Instantly the Amplitur’s mental focus shifted fully from the prisoner to the newcomer, hoping to mute hostile thoughts and induce the Restoree to lay his rifle aside. If necessary it would try to push first one, then the other. At worst, if the soldier started to fire then Sigh-moving-Fast could still react rapidly enough to kill one if not both of them. A forceful probe impinged on the soldier’s mind.
It brought forth a cataclysmic shriek of raw, uncontrolled energy, a concentrated eruption of fear, horror, loathing, and primitive primate hatred. The Amplitur shook violently. All four legs gave way simultaneously and it collapsed, managing to get off a single shot before blacking out. The pistol’s explosive shell blew a hole in the staging chamber’s distant ceiling.
Startled, the soldier had also fired once, missing badly. Now he leaned up against a fuel cell of Segunian design, his rifle dangling from one hand as he flipped up his armor visor with one hand and pressed against his forehead with the other. Sweat poured through his fingers.
Ranji had thrown himself to the floor. After checking to make sure he hadn’t been hit, he rose and approached the flaccid body of the Teacher. Limp, rubbery tentacle-tips yielded control of the handgun.
Walking up to the fuel cell, he put a comforting arm around the younger man’s shoulders.
“Shit.” The soldier shakily set his rifle aside and cradled his head in both hands.
“Bad?” Ranji inquired solicitously.
“Going away now.” The younger man took several measured deep breaths. “I heard about that, too.” He nodded in the Amplitur’s direction. “Not going anywhere soon, is it?”
“Not for a while, no.”
“Good.” He shuddered slightly at the memory of it. The sensation was slipping away like foam on a befouled tide. “Creepy, when it tries to get inside your mind like that. Feels … unclean. Like the most embarrassing thing that’s ever happened to you blown up a thousand times bigger for everyone to see. Didn’t it know something like this would happen if it tried that?”
Ranji regarded the slack, comatose alien form. “It thought you were something else.”
The soldier’s gaze narrowed. “Something else? And who’s this Tourmast character?”
“Someone else. Why don’t you take charge of our prisoner here?”
“What, me?”
“Amplitur prisoners are pretty rare. You’ll probably get a promotion out of it, maybe even a commendation.” Ranji looked past him. “Where’s the rest of your unit? I’ve got an injured colleague and I’d rather not use a communicator to call for help this near to enemy hostiles.”
“They should be over that way, sir.” The soldier adjusted the communicator built into his visor. “Enemy’s been pushed back pretty far. I think we’re safe in calling in.”
Ranji considered, then nodded. “I’ll rely on your judgment. I’ll go tell my friend help is on its way. We’re back over here.” He pointed, and the younger man indicated his understanding.
Lying immobile on its side, the Amplitur didn’t look very frightening, the trooper reflected as he studied his prisoner. Soft and slow. One bulging, golden eye gazed vacantly in his direction. It was about the ugliest thing he’d ever seen, and since he’d joined up with the Human battleforce that was aiding the Weave he’d encountered some remarkably ugly things. Ashregan, Crigolit, Molitar, Acuria, Massood and Hivistahm, Wais and Lepar. Ally or enemy, it didn’t much matter. Each was a greater paragon of ugliness than the next, and he wasn’t especially enamored of the facial features of some of his drinking buddies, either.
He shifted his rifle to a more comfortable position, pleased that like the rest of his friends back home he’d chosen to take part in the great conflict. What more could a man want out of life than the opportunity to eliminate some of the ugliness from the universe?
The Amplitur sensed that its paralysis would fade, but until then it would have to suffer the feral attention of the biped as well as a certain amount of physical discomfort. Unable to move more than a few extremities, Sigh-moving-Fast shifted one eye to track the departure of the Human Restoree. There was no help to be had, no other brethren within range. It had taken but a moment for its personal status to change from that of captor to captive.
Tricked, and cleverly so. The Restoree had seen and seized a chance to make use of Sigh-moving-Fast’s unfamiliarity with combat conditions. But in his haste to aid and comfort an injured companion the Human had forgotten one thing. Secrets could still be divulged, confusion spread, discord sowed.
“Listen to me.” The translator croaked enticingly. “That man is no longer wholly Human. He has been changed. He is now more like me than you.”
“Yeah, right.” The soldier’s expression was pensive.
“This is true! He has been modified. First by my kind, subsequently by something else. He can influence minds; he can push, just as can I. He is dangerous.”
“You’re telling me. All of us Human folk’re dangerous, squid. As you’re finding out. You know, I picked up a lot about your species in studies, but they never told me you had a sense of humor.”
“You must believe me!” The primitive biped’s indifference to logic was infuriating. “If you have studied my kind, then you know we are incapable of prevarication.”
“Unless that’s a lie, too. Our specialists don’t completely trust everything the Weave tells ’em. One thing they’re far from sure about is you. Don’t know enough about you yet to be sure of anything. So they’re withholding judgment.” He gestured with the tip of the cassion rifle. “So am I. If you want to turn me against one of my own kind, you’re gonna have to dream up something a lot less silly than that.”
Sigh-moving-Fast raged impotently, but try as he might, he was unable to give the Restorees’ secret away.
The Weave strike force took the headquarters complex, capturing or killing all but a few of its inhabitants. Human and then Hivistahm physicians dealt efficiently with Cossinza’s injury. With the aid of an implanted neuromuscular stimulator, she was up and walking within a few days.
He’d always been able to talk to Saguio, Ranji knew, but this was different. It was wonderful to finally have someone to share with, in matters of intimacy as well as friendship. Cossinza did more than merely listen. She understood. Heida Trondheim had been sympathetic, but no more. What existed now between him and Cossinza went much deeper. He felt fulfilled.
With time now to relax a little and contemplate things besides combat, other Restorees were also pairing off, developing liaisons, getting to know one another. The special characteristic they shared made it natural as well as necessary.
Their secret remained inviolate. The one Amplitur who had learned the truth had made a desperate break for freedom while being escorted from the captured staging chamber to a waiting sled, only to be shot down by impulsive Human guards before the officer in charge could intervene. It perished ranting, spouting mental and verbal gibberish about unsuspected threats to the stability of civilization. The exact nature of its dying diatribe went unreported, as no recorders happened to be operating in the vicinity at the time.
Wherever they were sent, the Restorees would have to stay in contact with one another, Ranji knew. To report any changes or permutations in the Talent, as they had come to call it; to provide support and understanding for one another; to better assist other deceived and debased Cossuutians in regaining their stolen birthrights, and so they could, if and when necessary, act in concert.
It was good to be Human and have Human friends, he knew. Assuming he and his fellow Restorees were Human, and would not become something else. Actual determination of that was going to take time. He was certain they had much to learn.
For example, had the severed neural connections between the Amplitur nexus and the rest of his brain ceased growing? That was but one of many things that would have to be watched.
I am mine own experiment, he thought. As such he intended to monitor its progress very carefully.
Their pla
n and intentions exposed, the Amplitur abandoned the great project on Cossuut. Their modified fighters could no longer be trusted in battle, not when every opponent knew and could reveal to them the truth of their origins. Many died natural deaths on that unhappy world, until the end believing themselves to be Ashregan. Others perished in battle. The fortunate ones were captured.
As was only natural, following the requisite surgery the newly Restored were assigned for repatriation to a reeducation group composed of fellow Restorees.
After participation in many battles, Ranji and Cossinza and those of their friends who had survived multitudinous conflict were retired with full honors, the grateful sympathy of the Weave, and the melancholy compassion of their kind. The name of their true devastated homeworld became yet another in a long line of rallying cries and watchwords by which the soldiers of the Weave fought.
In due time offspring were born to those who had survived the ministrations of the Amplitur. They appeared in every way to be normal, healthy children.
Their parents monitored their maturation with the utmost care.
The Spoils of War
For John Soderberg: sculptor
Fellow shaper of the aether
Fellow explorer.
I
“I wish that you would not do this thing. You know that we all do.”
They reposed on the slightly raised dining platform on the external lip of the restaurant. From their present height they could see much of the city spread out before them, an urbanized extravagance that covered a vast amount of territory. Mahmahar was not that heavily populated, but since by law no structure could be more than four stories tall, expansion was predominantly horizontal. The vast number of gardens and parks demanded by custom and aesthetics further contributed to the large areas occupied by even modest conurbations.
Not that the city had the slightest overtone of urban sprawl. On the contrary, it barely resembled a city at all, much less the kinds of metastacizing metropolises one found on the Hivistahm or O’o’yan worlds. Architecture that emphasized the harmonious while intertwining with gardens and parks made sure of that. In such a setting it was the larger structures that looked like interlopers and not the other way around.
Home to slightly more than two million, the community of Turatreyy was one of the larger on Mahmahar, and its inhabitants were proud to call it home. Where possible the Wais preferred to restrict the size of their cities to less than five million but more than one. In socialization as in everything else, the Wais found beauty in definition.
Sometimes this engendered a mixture of contempt and envy among the other members of the Weave, who would deride the Wais for their manners and formalities while secretly admiring their ability to develop or find beauty in everything. Even among their detractors there was no denying that Wais society and civilization represented the zenith of Weave culture, one that other species could only aspire to emulate even when Wais action (or lack of it) proved exasperating. It was a responsibility the Wais took seriously.
Like every other member race of the Weave, they had sponsored the war against the Amplitur from the beginning, over a thousand years ago. It was a support that had never wavered, one as strong as their desire to shun actual combat. In that they were no different from the majority of their allies.
Lalelelang’s mother toyed with the three traditional drinking utensils in front of her. One for the aperitif, one for the main course, a third filled with a lightly citrus-flavored spring water for ceremonial clearings of the palate between bites. Like every other aspect of Wais society, dining had been raised to a fine art.
As the dominant surviving representative of their matrilineal line, her mother had to say such things; it was her place. Her grandmother would have been even more forceful in her objections, but that honored life-giver was two years deceased, clipped, embalmed, and reverently ensconced in the family mausoleum. So the disagreeable task was left to her mother. Her father would be informed of the results only when the females saw fit.
“You could be so many things,” her mother was saying. “Among your age and study group your potential gradient is by far the highest, as it is among the family. You show flashes of brilliance in narrative poetry as well as industrial design. Engineering is wide open to you, as is the entire range of organic architecture.” Gold-tipped lashes fluttered above wide, blue-green eyes. “You could even be, dare I venture the notion, a landscaper!”
“I have made my choice. The proper venues have been notified.” Lalelelang’s tone was deferential but firm.
Her mother inclined forward, sipping through her beak delicately and with perfect grace from the damascened aperitif container.
“I still do not understand why you felt it necessary to choose such a dangerous and uncertain occupation.”
“Someone has to do it, Mother.” With the prehensile, featherless tips of her left wing Lalelelang nervously fingered the four small plates of food arranged in the standard midday meal pattern before her. “History is a respected and valued profession.”
Her intricate body language conveying unyielding parental concern, the senior female ruffled her feathers as she straightened in her chair. Her movements signified frustration rather than anger. There was disapproval in the delicate tilt of her head, remorse in the slight arching of her feathery cranial crest. Her father’s, Lalelelang mused, would by now have been twinkling iridescent crimson. Lacking such colors, a female had to make do with subtlety of movement.
She got the message nonetheless. Her mother had been flashing it in various guises throughout the meal.
“You choose to be a historian, by which amusing quirk of nature I cannot begin to imagine.” Lengthy eyelashes fanned the air between them. “Eclectic enough, but not in itself objectionable. It is your fascination with the war that confounds and distresses me. The obsession is un Wais.”
“However much we may dislike it, it remains the single most important component of our modern history as well as of our daily lives.” Lalelelang picked up a clutch of perfect, tiny, bright green berries from the dish nearest to her and used (as was proper) just the tip of her beak to neatly nip them one at a time from their black stems. When she’d finished she placed the stripped stems back on the empty plate, carefully positioning them so that neither end pointed either at her or at her mother. A perverse profession she might have chosen, but she still remembered her manners, of which there were intricacies even those representatives of other species who had worked intimately among the Wais for years did not suspect. After a while they ceased to care, which helped greatly to ease tension between them and their hosts.
In the midst of difficult times it struck some, like the Massood, as a waste of time and energy, not to mention an overemphasis on foolishness, but to the Wais manners were the very lifeblood of meaningful existence. It was a principle reason why they had contributed so much for so long to defeat the enemy: if imposed, the Amplitur Purpose would have wreaked havoc with traditional etiquette, without which, the Wais were convinced, there could be no true civilization. Other species did not disagree with this tenet so much as they did the emphasis the Wais placed upon it.
“Even if I grant your thesis, daughter, I still do not see why you could not have left this work to someone else.” Her eyes swept worriedly across the nearest garden, a dense paving of six-petaled yellow and orange Narstrunia that were just coming into glorious full bloom. They were edged with tiny violet Yunguliu, a touch the senior female was not sure she wholly approved of. Black and white Wessh would have provided more contrast, and they were in season.
We are all of us critics, she thought, as l am now in criticizing my offspring. It was a principle reason why within the Weave the Wais were greatly admired but less than universally popular.
An empty package marring the soft floral perfection of the garden path caught her eye. Doubtless dropped by a visiting alien, she knew, for no Wais would be so careless with the visual aesthetic. Possibly a S’van, though the
y were no more or less crude than any of the other Weave races. Their irreverent attitude toward life, however, bordered on the regressive. It was with some difficulty that she repressed her instinctive urge to leap over the ornate railing and spring across the lawn to snatch up the debris before it offended another passerby’s sensibilities. She forced herself to concentrate her attention on her patiently waiting daughter.
“Because I believe that I am best suited to the task, Mother.” Politely Lalelelang searched the remaining three plates of food in front of her for something appropriate with which to chase the green berries. “The same attitudinal approach which would make me a good engineer or landscaper will stand me in good stead in my chosen field of endeavor.”
“Aberrant behavior,” her mother whispered in the most inoffensive dulcet tones imaginable.
“No. Just a talent … and a calling.”
“So say you. Aberrant proclivity, then.” She sipped from the container of spring water and picked at her own meal, sufficiently upset to ignore dining protocol by selecting directly from the fourth dish. Her concern for her daughter outweighed any hunger, but it would have been unforgivable to have ordered food and not eaten.
She leaned across the table, the narrow head protruding gracefully from the half-meter-long neck. “You grade out top of your age group. You already speak fourteen Weave languages fluently when the norm for your educational cluster is five and for matriculated adults ten. I grant you your choice. I grant you your determination.” The head drew back and the senior female gazed into the distance.
“But this area of specialization you have settled upon, like a stone sinking down through the darkest waters: that I cannot give my approval to.” Her crest was absolutely flat against the back of her head and neck as she spoke. “Why, of all the subjects available, must you choose this?”
“Because no one else has,” her daughter replied.