Shaman (15 page)

“They have no claim,” Beneton repeated. “And when that's proven, do you honestly think they're going to just pack up and go away? You're supposed to be a negotiator. Can't you smell a bluff when it's waved under your nose? They were hoping to scare us off. When that fails, they'll fight. We have to be ready for that. In fact, I think we ought to attack first.”

“With what?” asked Governor Bekwe. “Our military capacity here isn't equal to blowing four wings of armed ships out of orbit. Especially when those ships are armed with a damping field like the one they demonstrated the other night.”

“I say we try to get word out to Collective Security.”

“And how do you suggest we do that? They let one message out by TAS packet—the one that summoned Dr. Llewellyn. And if we could call for military aid, how is Collective supposed to field a force daunting enough to scare the Tsong Zee off?”

“I wasn't thinking so much of scaring them off as engaging them.”

“And turn this planet into a battleground again?” asked Danetta. “It lay fallow for two thousand years after the last holocaust.”

Beneton shrugged. “That needn't happen. Weapons are cleaner now.”

Rhys shook his head. “Oddly enough, that's what the Tsong Zee said, too, but they still don't want to use them. Why force their hand? They've shown us one non-injurious weapon of defense. Do you really want to see what else they've got in their arsenal?”

Beneton shifted uneasily in his seat.

“If we could attack the Tsong Zee,” Rhys persisted, “it's entirely possible that a retaliation from them could mean the end of Haifa and her satellite communities. I'd say that would effectively destroy your consortium's interests, wouldn't you?”

For the first time, Beneton displayed some emotion. His face reddened, making his pale eyes stand out with gimlet keenness. “To fight for something and lose it is acceptable to me, Professor. To sit by and let some alien snatch it away without so much as a snarl is not.”

Governor Bekwe stood, bringing the meeting to an abrupt end. “Dr. Llewellyn has more important things to do with his time than circumambulate this issue with you, Beneton. You are a leader of business, not of government—which is a great blessing for this colony. You may find it acceptable to fight and lose; I do not. If it were a matter of property, I might agree with you. But it's not. It's a matter of lives. Lives that have nothing to do with you and your consortium. You've met Dr. Llewellyn; you've clarified your viewpoint. That's all I agreed to. As governor of this colony, I am going to request that you engage in no actions that will undermine our negotiations with the Tsong Zee.”

Beneton's lip curled. “Request?”

“Let me put it this way. Seditious behavior will result in immediate arrest. Do you understand?”

Beneton stood. “Clearly and completely. I'll comply with your
request
, Governor. But I can only promise my own, personal cooperation. Do
you
understand?”

“Good-day, Mr. Beneton.” Joseph Bekwe aimed a pointed gesture at the door.

Beneton uttered a curt response and left.

The governor breathed out an invective and turned to Rhys. “Any questions?”

“One. How does he know what the Tsong Zee look like?”

Bekwe's mouth twisted into a grimace. “There's only one way he could know. Someone on my staff must have shown him.”

With the next negotiating session set for the morning, Rhys, Yoshi and Rick spent the evening with the colony computer system, collecting and organizing the now vast databank of Tsuru words, phrases, expressions, gestures and incidental noises into their own version of a SubLearn language course. They slept that night with the sights and sounds of the Tsong Zee playing methodically in their dreams. By morning, they were able to dispense with their trans-collars. This caused quite a stir among the Tsong Zee who met them in the council chamber.

“You have learned our language in the space of a night?” marveled Javar, his blue eyes amplifying their usual startled expression. “How have you done this?”

“With the aid of a special computer,” Rhys explained carefully in Tsuru, “we have learned in our sleep.”

“And why have you done it?” asked Keere. His stiff posture and up-tilted vocal tone broadcast suspicion.

“To better understand you. To eliminate as many barriers between us as possible... Now, I would like to ask you a question.”

When Keere indicated this was acceptable, Rhys continued, “I have given much thought to what you told us yesterday about your reasons for not traveling to the future of this planet. They seem sound reasons to me, if not to others of my kind. But what I do not understand is why you chose this particular time to arrive here. Why not twenty-five years ago, or thirty—before Humans even set foot on this planet?”

Keere and Javar looked at each other, pupils dilating and contracting, and Rhys fancied he caught a whiff of some aroma beyond their careful uniform scent.

“We did not choose,” Javar told him. “The time was set by Kalkt and the Gondavar—the scientists. They measured the time it would take for the poison to fade; that was the time set on The Waiting. When The Waiting was complete, we returned.”

“But even now,” argued Rhys, “could you not go back to before Humans set foot here and reestablish yourselves? Then when we discover the planet—here you would be, already.”

Keere glanced at his companion and shifted from one foot to the other in what Rhys read as a gesture of unease. An odor like wet leaves curled in his nostrils.

Javar's mouth pulled down sharply at the corners. “Our technology does not allow us to make such... brief jumps. Time, to us, is a corridor with two doors. One door opens into Exile's past, one into Tson's present. There are no other doors.”

No other doors. That put severe limitations on Tsong Zee temporal technology.

“Why?” Rhys asked Javar. “You're a scientist. Have you not attempted to open other doors?”

The Tsong Zee's mouth pulled up at its extreme corners. “We had more pressing concerns. The technology we developed is geared to a specific purpose. The Tribes have grown in the past two thousand years. We must have a reliable way to transport them homeward. That was our purpose and we have fulfilled it in this... fleet of ships.”

“The implications of what you've just told me are that time is not completely relative within your two-door corridor.”

“That is correct, Speaker Rhys,” said Javar. “When we travel to Exile, time elapses at the same rate at one end of the corridor as it does at the other. If we were, as we previously suggested, to transport you and your assistants to Exile, we would be gone for whatever amount of time it took to reach Exile for the time-jump back, visit the planet and reposition the ship in orbit around Tson for the jump to the present. The ends of the corridor are not fixed—they slide—but its length, its duration, is set.”

“Then the entire transition would take hours—days even.”

Javar canted his head. “As you see, taking you to Exile is highly impractical as well as pointless.”

Rhys held out his hands, palms up. “What then? You said you had evidence to offer...”

Javar signaled his apprentice, who carried to him a satchel of soft, verdant material. From it, he lifted a sense-cube of almost blinding azure.

“This artifact,” he said, “is from the world of Exile. We are aware that you have found similar things here on Tson. That is no surprise to us, of course, for the technology originated here with our ancestors. Compare this to what your scientists have found. Perhaps it may stand as some form of proof.”

He handed the sense-cube to Rhys, who set it on his lap, brow furrowed. After a moment of hesitation, he placed his fingertips against the block's shifting surface.

“Forevermore!” Rhys ogled at the cube, then shot his assistants a brilliant, if tentative smile. “This is fantastic!”

It was fantastic, for the merest touch told him volumes. Add to that the shifting, shimmering, transient flow of color and texture, and he suddenly knew the name of the star and the names of each of its planets. There was mention of distance he could not put into Human terms, yet knew to be a measurement of the amount of space between the sun and each of its worlds. He saw the frozen, wind-scoured surface of Exile as it was presently; he saw it as the Tsong Zee knew it—an uncompromisingly bleak ball of muted, sagey greens, siennas, and umbers rolled out beneath a sky of faded aquamarine. Any colors on Exile were found in manmade goods—buildings, ships, vehicles, clothing. Those colors all spoke of Velvet and, in Exile's pigment-starved environment, they stood out in alien relief.

He passed his hands over the surfaces with a tingling sense of awe, eager, now, for the touch of new knowledge, knowing he had been pulled one step closer to belief in the Tsong Zee claim. He could no longer pretend to see in them the Wellsian invaders Beneton so feared.

“Mahor,” he said. “That's the name of your sun. And the planets are Bruka, Tson and Kamorg-Exile. The length of a Kamorg year is 498 days.” He turned the cube experimentally. “Ah, grand! This is one of the ships that brought you to Kamorg—carried you through space and time.”

He afforded the watching Tsong Zee a heartfelt smile. But in a moment, his smile faltered and he pulled his hands away, cringing from the multi-sensory legend. He looked to Javar who gazed back intently.

“This is the ship that failed. The one that carried the Tribe called Gondatrura—the Walkers.” Rhys tucked his hands under his arms as if he could drive the chill of that knowledge from his fingers.

An amazing medium, this, a medium that conveyed emotions as well as images, words, even scents and textures. It made Human script seem flaccid and pale, just as Velvet—no, Tson—made Kamorg seem that way.

“Not looking good for the home team, eh, Boss?” Rick Halfax's expression belied the glibness of his murmured words.

Rhys sighed. “At this moment, I'm not sure who the home team is.” And that, he had to acknowledge, was not a good thing.

Here on Velvet were thousands of Humans who had a vested interest in disproving the Tsong Zee claim to the planet. Many would be only too willing to believe the OROB capable of incredible deceit. In the worst case, admitting the veracity of their claim could be tantamount to packing the entire Human colony into a flight case. At best, it meant sharing a planet both parties had assumed was theirs to keep. But there, on Kamorg, at least according to this history, awaited an even greater number of Tsong Zee, longing to return to their homeworld. Rhys knew a sharp desire to see Human and Tsong Zee sharing its surface—and knew, as he entertained the thought, that he fully believed the Tsong Zee claim.

Or fully wanted to.

His fingertips returned to linger over the sepia-tone world of Kamorg and he wondered if the whole thing could be a grand manipulation—a lie. He stirred, pulling himself up from reverie, and handed the cube to Rick Halfax.

Rick licked his lips, twitched his fingers, and tentatively fingered the thing, looking for all the world like a nervous safe-cracker.

“Wow!” he said after a moment of intense study. “Wow! How far back did you...? Why, it'd have to be millions of years—billions, even.” He turned to Rhys. “We haven't been able to extend the Shift range anywhere near that far.”

“No, we haven't,” said Rhys and wondered how to cement a filial relationship between Human and Tsong Zee. The benefits to both races of men in the area of science alone was mind-boggling. Together they could —

He shook himself. Rampant idealism. They weren't together. They were separated by an armed fleet and the desire to be the sole owners of paradise.

“The city that is... depicted in the cube —” he began.

“Tsonvar,” Javar told him. “Home of Science. The largest of our cities. The center of our efforts.”

“It's a very... live place. Thousands of people, businesses, places of education. It has roots. It is not the sort of thing that can be simply packed up and moved to another world.”

Javar glanced at his fellows. “We are aware that this relocation will not be easy. It must be a gradual thing. Our ships are designed with the transportation of thousands in mind. We are prepared.”

“All of you?”

Javar didn't blink. “We are prepared.” He nodded at the cube. “Do you think your people will be convinced?”

Rhys smiled ruefully. “I suspect you know it won't be that easy. Whether they believe you belong to Tson, or it belongs to you, they won't be able to just pack up and leave. They've been here for over twenty years now. They feel... bound to this world.”

“And the Tsong Zee have been on Kamorg for two thousand years. Do you not think that many of us also feel bound? We will still leave. We will still come home.”

“How many, Speaker Javar? How many will go home and how many will stay simply because their lives are on Kamorg and always have been?”