“Hello, mon. I remember you. I can’ thank you enough what you did for me.” Slightly dazed, Will shook the gnarled, powerful fingers. “I didn’ talk much that time back ago, but that was before. Before the big sky trip; before Lea.” The woman smiled and put her arm through his.
“We married, mon. This whole business”—and his arm described an arc against the night sky—“change my life.”
“Too right. Changed everybody’s life,” the young woman added.
Will looked up the beach. She noted the direction of his gaze. “Steven? I’ve never seen him happier. You know we weren’t in love or engaged or anything like that. We were just traveling around together, seeing some of the world. It was convenient. But after I got to know Matthias here, well, Steven didn’t mind. He got involved in the training and the studies to the exclusion of just about everything else.”
“It’s none of my business anyway,” Will muttered.
“Hey, mon.” Matthias clapped him on the back. “How been the old world while we gone? It miss us?” He laughed heartily. “What about you? You have a good year?”
Will was more than a little taken aback by the formerly silent fisherman’s effusiveness. “Okay, I suppose. You… all of you seem so happy.”
“Mon, you just don’ know.” He beckoned. “Hey, Eleroy, you come talk to this mon, you heah?”
The Rastafarian stepped out of the darkness. Gone was the glazed stare, the slight jerkiness of movement, the raging dreadlocks. His hair was cut short and close and he stood straight as any of the palms on the little islet. He studied Will’s face carefully, as if trying to decide whether it was real or counterfeit.
“I know you, mon. I owe you my life.”
Questions overwhelmed Will’s ability to ask them. So many, he had so many. This was not what he’d been expecting, not what he’d been expecting at all.
“You’ve changed.”
“Everybody changed, mon.” Eleroy nudged the fisherman in the ribs. Lea laughed and clutched his arm tightly. “All my life I was nothing, mon. Nothing. I go with you because I don’ know what happening to me any of the time. These people, they fix me right, you see? They make me feel important, give me something to do. They say I helping them a lot and that make me feel real good, real good.”
“First thing, I ask them for ganja. They don’ understand but we talk. Then they ask questions, especially those big lizards. They take my blood and break it apart and they give me something else in return. Made me feel good, mon. Then we talk some more, and I learn things, and what they give me make me proud to be a man. Now I don’ have to get high all the time to feel good. I got something lot better.”
“Like what?” Will asked him.
The Rastafarian gave him a tight-lipped grin and clapped a hand to the device secured at his waist. “A purpose, mon. To fight for the Weave. To protect this place, my home. Your home, too.” He indicated the island, the ramrod palms, the calm waters of the lagoon.
“I never had anything to fight for before. I don’ even like to fight. But it all explained to us, mon. These Amplitur things out there, they want to take away everything that makes a man, everything that makes you real.”
The woman spoke up. “We have no choice, really. We have to fight, or we’ll end up sacrificing our Humanity. The Amplitur will come and take it away from us. Fair dinkum.”
“But we do have a choice,” Will insisted. “We can stay out of it. We can…”
The Rastafarian exchanged a sad look with his friend the fisherman. “He don’ know. He don’ understand because he ain’t been Out There.”
“No,” Matthias agreed, “but he will.” He looked past the nearly submerged shuttle which had brought them down and inhaled deeply. “I missed this. I missed the smell. Not just of the sea.” He gazed back down at Will. “It this whole place, mon. This planet, this Earth, this our home. I been other places this year gone and no other of them smell like this.” He smiled at his companion. “Come on, sweet woman. Let’s take a walk.” Hand in hand they headed inland.
Will was shaking his head. “What did they do, brainwash the lot of you?”
“No, mon,” said the Rastafarian. “They just show us the truth. Somebody they smack you in the face with it time after time, pretty soon it impossible to ignore, you know? They show us the truth about everything, including ourselves. Matthias, he find his truth. I find my truth. Sooner or later you gonna find your truth.” He gazed out across the water, toward the mainland.
“I got some sisters somewhere. Not here, down in Monkey Town on the coast. I got to find them and share the truth with them. The Massood boss say I can’ do that just yet, but maybe soon. Maybe.”
He started to walk away. Will reached out for him, was stopped by a new voice and a hand on his arm.
“Let him go.”
It was the expatriate teacher, and he was not alone. Next to him stood the old woman who’d been the last to join the group.
Their brown-and-yellow uniforms fit surprisingly well. Will had to smile at the sight of the battered Panama hat perched incongruously on the man’s head. Like its owner, it looked none the worse for wear.
“Come on, old chap. Let’s find a place to have a sit and we’ll explain the lot of it to you.”
“The young ones.” The old lady was nodding to herself as they walked. “They all impatient, and they have reason to be.”
“You see, William… that is your name, isn’t it? I’ve seen so much this past year that this old head is quite crammed with detail. It’s the way we’re made, how we’re fashioned. At first it was all a big joke to us. Then when we saw how serious things were we found ourselves turning serious as well. After that we found things out without having to go searching for them.”
Will listened to him but his eyes were on the old lady. She looked ten years younger. No longer the shriveled, worn-out woman who’d begged to go along, she stood straight and proud. Age lines in her face had been replaced with others suggestive of hidden strength brought unexpectedly to the surface.
“We each of us had our own reasons for agreeing to your peculiar request,” the teacher was saying. “We all thought we knew what life was about, oh, yes. Then we were forced to confront new things, both within ourselves and without.”
“Such new things.” The woman rested a hand on the expatriate’s shoulder.
“You see, old chap, when you spend a lot of time talking to things that don’t breathe as you do, or even what you do, and you start learning the true universal constants, why then your own little personal problems start to acquire this rank air of the petty about them. You find out what really matters instead of what you thought mattered and see some significant differences. All my life I’d been told that travel was broadening. What they don’t tell you, can’t tell you, is that the farther you travel the more broadening it becomes.”
“I heard that you were involved in some fighting. How did they get you into that?”
“Why, they didn’t get us into anything, young man.” The old lady eyed him reprovingly.
“Once we learned about reality, saw how things were, naturally we wanted to help,” the teacher told him.
“Your clothes.” Will gestured weakly.
“Ah, yes.” The man looked pleased. “We sort of put them together ourselves, based on what those Massood chaps wear and what I remembered from my days in the service. That young lass from down under is something of a designer. Working with her, our hosts had no trouble running these off for us. They were most accommodating when they saw that we wanted to help.” Will said nothing and the man continued.
“You know, I never had much of anything. I was a poor teacher at best, bleating away back in Surrey at indifferent young sods who were much more interested in the latest football scores or music vids than in anything I might have to tell them. That’s why I left England. There was also a small matter involving some funds in a school account.”
“I thought I might salvage what little remained
of my self-respect. Instead I left all that behind, along with my wife, a bland but decent woman far better off without me. No children, thank God. Haven’t communicated with her in twelve years.”
“I drifted, and like many of my countrymen I ended up here, in Belize. They need teachers badly, so obscure portions of my resume were not brought into question. Not that I was a better teacher here than I’d been Surrey. Liquor has this way of complicating one’s classroom manner.”
“I was drinking rather more than I was teaching when you materialized with your offer of an evening’s entertainment. What I did not expect to receive was higher education, which I was firmly convinced I had put far behind me. I acquired fresh knowledge, and something rather more than that. I acquired a cause. Because, you see, these Amplitur really are the cold soul of evil.”
“I also regained my self-respect because I found something that I was good at.”
Will eyed him guardedly. “Like what?”
“Why combat, of course. Oh, yes. That girl Lea, for example, is quite the Amazon, as tough as her paramour and those boys you found in Belize City. The couple from Connecticut are not bad and the young Australian fellow, Steven, is something of a born strategist. I don’t know if you’ve had occasion to notice, but most of these alien chaps aren’t any good for fighting at all. Only the Massood, and some other fellows called Chirinaldo. They’re big, but middling slow afoot. The Massood have a lot of endurance, but they’ve little natural quickness and despite their size they are not very strong.”
“The S’van and Hivistahm who studied us kept talking about our neuromuscular structure and how it was tied into our peculiar endocrine system.” He waved a hand. “Don’t ask me to explain. It was quite technical.” He reached into a breast pocket and withdrew the familiar shape of a translator. “These gadgets don’t function as effectively when scientific terminology is involved.”
“I don’t understand any of it at all,” said the old woman. “I only know that these are good people, despite what they look like. They need our help. It made me feel good to be able to help them, even a little.”
“You see, old chap, I spent some time in the military. I’m good at planning things. Annalinda and I have a lot of experience that the young people need. Their initial successes tended to make them impulsive. Steven understands that. It’s why they put him in command.”
“I’ve seen fighting all my life,” the old woman said. “I’m no good at it myself. I have a lot of control but no ability. But I can tell others of what I’ve seen. Those two poor boys you brought along are like my own grandchildren. They need good advice.”
“Do you know what it’s like,” the teacher was saying, “to have a great lot of important individuals tell you how wonderful you are, how important you can be, how much they need your help? It does something to you, makes you feel good inside. Just like these uniforms.”
“That’s enough for now, Edward.” The old woman took his arm and started up the beach. “We’d better go find the boys before they get into some kind of trouble.”
“Quite right there, Anna. After all, this isn’t Vasarih.” He winked at Will, cocked the tired Panama tight on his head. “Think about what I’ve said, will you, old chap?”
Numb and confused, Will watched them hike up the beach in search of the three young men.
“I’m pleased, of course.” Caldaq sat on the sand, legs crossed, arms resting on knees, inhaling the now familiar aromas of this world as he watched the prodigal Humans chatter and cavort. They were so childlike in their enthusiasm, so easily pleased, and these few, at least, a little less ignorant of the state of reality. In their jumpsuits they looked very much alike despite the usual variations in individual coloration. Jaruselka sat close, ignoring the sand in her fur.
Chief-of-Project stood nearby. She was an elderly Hivistahm entitled to much respect. At night she was able to dispense with the dark shades which during the day were necessary to protect eyes grown sensitive with age.
“Truly we all are. These people the potential to be of use beyond our wildest dreams have. Weave Command is ecstatic over what little they have been told.”
Caldaq’s gaze roved the palms, the odiferous sea beyond. “Then the isolation of this world is to be ended?”
“No. Is that not a strange decision?”
“I do not understand.”
“You were not there. You did not see.” Jaruselka shifted on the sand. “Because of what has been learned the evaluators are torn between caution and hope.”
“Individually and as a group, these creatures graded out more suitable for combat than any people of the Weave, including the Massood.”
This revelation inspired no jealousy or envy in Caldaq. A considerable part of being civilized involved the ability simply to see truth.
“This is difficult for me to accept, my mate. While I have not seen what you have seen, I have spent a lot of time on this world, observing, studying, learning. It leads me to believe that much of what our friend Will Dulac says about his people is true. They do love music and peace and very much aspire to the Weave definition of civilization.”
“Truly they may aspire, but it is not what they are best suited to doing.” Chief-of-Project was remorseless.
“It has been postulated,” Caldaq argued, “that if left to develop by themselves they might be able to overcome that fact.”
“Quite likely.” Chief-of-Project took several steps toward the water, her sandals leaving broad triangular impressions in the sand. Sharp nails flicked against one another as she spoke.
“Undisturbed they might achieve the same level of civilization as the O’o’yan, or the S’van, or the Wais.” She did not mention the Massood. Caldaq chose to regard it as an oversight.
“Truly it is conceivable that they could overcome the instinctive combative tendencies which they now so ingenuously display to become as peaceful as, say, the Hivistahm.” She turned back to the two Massood, slitted eyes bright in the moonlight.
“However, a certainty that is not. There is equal evidence to suggest that such inclinations will continue to manifest themselves even as their technology advances. It is intriguing to postulate what direction their society might take if such tendencies are encouraged instead of decried.”
An angry Caldaq rose. Jaruselka stood beside him. “I will not be a party to such a thing. It reeks of the immoral. These people must be allowed to find their way to civilization.”
“Even if that way to mutual self-destruction leads them?”
“Do not try to hide what you want beneath a layer of fatuous altruism.”
To her credit, the elderly Hivistahm was obviously uncomfortable. “Truly I am not unaware of the contradictions posed by this dilemma.”
“If we allow these creatures to achieve the kind of civilization which would permit them entry into the Weave, then sacrificing a great weapon we may be. Of what use would such a civilization be to them if subsumed into the Amplitur Purpose it is eventually?”
“If we instead allow, even encourage them to vent their natural combative tendencies not against each other but against the Amplitur, then great things accomplished may be. Do not forget, Captain, that the future of many races and not just that of Humans is in the great contest at stake. The Weave survives because the good of all it considers.”
“Adjustments to Human inclinations in the future can be made, after the Amplitur we have defeated. Time enough then to embrace these creatures and to the heart of Weave civilization clasp them. Truly first everything possible we must do to insure a civilization there is for them to join.”
Caldaq’s anger at an immutable injustice was already fading. “It has already been decided, hasn’t it?”
Jaruselka eyed him sympathetically. “It was not our decision to make. I am told that the Council agonized long over it.”
“The full Science Council,” Chief-of-Project elaborated. “The General Council of this world’s existence is not yet aware.”
Caldaq gestured tiredly, resumed his seat on the sand. “And they have already participated in actual combat?”
Chief-of-Project’s claws dug at an itch. “On Vasarih. A cautious test in hope executed of confirming results otherwise difficult to believe. Only those who volunteered were involved, the youngest and strongest, though they received advice from their seniors as well as from our own people in the field.”
“The Amplitur force on Vasarih consists mainly of Crigolit with a smattering of T’returi largely providing logistical support. Truly also there are the divided Vasarih themselves.”
“And what happened?” Caldaq pressed her.
Chief-of-Project hesitated briefly. “Conflict these creatures transforms in ways they themselves are unaware of. They take to combat as to a narcotic. Their endocrine and nervous systems function differently. The fact that for the first time in their racial history they were fighting creatures other than their own kind seemed only further to energize them.”
“Vasarih a minor theater of conflict is, but in the sector where they were introduced their impact immediate and devastating was. Not only did they wreak havoc themselves, their attitude and presence inspired the Massood who were present safely through any trouble to shepherd them.”
“They fought alongside Massood?” Caldaq said.
“Yes.” Jaruselka put a hand on his shoulder. “I witnessed this myself.”
He eyed her sharply. “You participated? You did not say…”
“It would only have worried you. Should I have not? I am trained as any Massood, and I was one who had dealt with the first specimen, Will Dulac. I understood more than those Massood who had never encountered a Human before.”
“Chief-of-Project speaks endless uncomfortable truths.” The Hivistahm was gratified by the support of the Commander’s mate. “When these creatures are thrust into combat they seem to enter a different state of consciousness. They are transformed.”
“They fight like machines.” The elderly Hivistahm searched for the best way to convey her feelings. “Not out of control but not as we would fight, either. This is not a conscious choice they make but something with them instinctive, something in their racial psyche deeply ingrained. Out of the other mature species civilization has bred it. Even the Massood must make themselves fight.”