by E. E. Knight
A smattering of applause broke out.
“The peace I speak of is settled between our kind and the Kurians. Whether you will enjoy the same peace is up to you. This is the one incontrovertible reality: The Interstellar Tree is being divided. Your world, I am afraid, is to be in the Kurian sphere. We must leave it. In turn, the Kurians will abandon all the old portals to any world save the one back to Kur.”
Ahn-Kha had been told more than once that the “portals” were just legends. He knew better, of course; his whole tribe had marched through one of the portals well before he’d been born.
Ahn-Kha wondered if, underneath the psychic projection he was watching, the creatures were capable of blushing with shame. They certainly deserved to.
“We did not agree to the withdrawal without conditions attached to the territories that freed themselves from the Kurians. These are the broad outlines of the arrangement. All territories in rebellion that have attended two of these sessions or coordinated with the Baltic League over the course of the last ten years will be left free. Both sides will disarm to a level of police protection, with provision for ‘national guard’ type units to handle emergencies and limited special forces for operations against international pirates and other gangs operating beyond the reach of national police.”
“That lets Kentucky out,” Sime said, slamming his notebook shut. “It’s like they wrote those restrictions to exclude it.”
“I know which way I will vote, then,” Ahn-Kha replied, surprised at the hard tone to Sime’s voice. Ahn-Kha knew he was not as keyed in to human emotion as his companions, but the only emotional displays from Sime he could remember before this were outbursts of laughter in more relaxed settings.
On the podium, the central Lifeweaver continued. “Individual nonaggression pacts will be worked out between neighboring territories. Future hostile acts will end the agreement as far as that rebel territory is concerned; others will remain untouched so long as they do not materially, financially, or politically support the combatants. Anti-Kurian newspapers and radio programming will be stopped, and in turn the individual Kurian territories will not widen the fighting by taking aggressive action. The main military bodies will carry small arms and light artillery sufficient for police actions and nothing else.”
“Seems to be a lot of wiggle room in that,” Sime said. “If this is the pitch they’re using to sell it, imagine what the unvarnished truth is like.”
“You are probably wondering how it will be determined that the Kurian operating areas have also demilitarized. The Baltic League will organize an international group of inspectors to evaluate the disarmament on both sides.”
That incited a buzz of conversation. Ahn-Kha distinctly heard heavily accented ejaculations of “Impossible!”
The Lifeweaver waited for the side talk to diminish. When he again had their attention he continued. “In time, it is hoped that trade will be established between the rebellious territories and the major regional-level Kurian Territories.”
“Jesus, what’ll they want as currency?” the delegate sitting behind, from Vancouver, Canada, said.
“I can’t believe anyone’s going to go for it,” his seatmate muttered back.
“Look at friend Sime,” Vancouver continued. “This must be a dream come true for the Free Republics. They’ve dropped out of the war.”
How would the delegation vote? Ahn-Kha had observed that the voting delegates were divided into three factions, two major and one minor. None had enough votes just in and of themselves to pass anything, so passing any resolution that was not what Sime called a “no-brainer” required some cooperation between the factions. The minor faction consisted of delegates who were cranks. They tended to be from freeholds away from the fighting and did not much need the cooperation of other delegations.
The second-largest faction Ahn-Kha thought of as the “Guns” group. They were led by the scarred giant from Norway who’d survived Trondheim, the “Stalingrad of the Twenty-first Century.” They generally were interested in whatever would bring the fight fastest and hardest to the Kurian Order.
The largest delegation was the “Butter” group. They’d dominated the conference, and were most interested in whatever would build up their freeholds to something approaching the capabilities of most twentieth-century nations, and mostly waging a defensive war against the Kurians. Ahn-Kha suspected that most of the Butter group would accept the offer, but it couldn’t pass without a majority of the Guns group adding their votes.
The Guns group would be heavily influenced by the Norwegian. He was at this moment perhaps the most influential human in modern history. Ahn-Kha wondered if he knew how important he’d become, and craned around to try to get a look at him.
There he was, huddling with some other Scandinavians and the representatives from the Pacific Northwest and Vladivostok, all in the Guns camp. Sime had mostly voted Butter over the course of the conference. Ahn-Kha wondered if it was on instruction from the UFR government.
“We will give you forty-eight hours to consider this. Consult your home governments if you have the ability. The arrangement you are about to be offered is the best one we could get. In a very short time our bargaining power on Earth vanishes, for lifespans beyond guessing without a collapse of the Kurian Order.”
The alarmed buzzing started up again. To him, it sounded like a beehive being poked by a stick.
The Finnish president returned to her podium. She was red-eyed from crying.
“We will have a thirty-minute break,” she said through their earpieces.
“I am sorry, but we are leaving,” another in the Lifeweaver party announced.
As he moved down the aisle, a little throng from the Butter group joined Sime. “Were you expecting anything this big?” a man with a slight Australian accent asked.
Ahn-Kha rounded on them, clearly angry.
“Sime, you knew about this?”
Sime’s cool composure was breaking down. He had sweat on his upper lip.
“Of course not.”
“But you knew something was in the wind,” Ahn-Kha countered. “Is that why you gave leave to David and so on?”
“I will do you better,” Sime said. “I’ll tell you everything I know about the matter. There were whispers around the president’s staff that some kind of ‘accommodation’ may be needed. It’s one of the reasons Southern Command has played it so quietly since Javelin dropped in Kentucky rather than the Coal Country.”
The delegates filed out, to find a small buffet laid out on the concourse outside the big meeting room with the piano. There was a good deal of talk about when the Lifeweavers would pull up stakes and whether the vote would go for or against making the freeholds permanent. Or at least permanent until the last Lifeweaver ship took off with a full cargo of legworm leather.
Ahn-Kha made a show of laying out his food for eating, but he actually hardly ate a bite of what he put on the plate.
A wild, blood-splattered redheaded creature threw open the glass doors to the concourse. “The Kurians are here!” Duvalier gasped.
She had blood caked all over one wrist and her clothes were stained. She stood there panting, more winded than Ahn-Kha had ever seen her. “We’re about to be attacked. Call the army, air force, navy, whoever you can get!”
CHAPTER TEN
The Defenestration of Kokkola: It proved to be the shot heard round the world. It also led to a good deal of historical inaccuracy. There were a few countries that mixed up players, participants, and notes. Most of the freeholds played up their own role in the affair—it was always the cowards on the other side of the world who were ready to hand over the keys to the planet to the Kurians.
As best as can be determined, the Kurian plan was to co-opt a few key players at the conference to ensure that the vote tilted their way, toward what’s now called the “Terrible Truce.” Of course there were a few ready to end the fighting and work something out that left their freehold intact. Then there was the lege
ndary Rolf of Trondheim. The plan for him, it appeared, was to use a Kurian posing as Alessa Duvalier to either render him indisposed for the vote, or perhaps have the creature dispose of him in some manner and then switch over to his appearance and have the most renowned Resistance fighter in the Baltic League vote for peace and perhaps sway enough from the Guns group to allow it to pass.
None of the more serious reporting that followed gave any credit to Alessa Duvalier, which was just the way she liked it. Rolf of Trondheim and, of course, the photogenic Ahn-Kha were given most of the credit for uncovering the plot and starting the Grand Offensive against the Kurians (within a year, it was possible to buy a stuffed Ahn-Kha in Helsinki to give to your children).
For once, a conference of humans settled on the right course of action. The Kokkola Resolve was short and to the point: immediate, all-out warfare from every freehold against the Kurians whenever and wherever they could be found was voted on and passed with just a few abstentions.
She needed food. How long since she’d eaten? Twenty-four hours, at least, since she’d had a meal. An incredible aroma permeated the buffet room and her mouth went soft and wet from the saliva that filled it so quickly that she had to swallow in surprise.
As she heaped a plate with food, she watched the security station work their phones, with increasingly worried faces and urgent switching of communication modes. Police and men in uniform began to appear and stand at the doors.
Duvalier fell upon the roast like a famished hound. As she ate, Ahn-Kha gave her the news.
It hit her hard.
When she was a little girl, she heard stories about angels who were secretly helping mankind. They’d come down to Earth to give mankind knowledge, weapons, and most important, the freedom from fear they needed to face the Reapers in battle.
She always wanted to meet the angels. Through a strange combination of circumstances involving a Quisling who’d been molesting her, she did. She’d murdered the evil rat, which seemed a strange gateway to an encounter with an angel, but that’s how it happened.
Hard to imagine angels playing politics.
To say the abandonment was a blow was an understatement. It was like she was standing on an entirely different planet. Everything she had thought to be true had suddenly gone wrong. The people, entities, angels—whatever you wanted to call them—who had inspired her, trained her, that she’d fought for, were quitting the fight just when it seemed as though they were getting ahead in the struggle.
What utter and complete bastards.
At least the rumors that the Lifeweavers were actually Kurians running both sides of the war were laid to rest. If that were the case, they’d keep playing their roles as long as each side needed an “other” to keep the confusion and killing going.
All the risks she’d run… Maybe it would have been better if she’d died in some ditch in Nebraska, rather than live to see this. All this time she’d fought with hope—lately it had been turning into certainty, after seeing how easy the shambles of the Kurian Order states collapsed if you just kicked them hard enough—and now that certainty was gone and hope was picking up its coat and hat.
Her gut was doing flip-flops. She briefly wondered if she’d passed out from exhaustion and was dreaming all this. The line of Lifeweavers up on the stage, all roughly the same age and looking like their bodies had been designed rather than lived in, added a surreal quality. But no, her gut sometimes woke her up, but a sour belly had never made an appearance in a dream that she could remember. This was all too real.
She recognized one of the Lifeweavers in the party. His appearance now was exactly as it was then, when she and Valentine received the mission to go into the Midwest and assess the threat of the Twisted Cross. His robes were a little more formal, chosen for the occasion, no doubt.
Of course, everything with the Lifeweavers was for appearance’s sake. She’d come to terms with their being master illusionists long ago. There was no reason they couldn’t all be standing on the stage in the guise of old cereal box characters, if they so chose. They went with what worked, and tall, elegant, attractive, and stately individuals in prophet-hair and robes seemed to work with humans.
“My lord,” she called. “Father Cat!”
One of the security detail interposed, but the Lifeweaver waved him away. And there she was, face-to-face with a living demigod.
“How could you abandon us?” she asked.
“I’m sorry?”
“We met years ago, in Arkansas, at the lodge for the Cats. I had a new aspirant with me, black hair—”
“Perhaps it was another using this guise,” the Lifeweaver said. “We find it easier to work from templates. Wait, you are Alessa Duvalier? Yes, we know you, the red wrath of the Midwest. Have you met Rolf of Trondheim? He is another great one of your vintage.”
“Do you think we like this? We don’t. The negotiations were handled by others, the decisions made by others. As it was explained to us, we get two planets, forever and absolutely, in exchange for Earth.
“I gave my life to you,” Duvalier said.
The Lifeweaver nodded gravely. “No, you gave it to your kind. It’s the oldest and best definition of heroism.”
“How can you quit on us? We’re winning this thing for you! Do you understand? Winning!”
“Precisely. You and those like you made this settlement possible. Had this planet been in the relative state it was thirty years ago, or even fifteen, we would never have had such an opportunity. You certainly deserve our thanks, and more.”
“Thanks? No thanks,” she said. “Why are we being given up? I know your kind have died here, too. Isn’t there another—”
“Why do they want Earth? First, you humans are rich in aura, and you breed quickly under different levels of stress and deprivation.Second, they made a case that Earth, being one of the few direct portals to Kur, and yet also a portal to many other worlds, was an ideal route for invasion. Earth is their new castle gate. Holding Earth saves them a fight on other worlds.”
She felt like she was flailing. What would Val say? Some cool, long-ranged argument, she supposed. She pretended to be him for a moment: “And once life here is consumed to the bedrock, what then? Don’t you think they’ll come across those gates, ‘forever and absolutely’ or no? When they come, won’t they be stronger than ever?”
“We will be stronger, too,” the Lifeweaver said. “If it is a matter of being left, there will be some population transfers allowed. You have little to hope for on the new Earth. Your emigration could be arranged to one of the worlds reserved for us. There is a plan to settle some humans on Eheru to ensure the survival of your species. Of course, the climate will not be that of your native Midwest.”
“Leave my home, friends, the whole shooting match?”
“I do not say it will be easy, only that we can offer you a better future than you have if you remain on Earth.”
“Leave—my planet?”
“We respire and take in water much as you. You would find one of our worlds peaceful. ‘Idyllic’ is not too strong a word. It would be easy to forget you are an exile among your fellows. No problem about leaving, as long as it is done quietly. The Kurians are only too glad to be rid of as many of our children among men as possible.”
“You don’t think much of humanity.”
“I don’t? You are from the United States, once a refuge for those who abandoned their cousins and fellow citizens in some land that had gone to devils incarnate. Look just a hundred years ago in your own history, at the Laotians after Vietnam, the Persians after the Shah, the Poles who fled their beloved land. They built better lives in peace. You might do the same.”
She began to respond, but he held up a hand. “I am being told we are in no small amount of danger. If you’ll excuse me, we must remove ourselves.”
She ran to the windows of the second-floor concourse and looked out at the endless sunset of a Kokkola summer.
A sea of gray backs filled the street
in front of the conference center. The bigger ones shoved the smaller out of the way to climb onto prominences like benches and the decorative border around the plaza fountain. They hooted and honked, making it sound like a traffic jam caused by a huge flock of Canada geese.
By instinct she joined Ahn-Kha, Pistols, and Sime.
“Are they dangerous on land?” Pistols asked.
“Very,” Duvalier said. She’d seen a little of what Big Mouths could do when she was in the Delta country south of New Orleans. “They can shoot across short distances in a blur. They don’t look like they can move any more quickly on land than a sea lion, right up to the point when they launch themselves like a missile.”
“There must be thousands of them,” Sime said in wonder.
Rolf, the Norwegian Bear, appeared with an old revolver in his hand. “The best I could get, at this point,” he said.
“The garrison won’t be able to do shit to them,” Pistols said, handing Rolf the Judge. He looked big enough to handle it.
They seemed to be just milling about, waiting, nudging one another, and squabbling over comfortable spots on the roads and verges and parkland about the conference center, rather than moving in for an assault.
“I hate those fucking things,” Rolf said in slow, unsteady English. “Trondheim was full of them in the summers. They bred them, fed them bodies for the giving of the taste of human flesh a fondness. In the end, they turned them loose in Trondheim, too.”
“How did you beat them?” Duvalier asked.
“Kill enough and they start eating each other. They are cannibals of the bad wounded and the fresh dead. Easier meal than chasing down men.”
“They will not harm anyone,” one of the security people was shouting. Others took turns yelling in different languages. “They are here as bodyguards for an emissary from Kur, a member of the Great Circle itself.”
Sime was standing in a knot of shorter delegates from the Butter faction, trying to calm them down.
“What is the Great Circle?” Ahn-Kha asked.
