“I wouldn’t. How many do you think would keep fighting if not for the gold?”
“I don’ know. Some yes, some no. Don’ matter, because there is gold.”
“Hasn’t it occurred to anyone that the S’van and Hivistahm and the rest might not want to associate with you because you’re all fighting for money?”
“Don’ matter. They think we pretty strange anyway.”
“When people start retiring back to Earth others are going to ask where all this gold is coming from. The secret will get out.”
She shrugged. “Fine with me. You know, some of these people brought their kids.”
“You mentioned the Russian.”
“An’ some have had kids since they been here. We got our own nurseries.”
“Don’t the parents care about schooling?”
“We got a couple of teachers taking care of that. Kids learn other stuff here, too. Like the Saki sisters. They speak Massood better than the Massood themselves.”
“It’s not fair to bring kids into something like this. They haven’t the foggiest notion of the issues at stake. How old are they?”
“Nine and twelve, I think.”
“They’ll forget about Earth.”
“Don’ matter. They happy, too. Make good soldiers someday.”
Will shuddered. There had to be a way to put an end to the nightmare.
The cart deposited them onto a moving sidewalk deep inside the mountain. Massood here wore sidearms and glanced questioningly at the Humans. There was considerably less of the casual conversation he had noted on his arrival. This was a place of business.
As they walked Echevarria would occasionally address one of the soldiers, sometimes utilizing her translator, other times speaking directly in crude Massood. They passed Hivistahm and O’o’yan as well. A Wais flowed past, impeccable of attire, graceful of stride.
“How do you communicate out in the field?” he asked her.
“We start using English by default. It’s easier than the translators.”
“Nobody tries to push their own language?”
“Hell, everybody too busy trying to learn some Massood or S’van. Easier back here. Always a few Wais around to help out. They pretty nice folk. Me, I like ‘em even better than the S’van. With the S’van you never know for sure if they laughing ‘cause they like you or not. You get a reaction out of a Wais, you know it for real.” She paused outside a doorway. Will was startled to see two Hivistahm guards bearing weapons.
“Those guns don’ kill, only paralyze,” she told him. “Can’t spare Massood from real fighting for this kind of work.” She grinned. “Course, they’d never waste a Human on guard duty. These lizards never have to shoot at anybody anyway. Nobody ever escape from this place.”
She murmured into a wall pickup, waited until they were passed through to another gate. Behind the second checkpoint lay a high-ceilinged room full of unadorned furnishings. Echevarria put up an arm to restrain Will, ran her other hand along an invisible barrier.
The two prisoners had ample room in which to move about. “This place will hold four,” Echevarria explained. “They don’ like to put more than four in any one cell.”
Will blinked. The plainly attired captives gazed back at him with equal interest.
Small eyes peered out from beneath protruding brows. An odd ridge of bone framed each recessed ear. The nose was flat, with twin openings. Though not large, the mouth appeared capable of opening wide. Perhaps the deep jaw was loosely hinged. The arms were long, the legs too short.
Those differences aside, both prisoners looked very, very Human.
“Ashregan,” said Echevarria grimly. “Funny faces and squatty builds, but otherwise they don’ look so different from us, eh? You never mistake one for a Massood or S’van, but they could pass for you. Not me. I was never that ugly.”
One of the aliens approached the barrier and spoke softly. “He want to know who you are,” Echevarria said.
“How… how do you know?” Will remembered the translators. Echevarria helped him adjust the setting on his own.
“You not wearing a uniform, so he’s confused.”
“These are allies of the Amplitur?”
“For about six hundred years. Long enough for the Amplitur to mess their genetic material around real good. Now all they can think of is serving their damn Purpose.”
Will fingered his translator as he stepped up to the barrier. “You look very much like us.”
“We have also remarked upon the similarities.” The male had a thick, sweet voice. “I am only a simple soldier of the cause, and not very familiar with such concepts as parallel evolution. I would not presume to comment further.” Shockingly, he smiled.
Will forced himself to reply. “Why do you and the Amplitur seek to conquer all other peoples? Why do you allow them to be your masters?”
The Ashregan exchanged an astonished look with its female companion. “There are no masters within the Purpose. We are all its servants. Each species serves to the best of its particular abilities. The Ashregan fight. The Amplitur advise.”
Echevarria leaned close. Her perfume was strong. “Senor Davis, he told you they were subtle, eh? The Amplitur don’ give orders. Only ‘suggestions.’ ”
The Ashregan overheard. “We could argue semantics for days, months. Are Humans not receptive to the advice of the S’van? That does not make them your masters.”
“In the field we do what we think best,” Echevarria shot back.
“In the heat of battle everyone improvises,” the Ashregan responded.
“If you want to live for this Purpose of yours,” Will put in hastily, “that’s fine, but why this compulsion to drag everyone else along with you?”
“Don’t you think we know that it would be easier to ignore you? Would it not spare us much suffering and pain? But we who have experienced the Purpose could not think of ourselves as civilized if we failed to extend its beauty and benefits to the uninitiated.”
“Even so,” Will insisted, “what if the uninitiated don’t want any part of it, don’t have any need of its ‘benefits’?”
The Ashregan smiled afresh. “Look around you. What do you see? Humans and Massood, Hivistahm and S’van unnaturally allied in an effort to resist unity and peace. The Weave is a wholly artificial organism, held together only by a misplaced desire to forestall the inevitable advance of the Purpose. Without it the many species would quickly fall to fighting and bickering among themselves. Where such conflict and dissension exists there can never be real harmony, true contentment. I ask you, Human: On which side lies logic and truth?”
“As for the Ashregan, we are content.”
“That because the Ashregan are brain-dead,” Echevarria said with a derisive snort.
The male looked over at her. “You confuse unhappiness with lack of choice.” Small dark eyes turned back to Will. The voice was earnest, pleading.
“Your people are great fighters, of unique and astonishing ability. Certainly you are the most unusual opponents the Ashregan have ever encountered. Why perish on behalf of Weave folly when you could be enjoying all the peaceful delights of the Purpose? You deny yourself true peace because you have been seduced by the lies of the S’van and others. The S’van are the most accomplished liars in existence. The manipulation of words is their art, the seduction of meaning their music. They are as accomplished at prevarication as you Humans are at warfare.”
“Try to convince your brethren. The Amplitur cannot be defeated, the Purpose never dissolved. Thousands of years of history cannot be reversed. The destiny of your kind is the same as that of every other intelligence: to join in the Purpose and not in fractious, primitive alliances such as that of the Weave.”
“The Amplitur will welcome you joyfully, all the more so because it will avoid the needless death of many. The death of a single sentient diminishes the Purpose.”
Will was silent for a long moment—dissecting, considering, mulling over a simp
le soldier’s eloquence… or programming.
“As I understand it,” he said finally, “the end of this Purpose is to be the integration of every intelligent species into a single all-encompassing organization?”
“That’s so.” The Ashregan was pleased.
“To what final end?” Will asked sharply.
“The Amplitur surmise that when this integration has been completed, all unified intelligent life will make the jump to the next stage of evolution. Whether that is to be joint participation in some kind of universal overmind or something else no one, not even the Amplitur, know for certain.”
“How many intelligences have to participate to produce this critical mass? How big does it have to be?”
“That the Amplitur do not know. They have been trying to quantify the necessary volume for thousands of years.”
“But what if there’s nothing at the end of all this? No next stage of evolution, no melting pot of a supermind? What if the Amplitur just go on absorbing one species after another to no eventual end?”
“But the end exists.”
The female spoke up from her place on a bed. “What is your notion of the be-all and end-all of intelligence, Human? Does your kind have a better theory?”
Will was taken aback. He’d come here to rail against war, not discuss philosophy and metaphysics. “No. We just feel that it’s better to be left alone to find our own destiny than to sacrifice our individuality to some kind of compulsive herd mentality.”
The female sat up, imploring with both hands. Five fingers on each, Will noted, but no nails. Just smooth and rounded at the tips.
“There is a sweetness, a joy of completeness within the Purpose that one who is not part of it cannot imagine.”
“All that notwithstanding, some people might prefer independence of thought and action.”
“It is illogical and uncivilized,” the male insisted, “to favor dissension above cooperation.”
“Then it’s our decision to remain uncivilized. It’s the way we are.”
“Only because you’ve known nothing better,” said the male calmly. “I fear my arguments are failing to reach you. If there were an Amplitur present…”
“If there were an Amplitur here you’d see the Purpose soon enough.” Echevarria had been leaning against the wall, listening. Now she straightened, gazing narrowly at Will. “It’d reach out and lovingly embrace you with its tentacles and look deep into your eyes with those beautiful ones of theirs. Then you’d feel a little tickling, you know? Right here.” She tapped the side of her head.
“Pretty soon you see the light. You understand. That what they say the Amplitur can do to you. They done it to some poor S’van and Massood. Some got cured by treatment and others just died twisting in their beds.” She gestured derisively at the prisoners.
“These things are the product of eight or nine hundred years of genetic manipulation. They wouldn’t know an independent thought if it bit them on the ass.”
“We do not expect to convince you.” The Ashregan was not in the least upset. “We are only simple soldiers. All we can offer are our honest sentiments and the example of personal contentment.”
“We have heard some things about your kind, Human. The Ashregan, too, used to fight among themselves, long ago. Now such unsupportable conflicts are a matter of history. We work together to serve the Purpose, and we are happy.”
“Sure you are,” Echevarria responded. “You better be happy, or the Amplitur will come and work on you some more.”
“You wouldn’t know happiness if confronted with it,” the female commented. “You refuse to acknowledge the possibility. You have not yet matured sufficiently to deal with the concept.”
“Oh, I can deal with the idea of happiness,” the captain told her. “What I have trouble dealing with is the notion of racial lobotomy. Come on.” She took Will’s arm and he allowed himself to be led away.
“Remember!” the Ashregan shouted after him. “There is independence within service and there is the independence that allows you to kill on behalf of meaningless abstraction.” The alien voice faded from translator range as they reached the first checkpoint. “It is uncivilized!”
Out in the corridor Echevarria eyed Will questioningly. “What do you think?”
“I’m not sure,” he replied slowly. “They were more thoughtful than I expected, and they look so much like us.”
“Yeah, they do, don’ they? Parallel evolution. Except they all brain-dead.”
Will was shaking his head uncertainly. “They didn’t act like zombies, or robots.”
“Oh, they as independent as you and I,” she agreed, “except when it comes to this Purpose business. Then it like their brains, their ability to think, goes flat like the line on a dead man’s heart monitor. It only start up again when you change the subject.”
“Speaking to which, you want to go out on a foray? I can get you a weapon issued. You can watch us push the Ashregan and the Crigolit back over the cordillera toward the sea. Soon as the next load of troops arrive we gonna make our big push.” She whispered conspiratorially. “The Massood are still hesitating, but we’re tired of sitting around. The major say it time to kick some butt. You know how to say that in Russian? And if there are any Amplitur around we gonna kick them, too. Course, they ain’t got no butts.” A wolfish grin creased her beautiful if slightly worn face.
“After we finish with this world we gonna go on to the next one. I don’ know which, the S’van haven’t told us. But we sure not gonna sit around here for a hundred years like the Massood been doing.” Her open hand palmed his backside and he jumped slightly.
“You know, for a composer you got a cute behind. I never know a composer. Maybe if you get bored later, you want some company… comprende? It’s nice when you don’ have to do it for money.”
“I’ll think about it.” was all he could find to say, caught off guard by the abrupt change of subject. “I’ve got a lot to think about, and J’hai wants me to see more of the base, and…”
“Yeah, sure.” She gave him a friendly whack. “You want to know where I am, you just ask around, hokay?”
“Okay.”
“Want to see something interesting?”
“Sure,” he said warily.
She showed him her hand. It was slim, feminine. “Take a close look.” She straightened her fingers.
“I don’t see anything,” he told her, feeling stupid.
“Don’ you see? There’s no lines.” It was true: her palm was perfectly smooth. “These S’van are pretty smart, but for practicals you gimme a Hivistahm every time. If they weren’t such pansies they’d make good fighters.”
“Had that taken off by a zeit shell. Right here.” With a finger she traced a line on her wrist two inches below the hand. “The lizards do real good regeneration. But you lose the lines. Fingerprints, too. The Amplitur now, they say the Amplitur can even grow your fingerprints back. They say the Amplitur can grow anything.” She gestured toward the east.
“You get shot up out there, if they can find enough pieces, the Hivisties can put you back together pretty much the way you look before, even if you do end up with plastic guts. They take real good care of us here, you know? Maybe they don’ like us a whole lot, but they take care of us.”
They climbed into the little transport vehicle. “What about the S’van? I thought the S’van liked everybody.”
“That what they say. Me, I never seen one be anything other than friendly. But it hard to tell about them. Sometimes I think maybe they joke around ‘cause they got no choice. It hard to get mad at somebody who joking all the time. I hear there’s not a lot of them. Hell, even the Lepar could chop them up pretty easy.” She grinned. “Hey, you know how many Lepar it takes to load a photic charge?”
“No,” Will mumbled as the vehicle sped along.
“One to hold the tube, one to load the charge, and a third to keep the first two from trying to eat the parts.” She cackled uproariously. br />
“I kind of like the Lepar.” The tension in his voice surprised him.
Her laughter faded. “Hey, don’ get me wrong, man. I do, too. Everybody like them. They work their tails off to help everybody else. They so slow and dopey-looking, how could anybody get mad at one?” The vehicle began to decelerate.
“I’ll take you back to J’hai. Sure you don’ want me to have a sidearm issued to you?”
“No,” Will said firmly. “There are too many guns around here as it is.”
* * *
Chapter Twenty-One
Thoughtful-quick-Probing had work to do and was irritated by the timing. It glanced up and around, the right eye swiveling independently on its short stalk to peer two-thirds of the way down the mottled orange back, where an irregular protrusion erupted from the smooth skin.
“Awaken, Thoughtful-new-Prober,” the Amplitur insisted.
Miniature eyestalks uncoiled from within the fleshy eruption, tiny eyes shining wetly at the tips. The bud leaned slightly forward, attentive and expectant.
Another two time periods and it would be fully formed, at which point it would separate from its parent to embark upon existence as an independent entity, already well educated and mature. A successful budding was much to be praised, the complex process always to be coddled.
But such was the skill of Thoughtful-quick-Probing that despite its delicate condition its presence at the upcoming interrogation session had been requested by Command.
It was awkward. A maturing bud ought not to be disturbed while its body was embarked on the sensitive process of taking over its respiratory and circulatory functions from the parent.
The blood vessels and nerves of parent and offspring would be linked a while longer. Thoughtful-quick-Probing tried to be optimistic. The encounter would be educational for the new individual.
The bud responded to the thought by waving its miniature tentacles, exercising evolving limbs already capable of grasping small objects. The four legs moved only slightly within their encasing skin. They would be the last part of the new individual to separate from the parenting body.