Shaman (18 page)

“He doesn't confide in me, Joseph. I'm just a source of information.”

“What sort of information, Alleen? How might he use it?”

She raised her head then, and glanced up at the ornate antique clock on Bekwe's office wall. She fidgeted, glancing at the people arrayed around her, her eyes never once touching their faces.

“He wouldn't hurt them, I don't think,” she said.

“Hurt who?” asked Danetta. “Hurt the Tsong Zee?”

Again, the glance at the clock. She pressed her lips together ferociously. “Dammit, I... I gave him the time the Tsong Zee would be leaving the Complex to return to their ship. I showed him... where they'd exit the building. And I gave him the driver's name.”

Rhys glanced at the clock. “My God, it's 1700 hours now!” He bolted for the door, causing it to shoot noisily aside. Aware only vaguely of others behind him, he made the lev-tubes in the foyer and stepped into one, demanding a high speed drop to Sub-level Four.

He had no idea what he would do when he got there or what he would find, and he had no time at all to ponder it. In a split second, his fall ceased, leaving him abob in the tube, while a perfect voice said, “Sub-level Four. Carpark sections AA to —”

He didn't wait to hear more, but vaulted from the lift, right into the midst of the clustered and waiting Tsong Zee.

His timing couldn't have been better—or worse, depending on who one asked. The driver of the Speakers' vehicle, half in, half out of the long, silver-blue Tesla Grav Mark II, glanced from Rhys to the Tsong Zee and back again. He got out of the car and closed the door. The highly tinted windows reflected the faces of the Tsong Zee in warped clarity, making them look like elongated tar-babies.

“You must be Dr. Llewellyn,” the driver said and flashed a smile that failed to reach his eyes. “Can I do something for you, Doctor, or have you just come to say goodbye?”

“Actually, I think goodbyes would be a little premature.” Rhys turned to face Javar, who stood beside him watching the exchange with interest. “I think perhaps you should come back upstairs with me.”

“Why?” asked Javar, stiffening. “What has happened?”

“We think someone may try to —” Rhys's explanation was cut off as the doors of the Tesla flew upward to reveal two armed men wearing half-masks.

Ridiculous
, Rhys thought,
they look like raccoons
. “Costume party?” he asked aloud.

“Lynch party,” said the driver. “Get in the car—all of you.” His eyes took in the steadily staring Tsong Zee, who had barely reacted to the threat.

Rhys realized their attention was riveted on the weapons as if they'd never seen anything like them.

“Get in!” repeated one of the masked men, gesturing with the muzzle of his gun. Every Tsong Zee eye followed it.

“I think you'll find your plans have been changed, gentlemen.”

Joseph Bekwe's voice came from Rhys's right, causing him to turn in unison with the Tsong Zee. The colonial governor was not alone. Half a dozen security guards had come out of the tubes with him.

o0o

Rhys Llewellyn paid scant heed to the dinner laid out on the small round conference table in Joseph Bekwe's office. He slid into his seat between Yoshi and Rick, took a deep breath, and reached for a cup of coffee.

“The Tsong Zee are on their way back to their ship. They wish me to express their gratitude for our intervention in their abduction. Although I'd swear Keere thinks we staged it.”

“Are they grateful enough to leave Velvet and go home... or at least grant us squatter's rights?” Joseph Bekwe took a long pull on his coffee, grimaced and sighed. “God, I needed that! I'm going to be an old man when this is over.”

Danetta patted his knee. “Shall I get you a lap-rug, dear?”

“I'm not quite ready for that, yet, but you could get me a solution to this crazy mess.” He looked over at Rhys, who was toying with the food on his plate. “Well, Dr. Rhys? How grateful are they? Enough to negotiate our staying on Velvet?”

“Grateful enough,” said Rhys, staring at absently at the governor's coffee cup, “to allow me to deal with them in kind.”

Bekwe frowned. “What, precisely, does that mean?”

“Well, it has to do with a... new style of negotiation I hope to learn.” He smiled wearily and explained the Trade.

The governor's reaction to the idea was emphatic, monosyllabic, and decidedly negative. Danetta's was similar, though more protracted and laced with indictments of several of Rhys's Scottish ancestors. Rhys wheedled, cajoled, pleaded, invoked the advance of scientific knowledge, and finally ended up at the bottom line.

“The wall at our backs, friends,” he told them, “is that there may be a Collective force of unknown size on its way to us at this very moment. It could arrive at any time. We may be faced with a war we don't want.”

“They won't come in blazing,” argued Governor Bekwe reasonably. “They'd assess the situation and —”

“And if the Tsong Zee take their approach as a hostile act? What then? The Tsong Zee may very well respond with force and a battle ensue. Governor... Joseph, these people have been planning their return for
two thousand years
.”

“If they're telling the truth.”

“All right,
if
they're telling the truth. Do you think they're just going to give up and slink off without a whimper because we haul out a mighty stick and shake it at them? I'm a Scotsman by blood. And I'm well aware of what it means to feel the sacredness of a bit of land. To feel it pull you, own you, demand your loyalty and, if necessary, your blood. The history of Scotland is rife with the push and pull between native and invader. We're like the English here, Joseph. We've come to this goodly place and built up our castles and our villages, and we've not been invited. And just as when the English invited themselves into Scotland, ignoring the explicit invitation to leave may lead to bloodshed. We can't turn a deaf ear to them.”

“No one's suggesting we do that,” objected Danetta. “And there's one important difference here, that you're ignoring. Your Scots ancestors didn't abandon their lands, then come home expecting the new tenants to move out. Some of the Humans on Velvet are more native to it than the Tsong Zee. They were actually born here.”

“Aye, granted. I'm just asking you to look at this from their point of view. They may have been physically absent from Velvet for two thousand years, but spiritually a good many of them have visited it every day. Their hearts and souls are here.”

Danetta sighed in exasperation. “Dammit, this is absurd. You can't... trade places with them, you're not Tsong Zee. You're Human. ‘East is east and west is west and—”

“Now don't you go mis-quoting Kipling to me, ma'am.” Rhys pointed a stern finger at his CEO's nose. “Read the end of that scrap of rhyme and you'll discern that it states the opposite of what folks usually drag it out to support. I'm going to try this thing.”

“Why, Rhys? Because it's never been done?” guessed Danetta.

“Aye, well. That adds sauce to the meat. But its chief allure is that it can help settle this. If we can meet on common ground, if I can just see behind those beautiful, inexpressive faces, if I can convince them that we're not so very alien...”

“That's such a long shot,” argued Danetta.

His lips curled into a smile and she knew the cause of caution was entirely lost.

“Aye,” he said, “I've rarely seen longer.”

He was alone in the council chamber with Brasn and Javar—no apprentices hovered. The dimly lit room was decorated to Tsong Zee taste with items of ceremonial significance—totems and Tribal artifacts forming a circle around the two negotiators, Javar and Rhys, who sat cross-legged, face to face.

Javar's artifacts, which included a sense-cube, a huge hunk of purple crystal, a picture painted on fine pieces of dark, and shaved wood, were arrayed in a fan behind Rhys. Rhys's—a set of pipes, a bodrun, a walking stick of Scottish pine, his purple fetish bag—were spread in the same pattern behind Javar.

On his knees beside them, Brasn prepared to mediate. He lit a small brazier containing an herbal incense determined to be safe for Human inhalation, the effects of which were described as relaxing. There was a drink, as well—a barky-smelling liquid of deep amber that both parties sipped from a shared cup.

The chamber flickered in the glow of Tsong Zee wicks, the incense curled between Human and Tsong Zee, the ritual drink warmed their bellies and loosed their thoughts, and Brasn began to chant.

Rhys was feeling most relaxed, his academic curiosity sitting idly in some distant aerie, observing. The incense smelled fine, like burning pine needles and crushed cedar. The room was close and warm, and he loved the feel of his thick woolen kilt lying warmly across his legs like a great plaid cat, the sporran curled, kitten-cozy in his lap.

He felt his left arm rise and thought absently that Brasn was lifting it. His hand uncurled, flattened itself, and pressed against a warm, yielding surface that seemed to fit it almost perfectly—another hand. His right hand followed, finding its own mate, pressing close.

There was a darkness, a whirl of colors, of voices, of sensations. Hot sun, warm sand, bleached landscape. The crisp, winy tang of an arid wind. That gave way to vivid greens, a swirl of breezes laden with scents pungent and delicate. A ripple of laughter. Joy.

The sequence repeated itself. The sepia world giving way to the world of rainbows. Joy. Here was home and that other place, that colorless place...

But home was not as they had left it. It was inhabited now by delicate, multi-hued people who made their capitol at the base of the Holy Yanna Mountains and refused to leave. This was understandable. Tson was a beautiful world. But the Humans simply must understand that it belongs to us, alone.

That small, distant academician, high in his objective roost, crowed with delight and shivered with pleasure. He was Javar T'lath-al Var of the Skycraft Guild of the Tribe Gondavar. His parents were T'lik and Luvar. His work and passion was the science of time and space. His mate-beloved was Slai Alau, a Music-craft Guilder. He'd grown up in a city called Brolath in the mountains above Kamorg's capitol, Tsonvar. He'd studied to be Speaker and was elected to that illustrious station in his fifteenth year. The Return was his mission. His Tribe had a Key.

This song. These notes. The Three Sisters.

He had led the planning for the journey, so grateful to have been born to this generation—to the generation of Return. His father had tested the theories and mechanics, his uncle had built the ships and he had outfitted them—tuned their machinery and their magic, readied them for their journey down the corridor of time, across the distance between Kamorg and Tson.
Shadayan, Shadavar, Shadamela, Shadarau
. He knew a stab of anguish. There would be no
Shadatrura
. There would be only —

Rhys's dissociated self ceased its jubilation.

Four ships—four unarmed ships.

There was a whirl of sensation that left Rhys speechless and dizzy. He came to himself with an abrupt thump, his arms lying limply in his lap, his mouth agape. Across from him, Javar gazed back with a similarly ludicrous expression.

“Holograms?” Rhys stared at the two Tsong Zee incredulously.

They glanced at each other, Brasn's eyes growing larger—if that were possible—than they already were. Javar lowered his head and nodded.

Rhys barely noticed the Human gesture. “But the energy damping web —”

“Is a purely benign tractor beam intended for moving freight pods. This is the first time we have ever used it as a weapon. It is, in fact, the closest thing to a weapon that we possess. Our arsenal, as you experienced, is empty. To put it bluntly: we are bluffing.”

There was a sharp bleat from the room's comlink just as Javar's communicator emitted a hailing whistle. While the Tsong Zee dealt with that, Rhys answered the comunit by the door.

It was Joseph Bekwe with a terse message. “Beneton's message got through. The fleet's in.”

Rhys turned to face the Tsong Zee. He could tell they'd gotten the same message from their ships.

“Good God,” Rhys murmured, “what now?”

o0o

Rhys Llewellyn gazed at the uniformed gentleman in the holo-column appraisingly. Admiral Sanchez was an imposing fellow—bison-like and bemused. So much was obvious from the peculiar train of expressions that chugged across his broad, bearded face.

“You still maintain that you are not under attack?”

“That is correct, sir. We are negotiating the situation very carefully so as to forestall that event. As Governor Bekwe indicated, the message that summoned you was not authorized by his office.”

“Yet the message we received was urgent and quite specific. Velvet was under attack by hostile OROB forces. The visual evidence supports this. I can see the OROB ships for myself. Just as a casual observer, gentlemen, I'd say this planet was under siege... I was warned that the government had been forced to... cooperate. That I would find you reluctant to act.”