Conquerors' Pride

13

With Svv-selic no longer in charge. It was obvious from the moment they entered the outer room through their private door. Svv-selic had always been the one in the middle of the group whenever they all stood or walked together, with Thrr-gilag and Nzz-oonaz flanking him and generally keeping their mouths shut. This time, it was Thrr-gilag, the short one, who held center position as they walked over to the glass wall of his cell.

And it was Thrr-gilag who spoke. "Good day, Cavv-ana," he said. "You well?"

"Reasonably well," Pheylan replied, wondering if he should comment on Thrr-gilag's new status and deciding it was probably best to ignore it. "I could use some sunlight, though. It's been a long time since I was outside."

For a moment Thrr-gilag seemed to study him. "That your doing," he said. "You must not go where forbidden."

"I didn't mean to do anything wrong," Pheylan assured him. Just one more bit of evidence, if he'd needed it, that that white pyramid thing out there was extremely important to these people. Apparently, Svv-selic had been demoted because of it. "We humans are curious, that's all."

"So you said," Thrr-gilag said. "Do you want go outside?"

Pheylan looked at Nzz-oonaz, standing near the dog flap with the obedience suit across one arm. "Yes, I do," he said cautiously. There was something about the way they were all just standing there that he didn't care for.

"We have question," Thrr-gilag said. "You answer question, you go outside."

So they were finally getting around to the inevitable interrogation. "Let me go outside first," Pheylan said. "Then I'll answer your questions."

"Question first," Thrr-gilag said. "If you refuse, no go outside."

Pheylan pursed his lips. "Compromise," he suggested. "I'll answer your questions while we're outside."

For a moment Thrr-gilag stood there, apparently considering the offer. Pheylan held his gaze, mentally crossing his fingers. The more he could get them to back down—on anything—the more potentially useful precedents he would have set for future negotiations.

And to his mild surprise Thrr-gilag did indeed back down. "You answer question outside," he agreed. "If not, you not go outside again."

"All right," Pheylan nodded. "But remember that if you do that, I'll die."

"You not die," Thrr-gilag said. "We not allow." He gestured, and Nzz-oonaz knelt down and stuffed the obedience suit through the dog flap.

They watched as Pheylan changed clothes. "Do as we say," Thrr-gilag warned as he opened the cell door. "Else punish again."

The weather outside wasn't nearly as pleasant this time as it had been four days earlier. The sky was completely covered with gloomy bands of gray and dirty-white clouds, and a moderate increase in the earlier cool temperatures was more than offset by the gusty winds that swept restlessly across the landing area, kicking up clouds of red dust. "This isn't going to help me very much," Pheylan warned Thrr-gilag. "Not much sunlight getting through those clouds."

"Tomorrow come back outside," Thrr-gilag said. "Unless you refuse answer question."

"Ah," Pheylan said, grimacing to himself. So that was why Thrr-gilag had backed down on the question of an open-air interrogation. He'd seen the weather and had known full well that they weren't giving anything away for free. "Fine," he grunted. "Let's hear these questions."

"One question only," Thrr-gilag said. "Tell everything about weapon CIRCE."

Pheylan's stomach tightened into a hard knot. So there it was: the dark fear that had been lurking at the back of his mind ever since he'd first realized that Commodore Dyami's personal computer had been captured intact.

The Zhirrzh knew about CIRCE.

"I don't understand," he stalled. "What do you mean?"

"CIRCE," Thrr-gilag repeated. "Do you refuse tell?"

Pheylan looked over at the white pyramid and its three surrounding domes, trying to figure out what the hell he was supposed to do now. The survival of humanity might well hinge on NorCoord's ability to use CIRCE against the Zhirrzh and those invulnerable warships of theirs. The more the Zhirrzh knew about the weapon, the better their chances of coming up with a defense against it.

But he'd made a deal with Thrr-gilag. If he reneged on that promise, he'd lose any chance of making future bargains. Besides which, there was probably nothing he could tell them that they hadn't already gotten from Dyami's computer. "No, I didn't mean that," he assured Thrr-gilag. "I was trying to ask what you wanted to know. I don't really know anything about CIRCE except its history."

From behind Thrr-gilag, Svv-selic muttered something in their own language. "You command human spacecraft," Thrr-gilag pointed out. "You know human weapons."

Pheylan shrugged. "Commanding a ship doesn't have anything to do with it," he said, starting to walk toward the woods behind the base. "Not with CIRCE."

"But CIRCE is human weapon," Thrr-gilag persisted, taking a couple of quick steps to catch up to him.

Pheylan glanced at him... and looked back again. Close up, he could see for the first time that there was a small button the same color as Zhirrzh skin nestled beneath a shallow horizontal ridge on the side of Thrr-gilag's head. It was hard to tell for sure, but it looked as if there were four thin appendages extending from the button into the four parallel slits curving across the skin beneath the ridge. "What's that thing?" he asked, pointing to it.

"This?" Thrr-gilag asked, his tongue snaking out around the side of his head to point at the button. Pheylan twitched his hand back a little; he'd almost forgotten Zhirrzh tongues could do that. "It connect to interpreter."

"To an interpreter?" Pheylan repeated. "You mean a mechanical interpreter? A computer?"

"Yes."

"But I thought... never mind."

"Explain."

"I said never mind," Pheylan said, starting to turn away.

Thrr-gilag's hand snaked out, its three fingers and two thumbs wrapping around Pheylan's upper arm. "Explain," he demanded.

Pheylan looked at the audio link again, threw a quick glance over his shoulder at Svv-selic and Nzz-oonaz. Now that he knew what to look for, he could see that each of them was wearing one, as well.

So then what was that scar all of them had at the base of their skulls? The scar he'd assumed was the mark of a Copperhead-type Mindlink implant?

Thrr-gilag was still waiting. "I assumed you were connected to a computer translator in a more permanent way," Pheylan told him. "These scars back here." He reached out toward the back of Thrr-gilag's head—

He didn't fall flat on his face this time, but only because he was more or less balanced when Nzz-oonaz triggered the magnets in his obedience suit. His right elbow did crack painfully against his rib cage, however, as his arms were yanked to his sides. "Hey!" he snapped, bending violently back and forth at the waist as he fought to keep his balance. "I was just trying to point to it."

Thrr-gilag said something, and the magnets shut off. "Explain word 'scars,' " Thrr-gilag said.

"Scars are marks of surgery," Pheylan told him, throwing a glare at Nzz-oonaz as he rubbed his elbow. "Cutting into someone's body to take something out or put something in. All three of you have them, right at the base of your skulls." He started to point, changed his mind, and indicated the spot on the back of his own neck. "Right here."

For a long moment the three Zhirrzh just looked at him, their nonhuman faces unreadable. Nzz-oonaz muttered something to Thrr-gilag, who replied in the same tone. Svv-selic joined in, and for a minute they held a quiet three-way discussion. Pheylan waited, blinking against the dusty wind blowing across his face and surveying the landscape around them. The last time they'd been out here, he'd spotted what had seemed to be a path leading back into the woods from a corner of the building where his cell was located. He was hoping today to get a closer look at that area.

"Humans not have fsss organ?"

Pheylan shifted his attention back to Thrr-gilag. "What?"

"Scar mark of fsss organ," Thrr-gilag said. "Humans have here?" His tongue darted out to point to the right side of Pheylan's abdomen.

Pheylan frowned. There was nothing noteworthy there except the small keyhole mark where he'd had his appendix removed when he was ten.

A mark which, now that he thought about it, the Zhirrzh examiners had paid an unusual amount of attention to during that long physical exam his first day here. "I don't know," he told Thrr-gilag. "We don't have the same names for organs that you do. What does a fsss organ do?"

Svv-selic growled something, his tongue flicking restlessly in and out of his mouth. Thrr-gilag replied—reluctantly, Pheylan thought—and then turned back to Pheylan. "Not proper subject," Thrr-gilag said. "You tell about CIRCE."

"There's not much more to tell," Pheylan said. So Thrr-gilag was changing the subject; and in a suspiciously abrupt way. Was this fsss thing something taboo to discuss in polite conversation? Or was it something they didn't want humans to know about? Either way, one more bit of information to tuck away for future reference. "The name CIRCE is supposed to be an acronym—that means it's short for the full name of Collimated Ion Resonance Cannon, Ephemeral. Everything else I know is just the history that's in the public record. Only a few humans know what CIRCE really is or how it works."

"Tell history."

Pheylan took a deep breath, an unexpected shiver running up his back. They must have shown the cadets that old watchship recording fifty times back at the academy... and it had been as eerie the fiftieth time as it had the first. "It was an ambush," he told Thrr-gilag. "Five top-of-the-line Pawolian warships were hanging off Celadon system's innermost planet, hiding in the umbra—the shadow. They headed straight out toward the three NorCoord ships, none of which was more than half the size of theirs. They launched their fighters ahead of them, we launched ours, and they had at it."

"You see?"

Pheylan shook his head. "This was thirty-seven years ago. I wasn't even born yet. I've just seen the record."

"Tell more."

"There's not much more to tell," Pheylan said. "The fighters met between the converging warship lines, and the battle was getting started when the Pawoles' tactical structure suddenly just collapsed. They started retreating, with the NorCoord fighters in pursuit... and on the record you can see that the warships behind them have started drifting out of formation. CIRCE had killed everyone aboard."

There was a moment of silence, followed by another three-way conference. Pheylan kept walking, watching the forest off to his left. It hadn't been just a trick of angle and lighting: there was a path there, all right. More or less straight, heading back into the trees and underbrush behind the complex. Altering his direction a few degrees, he headed toward it.

The conference behind him ended. "How?" Thrr-gilag asked.

"How what? How did CIRCE kill them?" Pheylan shook his head. "Radiation burns of some kind. Beyond that I haven't the foggiest."

Thrr-gilag seemed to consider that. Or else was listening to their computer floundering over the word "foggiest." "Why CIRCE not used in attack against Zhirrzh?" he asked at last.

Pheylan glared into his alien face. "Get your facts straight, Zhirrzh. We didn't attack first. You did."

"Not true," Thrr-gilag said. "Commanders and Elders say. Human ships attack first."

"Were you there?" Pheylan demanded. "You personally?"

Thrr-gilag's tongue flicked out a couple of times. "No. Kee'rr clan Elder speak—"

"I was there," Pheylan cut him off. "And I don't care what your Elders or your commanders or anyone else tells you. Your ships fired first."

He turned his back on the Zhirrzh, the faces of his murdered crew flickering across his vision. Rico, Hauver, Meyers, Chen Ki—

"You not speak words against Elders," Svv-selic admonished him. "Too'rr clan Elder say same."

"As say Flii'rr clan Elder," Nzz-oonaz chimed in.

"I don't care what your Elders say—"

"No more!" Svv-selic snarled, taking a step toward him. "You speak no more words against Elders. Or punish."

Pheylan felt his lip twist. So that was how it worked here. The official line was that the Jutland task force had been the aggressor, and that was how it was going to be. And Svv-selic and Nzz-oonaz were going to fall dutifully into line like loyal party functionaries. Unwilling to question the supreme Zhirrzh authority, or even to listen to anything that might conflict with the official version of the truth. Their minds already made up.

Absolute control, coupled with absolute subservience... and yet, even as the contempt bubbled in Pheylan's throat, he recognized that here, finally, was a chink in the Zhirrzh armor plate. A potentially devastating chink. Human history had demonstrated time and again the basic instability of autocratic, information-manipulating governments, from Nazi Germany to the Soviet Empire to the Chinese Domination to Celadon's Quadarch regime. All it took was the right spark to set it off.

The truth that their government was lying in order to justify a war could be that spark. And with a sudden surge of adrenaline, Pheylan realized that the necessary tinder might be standing right there in front of him.

Thrr-gilag hadn't joined in the quick chorus of reproach that had come from the other two Zhirrzh. On the contrary, he was being noticeably quiet. "I was there," Pheylan repeated, looking directly at him. "I know what happened."

"You not speak against Elders," Thrr-gilag said. But to Pheylan's ears the words sounded hesitant and unsure, and there'd been just a slight pause before he said them. "Not proper subject. Tell why CIRCE not used against Zhirrzh."

Pheylan turned away and started walking toward the forest path again. "CIRCE isn't standard-issue equipment aboard human ships," he said. "Contrary to what your leaders have probably told you, we humans don't kill just for the hell of it. Only when it's absolutely necessary."

"CIRCE used against others."

"It was used against the Pawoles." Pheylan threw them a grim smile. "But, then, the Pawoles attacked first."

They had reached the edge of the forest before Thrr-gilag spoke again. "How often CIRCE used?"

"Just that one time," Pheylan said. "The Pawoles were smart enough to capitulate before we had to use it again." He looked Thrr-gilag straight in those three-pupiled eyes. "Other nonhumans we locked horns with were smart enough not to make us use it at all."

He turned back to the forest. "Looks like a path here," he commented, gesturing to it. "Where does it lead?"

"Not go there," Thrr-gilag said.

"I won't," Pheylan assured him, taking another step toward it. The feathery grasslike ground-cover plants were worn away from the center of the path, he could see now, exposing the familiar reddish dirt and mixed with bits of leaves and twigs.

And a handful of flat, finger-sized gray stones.

"I just wanted to know where it went," he continued as he took another step toward the path. His knowledge of geology ranked near the bottom of his expertise list, but those stones sure looked like slivers of flint. With sharp edges...

"Not go there," Thrr-gilag insisted.

"Is more of the complex that direction?" Pheylan continued as if he hadn't spoken, taking another step. Eventually, Nzz-oonaz was going to wake up to the fact that he wasn't stopping and trigger the obedience suit. He had to be in position in front of those stones before that happened. "Will you be putting a real road through to it?" he added over his shoulder. One more step... two... three...

"Kasar!" Thrr-gilag called.

Even braced and ready for it, the obedience suit still packed a terrific wallop. Arms glued to his sides, Pheylan winced as he toppled helplessly over to slam chest first to the ground. "Hey, you didn't need to do that," he snapped indignantly, twisting his head around to glare at the three Zhirrzh. "I wasn't going to go in there."

"You did not stop," Thrr-gilag said.

"You didn't tell me to," Pheylan countered. They were moving toward him; but from their angle, for another second or two, his left hand would be partially hidden from their view. Carefully, keeping the movements as inconspicuous as possible, he searched across the ground with his fingers. "All you said was not to go in there. I didn't."

Thrr-gilag paused, his face twisting slightly in something that might have been a moment of uncertainty... and as the alien stood there, Pheylan's fingers found what they'd been looking for. Easing the stone beneath his palm, he closed his hand halfway around it.

"Say not go there," Thrr-gilag said. "Mean you stop."

"I'll try to remember that for the next time," Pheylan growled. "Can I get up now?"

Thrr-gilag made a gesture. Nzz-oonaz lifted the black trigger gadget and pointed it at Pheylan, and the magnets shut off. "Thank you," Pheylan said, pulling himself to his feet and rubbing his elbow where it had cracked into his ribs again. Nzz-oonaz had pointed the trigger at him, just as he had the first time they had used the suit. Did that mean the trigger worked with a directional signal, like infrared or a tight sonic, instead of radio? "Some kind of warning might be nice in the future," he added, rubbing his chin where the ground-cover plants had scratched it and then tugging his jumpsuit collar open another couple of centimeters.

Under cover of the motion he dropped the stone into the neck of the suit.

"You go back inside now," Thrr-gilag said.

Pheylan looked back along the path, cutting along the shrubbery to disappear among the trees. Whatever was down there, he couldn't see it. Probably nothing more useful than the Zhirrzh equivalent of an outhouse, anyway. "Suits me," he told Thrr-gilag. "Let's go in."

It took some doing to sneak the stone out of the obedience suit as he undressed, what with all three Zhirrzh watching him like misshapen hawks. But he managed it, palming the stone in his left hand as he pushed the suit back out through the dog flap, and then smuggling it into the shower with him.

The ventilation system, operating through a series of small slits in the ceiling, was pretty good; but while Pheylan had never been able to steam up the cell's outer glass wall, the open-topped shower stall itself was another matter. He got the hot water going... and under the temporary cover he examined his new prize.

It was a small treasure, as treasures went, perhaps five centimeters long and three wide. It was thin, too, no more than three millimeters thick, and while the edges weren't pleasant for human fingers to handle, they were a long way from being sharp enough to cut either obedience-suit material or Zhirrzh skin.

Still, it was something; and just having a solid, potentially dangerous object in his hand again was an immense boost to his morale. If he could successfully hide it, and then find a way to sharpen one of the edges without his captors catching on, it would open up a whole range of new options for him.

What those options were, he wasn't exactly sure yet. But he'd think of something.

He washed and got out of the shower, rubbing vigorously at his hair with the stone again concealed in one hand. He still wasn't sure why he was getting away so easily with this, but the more he thought about it, the more he realized that the design of the Zhirrzh hand probably didn't allow this kind of undetectable palming. His original plan had been to conceal it in his jumpsuit boot, snuggled up beneath his toes, but the difficulty of retrieving it quickly had made him change his mind. Sitting on his bed as he pulled on his jumpsuit, he slid the right-most of the under-bed storage drawers open a centimeter and dropped the stone inside, sliding it down between the drawer itself and the crumpled survival pack that filled most of the space.

He spent the rest of the day in his by-now-familiar routine, dividing his time between isometric exercises, his memorization of the outside room, and the continual contemplation of how he might escape this place. Several times he found himself wanting to ease the drawer open and touch the stone, to feel its edges and reassure himself that it was still there. But he resisted the temptation. He'd already noticed that their surveillance of him seemed to ease up after he turned in for the night. That would be the proper moment to move the stone to a more permanent hiding place.

The moment never came. He was lying on his bed, drowsily watching the Zhirrzh techs puttering around, when suddenly the outer door flew open and six of the aliens stormed in and headed straight for his cell. Two of the Zhirrzh were carrying the same long gray sticks he'd seen earlier in the hands of the pyramid guards on his first trip outside; two others were holding stubby flashlight-sized devices. The last two appeared to be unarmed.

"What's going on?" Pheylan demanded as they took up military-precise positions around his cell, the two unencumbered Zhirrzh moving to the door, the other four flanking them on either side. All four weapons, Pheylan noted uneasily, were pointed straight at his face through the glass... and up close, those long sticks looked even nastier than they did at a distance. "What's going on?" he asked again, less aggressively this time. Unlike the projectile and missile weapons used by the Peacekeepers, the Zhirrzh ships had used high-energy lasers. If the sticks and flashlights pointed at him were scaled-down versions of those, they could burn him to ash right through the cell wall. Possibly one reason they'd made it out of glass in the first place.

"You stand away," a voice came from behind him.

Pheylan turned. Thrr-gilag was standing there, his tongue flicking in and out of his mouth, the corkscrewing tail going at double-time rate. "What?" he asked the Zhirrzh.

"You stand away," Thrr-gilag repeated. His tongue stiffened to point across the cell at the shower. "Stand there."

Wordlessly, Pheylan stood up and walked over to the shower, the weapons tracking him the whole way. The outer door swung open and the two unarmed Zhirrzh stepped inside. One stood beside the open door as the other walked to Pheylan's bed. Pulling open the drawer, he pushed the survival pack out of his way and retrieved the stone.

Pheylan looked at Thrr-gilag. "Not proper," the Zhirrzh said. "Not keep."

"I see," Pheylan said, the words coming out mechanically through a dry mouth. So he'd been wrong. All the cleverness, all the subterfuge—all wasted. They'd known about the stone, probably from the second he picked it up.

No. That was wrong. It had been sitting in that drawer for a good twelve hours now. If they'd known about it from the beginning, they would surely have taken it away from him before now.

He looked back at the two Zhirrzh as they stepped back through the door and swung it shut. And yet, they'd known where it was. Exactly where it was, in fact—that Zhirrzh had gone straight for it, without any hesitation or groping around. And from the way they'd burst in here like that, he would swear that they'd just that moment found out about it.

So how?

The first Zhirrzh circled around the cell to where Thrr-gilag was still standing, and for a minute they conversed quietly between themselves, turning the stone over in their fingers as they examined it. Pheylan watched them, possibilities swirling through his mind like leaves in an aircar backwash. They were slightly telepathic, and they'd only just figured out that he had the stone. They were very telepathic, but only some of them, and the one with the power had just gotten into town that night. They'd just completed some nightly scan of his cell, a scan sensitive enough to pick up a five-cubic-centimeter chunk of flint and place it precisely in the proper corner of the proper drawer. They had a direct pipeline to God, and God didn't want Pheylan leaving just yet.

Or more likely, they'd known about it all along and had just been playing with him. Letting him have twelve hours of false confidence and hoping like blazes that he didn't plan to use the stone before they could get it away from him.

Thrr-gilag looked up at him. "Not proper," he said again. "Tomorrow not go outside."

"That's not fair," Pheylan protested, knowing full well that argument was useless but also knowing that he had to try. "You never said something like this wasn't allowed. Besides, I need to go out. I need the sunlight."

"You punish," Thrr-gilag said. "Not do again."

He turned away and strode back toward his private door. On the other side of the cell, the Zhirrzh commander collected his troops and led them out the other way. The techs in the outer room, the incident over, went back to their tasks.

Slowly, feeling numb, Pheylan walked back to his bed. All right. He'd lost the stone; but then, realistically, he shouldn't have really expected to get away with it in the first place. He'd lost the stone, but in its place he had another bit of information to take back to the Commonwealth when he escaped.