“The Solarans are not destroyed,” Thomas pressed.
She chopped her midlimbs across her body in negation. “They are, even if they do not know it. The Word of Both and The Solara have little in common.” Actually, their doctrinal differences were so subtle Thomas often found them difficult to grasp. “But they agree on one particular: Hell.”
“Hell is a cold, hazy place where moss grows thick on every surface.”
“Exactly,” she said. “We have remade our own world into Hell. It is too late to save any of us.”
“So that’s it?” Thomas demanded. “You just give up on your life, your future?”
“As have you.”
It was such an abrupt reversal of the conversation, Thomas thought for a moment he had mistranslated her words in his head.
“By coming to Phrentyr, have you not forever left behind everyone and everything you once knew?”
Thomas was startled. Relativity was not widely understood in this world. Most phren could not conceive of the fact that everyone he knew was already dead, even if he tried to explain. For a time, he had considered claiming a great holy war had killed his friends and family. That they would comprehend.
“I did not leave behind so much. I volunteered for this post after my wife’s death.”
Nearly the entire party had fallen silent, listening in curiosity. “On Phrentyr,” said Khorana, “you are in no danger of finding another mate.”
Already weary of the subject, Thomas decided to try to lighten the mood, thankful Fernandez had not stayed. “Well, they told me there were a lot of women marines on the orbital station here. Sadly, they didn’t tell me the marines were all genetically modified. I doubt I would survive getting too friendly with any of them.”
The phren around them roared with their hissing laughter. Direct discussions of sexual acts were forbidden, but phren greatly appreciated dirty jokes made through oblique references.
Khorana did not join the laughter. “I grieve for you, Envoy. You have experienced the pain of a single deep loss. But understand that we have known seven hundred million losses.”
“I realize, Priestess, that your loss is even greater than mine.” That was Thomas’ primary reason for coming to Phrentyr, a world of beings who had suffered as he had, who knew what it was to see a loved one brutally murdered. He was a fool to have believed these aliens could understand and comfort him in a way other human beings could not.
“Do not feel concern for us,” she said, raising her voice for all to hear. “Our losses are only the price of the terrible retribution the Two Gods will inflict. The last days are at hand for all Phrentyr. The promise of Both is that we will live to see the Solarans die in agony and rejoice in their suffering before They also call us away.” At the end of this declaration several phren chimed in, “Death to Solara!” A few stared pointedly at Hirokh.
This was why Thomas had not found the bond with Tokhin he sought. He had come here thinking of them as the victims of genocide. In truth, they were merely the losers of a genocidal war. Just as cheerfully would they have eradicated the Solarans had their side prevailed.
Still, they bore the standard of an ancient and rich cultural tradition, one that should be preserved if possible. “Priestess, does that mean you should hasten the death of your own people and all their beliefs and customs? What about your young people?” Thomas motioned to Priestess Khorana’s son, standing nearby. “Your own son, will you leave him nothing of your culture to treasure when you are gone?”
“You speak as if the passing of the Tokhin were by choice.”
“You have a choice!” Thomas shouted and instantly regretted it, as a fleck of spittle leapt from his mouth, an appalling sight to any phren who saw it.
The High Priestess spoke slowly and forcefully. “No. I can do nothing. I am not even a true High Priestess.”
Thomas was sure he had heard wrong. “What?”
“I cannot speak the Old Tongue. Even if our people had a temple left to them in which to pray to Both, I could not lead the invocation.”
“Then find someone who can.”
Khorana stared at him. “My mother was a true High Priestess. The position is not meant to be inherited. I stand in her place only because she and all her students died in the war. The Old Tongue is dead, for none survive who remember it.”
“Priestess, consider that perhaps it is the will of Both that I, an alien, am here to see your problem in a different light and to tell you that’s a load of khaat manure.”
This was rather a more forceful approach to the issue than Thomas had ever taken. Many of the gathering crowd muttered in annoyance, but the priestess did not react. He continued, “You have prayers in modern Phren, so speak them. The Two Gods cannot be offended to hear you praise Them the only way They have left you to do it.”
“And where shall we say these vulgar prayers? Our temples are all destroyed, and the site of the First Temple is but an empty field of moss.”
“Then go to that field and build a new temple.”
“Impossible without Sha’ad Tokh.” The crowd around them responded, “Sha’ad Tokh!”
“This is your reason for not rebuilding your temple—you’re missing the capstone?”
“It is no mere rock, Envoy. It is the birthstone of our people, given by the Two Gods to Khorin Khoron on the first day of the New Age.”
“A symbol.” Thomas tried to conceal his impatience. “Priestess, people die and buildings fall and relics get smashed. You cannot let that destroy your race. You must figure out how to rejuvenate your culture. Doubletown is a cemetery. I can pressure the Solarans to let you rebuild your temple, to release you from this compound. All I need is for you to lead your people out of here and start over.”
“Envoy, no doubt what you say would seem logical to another of your kind, but to us it is nonsense. Rebuild the temple without Sha’ad Tokh? You might as well ask the desert hawk to fly without wings.”
Thomas smiled. “It is possible to fly without wings.”
The priestess chopped her midlimbs. “You may have the technology to make a creature fly without wings, but it will not be a hawk. The Tokhin cannot be made whole without the First Temple, and there can be no First Temple without Sha’ad Tokh.”
Again the Tokhin surrounding them chanted, “Sha’ad Tokh!”
This was where it always ended, with Tokhin excuses for giving up. We cannot renew our culture, for too few of us remain. We cannot rebuild our temple, for lack of Sha’ad Tokh. Thomas had come to doubt the Tokhin race and their faith in the Two Gods would survive much longer, and worse, he no longer believed they deserved to. He hated himself for thinking that, but could not help it.
3.
After not speaking a word all evening in the Retreat, Hirokh addressed Thomas as soon as they were alone in the restroom. “It pains me, Envoy, to watch you waste your time with this refuse.” He held out the large cloak—Thomas tried not to think of it as a hoop skirt—which the two of them had designed many twelvedays before to allow Thomas to use the public holes in the floor that passed for toilets. The phren merely needed to slide forward on midlimbs and their personal cloaks covered all from view.
“Just take satisfaction, Hirokh, in how little progress I have made.” Don’t expect to see me try any longer, he thought.
“It is the will of the Great One. And yet . . .”
“Don’t tell me you’re developing sympathy for the Tokhin?”
“Do not be insulting, Envoy. But I acknowledge that they were once a formidable enemy. These docile survivors dishonor the memory of all my comrades who fell in battle.”
Thomas did not answer. He could not doubt that Hirokh would happily wipe out the thousand or so Tokhin still living, yet he still found Hirokh much the easier to respect.
He considered what H
irokh had said about the Tokhin, “once a formidable enemy.” How had they so utterly lost their will, their spirit? But then, who could understand that better than Thomas? Life knocks you down and you get back up for more, until the day it hits you harder than you can bear and that’s the day for giving up. Thomas had given up on his entire world and taken this damned job, and now he had even given up on that.
Another phren entered the facility. Stepping to the hole just past Thomas, he said in a singsong voice, “I did not realize an alien could be so compassionate. Does it really matter to you what happens to us?”
Thomas regarded him for a moment before placing him as Khora, the son of the priestess. “Maybe more than it does to your mother.”
This drew a quick reaction. He turned to Thomas with his midlimbs out stiff, but then stumbled forward. Thomas instinctively caught him, and felt something slip into his right hand as he did.
Hirokh instantly stepped in to separate them. While he shoved the son of the priestess away roughly, Thomas turned his back to them and quickly read the note in his hand: “Ten minutes. Outside back door. Don’t bring him.” It was scrawled on a thin piece of pressed grain coated in grease. Thomas shoved it into his pocket, knowing that within minutes it would be an unreadable lump of moss.
4.
Thomas couldn’t help feeling wary of the small alley where the three phren led him, but there was no time to scout a more suitable meeting place.
He had never tried to evade Hirokh before, but it had proved easier than expected. After waiting ten minutes, he told Hirokh he was ready to leave. As Hirokh held the car door open in front of the Retreat, Thomas declared he had forgotten his tin of spices and darted back inside. Then a quick dash through the hall, around a corner, out the back door, hoping Hirokh could not see where he went through the crowd. There had been no chance to tell Fernandez what he was up to, which was just as well—he did not want to get her into a tussle with Hirokh.
The son of the priestess and two other phren had waited outside the back door, and the four of them sprinted down the Doubletown streets to this alley.
They ducked behind a large stack of trash to hide from view. Standing with the rubbish pile to his right and the dark alleyway to his left, Thomas tried to ignore the putrid smell.
The other two phren, just as young as Khora if not as well fed, waved midlimbs nervously, but Khora gripped his in his forelimbs in a show of giddy confidence, like a cocky grin on a young human. Overconfidence could be dangerous, yet Thomas was pleased to see such energy from any Tokhin. He allowed himself some hope that the younger Tokhin had more spunk than their elders.
Khora launched into a rehearsed statement of his gratitude to the Envoy for joining them, but Thomas knew there was no time for niceties and interrupted. “Khora, do you believe your mother is wrong, that there is yet hope for your people?”
Khora answered haltingly, “Envoy, there is much you do not know. Just as there are Two Gods, there are two faces to the Tokhin people. My mother does not . . . well, she cannot speak freely in front of that Solaran giant.”
“He is not here now. Tell me.”
“I do not know all that my mother does. And I should not presume to speak for her.”
This was getting them nowhere. “Khora, you asked me to come here. Do you have something to say, or shall I go?” At that, Khora’s two companions stepped closer. Even in the dark alleyway, Thomas could see that one had a yellowing exoskeleton.
“The Tokhin are more than what you see, Envoy. With our strength and with Sha’ad Tokh—”
“It wasn’t destroyed in the war?” Thomas asked in surprise.
“No, Envoy, and when the day—”
“Where is it?”
“I do not know. I think my mother believes—”
“Enough!” interjected Khora’s jaundiced companion. “There are Two Gods, and They are Both bored to Their pouches from all this.”
Khora thrust out his midlimbs. “I decide what we—”
“You decide nothing,” said the third phren. “You agreed we are democratic.”
“So?” asked Khora.
“So,” said the yellow one, “we took a vote.”
Thomas thought he had lost his will to live after Kayleigh’s death, but staring at two phren short blades suddenly pointing at him, he realized otherwise.
“Stop!” shouted Khora. “We are not murderers. We are here to talk.”
“No. Wasn’t talk got us in this mess, won’t be talk gets us out,” said the yellow one. “We need to hit back. We need phren to go out with bombs in the breech.” Khora winced at the crude reference to phren pouches. “We need important people to turn up dead.” His midlimbs waved at Thomas.
“What would killing him accomplish, mossbrains? The humans are the only thing stopping Solara from killing us all, and you want to murder their ambassador?”
“They keep us alive like khaat in a pen. We kill him, the humans know it is not enough.”
“No, listen—”
“Seal it!” the third phren interjected. He straightened and leaned into Khora, an ineffective gesture, as he was an unusually short phren. “We have listened enough. You plan and plan and do nothing, and for twelveday after twelveday we sit with midlimbs tucked in our pouches. No more.”
When Khora began to protest again, the other two turned their knives in his direction. He stared at them both for a long moment before saying to Thomas, “I am very sorry. The moss will have you.”
This was a bit more spunk than Thomas had hoped. These phren were underfed, but Thomas, who had never had a moment’s self-defense training, was under no illusion he could disarm them. Still, he readied himself to move as they struck.
As the yellow one stabbed a forelimb forward, Thomas heard a roar from behind and the phren’s shell collapsed inward. The second knife-wielder stumbled backward and fell.
“Get down, Envoy!” The gruff voice of Hirokh sliced through the ringing in Thomas’ ears from the gunshot.
Thomas dove to the ground, pulling Khora with him. “Tomorrow!” he hissed at the young phren. “The back door again, and don’t bring any more of your moss-eaten friends. Now go!”
He stood up, trying to place himself between Khora and the source of the shots. He saw Hirokh climbing through the wall of garbage and slumped against him as if for support. Hirokh steadied him, then stared down the alley, but Khora had disappeared. “You would do well, Envoy, to think of me as your bodyguard, not as your jailer,” he said amiably.
The short phren still lay on the ground. Hirokh leaned over, yanked him up by a midlimb. Holding his gun in a forelimb, he pressed the muzzle into the side of the Tokhin’s head, which barely reached Hirokh’s massive chest.
“Where did the other go? Who is he?”
“I will tell you nothing, Enforcer.”
Hirokh turned his midlimbs up. “I believe you,” he said and pulled the trigger.
5.
Nowhere on the entire planet surface could Thomas find a moment’s privacy, either from Hirokh or the moss, except in his sealed apartment under the Hall of Ministers. The moment Hirokh left him that night he went to the kitchen to swallow his daily antibiotic, then headed straight for the shower stall.
The antiseptic spray killed the moss spores clinging to his body within seconds. Thomas stood under the scalding water for over an hour.
Still, as he dried, the prickling sensation returned. He began to scratch his skin. He scratched faster and harder until he felt moisture under his fingernails. Long streaks of blood appeared on his chest and arms.
He felt no pain, as if the skin he peeled away did not belong to him, but the color stung his eyes.
He turned off the lights and kept scratching.
6.
Nearly being murdered was a handy excuse to
spend some time in orbit at P-Station.
At the ramp to the shuttle, Thomas clasped Hirokh hand-to-forelimb and thanked him again for saving his life. Hirokh swirled his midlimbs in a phren gesture without human equivalent, essentially a denial that any favor was done. “I had to save you, or the Council would have believed I let you die on purpose. They know how I dislike you.”
Thomas chuckled and boarded the shuttle, thinking Hirokh would never forgive him if he learned what he had just done.
The shuttle lifted as if heading into orbit, but high in Phrentyr’s tortured stratosphere it turned back to deposit Thomas in Doubletown. Thomas did not imagine the Solarans would be fooled long, but perhaps long enough for him to meet Khora without anyone getting killed this time. Thomas was all too conscious of the irony that he was deceiving the phren who had just saved his life in order to collaborate with one of those who tried to kill him.
Thomas was pleasantly surprised to see Lieutenant Fernandez at the steering panel of the waiting native groundcar. Between the lack of her too-conspicuous body armor and the contorted position the phren car’s driver seat demanded, she could not have looked less comfortable.
“I thought you were off duty.”
“Right,” she said. “You call the closest thing to a covert op we’re ever going to get on this planet, and I’m going to miss it for another round with the stimbot.”
After confirming that Thomas had planted the nanotransmitters on Hirokh, Fernandez attached a device next to the car’s steering panel to alert them if Hirokh approached within two hundred meters. She then merged them into traffic and guided them toward the Tokhin Retreat.
“Whose shift was it supposed to be? Harding?” Thomas asked. “How’d you get him to step aside?”
“He wouldn’t argue. He knows I’m your favorite. He probably thinks I’m sleeping with you.”