Posleen War: Sidestories The Tuloriad (36 page)

“They—most of them, anyway—wish to acquaint the People of the Ships with their belief in a superior being, one they believe created the universe and all the life within it. I think, by the way, that their message is a practical false one, but a philosophical truth. I also think that hearing that message just might be to the benefit of your people, Tulo, Lord of Clan Sten.”

“You said, 'most of them,' Indowy. What do the others want?”

“Tulo, there are too many variants to the basic message to relate. Suffice to say that some among their party have a religion—that's the term the humans use—very similar to the ancestor reverence practiced by the Posleen, that others believe in more than one superior being, that still others do not believe in a superior being at all, but do believe that each sentient being has a soul which returns to life again and again until it has finally learned all it needs to learn to cease returning to life.”

“And why do the humans seek to bring us these conflicting messages?” Tulo asked.

Aelool didn't answer, but looked directly at Dwyer.

“In part,” the Jesuit said, “for the good of your souls . . . and ours . . . in part for the peace of the galaxy.”

“I cannot and will not order any of my people to believe in and join your religions,” Tulo said, after some hours of negotiations. “I cannot and will not at this time commit to an alliance with the humans, even against the never-sufficiently-to-be-damned Darhel. I can offer your humans, Father Dwyer, the chance to speak to my people and to persuade them if they can. I will even provide kessentai to escort and provide safe conduct. Further, however, I cannot go. ”

Dwyer nodded. It was reasonable. No, he thought, it's more than reasonable. Who would have assumed that the great Tulo'stenaloor, 'murderer on a planetary scale,' could, in fact, be such a reasonable creature. The priest looked 'up,' so to speak, even though 'up' was all around him, and thought, too, Lord, Your ways, however I may try to understand them, are beyond my ken. Which does not mean I won't keep asking for an explanation, mind You.

Posleen Prime

“The humans will be coming down,” Tulo said. Most of his group of close advisors trusted his judgment in this. Others were more skeptical. One, at least, Goloswin, was simply fearful.

“Must we let them among us, Tulo? Bringing their alien philosophies? Are you sure they mean us no harm?”

Tulo'stenaloor sighed. "I'm as sure as I can be. I'm not quite as sure what their reaction would be if I refused them permission. It might be . . . very bad. Their leader, a sort of Rememberer, seemed like a very reasonable being but, like the rest of you, I've met human duplicity before.

“Still,” Tulo continued, “I see no reason to simply trust them. Essone?”

“Yes, Lord,” answered that staff officer, a replacement for the one lost and presumed eaten on Hemaleen V.

“I want you to make a list of those among our kessentai who are most reliable and also most reasonable. I've told the humans I will give them escorts to ensure their safety. I want those to be escorts who will observe and report, as well.”

“I'll make the arrangements, Lord,” the Essone answered.

Home had the wanderers come, home to the planet of the People

And yet home, once left, ceases ever to be the same home again.

—The Tuloriad, Na'agastenalooren

Anno Domini 2024

Posleen Prime

Finba'anaga took a certain justifiable pride in the part he had played in reconstructing Posleen civilization, such as it was. Still, it was not an unlimited pride. He knew, or example, that the old religion he had recreated was, at best, partial and incomplete—“about one molecule deep,” as he sometimes phrased it. He suspected that, so long as there were normals and cosslain, there could be no going back to the true old ways. Even so, what they had—a city, a civic life, an economy—they had regained in goodly part through his own efforts and insights.

Nor did Finba have any strong feelings against the humans. After all, he'd never fought them, personally. Then, too, there was a certain, not entirely unjustifiable, fear of them. From everything he'd learned, they were simply dangerous, too dangerous to provoke.

For that reason, he could see, too, how Tulo'stenaloor might feel the need to acquiesce in the humans' frankly bizarre request to spread word of their equally bizarre 'religions.' He wasn't even particularly worried about it. What appeal, after all, could an alien god have to his own people?

And then he saw the being he waited for, the interesting one. Possibly even the most dangerous one. Guanamarioch.

Only the two junior Posleen were armed, Querida with her ancient boma blade strapped to her side and Frederico with his monomolecular halberd carried in his claws. Along with a small crowd of others, the three of them—Guano, Frederico, and Querida—debarked from the pinnace to air that should have felt like home yet did not. Neither Querida nor her son, both having been born on Earth, really felt that anyplace but Earth could be home, though Posleden was still better. Guano, though born on a different planet, still had spent so much of his life on Earth that it—barring only the never-sufficiently-to-be-damned jungle—seemed more like home than anyplace else.

The only homelike thing about Posleen prime, the presence of a majority population of his own people, was disconcerting to Frederico and Querida precisely because they had never been around any Posleen but each other and Guano. Oh, yes, Querida had been raised in a breeding pen by a bughouse nuts kessentai who sold his progeny to humans for the bounty on their heads, but of this she had little memory. For Frederico, on the other hand, he'd never even seen a Posleen outside of his own, immediate, family. (His father had made very sure that the boy never saw any of the stuffed heads some people kept on their walls.)

“Is this what the world you were born on was like, Dad?” Frederico asked as the trio ambled along the clay-topped road that led from the pinnace's landing point to the city gate.

“Not really, son,” the minister answered. “This is much too peaceful for close resemblance. The world I was born on was already sliding into orna'adar by the time I was taken out of the breeding pens. That world was hot. This one is cooler. The gravity here feels lighter, too, and the sun's a better color.”

“It's weird to me,” Frederico said. “I've never been around any others of the People besides you and mom. I don't know if I can trust them.”

“Christian charity would tell you to trust them, son,” Guano said. “But I know my own people and I'd advise you not to trust them until you know them a lot better.”

A couple of humans in white shirts with black ties passed by Finba'anaga, folding bycicles slung across their backs. He paid them no mind, though one of the waiting kessentai soon took them in tow. Rather, Finba kept his concentration firmly fixed on the trio of Posleen.

Tulo'stenaloor hadn't specifically ordered an escort for the Posleen, perhaps on the theory that they would be in no particular danger from the others of the People.

Which does not mean, Finba thought, that we are in no danger from them. Which is why I am here.

Finba waited until the small crowd from the humans' ship's pinnace had begun to disperse before walking over and introducing himself. Crossing his arms in front of his chest and making a slight bow, Finba said, “I am Finba'anaga, lately of the Clan of Sten, servant to Tulo'stenaloor and high acolyte in the Way of Remembrance.”

Guano repeated the gesture. “Guanamarioch, of the . . . the Clans of the Baptists and the Episcopals, in the service of our Lord,” he said. Guano's head dipped right and then left. “My eson'antai, Frederico, and my wife, Querida. Are you assigned as our escort?”

Finba understood eson'antai, of course. In High Posleen it meant, approximately, “prized lineal descendant.” The term “wife” was new to him, however. He inquired.

“Traditionally, we mate with only one,” Guano answered, “and we mate for life. Under the pressure of population imbalance, this is changing, for some. Beyond that, it is hard to explain. A wife is . . . well . . . in human terms, they having two sexes and one of those giving live birth, a wife is the bearer of the young. It is the husband's task to support the wife in her major task. She, because of the time and care she must devote to bearing and raising the young is uniquely valuable, in a way that a cosslain of the People never is.”

Guano couldn't even imagine the shrieks that would arise from human feminists if they could have heard that. On the other hand, Earth and its humans had many fewer feminists that had once been the case. Many, faced not with theory but with the hard reality of the war, had decided that, after all, perhaps men should be the ones to bear the brunt of the fighting. Still others, refusing to accept this, had been eaten in highly disproportionate numbers. The widespread adoption of polygamy had still further reduced both feminist numbers and influence. Humanity thought of itself as being very traditional now. Guano wondered on occasion if he could ever have fit in as well as he had, or if he might have made a better fit, in the society that preceded the one he had come to know.

“My wife is uniquely valuable to me.” Unconsciously Guano's claw went to stroke Querida's back. Equally unconsciously, she leaned in against him.

“Yes . . . yes, I can see that,” Finba said. “It is a very beautiful cosslain.”

Not 'it,'“ Guano corrected. ”She."

Changing the subject (for the ideas of uniquely valuable cosslain or, worse still, cosslain with a sex distinct from a kessentai, were, at best, uncomfortable. And an unarmed, adult kessentai escorted by an armed cosslain and juvenile? Unthinkable!), Finba continued, “I am, in any case, here as your escort. Where would you like to go?”

Guano thought upon that only for a moment before answering, “Somewhere where there are kessentai and kessenalt in numbers, then, and perhaps even some cosslain.”

“The Roga'a then,” Finba said. “Certainly it should be crowded by the time we get there, anyway. Follow me.”

Whatever it was that keyed Querida most emphatically not to trust their escort, Guano didn't know. He only knew that she kept softly whistling the danger signal, tugging at his arm, pointing at her sword, and making throat-slitting gestures while keeping her gaze fixed on Finba'anaga's twitching hindquarters. He shushed her by placing a single claw over her muzzle.

I understand, love," he said, even while thinking, your instincts in this may be good. We shall be careful but without committing murder.

As Finba had promised, the Roga'a was reasonably crowded by the time the party arrived. Most of the activity was mercantile, with bits of heavy metal changing claws in exchange for cloth, or harnesses, or thresh, or tools.

Guano stopped for a moment, to Finba's mild annoyance, to watch two cosslain bargaining over some fresh, which is to say still living, nestling. Their bargaining was non-verbal, but intense for all that. The cosslain in search of thresh pointed out two that seemed good to it. The other, the one running the shop, then put on a sort of chain mail glove and reached down to grab one of the nestling. The nestling spat and hissed and even got a toothy grip on the mail, but to no avail. The shopkeeper's mailed claws wrapped around it, pulled it from its pen, and dumped it in a smaller pen on the counter. She then did the same with a second nestling.

The second cosslain then reached into a pouch and put forth on the counter two small bits of heavy metal. The shopkeeper sneered until a third piece was added. This got rid of the sneer but also caused the shopkeeper to pick up one of the nestlings as if to put it back in the pen. At that the second cosslain hissed and began to reach for the golden bits. The shopkeeper then stopped, holding the thrashing, hissing, biting nestling above the pen.

When they finally settled on a price, five bits for the two nestlings, the shopkeeper took one of the nestlings and forced its head down to the counter. With its other claw it took what appeared to be a miniature boma blade, more handle than blade, and neatly sliced off the spitting nestling's head. In a few more seconds the second nestling had joined the first. Both heads and bodies were then wrapped in something that looked like a cheap kind of cloth and handed over to the shopper. The gold bits likewise were raked away into a claw and deposited into a pouch on the shopkeeper's harness.

“What's so interesting about a simple thresh purchase?” Finba asked.

Guano shook his head. “You don't know whether those nestlings would have become sentient or not,” he answered.

“What difference? They weren't sentient when they were chopped, and they surely won't get any more sentient when they're eaten. I understand Goloswin is working on a way to tell the difference early, but that way is still imperfect.”

“Seems wrong, somehow,” Guano answered. “And they were big enough almost to begin to show a crest if they were going to . . . or to act like cosslain, even if not.”

“Well, it's done now, anyway. Come, if you would see the Roga'a.”

With a shrug, not of indifference but of helplessness, Guano began to follow again, Frederico and Querida in tow.

“What do you call that great massif looming over us?” Guano asked, pointing at the mesa that dominated the city.

“It doesn't really have a name beyond the upper city or the high city,” Finba answered.

“Ah. Yes, that makes sense. The humans would call it an 'acropolis,' perhaps.”

“I like that term,” Finba said. “Perhaps we'll adopt it . . . if we adopt nothing else the humans have to offer.”

“Well, I do hope the People may adopt something else the humans have to offer,” Guano answered.

We'll see, thought Finba'anaga. He pointed at a raised square of some kind of whitish rock with veins of blue, pink and gold running through it. “If you wish to address the People,” Finba said, “that's where you'll attract an audience.”

Guano had thought long upon the problem, all the long months aboard ship. Truthfully, he'd been thinking about it since receiving his own call back in the ruined cathedral in Old Panama during the war. How in Hell do I even begin to catch their attention?