What about the breathmicrobes? Could he consider that the first shot from their side?
To know your enemy was the oldest rule of warfare. Realgar would have to learn fast, before they cooked up something worse than purple plague.
THROUGHOUT THE WITNESSING, Nisi had helped Usha tend those stricken by the air-poison. Back and forth she went through the fungus-swirled hallways, carrying water and blankets and medicines until she dropped from exhaustion. Most of the victims had recovered now, although a few remained with Usha ⦠. Nisi pulled her thoughts back from that. It was better to keep busy, to exhaust every moment, than to thinkâespecially to think of Realgar, who had said, They are peaceful; I'll go easy on them. Realgar had betrayed her far worse than she betrayed him.
When Lystra came back and the witness was over, Nisi's temper broke. “What do you
mean
, you all left? Can't you see they're just desperate? Now is the time to push on. What's the matter with you?”
Lystra's eyes flashed as they used to so often. She grasped Nisi's arm until pain streaked through. “And what if it's the truth? What else could make them share poison? You tell us, Deceiver.”
“They are death-hasteners. âDeath pays their wage.' They won't share respect with you, until you do likewise.”
Lystra's stare bored into her. Then at last she dropped Nisi's arm, and her fingers left pale marks. “That will be at the end of time. And the end of Sharers.”
Mithril said, “I don't believe it. Shora would never let such a thingâ”
“What's true is true,” rasped Yinevra. “What are
we
, if not Shora Herself? Who will act for us? Come, Lystra, you still have starworms to feed beneath the raft. I'll help you as best I can from the surface.”
Mithril's little chin lifted as she watched Yinevra leave. “Death itself won't stop Yinevra. But I was there too, today, despite my young girl at home, and what's to become of her, poor thing? I tell you, Nisi, some things are better never to have known.”
Too late for that, thought Nisi. It was too late for innocence. The Primes themselves had not lasted. Ten millennia you had for peace; how many peoples can say that? For your granddaughters, peace will be only a legend.
Â
In the cool water, branch shadows wove fleeting patterns upon the hide of the young starworm. Lystra admired the sinuous trunk that stretched several swimming-lengths ahead of her, though barely a third as long as the maturer specimens of Raia-el. The mouth-stalks of the starworm spread in a perfect star around its lip, none broken and regrown as on older starworms. As Lystra swam to the lip, two swimmers darted from an airbell, carrying rakes to clean the mouth filters of the beast. Cousins of Mithril, the two were just learning the care of the starworm. They approached its mouth from the side, careful to avoid the ingoing stream, which was listless in any case from lack of feeding. And if Lystra and Yinevra had not returned early, the starworm might have gone hungry a few hours more.
The young starworm had long streamers of filters within its mouth, because it was not yet large enough to digest squid or large fish, only plankton and fingerlings. As Mithril's cousins raked debris from the filters, Lystra swam up to the surface to get the net full of fingerlings that could be fed into that star-rimmed mouth, a handful at a time.
Yinevra awaited her in the boat. “I don't know, Lystra. This young one isn't growing fast enough. They all need more feeding at Leni-el, and more frequent raking.”
“Well, I do the best I canâ”
“Of course you do, and almost single-handed. It's just bad luck that the seaswallower got nearly all the Kiri-el starworm crew.”
Lystra looked away. In the net that hung down from the boat, the fingerlings were packed tight but still were fresh pink and wriggled a
bit. This would do the young starworm good, but there were a dozen more starworms to be fed on Leni-el. “You think this raft won't make it.”
“Already Leni-el drifts too far behind the system. As it is, I take too much time away from Raia-el.”
Was fighting the Valan madness worth losing another raft? Lystra did not ask.
“Lystra, what do you think of the Deceiver's notions?”
Lystra shrugged. She stretched her arm over the side and drew obscure signs in the ripples. “I still can't figure Nisi. She likes it here, and yet hates it here.” Lystra hesitated. “She's still a Valan.” Like Spinelâand Spinel had gone back to Valedon.
“What if she's right?” Yinevra asked. “If death is all that Valans understand, perhaps the soldiers wish us to help them die.”
Lystra sat very still, her hand just trailing in the water. “What do you mean?”
“Think how tortured their minds must be. Death might be the kindest fate.” She coughed suddenly several times, and her chest heaved. “Ah, I'll beat this poison yet. Listen: Suppose we set a trap, and warn them, and they still walk into it. Who's to judge, Lystra?”
Â
The next morning on Raia-el, Merwen was washing blankets and sleeping mats in a branch channel, a large load for the many guests. A commotion of shouting started from the silkhouse. Merwen looked up to see a helicopter standing with Sharers crowding around it. She dropped her wash on the branch and hurried back to see.
Wellen broke away and skipped out to her. “They're back, Mothersisterâall our lost sisters!”
Others were talking excitedly, a few weeping quietly. Several tight-lipped soldiers huddled at their helicopter, with six Sharers, pale and dazed, six of the eight who had been missing. The Sharers blinked confusedly, and one flickered white and lavender, uncertain whether or not to stay in trance.
Realgar stepped forward away from the others. Sunlight traced arcs on his helmet, and his boots ground into the weeds. “Greetings, Protector,” he began. “As you see, we are prepared to release all captives currently held, as well as the remains of those two who died by their own hands.”
So another had fallen. The pain was sharp but brief; Merwen knew she had to concentrate. Something was not finished.
Realgar continued, “Our condition is that you and your followers will cease all resistance and cooperate fully with the Guard from now on.”
Merwen eyed him bleakly. “What can I share with you that I have not?”
“You must acknowledge the authority of Valedon.”
Authority: responsibility for oneself and others. What authority could Merwen ascribe to these sad children? Even Siderite was no selfnamer.
Then she caught sight of the returned sisters, still held fast by the other soldiers. They were not yet out of danger. She must not jeopardize their safety with a careless word.
She forced herself to face Realgar again, to look into the blank horror of a soul dead in life. “I respect your authority,” Merwen said, “when you show it.”
Realgar appeared to expect something more.
“When you behave as adults,” she explained. She knew as she spoke that she skirted the edge, but some things have to be said.
“It is not your place to judge our behavior. You will obey us or pay the price: more pain, more deaths.”
To obey meant to share will. How could she share this Valan's sickened will? “What do you want of me, specifically?”
“Keep your sisters away from the garrison.”
“I will communicate your wish,” said Merwen. “I assure you, no Sharer within this system desires to go near the garrison.”
“Stop âlifeshaping' your breathmicrobes to harass my troops.”
“That is a bad thing,” Merwen agreed. She had been disappointed to hear that other rafts had chosen such a response. “Again, I will share your wish with others.”
“You must go further, Protector. You must make your sisters obey us in all things.”
Her toes squirmed uncomfortably and she avoided looking at them. “Am I Shora, to share infinite will? I can't even share the will of Weia and Wellen all the time, let alone that of all Sharers.”
“But you can convince them.”
Around her, sisters watched, hope and dread straining their faces.
Uneasily Merwen considered her own gift of wordweaving; like all power, it contained its own peril. “I can share what I believe, nothing more.”
The soldier leaned back a step, his head tilted to one side. “Do you always speak the truth, under every circumstance?”
“If what I believe is true.”
“What is it that Sharers fear more than anything else?”
This shift was a welcome change from his impossible demands. Realgar wanted to trust her, she saw, despite enormous pressure against it. “I think we fear ourselves, most of all.”
Realgar seemed disappointed, but it was hard to tell; his head might have been carved of raftwood.
“That may change,” Realgar said. “Your sisters will soon tell you what you can fear from us.”
Abruptly the lost ones were free, and the soldiers were climbing into their helicopter. The big blades whooshed round overhead.
Greetings were shared again, more subdued than before. On the raft lay the two wrapped shapes of those who had ended their own existence. Their bodies would be sung for, then hung with coral death-weights and sunken to their final dwelling place. Their spirits had already flown through the Last Door, perhaps to return in daughters not yet conceived.
Someone must share this lesson ⦠but that will be painful
. Those had been the parting words of Malachite the Dead. How much Valan pain will we share, Merwen wondered, and how much of us will be left?
GENERAL REALGAR REPORTED the incident closed. But he was far from satisfied by his exchange with “Protector” Merwen; essentially, nothing had changed. Elsewhere around the globe, several
bases still faced native “invasions” in various stages of resolution. Rumors of the purple-skin problem, and even “catfish transformation,” of all things, had damaged troop morale. And in some regions every ship and helicopter was grounded by weeds stuck in the enginesâoil-eating weeds.
That Iridian major general was incapable of any initiative, and it would only cause trouble at the Palace to try to replace him. So Realgar set up permanently at Planetary Headquarters. His children back on Satellite Amber complained that he never saw them any more.
“We've cleaned out the clickflies,” Jade told him at last.
“Well that's a relief. No more global uprisings over a couple of lost natives.”
“Yes, sir.”
Realgar leaned back from his desk and clasped his hands behind his head. “We have to get a handle on these natives. They must have a weakness.”
“It's pathological,” Jade said. “They just don't know what fear is.”
“They have a word for it.”
“They think they do, but it's on a different scale from ordinary fear.” Wrinkles puckered between her eyes. “With the mindprobe, only one ill-defined concept brought a fear response anywhere near normal levels. Something hard yet empty, with a cold light.”
Realgar had no patience for riddles. “Go get some more prisoners and find out what makes them tick.”
“Yes, sir. By the way, have you kept up with Siderite's reports?”
The desk screen lit up with a page of fine print, of which one paragraph was highlighted. The general read it, then barked at his monitor, “Get Siderite in here,
now.”
Siderite was dragged into the office, his lab apron askew, a pair of surgical gloves dangling from his pocket. “What theâ” He swallowed. “You can't just hustle me out when I'm in the midst ofâ”
“Did you actually tell the catfish how to beat our riot-control gas?”
Siderite blinked and shifted his feet. “Usha would have figured it out, sooner or later. Scientific exchange.”
“Treason. I could execute you on the spot.”
“Execute me?” Siderite laughed unsteadily. “It's not even wartime.”
Amazed, Realgar stared at him. “Just what do you think this is? An Iridian parade exercise? Doctor, you're in big trouble.”
Siderite swallowed again and blinked several times. “I thought thatâI thought you would be pleased. Sir.” His voice wavered. “In one day, I learned more about âlifeshaping' than I expected to in a year.”
“Indeed. Well, you'd better sit down and tell me about it.”
A chair rose from the floor, and Siderite sank into it. “I didn't tell Usha how to neutralize the gas. I just gave her a tip on its molecular structure. Then she modeled an antagonist, a sort of synthetic antibody, based on calculation by those remarkable insects. And finally weâthat is, the lifeshapersâcloned an enzyme secretor to produce it I followed the whole procedure. Now I can tell you just which of the shrubbery in those tunnels is significant and what's going on.”
“Then you could train an inspection team to actually inspect, for a change: to hunt out those enzyme secretors and ⦔ And destroy, if necessary.
“In theory, yes. Still speculative. Of course, there are hosts of other sorts of lifeshaping that I've barely got a glimpse of yet. For instanceâ”
“Very well. I'll suspend your execution. But from now on, doctor, you will take six guards with you, two of whom will not let you out of sight.”
“But General!” Siderite half rose, and a glove slipped from his pocket, a display of untidiness that intensely irritated Realgar.
“Would you prefer a selective mindblock?”
He looked at Jade, and his face blanched. He stood up, leaning his arms on the chair. “I've had enough. I can't work under such conditions. I'll return to the Palace today.”
“Sit down, doctor, sit down.” Realgar's tone became smoothly persuasive, full of the intensity of his will. “You remain under my authority, and I do not choose to release you. Besides, you don't want to leaveâbecause this planet is the chance of a lifetime.”
Slowly Siderite sat down. His look was frankly hostile, but he said nothing more.
Realgar signaled to the guard. “Good luck with your experiments, doctor.” The guard led him away.
Jade said, “Let me have him. I'll fix him for good.”
The general shook his head slightly. “If he cracks, the whole operation is doomed.”
“He won't crack; he won't even know it happened. In any case,
there must be other plant breeders on Valedon.” She stepped closer. “Mark my words: if I don't have him,
they
will.”
That touched a nerve, because of Berenice. But before he could answer, the monitor interrupted. “Trans-space relay from Palace Iridium, office of the High Protector. An audience is called today at nineteen hundred ⦠.”
Â
The general stood at attention while the lightshape of the High Protector materialized. Talion sat up straight behind his immense desk, his gray face relaxed except for tiny alert ripples around his eyes. “It's been quite some time, Ral. How's life on the blue moon? You expect to wrap it up soon, get back down to staff reorganization?”
Acutely embarrassed, Realgar regretted his initial promise, that he would leave Operation Amethyst to Sabas and get himself back to the Palace within a week. It had been four weeks since then. He saw that he faced an uphill fight with Talion.
Realgar cleared his throat. “The first stage is indeed over, my lord.”
“Oh? What comes next?”
“My lord, I expected to find here a planet well charted and managed by traders, with native citizens who were peaceful and reasonably cooperative. Instead it's a world of unknown diseases, unpredictable weather, weeds that strangle my equipment, and natives who are insane enough to throw their bodies in front of my troops. It's not a pretty sight, and I'd keep the Palace Press away, if I were you. I need troops and equipment to do this job right.”
“An Iridian division and a satellite fleet are not enough?”
“A riot-control unit is what I need. Also prison facilities, to hold a hundred per base. Alsoâ”
“Hold on, there. You've barely a hundred men at each base.”
“I need three more divisions, to put a base in every raft system. Only then can we hope to control the natives on a daily basis. A one-to-ten ratio: that's standard, for occupation strength.”
“But they're just naked women, Ral, not Azurite guerrillas.”
“They were crawling at our fence before we gassed themâand they came back for more. They're incredibly dispersed, all around the planet, but if we take one prisoner the whole population is up in arms. And two prisoners killed themselves. Natives willing to die for their own turf are a damned nuisance, whether armed or not.”
Talion studied his hands. The pause went beyond interplanetary
time-lag. “Troops cost ten times as much to maintain on the Ocean Moon. The expenditure you propose would approach that of the Pyrrholite campaign. And you say I can't even tell the public what's going on?”
Realgar contained his fury. Expense, public relationsâthat was none of his concern. It had hardly been his choice to take on this distasteful police job. “How badly do you want to control this planet? Is the âpurple menace' real or not? Siderite will take years to determine anything.”
“Oh, not that long.” Casually Talion leaned back and stretched his legs. “Months, perhaps.” Behind his offhand manner, Talion was watching the general closely. “In fact, Siderite thinks I may have been ⦠premature to send you at all. He finds the natives perfectly cooperative, as far as science is concerned.”
The nerve of that lab-aproned trollhead. How had such notions slipped through security? Of course, Talion would have his own spies. And if Siderite had the High Protector's confidence, there was no way to touch him. For a moment Realgar was tempted to throw in the towel, leave this Torr-forsaken planet behind him, forget the whole mess, and get back to real soldiering somewhere.
But the moment passed.
Realgar permitted himself a disparaging smile. “Siderite takes six armed guards with him on every visit.”
“I see. And that keeps his situation in hand.”
“For now.”
Talion swiveled in his chair. “Well. Short of outright war, I cannot accept your proposal. As you are aware, several Councilors have already called for me to wipe out the natives completely. They know of course that I can't do that. But the point is, Ral, a war effort does at least raise public support, whereas a covert operation is nothing but a troll on my back.”
At last, thought Realgar, they might be getting somewhere. “My lord, a swift exercise of force would be less costly than a drawn-out occupation, and perhaps more humane in the long run.”
“One decisive battle?”
“It would certainly speed things up if I could call those natives soldiers.”
“To declare war, I need provocation,” Talion said. “Usually that's no problemâthere's always a terrorist incident, a bomb in a post office
or whatever. Do you propose to plant something? Malachite is no fool.”
Realgar doubted that Malachite would care, as long as his campaign succeeded. “There is the mental deathblock that all Sharers appear to have. This is a blatant and serious infringement of Patriarchal Law.”
“True. Nobody but trained assassins and subversives need deathblocks. What bizarre people those natives are.” Talion shook his head. “If they are people. I'm still not convinced. But Malachite is. So you see, Ral, I have to be wary of mass executions of unarmed womenâthey can't even conceal a weapon, for Torr's sake. It was different in Azuroth, where the guerrilla mamas cooked up explosives in their cottages. I have enemies, you know, ambitious lords who will seize any pretext to accuse me before the Patriarch.”
Now Realgar had to commit himself. “Sharers are in fact like Azurite women. They do conceal weapons, biological ones such as the breathmicrobes. They're only biding their time, to gather strength for reprisal.”
“Are you sure of that?”
“Consider it yourself, my lord. A defenseless people could never show the fearlessness that Sharers do. They must have something in reserve, and I want my force to be ready to face it when it comes.”
For a long while Talion's light-image peered at a point beyond Realgar's shoulder. The image flickered slightly from static in transmission. Realgar gazed back so intently that his eyes began to ache.
Very slightly, Talion shrugged. “Suppose I declare war and send two more divisions.”
“Well enough, my lord.” Two divisionsâright away! This was just what he needed. “The Sardish First and Second?”
“The Dolomite Fifth and Sixth. They're itching for another campaign.”
“Dolomites, my lord?” Realgar picked his words with care. “They are excellent fighting men, although some do not believe in spaceships.”
“They learn soon enough, and they do as they're told. Besides, they mobilize fast.”
Never mind; at least the Protector saw the truth now and was willing to back him up. Whatever tricks those catfish came up with next, they would get a good thrashing.