The Godmakers (6 page)

Stetson's voice hissed: "Was that the native speaking Galactese?"

Orne touched his throat: "You heard him."

"Who are you?" the Gienahn demanded.

Orne dropped his hand, said: "I'm Lewis Orne of the Rediscovery and Reeducation Service. I was sent here at the request of the First-Contact officer on the Delphinus Rediscovery."

"Where is your ship?" the Gienahn demanded.

"It put me down and left."

"Why?"

"It was behind schedule for another appointment."

Out of the corners of his eyes, Orne saw more shadows drop to the mud around him. The sled shifted as someone climbed onto the load behind the cab.

The native climbed down to the sled's side step, slid the door open in one slamming motion. The rifle remained at the ready. Again, the lipless mouth formed Galactese: "What do you carry in your . . . vehicle?"

"The R&R equipment, the things a fieldman requires to help the people of a rediscovered planet restore their civilization and economy." Orne nodded at the rifle. "Would you mind pointing that weapon some other direction? It makes me nervous."

The gun muzzle remained unwaveringly on Orne's middle. The Gienahn's mouth opened, revealing long canines and a blue tongue. "Do we not look strange to you?"

"I take it there's been a heavy mutational variation in the humanoid norm on this planet," Orne said. "What was it? Hard radiation?"

The Gienahn remained silent.

Orne said: "It doesn't really make any difference. I'm here to help you as we do with all rediscovered planets."

"I am Tanub, High Path Chief of the Grazzi," the native said. "I decide who is to help."

Orne swallowed.

"Where do you go?" Tanub demanded.

"I was headed toward your city. Is that permitted?"

Tanub remained silent for several heartbeats while his vertical-slit pupils expanded and contracted. The eyes reminded Orne of a great feline deciding whether to leap.

Presently, Tanub said: "It is permitted."

Stetson's voice hissed through the hidden speaker: "All bets off, Orne!

We're coming in after you. Galactese plus that Mark XX, this is a new game.

They have the Delphinus for sure."

Orne touched his throat. "No! Give me a little more time."

"Why?"

"You'd put me right in the middle of a fire fight! Besides, I have a hunch about these Gienahns."

"What is it?"

"No time now. Trust me."

There was a long pause in which Orne and Tanub continued to study each other.

Presently, Stetson said: "Very well. Go ahead as planned. But find out where they've hidden the Delphinus. If we get our ship back, we pull some of their teeth."

"Why do you keep touching yourself?" Tanub asked.

Orne took his hand from his throat. "I'm nervous. Guns always make me nervous."

Tanub lowered the muzzle slightly.

"Shall we continue on to your city?" Orne asked. He wet his lips with his tongue. The green cab light gave the Gienahn's face an eerie sinister appearance.

"We can go soon," Tanub said.

"Will you join me inside here?" Orne asked. "There's a passenger seat right behind me."

Tanub's gaze moved catlike, right, left. "Yes." He turned, barked an order into the jungle gloom, then climbed in behind Orne.

There was a wet fur odor with a touch of acid in it about the Gienahn.

"When do we go?" Orne asked.

"The great sun goes down soon," Tanub said. "We can continue as soon as Chiranachuruso rises."

"Chiranachuruso?"

"Our satellite . . . our moon."

"What a beautiful word," Orne said. "Chiranachuruso."

"In our tongue it means 'The Limb of Victory,'" Tanub said. "By its light we will continue."

Orne turned, looked back at Tanub. "Do you mean to tell me you can see by what light gets down here through those trees?"

"Can you not see?" Tanub asked.

"Not without the headlights."

"Our eyes differ," Tanub said. He bent toward Orne, peered at Orne's eyes.

The Gienahn's vertical slit pupils expanded, contracted. "You are the same as the . . . others."

"Oh, on the Delphinus?"

"Yes."

Orne forced himself to fall silent then. He wanted to ask about the Delphinus, but sensed how narrow a path of tolerance he walked. They knew so little about the Gienahns. How did they reproduce? What was their religion?

It was obvious that Stetson and the brass behind him didn't expect this mission to succeed. This was a desperation move with an expendable pawn.

A sudden feeling of sympathy for the Gienahns came over Orne. Tanub and his fellows had no say in their own fate. Desperate humans were calling all of the moves.

Desperate and frightened humans who had grown up in the shadow of the Rim War terrors. Did that give these humans the right to decide whether an entire species should survive? These Gienahns were sapient creatures.

Although he had never considered himself very religious, Orne said a silent prayer: "Mahmud, help me save these . . . people."

An inner calmness washed all through him, a sensation of strength and confidence. He thought: I'm calling the moves!

A cool gloom swept over the jungle, bringing a sudden stillness to the wild sounds. A cluttering commotion came from the Gienahns in the trees and around the sled.

Tanub shifted, grunted.

The Gienahn who had been standing atop the load jumped down to the left.

"We go now," Tanub said. "Slowly. Stay behind my . . . scouts."

"Right." Orne eased the sled forward around an obstructing root, watched the headlights pick up the swinging, scampering figures of his escort.

Silence invaded the cab while they crawled forward.

"Turn a little to your right," Tanub said, indicating an aisle between the trees.

Orne obeyed. Around him shapes flung themselves from vine to vine.

"I admired your city from the air," Orne said. "It is very beautiful."

"Yes," Tanub said. "Your kind finds it so. Why did you bring your ship down so far from our city?"

"We didn't want to land where we might destroy anything."

"There is nothing to destroy in the jungle, Orne."

"Why do you have just the one big city?" Orne asked.

Silence.

"I said, why do you . . ."

"Orne, you are ignorant of our ways," Tanub growled. "Therefore, I forgive you. The city is for our race, for the foreverness. Our young must be born in sunlight. Once, long ago, we used crude platforms on the tops of the trees. Now . . . only the wild ones do this."

Stetson's voice hissed in Orne's ears: "Easy on the sex and breeding line.

That's always touchy. These creatures are oviparous. Sex glands apparently are hidden in that long fur behind where their chins ought to be."

Who decides where chins ought to be? Orne wondered.

"The ones who control the birthing sites control our world," Tanub said.

"Once there was another city. We destroyed it, shattered its towers and sent it crashing into the dirty mud where the jungle can reclaim it."

"Are there many . . . wild ones?" Orne asked.

"Fewer each season," Tanub said. His voice sounded boastful, confident.

"There's how they get their slaves," Stetson said.

"Soon, there will be no wild ones left," Tanub said.

"You speak excellent Galactese," Orne said.

"The High Path Chief commands the best teacher," Tanub said. "Do you, too, know many things, Orne?"

"That's why I was sent here," Orne said.

"Are there many planets to teach?" Tanub asked.

"Very many," Orne said. "Your city -- I saw very tall buildings. Of what do you build them?"

"In your tongue, glass," Tanub said. "The engineers of the Delphinus said it was impossible. As you saw, they are wrong."

Stetson's voice came hissing on the carrier wave: "A glassblowing culture!

That'd explain a lot of things."

The disguised air sled crept down the jungle aisle as Orne reviewed what he had heard and what he had observed. Glassblowers. High Path Chief. Eyes with vertical slit pupils. An arboreal species. Hunters. Warlike. Slave culture. The young must be born in sunlight. Culture? Or physical necessity? They learned quickly. They'd had the Delphinus and her crew only eighteen standard months.

A scout swooped down into the headlights, waved.

Orne stopped the sled on Tanub's order. They waited almost ten minutes before proceeding.

"Wild ones?" Orne asked.

"Perhaps. But we are too strong a force for them to attack. And they do not have good weapons. Do not be afraid, Orne."

A glowing of many lights grew visible through the giant tree trunks. It brightened as the sled crept through the jungle's edge and emerged in cleared land looking across about two kilometers of open space at the city.

Orne stared upward in awe. The Gienahn city fluted and spiralled into the moonlit sky, taller than the tallest trees. It appeared a fragile lacery of bridges, glowing columns and winking dots of light. The bridges wove back and forth from column to column until the entire visible network seemed one gigantic dew-glittering web.

"All that with glass," Orne murmured.

"What's happening?" Stetson demanded.

Orne touched his throat: "We're just out of the jungle and proceeding toward the nearest buildings of the city. They are magnificent!"

"Too bad if we have to blast the place."

Orne thought of a Chargonian curse: May you grow like a wild root with your head in the ground!

Tanub said: "This is far enough, Orne. Stop your vehicle."

Orne brought the sled to a jolting stop. He could see armed Gienahns all around in the moonlight -- Mark XX's, hand blasters. The glass-buttressed pedestal of a columnar building lifted into the moonlight directly ahead. It appeared taller than had the scout cruiser in the jungle landing circle.

Tanub leaned over Orne's shoulder. "We have not deceived you, Orne, have we?"

Orne felt his stomach contract. "What do you mean?" The furry odor of the Gienahn was oppressive in the cab.

"You have recognized that we cannot be mutated members of your race," Tanub said.

Orne tried to swallow in a dry throat. Stetson's voice came into his ears:

"Better admit it."

"That's true," Orne said.

"I like you, Orne," Tanub said. "You shall be one of my slaves. I will give you fine females from the Delphinus and you will teach me many things."

"How did you capture the Delphinus?" Orne asked.

"How do you know of this?" Tanub drew back and Orne saw the rifle muzzle come up.

"You have one of their rifles," Orne said. "We don't pass around weapons.

Our aim is to reduce the numbers of weapons throughout the . . ."

"Weak ground crawlers!" Tanub said. "You are no match for us, Orne. We take the high path. Our prowess is great. We surpass all other creatures in cunning. We shall subjugate you."

"How'd you take the Delphinus?" Orne asked.

"Ha! They brought their ship into our reach because it had inferior tubes.

We told them truthfully that we could improve their tubes. Very inferior ceramics your kind makes."

Orne studied Tanub in the dim glow of the cab light. "Tanub, have you heard of the I-A?"

"I-A! They investigate and adjust when others make mistakes. Their existence is an admission of your inferiority. You make mistakes!"

"Many people make mistakes," Orne said.

A wary tenseness came over the Gienahn. His mouth opened to reveal the long canines.

"You took the Delphinus by treachery?" Orne asked.

Stetson's voice came hissing on the carrier wave into Orne's hearing: "Don't goad him!"

Tanub said: "They were simple fools on the Delphinus. We are smaller than your kind; they thought us weaker." The Mark XX's muzzle came around to center on Orne's stomach. "You will answer a question. Why do you speak of this I-A?"

"I am of the I-A," Orne said. "I came here to find out where you'd hidden the Delphinus,"

"You came to die," Tanub said. "We have hidden your ship in the place that suits us best. In all of our history there has never been a better place for us to crouch and await the moment of attack."

"You see no alternative to attack?" Orne asked.

"In the jungle, the strong slay the weak until only the strong remain," Tanub said.

"Then the strong prey upon each other," Orne said.

"That is a quibble for weaklings!"

"Or for those who have seen this kind of thinking make entire worlds uninhabitable for any form of life -- nothing left for the strong or the weak."

"Within one of your years, Orne, we will be ready. Then we shall see which of us is correct."

"It's too bad you feel that way," Orne said. "When two cultures meet as ours are meeting they tend to help each other. Each gains. What have you done with the crew from the Delphinus?"

"They are slaves," Tanub said. "Those of them who still live. Some resisted.

Others objected to teaching us what it is we must know." He pointed the Mark XX at Orne's head. "You will not be foolish enough to object, will you, Orne?"

"No need for me to be foolish," Orne said. "We of the I-A are also teachers.

We teach lessons to people who make mistakes. You have made a mistake, Tanub.

You have told me where you have hidden the Delphinus."

"Go, boy!" Stetson shouted on the hissing carrier wave. "Where is it?"

"Impossible!" Tanub snarled. The gun muzzle remained centered on Orne's head.

"It's on your moon," Orne said. "Dark side. It's on a mountain on the dark side of your moon."

Tanub's eyes dilated, contracted. "You read minds?"

"No need for the I-A to read minds," Orne said. "We rely on superior mental prowess and the mistakes of others."

"Two attack monitors are on their way" Stetson's voice hissed. "We're coming in to get you. I'll want to know how you figured this one out."

"You are a weak fool like the others," Tanub gritted.