Shaman (19 page)

Rhys and Bekwe exchanged glances; Beneton didn't miss a trick.

“I expect Mr. Beneton used a less neutral term,” Bekwe surmised. “Harris Beneton—the... gentleman who contacted Collective initially, is a private citizen with a large financial interest in Velvet. He felt his interests were threatened by the Tsong Zee and he... panicked. He violated the direct orders of this office and undertook to contact Collective himself. He has also subverted my lieutenant governor and attempted to kidnap the OROB ambassadors. And he has gone out of his way to foment discord and even violence among the colonists.”

“Foment discord? I understood that Beneton was a military leader on Velvet.”

“We have no military leaders on Velvet, sir. We have a colonial police force and a port authority. Mr. Beneton is not connected with either organization in any way. He is the CEO of BeneCon, a large Velvet-based consortium —”

“And is there no chance that you've been influenced by the OROB, Governor?” Sanchez asked quietly.

Again, Bekwe and Rhys brushed gazes. “The Tsong Zee—the OROB involved—claim that Velvet is their homeworld. They wish to reclaim it.”

“They what? No, don't repeat it. I heard you the first time. Sonofabitch. That puts a different complexion on things. Although it doesn't change the fact that a Collective colony is under siege. I'm at your disposal, Governor. What would you have me do?”

“While the Tsong Zee do have a rather large fleet,” said Rhys, superstitiously crossing his fingers behind his back, “they are loathe to use it—a fact easily explained once you hear the history of their race.”

“We can muster enough firepower to handle them, if we have to.”

Bekwe took a deep breath. “Let's all pray that won't be necessary.”

“Beneton thinks it's necessary now.”

“Naturally. Harris Beneton doesn't want the Tsong Zee to be able to prove this is their homeworld. He wouldn't deed Velvet, or any part of it, back to the Tsong Zee if they could prove it.”

“You mean they haven't proven it, yet?”

Bekwe glanced at Rhys. “I know what you say you experienced, Rhys, but I have to be honest here.” He turned back to the holo-column. “No, sir. They have not proven it to the satisfaction of this Administration.”

“Then —”

“However,” —he held up a restraining hand— “Professor Llewellyn is of the opinion that they are telling the truth. He... entered into, em, private negotiations with one of the Tsong Zee leaders and came away convinced of their sincerity.”

“Sincerity isn't a title to this planet, Governor. If they can't do better than that—”

“There's a chance,” interjected Rhys quickly, riding a sudden wave of inspiration, “that they can. The form of negotiation Governor Bekwe mentioned may present a means by which the Tsong Zee can locate a particular artifact. An artifact which will prove their history to be more than fabrication. I beg the time to aid them in that.”

Rhys felt for a moment as if the two pairs of eyes boring into him—one pair real, one holographic—would leave four neat, smoking little holes.

“You're volunteering to help the OROB? Any particular reason for this remarkable generosity?”

“Justice. If this planet belongs to them —”

“If it belongs to them, why aren't they in possession of it?”

“That's a long story, Admiral. And there are any number of people who could share it with you. What I am asking, on behalf of the Tsong Zee, is the time and opportunity to prove that it does belong to them.”

The Admiral's eyes studied him long enough and unwaveringly enough to make him sweat. Wool is not comfortable when one is sweating and Rhys fought the unbearable urge to scratch such places as are not to be touched in company. He bit the inside of his lower lip.

“I'd like to talk with this Mr. Beneton,” said Sanchez finally. “I assume you have him under arrest?”

Joseph Bekwe nodded. “Quite definitely, Admiral. He won't be making any more unauthorized TAS transmissions.”

The Admiral's brushy eyebrows swept upward. “Always assuming he's the only subversive you have to worry about. I wouldn't be too certain that putting one man behind e-grid will restore order. If he's got folks as scared as you say —”

Bekwe grimaced. “Your point is well-taken, sir. How do you propose to speak to Mr. Beneton?”

“I'd like to shuttle down. Just me and a handful of men. No weapons. Can you clear that with the OROB?”

Bekwe glanced at Rhys, who shrugged. “We can but try,” he said.

Admiral Sanchez faded from the column, leaving Bekwe and Rhys staring at a potted Terran evergreen.

“I'd like to proceed, if I might, Governor,” Rhys said after a moment.

Bekwe's brow knit into a fabric of anxiety. “Rhys, the Admiral has a point about Beneton. He's just one head of the BeneCon hydra. He hasn't done all that —” He jerked his head toward the window behind them. “— all by himself. He's got associates. He's bribed at least one government employee—the Tsong Zee's driver—and compromised another. I'm not sure I can guarantee your safety.”

“I'm not asking you to.”

Joseph Bekwe fell into his chair and rubbed a hand over his face. “Dear God, we stand to lose so much. All and any of us—Human and Tsong Zee.”

“I'm hoping otherwise. I'm hoping we'll actually gain from this... in a lot of ways.”

“Care to clue me in?”

“The Tsong Zee objection to sharing Velvet with us was that we're... too different.”

“You mean inferior.”

Rhys inclined his head. “They believed, until today, that we were so alien as to be incapable of dealing in kind—trading places. They were wrong. I Traded with Javar and he with me. It wasn't as successful a Trade as he might have done with a Tsong Zee, but that might be partly a function of inexperience on my part. I know that he came away with more of me than I did of him.”

He didn't mention that one of the things he came away with could change the entire complexion of the situation, and knew a gnawing guilt at the omission.

“It's something like reading the Tsong Zee sense-stones. You miss a lot when you're not practiced at picking out the sensory details. You just get hit and, initially, overwhelmed with the wealth of input. What I'm hoping is that my experience with Javar will make them think again about our differences—make them reconsider sharing this world.”

“What's your plan?”

Rhys grinned ruefully. “What plan? I'm making this up as I go along.”

o0o

“You didn't tell them?” Javar's eyes rested, unblinking, on Rhys's face. “Why didn't you tell them?”

“I thought it would destabilize the situation. And I wanted to buy time to find the Shrine.”

“How are we to do that?” asked Keere.

Rhys sat in his council seat, facing the Tsong Zee delegation. “How would you do it if you had the missing Key Holder?”

“We would Trade,” said Brasn. “All five Speakers would place their Keys in the confluence of thought. The Gondatrura Key Holder—the Walker—would act as Key Master. He or she would then see the beginning of the journey. We would go to the place and again, we would enter the Trade and offer up our Keys. We would walk the path they showed together, bound in the Trade state.”

“But we cannot do this, now,” explained Keere, “because there is no one to provide the visual Key. No one to assemble the pieces into a whole.”

“Couldn't any of you be the Key Master?” Rhys asked, feeling frustration begin a slow crawl up his spine.

Javar shook his head an unprecedented three times. “We were not given that, Speaker Rhys. We assemble the normal moment-to-moment input as all beings do, but this is not that. In the state necessary to the Trade, linked to these others, with our collective purpose being to locate the Shrine, my mind will concentrate overwhelmingly on its own Key—sound. This is true for every Gondavar Tsong Zee. Brasn's mind, and the minds of his fellow Tribe members, concentrate on the feel of the experience; Keere's mind is attuned only to the fragrance; Parsa knows only a taste. Only the Gondatrura, with their visual Key, were prepared to assemble the input from the others and find their way to the Shrine.”

“Pardon, Brasn,” said Rhys, “but I must ask a delicate question. Have no members of your Tribes inter-bred?”

“Of course. One of the first changes in our culture was the encouragement of inter-Tribal bonding. But just as a child does not receive from her copper-eyed and blue-eyed parents one copper eye and one blue, so the child of a mixed pair does not receive a little of one Key and a little of another. He or she receives one or the other. This determines the Tribal affiliation of each child. Javar, for example, is the product of a union between a Var and a Yan. But he is Var by Key.”

Fascinating as that was, Rhys was ready to begin tearing the hair out of his head. “What process was used to implant these Keys? Is it anything like the Trade?”

“It was a process that embraced both the physical and the metaphysical, Speaker Rhys. It was a process created for a specific purpose by the (true) Speaker of the Gondavar and the Tsadrat of the Gondayan. We no longer know —”

“— how to do it,” Rhys finished with him, nodding.

The Tsong Zee were nothing if not methodical. There seemed to be a trend: technologies developed for one purpose and one purpose only; time-altered space vehicles that only went from one set of time-space coordinates to another on a sliding scale; a programming of the Tribal limbic system that could only handle one type of data. It was amazing that they'd actually conceived of using their tractor web as a ersatz weapon.

Rhys's heart kicked over rapidly, tripping on one of those thoughts. Something had grasped his subconscious's attention and shaken it. What —?

“I'm not programmed to any particular stimulus,” he observed, his eyes on Javar's gleaming face. “Perhaps I can assemble the Keys.”

Not surprisingly, it was Keere who uttered the first word of rejection. “You're not even Tsong Zee! He's not even Tsong Zee!” he repeated to Javar, as if he might not have heard. “He has no Key of his own. How can he be the Key Master? This is absurd!”

Brasn and Javar were all but ignoring the younger man's complaints. Their full attention was on Rhys Llewellyn.

“He did Trade with me,” said Javar. “Fully. More fully than I imagined possible. He even took thoughts from me which I had believed to be hidden.”

“But he can have no ability of his own!” objected Keere. “He was merely a passive participant.”

“We cannot know that,” said Brasn. “His mind is receptive. We have proven that. And we know he is to be trusted.”

“How? How do we know this?” Keere had gotten to his feet and begun to pace the outside of the circle of chairs, his apprentice practically glued to his side.

“He thwarted an attempt to harm us,” returned Parsa, “and he hasn't told them we are weaponless. I believe we can trust him. Surely, we must try. Javar, you Traded with him. Can he be trusted?”

Javar's eyes pinned Rhys to the air. “I believe so,” he said. “And I agree with Speaker Parsa. Time may be short. Our ships are in danger. Perhaps our very lives, if this Trader Beneton has set others like himself in motion. We must attempt it. To do otherwise is to give up hope.”

Brasn merely canted his head to one side and held it there for emphasis.

Keere was incensed. “You allow yourselves to be manipulated! Let us forget this insanity. We have tried to recover Tson and we have failed. It was a ludicrous idea to pass ourselves off as warriors, and I willingly admit my fault in its conception. Now, let us go back to Kamorg and pick up our lives again and go on.”

Brasn turned to the younger man with inscrutable gaze. “If that is what you wish to do, you are free from your commitment as Speaker. We ask only that you provide a suitable replacement.”

That cut deep, there was no doubting it. Keere's body was shaking with suppressed emotion beneath his bright, silken garments. “That will not be necessary. I will abide by the decision of the group. I merely wish to make my own feelings known.”

Brasn made a small gesture of acceptance. “Then, if Keere is prepared to join us in our madness, let us proceed.”

The Trade was a bit more complicated with five people involved. It was Brasn's apprentice who performed the mediator's function, making certain the participants—seated in a circle that reminded Rhys of nothing so much as a séance—were maintaining physical contact. The other apprentices—Rhys's included—looked on with concern, skepticism, hope, or anxiety.

Incense curled about the group in the dimly lit room, tendrils forming palpable links. Rhys could almost believe the information passed along those smoky ways, airborne, wafted between the individual islands now sharing a sea. Melody took him first, wrapping itself around him, cool and light. Three Sisters. It was a song given to the Gondavar, written to their memories, passed along like blue eyes or copper hair.

The fragrance was winy, pungent, like... lake weed or rushes. Water gurgled over rocks now, framing the fluting melody. He tasted the dampness on the breeze and the sweetness of blossoms... they tasted of honey—of nectar. Warm rock was beneath his feet and his hand rested against a rough, curving surface, also Sun-warmed. Sun kissed his left cheek and a cool breeze wiped the kiss away.

An image formed behind his eyes, hazy at first, but clearing as if released by morning mist. A stream rushed by below and to his left, and from that side, sun reached him. The breeze blew off the stream and curled up along the steep, rocky scarp on which he stood, right hand resting on the flank of a boulder. Flowering foliage tumbled over the slope, giving up a rich fragrance. The slant of the sun told him he must be facing southeast, the cast of the surface beneath his feet laid a roadbed of cut stone, worn smooth with use. It faded into purple shadow ahead, swallowed in the narrow wedge cut between two slopes.