For Love and Glory

XI

Taking a datacard out of her sleeve pocket, she put it in his terminal. “This has been edited, but only to bring time-separate parts together and cut out nonessentials,” she explained. “It’s our basic record of the encounter.”

A woman appeared in the screen, seated at a desk. She was a sister of Lissa’s, but well-nigh a stranger, born eighty years earlier and, newly rejuvenated, looking girlishly younger. The image showed date and time in one corner. Behind her, a viewscreen displayed the mining camp she superintended. Beyond it, rock and ice lay in a jumble to the near horizon. The moon’s gas giant primary hung as a crescent in the darkness above. Another satellite, shrunken by remoteness till the disc was barely perceptible, gleamed near the edge of its ring system.

“Evana Davysdaughter Windholm, wedded to Olavi Jonsson, calling from Gunvor,” she proclaimed. The name of her present husband wasn’t necessary to identify her, but she always made a point of using it. He was among the House’s most prominent clients, chief engineer at the base and, at home, grown wealthy from his investments. “I have immediate need to speak with the Head, communications enciphered.”

The screen blinked, the time indicated was half an hour later, and she was saying as crisply: “A strange spacecraft has arrived unheralded and taken up orbit about us. The pilot, who claims to be alone, sent a request for tight-beam laser contact. I obliged. It is a Susaian, asking urgently to be put in touch with the leadership of our House. Yes, it seems to understand Asborgan sociopolitics fairly well and to be aware that operations on Gunvor are Windholm’s. That may be why it sought us instead of somebody else, this chance for secrecy. It doesn’t want anything made public.” She hesitated. “I have no experience in dealing with nonhumans. Nobody here does. Pending your orders, I’ve restricted news of its arrival to those few who already know, and have activated the censor program in all transmitters. Rumors are flying. I have no idea how long the Susaian will wait. Please advise me.”

The scene cut to a magnified image of the outsider vessel, a black blade athwart stars and Milky Way. Valen whistled. “Susaian, for sure,” he said. “Scout type, small, high-boost, maneuverable. However, if one of them single-handed her, it was pretty desperate. The best of their automatic systems don’t compare to the average of ours, you know.”

“Daring more than desperate, I’d say,” Lissa murmured. “You’ll see. Watch.”

Davy Windholm’s fine-boned visage took over the screen, against a backdrop of his study, swirl-grained wainscot, an antique table, shelves of codex books and memorabilia that had been in the family for generations. She thrilled to the steadiness of his voice. “The Susaian doesn’t want to talk through hyperspace. Fears the beam being tapped. Well, it could be, and our ciphers aren’t absolutely secure.” Not for the first time, Lissa wished quantum encryption had been made to work for transluminal communication. “So we require a personal representative of the House, and time is lacking for consultation. Therefore I am appointing Lissa Windholm envoy plenipotentiary. Her part in explorations of planets in this galactic vicinity has given her as much knowledge of nonhumans as anyone on Asborg seems likely to possess. She has also demonstrated self-control and sound judgment, alike in emergencies and in ordinary difficulties. I have every confidence in her.”

Dad thinks that of me!

The screen showed Lissa in the command cabin of a courier boat. In Valen’s apartment, she observed herself observing herself as if another person were yonder, and thought, Why? Do I want to know how he sees me?

The rush to make ready and be off had told on her. Instead of tonight’s glittery flowrobe, she wore a coverall, smudged here and there. The auburn hair wasn’t netted in gold but, under low acceleration, hung sweat-lank past her ears. Still, she thought, she didn’t look hideous. A fair-sized number of men found her attractive.… Stop that! she silently snapped.

The pilot gazed into the pickup and said: “I record my understanding of my assignment just prior to medicating, getting into the flotation tank, and ordering top boost for the passage.

“I’ve never met a Susaian before, and only talked casually with people who have, but naturally I’ve been interested and studied up on them. Now I’ve brought along a database and will be accessing it en route. Transit time, about sixty hours, should let me learn something, though I’d better arrive reasonably rested and fresh. Better try to avoid preconceptions, too. However, I can’t help guessing. Since that may influence my actions, I’ll enter my thoughts at this point.

“I doubt we’ve got any subtle scheme under way. We’re as alien to the Susaians as they are to us. What buttons could they single out to push? Oh, they do have that curious sensitivity to emotional states, but on an individual basis. It doesn’t tell them how groups of us will react to something.

“I also doubt we’ve got a criminal trying for a haven. Not that we can be very sure what constitutes a crime among them. But anybody smart enough to make it here must know we won’t risk provoking an interstellar incident for nothing. We’ll need to be convinced it’s worth our while to help.

“Nevertheless, this isn’t exactly a usual way for a stranger to show up. My guess is that our visitor has come on behalf of some faction. The Susaians are no more united than us humans.”

The image smiled. “Don’t worry, I won’t embroil us in a civil war of theirs. I couldn’t if I wanted to. I’m really only empowered to ask questions and make suggestions. Believe me, I’ll think hard before I do either.”

The screen blinked. The time displayed was two and a half standard days later. Lissa floated weightless. She had spruced herself up. “I’ve proposed to the Susaian that we rendezvous elsewhere,” she said, and projected the coordinates and orbital elements, a million kilometers from the giant planet. “It has agreed. That should enable Evana to damp out rumors and gossip on Gunvor. Please inform her. She can tell the troops this is probably some minor matter.”

Valen chuckled.

He leaned tensely forward when the other ship swelled in view. Running commentary described the matching of velocities and the extension of a gang tube. Lissa appeared, spacesuited, an automatic camera on either shoulder.

“I’m crossing over like this,” said her voice. “Not that the air or the temperature or anything would kill me, but… well, just in case. The suit is reinforced, and I’ve got a blaster in my oddments pouch.”

“That much was beamed back to my father,” she said in the city. “The rest had to wait till I had returned to my boat— No, I misspoke. All I sent then was word that I was safe and things looked interesting. The real information I wasn’t about to trust to any transmitter.”

An interior flashed before her and the man. Its cramped plainness seemed almost familiar, until one noticed the details. The Susaian poised free-fall at the center. The sinuous body, dull red, as long as a man’s, was tautly curved about the four stubby legs. The tail, half that length, coiled to complete the ring. Two hands, each with three spidery fingers, at the end of supple arms, held a standard model translator. Just “above” them swayed the neck. Behind the blunt snout of the head, which lacked earflaps, the eyes glowed quite beautiful, like twin agates. The trans rendered purring, rustling sounds into flat Anglay. “Well be you come, Earthblood. Have you immediate desires I might perchance fulfill?”

Lissa’s helmet included a sonic unit. “Can we get straight to business? I don’t want to be discourteous, but I don’t know what’s polite in your society. My database told me that if we both belonged to the Thornflower nation,”—the trans turned that human name into the appropriate buzz—“we’d spend the next hour exchanging compliments. I’m willing, but not sure how.”

Again Valen chuckled.

“I am not a member of it myself,” the Susaian said. Did the vocal tone carry wrath, or sorrow, or eagerness? “And I will gladly go by the straightest tunnel, the more so when I sense that, beneath a natural wariness, your intentions are honest.”

Listening on Asborg, Lissa wondered anew about that race’s ability to read emotional states, apparently among each other and, to some uncertain degree, in her species. Whether they could do it or not in more sentients than that was unknown, at least to any observers whose writing she’d consulted; but those were all human, of course. Could there be some exhalations of pheromones or whatever to smell—not impossible, as basically similar as the biochemistries were—or even the faint, faint radiations of brains to sense?

Both implausible here, when she was encased in a spacesuit. Body language, facial expression, tone of voice? She’d thought the best guess was that the Susaians used a suite of clues, and a highly-developed innate capability of interpretation. Very likely this one had had direct experience of her kind, or else had spent considerable time studying virtuals.

The question slipped out of her mind as she heard the being continue: “Names first? I designate myself—” the trans hesitated for an instant, tried “Mountain Copper,” and settled on “Orichalc. At present I function as male.”

“Lissa Windholm,” she had answered. “Female. I… imagine you know what my name signifies.”

“Yes. You belong to that one of Asborg’s dominant consanguinities.” It was the best rendition the program could make of a phrase in that particular Susaian language, which attempted to describe a concept perhaps unknown to any Susaian culture. “The one that I sought.”

“Then you know more about us than I do about you.”

“I was here briefly, three rejuvenations ago. That was as a crew member of a ship conveying an expedition sent to gather information about what was then a new colony.”

“Yes. I’ve studied the accounts. Your people’s only visit, wasn’t it?” Xanaduans, Rikhans, Sklerans, and Grib had also come for a look, found no threat nor any particular promise to them, and gone away again. Later contacts had been between individuals or crews or other small groups.

“Correct. Since then, of course, much has evolved. I have striven to bring my information up to date. Travelers often take along databases about their homes. A copy is an appreciated gift or a trade item of some value.”

“I know. But why did you care about us especially?”

The tail slithered back, whispering along the glabrous hide. “The second planet of this sun would be quite hospitable to my species.”

“Freydis?” Lissa’s image registered surprise. That hot, cloudy world of swamps and deserts? “Well, yes… I suppose so… but there must be plenty more in the galaxy, some of them better, that you haven’t settled yet, or even found.”

“True, However, I pray you, consider who will take them. S-s-s-s—” Orichalc’s head struck at air, to and fro.

“House Windholm doesn’t own all Freydis,” Lissa said. “Nobody does.”

“Correct.” The head grew large in sight, drawing near her helmet. Fangs glistened, eyes smoldered. “But your consanguinity is uniquely qualified. First, it does own the large island on the planet that you call New Halla.” He must have put a special entry in the trans’s program. “Territory of scant or no use to you, originally claimed for prestige and on the chance of mineral resources, retained merely because of inertia and, s-s-s, pride. Second, as of recent years, you have maintained exclusive operations on the moon Gunvor, This gave opportunity for a discreet approach. I realize my plan is hopeless unless we, your people and I, can suddenly present the Galaxy with an accomplished fact.”

Lissa’s tone grew strained. “What do you want?”

“The island. What else? I have considered how the transaction may be done. Pay me a sum equal to the agreed-on price for the land, with an option to buy it. Leave the sum in escrow until I have fulfilled my part of the bargain. I will know whether your chieftans intend to abide by this and, afterward, whether I have truly met the terms as they understand them. My researches lead me to expect they will be honest.”

“You’re asking… a great deal.”

“I offer much more.”

“What?”

Orichalc hooked his tail around a stanchion. The long body swayed. “I cannot precisely tell you, for I myself do not know. But it is of the utmost.”

“Get to reality, will you?” Lissa snapped, impatient.

The undulations went hypnotic, the words sank to a breath. “Hearken. I am a cosmonaut of the Great Confederacy. It embraces four of the seven Susaian-inhabited planets, about seventeen hundred light-years from here. You have heard? Yes-s-s.

“During the last several of your calendrical years, its Dominance has repeatedly dispatched expeditions elsewhere. They are totally secret. Nothing whatsoever is said about them. Key personnel return to live sequestered in a special compound. I have gathered that they enjoy every attention and luxury there, and are well satisfied. Ordinary crewfolk of the several ships go more freely about on their leaves, but may not speak to anyone, no, not nestmates or clones or even each other, of what they have done and seen.

“That is easy to obey, for we know well-nigh nothing. Our vessels leap through hyperspace to someplace else. We lie there for varying times while the scientists use their instruments and send out their probes, operations in which we do not partake. All we perceive is that we float in empty, unfamiliar interstellar space until we go back. Ah, but the feelings of those officers and scientists! They flame, they freeze, they strike, recoil, exult, shudder; the glory and the dread of Almightiness are upon them.

“And at home, I have once in a while come near enough to certain of the Dominators that I sense the same in them. Not the awe, no, for they do not venture thither themselves, to yonder remote part of the galaxy; but their inward dreams grasp a pride and a hope that are demonic.” (What did that last word really mean in the Susaian tongue?)

In free fall, there is no true over or under. Nonetheless Orichalc loomed. “Is this not a sufficient sign that something vast writhes toward birth?” he demanded.

“I, I can’t say,” Lissa stammered. “You, how and why did you—”

“They knew I was unhappy, until presently, slowly, I went aquiver,” Orichalc said. “Well, my race has learned dissimulations. I led them to believe that I suffered private difficulties, hostilities, until I began seeing ways whereby I might cope. They expected little of a humble crew member, therefore suspected little. Meanwhile I took my surreptitious stellar sightings and made my calculations.

“And at home, I plotted with others. Jointly, they raised the means to obtain this spacecraft and send me off in it, all under false pretenses. Our need is that great.

“Here I am. I know, quite closely, where and when the monster thing is to happen. It will be soon. What is this worth to you and your kindred, Earthblood?”