"We’ll have room for almost a million of them," Argun said. "Mostly
female, although some of the higher placed women might want to take along a little male pet."
Rei felt his neck tingle. He felt cold. "That’s changed, sir. That’s all changed."
Argun roared. "Damn, boy, I told you long ago that you’re too soft. You’ve let this female-dominated society get to you." He looked directly into Rei’s eye. "Nothing has changed. From the time you submitted your first report to me, outlining your plan to fuck the Artonuee out of existence by loving hell out of all the females, it hasn’t changed. Damn, man, our women won’t stand still for this type of crap forever. We’ve got the universe open to us. You want to throw away the chance to populate it with Delanians because of a sweet little bug with an active cunt?"
Chapter Twenty-Six
"Lady," said Diere, Overlady of Research, "it is a curious thing, this. I have been checking the reports of the Light Twenty Scout ships which have for years past been searching the near stars for habitable planets. I discover that all of the scouts now on station are manned by our people, by Artonuee males. And it has struck me that times have changed. In years past, we females were the daring ones, the flyers. Males plodded on the earth and, at best, worked the mining drivers and operated the slow, ponderous shuttle craft."
"It is for the best," Miaree said wearily. "We have learned well from the Delanians. Now male and female work side by side in our society as in theirs." Then she paused, mused. "All scouts on station are flown by Artonuee?"
"Here is the list," Diere said.
She took the duppaper copies and ran her eyes down. The most distant scouts were years of travel time from the home worlds. All of the small ships were flown by Artonuee. A terrible thought came to her, a thought which she would not, could not accept. Instead, she tossed her head and smiled. "We must send orders for all of them to return. Their slow progress through the stars is no longer necessary. See to it, Diere." On second thought. "Make a memo to Rei to suggest that during their scouting runs the new Bertt ships rendezvous with the most distant scouts and pick them up."
"It will be done." Diere said.
The evacuation of Outworld was complete. A full half of the total number of Artonuee were back home. The shuttles were at work all over New World, lifting the remaining Artonuee to the waiting star ships for the short trip to the home planet. In Government Quad, thousands of clerks were transferring the records of the Artonuee to microtape so that history would ride with the race on the journey into the distant stars. The seat of Artonuee government would soon be abandoned, the Mother herself taking her place with her people on The World.
Rei was absent, with the fleet at Five. Although she missed him with all her heart, she was proud that her man was taking such a vital part in this moment of history. Rei would plan and dispatch the Bertt ships to move instantly through the galaxy. Miaree was confident that within a short time the good news would come winging back, the news of the discovery of a suitable number of good planets. Then, with time to spare, the movement of peoples would begin, the huge ships making trip after trip, shifting populations and their goods. Nothing need be left behind.
She busied herself checking the lists being prepared by her staff, lists of government files and machinery which would be salvaged once the point of destination had been determined. She would move only those records necessary for immediate administration to The World for the brief stay there. Later, the entire bulk of government would be moved, intact, to a new home on a new world.
It was a time-consuming task. Meanwhile, she was kept abreast of evacuation on the planet and was pleased to see that it went smoothly. The efficient Delanians had learned well from the evacuation of Five and Outworld, and a planet was emptied of its original inhabitants within weeks of the beginning of the movement. She herself waited only for the return of Rei, to hear his personal report of the departure of the first Bertt ships to seek new worlds.
From her high rooms, she could look down onto the spaces of the Quad. There was an eerie feeling of strangeness about it, for there were only
Delanians there. Another Artonuee world had been given over, if only temporarily, to the aliens.
Once, while resting, she saw a lone female, wings exposed in the style of the Delanian-mated, being escorted by a tall man. She knew that some alliances had been renewed when the news of Bertt’s miraculous breakthrough was announced, but she noted that where the pair walked, the heads of Delanian women followed them. She shuddered involuntarily, thinking of the violent treatment of Artonuee females on Outworld.
She was isolated in her tower. She had communication with the administration offices on The World, but feeling rather guilty for not being there, she left the settlement of her people on their home world to assistants. She was, she knew, being frightfully self indulgent by staying on New World, but she rationalized her failure to be with her people by telling herself that it was important that the first lady know all details of the explorations. This time of trial and sadness would pass, and on new worlds the Artonuee, the universe opened to them, would rise to a greatness never before dreamed.
It was old Bertt who brought the terrible news. He had been supervising the installation of the last new expanders. He flew into Nirrar in his own vehicle, forced his way through the armed guards at no little cost to his temper and his dignity, and faced her, his male eyes reddened with madness.
"Lady," he said, his voice strange, "star ships are being loaded on both Five and Outworld."
"The explorers," Miaree said.
"Population," Bertt said. "Delanians."
Her hand at her throat, she felt weakness. "There must be a reason," she said.
"Even now the final off-loading of Artonuee is being completed on The World." Bertt said. "Do you have explanation for this, Lady?"
Miaree, fighting the dread, punched the communicator. "Please get me Fleet Overlord Rei, on the planet Five." she ordered, her voice firm in spite of her fears.
"Sorry, baby," a male Delanian voice said. "They’ve taken away all your toys."
"I beg your pardon?" Miaree said. "Where is Tanle, my communications officer? I want to speak with her."
"There is no one here," the voice said. The communicator fell silent.
Eyes darkened with fear and rage, she ran to the door, into the hallway. Diere’s office was empty. The personal art objects always clearly visible on Diere’s desk were missing. As she ran out of the empty office, she almost screamed with delight, for Rei was coming out of the lift, tall, handsome. Rei would explain. Rei would reprimand the Delanians below who had been discourteous. Rei would assure her that Bertt’s information was not what it seemed. She ran to him, threw herself into his arms. He held her close, and then looked down into her disturbed eyes.
Bertt stood in the doorway of Miaree’s office. Looking over Miaree’s head, Rei saw the grimness of the old male’s face. "You know, then," he said softly to Miaree.
The Fires of God would have been more merciful. They, at least, would have been quick and final. In the Fires, she would not have become a walking dead female.
"Why?" she asked simply, not weeping.
"It was not my decision," he said. "You must believe that."
"Please," she said. "I want to be with my people, if you don’t mind."
"No," he said gently.
She looked into his eyes.
"You may take anything you like, things of a personal nature." Rei said. "We will be together."
"And my people?" she asked.
"You told me once, Miaree, of the extermination of the animals of The World."
"We are not animals," she said calmly.
"No, of course you are not. But there was a choice. It was a terrible choice. The decision of our leaders was dictated by the death of twenty-four billion Delanians."
"But there is time. The new ships—"
"I asked them to give you just one ship," he said. "I begged them.
I begged for just one ship to allow the race to live."
"We can find planets. We can shuttle people. There is time."
He shook his head sadly. "Our people are filled with fear. The Fires can be seen, as they were seen on the home worlds. We began the loading on Five to prevent the outbreak of a popular uprising."
"In the name of God," she said, "there is room in the universe for all."
"Once we had gods. There was a god for every purpose. The gods lived up there, in the Fires. When we were a young race and saw the Fires moving gradually, slowly, crawling toward us, our cultists rejoiced and said that the gods were favoring us, moving their dwelling to be nearer our planet. When we went into space on primitive rockets, it was to search for the gods, and we found only cold death and terrible vacuum. By then we understood that there were no gods living in the Fires unless they ate ionized electrons and thrived on hard radiation and swam on the seas of a burning star. There is no God, Miaree, only radiation and cold and fire and death and the accident of life, which is precious only to those who are strong enough to fight for it. We have fought and we have lost. We have paid a terrible price in dead, and we have learned that the universe is basically inhospitable to life and only the strongest will survive.
"The decision to abandon the Artonuee was not coldly selfish. There is real doubt that your race would survive transplanting. Your life chain is fragile, depending on an exact set of conditions, soil, air, sun, which may not be matchable anywhere in the universe. The percentage of rare earths in the soil of The World is a unique situation. Have you never wondered why the juplee forests were confined to The World, why it was necessary to lavish constant care on the trees which were taken, for example, to Outworld, for decorative and spiritual purposes? No. It was decided, by those in command, that moving the Artonuee was a gamble. And we would have been gambling with over a billion more Delanian lives. It is regrettable and tragic, but there is no escape from the basic fact that we Delanians are more suited for the rigors of space and planet change."
She had ceased to listen. She had pulled away, looking at him in horror. Behind her, Bertt was weeping silently. She turned to him, took his arm.
"I will come for you," Rei said. "And for the worthy Bertt, who will rest here with you until it is time."
She escorted the old male to her chambers, seated him comfortably.
His eyes were wet with his weeping. "It was I," he said. "I made it possible. First I gave them the union of convertor and fusion, then I gave them the power of unopposed electrons. It was I who gave, My Lady."
"Yes, yes, you meant well, Bertt. You are not to be blamed."
He dried his eyes, his cheeks. A strength seemed to flow into his old body. There was a look of pride and decision on his face. "I gave," he said, "but I saw the contempt on their faces. Once, while I was Overlord of the Fleet, I heard workers talking. ’All of the bugs,’ they said; they called us bugs, a Delanian word full of derision. ’All of the bugs are going,’ they said. And I recognized then the basis of our relationship, but I would not admit it. I worked with Untell. I shared my bed with Untell and it was good. And I would not open my eyes to see that they were using us, that they were taking the last resources of our worlds, using our worlds as a base for a further leap away from the Fires. There were jokes, even then, about loving the Artonuee out of existence. But I told myself that a great race, a race which could reach the stars, could not commit such a vast conspiracy."
"Have you thought, dear Bertt, that our priests have been proven right?" She was numb. Her heart beat, but she was dead. "Nothing has changed, really. Before they came we were to face the Fires. Now we still face the Fires. It is even ironically fitting that we face them on the old world, the home planet."
Bertt seemed not to hear. He sat straight, eyes hard, glittering. "I would not believe until, finished with the installation of my gift on all the star ships, I saw with my own eyes the loading of Delanians on Five. And then I praised that male jealousy which had forced me to do it."
"What did you do?"
"Do you think we males have enjoyed seeing you, our Mother, seeing our females going to the Delanian men with such joy? Oh, we took the lesser prize, the Delanian women, and we told ourselves that we were enjoying the best of two worlds, for the women were ever ready for pleasure and the eternal stink of pleele, the stifling smell of our females’ constant readiness-yes, I say stink. Once it was a pleasure, but in massive amounts as it radiated out from all females, it became a stink in our nostrils and it insured our own constant readiness, which we burned on the bodies of the fleshy women. And we knew in our hearts that the pleasures of flesh were not God’s will, not the destiny of the Artonuee, and we grieved privately. And I thought of this as I designed the fleet. Thank God, I thought of it."
"I don’t understand," Miaree said.
"You will, my daughter. They need me, for I alone know the secrets of the altered expanders. So I will be carried along, a prize, a slave, a worker to teach their technicians the secrets of my inventions. You will go—"
"No," she said.
"Yes, you must. I am too old. I might fail, there in the depths of space. I might seek my iffling and find no iffling to accept the life force which cries out to be exchanged. And then you will have to complete the job."
"What job?" She stood before him. "Are these just the ramblings of an old male? Explain to me, Bertt. Tell me."
"When the time is right," Bertt said, and would speak no more.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Poised in deep space off the orbit of Five, the fleet stretched into the distance, its numbers, rank on rank, assembled in order, under the direct control of the flagship on the center point. Behind it, four worlds were empty. A fifth, The World, swarmed with the total population of the Artonuee. There, hunger stalked, for a gutted world, its surface scarred by strip mining, its resources melted now into the metal hides of the fleet, could not support the race. The mutilated juplee forests were but a fraction of their former glory. Artonuee died and their loves were dead with them, their life force wasted, fading into empty air in the absence of ifflings; for in the end, the loaded iffling ships had belched their sacred cargo out into a spiral orbit leading to eventual disintegration in the sun. A forest of juplee, emptied into cold space, made but a minor ripple on the surface of the Artonuee star. Ifflings, long dead in the vacuum, were mere motes as they were drawn into the furnace.
Her cubicle was small. She was allowed freedom, but she was among aliens who looked at her and resented her presence. There were others of her kind, the mistresses of the high officials, but when she passed them she lowered her eyes, shamed to be one of them. Bertt was there, treated with a certain condescending honor. Once she heard Argun speak to the old male.
"Good work," the tall Delanian said, when Bertt had finished an adjustment to the expander. "I’m glad you’re here to see it."
Then, when Bertt, older and weaker, had shambled away, Argun laughed. "Of course, we’d have discovered it sooner or later, eh? And after all, he probably laid the foundation for it when he was working with our Untell."
Bertt seemed to accept the situation. He was interested in nothing but his work. A short jump was scheduled to test the central control system; the fleet had never operated as a unit, and in order to maintain contact in the spaces between galaxies—it having been announced that the plan was to leave the stricken galaxies far behind and seek entire new universes—the expanders of all ships were now linked to central control. The short test jump was calculated to end within distances which could be covered by communication, thus allowing any ship left behind by a malfunctioning expander to rejoin the fleet.
There was perfection. With the touch of a button, Bertt sent a fleet numbering in six figures, possessing a mass equal to that of a small planet, leaping the specified distance to come out of the jump in perfect formation, not one ship out of line.
On a course plotted to close on a distant galaxy across parsecs of space
, the fleet leaped again, taking the distance in fractions of the total journey, lest miscalculation send the fleet, like a colliding galaxy, into the midst of
dense stars. It was then, at the end of the first huge jump, that a minor malfunction disrupted instruments at the control center on the flagship. There was a worried look on the cold face of Argun as Bertt ran tests with his slow, shaking fingers. After a series of adjustments, Bertt stood erect.
"I will need the aid of an Artonuee," he said. "We have techs who can help you," Argun said.
"The female, Miaree," Bertt insisted. "It is a delicate adjustment needing the abilities of the Artonuee eye. Bring her."
She was summoned from her cubicle. She had not seen Rei since the loading, but he was there, standing beside Bertt in front of the exposed wiring of the console. She averted her eyes.
Bertt spoke to her in the language of the Artonuee, a mixture of thought and sound undetectable to the alien ears. He chose his words carefully, not using sounds which could have given any clue to his meaning. His words were old, old language, bringing with them a glow of pride. Even in defeat, Miaree saw, the Artonuee were great.
"It is time, Mother Miaree."
At first she thought that he was speaking personally, for his face was gaunt and strained. His physical movements were slow and tortured. For weeks he had seemed to live on will alone, long past his appointed time, far from the ravaged world of the ifflings.
But, no. Speaking now in Delanian, he said, "I require a measure of the field of the fleet. My flyer is based in Scout Bay Five. Board it. Remove yourself to a distance of—"
"Hold it," Argun said. "That can be done by a man."
"Can the eyes of a man see a magnetic field?" Bertt asked. He turned his back on the tall man. "When you are at the assigned point, we will communicate."
She looked toward Argun for confirmation. Her heart pounded. Although Bertt had not explained his reasons, she sensed that the time, the time he had promised, was near.
The Legend of Miaree Page 16
