Battleground (20 page)

But finally light flashed at the module where she slumped, and the familiar voice said her name. Clearly the prohibition did not work both ways; Metra had not dared to deny Jameson. He said, “An update, please. It took some time to reach you through your captain. She's been very busy, of course.”

She could not tell if he thought the delay had been deliberate. The dry tone told her nothing.

“How—” she began, and stopped. This conversation was not private.
How the hell am I supposed to function if I can't talk to you,
was what she had started to say. Before she could think of a way to put it differently another light flashed.

“Kwoort,” she said. “Finally. Listen!”

Kwoort said her name, too, that strange
Haknt
, sounding like a threat as it hung between them. There was no video. “Kwoort Commander,” she acknowledged, and hesitated, reaching for diplomacy, before she went on. “I'm told there has been a misunderstanding.”

“There was. I corrected the situation immediately. Your Commander has informed us the remaining not-Soldier and our record-keeper will be removed momentarily. It appears all the other not-Soldiers have gone away. It was not necessary.”

The translator allowed no nuance that might carry emotion, but she knew Kwoort well enough to touch his mind without effort.
The hell with getting Metra's permission,
she thought, and did it, the barest, lightest touch. She sensed him strain to feel anything like it, too, and knew then what had set him off: somehow he had discovered the real nature of the “surveillance system” he had suspected. She could not tell where the conviction came from and could not try to look for it without the shield of trance. He was so rigid with anticipation that he might even interpret a stray thought of his own as an intrusion.

But she did not have to probe further to see that he was furious. His orders had been countermanded by the Holy Man, and he was not used to it.

She said slowly, “I believe you acted properly. Disagreement between Soldiers and not-Soldiers would not be desirable.”

She would let him work that out for himself. Battleground was in no position to fight an interspecies war. As, perhaps, the Holy Man had realized, and insisted on backing off.

Kwoort said, “A Holy Man has agreed to meet with Gergtk.”

He meant Gabriel. Hanna said immediately, “I will accompany him. He is under my command.”

“Very well,” Kwoort said. He named the location, the same as before, and a time three hours away.

“Starr?” she said when Kwoort was gone. “Did you hear? There was more that he didn't say. He found out about telepathy somehow.”

“But he won't say so openly.”

“Not yet. He's on guard, though.”

“What was Harm doing there alone?” Jameson said, and Hanna winced. Arch should have gone as part of a team.

“I made a mistake,” she said, plain truth. In the endless bombardment of detail, exhausted, she had simply missed the violation.

But the deep, calm voice that had stayed her through many bad nights only said, “Talk to the record-keeper Harm is bringing to
Endeavor
. Do it soon. Kwoort might demand her return at any time.”

“Of course. But I need to find out more about what's going on inside his head first. If Metra will allow it.”

“I'll make sure she does. Or Andrella will. Andrella had to intervene before I could talk to you.”

Hanna made a face. “There are advantages to being commissioner,” she said.

“It won't be long. Endit,” he said.

•   •   •

Back to her quarters and back into trance, but not for long.

Still rumbling with anger, arguing orders. He is not without ego
, and a big one, too!—flashes like this from Starr sometimes, when he talked about Vickery . . .

“...had no suspicion of secrets when I was on their world, though perhaps they had them; we know these do! This Warrior they took to their craft—you know her cast of thought, I had already brought her to your attention, and now you allow her to go to them—we must bring her back, tell them to go away, tell them if they do not we will fight them—!
”

“—oh, hell,” said Hanna, scrambling to her feet, calling out for a connection to Metra.

Bella said, “What?” at her side and Metra said,
“What!”
from the air.

“We need to distract Kwoort and we need to do it now. He's
insane—”

She stopped, hearing herself, thinking she had used the word too lightly. She amended it: “He's in a rage and working up to aggression—where's Gabriel? When's this meeting we're supposed to have with the Holy Man? Contact Kwoort and tell him we're ready!”

“I
'M NOT
READY
,”
SAID GABRIEL
and Hanna said, “For God's sake, Gabriel, what do you have to do to get
ready?
Pray?”

“For one thing,” he said stiffly.

“Don't you pray all the time, or something?”

“Ideally, just being is prayer,” Gabriel said, “but I've only had glimpses of what that's like.”

“I do not have any idea what you're talking about,” said Hanna.

I don't suppose you would,
Gabriel thought, and simultaneously wondered if she had read the thought and wished he was too kind to have thought it. She didn't seem to have noticed; she was walking purposefully ahead of him toward a starboard docking bay
,
her light slippers making no sound. She had put on something gauzy and pale blue which clung to her admirably, and when she glanced around, the blue of her eyes was vividly dark by comparison. She stopped abruptly, turned around and stared at him. He had hovered in her presence every chance he could get, watching the expert at work, watching with awe, and she had been too busy and too tired to pay attention to him. Sometimes she noticed him and looked puzzled. He was puzzled too—mostly because everyone around her seemed to see her as invulnerable, and he knew she was not. All that fierce attention was focused on him now like a lance of light, and he was the one who felt vulnerable.

She said, “This is not the time to be thinking of me as a woman.”

There didn't seem to be any reply to that. She frowned.
Exquisitely,
Gabriel thought, and then, rather desperately,
Adolescent crush, that's all it is, just an adolescent crush!

“Maybe it is,” said Hanna, eradicating his hope that she was going to stay out of his thoughts. “Try to cure yourself of it, all right? I wish it was raw sexual desire, I can deal with that!”

“How?” said Gabriel, and immediately regretted asking.

“You wouldn't like it. Anyway, I'm not interested. I have all I want—”

She stopped short. Gabriel said, “Another lie?”

“All right. Not all I want.” She glanced over her shoulder, toward the waiting pod. She clearly didn't want to take time to explain, but he saw her make up her mind to do it. “What I
want
is what I had with Mickey's father. But it's so rare that nobody where I come from expects ever to have it. I certainly didn't. And I will never have it again. It almost never happens, and it never happens twice.

“But for now, just for now, I have Starr. I respect him and I'm grateful to him and most of the time I like him and he makes love beautifully. Quite possessively, usually, but that's very exciting in a perverted sort of way,” she said, and Gabriel winced at the cruel crudity of it. “Now you know what I want and what I have. What I am.”

Somebody used Gabriel's mouth to say, “You didn't say anything about love.”

For a moment she was absolutely still. She did not even move until she said, “I don't think I'll have Starr much longer either. I don't know if I want what he's becoming.”

The somebody using Gabriel's mouth said, “What does that have to do with somebody else falling in love with you?”

“Oh. Nothing. Well, do it at your own risk,” she said, and started walking again.

It's time I took some risks,
Gabriel thought with new conviction. She looked back once more. It was a very thoughtful look, and he rejoiced in it as he followed her to the pod.

•   •   •

I
t was a rocky flight. Hanna, who Gabriel thought ought to be paying more attention to what she was doing, instead talked savagely. “If they want us to ‘survive,' they should have waited for better weather over Rowtt!”

“You're the one who insisted on meeting now,” Gabriel pointed out.

“I didn't know it was going to be this bad!” Billowy white clouds had turned dark as they descended and there was lightning, there was wind; the pod shuddered as it neared the surface. “Never mind, Gabriel. We'll go faster than the lightning,” she said blithely, and he wanted to point out that this was impossible but thought it best to keep his mouth shut.

Still, when the hatch slid open, she stood uncertainly at the portal, looking out at the strangest storm Gabriel had ever seen. Afternoon had come but it was so dark that it might have been twilight; hot wind came in hard blasts and thunder was almost continuous, but there was no rain—not yet; there might be some in the black clouds, lit up weirdly by lightning within. The ominous light had a greenish cast.

Hanna muttered something that was lost in thunder, and Gabriel said, “What?”

She raised her voice. “High incidence of low-precipitation electrical storms. That was in one of the reports.”

“I read that.”

“Something to do with the magnetosphere? I don't remember.” She jumped to the ground without bothering to order the ramp down, and he followed.

They were at the place where they had met with Kwoort before, the blocky, ungraceful building they had not entered, fronted by three shallow steps and a stingy terrace made of the same deteriorating concrete.

“It looks deserted,” Gabriel said. Hanna walked quickly toward the door, veering at the strongest bursts of wind. Gabriel managed to resist the urge to put his arm around her, to steady her. She said softly, between stutters of thunder, “Kwoort's here, though. So is somebody else. But it's not the Holy Man, whatever Kwoort says. He lied.”

He started to ask how she knew, then didn't, accepting it.

The door did not open automatically but swung inward at Hanna's tentative push. They stepped into the featureless inside of a cube. There were lights set in the ceiling, dim with grime, and dust on the floor, scuffed with tracks that resolved into footprints. Gabriel turned to close the door and Hanna stopped him with her hand on his. “No. There's been too much confinement done since we got here,” she said obscurely. “Me first and then Arch. His wasn't voluntary. Don't close any doors you don't have to.”

Gabriel shook his head, without a clue to what she meant. He looked down to see her brown hand against his own lighter skin, and he was distracted, lost in the sight. It might be the only time she ever touched him and his mind filled with the moment, the coolness of her skin on his.

She took her hand away and turned to the blank wall opposite the door. There was a slight sound and a section of the wall slid up. They walked through the opening into another gray chamber. Hanna glanced back, but the wall did not shut behind them; instead another panel opened, and Kwoort stood there with a personage behind him. The second figure was deep in the shadowy interior, too far away for Hanna to make out its face.

“I greet you,” said Kwoort. His eyes—all of them—were on Hanna.

“Here are two Holy Men,” he said, “one of my people, one of yours. You and I will leave them to converse.”

“Very well,” Hanna said after a moment. She seemed to have forgotten Gabriel; she had gone still and was looking at Kwoort with a directness that chilled. Gabriel suddenly remembered things he had heard about this woman that had nothing to do with her quick mind, her desirable flesh, or her tears. He wondered if she had managed to obtain a weapon and somehow conceal it.

Another panel opened, and in a moment she was gone with Kwoort without one look back, and Gabriel, feeling especially unholy, faced an alien Holy Man: his strangest dream had come true, and he was alone without any ally except (fittingly) his God.

•   •   •

D
eeper and deeper into a gray warren where there were no birds to sing (
I have heard there are birds on this world
, thought Hanna, though she had seen none), and she opened her perception fully to Kwoort and saw that he thought of growing old, and of growing insane if not holy, and he knew it was happening, that he had become killer only, never breeder again, because the breeding function itself was gone, it was time to think only of killing—

—but it was not quite time, not quite, and he demanded, “How do you choose not to breed?” with the urgency of an implacable force behind it.

She had expected him to rail about telepathy and was completely unprepared for the question. She struggled to make the switch and began slowly, “It has been an easily implemented choice for a thousand summers, though exercised less in places where there is much room—”

Too slowly for Kwoort.

“That is not what I mean! We do not have room! And we do not have a choice!” he said, and she caught a momentary flash from his mind, not an image of Soldiers but of another species that lived on this world—finger-sized, dead white, hairless and blind—it lived underground, they were crowded and scrambling over one another, they turned on each other savagely and tore with sharp teeth and ate, ate—

Hanna stumbled as if someone had hit her. Kwoort moved faster, leading her on floors slanting downward, taking her deeper through gray rooms as if in fear of pursuit or—
no
—of being overheard.

H'ana!

She fastened on the call:
Joseph? Bella!
—they were monitoring her, and though Gabriel did not know it, Dema and Arch watched him.

Bella, steady, practical:
Did you know you have gone underground?

I don't want to be underground!

I can see why!
—Bella had caught her vision of tiny cannibals, too.
The captain's ordered a fix on your position. She'll come get you, if she has to.

“Kwoort Commander,” Hanna said, “stop, take me back!” She had kept track of their turns for the first three or four but at the tenth or twelfth change of direction this maze had defeated her, though now they were in a level corridor that ran straight, straight, and long, to a vanishing point in darkness, tracks of wheels showing in the dust.

The cannibalistic image had unnerved her. For the first time she was almost afraid of Kwoort. She did not know how to fight him if it came to that; she did not know his anatomy. The eyes would be vulnerable but what else, surely the genitalia, if she kicked between his legs it would hurt—

Maybe
, said Joseph, who had read the physiologists' reports,
but the organs are usually retracted, the attack might be ineffective—

Contact with Bella and Joseph had calmed her. She stopped; she would not go any farther. She said, “Kwoort Commander!” and almost said
You are angry with me
, but aloud made it a question: “Kwoort Commander, are you angry with me?”

The translator chirped. There was no match for
angry.
But Hanna had no doubt of what he felt.

He could not take her any farther without seizing her and dragging her, and she saw that he thought about doing it, but he did stop, and turned and said “Speak to me of breeding!” with fury.

Instead she said, “First tell me how the misunderstanding came about, that my historian was briefly made prisoner—”

“The lower ranks of Soldiers are sometimes inattentive. These were inattentive. They have been disciplined,” said Kwoort.

The same lie.

“Answer my question!” Kwoort said. Hanna had known enough human warriors to know the tone of command even filtered through a translator. She was going to have to answer, and there was no reason not to tell the truth. But,
Something I didn't expect
, she said to Joseph and Bella, feeling their tension—or maybe they only reflected hers.
He's angry about more than telepathy. Find out what the other humans on Battleground were doing, who they were talking to, what they were studying, what else he might have found out about us.

That had to be it, she thought. Kwoort had learned about something besides telepathy, and was outraged.

The two of them at least had stopped and were standing still in that gray corridor. Hanna did not know where it went, but she knew she did not want to go there, not without knowing what waited.

“Please, Kwoort Commander,” she said. “There were students of the body here only a little while ago, and if they return they will answer your questions better than I can. Can we come to an agreement? Can you promise they will be safe from harm? That you will not try to keep them, as you tried to keep our historian? If you can promise those things they will tell you anything you want to know.”

The eyes were all open and all yellowish-gray; they seemed to glow in the dim space. There was a flash of bright blue, out of place. The ring on her hand, perversely, had decided to act as if it were alive. This time Kwoort paid no attention. She could feel his effort to master emotion and with it his awareness that those emotions—for which she thought he had no words—were ever stronger and someday soon would go beyond control.

But the day had not come yet. The breathing channels at his neck pulsed more slowly. There was a fractional relaxation of all his body.

She almost whispered, “I would like to return to my companion, the human holy man. He is a gentle being unused to communicating with nonhumans, and I do not want to leave him alone in this strange place for long—”

—just as Bella told her, tension in the thought,
Try to get back to Gabriel, there could be a problem with His Most Exalted Madness or whatever he is—

Kwoort turned abruptly back the way they had come. Hanna followed as quickly as she could. Noting, as she went, that “gentle” had not translated.

•   •   •

G
abriel's first impression was that this being—this person, he reminded himself—was in constant motion. The Holy Man was robed, and Gabriel's next crazy thought was
Is there some significance to ceremonial robing among sentient bipeds, yeah, they all do it, I think we all do it.
The robe was made of some crinkly off-yellow fabric with an iridescence to it
sort of like that clingy silvery thing Hanna wore the other day oh God I shouldn't think of that—
And he thought:
Where'd the expert go when I need her?