Piarai’s enthusiasm was muted. “Is that wise?”
“Not only do I think it wise, I deem it imperative. Now that a second human has come, others may be soon to follow. Best to halt this inclination to enhancement before it spawns a greater infestation still harder to excise.”
Tilting back his head, he gazed at the ceiling, which had been designed to resemble the early morning sky of his home world. Carefully placed points of light duplicated familiar constellations while a single rust-hued moon gleamed not far to the right of his visitor’s head. The pleasant vista never failed to soothe his liver.
“What do you have in mind?” Piarai waited expectantly.
Essasu lowered his gaze. “The humanx station has survived many mastorms, but it is not invulnerable. Surely successive blows have weakened it.”
The first assistant made a perfunctory fourth-degree gesture of comprehension. “I see your thinking. You wish to eliminate not only the personnel but the installation itself. Is it truly necessary?”
The movement of Essasu’s lips conveyed second-degree insistence. “Their presence here is a burr, their progress an embarrassment. Our contact specialists have enough to do without the added burden of competition weighing constantly upon them. I am convinced the time has come to remove that.” He gestured importance.
“Something must happen first to the inhabitants of the humanx station and then to the structure itself. This something must occur discreetly and unnoticed by talkative locals.” He picked at his teeth. “During severe weather would be the best time. It would provide impenetrable cover.”
Piarai was visibly alarmed. “Surely you cannot be thinking of putting a readjustment party on Torrelau in the midst of a mastorm? Even the best stabilized floater would be hard-pressed to make the journey.”
“I know that.” Essasu shifted again in his lounge. “The readjustment party will stand ready to depart at a moment’s notice. At the first sign of an approaching mastorm, they will move at maximum speed to Torrelau. It is a high, rugged place and offers ample room for concealment. According to the reports there are areas where even the locals choose not to go.
“I am thinking particularly of certain high sea cliffs on the east shore that the natives find negotiable but unattractive. A cut in the enclosing reef there allows large swells to break against the rocks, making fishing or any other gainful activity difficult. An expertly piloted float craft could make the approach and land atop the cliffs. From there a landing party could make its way unseen and on foot to the site of the humanx station.” Teeth flashed. “Cleansing should not take long.”
Piarai indicated assent. “The humans will not venture out during a storm.”
“Just as we would not—normally. I myself will lead the team.” He reeled off a handful of names. “Chosatuu should certainly participate. I believe she is adept with explosives.”
The first assistant emphasized his words with a gesture of third-degree concern. “When the station goes silent, investigators will be sent from Ophhlia. If they find any evidence of explosives, blame will not fall on the Parramati.”
“Appropriate care will be taken.” Now that he had made the decision, Essasu was not to be denied. The AAnn commander clicked the claws of one hand against those on the other. “Signs of severe storm damage will be present in abundance. Have confidence in our technicians.”
Piarai remained uncertain but did not show it.
“For example,” Essasu went on, trying to reassure his visitor, “the humanx station includes the usual equipment for monitoring and recording the weather. We will adjust these on site to reflect a mastorm of exceptional intensity. Appropriate explanations in abundance will be provided for any who arrive seeking enlightenment. The destruction will be seen as a consequence of a freak storm among freak storms.”
In light of the base commander’s unshakable confidence, the first assistant’s enthusiasm rose. “And the bodies?” One sandaled foot shuffled against the floor.
Essasu’s gesture was imperceptible. “Seeking shelter from the storm elsewhere on the island, their skimmer will have an accident. It may be found. Their physical remains will be offered to the voracious ocean scavengers of this world. I am confident they will not be found.”
Piarai began to pace. “A tricky undertaking, this.”
“Anything to alleviate the boredom and frustration of this assignment. Kill plans stimulate the mind. It will be beneficial to those fortunate enough to be taken along.”
The first assistant glanced meaningfully at his superior.
“The Parramati of Torrelau may want to know what happened to their humans.”
Essasu let out a derisive hiss. “Why should they care? They are interested only in their ‘roads.’ None bind them to the humans. What happens between us and them lies outside the boundaries of Parramati kusum. They will be less concerned than you think.”
A tapping on the narrow triple-paned window caused both AAnn to turn. A gaily colored hopiak was pecking at the transparency with its short, sharp beak, wings half feathered and half membranous flapping awkwardly against the sand. Beneath the beak a bright pink eye regarded them curiously, while atop the smooth oval skull a second eye kept independent watch on the sky above.
Like so many of Senisran’s native life-forms, the creature was engaging to look upon. It could not break the window, of course. Such colorful intrusions were welcome diversions from the monotony of daily routine.
Turning back to his first assistant, Essasu gestured in such a way as to express self-satisfaction in the second degree. “When questioned by visiting investigators, the Torrelauans will undoubtedly insist that the regrettable loss of property and life was a direct consequence of the deceased humans not mastering the appropriate road, or failing to consult with the relevant stone masters. While expressing our own regrets we can, as interpreters of local kusum, do no less than concur with this somber assessment. It may even serve to strengthen our ties with the locals.”
“The humanx will send others. They will reestablish the station.”
“Of course they will.” Essasu slid out of the lounge and dug his bare feet into the heated sand heaped at its base. “But by that time, in the absence of any competing voices, we should be able to achieve our objective here. If not, we deserve to wear the stigmata of failure.”
Piarai stiffened, his teeth clenching. “Truly.”
The base commander came out from behind the work pillars. “The human female is the only one with a working knowledge of Parramati kusum. With her eliminated, the humans will have to start over again. As they do so, we here on Mallatyah will patiently emphasize their clumsiness and mistakes. We will have our treaty and the humanx will be forced to concede this important corner of Senisran to the Empire.”
He moved to the window. As he did so, the startled hopiak pumped hybrid wings and flapped out of sight, precipitously abandoning its attempt to burrow into the room. It left Essasu with an unobstructed view across the beach to the pale blue water.
“For once I look forward to the next of these interminable little mastorms. Calm weather only means delay, and now that I have determined upon this course I wish to pursue it with utmost vigor to a satisfying conclusion.”
“Have confidence, Commander. It will turn nasty soon enough.” Piarai, too, peered through the window. “It invariably does.” The first assistant gestured second-degree jocularity. “If you wish, I can find a local to consult a weather stone.”
Essasu was not submerged so deeply in his killing vision that he missed the jest, and he was quick to respond with his own hiss of amusement.
8
The longer he had contact with them and more comfortable he grew working in the village, the more Pulickel came to admire the Parramati. From his preparatory research he’d known in advance that their culture was special: different not only from the other aboriginal alien societies he had previously encountered, but from that of their fellow seni, as well. How different, the reports
could not accurately convey. As always, there was no substitute for being in the field.
It was captivating to observe them at work and at play, to see how content they were in their nontechnological lifestyle and how secure in their zealously maintained kusum. The serenity of Parramati village life stood in sharp contrast to the sometimes wrenching cultural changes being undergone by the seni who had opened themselves to humanx and AAnn influence. He found himself reflecting on more than one occasion that, unlike so many other tribes, the Parramati knew themselves.
He and Fawn were making recordings of youngsters at play near the base of the waterfall that tumbled over the steep cliff into the shallow lagoon below the village. With their oversize hind feet, powerful legs, and short muscular tails to aid in steering, the seni were quite comfortable in the water. Their swimming strokes were more akin to those of frogs than humans. They hardly used their three-fingered hands at all.
The volume of water cascading over the cliff was sufficient to keep the youngsters away from the base of the sheer rock walls. Pulickel could hear them playfully taunting one another. The game consisted of seeing who could swim farthest under the falls without being shoved to the bottom of the lagoon by the force of the falling water.
This natural aeration attracted a phantasmagoria of sea creatures, most of whom scooted about the lagoon by pumping water through an astonishing assortment of valves and chambers. Considering their numbers and relative velocities, it was something of a minor miracle that they managed to avoid running into the silicate pseudocorals or one another. The swimming youngsters tried to catch the more brightly colored visitors, rarely with any success. Quick as the natives were, the jet-propelled denizens of the sea were far faster.
The small inflatable the two scientists were using allowed them to move in for closer shots. Behind them, the skimmer sat motionless on the transparent water, secured to the same floating pontoon dock the Torrelauapans used for berthing their wonderful outriggers. Swimming young villagers frequently moved to touch and inspect the alien craft, but they were forbidden by the local big persons to board it.
Pulickel knew the temptation must be great. The seni were a naturally curious species. He could see them examining every centimeter of the vehicle, their vertical pupils fully open, high pointed ears flicked sharply forward, fingers eager to probe. But not one of them was bold enough to violate the prohibitions laid on the craft by their elders.
“I believe that a lot of the Parramati’s success is bound up with the way they order their existence,” Fawn was telling him. “The Herimalu and the Poravvi who live on the islands to the west have a genealogically stratified society. Everything is determined by who your relatives are, and were. The Soroaa elect chiefs and clan leaders. The Parramati organize their existence spatially.”
He watched her as she aimed her recorder at a pair of adolescents frolicking in the water. She was wearing only the skimpy bathing costume she’d had on when they’d first met. Comparative nudity was funny that way. The more of it there was, the less attention it drew after a while. He found that familiarity now allowed him to almost ignore his colleague’s physical attributes. Almost.
She turned to look back where he was seated at the rear of the inflatable and he reflexively shifted his gaze. “It’s all bound up with their mythology of roads, of everything being connected to everything else. It’s just not a concept you find in the Narielle Islands, or the Suruapas, or even in the outer reaches of the Helemachus shoals. Like so much else, it’s unique to Parramat.”
He found himself nodding. “You might be able to steal someone else’s stone, but you can’t steal another person’s space. What about forcing someone off their land?”
She grinned down at him. “Doesn’t work that way. A person’s space moves with them. Roads aren’t fixed; they move with individuals, as well. By the same token, no one owns their individual space. The Parramati don’t believe you can possess space. You can only make use of it.”
He checked the charge on his recorder. “No wonder you’ve had so much trouble here.”
She nodded. “That’s why they’re having such a hard time agreeing to what we want. A mine would make use of space, but the wording of the proposed treaty talks about owning it. That’s the concept they have trouble with.”
“The Commonwealth doesn’t want to own the space. Just the minerals that occupy it. But I follow your reasoning.”
He let his legs dangle over the side of the inflatable. The water in the lagoon was too shallow to admit large predators like the apapanu, and he could cool his feet in safety while electrically hued cephalopods and mollusks darted back and forth beneath them. A nearby bommie consisting largely of blue pseudocorals attracted schools of swimmers. The upthrust tower seemed fashioned of azurite crystals: dark blue spears thrusting up through the crystalline water.
He felt himself becoming altogether too relaxed. The temperature of the lagoon water flirted with thirty degrees. Easy to lie back in the inflatable, forget about work, and go to sleep in the warm sun. No wonder Fawn Seaforth had lost her inquisitive edge. A few months here could turn the most compulsive researcher into a beachcomber.
Resolutely but not without reluctance, he swung his feet back into the little boat. He had a job to do here. It was up to him to resist the exotic blandishments of the local atmosphere, however seductive.
The tropical sun soothed and warmed him. He felt as if he were trying to run through gelatin. At the same time, he couldn’t escape the feeling that there was one key, one discovery, one cultural Rosetta stone that would allow him to deal successfully with Parramati society. When he discovered it, Fawn Seaforth would be impressed, he would be commended and transferred, and the AAnn would again be confounded.
All he had to do was find it.
“This is the most difficult culture to get a handle on I’ve ever dealt with,” he told her. “Everywhere else, irrespective of species, there’s always been a chief, a leader, a senior teacher, an elected representative, a head priest, a respected philosopher, a senior matriarch, even a local mob boss. Someone charged with making decisions. You work up to them and they speak on behalf of those below. This polite semianarchy is frustrating as hell.” He watched something like a rocket-propelled banana with eyes go flashing past beneath the boat.
“Sometimes I wonder if either we or the AAnn will ever persuade these people to agree to anything.”
She turned off her recorder and sat down opposite him, on the curving flank of the inflatable. “And it’s not just individuals you have to convince. You might get a majority to agree to a treaty, but then the clans have to debate it. If the clans agree, then the population of each island in the archipelago has to vote. The power to decide is dispersed through multiple layers.”
“It’s not necessary to remind me,” he complained. “Talk about your fragmentary processes …”
“Roads.” She tried to sound encouraging. “All we have to do is find the right road. The road that leads to general agreement.”
He looked up. “You really think such a ‘road’ might exist?”
“Why not?” she replied cheerfully. “There seems to be one for everything else.” She lay down on the side of the inflatable, a strip of dark photosensitive plastic protecting her eyes.
He looked away from her, to where Parramati youngsters were doing acrobatic flips off a small ledge that projected out over the lagoon. Behind the inflatable, one of the large outriggers was just returning from an extended fishing trip. Its crew rushed to reef the double sails. It was always interesting to view the daily catch. Much of what the Parramati caught resembled outtakes from a fever dream. They were invariably tasty dreams, though, with rarely any bones to deal with.
Something green and yellow and blue-spotted tried to climb into the boat, its four small tentacles groping. Gently, Pulickel nudged it back into the water, discouraging the intrusion. Sometimes the sea life was as curious as the natives.
Parramati wasn’t paradis
e. Roads notwithstanding, ordinary everyday arguments were common enough among its inhabitants. Sometimes disputes were settled violently. But when it came to dealing with outsiders, be they human, AAnn, or other seni, the locals presented a united front. That was the strength of their kusum. They were aggressive only among themselves. What was the point, anyway, of trying to conquer an outlying island when you could not possess its space?
The Parramati had their stones and their roads. Use the stones, follow the roads, and life would be good. Watching them at their everyday tasks, seeing the joy they took in life, who could argue with them?
The sacred stones were the key, he suspected. Understand the stones and you would understand the roads. Understand the roads and you would know what bound the Parramati together. Learn that and you might get them all to agree on something. Perhaps even a formal treaty.
Medicine stones, love stones, fishing stones, planting stones. Weather stones and birthing stones, blessing stones and building stones. Stones of war and stones of sleeping. Tired, he shook his head. Maybe what was needed here was not a xenologist but a mason.
Stones and the roads that connected them. Imaginary lines of power linking all of Parramat and Parramati society. What was his stone, what was his road? The Parramati couldn’t tell him and he couldn’t tell himself.
Whichever road leads to a treaty, he thought. That’s the one I want to find. He smiled to himself. It was there: of that he was certain. It was just in poor condition, full of ruts and potholes, forcing him to go slowly and carefully instead of speed along.
If only he could be as facile with solutions as with metaphors, he mused.
The hell with it. Slipping on mask, rebreather, and fins, he flopped over the side. Fawn ignored him, intent on her work. As he slipped blissfully beneath the surface he felt the warm water envelop and refresh him.
Curious creatures surrounded him, staring and touching. His mask dimmed the glare from the glistening pseudocorals. Reaching the sandy bottom, he sat down and contemplated his utterly alien surroundings, hoping to find inspiration somewhere among the sea-dwellers.