Dark Foundations (38 page)

As the being moved its head around as if to allow them a better view, a narrow neck could be seen.

The view zoomed out to show Betafor sitting on her haunches rather like a begging dog or a kangaroo might do. Merral found it hard to make any immediate sense of her torso, but noted thin arms with long fingers and a tail that tapered away from her body to a fine point. In an instant he saw that she wore a waistcoat or sleeveless jacket made from some heavy, but smooth-textured cloth.
It
wears clothes!

“Are you a Krallen?” Merral asked, seeing both differences and similarities to the beings he had seen on the ship.

The creature lifted its head with a mechanical smoothness and stared at him. “Krallen? No. I am . . . puzzled how you know their name. No, I am not.” The tone was almost agitated.

Merral glimpsed bare rock behind the creature and the thought came to him that the setting was perhaps a cave.

“If I were a Krallen, I would not have . . . the brains to find you. If I were a Krallen, I would have killed Sarudar Azeras.”

Merral saw the lips move, the one soft feature on an otherwise unyielding face. The creature's handling of Communal was good. There was a noticeable deliberateness and precision to the phrasing. Still struggling as to whether he should treat Betafor as a machine or a person, Merral had a sudden insight that there was more to this than grammar.
All our dealings are founded on whether we relate to each other as things or beings.

“All of you, learn this. We, the Allenix, came first. . . . We were made by men in . . . the earliest days of the Freeborn.” The creature's tone was firm, almost harsh. “We were created as watchers, translators, and negotiators. We were given intelligence and language so that we might serve and we have developed since. The Krallen came after us. They were modeled on us, but were made to be killers. They are stupid. They do not speak—they have only hatred and cunning. We loathe them.”

Curiously, it was that last phrase,
we loathe them,
that made Merral's mind up that he was dealing with a person. There was such a sense of outrage behind it that he felt that what he had said had been taken as an insult.
And if you can feel insulted
,
you are surely a person
.

Betafor moved toward whatever was imaging her. “Look at me,” she said, extending her forelimbs to show long, rounded, nail-less fingers. “Do I have metal alloy nails to claw flesh? Do I have sharpened fangs that can tear off limbs?” The creature moved her head forward on her long neck, opened her mouth and tilted it several ways, exposing only tiny, smooth, flat-topped teeth behind her strangely broad and flexible lips. “Do I have a toughened skin to protect me in battle?” She tilted upright, exposing the top of her chest through a gap in the fabric jacket. Although her skin was marked out by the same faint lines Merral had seen in the Krallen, it was very different. While they were covered mostly in semirigid tiles that gave their bodies an angular form, she was wrapped with softer tiles that gave her a rounder shape.

Her eyes opened and shut in a sort of leisurely blink. “Do I look like a killing machine?”

“No.”
I do hope I'm right
. The chief emotion she aroused in him was curiosity, not fear.

“Good. I am an Allenix, not a Krallen. Now let us proceed. Will you come and help?”

“Show us this man,” said Vero.

“Ah, Verofaza, the sentinel. We too were made to be sentinels.”

Merral caught his friend's look of alarm.
How much does this creature know and if she knows so much, what does this say about our vulnerability?

There was a pause.

“As you wish.” The screen went blank and a few moments later an image of a man lying on some sort of bed appeared. His face was bearded and gaunt, and framed by long, matted black hair. A thin sheet covered his chest and legs and around his neck was some sort of medical dressing. His eyes were closed and his breathing was shallow and rapid.

“Not in good shape,” Vero muttered.

The image shifted to Betafor.

“Will you come?”

In the silence that followed Lloyd and Vero turned to Merral.

They expect me to make the decision
. “Betafor,” he said slowly, “I want an assurance there will be no tricks.”

“I promise. And I trust there must be no tricks from you.”

“There will be none. We do not use tricks.”

He realized that he had chosen
. So help me, God.
“Very well. I will do my best to be there. I cannot speak for the others. They must make their choice.”

“Good. I will see you later today.”

The screen went blank.

“I meant what I said.” Merral's quiet words seemed to echo in the silence that followed. “I will go alone. I feel it is a risk that must be taken. We have prayed for help and I believe this may be it.”

“You don't go anywhere without me, sir.” Lloyd tapped his gun. “And some hardware.”

Vero stared at the diary as if it gave an answer. “I will come too. I have my misgivings, but I too think this is the answer to our prayers.”

“Who do we take as doctor? Felix Azhadi?”

Vero shook his head. “No, he's busy and he's FDF. I want to put clear water between us and them on this.”

“‘Clear water'?”

“Distance. The FDF is now too big to keep this quiet. Leave it to me. I'll call Perena. In the meantime, better get some sleep. Tomorrow may be a long day.”

“You realize, of course,” Perena said at Isterrane airport the following morning, “that Ilakuma is one of the wettest parts of this planet?”

Merral stared at the large image that Lloyd held up against the fuselage of the
Nesta Lamaine
, seeing confirmation of her statement in the lurid green expanses of jungle and the white meshwork of foaming rivers.

“And that by seven tonight there will almost certainly be torrential rain? And that the Eligotal Highlands are one of the roughest areas on the planet? If I had to hide a ferry craft or a base, it's a place I would consider. There are cavities and holes here you could conceal a fleet in.”

“Are you saying there may be some rough flying?” Vero asked, his face registering unease.

A look of amused sympathy appeared on Perena's face. “Only at the end. It'll be a four-hour flight. I'm staying within the atmosphere and taking it slow. But the seating that we have fitted into the hold is rather basic and doesn't absorb motion. So as a precaution, I suggest you just don't eat.”

She turned to the stocky lady with dark brown hair who stood by Merral. “Sorry, Arabella, I should have warned you. Vero here doesn't travel well.”

A smile spread across the broad face of Dr. Arabella Huangho. “I'll see what I can find in my bag. Infections and tropical diseases are my speciality but I may be able to help here. Tablet, injection, or suppository, Sentinel Enand? Or just a very large bag?”

Relieved that the newcomer seemed to be fitting in, Merral noticed Anya grinning and his heart gave a turn.
For all my resolve,
I am still terribly fond of her.
For the hundredth time he cursed his public renunciation of relationships.
How unspeakably stupid to have taken a vow that, it now turns out, has been witnessed by almost the entire planet! Had I not chosen that route, I might, by now, have ended things with Isabella and been free to pursue my heart's desire. “You will pay
a price for today's words,” the envoy said. Today, seeing Anya, I sense something of that cost.

There was a gesture from the cockpit window.

“Deanna is summoning us,” Perena said. “Time to go.” She shook her head at Lloyd as he picked up a very large and evidently heavy bag whose fabric bulged around a number of ominous looking tubes. “And Sergeant Enomoto, can you keep the safety catches on?”

“Aye, aye, Captain.”

Perena and Merral were the last left outside. Perena stood back and made what was clearly a last visual check.

“So here we are again, Captain,” Merral said. “A new mission.”

“Just so,” came the somber reply. “I've studied the recording of your conversation. I think you made the right decision. It may be an answer to our prayers, but I'm uneasy. I just think . . .”

“What?”

“There's something not right about this. Machine or not, something doesn't ring true.”

“If it's a trap, we're terribly vulnerable.”

“Yes. I wondered about putting a drone ship down first, but we don't have the time.”

“Perena, are you scared?”

“Scared?” Perena's smile was unfathomable. “We talked about this before. There are many types of fear. Fear of failure, fear of not doing what is right, fear of dying. Are these all the same thing?”

“Good question. And what concerns you today?”

“Today? My primary concern is that none of us be killed. My secondary concern is about any loss or damage to the ship.” She paused and when she spoke again she seemed to speak from a vast distance. “Or perhaps, more accurately, I'm most scared about the enemy achieving either of those things cheaply.”

“Cheaply?”

“Merral, by all accounts, war will soon be upon us. We have limited resources. Speaking for myself, if I must lose my ship or my life, I would prefer to do so where it counts most.” She ran a hand through her cropped hair.

“I see.”

“Well then, let's fly.”

As they flew south at high subsonic speed, Perena explained her strategy to Merral. On arrival at Ilakuma, they would circle high over the island for some time looking and listening for anything untoward. If there were no problems, she would then make a low, ground-hugging approach to the landing zone where she would hover long enough for Lloyd to leap out before taking off again. Only when Lloyd had given the all-clear would there be a full landing.

“One other thing,” Perena said. “It's slightly unusual—actually it's unparalleled. As we go to land, I'm going to ask everyone who can get to a window to keep a watch for anything that might be an attack.”

“Such as?”

“Bright lights, flashes, smoke trails from missiles. If you see anything, do two things: first, yell with directions—for instance, ‘Flash at two o'clock.'”

“And second?” Merral asked.

There was a flicker of a smile. “Pray very hard.”

Four hours out of Isterrane, Ilakuma came into view. The island was an impossibly jagged massif rising up out of a brilliant aquamarine sea. It looked as if it had been shattered with a continent-sized hammer to form a landscape dominated by sharp slivers of stone lying at every conceivable angle. Between the towering blades and needles of rock lay valleys in whose depths fine creamy lines of turbulent streams ran before finally reaching the sea, where they disgorged brown plumes of sediment. Clinging to this brutal stone framework was the dense greenness of the new jungle. From its knife-bladed summits high clouds blossomed.