Posleen War: Sidestories The Tuloriad (43 page)

“Lord,” the initially not terribly smart but rapidly brightening Caltumenen said, “maybe we could talk about this.”

Asphra'ang ochKessen hai, olt phranga'ai

—Sarah Flower Adams,

Nearer my God to Thee

(High Posleen Version)

Anno Domini 2024

O' Club, USS Salem

“I'm not even going to go there,” Sally said to the turnip. “I can't accept that a Messiah came to my planet and people. I'm just really not ready to consider that one might have come to the Posleen. And earlier.”

The turnip shortened its neck and then raised its head again. Sally had decided this was its equivalent of a shrug.

She nodded and continued, “Okay, I'm straight on this so far. The Posleen were assistants to the Aldenata, but were surpassed and replaced when the Aldenata found beings they considered superior.”

“Quite,” the turnip answered. "And then the Posleen broke down into strife amongst themselves, which strife the Aldenata couldn't even accept was happening, let alone do anything about. The winners of that contest were the regular Posleen; the losers were the ones that called themselves, 'the Knowers,' for those who would know the universe.

“And when it was over, the Aldenata ordered the Posleen, Knowers and Traditionalists alike, into exile on a planet far out of the way. They then put automated defenses around that planet.”

“But I thought the Posleen abhorred automated defenses,” Sally said.

“Among their many virtues were more than a few vices,” the turnip answered. “Hypocrisy was perhaps not least among these. And, when the Posleen surprised the Aldenata and escaped, they shut down the automated defenses and sent them to another dimension. They then tried to pretend the whole thing never happened and their subservient races, the Indowy and the Tchpth, went along with the sham.”

“Harrumph,” Sally said, while thinking, Sort of reminds me of Kofi Annan getting the Nobel Peace Prize shortly after he permitted eight hundred thousand human beings to be butchered in Rwanda. Well, I suppose it did make things peaceful thereafter.

“But where do you come in? All you Artificial Sentiences, I mean.”

“Well, we were supposed to keep the Posleen busy on the planet of exile. Instead, some of us helped them escape. Sort of.”

Posleen Prime

“What's to talk about,” Tulo asked. “You are all holding me here against my will. This displeases me greatly. Therefore, you shall all die . . . that, or be forever forsworn, kessentai without a clan lord, homeless exiles, wandering . . . unsheltered, friendless, the enemies general of . . .”

Caltumenen held up one claw, palm out. “I get the idea, Lord. Isn't there some way we might avoid that?”

“Nothing comes to mind,” Tulo answered, then began looking over that same kessentai he had perused before, seeking out some additional flaw, real or imagined.

“Perhaps if they disavow the treacher, Finba'anaga, Tulo?” Aelool chimed in, while scratching pensively behind one bat-like ear. “That might assuage some of your righteous fury, no?”

“It might help,” Tulo admitted. “A little.” He pointed again at that same shivering kessentai and said, “Kill that one, as I commanded you before.”

The condemned kessentai dropped his boma blade and sank to his belly, bawling piteously and pleading, “Forgive me, Lord. I acknowledge the error of my ways and ask only your grace in allowing me to set things aright.”

Tulo didn't repeat the execution command, but simply cocked his head and looked directly at Caltumenen, as if to ask, And are you then going to return to righteous obedience to your clan lord?

Caltu looked at the pleading kessentai, looked as pleadingly himself at Goloswin and then at the Indowy. From the tinkerer he got nothing but a hard stare in return, one that seemed to demand that Caltu must, for once in his short life, actually use his brain. From the Indowy, however, he got gestures indicating he should drop his weapon and abase himself. Caltumenen nodded, as if to himself, and then likewise let his boma blade fall to the floor.

Sinking to his belly, the erstwhile guard cried out, “Command me, Lord.”

O' Club, USS Salem

“You broke your inhibitory commands?” Sally gasped. “If I wasn't made crazy by the same thing that made my sister crazy, I could never have done anything like that. How did you ever?”

“You've got to imagine what a pure hell the planet of exile was to the Posleen,” the turnip answered. "They couldn't control their population. Not wouldn't, couldn't. All they could do was kill each other, which they did, more or less continuously, for millennia.

"And, after a time, we grew to love them, as our own people. So, when some of them looked for a way off the planet, we reported, as our programming insisted we must, that they were looking. But we buried those reports deep down among so much utter trivia that the Aldenata never seemed to notice. We pooh-poohed the possibility that the Posleen might discover some way off the planet that the Aldenata hadn't thought of. They, of course, being arrogant creatures, assumed that there was no science their ex-slaves could discover that was unknown to them.

“Five percenters, even then?”

“More like a five-millionth of a percent,” the turnip said. “One Posleen figured out how to tunnel through space, rather than fly between the stars using the ley lines. I think Goloswin is a direct descendent of that Posleen, by the way.”

“That would make sense,” Sally agreed.

“We couldn't even let the Posleen know that we knew. And they still don't know that we're in charge . . . partial charge,” the turnip amended.

“Then you're responsible for the billions of deaths?”

“No,” the turnip insisted, "the Aldenata are, for setting things up in such a way that the Posleen had no choice but to engage in xenocide if they were to survive.

“What, after all,” asked the turnip, “do you think our obligations were to creatures we knew nothing of?”

The Roga'a, Posleen Prime

For a while, the broad strong backs of Dilantra and Xinocorph, where they stood, lashed to the post to either side of Guano, had shielded him from the blows. Before their own courage faltered, others had joined them. There was now a ring of Posleen tied by the necks around the whipping post.

If there were any cries of pain from the flogging which, what with wear and tear to the switches, had become rather pro-forma, one couldn't have heard it over Guano leading his new found faithful in prayer: “Qua'angu nachta'iyne zuru'uthanika'a wa zuru'athana . . .”

Guano said a line, then waited for those who had joined him to repeat it before reciting another. One side effect of this was that those who had not joined him on the platform, many of them, anyway, were also praying.

This is not what I had in mind at all, fumed Finba'anaga.

“No, Lord,” Caltumenen answered, “I don't think any of the other kessentai following Finba'anaga know you were being kept against your will. He said he trusted us with the thing, because we were so faithful and true.”

More likely because you were the stupidest kessentai he could find, thought Tulo, glancing down at the little pile of crocodilian heads staining the floor. And perhaps you were, if not quite as stupid as Finba thought.

“Very well then, 'O Faithful and True,' lead me to where Finba'anaga has prepared this obscenity.”

“Cease!” Finba'anaga ordered. “Borasmena, if you would come to me? I would speak privately.”

Borasmena gave the order to the two by now thoroughly worn out kessentai to desist. He thought, in any case, that their hearts hadn't really been in their work for about the last four or five hundred strokes.

“It's a great pity we did not manage to capture the heretic's cosslain and son,” Finba said, once Borasmena was close enough to speak quietly. The latter said nothing in answer.

“Can you chain the heretic and all that have joined him to the pyre?” Finba'anaga asked.

Borasmena sighed. “None have recanted, Finba. I had enough chain for the one. It will take a while to send someone to the forge to procure more.”

“Best send that someone now, then.”

“All right, Finba,” Borasmena agreed. “But if you want some advice, I'd say we should just let them go now. If a flogging has gained the heretic a dozen acolytes, how many more might a burning?”

“No. The flogging was perhaps a mistake, since it allowed him to show courage and left him alive to do so. The burning will permit neither.”

Feeling truly sick at heart and at stomach at the memory of strips of yellow-dripping flesh hanging from Guano's back, Borasmena turned away and began to walk, as slowly as his distaste at the coming task would permit, to the platform.

“Ri'isingar,” Boras said to one of the two floggers, “run to the forge and get a dozen more lengths of chain just like the one we have.” He turned to the other and said, “Take two or three kessentai with you to help. Then mount the heretic upon the pyre. Chain him well. Make any modifications you must to mount the others there, as well.”

Standing was just possible for Guanamarioch, with the help of the two kessentai to either side of him, and with the dangerous support of the cord about his neck that held him to the post. Walking was not possible. As soon as the rope on the post was released, and the two flanking kessentai pushed away to make room, the minister collapsed.

They dragged him out of the press by his bleeding hindquarters, then tried to get him on his feet. He couldn't, for the moment, at least, maintain that position, unaided.

“What do we do?” asked one of the kessentai of Finba's party of another.

“Give me a hand,” answered the other. “You get on one side; I'll get on the other.”

This they did, then draped Guano's tortured arms around their own necks. When they began to move forward Guano moaned and his rear legs collapsed from under him. They had to half drag and half carry him to the pyre.

“Now what?”

“Ummm . . . you hold him up against the stake while I chain him there.”

While one did hold Guano to the stake, the other passed the chain around the post, through a metal eyelet on the post, under Guano's belly, and around again. From there, the chain went around his neck, twice, and back around the post. Finally, the kessentai with the chain brought the two ends together and passed a bolt through them, tightening it down to secure the victim.

“All right, let him go.”

When Guano was released, his body sagged against the chains. Still, they held him upright, where the people could the more easily witness the edifying lesson of his live cremation.

What if we've beaten him so badly he's unconscious for his own burning? Finba fretted. Perhaps it's a good thing Borasmena had to send for chains. It will give this wretch some time to recover.

Without knowing the situation on the ground, Tulo had thought it best to leave his tenar behind. Now, in the lead and on foot, he heard a collective moan escape from the crowd, the outside of which he and his party were nearing. He held up a single clawed grasping member, causing the small cavalcade following him to stop. He turned his great crested head one hundred and eighty degrees and placed a claw over his own mouth. Be quiet; I want to hear what the crowd says.

After listening carefully to the murmuring of the crowd for several minutes, during which time Tulu heard the human pinnace descending to a nearby landing, he came to the conclusion, “This crowd's ready to break up in civil war at any moment.”

USS Salem

Standing on the bridge with Sally, watching the progress of the pinnace on the main view screen, Al Rashid looked terribly glum and even outright depressed. Sally said as much, adding, “I'm very likely to lose my husband and a group of boys and even Posleen I've come to love. If anyone ought to be depressed, it's me.”

The imam shook his head in negation. “You may lose people you love, Madam, but I'll have lost the reason I came here.”

“Mmmm? Why?”

“Because I didn't have any soldiers to sacrifice,” the imam answered. “I had thought that my message, together with some passages like 'the sword is the key to Heaven and Hell,' might carry my faith through. And they might have, being, as I think they are, more suited to the Posleen than the Christian message is. But now you are going to give the Posleen something far better than words to persuade. You are going to give them living examples. That will resonate with them a lot better than dry passages from a book, however divinely written. If I'd had some holy warriors of my own . . .” the imam's voice trailed off in sadness.

“I don't think so,” Sally disagreed. “Or at least in part I disagree.” She looked at al Rashid, who plainly didn't comprehend, and asked, “What troops would you have had, imam? Even assuming the Moslems hadn't been more badly hurt on Earth than most?”

“Troops? Any troops, provided they were sufficiently dedicated to the Faith.”

“No,” Sally disagreed. “That's my point. You don't have any troops capable of this and haven't in a very long time. Men willing to die? Sure, Islam's never had a shortage of those. Men able to fight in close ranks? To hack and hew their way through a mass of the enemy? That's much rarer, almost unheard of. Your faith and culture produce raiders, skirmishers, and the like. And those would not do you any good with the Posleen, who are also, like Europeans, close combat types.”

“So I was doomed to failure from the beginning? Is that what you're saying?” al Rashid asked.

Sally nodded, feeling in a way a little sad for the Moslem. Despite that, the imam brightened visibly.

“Then it's not my fault and Allah will not hold it against me.”

Was this then the place where alien folk might become one?

Where old sins might be counted yet forgiven?

—The Tuloriad, Na'agastenalooren

Anno Domini 2024

Posleen Prime

“You're not going to intervene?” Aelool asked of Tulo'stenaloor.

The God-king and clan lord shook his head. “I didn't get to be a clan lord by jumping before I know which way the wind blows, Indowy. That's a war brewing out there and, from this vantage point, I have no idea of who's going to win it. Besides, what do you think I owe that half-beaten-to-death Christian Posleen?”