Diuturnity's Dawn (25 page)

“This is a most momentous time in the history of our respective species. It will go down as such in the history scrolls—or else be memorialized as one of the great lost opportunities in this sentient part of the galaxy. Though you and I are but insignificant players in the sublime drama, we must each of us strive at the moment of truth to maximize our whistling.”

It was a fine sentiment, Fanielle felt. There was a nobility to it that calmed her anxieties. Very rarely are individuals actually aware of balancing on the crux of history. She hoped she would live long enough to see come to pass all that the glittering-eyed Lyrkenparmew had described. For that matter, painfully recalling what had happened to Jeremy, she hoped she would just live long enough to see the actual voting on the proposal take place.

Lyrkenparmew had set his drinking utensil aside. His manner had grown more somber. “There are other threats besides the declared intention of our opponents on both councils to vote no on any such proposition. While our people have been hard at work behind the scenes, lobbying human politicians and thranx eints alike, the AAnn have not rested. They are ever active, making mischief.” He glanced in Fanielle’s direction. “As I have been informed you know from more than merely speculative experience.”

She nodded slowly, a gesture both thranx would recognize. “As you know, I lost . . . I lost the father of my child.” She swallowed hard. Though she had been down this road many times since Jeremy’s death, remembering was still agonizing. Only her work, into which she had thrown herself with more intensity than ever, kept her from seeing his face in familiar places and from crying uncontrollably.

Something hard and unyielding brushed softly against her right side. Eight of Haflunormet’s fingers grazed her ribs in a particular ellipsoidal motion, a soothing motion designed to show sympathy for both egg-layer and prospective offspring. She sniffed only once as she returned his touch with a smile. Surrounded though she was at residence and on the job by fellow humans, it took a bug’s caress to put her at ease.

“Surely,” she observed, collecting herself, “the AAnn can’t hope to match this flowering joint effort with one of their own?” Around them, clusters of miners came and went, toiling at flexible shifts. Whenever a new group lay down on benches nearby, the diplomats’ conversation shifted to innocuous, generalized topics until the diggers departed. The information being discussed at the small table in the back was too sensitive for general dissemination. It would have to remain so until the grand proposition had been announced to the public.

Lyrkenparmew indicated mild distress. “They’ve been very busy, the scale-skinned ones. In the area of commercial treaty making they have been especially active. The accumulation of individual wealth occupies greater status among the AAnn and humankind than it does among my people. This similar outlook affords a kind of instant rapport among certain of your kind and many of the AAnn.” His truhands were in constant motion, making it difficult for Fanielle to follow every subtle overtone of the conversation.

“Many covenants have been proposed between AAnn and human, and several adopted, but nothing like the Commonwealth. The AAnn would never contemplate such an intimate union with anyone.” He let out a series of shrill clicks. “They are too enamored of their own imagined destiny as rulers of this part of the galaxy to ever surrender any real control to another species. But beyond that, they are quite willing to consider all manner of agreements.”

“The problem,” Haflunormet continued, “is that too many humans are easily blinded by promises of the riches to be gained from trade with the scaled ones, who are not above bribing your people to secure support, special treatment, and whatever other perks they believe they can so acquire.”

Fanielle was embarrassed for people she did not know and would never meet. “My kind have come a long way from the time when we used to beat one another’s heads in for the most insignificant reasons. But there still exist those who crawl through life as ethical hemophiliacs.”

“What they don’t realize,” Lyrkenparmew went on solemnly, “is that opportunism is ingrained in the AAnn social structure. They will treat fairly when it best suits their needs, and break legs when it does not. The grief arises from their skill. They have made a science of duplicity. I am not saying that humans are naÏve, but there is no sentient in the known universe as crafty, sly, and cunning as a mature, experienced AAnn.” He gestured mild apology of oversight. “But then, there is no need for me to tell you this. You have already met one such.”

She nodded. “The emissary in question could charm a
sifla
out of its
morgewout
. When not tearing out your throat.”

Haflunormet whistle-clicked concurrence. “His reputation spreads wider than does his water.”

“I know he charmed a colleague of mine back at the compound.” She looked straight at Haflunormet. “Mind the name ‘Jorge Sertoa.’ He’s a very clever fellow, but a bit of cold plasma. Has dark matter in place of a backbone.” At the dual gestures of bemusement from her companions, she hurried to modify the simile. “Sorry—in place of his predominate dorsal chitin.” At this clarification, they gesticulated knowingly.

“And he’s not alone in his sympathies for the AAnn. There are others at the settlement who feel similarly, though I’m happy to say they’re in the minority. When the proposal is announced, I think you’ll be able to count on the support of the majority of the staff, diplomatic and support personnel alike, at Azerick.” Her expression hardened. “I’ll arrange to keep an eye on Jorge and the others so they don’t cause any trouble.”

Lyrkenparmew indicated understanding. “Everything is suddenly starting to move very rapidly. There is a sense of great events having been set inexorably in motion. I hardly need tell either of you that if this proposal goes down to defeat, it could be fifty or a hundred cycles before anyone dares to bring it up again. Failure carries with it the concurrent risk that the opponents of unification, alarmed by the boldness of the proposition, will unite in even more formidable leagues to oppose any reconsideration.” His voice lowered as his clicking subsided to the intensity of pins landing on a metal sheet.

“I’m not trying to alarm you, but this is the way the gist is seen. Our first chance may very well prove to be our best chance, if not necessarily our last.”

“I wonder if it’s too soon.” Fanielle almost leaned back on her bench before she remembered that it had no back. “I wonder if we’re pushing too much too fast.”

The genial twisting of Lyrkenparmew’s truhands insinuated inevitability. “Those in charge of making such decisions feel they have no choice but to press for the establishment of the complete Commonwealth. Now that the concept has been brokered, it has gained a momentum all its own. It is like entering into a burrow that has been slimed. Once you’ve started downward, there’s no stopping until you reach the bottom.”

Haflunormet drained the last of his drink. It was nearing time to leave, lest they become too conspicuous. “This will be the cycle that the progeny of our clans will venerate forever.”

“
If
our designs are fulfilled.” Lyrkenparmew slipped sideways off his bench while Fanielle straightened and stretched. Her back was stiff from sitting so long in one place without any support.

“I suppose I’ll be heading back to the plateau in a few days.” She checked her comm unit. “They won’t be expecting me so early, but no one will question the timing of my return.” She smiled wryly. “After all, what right-minded human could stand more than a couple of days of vacation in a place like Daret?”

“We are all of us hoping,” Lyrkenparmew commented quietly as they left the table behind and headed for the transport platform, “that it is individuals like yourself who are the right-minded humans.”

Reaching out, she momentarily rested the flat of her hand against the back of the envoy’s abdomen, feeling his upper set of wing cases vibrate against her palm. “I’m not alone in liking your kind, Lyrkenparmew, and not just for the ever-amazing variety of wonderful fragrances you emit, or for your aid in the Pitarian War. There are plenty of us who are fond of thranx culture, and philosophy, and your way of looking at the universe. It’s minds we seek in common, not shapes.”

“How fortunate.” The widely spaced nerve endings in Lyrkenparmew’s exoskeleton conveyed to him the warmth of the barely insulated mammalian flesh. Such a strange sensation it was, to be accompanied by a creature that was little more than a loose sack of fluids wrapped around a barely balanced upright bony framework held together by fragile bonds of stretched protein. That this female’s often erratic kind might be the ones to at last put an end to centuries of AAnn depredations was scarce to be believed. Many thranx, in fact, would not believe it.

They would have to be convinced.

17

Conversation in the room was subdued. Skettle let them talk. It helped to relieve the tension. As Nevisrighne and Botha, Pierrot and Davies and the others chatted quietly, the old man looked on with pride. In a stern, paternal fashion he was as proud of them as if they were his real children. Very soon now they would join gloriously together, patriarch and progeny, to sow destruction in order to prevent an onslaught of racial commingling of a kind their virtuous ancestors could never in their wildest dreams have imagined.

Walking over to where Botha was seated poring one last time over his beloved charts, he put a hand on the other man’s shoulder. “The special explosives are ready?”

The other man adjusted his multifunction lenses and nodded. “It’s a shame we couldn’t disguise them the way we did the smaller stuff and just bring them in with us. I’d feel better knowing the full provenance of the ingredients.”

“I know. But even a couple of small tanks of highly sensitive reactant would have set off alarms in customs. How fortunate that you and our other equally brilliant technical people have been able to devise a liquid explosive that can be produced from widely available materials.”

Botha allowed himself a rare grin. “Catalyzed right here in their own city, too. Anyone reviewing the purchases would think one group was going to mix up some lacquer to paint a house, and the other a few crates of home brew.”

“Home brew it is,” Skettle replied, “only this blend is not for drinking.” He raised his gaze to the far corner of the hotel’s reserved and shielded conference room. The pair of trivarium tanks standing upright on the floor near the window—through which they could be hastily chucked in the event of a lightning raid by the authorities—were small, light, exceptionally strong, resistant to the caustic liquids they were originally designed to hold, and of a familiar commercial design that would spark no alarms in the minds of anyone who happened to see them. For all anyone espying them might know, they could easily contain cold-drink concentrate destined for delivery to one of the fair’s numerous food concessions.

Skettle would take charge of one, Martine the other, in the unlikely event either of them should be stopped and questioned. The volatile contents of one tank should be more than sufficient to blow the bulk of the fair’s central communications facility halfway across City Lake. As a further security precaution, they would take separate routes to the complex. Meeting there, they would then make their way into the facility by a prearranged, rehearsed route. Any security or communications personnel unlucky enough to encounter and query them would be dealt with as necessary.

Once the explosives had been placed and set, the two would join their companions in creating general havoc. Skettle was a tower of tranquility among his associates, some of whom for the first time since they had arrived on Dawn were beginning to exhibit the first understandable symptoms of agitation. Even the righteous, he reflected calmly, could grow nervous on the eve of retribution.

He had boundless confidence in all of them. All of them, men and women alike, had dedicated themselves to the cause of the Preservers. They were here to buy time, to allow humankind to reflect upon the mad course of action a few species traitors were hell-bent on pursuing. By tomorrow evening, the festering pace of human-thranx relations would have come to a crashing halt. By the day after, he and his companions would be safely on their way home, on separate KK-drive ships, able to relax and reflect on the good work they had done.

Yes, some innocent humans would have to die. It was quite possible some of his own people would also perish, although every precaution had been taken to ensure their quiet and successful escape from the zone of carnage they intended to enkindle. These unwitting tourists and visitors would go down as martyrs to the cause of species purity. It would take time, but when humankind finally came to its senses and realized the absurdity as well as the danger of trying to merge with another species, the names of the dead would be remembered gratefully by many millions more than the few relatives who would grieve over their loss next week and next month.

When he raised his hands for quiet, the low buzz of conversation ceased. All eyes—some anxious, some expectant, others alive with the anticipation of the work to come—were on him.

“My friends, my good companions: We stand at the threshold of the greatest calamity mankind has ever experienced. The uneducated and ill-informed gather in mindless herds, ready to be pushed into oblivion by the traitorous politicians and philosophers among them. Shall we who have taken the name Preservers allow this to happen?”

The multitude of murmured “no”s that rose in response to his query were no less bone-chilling for the restraint with which they were ululated.

Skettle’s jaws tightened. “Then let us go forth, comrades mine, and once and for all put a stop to this murderous collision course on which the betrayers of our own kind have set us.” He smiled at them, and though he was quite unaware of it, it was a smile that would have set young children to running. “And while we are doing so, let us be sure to kill as many worthy people as possible while taking care to spare the visiting bugs.”

This last bit of carefully concocted perfidy would serve to further heighten the suspicions of those humans who would rush to investigate the tragedy. There was delicious irony in the knowledge that the ones the Preservers most wanted to kill would, by surviving, serve to impair the cause of their own conciliators. Beskodnebwyl’s coworkers would not be so lucky. Skettle had given his colleagues free rein to shoot down as many of them as they could as they made their way clear of the pandemonium. It was the ordinary, bewildered thranx they planned to spare—to suffer the suspicions and outrage of the surviving humans.

As his people began to file out of the room, individually and in pairs so as not to draw the attention of the hotel staff or anyone else to their departure, Skettle paused to glance out the window. Across the great lake, shimmering like a sheet of blue metal in the pellucid morning sunshine, the swooping, soaring structure of the fairgrounds could just be seen in the distance. By this evening, all of it would be in flames, cleansed and deserted, its name become tragedy spread by space-minus communications throughout the civilized portions of the Arm. Walking to the window, he picked up one of the two inauspicious-looking tanks of liquid explosive. Martine had already left with hers.

As the last one out of the conference room, he was careful to close the door behind him. He would make his own separate way to the fair. There he would pause for coffee and a quick meal, his attention on his own synchronized chronometer.

At exactly half past one, it would be time to start killing.

Nordelmatcen, one of the most able among the Bwyl, sidled up next to his clan leader and touched the latter’s right antenna with one of his own. Beskodnebwyl turned immediately.

“I don’t trust my own chronometer. How long until we induce permanent collapse into this vile burrow?”

Around them, blissfully ignorant humans and thranx alike promenaded to and fro throughout the fairgrounds. They had no reason to glance in the direction of the three thranx who were quietly scrutinizing an exhibition of art especially prepared for the fair by creative talents of both species working in tandem. Nordelmatcen had taken one look at the prancing abominations and dismissed them as obscene. Beskodnebwyl was too indifferent to be similarly enticed.

Had any curious passersby paused to stare in their direction, they might have wondered at the extra layers of external sheathing that enclosed the trio of insectoid males. Given the subtropical climate of the region in which Aurora had been founded, these wrappings might have struck even another thranx as excessive. Closer inspection, had it been allowed, would have revealed that the innermost layer of covering consisted not of finely machined fabric from Drax IV or special lightweight abdominal insulation from the
sythmills
of Amropolus, but of self-propelled explosives and kindred virulent mechanisms.

“Patience,” Beskodnebwyl lectured his companions. “The time for dispensing annihilation will come soon enough.”

Deimovjenbir whistled his displeasure. “I would have preferred that we proceed with our intended business on our own, without having to rely on, of all things, a group of contemptible if like-minded humans.”

Beskodnebwyl gestured to emphasize lofty thoughts. “But it is the fact that they are like-minded that compels us to restrain ourselves. If we can make use of some of the soft ones to triple the amount of chaos we can create, should we not do so?”

“I did not say that.” With a series of deep clicks, Deimovjenbir mimicked a disapproving human grumble.

“The humans of Skettle—I have still not been able to decide if that is properly a family or clan designation—are convinced they are making use of us. We feel the opposite is true. None of which matters. What is important is the result. It doesn’t matter if the humans blame the thranx or the thranx blame the humans. What is meaningful is that blame is ascribed.” He gestured with a truhand. “Are you ready to kill some artists?”

“I am ready to kill anything that thinks it controls the destiny of my hive. Artist, worker, prognosticator, musician, scientist—occupation is unimportant. What matters is that we stop this unclean mixing before it has a chance to fuse.” Reaching back with a foothand, he caressed a brace of the self-propelled explosives that were bound to his abdomen. “I am anxious to spread the flowers of destruction.”

“Soon.” Beskodnebwyl checked his own chronometer. “Within the current major time-part.” Slipping a foothand into a thorax pouch, he removed a communicator. Holding it in all four fingers, he used a truhand to activate the compact device. “Time to make certain everyone else is in position.” Addressing the pickup softly, he called to the team of Vedburankex and Hynwupletmer.

There was no answer.

He tried again, with the same result. Nordelmatcen’s attention was still concentrated on the swirling, cheerful crowd. “Trouble with their units. Perhaps they are in a location that restricts short-range, closed-beam communications. Try Yiwespembor and Cuwenarfot.”

Beskodnebwyl did so, to another nonresponse. “Possibly there is something wrong with my unit.” He extended a truhand. “Let me have yours.”

Nordelmatcen obediently passed over his own communicator. Beskodnebwyl first tried Vedburankex and Hynwupletmur again, only to be rewarded with the same pensive electronic silence. It was the same for Yiwespembor and Cuwenarfot, who were supposed to be milling about among the largest of the eating pavilions that had been built out into the shallows of the lake. If they were in position, as they ought to already have been for several time-parts, there should be nothing around to interfere with the receptiveness of their communicators.

Growing increasingly concerned, Beskodnebwyl proceeded to try to contact every one of the widely scattered armed teams. It quickly became apparent that the rest of the Bwyl either could not or would not respond. As for the possibility that Nordelmatcen’s as well as his own communicator was defective, that was a likelihood so unreasonable as to be beneath consideration. Designed to take a lot of mistreatment, field communicators simply did not fail. The thought that two could falter in such close proximity to one another was not to be believed. Beskodnebwyl did not even bother to try Deimovjenbir’s unit.

They were standing on a raised platform that wound its way through the interspecies exhibition of art. While it was conceivable that some of the larger sculptures might block communication to and from the east, there was nothing to divert beams being broadcast in the other three directions. Searching for an explanation, Beskodnebwyl could conceive of none.

Then Nordelmatcen was striving to suppress an instinctive stridulation as he tapped his mentor on the thorax and pointed sharply.

Beskodnebwyl recognized the strike team that was walking rapidly toward the art exhibit. They had just appeared inside one of the entrances on the far side of the pavilion. Sujbirwencex and Waspulnatun were looking around more than was necessary, and their antennae were positively dancing. There appeared to be nothing wrong with them, either physically or mentally. For the first time since he had started scanning, Beskodnebwyl received an acknowledgment in response to his query signal.

He was about to ask if the recently arrived team members were having similar difficulties contacting other members of the group when Sujbirwencex and Waspulnatun were abruptly swarmed by a collapsing ring of humans and thranx. Shocked by the swiftness of the maneuver, Beskodnebwyl could only stare, one finger still on the
send
contact of his communicator. It was as if a portion of the milling crowd had collapsed on top of the stunned pair. Neither had a chance to fire a shot in their own defense, or even unlimber one of the many weapons they carried. One time-part fraction they had been making straight for Beskodnebwyl and Nordelmatcen; the next, both were in custody and in the process of being disarmed.

Deimovjenbir benefited from a slightly different perspective on the calamity. “Sujbirwencex and Waspulnatun have both been immobilized. Whether by fume, shock, or other means I cannot say, but both are now lying on their sides and offering no resistance.”

Beskodnebwyl’s colleague was not quite right. As the three dismayed thranx looked on, Sujbirwencex managed to wrest free a small hand weapon not yet confiscated by her attackers. She was immediately swarmed, but not before she succeeded in getting off at least one shot. A few nearby wanderers looked on in shock as the explosive shell blew one human patroller in half. In response, the downed Sujbirwencex received half a dozen blasts of varying intensity from at least three different kinds of weapons. The ferocious counterattack left little behind suitable for future identification.

From the brief but lethal confrontation nary a sound was heard.

“Silencing sphere,” Nordelmatcen clicked unnecessarily. Whoever had ambushed the two Bwyl carried equipment to ensure that whatever else resulted from any confrontations and challenges, crowd panic would not be among them. The throng of sightseers had been effectively and efficiently shielded from the unsettling sounds of violent verbal and physical combat. One human and one Bwyl lay dead on the pavilion floor, but only those visitors who had been close enough to observe the challenge directly had any inkling that anything untoward had taken place in their midst. It was all very slick and masterful. The actions of the ambushers smacked of extensive training and ample rehearsal.