Contact Imminent (19 page)

Elon activated the skimmer audio array, then paused to beg the gods for calm. She spoke English only when necessary, and as such, did not speak it well—with the prospect of combat, the ability to do such threatened to leave her completely. “You have trespassed upon idomeni land, deeded as such by your dominants.” Her words cut through the air as a weapon. “You will throw your weapons from your vehicle to the ground, and disembark.” She deactivated the array and gestured to Ghos. “What do you see?”

“Three occupants—two male and a female.” Ghos monitored the scan display set in the middle of the control array. “They are all armed—expect four shooters, including a mid-range.”

“To activate a mid-range in such a small vehicle—would they be so stupid?” Elon evaluated the distance to the humanish skimmer. “The recoil would send them backward into the trees, and the newssheets would blame us for such as well.”

Ghos unholstered his weapon and activated it. “I could leave our vehicle and approach them, compel them to shoot at me, and force them to do such.”

“Ghos!”
Elon slipped into Vynshàrau Haárin, such was
her anger. “Feres's soul has just been released—I will not officiate at another Vynshàrau death in this damned cold place!” She gripped her right hand within her left and squeezed. The rebroken bone had long since healed, but if she compressed enough, she could induce some pain, and employ it to focus her mind. “I repeat to you,” she said, reactivating the audio array, “throw away your weapons and disembark your vehicle!”

The humanish two-seater hovered low to the ground. Then, as though it awakened from sleep, it elevated slightly, rotating until it faced Elon head-on, until she could discern the vague shapes seated behind the tinted windscreen.

“They are to charge.” Ghos reached for his door lever. “They are to—”

Before Ghos could disembark, the humanish skimmer launched toward them, advancing in the beat of a heart, elevating at the last instant, leaping above them so that Elon could see the waves of iridescence the magnetic drives had induced in the metal of the lift array.

Then the audio array screeched, the sound filling her head as a white-hot thing. She screamed and tore the headset away, as around her scan displays blanked, then flooded with light and gibbered signals.

“Their shielding is damaged—they attacked us with such!” Ghos tried to steer the skimmer around, but the magnetic battering had rendered it crippled. The engines whined. The displays showed only fragments of words and histograms.

The other embassy skimmers streamed past them in pursuit of the humanish. Ghos muttered in Vynshàrau Haárin and tried to reset all systems at one time, while Elon aided him, half deafened, her ears ringing.

At last they reactivated. At last they turned and gave chase. Ghos followed the scan, the trail of broken branches, as Elon contacted her suborns. “They have attacked!” She barely heard her words.
“Take them!”

They entered another circle of trees, this one nearer the
road that led to the humanish skimways. They found four skimmers in a line, facing a wall of brush and stone, and eight Vynshàrau milling in the grass.

Elon disembarked and walked across the circle to her suborns, slowing to allow Ghos time to overtake her and precede her, the cries of birds piercing her deafness.

“They have escaped, nìaRauta.” NìaRauta Laur gestured toward the wall. “I witnessed them leap over the barrier as an animal, yet none of our scans detected the disruption of the security array.”

“Humanish skimmers do not
leap
.” Ghos holstered his shooter and walked to the wall. He climbed to the top, using the brush as handholds, and kicked at loose stones that lay scattered on the surface.

“Scan the grounds,” Elon said to Laur. “If these humanish were able to arrive and depart without detection, they most likely spent much time here. It is therefore even more likely, and truly, that they left something behind. Contact the humanish Service and ask them of their mines. Ask them if they ever used this land as a training ground as well.” She watched Ghos and another suborn pull at the stones and gesture displeasure. “And contact ní Tsecha. Wherever he is, whatever he does, bring him to me.”

 

Elon returned to the embassy and retired directly to her rooms. Her cook-priest berated her for missing the time of her mid-morning sacrament, then led her to the altar room and stood over her as she begged forgiveness of the gods.

She prayed as she ate, her still-damaged hearing making her voice sound as something far away. Then she removed her grimed coverall, laved, and donned the pale green trousers and shirt, the off-white overrobe more appropriate to hallways and meeting rooms. Sat at her worktable and studied the layout of the embassy, and tried to determine how the humanish gained access to the grounds. Felt the rage build within her as a living thing as she pondered how she had come to be sent to this damned cold place, to watch
her suborns die, chase down decrepit skimmers, and remove that which they left behind as a keeper of beasts removed their waste.

Her door chime sounded, though such was its pitch that it took some time before she realized it did so. She rose from her table and walked to her door, forming a fist with her right hand and striking the entryway arch as she passed beneath.

“NìaRauta.” Ghos still wore his coverall, and had tucked a documents case under his arm. “You are as deaf.”

“Yes, Ghos.”

“When the mine deafened me, you compelled me to go to my physician-priest. I will do the same now to you.”

“After I speak with Tsecha.” Elon cradled her hand, which throbbed and stung when she sought to straighten her fingers. “What is your report?”

“Laur is leading the scanning of the land.” Ghos walked inside. He had bound his braided fringe into a single rope of hair to keep it away from his face, which had been scratched in several places by brush and had bled accordingly. “They have already found small amounts of humanish food in storage sheds, in greenhouses and security bunkers.”

“No explosives?” Elon waited until Ghos gestured in the negative. “I have read of such things. They wish us to know that they have breached our defenses, that they may do so again as they will. And to do this, they taunt us with their food, for they know that no greater insult to our way exists.”

Ghos set the documents case atop Elon's worktable. “I have brought the readouts from the stations confirming no sign of incursion.” He removed a sheaf of wafers and set them beside her workstation. “They have overridden our defenses, Elon. What is there to do?”

“Implant our structures with sensors that are not integrated into our systems. Fit those sensors to loud alarms.” Elon rubbed one ear. “Drive them as deaf if they invade again.” She drew alongside Ghos, tilting her head in puzzlement as she comprehended the condition of his hair. “Ghos, you wear twigs.” She reached up and plucked a thin branch
from one of his braids. Half a finger in length, brown and grey, a hard bud at one end.

Ghos unbound his braids and shook them out with his hands—three more twigs fell onto the table, along with a strip of leaf. He picked them up, one by one, then handed them to Elon. “Burn them. Smear the ash on pieces of scroll and burn them again.”

“Such will not serve as enough. Such as this place can never be purified.” Elon rubbed the objects between her hands as though to grind them to dust, but the wood was too hard and the leaf too new, and thus did not powder but remained intact. “Yet you would have left our skimmer and walked before the humanish, drawn their fire and most surely been injured. Or died.”

“You will say that it would be better to die within the worldskein than here. I maintain that it would not.” Ghos rebound his braids, tying them as tightly as though he prepared for
à lérine
. “I maintain that we are already damned, all of us damned, so what difference? Tsecha denies Sànalàn, and should thus face the wrath of the gods. But time has passed, and what is the decision of Temple? Of Council? Have you read a decision, nìaRauta, for most assuredly I have not. Have you seen him confined, returned to the worldskein, executed, as he most assuredly should be?” He paced. “
Politics
. Cèel ponders if he may risk Haárin wrath by doing as he must to Tsecha, by treating him in the way the gods demand. Thus do I pronounce him damned, and with him, each of us, for he is as our Oligarch, and he has failed in his duties, and thus have the gods rejected us all.” He stopped before her, took her damaged hand in his own and opened it. Took one of the twigs and held it before her face, looking her in the eye as he did so, as had become more and more his way. “Each of us to be burned, and the ashes smeared upon scroll, to be burned again, and even then we will not be clean.”

“Ghos.”
Elon felt the horror of disputation carried too far. “You blaspheme.”

“Do I, Elon?” Ghos tossed the twig upon her worktable, then released her hand as though it were a thing of glass. “Yet even so, this place must burn.” He took a step back from her, his eyes still meeting hers. His pale eyes, so bright against his pallid face, against which the blood shone like jewel.

Elon looked down at her hand, still felt the departed pressure. Then she crossed her arm over her chest and tilted her head in confusion, and even as the entry chime rang out, she did not hear it until Ghos gestured toward the door.

“NìaRauta?” Laur entered, looked from Elon to Ghos, and stood most straight. “Ní Tsecha attends.”

Elon gestured in affirmation, aware of Ghos's anger as a living thing between them. “I will speak with him.”

“Politics.”
Ghos swept a hand across the worktable, sending the twigs and leaf to the floor, and strode to the door, forcing Laur to step aside to allow him to pass.

Elon entered the primary meeting room to find Tsecha standing before one of the low tables that lined the far wall of the sparsely furnished space, contemplating an arrangement of stones. He dressed most as Haárin, as was his habit since his outcast, in a blue that pained the eyes and an orange so near to red as to be ungodly. He looked to the door as she entered, regarding her as he used to at Temple when she argued with him over his blending heresies, his gaze fixed on the floor at her feet, hands clasped behind his back.

“So, Elon. Humanish food in your buildings, and skimmers that leap about as beasts and evade capture.” He turned his attention to the stones once more, this time picking one up and stacking it atop another, then removing it and doing the same again. “A grenade of pink could have halted your invader.”

“No, Tsecha.” Elon's shoulders rounded. Now, as when he served as ambassador, Tsecha felt he knew her duties better than she. “We would have damaged ourselves just as we damaged them. The new pink is not yet ready.”

“It was not ready when I served in this place. It takes its time readying itself, and truly.” Tsecha picked up another stone, but instead of adding it to his pile, he passed it from hand to hand. “What has Shai said of all this?”

“NìaRauta Shai attends a conclave with Prime Minister Cao. They discuss expansion of GateWay rights, I most believe. As always, Samvasta serves as issue due to its nearness to Shèrá. The humanish wish it so very much, and Cèel has ordered Shai to withhold.” Elon stepped across the room to a window that looked out over the gardens. The sky pained the eyes as did Tsecha's shirt, yet such did she esteem, for it lit the hybrid grasses and shrubs to a brilliance that took her to Rauta Shèràa. The time just before first planting, when the leaves greened and the sun burned low in the sky.

Tsecha set down the stone. “You have not told her of this latest incident?”

“No.” Elon remained at the window. “I most prefer to examine such matters most completely before I inform nìaRauta Shai. I prefer to understand reasons, and determine that which must be changed.” She pressed her hand to the windowpane, imagined heat, but felt only cold. “Humanish did not attack us in this way until the enclave came to be. They did not despise us so until you went out among them. They once enjoyed you, for they believed you only a visitor here. Now they fear you, for they know you mean to stay and force your blending prophecies upon them.” She paused, laboring to think of words to describe that which to this point had only been vague impression, the unformed sensation of the soldier who recognized menace she could not define. “Therefore, I would ask you to leave this place, and return to Rauta Shèràa. Today. Tomorrow. As soon as you may.”

Tsecha moved down the table, away from the stones and toward a bowl fountain. “And the other Haárin? Dathim and the rest?” He placed his fingers beneath the water stream, and the gurgling softened to a quiet patter.

“They should return with you.” Elon stepped back from the window, but remained some distance from Tsecha and his table contemplations. She had never entertained a wish to draw close to him, and now, more than at any time, she
wished to remain well away. “I have thought of this a great deal since the time of the mine explosion. Since the time I conveyed Feres's soul to his final place. It is with you that all this began, Tsecha. It is with you that it all will end. It is with you that it all must end.”

Tsecha raised his hand from the fountain stream, watched the water drip from his fingers to the tiered bowls beneath. “As always, Elon, your reasoning is flawed. Even at Temple school was it so. When you were required to think as a soldier, you pondered as a student, and when you were required to ponder as a student, you thought of nothing but advance or retreat.” He shook the last drops from his hand, then wiped it over the front of his shirt. “My leaving this place will not end these attacks. They would have occurred if I had never lived, for they speak to the weakness of both humanish and idomeni. Humanish, who only know advance and retreat, as the soldier, and idomeni, who withdraw to ponder and suppose, as students until death.”

Elon drew back from the window, away from the light that pained her eyes and the color that struck at her soul. Yet she did not want to leave the view, and the need to do so angered her. “We are warriors as well, Tsecha.”

Tsecha took a step closer to her, nearer the sun that entered through the window. The brightness accented the water stains of his shirt, the almost-red darkened to blood. “We attack one another within the bounds of our classroom. We argue points of law with blades. But we do not advance. We have built ships of space for as long as have humanish. Yet we have only ten poor colony worlds to show for our labors. They have near to fifty, and bother us as starving youngish for our share.” He once more clasped his hands behind his back, and studied a flaw in the ceiling that only he could see. “But as starving youngish, they think only of their own hungers and how to assuage them—if a slap gives them what they wish, they will continue to slap until their target sickens of being struck and slaps back. If I departed, they would most believe, and with reason, that they drove me away. My
remaining, all our remaining, serves as a return slap. It is necessary, Elon. It is as it must be. Therefore will I stay.”

Elon rubbed her hands together, imagined the twigs between them, the twigs that even now remained scattered across the floor of her rooms. “Allow the humanish to think as they will, but do that which is godly. That which is best for Haárin.”

“Such a day it is, Elon, when you think at all of Haárin.” Tsecha bared his teeth at the ceiling, then lowered his gaze once more to the place at her feet. “No. Such is my answer. No, and no again.” He walked to the other side of the space, toward a cloth-draped pedestal. “I see that Shai maintains sculpture in the meeting rooms.” He removed the cloth and poked at the half-formed mound beneath. “During my time at Temple, I never saw her but with a lump of clay in her hand. She required it, so she said, to quell her anger. When she first arrived here, she did not use such. Now I see that she has taken it up again.” He studied the sculpture for a time, then shook out its cloth and covered it once more. “Is this why you summoned me here? To beg my return to Shèrá?”

Elon walked to the middle of the room and circled a ring of chairs. Her body ached as it always did after the discord of a pursuit, yet she could not sit. Instead she paced, and pondered what to reply.
As a student
. She gripped the back of a chair, squeezing until her knuckles paled to white. “That is why, Tsecha. Yes.”

“Shai will not appreciate this fact. She prefers to know when I am about this place.” Tsecha walked to the door, his stride relaxed, as though he had not sentenced a race to despair with his decision. “If you are not occupied with more impossible requests, I would ask and truly that you come with me. Someone is here with whom you as security dominant should speak.”

 

Elon followed Tsecha down the wide corridor that led to the verandas. “I must meet with my suborns most soon to talk of
this attack.” She had fixed her eyes on her former dominant's narrow shoulders, which had seemed as old when she schooled at Temple and now seemed as those of a youngish, clothed as they were in Haárin blue.

“Then you will want to discuss such here first, I most believe.” Tsecha pushed open a hinged door and stepped out onto the walled veranda reserved for humanish.

Elon followed Tsecha out onto the veranda. By the far wall, near a pedestal fountain, stood Pascal, the Service captain, dressed in the clothes of the street. Pale stone colors, she noted, that did not offend the eye, however much their wearer did. Such strangeness. His stunted body, too broad and bulky. His hair, so pale as to be Oà, sheared as close to the skull as Tsecha's and Dathim's, his narrow face and weak jaw.
Ugly beings, are humanish
. How she wished, and truly, that she would never see one again. Next to him stood Dathim, clothed in green and brown, such subdued tones that Elon wondered if he sought mercy from the gods for Tsecha, who dressed as one who could not see that which he wore.

“NìaRauta.” Pascal stood as a carving, his back most straight, gaze fixed at a point above Elon's head as a show of respect. “Ní Tsecha has told me of the attacks against the embassy,” he continued in adequate High Vynshàrau. “I am most interested, and truly, as to the details, for this is the first I have heard of such.”

Elon heard the movement of the door behind her, and turned to find Ghos standing in the entry. He now wore the clothing of the embassy, green and off-white, as she did, and had unbound his braids so they fell freely past his shoulders.

“We have not told humanish of these assaults.” He spoke High Vynshàrau. Yet his voice and posture still held his earlier anger, and his intonations came as chopped and truncated as his harshest Vynshàrau Haárin. “What purpose would be served? Feres's soul has already arrived within the worldskein, so long ago did he die, yet humanish know nothing of the source of the mine that killed him. What
good, then, to consult with you of this? More time spent, more worthless meetings, more politics, and less knowledge gained for all of that. You are as nothing, and truly.”

“Ghos, silence.” Elon sensed Pascal's surprise at Ghos's anger, Dathim's and Tsecha's irritation, and took what pleasure she could from the discord. “Even now, nìaRauta Sànalàn labors to purify those places.” She stood aside so Ghos could move half a pace ahead of her, as was seemly. “So many are there that she will labor far into the night.”

Pascal looked to Tsecha, then away. He drew his hand to his mouth, then recalled where he stood and let it fall. “My High Vynshàrau is adequate to most of my embassy dealings, but it may not prove so if the speech becomes too technical, or too heated. In such instances, I will speak English, and ní Tsecha or ní Dathim will translate. Is such acceptable?” He waited until they all gestured in the affirmative. “Any vehicle that managed to evade your security systems would have to have been specially equipped. Did you obtain any images of this one you saw today? Any scans or other identification?”

“Why should we discuss such with you?” Ghos looked to Pascal. “Strange humanish who befriends Haárin. Suborn of ná Kièrshia, who is anathema to all that is godly. What are you?”

“Ghos!”
Elon looked to her suborn, who seemed most as determined to forget her existence, then to Pascal, who gestured again in question. “Yet such is something we would want to know, Pascal. You possess some standing in the humanish Service. Your loyalty is to them. Why, then, would you assist us?”

“Such is a most fair question.” Pascal's right hand drew up in hesitation. “I fear the subtleties I must express to explain myself are beyond my grasp of High Vynshàrau, but I will try.” His hand lowered. “As nìRau Ghos said, I am indeed suborn to ná Kièrshia. While she is absent from Chicago, I work for her, serving as her eyes and ears.”

“But you wear the clothes of the Service, when you re
member to.” Ghos stepped closer, his hands clenching as his back bowed. “You act as the most ungodly Haárin—all know this who know anything. You serve any and all. You do not comprehend the meaning of order, or loyalty!”

“Ghos! Such is enough.” Tsecha's back bowed. “You wish to know more of the humanish who have invaded. I have one with me who can determine such.”

“He is disorder!”

“He is between the lines, as he has always been! Such is no surprise to me!” Tsecha pushed up one sleeve. Silvered
à lérine
scars reflected the light, a warning to Ghos.

“He serves only the Kièrshia.” Dathim stepped forward, his hands low before him, his weight balanced as a warrior who expected attack. “If you accept nothing else, you must accept that, and if you accept that, you must accept all that follows.” He tilted his head, his shaved scalp a glinting mockery of the old ways. “Even a bornsect must comprehend such.”

Ghos ignored him, his gaze fixed on Pascal. “Why are you here, humanish? To spy for your anathema, or your Service?”

Pascal raised his left hand chest high, palm out and fingers curved, a gesture of pleading. “I only wish to help. You are being attacked. I wish to find out more of these attacks—I believe I can assist you in preventing them.”

“And I should believe you why?” Ghos moved to the side as a fighter trying to find his feet, while Dathim moved with him in an effort to stay between him and Pascal. He moved again, and again Dathim moved with him.

The movements of
à lérine. Elon felt her own body sway in response as her fingers closed around the ghost of a blade.

“Elon.”
Tsecha drew close to her, his voice lowered in a damned humanish whisper. “Ghos is yours—order him to still.”

“Why, ní Tsecha?”

“Because my Lucien does not understand what occurs.”

“Yet you compel us to understand him? To trust him? Un
fair, ní Tsecha. If your humanish does not understand us, then it is time he learned.”

“You damn this place with each breath and beg the gods to deliver you, yet when you sense blood, you act as the animals you condemn?” Tsecha stepped around Elon toward Dathim and Ghos, who still moved in strange unison. “
Ghos
. Stand back. My Lucien does not comprehend.”

Ghos took a step toward Tsecha. “You brought him here. You, who damned our souls by your outcast.”

“You damn your own soul now, Ghos.” Tsecha pushed up his other sleeve, revealing another lifetime of scars. “You have not listened. You have not thought. You only attack.”

“I attack. Such should be no surprise to you.” Ghos punched the air, his fist finding a space past Dathim's shoulder, a handsbreadth from the dodging Pascal.