What the Thunder Said

by Walter Blaire

  The tablet gave a flat gong, the tone for dubious acknowledgment. It would try, but it would get everything wrong unless she could explain more clearly.

  The bird bear clambered upright. It gathered slowly, dripping birds but steadily replacing them. It gave every impression of a drunken man carefully trying to stand. Caulie’s ears could not register her tablet’s recording or the brain bird’s response, but a dozen things might explain the creature’s resurgence: maybe Caulie’s recording had ended. Maybe the recorded brain bird had briefly stopped singing. More likely, brain birds probably had hereditary strategies for outcompeting other brain birds, and the live brain bird had simply bested her recording.

  But it didn’t matter. Caulie knew what to do.

  “Tablet, invert the waveform of the bird recording. Play the inverted version.”

  Affirmative beep.

  The effect was immediate. The surface of the bird bear burst apart with a flurry of wings and feathers. Then the next layer took flight, then the layer underneath.

  She laughed out loud. It was a most un-Haphan outburst: loud, slightly unhinged, and genuine.

  Her tablet’s inverted waveform was playing at the same time as the live birdsong. If it had been pitched for her ears, Caulie would have heard nothing but a neutral hum on the frequencies where the two songs intersected. That was how noise-canceling technology worked: it heard the noise and then created an opposite waveform to zero it out.

  The inverted waveform from her tablet didn’t precisely match the live brain bird’s sounds, but it didn’t have to. There would be overlaps where the live birdsong crossed the inverted birdsong, and then lapsed into a meaningless hum. It wasn’t efficient, but it was enough to disrupt the birdsong and destroy the bird bear’s cohesion.

  Layer after layer of birds spiraled into the sky like columns of smoke. High above, the flock began to disperse. They were confused or distraught and didn’t linger to swarm her. Perhaps some instinctual defense had been triggered when the brain bird’s messaging turned sour.

  “This is so interesting,” Caulie told the panther when she finally caught her breath. “The sounds made by brain birds must be filled with information. Like that comm traffic you wanted to play for me in the causeway—do you remember saying it was a high-pitched squeal? I wonder if some researcher has tried to unpack the brain bird’s song, to see how they control the—”

  “You must enter my cockpit, Caulie,” the panther said. “The Tachba have left their compound and are coming to investigate.”

  She didn’t move. She felt she’d earned this moment in its entirety, so she watched until the last of the birds departed. In the end, there was only the brain bird itself. Its breast heaved, and it flapped its stubby wings. It would need powerful lungs to be able to breathe inside the bird bear’s massive body. It would need those stubby wings and tiny legs to withstand the pressure.

  The brain bird didn’t notice her; it wasn’t even that smart. It didn’t realize its prey from a minute earlier was still in front of it.

  “It’s cute in an ugly way.” Caulie squatted beside it. “I wonder if—”

  The panther smashed a heavy metal paw onto the bird and scraped it across the ground. It left nothing but a smear of gristle and feathers.

  “I say!” Caulie leapt back.

  For good measure, the panther pawed it again, and again.

  “Enter the cockpit,” the panther said. “If you do not move immediately, I will be forced to destroy every Tachba witness.”

  Caulie leapt back into her seat, only scraping her shins once. The cockpit closed with its bone-grinding crunch and she was back in cool darkness again.

  The return to safety was what broke her.

  Relief and adrenaline flooded Caulie’s heart, which was beating as if she’d just thrown herself off a cliff. She couldn’t help but sob aloud. For all love, she wasn’t crying in front of alien technology, was she? Despite the tears, she felt nothing but overwhelming gratitude—toward her tablet, toward the panther, toward the young, handsome Tachba who had waved to her from his palisade walls. Toward the universe at large. Yet she could not stop her tears.

  The panther darted into the forest, away from the compound. It activated Caulie’s seat restraints of its own volition, which was very nice of it.

  “Are you harmed?” it asked.

  “No, I’m good.”

  “But you are making noise.”

  “I am in a state, panther, thank you for commenting. I’m . . . flustered? Very, very flustered.” The muscles in her neck had bunched so hard that her head started to vibrate. Her legs were cramping. Nothing she tried seemed to help. She reported: “I’m still flustered. I’ve never been that scared.”

  “If you are human, this is a flight response,” the panther said. “It will dissipate in time.”

  “On the upside,” Caulie said, “I think I could void my bowels through your roof now. If you’re still interested.”

  Chapter 7

  In the safety of the panther—the safety and soon the dullness—Caulie studied the maps and found the setting for her adventure with the bird bear: Ligae.

  Ligae was the local name for the territory, once a province, at the edge of the sovereign Haphan Colony. Notably, at the interior edge of the colony. They’d been only thirty hours, at panther-prowling speed, from Falling Mountain.

  She couldn’t believe it. Sure, the local empire was an isolated colony on a dangerous world Caulie doubted any other space-faring race desired. Sure, the colony was trapped in a slow technological decline and the home world was six centuries of sub-light travel away. Nonetheless, the Haphans tended to believe they were still civilized, sophisticated, and advanced.

  Caulie had been inside the empire when she’d witnessed a terrifying composite monster attacking a primitive walled compound that had defended itself by throwing burning sticks and clay pots. Unbelievable. And the empire would only get less civilized the farther she traveled from Falling Mountain.

  A mountain chain demarcated the edge of the colony and the start of the autonomous Tachba provinces. They entered Sellamon, about which Caulie only knew the name. The forests weren’t as deep here and the coverage was sparser. They crossed broad, open savannas. The visibility was good enough that the panther found it safe enough for Caulie to leave the cockpit, sometimes twice a day.

  Three days in, they entered the famous Sessera, the empire’s most favored Tachba province. Caulie couldn’t see much difference. The communities were better maintained and the farmland may have been more fertile, but the trees were as thick as they’d been in Ligae. They stayed in the lowlands until finally, a hundred miles before the eternal front, they crossed into the mountains of Ed-homse province.

  * * *

  Caulie was calm, collected, and ready to brutalize the panther. If she never sat in a semireclined chair or saw another purple-tinted screen again, it would still be too soon. She knew she’d dream about a stuffy, dark coffin that never stopped swaying. In the dreams, her coffin would probably ignore her questions and make highly provoking comments whenever it deigned to notice her. Four days of panther travel was enough for anyone.

  “I will park in a grove that the local Tachba believe is haunted. Local command for Front East uses the grove for vehicles that should not be noticed. You will complete your journey to the headquarters on foot.”

  “Am I dressed for the mountains, panther? How will I know where to go?”

  “You are not dressed for the mountains. A Tachba orderly will meet you in the sacred grove, a man named Fearan. He has clearance, he’s high-functioning, and he doesn’t believe the area is haunted. He will be your ‘helpie,’ in trench parlance, and he will help you navigate the eternal front until your return to Falling Mountain.”

  “Fearan, huh?”

  “There he is,” the panther said. A bright speck in the panther’s thermal vision. Scattered across the landscape were indications of other vehicles: rectangular outlines too small to be st
ructures, too warm to be landscape. Caulie was an expert at interpreting the screens now. “I will stop here, away from the other machines.”

  “Aw,” she needled, “do the other machines not like you?”

  But she had never succeeded in getting under the panther’s skin. It was a strictly one-way process. The panther merely said, “They are simple machines, not like me.”

  “You know, you never answered the question. Are you alive? Do you qualify as a mechanical subject of the empire?”

  It normally deflected questions about itself. This time, as it settled into its crouch and opened the cockpit, it said, “Because of my alien manufacture, I will never be a Haphan personage. I will only ever be a possession of the empire. On my service contract it states that I require maintenance if I become subject to delusions of independence. However, Caulie, I feel like I’m alive. Inside myself, I think about my decisions, and this makes me feel I can judge my thoughts and therefore determine my own course.”

  “For what it’s worth, I think you’re alive,” Caulie said, but its answer had lowered her mood. “No mere machine could be so annoying.”

  It didn’t answer.

  “See what I mean?” She almost fell from the panther’s mouth and onto the rocky ground of Ed-homse. It was bright, the air was clear, and the temperature was arctic. The “sacred grove” consisted of some scraggly trees and rock piles, and it was hemmed on three sides by steep rocky slopes, nearly cliffs. After three days of mostly forests and plains, the place felt claustrophobic.

  She pulled her satchel from the cockpit and backed up as the panther’s mouth crunched closed again. She patted its nose, remembering how Luscetian had done the same thing when saying good-bye at the university. She was glad to be out of the panther, but not as cross with it as she’d thought.

  The Tachba orderly was already approaching, picking an unhurried path through the stones. Her helpie, she told herself. The faster she adopted the terminology of the front, the easier it would be to do . . . whatever she was here to do.

  She waited, shivering.

  The man was ten yards away when the panther spoke through her earring.

  “Use great caution, Caulie. That is not Fearan.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “That is not your contact. I do not know who that is.”

  Chapter 8

  “A woman wonders if the man is here for her,” Caulie said, adopting the formal Haphan phrasing. She spoke with a brightness she didn’t feel.

  The Tachba ambled to a stop. “She’s wondering that?”

  Caulie hesitated. This was why she hated meeting new people. She hoped she could keep it simple. “I’m sorry if I misspoke. That is how we ask questions if we’re being polite, we Haphans. We overlords? It’s all about offering leading statements that invite correction. If you’re answering, it’s wonderful for avoiding personal specifics. If you’re the one asking the question, it’s great for being passive aggressive because you can insert your opinion at the same time.”

  The Tachba seemed only more perplexed. “So, was a question in there?”

  “I asked, are you here for me?”

  “La, she turns it clear. I shall answer. Yes, ma’am. Suppose-meh I am here for you.”

  Silence fell between them. Caulie stared at him.

  This is my first Tachba.

  Well, almost her first. She’d played with bits and pieces in the lab, sure. Jephia worked with living samples but they were isolated under need-based access, as stipulated by the military grants her department chased. Theoretically, Caulie could have crossed paths with free, sanctioned Tachba anywhere in Falling Mountain, but they were rare in the capitol and it had never occurred.

  This was a living, breathing Tachba. A Tachba in the wild. An in vivo servitor.

  Her main experience with Polluted humans, beyond lab samples and academic texts, were as bumbling caricatures in entertainment. On the interminable journey from Falling Mountain, the closest she’d gotten to the Tachba had been waving at them over the head of the bird bear.

  And I only had that experience, she thought, because Luscetian dragged me out of my lab and sent me across the continent. She grinned at herself. And he did that because—wait for it—I’m the foremost expert on Tachba.

  This particular Tachba wore a patched and repaired coat of dark green canvas buttoned to the throat. It was dirty and ragged, but Caulie was freezing and immediately jealous of it. A random collection of equipment dangled from the leather belt at his waist: a bulging water skin, a trench knife in its sheath, a rattlesack filled with who-knew-what, and a canvas drawstring bag that might have held ammunition, though as far as she could tell, he didn’t have a firearm. His trousers were even more heavily patched than the jacket, and they disappeared into cloth strips that wound in spirals around his calves and ankles.

  If he was wearing the famous trench boots to which all the articles and entertainments made constant reference, she found them underwhelming. They were little more than leather shoes, though wider and heavier and with a solid toe. Their most notable feature was the set of straps that emerged from them. His shoes were tied to his legs, for reasons she couldn’t fathom.

  In all, he was unkempt, patchy, and dirty—though not outright filthy. It was more of an “end of a hard day in the field” level of dirtiness. Still, she felt a touch of disappointment, almost concern, that the empire was being represented like this to the enemy.

  When she couldn’t put it off any longer, she raised her eyes to his face.

  Jephia had tried to explain it to her once. The presence they could have. It couldn’t be adequately conveyed in second- and third-hand accounts. To truly separate the historical and clinical facts from the people themselves, Jephia told her, one had to personally meet the Polluted.

  The man’s eyes were slate gray, crinkled at the edges, and they returned her gaze unflinchingly. His eyes bored into hers. Somehow, Caulie didn’t find it rude—he was simply intensely interested, as if he’d never seen another human and never would again. She had the impression that he looked at everything this way—and that, despite their rocky first exchange, he was intelligent or at least perceptive. Little would escape those eyes.

  As for the rest of him . . . well. It was unfair. She was finally across from someone who was categorically her social inferior. The very fabric of civilization and empire gave her every advantage over him, and he still made her nervous and shy.

  Although Caulie was tall for a Haphan woman, he towered over her. At least six-foot-five, and that was while slouching. His general wear and wrinkles put him in his thirties, but these Tachba aged differently and he could have been younger. Really, thirty would be an anomaly, and not just because of the Tachba’s shorter lifespans—active soldiers of any race rarely reached that age on the eternal front. Old or not, his hair was an unkempt, glossy black where it escaped his forager cap, and he had several days of scruffy growth on his cheeks. In addition to the slab-like Tachba jaw, he had the broad forehead of an easterner from the Ed-homse mountains. The books described it as “frontal cranial bossing,” and it did look like some of the skulls in her lab, but there was nothing bulging about it in real life. His features were regular and attractive.

  Caulie never thought of her samples in terms of attraction, yet the word floated into her thoughts. It was the combination of his size, his lean body, and the angular features of his face. And those eyes.

  That was it. He didn’t look Polluted.

  He wasn’t moon-faced, soft-faced, or soft anything. He wasn’t blank, and nothing about his demeanor seemed to be waiting for her to ascribe features and traits to him. He wasn’t anything like the template she’d expected, and nothing like the blundering, wayward misfits from popular entertainment. She hadn’t even known she’d had any expectations until they weren’t met. Maybe that was why his simple, direct gaze was so disorienting.

  “I’m here to meet Fearan,” she said carefully. Then, bracing her sensibilities, she contin
ued with a direct question. “Is your name Fearan?”

  Of course, she knew he wasn’t. She was testing him, and felt herself relax a little when he shook his head.

  “Little Fearan got underfoot and died-geh. Home to the ancestors, our load is lightened. Service.”

  Underfoot? Died-geh. Home to the ancestors. Fearan was dead. “How unfortunate,” she said cautiously.

  “It is? Yes, it surely is. I should tell her that.”

  But the Tachba didn’t continue and tell her. His gaze slid to the side and he stepped past her, to the panther.

  “What is your name, soldier?” she asked. She found it easier to think when he wasn’t watching her do it.

  “Soldier?” he shook his head. “Haphans are called soldiers, and Tachba are more properly called boots—but sometimes soldiers too. Is this a Haphan robot?”

  “He’d be quite cross to hear you—” She stopped herself. “It’s just a vehicle.”

  “More than just a vehicle, it’s a contrivance.” He ran his hands over the lines of the snout and then into the seams of the metal, as if he was studying it by touch. “I wonder, could I kill it in a fight?” He tapped his lip with a forefinger, and then remembered himself. “Did I speak that out loud?”

  “You did,” Caulie said.

  He gave an unforced laugh. “Begging your pardon, ma’am. Sometimes when I think, Pretty Polly wants to hear it too, and I mutter-meh without hearing. I was only wondering about its capabilities, and whether I could kill it in a fight.”

  “Yes, I got that.” Caulie felt the conversation veering into confusion and wondered how to set it right. The man had deflected her last question. “Your name, boot. Are you hiding your name from me?”

  He swung back to her. “I’m sorry. I was getting to that. Which I’m Shantanthic Goldros, your helpie. Call me Shanter, ma’am. Rolls off the tongue.”

  “Call me Caulie,” she said. “No more ma’am, please!”