying between him and his bandfriends had formed them into a single consciousness. He could see everything eight sets of eyes could see. He could move as if he was part of one huge many-legged body.

  “Concentrate on the runaways,” Vigdal sang. “Ignore the wounded who can’t run. Let no one escape!”

  He sang a direction and three itiji broke from the positions they had assumed around the perimeter of the Drovil camp and began prowling through the trees in a standard search pattern. Four Drovils had already plummeted through the branches. Two were dead. One had a broken back. The fourth died beneath an itiji’s claws before he could hobble to safety on a battered leg.

  An itiji caught a flash of movement high in the trees, moved to get a better look, and felt a dart glance off his blanket. A Drovil was scurrying through the lower branches as if he was trying to break away from the battle. Another Drovil seemed to be protecting him.

  Vigdal’s neck muscles tightened. He threw back his head and screamed his best—and loudest—imitation of the high, screeching voices of the tree people. Somewhere above him, Jila-Jen was supposed to hear that unmistakeable parody of the noises he and his fellows were flinging at each other.

  The itiji who had spotted the runaway galloped along the ground after his quarry and Vigdal relayed his reports to the trees. Had Jila-Jen heard him? Was anything happening?

  “They have darted the runaway,” an itiji sang. “He clings to a handhold. I believe he is darted again. A tree devil falls near me. I kill him with a swipe to the face.”

  Vigdal had told his companions they should avoid some of the terms they had customarily applied to the tree people. They are our allies now. We must think of them as people, just like us. Even the ones we fight. We must treat them just like we treat our own people when we fight with them.

  He would discuss the matter with them again, when they were calmer. Right now it was a minor matter. But someday some of the tree people might actually learn an itiji language. It seemed very unlikely now. But the world had become an unlikely place.

  They counted the bodies in the morning. They had assumed they were attacking a Double Eight and they found thirteen dead and five cripples. If you added in the normal ration of commanders, each eight should have contained nine people—eight subordinates and one commander. Eighteen for the whole patrol.

  Unless the patrol had been given an overall commander. In that case, the count had come up one short.

  “There’s no way to be sure,” Jila-Jen said. “Sometimes one of the eightleaders takes charge. Sometimes they appoint someone extra. They aren’t consistent.”

  “Can’t you ask one of the cripples?”

  “The two who can talk say we netted the whole patrol.”

  “But who knows if they’re telling the truth?”

  “Yes.”

  Jila-Jen had another matter on his mind. Vigdal could see the signs in the arch of his back, the movements of his fur, and the position of his fighting hand. Jila-Jen was holding himself as if he was expecting a blow—or preparing to deliver one.

  “Does Nama-Nanat have any other messages for me?” Vigdal said.

  “He has ordered me to give you a warning.”

  “A warning?”

  “He says he knows you are our allies. He knows the Goddess has decreed we must accept you as equals. But that doesn’t mean we must accept everything you do.”

  “We did everything Nama-Nanat decreed. I objected to his command to attack the patrol but we still obeyed his orders.”

  Vigdal had learned to speak the Imeten tongue almost as naturally as he spoke the nine itiji languages he had mastered, but some part of his mind always cringed at the way he had to talk about ordering and obeying. The Imetens had no words for the fluid, voluntary coordination of an itiji band.

  “Three of the enemy bodies had missing legs,” Jila-Jen said.

  Vigdal didn’t believe in gods, bu
t he had learned some of the standard prayers when he had been young. He could steady his emotions with a silent recital of the complete text of the famous Prayer for Evening Calm while his mind sorted through possible responses.

  “Tell Nama-Nanat I will take the necessary steps,” Vigdal said. “Tell him it will not happen again.”

  It was the best he could do. There was no way you could apologize in the Imeten language without expressing some kind of submission.

  “We don’t eat our people,” Jila-Jen said. “We don’t eat your people.”

  “I will take the necessary steps.”

  “Will you have them punished?”

  “I will have them punished. Tell Nama-Nanat they will be punished.”

  Jila-Jen’s face fur stiffened. He stared at Vigdal through a halo of ferocity.

  It was a good display. Nama-Nanat would be satisfied. But Vigdal had noted Jila-Jen’s choice of words. He hadn’t demanded that the culprits be killed or mutilated. He hadn’t even demanded a beating. He had left the nature of the punishment up to Vigdal. For a Warrior of Imeten, it was an impressive exercise in diplomacy.

  The tree people could survive indefinitely on fruits and leaves, gathering their food as they traveled. The itiji diet required more demanding arrangements. Normally, a band of traveling itiji would kill and feast every second day. If they were in a hurry, they could spend a little time each day catching small animals or slapping fish out of streams.

  Sun-dried flesh was another alternative. Vigdal’s warband had been living off four bags crammed with sun-dried flesh and the burned flesh the tree people and the humans liked to eat. Both substitutes felt dry and chewless. The burned flesh had a flavor that evoked unpleasant memories of charred, smoldering trees.

  Vigdal led his band away from the Imetens and gathered them in the tightest circle they could tolerate.

  “I’ve felt the same temptation myself,” Vigdal said. “The tree people would probably eat us if we were plant eaters. But we must treat them exactly the same way we would treat our own people.”