The ceiling glowed with the simulated light of a red dwarf sun, which lay like blood on leaves and vines and slowly writhing flowers. A bank of Terrestrial room instruments—phone, 3V, computer, vocascribe, infotrieve, service cubicle, environmental control board—stood in one corner of the jungle with a harsh incongruity. The silence was as deep as the purple shadows. Unmoving, Cynbe waited.
The decompression chamber finished its cycle and Gunnar Heim stepped out. Thin dry atmosphere raked his throat. Even so, the fragrances overwhelmed him. He could not tell which of them—sweet, acrid, pungent, musky—came from which of the plants growing from wall to wall, reaching to the ceiling and arching down again in a rush of steel-blue leaves, exploding in banks of tawny, crimson, black, and violet blossoms. The reduced gravity seemed to give a lightness to his head as well as his frame. Feathery turf felt like rubber underfoot The place was tropically warm; he sensed the infrared baking his skin.
He stopped and peered about. Gradually his eyes adjusted to the ember illumination. They were slower to see details of shapes so foreign to Earth.
“Imbiac dystra?” he called uncertainly. “My lord?” His voice was muffled in that tenuous air.
Cynbe ru Taren, Intellect Master of the Garden of War, fleet admiral, and military specialist of the Grand Commission of Negotiators, trod out from beneath his trees. “Well are you come, sir,” he sang. “Understand you, then, the High Speech?”
Heim made the bowing Aleriona salute of a ranking individual to a different-but-equal. “No, my lord, I regret. Only a few phrases. It’s a difficult language for any of my race to learn.”
Cynbe’s beautiful voice ranged a musical scale never invented by men. “Wish you a seat, Captain Heim? I can dial for refreshment.”
“No, thank you,” the human said, because he didn’t care to lose whatever psychological advantage his height gave him, nor drink the wine of an enemy. Inwardly he was startled. Captain Heim? How much did Cynbe know?
There would have been ample time to make inquiries, in the couple of days since this audience was requested. But one couldn’t guess how interested an Aleriona overlord was in a mere individual. Very possibly Heim’s wish had been granted at Harold Twyman’s urging, and for no other reason. The senator was a strong believer in the value of discussion between opponents. Any discussion. We may go down, but at least we’ll go down talking.
“I trust your trip hither was a pleasant one?” Cynbe cantillated.
“Oh … all right, my lord, if, uh, one doesn’t mind traveling with sealed eyelids after being thoroughly searched.”
“Regrettable is this necessity to keep the whereabouts of our delegation secret,” Cynbe agreed. “But your fanatics—” The last word was a tone-and-a-half glissando carrying more scorn than Heim would have believed possible.
“Yes.” The man braced himself. “In your civilization, the populace is better … controlled.” I haven’t quite the nerve to say “domesticated” but I hope he gets my meaning.
Cynbe’s laughter ran like springtime rain. “You are a marksman, Captain.” He advanced with a movement that made cats look clumsy. “Would your desire be to walk my forest as we discuss? You are maychance not enrolled with the few humans who set ever a foot upon Alerion.”
“No, my lord, I’m sorry to say I haven’t had the pleasure. Yet”
Cynbe halted. For a moment, in the darkling light, they regarded each other. And Heim could only think how fair the Aleriona was.
The long-legged, slightly forward-leaning body, 150 centimeters tall, its chest as deep and waist as spare as a greyhound’s, the counterbalancing tail never quite at rest, he admired in abstraction. How the sleek silvery fur sparkled with tiny points of light; how surely the three long toes of either digitigrade foot took possession of the ground; how graciously the arms gestured; how proudly the slim neck lifted. The humans were rare who could have dressed like Cynbe, in a one-piece garment of metallic mesh, trimmed at throat and wrists and ankles with polished copper. It revealed too much.
The head, though, was disturbing. For the fur ended at the throat, and Cynbe’s face—marble-hued, eyes enormous below arching brows, nose small, lips vividly red, wide cheekbones and narrow chin—could almost have been a woman’s. Not quite: there were differences of detail, and the perfection was inhuman. Down past the pointed ears, along the back and halfway to the end of the tail, rushed a mane of hair, thick, silken fine, the color of honey and gold. A man who looked overly long at that face risked forgetting the body.
And the brain, Heim reminded himself.
A blink of nictitating membrane dimmed briefly the emerald of Cynbe’s long-lashed feline eyes. Then he smiled, continued his advance, laid a hand on Heim’s arm. Three double-jointed fingers and a thumb closed in a gentle grip. “Come,” the Aleriona invited.
Heim went along, into the murk under the trees. “My lord,” he said in a harshened tone, “I don’t want to waste your time. Let’s talk business.”
“Be our doings as you choose, Captain.” Cynbe’s free hand stroked across a phosphorescent branch.
“I’m here on behalf of the New Europeans.”
“For the mourned dead? We have repatriated the living, and indemnified they shall be.”
“I mean those left alive on the planet. Which is nearly all of them.”
“Ah-h-h-h,” Cynbe breathed.
“Senator Twyman must have warned you I’d bring the subject up.”
“Truth. Yet assured he the allegation is unbelieved.”
“Most of his side don’t dare believe it Those who do, don’t dare admit it.”
“Such accusations could imperil indeed the peace negotiations.” Heim wasn’t sure how much sardonicism lay in the remark. He stumbled on something unseen, cursed, and was glad to emerge from the bosket, onto a little patch of lawn starred with flowers. Ahead rose the inner wall, where some hundred books were shelved, not only the tall narrow folios of Alerion but a good many ancient-looking Terrestrial ones. Heim couldn’t make out the titles. Nor could he see far past the archway into the next room of the suite; but somewhere a fountain was plashing.
He stopped, faced the other squarely, and said: “I have proof that New Europe was not scrubbed clean of men—in fact, they retreated into the mountains and are continuing resistance to your occupation force. The evidence is in a safe place”—Goodness, aren’t we melodramatic?—“and I was planning to publicize it. Which would, as you say, be awkward for your conference.”
He was rather desperately hoping that the Aleriona didn’t know the facts of life on Earth well enough to understand how forlorn his threat was. Cynbe gave him no clue. There was only an imperturbable upward quirk of mouth, and: “Seeming is that you have decided upon another course, Captain.”
“That depends on you,” Heim answered. “If you’ll repatriate those people also, I’ll give you the evidence and say no more.”
Cynbe turned to play with a vine. It curled about his hand and reached its blossoms toward his face. “Captain,” he sang presently, “you are no fool. Let us assume your belief is truth. We shall speak of a folk in wrath under the mountain peaks. How shall they be made come to our ships?”
“They’re fighting because they expect help. If representatives of the French government told them to return here, they would. The parley can be arranged by radio.”
“But the entity France, now, would it so cooperate?”
“It’d have no choice. You know even better than I, a majority of the Federation doesn’t want to fight over New Europe. About the only thing that could provoke such a war is the plight of the settlers. Let them come back unharmed and … and you’ll have your damned conquest.”
“Conceivable that is.” Light rippled red down Cynbe’s locks when he nodded. His gaze remained with the blooms. “But afterward?” he crooned. “Afterward?”
“I know,” Heim said. “The New Europeans would be living proof you lied—not only about them, but about the entire battle. Proof that things didn’t happen because someone got trigger happy, but because you planned your attack.” He swallowed a nasty taste. “Well, read Terrestrial history, my lord. You’ll find we humans don’t take these matters as seriously as we might. Lies are considered a normal part of diplomacy, and a few ships lost, a few men killed, are all in the day’s work. If anything, this concession of yours will strengthen the peace party. ‘Look,’ they’ll say, ‘Alerion isn’t so bad, you can do business with Alerion, our policies saved those lives and avoided an expensive war.’ Unquote.”
Now the muliebrile face did turn about, and for a while the eyes lay luminous upon Heim. He felt his pulse grow thick. The sound of the fountain seemed to dwindle and the hot red dusk to close in.
“Captain,” Cynbe sang, almost too low to hear, “The Eith is an ancient sun. The Aleriona have been civilized for beyond a million of your years. We sought not far-flung empire, that would crack an order old and stable; but our Wanderers ranged and our Intellects pondered. Maychance we are wiser in the manifold ways of destiny than some heedless newcomer. Maychance we have read your own inwardness more deeply than have you yourselves.”
“ ‘Afterward’ did I say. The word carries another freight when echoed through a million of years. My regard was to no gain for a decade, a generation, a century. I speak beyond.
“Between these walls, let truth be what you have claimed. Then let truth also be that Alerion cannot hithersend five hundred thousand of individuals to leaven their race with anger.
“Had they yielded, the case were otherwise. We would have told Earth this battle was one more incident than tolerable and now we must have our own sphere where no aliens fare. But any of your colonists enwished to stay might do so, did they become subject to Alerion. We would offer inspection, that Earth might be sure they were not oppressed. For such little enclaves are significanceless; and Alerion has ways to integrate them into civilization; ways slow, as you look upon time, ways subtle, ways quite, quite certain.
“The colonists yielded not, I say between these walls. Even could we capture them alive, in so much wilderness—and we cannot—even then could they not become subject to Alerion. Not as prisoners, forever dangerous, forever an incitement that Earth deliver them. Yet if the entity France commanded them home: in their nerves, that were betrayal of folk who had not surrendered, and they must strive for a Federation government of males more brave. I look in the future and I see how they shame the others of you—yes, yes, Captain, such intangibles make your history, you are that kind of animal. Truth, there would not be war to gain back Europe Neuve. Those bones grow dry before leaders as I speak of come to power. But when the next debatable issue arises—ah-h-h.”
So there is to be a next issue, Heim thought. Not that he’s told me anything I hadn’t already guessed. I wonder, though, when the second crisis is scheduled. Maybe not in my lifetime. But surely in Lisa’s.
His voice came out flat and remote, as if someone else spoke: “Then you’re not going to admit the colonists are alive. What will you do? Hunt them down piecemeal?”
“I command space fleets, Captain, not groundlings.” Astonishingly, Cynbe’s lashes fluttered and he looked down at his hands. The fingers twined together. “I have said more than needful, to you alone. But then, I am not Old Aleriona. My type was bred after the ships began their comings from Earth. And … I was at Achernar.” He raised his eyes. “Star Fox captain, as Earth’s men do, will you clasp my hand farewell?”
“No,” said Heim. He turned on his heel and walked toward the compression chamber.