Rogue Powers Read online

  Supposedly, he and George had been shipped to Bandwidth for reasons that had something to do with the search for Capital. No one had quite known what to do with George after New Finland, and Metcalf half suspected that had much to do with why the two of them had found themselves on Bandwidth.

  The whole thing was a military jury-rig. Certainly there was value in questioning prisoners, and there were any number of Intelligence officers from across the League right here on Bandwidth, very happily doing just that. Whatever prisoners of war from New Finland that could be pried loose from the Finns were here. But there hadn't been many prisoners to start with, and the Finns, as the party most aggrieved by the Guards, were reluctant to give many up. But here the available P.O.W.s were. And so George was here. Perhaps there was even value in having George around as a tame expert, catching the P.O.W.s in lies and suggesting questions that might be

  asked of them. It might even make sense to have Metcalf there, because he had experience in Guard battle tactics and might have something to contribute. Metcalf rather suspected he was really there because there wasn't much call for fighter pilots at the moment and because the higher-ups wanted some around who could keep Prigot company—and keep an eye on him. George, after all, was a turncoat, and he might turn again. . . .

  But Prigot didn't seem to need much watching, though he was glad of Metcalf s company, glad to have a familiar face around. Still, there wasn't much for Metcalf and him to do.

  Metcalf took a long pull at his drink. They had been cooling their heels, with little to contribute, for close to ten months now. The war had dragged to a halt for lack of an enemy to fight.

  And all they had to work with were the prisoners, and the prisoners didn't talk much. When they did talk, it turned out they didn't know much. The Intelligence officers didn't seem to mind. As far as Metcalf could see, most of them saw interrogating the prisoners as a career choice with good job security, rather than as a temporary assignment. They went gaily on, asking the same things again and again, charting responses, correlating results, writing summaries of evidence that were longer than the evidence itself. Metcalf could almost sympathize with the Intelligence team. These were the only enemy troops they were going to milk the chance for all it was worth.

  But all that to one side, there was no progress whatsoever on the central question: Where is Capital?

  The Guardian leadership, very wisely as things turned out, had practically made astronomy a state secret. None of the prisoners had ever seen a star chart. None of them even knew there were grid reference systems to locate stars relative to each other. None of them knew that stars were differing sizes and colors. It made asking where their sun was, or what mass and spectral class it was, a stunningly futile undertaking.

  As Metcalf was fond of pointing out, rarely had so few who knew so little been asked so much by so many for so long. When he said that to George, George replied, "So what?"

  Metcalf didn't have an answer for that. He ordered another double Scotch.

  CHAPTER SEVEN Chralray Village: the Current Nihilist Camp

  D'eltipa had a great desire to be found anywhere but where she was. But it was this village, that they had tarried in for far too long, and this hall, and this time, and she had no choice but to meet with her First Advice, Nihilist M'etallis. D'eltipa found irony in M'etallis's title. As Primary Guidance of the Nihilists, she had never accepted a syllable of M'etallis's advice. And now M'etallis would succeed her. M'etallis would be the one to deal with the halfwalkers.

  The aliens, strange as they were, strange as they had to be, represented so much change and renewal to come— they were hope itself—and yet they could not have brought their remarkable flying-carrying machines down out of the sky at a worse time. Even without the halfwalkers, the situation would be explosive. And the halfwalkers, weird creatures that they were, represented infinite complication. No one had made sense of them yet. The aliens seemed to have no desire to go anywhere. And they did things in such strange ways. D'eltipa found herself forced to believe the reports of the learners, but she still found it fantastic that such a complex thing as a spacecraft was built and not grown. Perhaps, the learners suggested, it was actually impossible to grow one, or grow the parts of one to be assembled. Something about stresses and pressure and heat. The halfwalkers could build those things and yet seemed to have no skill of biology at all. Strange indeed.

  She felt her mind straying, and almost allowed it down the side path. But the humans, as they called themselves, were not the central problem, though M'etallis no doubt had schemes already that involved them. M'etallis herself was the problem—a problem just waiting to happen. No, that was too gentle. M'etallis was a disaster impatient to happen. And D'eltipa could see no way that would keep M’etallis from the post of Primary Guidance. D'eltipa had even given up her hopes for a splitting of the path, of disciples of her Guidance being there to start anew down the correct course after she was a suicide or had been Divided from her people. And that time would be soon. She understood fully that she should have surrendered Guidance and taken her own life long ago, but she had remained, desperately hoping for some other inheritor than M'etallis. But D'eltipas nearest followers were all dead—suicides, the kindly, dignified, death Nihilism had been founded to grant. And D'eltipa hung on, past all hope, until it was too late, until she herself felt the coming of Division. And, for the founder of the Nihilists, that was an irony far too cruel.

  M'etallis! Nihilism would be so perverted under her that it should not be called by that name. Murderism, or Annihilationism, perhaps. But there would be no peaceful endings, no aid for the fearful under the next Primary Guidance. The upstart was not interested in easing the way out of life. She looked only for power. And soon she would have it.

  That last point was one of the few on which M'etallis would agree with her Primary Guidance. The old fool was headed straight for Division—and undoubtedly knew it. M'etallis felt a sudden acute shock of her chronic impatience. All the cantering about in circles, all the subtle— and unsubtle—suggestions to certain Nihilists that their proper time to die had come, all the agreements formed and broken, all the efforts meant to put her in her present place, all of it was at last to pay off. M'etallis was certain to take control and get this absurd little sect to be something worthwhile. And now D'eltipa courted the final humiliation, for no other possible purpose than to hold things back from their inevitable resolution.

  M'etallis blew an angry snort through her blowhole at the thought. All the time that had been wasted! Why couldn't the old spread their wings and give over to the young without all this interference?

  M'etallis paced back and forth down the long, low halls of Chralray s Second House. It was almost time to go and meet with D'eltipa at Guidance Hall. But wait. Delay a moment. Let D'eltipas fidget a while too. Time was on M'etallis's side, and it might as well be used.

  She trotted out to the south windows that looked toward the meadow and the halfwalker's camp. Plain old bad luck that it had taken so long to clear the vermin out of the area when the humans first arrived. The humans had very prudently stayed in their carrier—ship was one word for it, and lander another—until their hosts could wipe out the more energetic—and hungry—animal life. Hunters and beaters still worked endlessly to keep the perimeter clear. M'etallis wondered if the halfwalkers appreciated the trouble it took to keep such a large clearing safe. Perhaps they did. The humans seemed to be making a very permanent job of that camp. They remained, and built as if they intended to stay forever. There was no sign of their looking toward the Road—but then the Roads they travelled across the sky must be long enough indeed.

  M'etallis stamped her left forefoot. She could do with a bit of travel now. The Nihilists had stayed too long in this place. Time to strike camp, time to find an empty village or build a new one for the next season. She couldn't remember any Group spending this long in one village. Chralray might even spring up into a permanent city, fete forbid.

  B
ut the aliens were too great a chance to pass by. It had been M'etallis herself who had heard third-hand from a sojourner that some big metal shape had come back from the sky and come to rest near Chralray, stayed a bit, and then left with a great noise—that some odd creatures had been seen around it. That was why M'etallis had chosen Chralray Village for the season. M'etallis was not one to let new things slip by.

  But now it was well past time for the meeting with D'eltipa. The skin around M'etallis's eyes crinkled in the Z'ensam equivalent of a gleeful smile, and she galloped off toward Guidance Hall.

  The Z'ensam are the descendents of migratory herd animals and, like most migrators, are not a territorial species. The concepts of personal property, and money, and trade certainly exist, but do not hold anywhere near the emotional importance they do for humans. These are important only insofar as they helped to establish rank, a pecking order.

  Their property is generally portable, for the very good reason that it has to be. The Road would call, the eyes would yearn for new vistas, and it would be time to move. It took the strongest discipline and the most compelling of reasons to keep the Z'ensam in one place for long. But the halfwalkers seemed prepared to stay where they were indefinitely, and that qualified as a compelling reason.

  To the Z'ensam, it was natural to abandon a village and move the Group to a new site—either an existing village some other Group had abandoned, or a virgin site where a new village would be grown. Indeed, the villages were more for the sake of protecting property from the weather and keeping Groups organized than they were for the comfort of individuals. Humans are a tropical species, while the Z'ensam evolved in a fairly harsh temperate zone. The latter are therefore better adapted to extremes of cold and heat and rough weather, and tend to bother far less with heating and cooling.

  M'etallis walked straight into Guidance Hall without a knock, a pause, or the slightest formality. A great deal of human etiquette and ceremony and law deals with the circumstances under which one can and cannot or must or must not admit or deny another to one's home territory. Such questions simply did not enter into any Z'ensam society.

  A human second-in-command, especially a rebellious one, would have been stopped by an underling and announced, delayed, be made to wait, perhaps even led through guards and fortifications—symbolic or functional— before arriving in the presence of the Leader. If such things had been absent in a human meeting, there would have been a great show made of their absence, a demonstration that the visitor was welcome and trusted in the Leader's territory. But the Z'ensam lacked the trappings of the territorial imperative, along with the imperative itself. M'etallis simply trotted through the doorway of the Guidance's hall and wandered about until she found D'eltipa impatiently pacing down one of the corridors. The older Z'ensam pulled herself up short and glared at her subordinate. At which moment M'etallis had to physically restrain herself from rushing outside to gallop around the building and crow with delight. D'eltipa actually had a long red welt down the length of her back! She was already in the first stages of Division. She was practically ready to keel over then and there! M'etallis held her emotions in check and contented herself with a merry flick of her tail.

  "Your presence is sensed, Primary Guidance," M'etallis said, in what she hoped was a calm and neutral voice.

  "And yours, First Advice. Nothing can be hidden at this point, I know my condition as well as you. You need treat me with the dignity due wisdom only a little while longer. But I still have time for talk. Come, let us be found in the garden."

  "As your Guidance is pleased," M'etallis said. The garden was surrounded by a low wall. They would be unseen there—and that was just as well; D'eltipa's appearance was not suited to being seen in public. M'etallis was surprised to find herself concerned that the Guidance not be humiliated. She twitched her tail, and realized she still had feelings for her old teacher. She felt a sudden twinge of guilt that she had driven D'eltipa to the extremity of accepting Division. But the change must come. New thoughts must lead Nihilism, and D'eltipa of all Nihilists must accept that each person choose her own mind's way out of the world. But it was sad that things had reached such a crossroads.

  M'etallis could not admit it herself, but she was unnerved to find principle, and tenderness, and regret at unfortunate necessity, still in her soul. She had sought power so long, she had almost convinced herself that power was all she cared for. Perhaps one day it would be. She would be by no means the first being seduced away from a goal by the means of achieving it.

  The older Nihilist led the way into the garden. It was a lovely spring day, a good day to enjoy with time so short. "So, M’etallis, soon you shall be called by a different name. Are you practiced, so you will answer when someone calls for D'etallis?"

  M'etallis chose not to respond to such needling. "Not as such, but I have trust that my new name will be familiar to me."

  "Yes, you are practiced, then. And you have been ready for a long time, as well. But you are not called here for teasing, but for schooling, and warning. This has been said before, but hear it again: Change is like any tool; not good, or bad, but only a thing which can be suited to many purposes. Use it, but wisely. I fear you will not."

  "Guidance. Let us not have platitudes or wasted time and words. You left with me, years ago, when I ended my sojourn at your side, the knowledge that the curse of our people was in knowing their late. All other living things, plant and animal, wild-evolved or guided and bred by us down a path of our choosing, did not know of their doom. Even the animals whose life cycle parallels our own do not

  experience the loss we do. Only our kind, the Z'ensam, have ever known the pride of having a full name—and so only our kind are haunted by the fear of losing it—"

  "Gallop on, say it. I know my fate. Losing it to be Divided out from thought and knowledge. But you have taken that teaching to extremes, leaving it perverted. I had only the goal of aiding those who so wished a chance to pass from life painlessly, with mind intact, still bearing a full name. But each must choose for herself. You would have us all swept away. Can you not seen the paradox you find drawn around yourself? You have used the power of your own mind to reach the conclusion that sentience— the power of mind—is an abomination! You seek the extinction of your own people."

  "1 seek the perfection of nature," M'etallis said primly. "All life is beautiful. Death is ugly. Therefore the knowledge of death is ugly. And, that knowledge of our own doom is ours alone. The heritage of all other living things is to grow and live and prosper and multiply—until death, unknown, unseen, unlooked for, takes one life to replace it with another. A flower, a bug, a cartbeast, have no realization that they will die, and so for them the ugliness of death does not exist. The heritage of all the Z'ensam is a grim and terrible choice: an early death, or to let the cycle of life debase us—" M'etallis drew up short. "Guidance, pardon. The heat of my feeling, I did not recall your circumstance. ..."

  "I find relief that you can still feel embarrassment. There is kindness still in your soul. But it only strengthens my question: You seek the power to do so, but would you use it—would you truly wipe out your own kind?"

  "What is the better alternative? We are trapped. We might go on and on, yes—but to what end? What goal? That the unborn generations can grow to find the ugliness of death or division to snatch at them? I would have the melancholy of the Z'ensam over and done, not drawn out over the endless generations. And, Guidance, I must add a further point. It is not my own kind I would wipe out. It

  is mind that perverts nature and life with the knowledge of death and the end of things. It is mind I would wipe out: mind wherever it is, wherever it comes from, doing so by any means possible. And you call me cruel, cynical, jaded already, so this next will seem in character. It will require power to wipe out the Z'ensam, but we cannot gain power by killing those we would have power over. A grand paradox. But now we are presented with a far easier, far more palatable way to kill our way into great power."
/>   D'eltipa looked at her successor in stunned silence. There was a dull, rumbling roar from the meadow. Both of them turned to watch the human's lander rise into the perfect spring sky.

  CHAPTER EIGHT Guardian Contact Base, Outpost

  Captain Lewis Romero was a dangerous man with an idea, the way an unskilled pilot was dangerous with a spacecraft. The pilot had no idea what his ship could do, and Romero hadn't thought his idea out past the end of his nose.

  He was also ambitious. Ariadne station was a busy place these days—new battle fleets were forming and training, and they made much use of the station's communications and supply capabilities. Ariadne was also charged with supplying the contact base on Outpost and handling the scientists ever-growing demand for communications and information. Romero's command was doing useful work, his people were accomplishing things—but it wasn't enough. Romero had finally come to the realization that he had been deliberately stuck in a backwater post, and that the Outposters were more than just of interest to the scientists: They were a golden opportunity for career advancement. He had been a good little sailor long enough. None of the excitement going past was doing him any good, and it was time to change all that.

  That was why he had come down to Outpost. Ostensibly, it was a courtesy call, a chance for Romero to see after the supply situation, make sure that all was going well, a chance to listen for complaints or suggestions. All that would do as an excuse. Romero had to admit to himself that Gustav seemed to have things well in hand. The camp was in excellent condition, clean, well laid-out, and the enlisted men, officers, and civilians all seemed quite satisfied with the physical conditions they worked under. Romero strolled the camp, watching humans and Outposters working together. He had never seen a native in the flesh before; they seemed quite surprisingly large. Romero was upset to see everything working smoothly, good progress being made everywhere. Damn! He should never have let Gustav take command of the contact base—though with Gustav's Intelligence background and the shortage of personnel, there had been very few other choices, and there was no way Romero could have relinquished his command of Ariadne to do take the job himself. More galling still was the way Romero's job on Ariadne was suddenly so much more difficult with Gustav gone. Officially, Gustav was still the station's executive officer, on detached duty, so Romero couldn't put in for a replacement XO. The personnel shortage again. But there was so much work to do with Gustav gone! Damn his luck for being handed a prize like First Contact! He'd be promoted, he'd be in the history books, and Romero would be stuck on Ariadne for twenty years!