“Keep watching,” Gau said.
A moment later a point of light appeared in the sky, near the Gentle. Then another, and another.
“More ships,” orenThen said.
“Yes,” Gau said.
“How many?” orenThen asked.
“Keep watching,” Gau said.
The ships winked in, singly, then in pairs and triplets, then in constellations.
“So many,” orenThen said, after some time.
“Keep watching,” Gau said.
OrenThen waited until he was sure no more ships were coming before he turned again to look at Gau, who was still looking into the sky.
“There are four hundred and twelve ships in your sky,” Gau said. “One ship from every member race of the Conclave. This is the fleet with which we will visit every world that was colonized, without authorization, after the Agreement.” Gau turned again and looked for his lieutenant, whom he could barely see in the gloom. Gau gave his lieutenant a second nod. The soldier spoke in his communicator again.
From each ship in the sky, a beam of coherent light stabbed into the colony on the riverbank, blanketing the colony in white. OrenThen let out an agonized, bursting cry.
“Spotlights, Chan,” Gau said. “Only spotlights.”
It took a few moments before orenThen could respond. “Spotlights,” he said, finally. “But only for the moment, correct?”
“At my order, every ship in the fleet will refocus its beam,” Gau said. “Your colony will be destroyed, and every member race of the Conclave will have a hand in it. This is how it has to be done. Security for all, responsibility from all. And no race can say it did not agree to the cost.”
“I wish I’d killed you when I first saw you here,” orenThen said. “Us standing here talking about sunsets when you had this waiting for me. You and your damned Conclave.”
Gau spread his arms, opening himself. “Kill me, Chan. It won’t save this colony. It won’t stop the Conclave, either. Nothing you can do will stop the Conclave from taking this planet, or the next, or the next. The Conclave is four hundred peoples. Every race who fights against it fights alone. The Whaid. The Rraey. The Fran. The Humans. All of the others who have started colonies since the Agreement. If nothing else, it’s a matter of numbers. We have more. One race against one other race is one thing. One race against four hundred is quite another. All it will take is time.”
OrenThen turned away from Gau and toward his colony, bathed in light. “I’ll tell you something,” orenThen said to Gau. “You might find it ironic. When I was chosen to lead this colony, I warned the ataFuey that you would come for it. You and the entire Conclave. He told me that the Conclave would never form and that you were a fool for trying, and that I had been a fool for ever listening to you. There were too many races ever to agree to anything, much less a grand alliance. And that the enemies of the Conclave were working too hard to fail. He said the Humans would stop you if no one else did. He thought highly of their ability to set everyone against each other without getting involved themselves.”
“He wasn’t far wrong,” Gau said. “But the Humans overreached. They always do. The opposition they created to counter the Conclave fell apart. Most of those races are now more concerned about the Humans than they are about us. By the time the Conclave gets to the Humans, there may not be many of them left.”
“You could have gone after the Humans first,” orenThen said.
“In time,” Gau said.
“Let me put it another way,” orenThen said. “You didn’t have to come here first.”
“You were here,” Gau said. “You have a history with the Conclave. You have a history with me. Anywhere else and there would be no question that this would begin with destruction. Here you and I have a chance for something else. Something that will matter beyond this moment and this colony.”
“You’ve put a lot on me,” orenThen said. “And on my people.”
“I have,” Gau said. “I’m sorry, old friend. I couldn’t see any other way. I saw a chance to show people that the Conclave wants peace, and I had to take it. It’s a lot to ask of you. But I am asking you, Chan. Help me. Help me save your people, not destroy them. Help me build peace in our part of space. I beg this of you.”
“You beg me?” orenThen said, his voice rising. He advanced on Gau. “You have four hundred and twelve battleships pointing their weapons at my colony and you beg me to help you build peace? Fah. Your words mean nothing, old friend. You come here, peddling that friendship, and in return for it ask me to exchange my colony, my loyalty, my identity. Everything I have. At the end of a gun. To help you provide the illusion of peace. The illusion that what you do here is something other than simple, raw conquest. You dangle the lives of my colonists in front of me, and tell me to choose between making them traitors or killing them all. And then you suggest to me that you’re compassionate. You can go to hell, General.” OrenThen turned and stalked away, putting distance between himself and Gau.
“That’s your decision, then,” Gau said, some time later.
“No,” orenThen said, still facing away from the general. “It’s not a decision I can make on my own. I need time to talk to my people, to let them know what their choices are.”
“How much time do you need?” Gau said.
“The nights here are long,” orenThen said. “Give me this one.”
“It’s yours,” Gau said. OrenThen nodded and began to walk away.
“Chan,” Gau began, walking toward the Whaid. OrenThen stopped and held up one of his massive paws to silence the general. Then he turned and held out his paws to Gau, who took them.
“I remember meeting you, you know,” orenThen said. “I was there when the old ataFuey received the invitation to meet with you and every other race who would come to that damned cold rock of a moon you so grandly called neutral ground. I remember you standing at that podium, saying welcome in all the languages you could croak, and for the first time sharing your idea of the Conclave with us. And I remember turning to the ataFuey, and telling him that without a doubt, you were absolutely and totally madhouse insane.”
Gau laughed.
“And then afterward you met with us, as you met with every embassy there who would hear you,” orenThen said. “And I remember you trying to convince us that the Conclave was something we wanted to be a part of. I remember you winning me over.”
“Because I wasn’t truly madhouse insane,” Gau said.
“Oh, no, General. You were,” orenThen said. “Entirely and completely. But you were also right. And I remember thinking to myself, what if this mad general actually pulls it off? I tried to imagine it—our part of space, at peace. And I couldn’t. It was like a white wall of stone in front of me, keeping me from seeing it. And that’s when I knew I would fight for the Conclave. I couldn’t see the peace it would bring. I couldn’t even imagine it. All I knew was that I wanted it. And I knew that if anyone could bring it into being, it would be this mad general. I believed it.” OrenThen let go of the general’s hands. “It’s so long ago now,” he said.
“My old friend,” Gau said.
“Old friend,” orenThen agreed. “Old indeed. And now I must go. I’m glad to have seen you again, Tarsem. I truly am. These are not the circumstances I would have chosen, of course.”
“Of course,” Gau said.
“But isn’t that the way of things. Life surprises.” OrenThen turned again to go.
“How will I know when you’ve reached a decision?” Gau asked.
“You’ll know,” orenThen said, not looking back.
“How?” Gau asked.
“You’ll hear it,” orenThen said, and turned his head back to the general. “That much, I can promise.” Then he turned back and walked to his transport, and with his escort drove away.
Gau’s lieutenant approached him. “What did he mean when he said you’ll hear his answer, General?” he asked.
“They chant,” Gau said, and pointed toward the co
lony, still under spotlight. “Their highest art form is a ritualized chant. It’s how they celebrate, and mourn, and pray. Chan was letting me know that when he’s done talking with his colonists, they would chant their answer to me.”
“Are we going to hear it from here?” the lieutenant asked.
Gau smiled. “You wouldn’t be asking that if you’d ever heard a Whaidi chant, Lieutenant.”
Gau waited the long night, listening, his vigil occasionally interrupted by the lieutenant or one of the other soldiers offering him a hot drink to keep him alert. It wasn’t until the colony’s sun rose out of the eastern sky that Gau heard what he was listening for.
“What is that?” the lieutenant asked.
“Quiet,” Gau said, and waved his annoyance. The lieutenant backed off. “They’ve begun their chanting,” Gau said a moment later. “Right now they’re chanting a welcome to the morning.”
“What does it mean?” the lieutenant asked.
“It means they’re welcoming the morning,” Gau said. “It’s ritual, Lieutenant. They do it every day.”
The morning prayer rose and fell in volume and intensity, continuing on for what seemed to the general a maddeningly long time. And then it came to a ragged, hesitant ending; Gau, who had been pacing through the latter parts of the morning prayer, stopped stock-still.
From the colony came a new chant, in a new rhythm, growing progressively louder. Gau listened to it for several long moments and then slumped, as if suddenly tired.
The lieutenant was at his side almost instantly. Gau waved him off. “I’m fine,” he said. “I’m fine.”
“What are they chanting now, General?” the lieutenant asked.
“Their anthem,” Gau said. “Their national anthem.” He stood up. “They’re saying that they won’t leave. They’re saying they would rather die as Whaidi than live under the Conclave. Every man, woman and child in that colony.”
“They’re crazy,” the lieutenant said.
“They’re patriots, Lieutenant,” Gau said, turning to the officer. “And they’ve chosen what they believe in. Don’t be disrespectful of that choice.”
“Sorry, General,” the lieutenant said. “I just don’t understand the choice.”
“I do,” Gau said. “I just hoped it would be different. Bring me a communicator.” The lieutenant hustled off. Gau turned his attention to the colony, listening to its members chanting their defiance.
“You always were stubborn, old friend,” Gau said.
The lieutenant returned with a communicator. Gau took it, keyed in his encrypted code and opened it to a common channel. “This is General Tarsem Gau,” he said. “All ships recalibrate beam weapons and prepare to fire on my mark.” The spotlights, still visible in the morning light, disappeared as the ships’ weapons crews recalibrated their beams.
The chanting stopped.
Gau nearly dropped his communicator. He stood, mouth agape, staring at the colony. He walked slowly toward the edge of the bluff, whispering something softly. The lieutenant, standing nearby, strained to hear.
General Tarsem Gau was praying.
The moment held, suspended in the air. And then the colonists took up their anthem once more.
General Gau stood on the edge of the bluff overlooking a river, now silent, eyes closed. He listened to the anthem for what seemed like forever.
He raised his communicator.
“Fire,” he said.
NINE
Jane had gotten out of the medical bay and was waiting for me on the porch of our bungalow, eyes up at the stars.
“Looking for something?” I asked.
“Patterns,” Jane said. “All the time we’ve been here, no one’s made any constellations. I thought I’d try.”
“How’s it going?” I asked.
“Terrible,” she said, looking at me. “It took me forever to see the constellations on Huckleberry, and they were already there. Making up new ones is even more trouble. I just see stars.”
“Just focus on the bright ones,” I said.
“That’s a problem,” Jane said. “My eyes are better than yours now. Better than everyone else’s. They’re all bright. That’s probably why I never saw constellations until I came to Huckleberry. Too much information. You need human eyes to see constellations. Just another piece of my humanity taken away.” She looked up again.
“How are you feeling?” I asked, watching her.
“I’m fine,” Jane said. She raised up the hem of her shirt; the slash in her side was livid even in the dim light, but far less worrisome than it had been before. “Dr. Tsao patched it up, but it was healing even before she got to it. She wanted to take a blood sample to check for infection but I told her not to bother. It’s all SmartBlood by now, anyway. I didn’t tell her that.” She dropped her hem.
“No green skin, though,” I said.
“No,” Jane said. “No cat’s eyes, either. Or BrainPal. Which is not to say that I don’t have increased capabilities. They’re just not obvious, for which I’m grateful. Where have you been?”
“Watching the director’s cut of the Whaidi colony annihilation,” I said. Jane looked at me quizzically; I recounted what I’d just been watching.
“Do you believe it?” Jane asked me.
“Do I believe what?” I asked.
“That this General Gau was hoping not to destroy the colony,” Jane said.
“I don’t know,” I said. “The discussion was honest enough. And if he simply wanted to destroy the colony, he could have done it without having to go through the mime show of trying to get the colony to surrender.”
“Unless it was a terror tactic,” Jane said. “Break the colonists’ will, get them to surrender, destroy them anyway. Send the evidence to other races to demoralize them.”
“Sure,” I said. “That only makes sense if you’re planning to subjugate the race. But that doesn’t sound like how the Conclave is supposed to work. It sounds like it’s a union of races, not an empire.”
“I’d be careful of making assumptions based on one video,” Jane said.
“I know,” I said. “But it’s bothering me. The video the CU gave us shows the Conclave simply destroying the Whaidi colony. We’re supposed to see the Conclave as a threat. But the video I’ve just seen says to me it’s not that simple.”
“That’s why it was edited out,” Jane said.
“Because it’s ambiguous?” I asked.
“Because it’s confusing,” Jane said. “The Colonial Union sent us here with specific instructions and gave us the information to support those instructions, without the information that would cause us to doubt them.”
“You don’t see that as a problem,” I said.
“I see it as tactical,” Jane said.
“But we’ve been working on the premise that the Conclave is an immediate and genocidal threat,” I said. “This suggests it’s not.”
“You’re back to making assumptions without much information,” Jane said.
“You knew about the Conclave,” I said. “Is a genocidal Conclave consistent with what you know?”
“No,” Jane said. “But I’ve said before that what I know about the Conclave comes from Charles Boutin, who was actively planning treason against the Colonial Union. He’s not credible.”
“It still bothers me,” I said. “I don’t like it that all this information was kept from us.”
“The Colonial Union manages information,” Jane said. “It’s how it keeps control. I’ve told you this before. It shouldn’t be news now.”
“It makes me wonder what else we don’t know,” I said. “And why.”
“We can’t know,” Jane said. “We have the information the Colonial Union has provided us on the Conclave. We have what little I know. And we have this new portion of video. That’s all we have.”
I thought about it a minute. “No,” I said. “We have something else.”
“Can you two lie?” I asked Hickory. It and Dickory were standi
ng in front of me in our bungalow’s living room. I was sitting in my desk chair; Jane stood to my side. Zoë, whom we had woken up, was yawning on the couch.
“We have not yet lied to you,” Hickory said.
“But you can clearly evade, since that’s not what I asked you,” I said.
“We can lie,” Hickory said. “It is a benefit of consciousness.”
“I wouldn’t call it a benefit,” I said.
“It opens up a number of intriguing possibilities in communication,” Hickory said.
“I suppose that’s true,” I said. “None of which I’m interested in right now.” I turned to Zoë. “Sweetheart, I want you to order these two to answer all my questions truthfully, without any lies or evasions.”
“Why?” Zoë said. “What’s going on?”
“Please do it, Zoë,” I said. Zoë did as I asked.
“Thank you,” I said. “You can go back to bed now, sweetie.”
“I want to know what’s going on,” Zoë said.
“It’s not something you need to worry about,” I said.
“You order me to have these two tell you the truth, and you want me to believe it’s not something I need to worry about?” Zoë said.
“Zoë,” Jane said.
“Besides, if I leave there’s no guarantee they won’t lie to you,” Zoë said, moving quickly before Jane could finish. Zoë knew she could negotiate with me; Jane was much more of a hard-ass. “They’re emotionally equipped to lie to you, because they don’t care about disappointing you. But they don’t want to disappoint me.”
I turned back to Hickory. “Is this true?” I asked.
“We would lie to you if we felt it was necessary,” Hickory said. “We would not lie to Zoë.”
“There you go,” Zoë said.
“Breathe a word of this to anyone and you’re spending the next year in a horse stall,” I said.
“My lips are sealed,” Zoë said.
“No,” Jane said, and came over to Zoë. “I need you to understand that what you’re hearing here you absolutely cannot share with anyone else. Not Gretchen. Not any of your other friends. Not anyone. It’s not a game and it’s not a fun secret. This is dead serious business, Zoë. If you’re not ready to accept that, you need to leave this room right now. I’ll take my chances with Hickory and Dickory lying to us, but not you. So do you understand that when we tell you not to share this with anyone, that you cannot share it with anyone else? Yes or no.”