Forge of the Elders, page 22
She smiled. "The rain."
"The rain." They resumed walking until they came to the little waterfall that broke the course of the stream not far from the sprawling roots of an enormous canopy tree, thirty or thirty-five meters in diameter. "So I guess we're stuck here for the duration," he concluded, "whatever that turns out to be. Or until sufficient reasons accumulate to use the translator." He turned to look at her. "It could be quite a long while."
Again she smiled, shyly this time. "Is that so terrible?"
"It's why we're here, you and I, in this spot. I wanted to show you something." He reached into a pocket and handed her an object, knowing it would look to her like an undersized golf ball, complete to color and texture. "It's my office and personal quarters, Estrellita. At least it will be in a few days. You'd call it a seed, with engineered genes. Don't drop it, or it'll try to take root."
He took the object from her, stepped to the tree, reached as high as he could and touched it to the trunk. When he took his hand away, it stayed in place. "When it's mature, it'll cantilever out over the stream, and I can fall asleep listening to the waterfall. We're exactly halfway between your camp and the Elders' settlement, which sort of describes my position, as well. While I'm here, I'll act as liaison between humans and nonhumans on the asteroid."
"Good," she replied, finding a mossy place near the base of the tree to sit down, "you can begin with me."
He smiled back self-consciously and joined her where she sat, propping sword and scabbard against the tree beside him and taking her hand. "Why, I believe I have. This report you'll make, part of its purpose will be to wrap up the loose ends?"
"Loose ends? There aren't any." Keeping his hand, she ticked off the fingers of her other hand. "Method: after she struck him down, Richardson strangled Piotr with one of Semlohcolresh's tentacles. She probably shot the nautiloid. Her gun wasn't empty then, she'd just taken it from Danny Gutierrez. Semlohcolresh would have been an easy mark. He wasn't wearing a protective suit. Opportunity: it was pitch dark. According to Sebastiano and others searching for Richardson, Semlohcolresh and Piotr were alone at the pool. Motive: Richardson was crazy."
Eichra Oren took her hand in both of his. "Estrellita, life consists of little besides loose ends. Sometimes that's the only thing that gives survivors a reason for going on."
"All right, if you're so smart," she retorted, "give me an example of a loose end."
He nodded. "I'll give you a good one. Your people in their camp should have heard the shot you mentioned, if that's how Semlohcolresh died. Your pistols are loud. I found that out this morning."
"Because the bullet went right by you, silly. Semlohcolresh's pool was almost a klick from the camp. The forest would have absorbed the sound. Next loose end, please."
"Motive." He shook his head. "Crazy's too easy, Estrellita, and at the same time, it's too hard."
She rolled her eyes and answered with exasperation. "Is this going to be some more of your deep philosophical and psychological ponderings? What do you mean, too hard?"
"In the sense that it violates parsimony, the principle of the fewest variables. What you call least reactance or Occam's Razor. A lone Soviet individual striking on her own? After everything I've learned about your people, I find that hard to believe. There's a perfect motive still lying around unused, Estrellita, a single reason for that particular double murder that makes sense in the light of everything else."
"And that is?" she asked in mock resignation.
"What it always was, to provoke conflict between the humans and the Elders. Therefore it must have been done on orders from your ASSR leaders. I've learned enough about affairs on Earth to know that Moscow had no wish to antagonize Mr. Thoggosh and his people."
She turned where she sat and faced him, taking both of his hands. "Now that you mention it, I do have a few unanswered questions of my own, mostly making certain I understand what the nautiloids and their friends seem to imply about their way of looking at things."
He raised his eyebrows. "We're still talking about motive?"
"In a way." She nodded. "Given the nautiloids' five hundred million year advantage, everybody but the government assumes we'll be wiped out the instant hostilities begin. But from what I've seen for myself, from what they've told me, I see what I think could be a fatal weakness on their part, if it came to conflict. I could hardly believe it myself, at first, it sounds so childish and naive. It appears your Elders can't use weapons of mass destruction."
"You're entirely correct, Estrellita, they can't." He paused, then added, "We can't."
She laughed gently. "Do you mean to tell me that all these gun-toting monsters are effectively disarmed by what's supposed to be a purely selfish, individualistic philosophy? They're prohibited from using fission or fusion bombs, even high explosives or hand grenades, no matter how desperate the circumstances?"
"Antimatter bombs, too. I'm not so sure about hand grenades. It must seem strange and contradictory to you. For their part, I imagine they can hardly believe it necessary to explain such an elementary matter of ethics to a person who represents herself as a reasoning being. The use of such nondiscriminating weapons is monstrous, Estrellita. No value it can possibly achieve can outweigh the values it destroys. The Elders aren't pacifists, as you know. But this would inevitably involve, in their view, inflicting injury or death on innocent individuals who are not party to whatever dispute's being settled. Will this, too, be in your report?"
She shrugged, and for the first time there was unhappiness on her face. "I don't see how I can avoid it. The Elders are aware of any number of politically dangerous facts. United or not, the World Soviet's very fragile, and that knowledge alone, in the hands of an enemy, could damage it beyond repair. Now I've learned a hidden vulnerability of the Elders, and you know I have. For the sake of your culture's survival, you'll try to keep it from the ASSR. With what the two of us know together—mutual, horrifying discoveries—we might even bring about the thermonuclear war which, until our arrival on this asteroid, everybody thought had been avoided."
"Peace, through bloodless capitulation?"
"It was almost bloodless. There are always a few who can't see the handwriting on the wall; it took people like Horatio Gutierrez to deal with them. It cost so much of so many, and now we can destroy it, all by ourselves. Wouldn't that be something to be proud of?"
He couldn't think of anything to say before she went on.
"As a result of those discoveries, I'd come to a decision. I'm a Marine, a veteran, proud to have earned my rank the hard way in a man's world. And I'm KGB, whether I like it or not. My opinion of agents willing to use sex as a weapon has always been low. I was happy it hadn't ever been required of me. To be completely truthful, Eichra Oren, I'd managed to fall in love with a mysterious stranger—no, don't say anything—and part of that happiness is that I slept with him for its own sake, outside the line of duty."
He sat up. "Why is all of this in the past-perfect tense?"
She wouldn't meet his eyes. "Because I'd hoped, without much basis, that after this mess was over with, something more might come of you and me. With all my heart, Eichra Oren, I loathed the idea of cheapening the first feelings like this I've ever had. But even though I made the decision despising myself, I could conceive of no option except to kill you!"
"Your duty to obey authority," he reflected, placing a hand on her shoulder. "And now?"
"Loathsome as it would have been, the task didn't appear difficult. We'd begin right now, making love. I'd pretend to be as relaxed and open toward you as I was last night." She reached to her belt and drew her fighting knife. "When your relaxation appeared complete," she raised it to his chin, "when you seemed off your guard—" the point touched his skin, indented it, "I'd discover I can't take your life!" She hurled the knife into the ground, where the blade stuck, and turned her back.
They were both silent for a long time, then Eichra Oren sighed. "For my part, Estrellita, I couldn't have made love to you this afternoon, because I've something I must tell you. Although I don't want to. Like you, I've pondered hard over this turn of events, always coming to the same miserable conclusion. The problem's my inability to understand my fellow beings, including most of all a beautiful, intelligent, accomplished young woman whom I've come in only a short time to love deeply.
"And to condemn."
She snapped around to face him. "Condemn? Why—"
He turned his hands over in an expression of helplessness. "Why would anyone betray what they value? Why would they destroy something—someone—they admire? Can it be, as they tell me, that they're obligated to obey some other sapient? Despite whatever education and intelligence I have, I've been unable to discover an answer that satisfies me, or any alternative to what must be done. Loathing myself, as you say you did, I'm forced to speak now, Estrellita, because you murdered Piotr Kamanov and Semlohcolresh."
Her eyes widened, and she didn't quite stop the gasp this provoked.
"I became suspicious," he continued, "when Dlee Raftan Saon told me you'd mentioned a nautiloid habit of venturing unprotected into the air to converse with land beings. You mentioned it again, just now. No such habit exists. Semlohcolresh's dislike for liquid fluorocarbon and protective suits was a personal eccentricity, as was lying in shallow water, splashing his gills. You could only have seen it when he and Kamanov conversed, the night they were both killed. It was you who strangled Kamanov, acting on orders from the American KGB which you were given in secret as a department head, before you received your official, public promotion."
She protested, "But how could you—"
"I lack direct evidence of this last surmise. The Elders listen to your transmissions and understand any encrypted message, but they couldn't recognize orders couched in terms of your previous missions: `Do what was done on such-and-such a date in such-and-such a place.' Washington's objective was to provoke trouble. You pursued that objective, despite the fact that you liked and respected Kamanov. He was chosen to die because that might help alter Moscow's attitude, and even the murder weapon was chosen to maximize hostility between the species. I'll never be certain whether the murder of Semlohcolresh was your own idea, and that makes me sick."
"Eichra Oren, I—"
"I'll never know all of the details, and you needn't supply them. Kamanov started home through the jungle and you knocked him out. At the pool you shot Semlohcolresh with the silenced pistol from the Russian's pocket, replaced when you cut off Semlohcolresh's limb and finished Kamanov. Afterward, in the late night or early morning before your visit, you dragged the Elder's body to the matter-converter, easy in this gravity, and disposed of it, so it would look like Semlohcolresh killed Kamanov and ran away. You didn't know that Richardson had watched every step of the process. She was crazy enough to claim your deeds for her own. My suspicion was confirmed when you shot her, knowing that Mister Thoggosh was protected and that I'm quite able to take care of myself."
"I didn't know." She let her head fall to his shoulder and began to cry softly. "I only wanted to . . ."
He stroked her hair. "At that, you might have gotten away with it, but you didn't think of everything, my love. You'd seen Sam, who has a mind of his own. You'd seen Aelbraugh Pritsch's reptile companion. I don't know why it didn't occur to you that they're modeled on the nautiloid separable tentacle, a semi-independent being with complex nerve bundles, and therefore—like Sam—some independent intelligence. While you cut off one of his ordinary tentacles, Semlohcolresh's separable tentacle survived the death of its owner, Estrellita. It crawled into the jungle and lived long enough to identify you, by your red hair."
Not denying it, she sat back and looked at him, her expression that of a trusting child. Tears streamed down her cheeks without a sound to accompany them. Her voice was formal, as he'd specified, and in earnest. "God help me, Eichra Oren, am I allowing my existence to continue in ignorance of some irreversible breach I've unknowingly committed, some irrevocable restitution I've neglected to make?"
His tone was equally disconsolate as he reached behind him for his sword. "I wish I had a god to help me, Estrellita, because I lied. Separable limbs only survive their owners by a few seconds. That of Semlohcolresh was never found."
She smiled through her tears. "I love you, Eichra Oren. I've never said that to a man before. I more or less expected, maybe I even hoped, that things would turn out this way." She touched his arm. "I hate the idea of that sword of yours. So, having seen you fight four men at once, I'm going to make another sort of restitution, in advance, to you. Someday you'll be grateful that I didn't make this easy for you, that you didn't have a choice."
She was pulling the trigger as her weapon leveled on his body. Before his conscious mind could interfere, his unconscious mind responded. Holding her gun hand by the wrist, he paralyzed it with a touch, pressing her carotid arteries with the thumb and forefinger of his other hand. Whether her heart and mind were in the effort, her body struggled to survive. The effort was futile; his grip was steel. Estrellita relaxed and breathed her last breath.
Afterward, he held her pistol to his temple for a long while, but he never pulled the trigger.
TWENTY-FOUR p'Na
They watched him from over half a kilometer away.
Eichra Oren was a tiny figure sitting on the tree balcony—where Sam had left him and a happy Estrellita only the previous evening—staring out over the landscape at his soul. Mister Thoggosh had come to the encampment, "in the flesh," to help his p'Nan debt assessor explain to General Gutierrez what had happened, but he'd wound up helping Sam, while the dog's companion climbed those spiral stairs to be alone.
"No, sir," the mollusc told the human, "it doesn't make him feel a bit better that, thanks to her, it was an act of self-defense. Col. Reille y Sanchez never had a chance to know that, in addition to the incredible reflexes she counted on, Eichra Oren had already responded consciously to principle. He understands that, in order to fulfill a function he long ago willingly accepted, he'd have had to assist her to make the ultimate restitution sooner or later. Whether he cared for her or not, as I gather he did rather deeply, wouldn't have made any difference."
The general shook his head. They sat outside the circled shuttles in the waning light of late afternoon, Gutierrez on an improvised log bench, the Proprietor beside him on the ground. Nearby, the Elder's electrostat seemed to be waiting patiently. "She was morally wrong," replied the human, "because it was her duty to kill someone she cared for. He was morally right because it was his duty to kill someone he cared for. What's the difference?"
Mister Thoggosh raised a tentacle. "The difference, General, is that, having acted morally, he'll eventually get over the horror, whereas Reille y Sanchez, acting on immoral orders, and without the benefit of his philosophy, would never have. There's all the difference in the world—in several worlds—between acting against your own judgment on someone else's orders and committing what perhaps amounts to the same physical act for the sake of principle. He'll live and go forward because he acted consistently with what he believes."
Gutierrez folded his arms in front of his chest. "What he believes? Killing someone over a philosophical point?"
"Perhaps I used a word carelessly. In his view, in my own, p'Na is a fundamental feature of the material universe, no different from the operation of gravity—although quite distinct from foolish artificial laws made up by primitive sapients—and subject to the same process of verification. p'Na required, for the debt Col. Reille y Sanchez owed the sapients she murdered, that she make restitution. As a law of nature, this would be true whether she accepted it or not, although the question she asked, her token attempt to kill Eichra Oren, demonstrated her acceptance of her fate."
The general shook his head. "And there he is, without her."
The Elder pulled himself around to look the human in the eye. "Not by any act on Eichra Oren's part, but because of a chain of events which she began, of which he was but the final, inevitable link. From your expression, if I've learned to read it correctly, you fail to find that satisfying."
Gutierrez nodded; anger, disgust, and resignation coloring his tone. "You could say that, Mister Thoggosh."
"Then consider: it could also be surmised that he acted according to another principle. Ultimately, despite the pain it cost him, Eichra Oren acted because an abomination like socialism—any sort of collectivism—must be eradicated, if for no other reason than its power to corrupt love, such as he and Estrellita found too late."
Gutierrez rubbed his chin in thought. "The colonel was accused, tried, sentenced, and executed according to the laws—"
"Customs," the nautiloid insisted.
"Of the world she committed her crimes on." He stood. "Forgive me, sir, if I limit myself to that when I report to the KGB."
"I shall, General, I shall, indeed." With a tentacle, he indicated the electrostat he'd come in. "Now, I've brought some refreshment along, will you join me? I'm having beer."
BOOK II: SECOND TO ONE
THIS BOOK IS DEDICATED to Rob and Laura Arbury, Dave Blackmon, Ken Flurchick, Michael Szeszny, and Kitty Woldow, for reasons that will be obvious to each of them when they recall the summer of '88.
TWENTY-FIVE Cold Fusion
"Enter, Comrade Admiral! Sit! Have some vodka!"
Nikola Deshovich lifted a hairy hand, the stub of a cigar protruding between its first and second fingers. Inboard the USSR Lavrenti Pavlovich Beria he alone smoked, for who had the power to forbid it? Known as "the Banker"—for his habit of settling old political debts "with interest"—he was the absolute, undisputed master of the Soviet Union and, more recently, of the United World Soviet, as well. The air in the little room was blue and foul.
