Dirge (26 page)

Among the thranx the reaction was one of subdued fury. Arising as they did from an ancient line that had succeeded partly by venerating a single egg-laying queen, they were especially sensitive to any violation of the reproductive system. What the Pitar had done to and with human females sent a ripple of rage through every hive. Even as the humans methodically assembled a vast force to attack the Twin Worlds, vexatious debate seethed among the thranx on how best to respond to the unimaginable barbarity.

“It does not involve us.”

Sprawled atop a convenient log, Wirmbatusek regarded the lake. It was a small body of water surrounded by dense tropical forest, a refuge high in the mountains of Lombok. Nearby, Asperveden was waltzing with a birdwing butterfly, letting it flutter from one truhand to another. Perhaps the huge, iridescent green ornithop recognized a distant alien cousin. More likely it just found the thranx’s chitinous digits a convenient place to rest.

“Of course it involves us.”

Raising a truhand, Asperveden examined the exquisite creature. Compound eye met compound eye. Beautiful, the attaché mused. What the butterfly felt was not recorded. Eventually it tired of the game and flew off, soaring up into the tall vine-draped hardwoods, a pair of thin emerald slabs throwing back the sun.

Wirmbatusek turned his head and antennae in the direction of his friend and coworker. “Keeping a constant watch on the AAnn is enough to worry about. Why would the Grand Council choose to weaken our own defenses to support a massive effort to punish a race that has done nothing to us?”

Exhibiting uncharacteristic daring, Asperveden walked forward until all four trulegs were in the water. Astonished at his own boldness, he stood and watched as the tepid, algae-stained green liquid swirled gently around his limbs. Where he was standing the lake was perhaps ten centimeters deep.

Wirmbatusek’s antennae twitched nervously. “Are you insane? Get out of there! Suppose the soil is soft and you begin to sink? Don’t expect me to pull you out.”

The slightly smaller thranx gestured for his companion to be calm. “Have no fear. The surface underfoot is firm and unyielding. These Pitar have violated every accepted norm of civilized behavior.”

“No one disputes that.” Wirmbatusek watched a line of ants marching along the base of the log. To a single ant, the insectoid thranx might well have been a vision of God. “No one disagrees with the humans’ urge to seek revenge. We would doubtless react similarly, albeit less noisily, if the barbarity had been visited upon us. But it was not. What happened on Argus Five does not concern us.”

“Why not? Because only mammals died? Because only human females were dishonored?”

“It is too facile to say that we should help the humans.” Sliding off the log, Wirmbatusek settled himself on his trulegs. Using all four hands he daintily picked bits of bark and other debris from his gleaming blue-green exoskeleton and the thorax pouch that hung from his second major body segment. “First, they have not asked us, or any other species, for assistance. Next, it is not incumbent on the thranx to aid them because there is no treaty or agreement between our two races particularizing any such action. There are no reasons for us to become involved and many why we should keep our distance. For one thing, like so much else about them the martial capability of these Pitar is unknown. We could end up having allied ourselves with the losing side.” He flicked a fallen leaf from his abdomen.

“I would not bet against the humans in a war.” Finally starting to grow uneasy at the feel of water lapping around his legs, Asperveden carefully backed out of the shallows.

“Nor would I, but neither would I choose to gamble with the neutrality that preserves our civilization unscathed. War is not a lark, and gambling on it not entertainment.”

One foot at a time, Asperveden shook water from his impermeable chitin. “The estimable Desvendapur would have much to say about this situation.”

“No doubt, if he was living. I wish I could have seen him perform. To my knowledge none of his poetry dealt with war, despite the gravity of his clan and family history.” The larger thranx followed a pair of hornbills as they glided across the lake. “What makes you think the humans would accept our help even if it were to be offered? A great many of them despise us and cannot even stand to be in our presence. Those of us here and at the Amazon hive are isolated from such individual conflicts.”

“I realize that our relations are still developing.” Feeling the first pangs of morning hunger, Asperveden began to remove food from his own pouch. “I am not naïve. Much work remains to be done to bring our two peoples together to the point where trust is accepted instead of debated, and genuine friendship is not an isolated occurrence.” Biting into a starch loaf with all four opposing jaws, he chewed reflectively. “This conflict would be a perfect opportunity to do just that.”

Approaching his friend, Wirmbatusek waited to be offered food, withholding his own offering until the smaller thranx made the appropriate gesture. “More than strategic concerns are involved in this. As many thranx are suspicious of the humans as they are of us. It is hard enough to arrange for meetings, for cultural exchanges, for agreements on minor matters. An alliance that includes provisions for mutual defense lies far in the future.”

“It need not require a formal association.” Asperveden executed the appropriate hand gestures, following which his friend responded in kind. They exchanged food. “The arrangement could be temporary, and understood as such by both sides. Assistance in time of and solely for the duration of conflict, superseding all current agreements, after which the previous status is resumed.”

Wirmbatusek considered. “I am envisioning several fully armed hive warships emerging from space-plus at safe distance beyond the orbit of this world’s moon. I am envisioning the human reaction. I am not sanguine about what I am seeing.”

“Hive ships need not enter this system. A mutual rendezvous point elsewhere could be agreed upon.” Asperveden refused to acknowledge the impossibility of his hypothetical proposal. “The humans would be grateful. It would advance our relationship and improve our mutual prospects immeasurably.”

Swallowing, Wirmbatusek began to hunt in his pouch for the spiral-spouted drink bottle. “If we are victorious. If the Pitar should win, we would have acquired their enmity for nothing.”

“Not true,” Asperveden argued. “We would still have gained the gratitude of the humans.”

“Would we?” Slipping the decorated drinking tube between his jaws, the larger worker began to sip sugary, nutritious liquid. “You ascribe to humans a quality of gratefulness I have yet to see demonstrated.” He passed the bottle over. “First I would like to see one invite me into its home without an expression of disgust on its face. Then I might consider rendering it some assistance. If we remain neutral we are detached in the eyes of Pitar and human alike. We risk nothing. That is what the Quillp, and the Unop-Patha, and even the AAnn are doing. Why should we do any differently?”

Asperveden contemplated the tranquil lake, the intriguingly different indigenous wildlife, the warm, clear, morning air, and felt himself troubled. “I do not know. Perhaps because we are better than they?”

Wirmbatusek chose to comment via a sequence of circumspect clicks. “Anything else?”

“Nothing that could be construed as conclusive. Only that, unlike many who count themselves true progeny of the First Queen, I happen to
like
humans.”

“So do I,” Wirmbatusek confessed freely. “But that does not mean I am ready to march out of the hive to sacrifice limb and life alongside them.”

18

T
he armada was unlike anything that humankind, or for that matter any of the other species that happened to dwell in that same portion of the Arm, had seen before. Less what was necessary to protect and defend Earth and its other colonies, every armed vessel propelled by a KK-drive was assigned a position and time to rendezvous on the outskirts of the Dominion. It was believed that the Pitar would meet them there, somewhere in the vicinity of their system’s twelfth and outermost world. It was also conceded that Pitarian vessels ranging far and wide would at least make an attempt to assault one or more of the human populated worlds, if only to divert attention from their own.

Neither threat materialized. Human strategists were perplexed. The xenologists who had studied the Pitar were not.

Levi was one of those who was not. Others like him had been assigned to the armada, one to a ship so that in the event of catastrophe all the members of his group and the valuable knowledge they represented could not be lost in a single blow. If not the fleetest of mind or the most experienced member of the team that had studied the Pitar since first contact, he was acknowledged the senior member of the group. His opinion was solicited and respected. He found himself on the
Wellington
, seconded to the general staff.

It was subsequent to a meeting where the plan of first attack was being finalized that he found himself, thoroughly preoccupied with the critical matters at hand, strolling aimlessly through the great ship. As big as anything mobile that mankind had yet put in space, the
Wellington
was an impressive achievement. Four rings of armaments located in evenly spaced weapons blisters girdled the main body of the dreadnought. The KK-drive generating fan that spread out before it and pulled it through space-plus was the size of a small town. Between fan, hydrogen spark plug, and the main body of the ship were five defensive-screen generators. No more powerful or fearsome ship cruised the cosmos. It was a supreme example of contemporary human technology, an other-than-light vessel representing a confluence of all that human civilization had thus far accomplished.

That it was designed expressly to blow things up placed it squarely in the mainstream of human technological achievement.

Meyer Levi was a civilian attached to a military expedition. He was an old man who ought to have been reclining in a soft chair in a library, fronted by a tridee screen and surrounded by real books, a hot drink steaming on a nearby table, and a rumpled dog lying at his feet. Instead he found himself inconceivably far from home and anything akin to such imaginary comforts.

Despite the absence on the system’s outer fringes of any armed confrontation, no one believed that the Pitar were simply going to allow the invading humans to put punishing landing parties down on the surface of the Twin Worlds unopposed. The timing and manner of their resistance was yet to be determined. But one by one, the warships of Earth and its colonies had emerged from space-plus into Pitarian space, uncontested and unchallenged. Now fully assembled in normal space, the armada was ready to take the next step of moving toward the system’s sun and positioning itself around the Twin Worlds.

Nor had the Pitar sent ships to attack Earth itself or any of its more lightly defended colonies. There had been no reaction at all from the tall, elegant humanoids. Their representatives on Earth and elsewhere had died fighting, refusing to suffer imprisonment. All remaining Pitar, the entire population, was on their two homeworlds, presumably cognizant of and awaiting the arrival of a vast assemblage of ships crewed by tens of thousands of angry, revenge-minded humans.

What were they overlooking? Levi found himself wondering. Surely the Pitar were going to resist, were not going to commit racial suicide. But that was essentially what their isolated representatives on Earth had done. Did the entire species have a death wish that humankind had been put in the position of inadvertently satisfying?

The armada was in motion, a great swath of ships and science, when the answer came to him. Rushing as fast as his aged legs would carry him, he hurried toward the bridge. In the vastness of the great ship he lost his way several times, despite the instructions available to him in each lift.

When he finally succeeded in finding his way to the central, shielded core of the
Wellington
, he had to identify himself several times before he could gain access to Fouad. She was seated in the captain’s command chair, in charge of the ship but not the strategy it would execute. That was the province of the group of general officers seated off to one side, facing one another across a wide, oval table from which projected upward a perfect three-dimensional portrait of the Pitarian system. A cloud of glowing pinpoints was moving toward the sun at its center, each pinpoint a ship. Levi was put in mind of midges attacking a dog.

“Hello, Mr. Levi.” Her musician’s hands rested on controls; her trained soprano voice commanded more destructive power than humankind had ignorantly unleashed upon itself since the beginning of its struggling civilization. “Feeling well?”

“Tired,” he told her. “Tired, and worried.”

“We’re all worried,” she replied. Before her hovered a tridimensional image similar to the one being closely scrutinized by the general staff, only somewhat reduced in scale. “Everyone is waiting for something to happen.”

“What will you do if the Pitar do not respond?” Fascinated as always by technology he did not understand, Levi stared at the perfect, hovering representation of the space in which the ship was moving.

“Place ourselves in orbit around the first of the Twin Worlds. Deliver the ultimatum drawn up by the world council.” She shrugged without smiling. “React to their reaction. If they continue to do nothing, the first landing parties will go down. These will be backed by heavy armor and orbital firepower. Once our forces have acquired a beachhead on the surface the choices remaining to the Pitar will be considerably reduced. Basically, they’ll have to decide whether to opt for capitulation or seppuku. After securing the outer of the Twin Worlds, the armada will move on to the second and hopefully repeat the process.”

Levi nodded. “What happens if they do submit without a fight?”

Fouad looked at him closely. “Is that what you think is going to happen?”

“No, but at this point the possibility cannot be entirely discounted.”

She turned away from him, back to the glowing, in-depth representation. “That’s not my department. I’ll do what the general staff tells me to do. They in turn have their orders from the world council. All I know is that there’s a predetermined sequence of actions whose degree of reaction is calibrated according to how the Pitar respond.” Her jawline firmed. “To one extent or another, they are to be punished for what they did on Treetrunk.”

“You asked me what I thought was going to happen.” Levi watched her expectantly.

The captain’s interest was piqued. “You have an idea?”

“I think so. You know, among the original Twelve Tribes the Levites were the scholars. I do not feel like I belong here, on a warship, preparing to engage in mass destruction.”

“Your unhappiness is noted,” she replied curtly. “Tell me what you think.”

“I’ve studied the Pitar ever since they first arrived on Earth aboard the
Chagos
.”

“I know that.” Her tone was impatient. “Get to the point, old man. In case you haven’t noticed, there’s an invasion in progress.”

“Sorry. There are a number of ways I could put it scientifically, but I see no need to couch an opinion in complex systematic jargon. Suffice to say that the Pitar are homebodies.”

“They don’t colonize. They told us that from the first.” Fouad tried to divide her attention between the clustered general staff, the view tridee before her and its accompanying heads-up displays, and the lugubrious sage standing next to her seat. “It was one of the reasons their complicity in the massacre was so hard for so many to accept.”

“They’re not just homebodies. They’re fanatical about the Twin Worlds. Except for occasional excursions to places like Earth and Hivehom, and deviate adventures such as Treetrunk, they do not leave their home system. Not only are they not colonizers, they are not big on straightforward exploration. They simply do not like to leave home.”

“Which means what? You do have a point, don’t you?”

“I think so. What I am trying to say is that all the energy, and effort, and advanced technological development we have put into spreading ourselves outward, they have focused inward.”

She frowned and idly adjusted the neural jack above her left ear that allowed her direct communication with the rest of the armada, her own staff, and the
Wellington
’s intelligence center. “So you’re saying that…?”

A little anxious himself now, Levi interrupted her in order to state the thought. “Everything we have put into offense, they may have concentrated on defense.”

It was not long thereafter that the
Wellington
was rocked by explosion and near catastrophe, and the armada found itself fully and desperately engaged.

Extending in their respective orbits outward from Pitar’s star were three worlds of various mien, none suitable for permanent habitation. Then the closely aligned planets numbered four and five, the Twin Worlds of the Pitarian Dominion. Between the fifth planet and the sixth, which happened also to be the first of four gas giants, was not one but two asteroid belts. While one lay in the normal plane of the ecliptic, the second occupied an orbit almost perpendicular to the first. Among this mass of planetary debris were a good many planetoidal objects of considerable size.

Every one of which had been transformed by the Pitar into an armed and shielded attack-and-support station.

In those first lunatic moments frantic commands ricocheted between ships at the speed of light. Humans and their machines slipped instantly into battle mode, each functioning efficiently and effectively. In this it was difficult to say who had the greater advantage. Machines offered speed and reliability, humans the ability to improvise in response to the unexpected. Organic and inorganic had spent several hundred years evolving in tandem to perfect the art of combat.

On the other hand, in spite of the unprecedented ferocity of the human assault and despite all their racial introspection and paranoia, the Pitar did not fold up and slink quietly back to their homeworlds.

Interstellar space is unimaginably vast. Even between planets there is room enough to lose a thousand ships. But the physics that can follow the tracks of tiny comets and minuscule asteroids are also adept at locating the operational drives designed to push vessels through space-plus. And a vessel that is propelled by anything less takes months to journey from one planetary body to another.

So while humans and Pitar swam in inky nothingness, their respective machines utilized far more sensitive instruments than eyes and ears to plot each other’s courses. Every time a ship of the armada attempted to pass within the orbits of the intersecting asteroid belts it found itself confronted by two or more Pitarian warcraft. Each human vessel was parsecs from home while support for the defending ships was, astronomically speaking, an eye blink away.

And the Pitar were capable. Avoiding confrontation wherever possible, they concentrated exclusively on countering any approach to the Twin Worlds. Initially, fear of active counterattack dominated much of the general staff’s strategic thinking. As the days became weeks and the weeks months it became clear that Pitarian tactics included such thrusts only insofar as they related to their defense. No attempt was made, even by a single suicidal ship, to threaten Earth or any of the colony worlds. Everything the Pitar had, every armed vessel they could throw into the conflict, remained close to home. Not one ventured beyond the Pitarian heliosphere.

The attacking humans tried everything. When a deliberate concentration of forces in one place was met by an energetic and equivalent Pitarian response, the battle planners went to the opposite extreme by suggesting an attempted englobement of one of the Twin Worlds. Reacting aggressively and quickly, the Pitar promptly dispersed their forces in precisely the most opportune fashion to counter the widespread assault. Probes of sectors presumed weak were beaten back by Pitarian forces of unexpected strength.

Missiles launched at the fifth world were detected, tracked, intercepted and destroyed. The residents of the Dominion suffered no casualties as a result of the invasion of their system. Requests to parley were met with strident animosity. It became clear that while humans had originally taken an immediate liking to the Pitar, the humanoid aliens felt very differently about their smaller mammalian counterparts. This did not take the form of outright loathing: The Pitar were too courtly for that. It was more on the order of a general contempt for the human species as a whole. The Pitar would not talk, would not discuss any sort of armistice with the lowly humans, until every last ship of the armada had left the sacred system of the Twin Worlds.

It didn’t matter, since they refused to apologize for what they had done on Treetrunk or discuss handing over those responsible. One Pitar spoke for all, and all Pitar spoke for one. Admitting no guilt, they therefore dispersed it among themselves and repeatedly commanded the disgusting, detestable invading beings to depart, as their very presence constituted a corruption in the sight of the hallowed Dominion.

Their attitude helped Levi and his colleagues to unravel the rationale behind many prior enigmas: why no embassy had been allowed to open on either of the Twin Worlds, for example, and why visits to the Dominion had been prohibited. It had nothing to do with racial shyness or reticence. The Pitar were not coy—they were overbearing. Nasty, uncouth humans could not be allowed to defile the purity of the homeworlds.

To what end their plundering force had removed the reproductive organs of thousands of human females from Treetrunk continued to remain a mystery. Here it was left to an admixture of Levi’s people and researching biologists to speculate on possible reasons. Many were put forth, some fantastic, not a few revolting. Among the facts that were assembled in the ongoing attempt to build an explanation was the realization that from the moment the Pitar had been contacted until the day when the armada had emerged from space-plus on the outskirts of the Dominion, no one had ever seen a Pitarian child.