A Talent for War

IX.

I’D NEVER READ Man and Olympian. Like probably every other kid in the Confederacy, I’d been exposed to it by the schools. And I can remember struggling through the chapter on Socrates for a college history class. But I’d never really read the book.

There was a bound copy on one of the shelves in Gabe’s bedroom. (I didn’t sleep there myself. I was using a room in the back of the house on the second floor.)

On the way home from the Talino Society meeting, I decided it was time to look at Sim’s classic again.

It’s one of the standard works, of course: a history of the Hellenic Age, from the Persian wars to the death of Alexander. My assumption had always been that it owed its reputation to the fame of its author rather than to any innate value; but that was a prejudice grounded on a child’s collision with a serious book.

I opened it approximately in the middle and read in both directions, expecting, I suppose, quiet excursions into Greek philosophy, and a tired rehashing of the Persian and Peloponnesian wars.

What I got instead was volcanic energy, sulphurous opinions, and sheer brilliance. One does not drift leisurely through a few political analyses, or stare at a few arrows on a battle map. Not with Sim. The statesmen in his book pound tables; one can smell the Mediterranean and the planks of the Athenian triremes. And the terrible issues of freedom and order, of mortality and the spirit, are achingly alive.

We are all Hellenes, he says in his introduction. Dellaconda and Rimway and Cormoral owe all that they are to the restless thinkers along the Aegean, who, in the most exquisite sense, took the first steps to the stars. Only the mind is sacred. That notion was a dazzling insight in its time. Wedded to the observation that nature is subject to laws, and that those laws can be understood, it was the key to the universe.

I read through the day, well into the late afternoon. Occasionally, Jacob fussed in the background, noisily grilling hamburgers or mixing drinks, or breaking in to suggest that I take advantage of the good weather for a stroll.

There were some surprises. Sim disapproves of Socrates, whose doctrines embody admirable values (he concedes): but which nevertheless disrupted Hellenic society. The unfortunate reality about the execution of Socrates, he writes, is not that it happened; but that it happened too late.

The early pages of Man and Olympian are filled with Xerxes' rage ("O Master, remember the Athenians"), Themistocles' statesmanship, and the valor of the troops who stood at Thermopylae. I was struck, not only by the clarity and force of the book, but also by its compassion. It was not what one would ordinarily expect from a military leader. But then, Sim had not begun as a military leader: he’d been a teacher when the trouble started.

The book is well named: Sim’s views are essentially Olympian. One cannot escape the impression that he speaks for History; and if his perspective is not always quite that of his colleagues, or those who have gone before, there is no doubt where the misperceptions lie. His is the final word.

The prose acquires a brooding quality during his account of the destruction of Athens, and the needless loss of life during the effort to defend the Parthenon. His most memorable passage blasts the Spartans for allowing Thermopylae to happen: They knew for years that the Persians were coming, and, in any case, had advance intelligence of the gathering of the invasion army; yet they prepared no league, and set no defenses, until the deluge was on them. Then they sent Leonidas and his men, and their handful of allies, to compensate with their lives for the neglect and stupidity of the politicians.

It was a grim coincidence: those words were written before the Ashiyyur launched their war, and, in a broad sense, it fell to Sim to play the role of Leonidas. He led the holding action for the frontier worlds, while Tarien sounded the alarm and began the immense task of forging an alliance that could stand against the invaders.

In the morning, while I ate, Jacob told me he had hold of something else that was strange. "The Corsarius seems to have got around pretty well. For example, if we can believe the accounts, two days after the raid on Hrinwhar, it was reported to have driven off an Ashiyyurean destroyer near Onikai IV. Onakai is eighty light years from the Spinners. Four days in hyper alone. It attacked a capital ship at Salinas on the same day that Sim was winning at Chapparal. Again, an impossible flight. There are numerous other instances." "What did the Ashiyyur have to say about all this?" "They aren’t very communicative, Alex. As nearly as I can make out, they’ve simply denied the stories. But their records have never been made available."

"Maybe," I said, "we should try talking to them."

"How do you plan to do that? There are no diplomatic contacts."

"There’s one," I said. "The Maracaibo Caucus."

Thirty-six standard years ago, a small group of senior military officers broke with long-standing custom, and invited a noted Ashiyyurean naval strategist to address the Maracaibo War Academy, on Earth. The speaker, whose name no one seemed to be able to pronounce, was the first of her species to be admitted legally onto a Confederate world in more than a century.

The invitation became traditional, and from the annual meetings an unusual special interest group developed: retired military officers, both human and Ashiyyurean, who were dedicated to establishing a permanent peace. The group, naturally, remained small. It was never a popular movement. Members—at least the human ones—absorbed political punishment and suspicion for their activities.

When I tried to link in, I got only an AI, who explained that officers of the Caucus did not accept unsolicited calls. What was my business?

I told it who I was, and explained that I was doing some historical research. I wondered if I could talk with someone who was reasonably knowledgeable about the Resistance in general, and details of the naval war in particular.

There was a delay, presumably while it sought instructions. Then: "It is not our policy to receive private visitors."

"I would be grateful for an exception." I explained that numerous questions remained unanswered, that an account of the war from the point of view of the Ashiyyur would contribute to mutual understanding. Needed to get information from the horse’s mouth. Etcetera.

It listened politely, excused itself, and let me wait about ten minutes. "Very good, Mr. Benedict," it said on returning. "One of our staff will be pleased to entertain your questions. But we request that you come personally."

"You mean physically?"

"Yes. If that is not too great an inconvenience."

That seemed curious. "You want me to actually come down here?" I was at the moment seated opposite the AI in what I supposed was one of the suites at Kostyev House, where the Maracaibo Caucus maintained its offices.

"Yes. If you wish."

"Why?"

"Personal contact is always best. The Ashiyyur are uncomfortable with headband technology."

I shrugged and made my appointment. Two hours later I arrived outside Kostyev House, a former embassy building near the capitol. It was, on the afternoon of my visit, ringed with demonstrators, who circled a holo depicting an alien with burning eyes. Demonstrations, I learned later, were almost constant outside the grounds. Their intensity and numbers fluctuated in proportion to the current level of mutual hostility. Things were bad just now, and I was roundly jeered as I hurried past, gave my name to security, and entered the ancient gray structure.

I rode a tube up to the third floor, and turned into a thickly carpeted, paneled corridor. Carved doors appeared irregularly; and long murals depicted men and women in sedate tableaus, contemplating storm-threatened landscapes, dallying at overladen picnic tables, or browsing through markets. There were no windows, and the only illumination was gloomily cast by occasional electric candles. The effect was that the far end of the passageway seemed to stretch into a guttering infinity.

There were doors on both sides of the hallway. Most were unmarked. I passed a legal firm, and a shipping company, and, in two or three cases, offices designated only by names.

Eventually I arrived in front of a pair of double doors, and a plate reading Maracaibo Caucus.

I knocked and stepped inside. I’m not sure what I was expecting: I’d been thinking about representatives of a civilization much older than my own; of telepaths; of a species intellectually our superiors, and yet whose technological accomplishments trailed our own. The cost of easy communication, some had theorized. Vertical information storage, writing, came quite late.

Anyhow, whatever exotic sort of chamber I’d been anticipating from the Maracaibo Caucus, I’d walked into something that might have been a shipping office. The furnishings were tasteful, but mundane: a square-cut uncomfortable-looking couch, a couple of carved chairs, and a low table on which a row of worn books were haphazardly piled. Large square windows admitted blocks of pale sunlight. The titles of the books were vaguely familiar, though I’d read none: An Urge to Empire, Green Grass and Silver Ships, Last Days. There were several biographies of persons, both human and Ashiyyurean, who had tried over the millennia to prevent the outbreak of mass violence.

I discovered a copy of Tanner’s Extracts from Tulisofala, and picked it up. It was a hefty volume, the sort you lay out as eyewash, but never expect to open.

I was paging through it when the sensation that I was not alone in the room, that I was indeed being watched, settled over me. I peered carefully from desk to cabinet to terminal to the entrance to another door that led (I presumed) to an inner office.

Nothing that I could see had changed.

Still, something that was not me moved.

I felt it. In the office. In the still warm air.

Back behind my eyes.

Simultaneously, I heard footsteps in the adjoining room. The connecting door opened, away from me. Whoever had hold of it did not immediately enter, but hung back as though in conversation with someone. There was no sound.

I began to sweat. My vision darkened, and white blossoms expanded in the gauzy light. I must have retreated to a chair. Someone entered the office, but I was too busy trying not to be sick to worry much about it. A hand touched my wrist, and a cool cloth was pressed against my forehead.

The thing that I had sensed stirred in measured cadence to the visitor’s movements.

"It’s all right, Mr. Benedict," he said. (It was a male. I had glimpsed that much.) "How do you feel?"

"Okay," I said, shakily. Something turned in my head, twisted away from the light, burrowed deep. Another wave of nausea swept over me.

"I’m sorry," he said. "Perhaps it would have been best to attempt the commlink after all."

That’s what I was thinking. And of course he knew that. Still, I tried to look on the positive side: chance to meet an Ashiyyurean. How the hell could I forego that? And of course I’d heard the stories. But I’d dismissed them as hysterical.

I tried to concentrate on externals: desk and lamp. Sunlight. The creature’s long, curiously human hand.

"My name," he said, "is S’Kalian. And if it’s any consolation, you should know that your reaction is common." I couldn’t see where the words came from: undoubtedly a device concealed within his loose sleeves.

I was able to sit up now. He placed the cool cloth he’d been using in my hand. "If you wish, I can withdraw, and have someone, a human, come and help you back to the street."

"No," I said. "I’m all right." S’Kalian retreated a few steps, and leaned casually against the desk. He dwarfed the furniture. You’ve seen holos of the Ashiyyur, but you have no idea of the presence they project until you’ve been in a room with one. I felt overwhelmed.

He wore a plain, long garment, belted round the waist; and a skullcap. His face, which deviated from a human’s just enough to be unsettling (particularly, the large, arched eyes, and the canines that always chilled the smile), registered concern.

There was a sense of serene ferocity about those eyes. I pulled free of them, and tried to collect my wits. He looked young. And his appearance had just the correct strain of the exotic to render him attractive. In an unnerving sort of way.

"I’m grateful," I said, "that you agreed to talk to me."

He bowed, and I felt all the secrets of my life spill out into plain view. He is a telepath! I’d believed I could control myself, ask my few questions, and get out. His face showed no reaction. But I knew, knew, he was reading everything.

What was there for him to see?

The tilt and flow of Quinda Arm’s breasts.

My God! Where had that come from?

I fastened on the Hrinwhar raid, the Corsarius, that magnificent plunge into the Ashiyyurean fleet.

No. That wasn’t so good either. I squirmed.

More women drifted into mind. In compromising positions.

How does one converse with a creature who seizes the newborn thought?

"You seemed so insistent," he said, joining his hands beneath the folds of his robe, and giving no indication he was aware of any mental turmoil in the room. "How may I be of service?"

It would be incorrect to say that I was frightened, even though I knew that some people had suffered psychological damage from encounters with the Ashiyyur. Fear would come later, when I was safe. For the moment I was only ashamed, humiliated, that nothing I knew or felt was concealed from this other self, from the incurious eyes that casually glanced over my shoulder and focused somewhere behind me.

"Need I speak?" I asked. "You know why I am here." I looked for a fleeting smile, a nod, a physical sign that he understood my discomfort.

"I am sorry, Mr. Benedict," he said, "but I am no more able to avoid penetrating your coelix, than you would be to avoid hearing an orchestra playing in the next room. However, you should be happy to know that it is not at all easy to sort out." His lips never moved. But there was animation in the eyes. Interest. A trace of compassion. "Try to ignore the penetration, and speak as you would normally."

My God, how the rubble of a lifetime boiled to the surface: an act of cowardice committed long before in a schoolyard; a failure to speak honestly to a woman for whom all passion had expired; an unspoken satisfaction taken, for no discernible reason, in a friend’s misfortune. Small, contemptible things. The baggage that one hauls through a lifetime, the acts that one would change—

"If it is of any assistance to you, please be aware that the experience is even more difficult for me."

"Why?"

"Are you sure you wish to know?"

It struck me that he possessed remarkably poor insight into human psychology to put the question that way. I wasn’t at all sure I wanted to hear the answer. Nevertheless: "Of course."

"You have evolved without telepathic abilities. Consequently, you —your species—has never seen a direct need for imposing order, and very little for restraining the more violent passions. The intensity of your hates and fears, the sudden gales of emotion that may erupt without warning in a human mind, the dominance of your appetites: all of these create discomfort." He inclined his head slightly, and the wisp of a sad smile played about his lips. "I’m sorry, but you are greatly handicapped by the conditions of your environment."

"S’Kalian, do you know why I’m here?"

Apparently confident now that he would not have to come to my rescue, S’Kalian slipped off the desk, and dropped into an armchair. "I’m not sure you know, Mr. Benedict."

"Christopher Sim," I said.

"Yes. A great man. Your people are right to hold him in reverence."

"Our records on the war are incomplete and contradictory. I would like to clarify some points, if it would be possible."

"I am not a historian."

Quinda popped back into my mind. Quinda’s shoulders, soft and naked in candlelight. I cringed, and tried to concentrate on the Corsarius, on the Tanner volume that lay on the table.

S’Kalian remained quietly attentive.

What would sex be like with a female Ashiyyurean? What happens to mating habits when minds are completely open?

"It’s all right, Mr. Benedict," said S’Kalian. "This sort of thing invariably happens. There’s no need to be embarrassed. Thought is, by its nature, unpredictable and, even among us, perverse. You and I can bring anything into each other’s mind, in glittering color and full animation, merely by mentioning it."

"You’re not a retired officer, are you?" I asked, close to panic.

He inclined his head. "Thank you. No. My function is to assist in communications, and to act as a cultural advisor. I’m trained to conduct conversations with humans. But not very effectively, I fear." Again he smiled, reassuringly. I wondered whether that particular gesture might turn out to be universal among intelligent species. At least, among those physically equipped to produce it.

"Can we talk about the Ashiyyurean perspective on some aspects of the Resistance?"

"Of course," he said. "Although I doubt that I know enough to help you. By the way, we call it the Incursion."

"Does that matter now?"

"I suppose not. But perceptions are important. Some would even say they are the true reality."

"When you mentioned Christopher Sim earlier, you described him as a great man. Is that view generally shared by the Ashiyyur?"

"Oh, yes. I don’t think there’s any question about that. Of course, if he had been one of our generals, we would have executed him."

I was shocked. "Why?"

"Because he violated all the rules of civilized behavior. He attacked without warning, refused to meet his opponents in open combat, waged war in a thousand unorthodox ways. When the war was clearly lost, he nevertheless continued to sacrifice lives, both those of his own people, and ours, rather than admit defeat. No: many died in a struggle that was needlessly prolonged."

I laughed at him. In the exposed position in which I found myself, it seemed the only proper response. Still, he maintained his equanimity, and even chuckled lightly himself.

"About the Corsarius," I said. "Our records place it and Sim at the scene of various engagements which happened too far apart and within too narrow a time frame to allow him to travel the distance between. For example, the actions fought in the Spinners, at Randin’hal, the first engagements in the Slot, and Sim’s appearance at Ilyanda all occurred within twelve standard days of each other. The distances involved here are considerable. Hrinwhar in the Spinners is almost sixty light years from Randin’hal. If a modern warship were to succeed in re-entering linear space at precisely the target area — which is damned near impossible—it would still take three to four days to get from one place to the other. Sim appears to have done considerably better."

"Our records contain essentially the same time frames."

"There are other, similar, discrepancies. Other times and places."

"Yes."

"How do your historians account for it?"

His eyes slid shut. "Like yours, they can only speculate."

"And what are their speculations?"

"That there were actually three other vessels masquerading as the Corsarius. This proposition will not come as a surprise to your own analysts. It is the simplest explanation, and consequently the most likely.

"After all, who knows where he really was? All we can be sure of is that a ship with a supposedly unique symbol appeared in various places. Sim’s intention in creating that symbol was clearly to wage psychological warfare. It was never the act of simple bravado which has found its way into the popular consciousness. And it was effective: that vessel was seen everywhere, and the effect of its appearance became, in time, quite demoralizing.

"You may be interested in knowing, Mr. Benedict, that there is a myth among our people that Sim was an alien. A true alien, that is, a member of a species unknown to us both.

"It was this aura, even more than his capabilities as a strategist, as a psychologist, and as a battle commander, that made him so dangerous, and so widely feared.

"Incidentally, there is reason to suspect that one of the duplicate Corsariuses was destroyed at Grand Salinas, and at least one, and maybe two, during the long series of engagements in the Slot."

"What you’re telling me is that nobody really knows."

"That is correct. I can confirm that our information tallies with yours in most essentials. In fact, your historians and ours have long since collaborated on these matters, despite a distinct lack of official enthusiasm. But we are talking about wartime, and there was considerable confusion. It seems likely the whole truth in these matters will never be known." He shifted his position. "Is there anything else I can help you with?"

"Yes," I said, picking up the Extracts. "What do you know of Leisha Tanner?"

"Early translator of Tulisofala. Quite good, by the way."

"She also opposed the war."

"I know. That is a position that has always bothered me."

"Why?" I asked, thrown momentarily off stride.

"Because she had obligations to her species that outweighed the essential morality of the struggle. Once the war was underway in earnest, the risks for both sides were great, and the right or wrong of it, from a philosophical point of view, ceased to matter."

"Philosophers make the best generals," I said, drily.

"I understand the jest. But it is quite true. There comes a time when one must choose. Whatever we would prefer for ourselves, we must choose for the common good. Even if that means we must support an immoral cause. Had I been human, I would have fought with the Dellacondans."

This was all disconcerting. "You represent an organization dedicated to finding ways to keep the peace," I said.

"And we will. But it is not easy. If I can say this in all honesty, there are those on both sides who wish war."

"Why?"

"Because many of us who have looked into your minds are terrified by what we see there. It would be very easy to conclude that our only real safety lies in reducing your species to impotence. And among your own people, there are many who believe, and perhaps rightly, that enmity with us is the cement that binds your Confederacy together."

I grunted some sort of response.

He stood up, and adjusted the folds in his robe. "However that may be, Alex, you may be certain that you have a friend among the Ashiyyur."