“Something here doesn’t make sense.” Tourmast gripped his weapon, waiting for the sensors in his hood and visor to interpret what he couldn’t see with his own eyes.
“Everything makes sense,” Ranji assured him quietly.
“There they are!” A startled soldier shouted as she started to raise her rifle. Ranji rushed out in front of her, raising his voice.
“No shooting, I said!” In the stunned faces of those who gaped at him there was much confusion and in several cases, the first inklings of painful suspicion. Saguio could be counted among the latter.
By the time anyone thought of wresting command it was too late; they were completely surrounded by armed Massood. Engulfed in an unprecedented and inexplicable calm, intruders and defenders regarded one another nervously.
“Stranger and stranger.” Tourmast regarded his friend and superior closely. “Why haven’t they fired on us?”
Feeling more vulnerable than he ever had, and with good reason, Ranji addressed his troops. “Turn over your weapons.” He glanced in Tourmast’s direction. “They haven’t fired because I’ve informed them that we’re surrendering.”
“We’re doing what?” Weenn blurted.
“Surrendering.” His eyes roved over the squad, trying to seek out the one unsteady weapon that could reduce his plans to chaos. “This is an order. You are to comply … now. If the thought troubles any of you note that we’re thoroughly outnumbered.”
Someone mumbled loudly. “Traitor!”
Flinching, Ranji tried but failed to identify the speaker. “I’m no traitor, as you’ll see. I know exactly what I’m doing and everything will be explained to you so that you understand.”
“What’s there to understand?” A resigned Tourmast deactivated his rifle and slowly placed it on the floor. “It looks pretty straightforward to me.” His tone left no illusions about what he was feeling.
Ranji walked over to him. “I know what you’re thinking, Tourm, but you’re operating under a significant number of mistaken assumptions.”
Tourmast didn’t meet his gaze. “Is that so? What sort of ‘mistaken assumptions’? That you’re someone any of us should continue to pay attention to, for example?” Around them disgruntled, angry Cossuutians were laying down their arms under watchful Massood eyes.
Ranji held his temper. “For starters, how about the fact that you’re not Ashregan, but Human.”
Tourmast’s expression twisted unpleasantly. “My first thought was that you’re a traitor and a coward, but I see now that’s not fair. You’re only crazy.”
“It would shock you to know how many times I wished it were that simple.” He backed up and raised his voice. “All of you, listen to me! We’re not Ashregan who’ve been modified to look and fight like Humans. We’re Humans who’ve been raised to believe that we’re Ashregan. I’m sure that at one time or another you’ve all noticed and remarked on the similarities, from our reaction times and muscular density to our physical stature and enthusiasm for combat.”
“What nonsense is this?” The brief speech had done nothing to convince Tourmast of his friend’s thesis. Or his sanity. “It’s all been explained to us from childhood. Such characteristics are the gifts of the Teachers, given to us so that we may better defend the Purpose.”
“Rather than given us gifts they’ve stolen our birthright,” Ranji shot back. “We are Human. No Ashregan can be ‘modified’ to do what we’ve done. All our lives are lies. Yours, mine, my brother’s.” Utterly baffled, Saguio gaped at his mad sibling. “All of us.
“Once we were all wholly Human children, or at least Human embryos. We were abducted, stolen from our parents, and without consent surgically and genetically altered solely to serve the Amplitur’s needs. They placed us with Ashregan families, gave us Ashregan histories, had us raised to believe we were Ashregan. They’ve trained us to fight as Ashregan warriors, and when they’re satisfied with our performances, we’ll be withdrawn from combat.” He paused for emphasis. “For breeding. So that we’ll pass on the traits they’ve inserted in us to our unknowing offspring.”
“You forget one thing,” said a soldier as she reluctantly divested herself of her weapons. “I myself have felt the Teachers in my mind. Most of us have. If we were Human something in us would resist such Teacher contact. This is a fact that is widely known.”
“True,” Ranji replied, “but what’s not widely known is that the Amplitur have inserted into each of our brains a special neural nexus of their own design.” He tapped his forehead. “Here. Through means no one as yet properly understands it negates the mechanism in the Human nervous system which responds defensively to attempted Amplitur probing. It renders us susceptible to their mental ‘suggestions.’” The Massood soldiers, he noticed, were paying as much attention to him as his fellow Cossuutians.
“Why should we believe you?” Without really understanding why, Weenn found himself wavering. “Why should we believe anything you say?”
“Because I’ve seen the nexus inside my own skull.” He swallowed. “Many of you have heard the story of my miraculous survival on Eirrosad. It’s all falsehood. I did not spend months wandering alone in the jungle. Instead, I was captured and taken to a world called Omaphil, where Hivistahm surgeons severed the connections between the Amplitur nexus and the rest of my brain. As a freed, restored Human on Eirrosad I saw how Amplitur probes were used to manipulate the rest of you. I saw because self-determination had been restored to me, if not the biological defenses common to all natural-born Human beings.
“It nauseated me, and it made me angry. I determined to bring the truth to as many of my fellow abductees as possible. Until we were sent here I had no idea how to do that because I knew that as soon as I started trying to explain you’d think me insane and have me turned over to the psychologists. They, in turn, would call in the Amplitur. And that would likely be the end of me as a freethinking, independent-minded individual.
“I understand what you’re going through right now, what you’re thinking. I understand because I fought the idea as hard as you’re fighting it this minute.”
“They did something to you, all right,” Weenn murmured sadly. “Affected your mind somehow. Messed up your thoughts.”
Ranji was nodding grimly. “I know words alone won’t be enough to convince you, because they weren’t enough to convince me. You’re going to have to see the scanner images and the rest of the proof for yourselves.”
Under the watchful gray cat eyes of a group of wary and very puzzled Massood, the disarmed Cossuutians were led from the switching station. Outside, the rain had eased. A cluster of Hivistahm and Massood hovered at the edge of the gully where Ranji’s people had abandoned their vehicles.
“Images can be faked,” someone in the group muttered.
Ranji was ready for every objection because not long ago he’d voiced them himself. “True, but close-quarter surgery cannot. I don’t expect any of you to believe or understand until one of you undergoes the same operation I did while the rest look on. You can’t deny the evidence inside your own heads.”
Tourmast strode disconsolate but thoughtful across the damp walkway. “So someone has to volunteer themselves for the operating table. The enemy’s operating table.”
“You’re going to have to stop thinking of Humans as the enemy. The enemy is us, we are them. I know it’s going to take a tremendous readjustment on everyone’s part.”
“Our Unifer,” Weenn muttered. “Master of understatement.”
“I know how hard this is.” Ranji implored his friends. “You’re going to have to throw out everything you think you know, think you feel. But it can be done. It’ll be easier for you than it was for me because you have me to help you. I had only Hivistahm and Humans.”
They entered a large angular building fronted with sheets of bronzed translucence that glittered in the walkway light-strips.
“This operation,” Tourmast persisted. “Is it risky?”
“So I was tol
d. I won’t lie to you. Dangerous or not, everyone will have to undergo it sooner or later.”
“What about this?” A female soldier had removed her now unnecessary hood and visor. She ran gloved fingers along her cranial ridge.
“More Amplitur handiwork,” Ranji told her. “Along with the diameter of our eye sockets, the length of our fingers, and the other physical differences. Under the right instruments the proof is clearly visible, and it can all be corrected.” He touched the calcareous mass above his recessed right ear. “This is a prosthesis. I’ve already seen myself as a Human. Great revelations sometimes spring from small sources.”
“No Hivistahm or Human’s operating on me,” someone in the middle of the column muttered. Angry whispers indicated he was not alone in his determination.
“I’ll do it,” a voice announced unexpectedly.
Ranji looked into the crowd, to find his brother meeting his gaze.
“As far as I know, Ranj, you’ve never lied to me.” Saguio surveyed his fellow fighters, many of them childhood friends. “If Ranji-aar says this is the truth, then I believe him.”
“Sagui, it doesn’t have to be you. We can …”
“What’s the matter, Unifer?” A belligerent young woman pushed her way toward him. “Afraid to have your own flesh and blood go down on the table?”
“Yeah,” said someone else accusingly. “Don’t you want him made more ‘Human’?”
“Don’t you see?” Saguio importuned his brother. “It has to be me. If I don’t have the operation, neither will anyone else.”
Intending to reply, Ranji found himself choking on his objections. His brother was right, of course. Saguio had always been smarter than his older sibling had given him credit for.
Tourmast put a comradely arm around his superior’s shoulders. “We’ll all be watching closely when the Hivistahm cut your brother open, Ranj. It would be well for them to find something. Because if they don’t, no matter where they imprison us or how they treat us or what they do to us, one of us somehow, sometime, will find you and kill you.” He gave Ranji’s shoulder a suggestive squeeze before removing his hand.
The response was steely cold. “If nothing is found you won’t have to worry about finding and killing me, Tourm. Because I’ll have attended to that particular detail myself.” The Sub-Unifer grunted under his breath. There was nothing more to be said. They quite understood one another.
The dialogue was unnecessary, Ranji knew. The Hivistahm surgeons would find an Amplitur-induced nexus inside his brother’s skull, just as they had within his own. They had to. Otherwise it would mean that he truly had been lied to, had somehow been thoroughly and disastrously fooled.
He refused to consider it. Another attempt to so drastically rotate his perceptions and rewrite his sense of self would put an end to him as efficiently as could Tourmast.
The column turned left at the end of the corridor. A gaping double door beckoned, and they were herded into a high-ceilinged chamber packed with instrumentation.
The Massood officer who’d taken them in charge vanished, to reappear moments later in the company of a harried-looking Human who struggled to mine sleep from his eyes. His brushy crown of red hair jolted memories Ranji thought long buried.
“What the hell is this?”
Ranji walked up to him. He was taller than the man, though not the armed Massood who stood nearby.
“My name, sir, is Ranji-aar. Despite that I am not Ashregan but Human, like you. So are my companions.”
“You don’t say.” Having cleared his eyes, the man began rubbing his chin. “Part of you looks Human, part Ashregan. We’ve heard about your kind.”
“The result of Amplitur bioengineering performed on Human infants and embryos,” Ranji explained.
“Sounds like antimat to me. What do you expect me to do with you?” Nearby, the Massood officer’s nose wrinkled in the presence of so many strange smells.
“Get in touch with your Military Council. Contact the central medical facilities on the Yula world of Omaphil, and if he’s still there, ask for a certain Hivistahm First-of-Surgery. I was there not long ago. They’ll tell you all about me.” Exhausted beyond measure, Ranji sank to the floor on shaky legs. “In fact, they’ll be more than a little relieved to hear that you’ve spoken with me.”
The Human exchanged a glance with the Massood, who curled an upper lip by way of response. “Assuming I go to the trouble of making such contact, what am I supposed to say?”
“Tell First-of-Surgery to come with as many skilled surgeons as the Weave can spare. Tell him there’s work for them here.”
The Human’s gaze narrowed. “At the moment we’re being hard pressed by the rest of your friends. As you undoubtedly know, the local population is worse than useless in the face of armed invasion. That leaves it up to us temporary immigrants to try and save their world for them. Right now that’s all that concerns me. This is no place for a medical convocation. Yet you expect me to requisition the use of deep-space relay time on behalf of some half-Ashregan freak, because he wants to see a doctor?”
Ranji looked up tiredly. “If you don’t, I can guarantee that the remainder of your military career will be spent tending sanitation facilities on the airless moon of Earth.”
The Massood leaned forward and whispered in broken Human. “Consider: Though armed they have committed no violence. After successfully breaching our defenses without raising any alarm they surrendered peacefully when they could have caused a great deal of damage. While I also view the creature’s words with the greatest suspicion, it cannot be denied that there may be more to this than self-delusion.”
Silently the Human officer pondered the tall armored enigma that called itself Ranji-aar. “How’d you get inside the dome, anyway?”
“I’ll explain everything … as soon as you get in touch with your superiors and verify what I’ve told you.”
Another pause, whereupon the man reluctantly turned and shouted something in guttural Human. There was movement in the corridor outside. The Massood leaned forward politely, whiskers twitching, lower lip curled slightly downward to expose sharp teeth.
“We are complying with your suggestions. You must understand that it will take some time to make contact and receive a response. Until then you and your troops will be held under guard and appropriately treated.”
Ranji nodded tiredly, free at last to employ whatever Human gestures he wished. “Thank you. I have one additional request. I ask that you isolate me from my companions.”
The Massood officer said nothing, but the fine erectile fur on his muzzle stiffened slightly.
XX
It was strange to sit by himself in the room they had given him and wish for the defeat of Birachii and other old friends. If they overran the distribution complex and “rescued” Ranji and the other captives, even Saguio’s determination to support his brother might falter. Certainly there would be no reunion with First-of-Surgery, no revealing, liberating operations for his companions. He would be shipped off-world at first opportunity, an object of anger and pity for the curious Amplitur to prod and probe.
But deprived of its Commander’s strategic skills, the attack faltered. Birachii and Cossinza’s squads failed to dislodge the installation’s defenders. Even as they lamented the loss of the brave assault team led by their friend and Unifer, they fell back to the protection of the foothills and requested instructions from Regional Command.
Two weeks later a column of heavily armed and armored attack sleds arrived at the distribution complex, having fought off sporadic enemy attacks all the way from Usilayy, Ulaluable’s capital city. The Massood and Human officers in charge of defending the installation were surprised to learn that the convoy had made the dangerous run not to bring reinforcements but solely to escort the tiny clutch of prisoners back to the capital.
The pressure of coordinating the center’s defense didn’t allow much time for casual conversation. Now it was too late. But the Human officer who
’d confronted Ranji on that rainy, confusing night many days earlier did manage to be present when he and his companions were being loaded aboard the armed sleds.
“Look, I don’t know who or what you are or how much of your story is true,” he told his former prisoner, “but if you are Human under all that extraneous calcification, how did you come to look like this?”
Ranji glanced back at him. “I told you. The Amplitur.”
The man nodded sagely. “Wouldn’t put anything past the squids. But this …” His voice trailed off. “Will you do me a favor? We don’t know each other and you certainly don’t owe me anything, but when you get to wherever it is you’re going, and your situation is finally resolved, will you let me know what the results are? As one curious primate to another?”
“I’ll try.” They parted with a handshake. The wholly Human gesture at last felt easy and natural to Ranji. The unconvinced among Ranji’s fellow soldiers did not hesitate to curse the exchange.
In contrast to its arrival, the convoy’s run back to Usilayy was uneventful. Having decided to concentrate their firepower on specific targets, the invading Crigolit and Ashregan had few personnel to spare for disruptive sorties of dubious military value. Had they known that Ranji and his companions were traveling with the convoy, its progress would have been considerably reduced. But as far as Ashregan command was concerned, they’d perished bravely while trying to infiltrate an enemy installation. Notification of that conclusion was already on its way to friends and relations.
Never having had the opportunity to examine Humans at close range, Ranji’s companions were forced to admit the extraordinary similarities between themselves and their guards, while the Humans in the convoy regarded their prisoners with equal dubiety and puzzlement. Anyone who continued to insist that captors and captives were not somehow related was asking a lot of the principle of convergent evolution.
Everyone knew, however, that physical appearance was not what mattered when evaluating potential enemies or allies. What was important was what individuals believed and how they thought, and in that respect the gulf between was still wide. With the possible exception of their enigmatic leader, the clutch of captives remained wholly Ashregan in attitude and outlook.