Overhead a flock of noisy unnamed birds was winging its way toward the high mountains. The surrounding underbrush was full of similarly vocal feathered songsters. It struck him that in none of the other places where he had spent time, from Seraboth to Myssar to Daribb, had he encountered so much airborne song. If humans had been the chorus of Earth, then its birds had been its trumpets.
Have to acquire some recordings from the Myssari xenologists, he told himself as he continued to pick his way down the slight slope. He might not be able to live full-time on Earth, but he could take its music with him.
The Myssari expedition had been on Earth for several sublime terrestrial weeks before the first discordant note declared itself.
* * *
—
While no restrictions were placed on Ruslan’s or Cherpa’s movements, the leader of the expedition insisted that they carry sidearms with them on the walks the two humans took frequently. Ruslan scheduled his forays for times when he was not aiding the archeologists in identifying the purpose or providing the names of recovered relics. Sometimes Cherpa went with him. On other occasions they hiked separately, since he preferred the morning hours, while she favored the evening.
Sidearms were necessary because in the absence of humans Earth’s fauna had recovered in numbers not seen on the planet since before the rise of humankind. Not all of these revived species were benign. In particular the expedition’s xenologists singled out in the vicinity of the landing area three examples of large carnivorous felines, any one of which could easily make a meal of an unarmed human or Myssari. Neither was the big cats’ normal prey. They knew nothing of Myssari, while humans had not been available for the taking for hundreds of years. Still, the way any large carnivore determines if something strange and new is good to eat is to taste it, and both the Myssari and the two humans preferred to avoid that possibility.
Between the weapon slung at his hip and the always-on locator/communicator that floated near his lips, Ruslan felt no compunction about wandering through the ruins and the forest that had taken over streets and buildings. Doing so made him feel as if he were a youth again back home on Seraboth, wandering aimlessly in search of sustenance and company, finding ample supplies of the former and none of the latter. Sometimes he went into the ruins with Cherpa, sometimes with a Myssari scientific team.
This morning he was alone. Packs of lesser primates scattered before him, chattering but not complaining at the way history had turned out. This world was theirs once again. Clearly they were happy it was so, despite the disappearance centuries ago of the last handouts. Enormous trees sent powerful aboveground roots searching and curling through the collapsing structures, co-conspirators with the wind and rain in the eternal process of decomposition. Ruslan clambered over and around them, through empty buildings with collapsed roofs, seeking revelation and finding only destruction.
Movement in front of him caused him to pause and put one hand on his weapon. Mindful of the warning about the surviving large native carnivores, he let his forefinger slip down to activate the gun. He did not want to kill anything on a world from which so much life had been taken, but if attacked he would have no hesitation in defending himself.
The predatory nature of the creature that rose before him might have been debatable. Its origin was not.
Gripping a sidearm of its own, the Vrizan approached deliberately. Several more appeared off to Ruslan’s right and left. Drawing his own weapon with his right hand, he murmured to his aural pickup.
“Ruslan speaking. There are Vrizan here. They are armed and closing in on me. I doubt I could outrun them, so I’m not going to try. I’ll attempt to stall them while waiting for pickup.”
“You are wasting your words, human.” The lead Vrizan lowered her (recent study allowed Ruslan to distinguish gender among the Myssari’s rivals) weapon. “Your communications device has been smothered since first we detected you.”
He held his ground. “I have only your word for that. And I still have my weapon.” He gestured with the sidearm.
“You are welcome to retain it.” She continued to advance. “Are you going to shoot me?” She indicated her companions, who now numbered more than a dozen. “What then if we shoot you in return?”
“You won’t shoot me.” He was outrageously confident. “I’m too valuable.”
That halted her. “To kill, yes, but we also have devices that will incapacitate without causing damage. Why make yourself uncomfortable? Killing me would only ensure that. As you surmise, the last thing we wish to do is harm you.”
“Then what do you wish to do?” The longer he could keep the conversation going, he knew, the more time it would give for the Myssari to reach him. Unless, of course, the Vrizan was telling the truth and his locator signal was being masked.
“Treat you as the unique individual you are. Provide for you for the remainder of your life. Show you things to which no Myssari has access. You refused our offer on Treth.”
His thoughts churned furiously. “So, you know about that?”
“Such unique information spreads rapidly and widely. The arrival here of your transporting vessel was noted immediately. It was decided that no action was to be taken and that any investigations its personnel wished to carry out would be allowed to proceed without interference. Then your presence and that of your fellow human was detected. Swift correlation was made with your earlier presence on Daribb. Records of that encounter were reviewed. As a consequence, two decisions were rendered. The first was that if an amenable situation presented itself, we were to try once again to convince you to come with us and aid the Integument in its studies and research into human history and culture.”
“Forget it.” Ruslan gripped his sidearm more tightly. “What’s the second decision?”
The Vrizan officer was staring at him intently. “To use force to compel you to comply if the first decision failed to produce the desired result.” At a gesture from one slender many-jointed arm, the other Vrizan resumed closing in around the specimen.
Ruslan realized he could delay them no longer. Nor could he run fast enough to escape. All he could do was fire. He had no doubt that would produce the kind of reaction the Vrizan had described, probably leaving him provisionally paralyzed. No matter how valuable they considered him, if he killed someone they would be less likely to treat him with the kind of deference they were showing now. But if he surrendered to the Vrizan, before long the Myssari would find his lack of verbal communication puzzling, then alarming. Even if his smothered locator still showed him wandering safely, a lack of response on his part would rouse them to come looking for him. He would have to rely on that.
Forming up into an escort, the Vrizan led him out through the back of the ruined building. He was a bit startled to discover that their leader had been telling the truth about allowing him to keep his sidearm. No one tried to take it from him. Then it occurred to him that if they could smother his locator and communicator, they might well have the technology to do the same to his weapon. He hoped he would not be forced to find out.
In contrast to a Myssari driftec, the flyer they placed him in was larger and more powerful, plainly designed to cover longer distances at higher speeds. Rising much higher into the atmosphere than a driftec could manage, it then accelerated westward. Given the rate of speed at which they were traveling, it was not long before he started worrying how the Myssari, when they did start searching, were ever going to find him.
Left alone, he took the first mental steps toward resigning himself to a new life, in a new captivity. In the decades he had lived among them, the Myssari had been pleasant, even deferential. What would life among the Vrizan be like? Having now encountered them several times, he knew them to be more brusque, more contentious than his current longtime hosts. Except where he was concerned. The alien society into which he would be placed would be different, but his treatment might
well be similar. How he would respond remained to be seen.
He would miss Kel’les, and Bac’cul and Cor’rin, and even Yah’thol. Then he thought of Cherpa and the sixteen children and started to weep. The Vrizan leader, having positioned herself near her prize, regarded the display with unconcealed curiosity.
“You expel salt water from your eyes. This is a voluntary physical reaction to your situation?”
“Yes and no.” Using the back of his bare right arm, Ruslan wiped at his face. “It is an involuntary human expression of sorrow that I’m making no attempt to repress.”
“You have no reason to grieve,” the Vrizan assured him. “You will be treated with the utmost care and respect and will be given whatever you wish.”
“I ‘wish’ to return to my friends.”
“They are not your friends. They are your keepers. You mistake cold scientific calculation for sincere friendship.”
He stared back at her, having a hard time trying to decide on which of the widely spaced eyes to focus. “As opposed to the Vrizan?”
She surprised him again. “No. We are also operating under the aegis of cold scientific calculation. The difference is that I am admitting it to you.”
17
When the atmospheric transit vehicle finally descended low enough for him to once more distinguish individual surface features, Ruslan found himself shocked at the size and extent of the Vrizan outpost. He quickly decided that “outpost” was inadequate to describe what he was seeing. It was at least a station and possibly large enough to qualify as a full-fledged base. The fact that the majority of it threaded its way along the bottom of a narrow, high-walled desert canyon could explain why it had not been detected by the initial, necessarily perfunctory Myssari survey.
He became aware that in addition to the team leader, another nearby Vrizan was watching him closely. Speaking Myssari, the alien responded to the human’s stare with an explanation.
“I am Abinahhs Uit Oln. You may call me by any of my three identifiers.”
Presuming the Vrizan was expecting a reaction, Ruslan complied. “I am Ruslan. You may call me by any one of three identifiers: angry, outraged, and uncooperative.”
“Sarcasm. The plentiful records left by your kind are rife with it. Fascinating to encounter it in life instead of merely in endless folios of dead speech. I am thinking it is even more effective in the original language than when transshipped via the feeble Myssari tongue.”
“In that case I am sorry you don’t speak my original language,” a glum Ruslan retorted, “so that I could provide you with multiple, more extreme examples.”
“In goodening time.” The Vrizan seemed remarkably even-tempered. “I look forward to it.”
“What about my unrelieved hostility?” Ruslan challenged him as their craft leveled off to land. “You have that to look forward to as well.”
The alien’s temperament was unshakable. “That will wither. Time and superior treatment are remarkably effective emollients.”
“I don’t believe I’ll have a chance to experience them.” The transport touched down with the slightest of bumps. “My friends are looking for me even as we speak.”
“I know that they are.” The Vrizan was no less certain than the specimen. “It is possible that they will locate this settlement before we can get you offworld. You will be interested to know that an appropriate Myssari vessel has already been dispatched in our general direction, though it is traveling at a slower speed, is still a considerable distance from here, and can have no idea of exactly where you have been taken.”
Ruslan replied with confidence. “You can be certain they’ll find me. And when they do, you’ll wish you…” He halted, frowning. Unsure of what he had just heard, he sought clarification. “Did you say ‘settlement’?”
“I am pleased that my command of a debased language is sufficiently competent for comprehension by a third party. ‘Settlement’ is the correct term, yes.” Rising from his seat, he gestured toward the back of the passenger compartment, his multi-jointed right arm flowing like a wave. “Please, Ruslan the angry, outraged, and uncooperative. Set aside your three harsh modifiers long enough to exit this craft of your own volition. It would displease me ethically and you physically were it to prove necessary to carry you off.”
Ruslan hesitated. Understanding that there was nothing to be gained by engaging in futile obtuseness (at least at this moment in time), he rose and followed the Vrizan. Two especially large examples of their kind fell in wordlessly behind him. He smiled with grim satisfaction. Though he had nowhere to run to, he was pleased by the notion that they feared such a possibility.
In contrast to the smooth architectural arcs preferred by the Myssari, Vrizan structural design favored conjoined shapes that could be sharply angled as well as curved. Startlingly, some of it was strongly reminiscent of buildings on Seraboth. That the structures boasted a more familiar appearance in no way made them inviting. He knew what the Vrizan wanted with him: the leader of the abduction team had told him as much. As a surviving human he was a living fount of information about his long-vanished kind. In return for details, explication, and explanation, they would doubtless treat him as well as Abinahhs claimed. There was no reason to do otherwise.
As had often been the case on Myssar, he would very much have liked to have been less popular.
They entered a building whose interior had been cleverly tailored to match the tinted sandstone in which it was set. An assortment of automatons whisked around them, some gliding along the smooth, patterned floor, others airborne. Every Vrizan they passed paused to stare at the marvelous acquisition that was Ruslan. He ignored them even to the extent of forgoing obscene gestures. They would have been meaningless in any case and he was too tired to engage in a futile exercise in primitive personal satisfaction. He found himself unable to restrain his own curiosity.
“What kind of ‘settlement’ are you talking about?”
“Why, a permanent one, of course.” Stepping aside, Abinahhs allowed the human to enter the room first.
Ruslan inhaled softly. Of all the things he had expected to encounter within the Vrizan outpost, calculated beauty was not among them.
The room duplicated, down to the smallest detail, a waterfall-dominated slot canyon. The original probably was to be found nearby, he decided as he entered. At the base of the musical spill of cool water was a small rock-lined pool. That the permanent rainbow that angled across the artful cascade was artificially generated made it no less beautiful. Native terrestrial plants fringed the pond. Benches that appeared to be hewn from solid sandstone proved to be composed of much softer and more accommodating synthetics. He sat without having to be told.
The dragonfly that appeared before his eyes paused in chromatic contemplation before flitting away. Brief as the encounter was, he could not tell if it was an actual insect or an artificial construct.
Abinahhs had taken a seat opposite—on a cushion much more like a human seat than a Myssari rest bar. The faux sandstone sank beneath his weight. His widely spaced eyes regarded the human. Ruslan did not doubt for a second that his every word, movement, and eye blink was being recorded by unseen pickups for study later. Never having had a live human to examine, Vrizan xenologists would doubtless be salivating over each individual image. Assuming their digestive processes produced saliva. He knew less about their kind than they did about his.
“You can’t have a permanent settlement here,” he said sharply.
“Why not?” Abinahhs was nothing if not straightforward. The formality Ruslan had come to associate with the Myssari seemed absent among the Vrizan. They were almost…affable. Brusque, but affable.
No, he corrected himself. Friendly overtures did not involve abduction. He remained wary.
“You can’t because this is Earth, homeworld to my kind, the place where my species evolved, built a
civilization through trial and error, and eventually leaped out to the stars.”
“A commendable progression, to be sure. No one is arguing with that. Let me know when you require food or drink and it will be provided.” One long, nearly flexible arm swept wide to take in the surroundings outside the windowless chamber. “Which brings forward the question: where are your kind?”
Ruslan tensed but tried not to show it. Not that the Vrizan was likely to pick up on any physical clues anyway. “You know the answer to that question. As a human it’s not something of which I’m proud even though I, personally, am not responsible for what happened to my species. I’m a victim of the hereditary forces of rampant hubris.” This last was awkward to translate into Myssari. He managed, though he was not sure his translation carried with it the full weight of intended sarcasm.
Rising from his seat, Abinahhs began to pace back and forth in front of the specimen—anxious pacing being another trait Ruslan apparently shared with his captors.
“This world is, by the definition of any civilization, habitable but uninhabited. Respect for previous dominant species does not preclude replacing them. Your Earth is a beautiful world. Why should it not once again resound to the actions and words and deeds of an advanced civilization? That it would not be a human civilization is regrettable but irrelevant. Others of your kind would of course be welcome to settle here among us, with all rights and privileges. Indeed, they would be greeted with excitement and pleasure—were there any left to greet.”
Realization struck Ruslan hard. “You’ve made a formal claim. The Vrizan are claiming Earth.”
Abinahhs did not bother to deny it. “Of course we have. With a world as welcoming as this, we would have put forth a claim whether a previous civilization existed here or not.” Was that empathy in his voice? Ruslan wondered. “Your kind built a civilization, vast and advanced. And then destroyed it. I am afraid the claim of a single survivor does not outweigh that of a vital, developing species such as my own. What would you do with this world if you contested our claim? Preserve an entire habitable planet for one individual and his memories? Humankind was unimaginably destructive. Your comment suggests that in addition to unchecked aggression, unbridled greed was also encoded in its genes.”