Extremis-ARC, page 72
“Well, you must be a citizen of the Rim Federation, considering that you’re its military commander-in-chief! I, on the other hand, am a citizen of the Terran Republic, a senior officer in its navy, and the daughter of rebels against the Federation.”
“And your point would be?”
“Don’t be deliberately obtuse! You must admit it’s not exactly a recipe for a conventional marriage!”
Trevayne’s eyes took on a look with which she’d become familiar. “Conventionality is the last refuge of the small-minded,” he intoned.
She glared at him. “As with at least two-thirds of your quotes, I can’t identify the source. Who came up with that one?”
“I did,” he admitted blandly.
This time it was her fist that went into his rib cage. There followed a wrestling match whose most conspicuous feature was the eagerness of each party to lose. It concluded with her on top, finalizing her victory with an extended kiss.
“Actually,” he said when he’d caught his breath, “there’s a very simple solution to the problems you’ve raised.”
“Oh?”
“Yes. I can resign my commission with the Rim Federation—some would say it’s about time—and become a citizen of the Terran Republic.”
She rolled limply off him and stared, her almond eyes as round as nature permitted them to get.
“Well, well, well!” He smiled. “I’ve finally succeeded in flooring you. Figuratively, that is, as opposed to literally.”
For once she didn’t rise to the bait. “If I didn’t know better, I’d swear you were serious.”
“But I am.” And all at once she could see he was serious. “You see, I’m one of the few people left alive who remember what the Fringe Revolution was really like. And even those other few—your godparents, Miriam Ortega, Cyrus—don’t have the fresh recollection I do. What I was really fighting for was the ideal of human unity, which I identified with the Terran Federation to which I had given my oath. This, even though I was—as nobody seems to remember these days—sympathetic to the Fringers. Bloody hell, my first wife was from Novaya Rodina! And my children…” All at once, he couldn’t go on.
“Yes, Ian, I know,” she said softly. “Your wife and daughter, killed by the revolutionaries. And your son—”
“Whom I killed,” he finished for her unflinchingly. “Well, for once what ‘everyone knows’ is true. I did that, in the name of my ideal of unity. I couldn’t permit myself to realize that the Terran Federation had forfeited the right to be the standard-bearer of that unity. And I didn’t understand—as so many haven’t understood throughout history—that unity doesn’t have to involve a unitary state. I think we’ve proved that now, even if it took the Baldies—sorry, the Arduans—to help us.”
“But Ian,” she protested, wanting with all her soul to believe this but needing to be certain that he wanted it, too, “considering your historical role in the founding of the Rim Federation—”
He laughed. “I do love the Rim in many ways. But—and I’ve never told anyone this—it will be a relief to get a way from there, where they insist on putting me on a pedestal. Bloody hell, they even put me literally on a pedestal, outside Government House! And with that outrageously inaccurate quote on the pedestal!”
“ ‘Terra expects that every man will do his duty,’ ” she quoted before he could. “The admiral doth protest too much, methinks! Genji Yoshinaka was right about that bogus quote. You just love it!”
With a theatrical growl on Trevayne’s part, the wrestling match on the bed resumed. Just before it came to its inevitable and mutually desired conclusion, he paused to whisper into her ear, “At any rate, it doesn’t matter. It’s the future that matters, not the past.”
EPILOGUE
The young man and the strangely spry and ageless old man emerged from the ballroom foyer into the East Shore Plaza’s atrium skyway, a long glass tube that led from the hotel’s Conference and Banquet Center to its prestigious Executive Service Suites: a miniarcology of luxurious—and supremely secure—apartments normally assigned to visiting dignitaries and celebrities.
The old man, whose telescoping cane remained folded in his hand like an old Imperator’s baton, bumped a shoulder into his younger—and not facially dissimilar—companion. “So, have you decided to forgive me for getting you sent out here?”
“To be honest, Uncle Kevin, when I agreed, I thought I was doing you a favor. Now I realize that it was you who was doing me a favor—for which I am very grateful.”
“Grateful? Because I almost got you killed?”
“No. For guiding me to a time and place where I was really needed—and made a real difference.”
Antediluvian Kevin Sanders shrugged. “Seemed like a waste, you knocking about in the Home Worlds, Ossian. Not much to do there—not much that matters, anyhow. But now, after this, whatever you choose to do you’ll do with more insight, more appreciation, and more reverence.”
Wethermere started at the last word, a word he would never have expected to hear from his fey and ever-waggish relative. “ ‘Reverence?’ ”
“Sure. You’ve seen real life and real death—and have had a hand in measuring out both.”
“I wish I hadn’t.”
Sanders nodded. “No good man wants to. It’s a bad fit, after all, the power of life and death entrusted to us frail, fallible humans. But that’s the nature of our existence, and now you’ve done more than just hear the pieties and axioms about the burdens of command. You’ve lived it. And that, my boy, will change you.”
“It already has.”
Sanders clucked his tongue, and the voice that emerged from his finely lined lips was pure Tidewater drawl. “You evah were a fast learner, nephew.”
Wethermere smiled. “You mean, like the way I figured out that we’re heading to the real interspeciate summit just now?”
Kevin smiled back. “Like I said, a fast learner. What tipped you off?”
“Well, first, the timing of your arrival. Once the Astria warp point was reopened, you could have come through any time in the last three weeks, but instead you chose yesterday to get here. Just in time for the formal signing of the truce—but also just in time for this little informal chat with Ankaht. So small, and so informal, that it’s just the three of us. Which makes me wonder: why me? Why not Ian Trevayne?”
“Ian Trevayne? Son, he wanted you here—in his stead.”
“What?”
“Ossian, Ian is a statesman only when he must be. He is a soldier by inclination and profession. But you—well, he saw your file, and, as he put it, you had been ‘washed by many waters.’ Meaning that while you have acquitted yourself quite well on the field of battle, it’s only one of your many gifts. Ian is a genius, make no mistake. But he knows he’s not a polymath—and when it comes to statecraft with a race as alien as the Arduans, that’s the kind of mind we need.”
“You mean, one like yours.”
“And yours, too, nephew. Runs in the family, I ’spect.”
Wethermere kept his profound doubts about the inheritability of such a trait to himself. “So, what’s our objective, Uncle?”
As they entered the elevator that would bring them to Ankaht’s suite—and which would electronically assess and scan every fiber of their apparel and bodies—Kevin stared at his shoes, as if searching for the correct phrase. “Our objective is to talk about the real future, about all the things that the diplomats either don’t want to mention or don’t have the imagination to foresee. And, of course, to get you established as the PSU’s covert operative inside the interspeciate Military Liaison Mission.”
Ossian goggled. “You want me to be a spy?”
“Tut, tut, boy. You use such pejorative terms. Let’s say instead that you will surreptitiously observe and report how things are progressing between our two species.”
“So you’re asking me to lie, on a daily basis, to all the people—both humans and Arduans—that I’ll be working with.”
“Oh, I didn’t say anything about lying, Ossian. In fact, one of the most important reasons for our meeting Ankaht is so that she can get a look at who she’s going to be working with.”
“Does Ankaht know that my actual assignment out here was always through Naval Intelligence?”
“Most assuredly so, Nephew.”
“And does she know that my new job is to be a sp—a ‘covert operative,’ tasked with watching her race?”
“Well, of course she does. Good grief, boy, we’d have to be low-grade morons to think we can keep secrets from the Arduans. It will be a while before we learn what they can and can’t do with their telempathy. But that’s all besides the point. It was her idea to set up an additional, confidential liaison between our upper echelons and theirs. The Military Liaison Mission serves a fine purpose on its own—but it’s also an excellent cover for whoever becomes the secure conduit between our intelligence community and the reliable Arduan leaders.”
“And I’m that conduit.”
“And so you are.”
“What a nice way to repay all my new friends in both the Republic and Federation, and establish myself as the very soul of honesty to the Arduans. My ostensible job of ensuring peace and cooperation between our races is all just a cover for me to work as Terra’s confidential agent on-site.”
“Yes, but your job involves a great deal more than that. You are also our eyes and ears upon the evolving relationships between all three of those groups, and so you’ll also be a tripwire if the relations between them become—well, strained.”
“So you can dictate policy to them?”
“So that we might be able to intercede in time, before misunderstandings escalate into war. And in so doing, save thousands, maybe millions, of lives.”
Well, Wethermere reflected, put that way, his new job didn’t sound quite so bad. Which was also, obviously, his sly old uncle’s intent. But it just might be the truth, as well.
The elevator came to a smooth stop. The doors opened. Ankaht was already waiting in the receiving room before them, a massive and very complex vocoder on the table beside her. “Welcome,” announced her voice from the vocoder as she rose and—stiffly—offered her right cluster: its ten tentacles were paired into five dyads that resembled extended fingers.
Wethermere and Sanders advanced and shook “hands” with her, Sanders adding, “Your acquisition of our traditional greeting does us great honor, ma’am.”
Ankaht made a recognizably dismissive gesture with her other cluster: the vocoder announced, “The honor is mine, esteeme—” The machine voice went abruptly silent: the small dark Arduan gave a sudden start, all three eyes opening very wide as they moved from one human to the other. “You are—related.” She said it as a statement, not a question.
“Yes, ma’am,” confirmed Wethermere.
“Most people say you can see the resemblance in our eyes,” added Sanders.
“No. No, I cannot detect that. Familial similarities are far too subtle for us Arduans to discern.”
“Then how did you know we are related?”
She looked at Wethermere carefully. “It is as if you both—but you particularly—sleep atop a mountain of intertwined shaxzhutok’ix, unknowing of all the lives that reside within you from the past.”
Wethermere remembered Krishmahnta and smiled. “You mean like an Old Soul?”
“Yes—the Hindu concept.” Ankaht’s attention was now not merely focused on Wethermere; it was riveted upon him. She changed color a bit, and Wethermere had the fleeting sense that she was concentrating—or exerting some other mental focus—so intently that she grew pale. He stepped slightly closer to her, feeling his uncle’s keen eyes measuring every nuance of this unexpected scene. “Are you well, Elder?”
“I am—quite well. This is a fascinating sensation, and I will reflect upon it later. But now, where are my manners? Please be seated. May I offer you refreshments?”
Sanders shook his head. “No, thank you, Councilor—or do you prefer Ambassador, now?”
Although she did not smile, the voice that emerged from the vocoder seemed rich with wry amusement and self-effacing wit. “I should think Ankaht will be quite sufficient. And before we go any further, I must thank you, Mr. Sanders, for ensuring that the final version of the truce included an explanation of how and why my people had such profound initial difficulties in understanding your people.”
Kevin answered with a slow, gracious nod. “But of course, ma’am. The cascading misinterpretations that led to our tragic first contact were truths that had to be included. As did mention of Admiral Narrok’s exemplary actions in both repelling the Tangri and providing aid and assistance to the human worlds savaged by that now-mutual enemy. I dare say those deeds went a long way to silencing some of the less congenial members of my species’ delegation.”
“Very true, Mr. Sanders. But I could not help but notice that your senior delegates kindly omitted one key fact that sheds a less favorable light on the war between our races in general, and our conduct of it, specifically.”
“I presume you are referring to the caste-specific xenophobia some Arduans displayed toward human communities?”
“Your diplomatic generosity is outdone only by your tact, Mr. Sanders—but let us speak plainly. The most aggressive of the Destoshaz, who ultimately became part of the Martyrs’ Movement, would still gladly exterminate your species in its entirety. This is a unique cultural aberration in our long history, and—as my delegation promised yours today—we are resolved not to allow it to occur again. However, I must share with you my personal reservations regarding our ability to make good on that promise.”
“Oh? Why so, Ambassador?”
“Regrettably, it seems likely that the radical Destoshaz represent a devolved version of their caste. Which presents my race with a problem that may persist for quite some time.”
Sanders cocked his head. “Perhaps not, ma’am. Our sociologists have pretty conclusively shown that, once freed from the constant trauma of a crisis, both individual and social evolutionary structures begin to return to their pre-crisis norms.”
Ankaht’s eyes were lidded. “I fear it may prove otherwise with Arduans. Our advances in evolution—both physiological and social—are directly tied to increases in our memories of past lives and in our selnarm. Unfortunately, these increases have never been uniformly distributed among Arduans. For shaxzhu such as myself, and the Selnarshaz caste as well, our personal identity largely arises from our memories of the totality of our species and therefore cuts across the boundaries of caste and gender and even epoch. Conversely, while the Destoshaz have always derived their identities mostly from personal experience, their post-Dispersal predominance has been paralleled by dramatic changes in behavior. They are more reactionary, less nuanced, more susceptible to charismatic leaders, and deeply suspicious of anything that they consider abstract or intangible. This means they are not only supremely dismissive of shaxzhutok but even spurn participation in the communal meditations that are the very core of our race’s narmata. So, they who need the leavening effects of our mental community the most are the most closed and resistant to it.”
Kevin stroked his prominent chin. “So you fear that you won’t be able to control the regressed Destoshaz enough to ensure compliance with the terms of the truce.”
“The problem is ultimately more serious than that—because it now seems certain that our entire species is undergoing regression.”
“Even you shaxzhu?”
“Yes, although our regression is not detected as changes in individual qualities, but rather in generational quantities.”
Sanders frowned. “What do you mean?”
“The shaxzhu that are born today are personally no different than those I remember on Ardu. But the numbers of us born now have declined to historical lows. And since the shaxzhu trait is random and inborn, rather than caste-conferred, we are powerless to change this demographic trend—which is ominous. Our historical studies show a very marked correlation between the growth of the shaxzhu population and proportionate increases in our social and individual evolution. We are now trapped in an inverse process of decline.”
Wethermere understood. “And since you have no way to create more shaxzhu, you can’t alter the rate at which your race can return from its regressed state.”
“You see it with all three eyes, Ossian Wethermere.”
Sanders nodded, following the logic. “And this also means that your society is poised on the brink of bitter class warfare—a resentful Destoshaz majority ready to slap down the shaxzhu elite who enjoy their social status by genetic accident.”
“Yes, Kevin Sanders. Amongst the radicals, this attitude already exists.”
Wethermere nodded. “And so you need our help to reverse these trends.”
Ankaht’s eyelids cycled slowly. “So you see it then.”
“Yes,” answered Wethermere, who felt the pieces falling together even as he articulated them. “You need our general expertise in genetics—which we’ve necessarily pursued more assiduously than you. You’re hoping that we can identify whatever genetic code—or complex of codes—creates a shaxzhu. Because if we can, then you could selectively breed a higher proportion of shaxzhu and accelerate your recovery from regression.”
“Just so. But the mere act of doing so could generate a civil war.”
“Only if the process were conducted openly,” Sanders observed mildly.
Ankaht closed all three of her eyes. “It does not please us to work in secret from the others of our race, but the alternative—an increasing dominance of the Destoshaz radicals—could lead to further conflicts with humans. Ultimately, you might be justly compelled to exterminate us in order to save yourselves. Assuming, of course, a deeper social schism does not consume the Children of Illudor first.”
Wethermere frowned. “What kind of schism are you referring to?”
