Dirge

  , "Mr. Mallory, you may call me anything you want." Lowering his hand, she squeezed it very tightly before lowering it back to the bed. "You've earned that right."

  "I don't want it as a 'right.' I want it from a friend."

  "However you wish," she told him softly.

  The moment was broken, though not shattered, as Dr. Chimbu, several military and civilian personnel Tse did not recognize, and two medical technicians entered the room. Though they filled it, there was no frenzy, no pushing or shoving. Everyone, including the solemn-visaged officers, was quiet and respectful.

  "Mr. Mallory," Chimbu began gently, "we don't want to crowd you. If there are too many people in here now, just say so and we'll have some leave."

  The man in the bed grinned. He had not let go of the nurse's hand, and she did not draw it away. "Too many people? There aren't enough. There can never be enough for me, not ever again."

  Standing behind the chief medical officer, a handsome woman in a colonel's uniform was no longer able to restrain herself. It was an attitude plainly shared by everyone around her.

  "Mr. Mallory, as I'm sure you can understand there are some of us who very badly would like to ask you some questions. If you don't feel up to it..."

  "Ask away." He smiled up at Tse. "And how about some real food? Applesauce is fine - preferably on a large eland sirloin, with fried potatoes. And gravy. And shellfish - any kind of shellfish."

  Tse glanced expectantly at Chimbu, who looked reluctant but eventually nodded. "A small sirloin," he could not forbear from adding.

  The elegant soldier was hesitating, spurring Mallory to prompt her. "Go ahead and ask what you will. You won't upset me. I've done my time in upset land."

  "Very well. Mr. Mallory, I'm sure you know that everything that has happened in your vicinity since you were brought here has been carefully monitored. I'm sure you must understand that given the reception the Pitar have been accorded here on Earth and elsewhere, coupled with the fact that over a period of some five years they have displayed nothing even remotely like the behavior you have described - the story you just told is difficult for the rest of us to accept." The hospital room was dead silent as everyone waited to see how the patient would react.

  Mallory's reply was low, but perfectly intelligible. "So you think I'm a liar?"

  "Nobody said that," another officer hastened to add. "Nobody's calling you a liar." He looked to the woman, then back down at the ravaged figure in the bed. "You've been through a terrible ordeal, sir. It's a miracle that you survived, much less with your body and your..." Aware he had stumbled into awkward territory, he broke off.

  Mallory finished the thought for him. "My mind intact?" His eyes searched the attentive gathering. "You think I may have hallucinated what happened on Treetrunk? How about the six hundred thousand dead or missing?" His voice rose perceptibly. "That's one hell of a hallucination."

  "No one disputes the destruction of Treetrunk." The female officer's tone was tender, but hardly condescending. "That is something no human being would dare try to deny. What Major Rothenburg and the rest of us are wondering is if you actually saw what you say you saw, or if your mind, overwhelmed by the horror, invented something, however implausible, to mask or blot out an even worse reality."

  "Worse reality? Worse than genocide? Worse than female reproductive organ evisceration and theft?" He shook his head slowly. "Ma'am, all I can say is, you must have a greater capacity for inventing horror than I do."

  From his position near the end of the bed, Chimbu spoke up. "Mr. Mallory, Colonel Nadurovina is an eminent military psychiatrist specializing in combat and combat-related disorders. She doesn't mean to impugn your veracity. Like the rest of us, she only wants what's best for you - and to get at the truth."

  "The truth!?!" His voice bordering on hysteria, the patient leaned sharply forward in the bed. Nearby, a medtech activated the osmotic hypo he held behind his back and started forward. Startled by the unexpected violence of his response, Tse let go of Mallory's hand. But she did not stand up or retreat from her position alongside him. Seeing the sudden fear in her face, he made an effort to regain his composure.

  "I've told you the truth. Whether you believe it or not is up to you." Staring hard at the circle of the curious, he added warningly, "You'd better, because there's no guarantee the

  Pitar won't try something like it again. Unless, of course, they got everything they needed from Treetrunk."

  "Human female reproductive organs?" Rothenburg's tone laid bare his skepticism. "You'll excuse me, Mr. Mallory, if that doesn't strike some of us as unsound grounds for rationalizing an assault on a colony. To gain a strategic advantage or base, yes; to acquire a world rich in rare metals and minerals, perhaps; or even to try and intimidate the occupying species into conceding possession, possibly. But what you say makes no sense."

  "Deliver us from the blindered workings of the military mind," he muttered. "What's the military doing here anyway?"

  "When six hundred thousand people are slaughtered without mercy or warning, it becomes a military matter," a man behind Rothenburg replied stiffly.

  Mallory grunted and leaned back against his pillows. "For what it's worth, it doesn't make any sense to me, either. Pitar and human can't generate offspring, but at the same time I can't put the kind of organized organ-gathering I witnessed down to morbid scientific curiosity or aimless disemboweling. The Pitar I saw looked like they knew exactly what they wanted and how to go about getting it. They had storage containers ready to store their... handiwork. What they did was for a reason. If they had other motives for annihilating Treetrunk, then they're the only ones who can tell you about them." He made an obscene gesture, heedless of who might be watching via relay on distant monitors.

  "Me, I think we should put every weapon we can find on every ship that can be mustered and blow them out of existence all the way back to their beloved bastard Dominion, and then seed both their precious Twin Worlds with radioactive dust that has a nice, long half-life. How about it? Why don't you put the question to a couple of their local representatives? Gauge their reaction. They'll lie, of course. Fluently. They're doubtless convinced they obliterated any evidence of their treachery. Which they did - except for me." The bluster and bravado abruptly leaked out of him like the air from a balloon subject to deep-sea pressures. His voice became small and frightened, as if two distinct personalities were fighting for space in the same body.

  "They don't know about me, do they? They don't know I'm here...?"

  "Easy," Tse told him, leaning closer and stroking his arm with her fingers. "Be calm, Alwyn. Nobody knows you're here." She looked anxiously over at Chimbu. "Do they?"

  The chief physician shook his head. His words spelled confidence. "Only the upper echelon of the hospital staff knows about Mr. Mallory's origins. Beyond the people presently assembled in this room, there are a handful of government officials who had to be informed."

  Colonel Nadurovina added soothingly, "You would be surprised who knows and who does not, who was deliberately informed and who was kept in the dark. You are safe here, Mr. Mallory. If you look in the hallway you will not see much, if you look out your window you will see less, but it would take vaster weaponry than we believe the Pitar or any other species possesses to reach you." She smiled, and it did not seem forced or artificial. "At this moment you may very well be, Mr. Mallory, the best-protected individual in this portion of the Orion Arm. The members of the world council are not as well looked after."

  "Then you do believe me." She might not be in charge, but Nadurovina acted as if she was, so he directed half his attention to her. Whether she was aware of it or not, the rest had been settled on Irene Tse.

  "We believe you saw something. We believe that a powerful and inimical sentience is responsible for the eradication of human life on Treetrunk. Whether those two things are one and the same we cannot accept on the word of one man found drifting in space starving, near death, and out of his mind." This time
her smile was wry. "Surely you can appreciate the sensitivity of my position and that of my colleagues who are charged with rendering a decision in this matter."

  "Question the Pitar," Mallory shot back. "Corner them and press them. Ask them what they might want with human organs and judge their reaction."

  A plump man in civilian clothes who had hitherto been silent now pushed his way forward. "I am Jenju Burriyip. I represent the world council." His lips curved upward. "Those members who have been informed, anyway. Please tell me, Mr. Mallory, how I am supposed to confront the representatives of what to this point has been a likeable, good-natured species and inquire politely if they might perchance have in an off moment slaughtered six hundred thousand of my fellow beings?"

  "How should I know?" the patient snapped curtly. "I'm no diplomat."

  Burriyip nodded solemnly. "That is exactly my point, Mr. Mallory. If, and please bear with me when I say 'if,' what you have told us has somehow become confused by your condition, or distorted because you have suffered physically, or has otherwise been altered in your mind, and we wrongly accuse the Pitar, however obliquely, then we stand to forfeit some nice, useful, popular new friends. If word got out, the government could fall."

  "Listen to me." Mallory chose his words slowly and carefully. "The Pitar are not nice. They are not ever going to be 'useful.' They murdered six hundred thousand men, women, and children, for what depraved reasons of their own I can't say. And if they only had to do it once to get what they wanted or needed, and never do anything like it again, then they will have done worse than what they did. They will have gotten away with it."

  Burriyip was immovable. "I said 'if,' Mr. Mallory. No one is ready to discount your theory out of hand."

  "Goddammit, it's not a theory!" He looked as if he was going to start crying again but pulled himself together with an effort. The hypo wielder held his ground. "Then you won't confront the Pitar?"

  The representative sighed heavily. "I am sorry, Mr. Mallory, but to accuse an entire race of interspecies genocide on the word of one man... We cannot. You have to understand that. You do not have to like it, but you do have to understand."

  "I understand that if you don't do something you're going to have humankind dancing and laughing down through the years hand in hand with the worst enemies in its history, and that they're the ones who are going to be laughing the hardest. If they do laugh, that is."

  "We will do something, Mr. Mallory." Nadurovina tried her best to mollify him. "We will find out who is lying and who is telling the truth."

  "And most of all," Rothenburg added, "we're going to find out who or what was responsible for what happened on Argus V"

  "Not if you don't ask the right people the right questions." Closing his eyes, Mallory slumped deeper into the pillows.

  Tse held his wrist, not trusting the machines. "That's enough. He's only recently emerged from his coma, and this is more activity than he should have to endure."

  Chimbu rose. "Nurse Tse is right. We should leave so he can get some rest."

  "When can we talk to him again?" Despite his professional skepticism, Rothenburg felt concern for the man in the bed.

  "Not before tomorrow." Chimbu began to urge everyone out of the room, an insistent father herding his flock. "If you don't want to communicate with a mind that might be playing tricks on itself, allow it to rest. If his vitals continue to strengthen and he is willing, we'll try this again tomorrow."

  "Maybe once he's rested some more he'll remember something else," Rothenburg murmured as he stepped out into the corridor.

  "Like who actually committed the atrocity?" Nadurovina followed her colleague down the hall.

  "Then you don't believe his story?" Absently, Rothenburg saluted the two guards who were posted at the far end of the walkway.

  "I don't know. The Pitar as exterminators? And for such an obscure reason? One that might well devolve from some unhappy or repressed childhood sexual experience of the patient's? I could not find anything in his records, but that does not mean there is nothing of the kind buried deep within his memories." They entered the hospital lift and stood back from the closing doors. "That does not mean he is not telling the truth. The question remains, is it the truth as it actually is or merely the truth as his traumatized self sees it?"

  Rothenburg considered. "Burriyip meant it when he said the government couldn't confront the Pitar."

  "I know. We cannot, either. Not without a specific directive from above, one that I do not think will be forthcoming. Ever since the first encounter, people have been mesmerized by the Pitar."

  Rothenburg nodded knowingly. "My wife has two outfits inspired by Pitarian design. She'd find the very idea of them killing one human grotesquely laughable, let alone hundreds of thousands. If we challenge or accuse them in any way, there'll be diplomatic bedlam. Careers will be ruined, or at the very least any hopes for advancement aborted. In that respect Burriyip wasn't understating the gravity of the situation. Such a confrontation really could bring down the government."

  "I agree. Neither the government nor the military can directly confront the Pitar. But someone else can."

  "Someone else?" Rothenburg's uncertainty showed in his expression. "Who else could possibly...?" He halted in mid-query. "You can't be thinking what I think you're thinking."

  Nadurovina did not smile. Her posture was as regimented as her thinking. "Tell me true, Erhard: Haven't you ever, watching such happenings on the tridee, had the desire one time in your life to gamble a million credits or so on a single throw of the dice, or spin of the futures' globe?"

  They stepped out of the lift and into a main hallway, busy with nurses and medtechs, doctors and support personnel. The two by now familiar uniformed officers hardly rated a glance.

  "We could lose him," Rothenburg warned her. "The shock might be too much, even if the Pitar are involved only in his imagination. Fantasy can kill as readily as reality."

  "I'll speak to Chimbu about it. Medication and specialists will be standing by at all times in the next room, ready to intervene."

  "What about the Pitar? What makes you think one of them will agree to see him?"

  The colonel's mouth twitched. "How could they refuse? Compassionate and neighborly as they are, it would look funny if they declined to offer their deepest sympathies to the sole survivor of the Treetrunk holocaust. Anyone who agrees to pay their respects will be intimately screened for the carrying of anything even potentially inimical, of course, before being allowed to come within a hundred kilometers of this island, much less this hospital. Much less Mr. Alwyn Mallory's presence."

  "Even so," Rothenburg felt compelled to point out as they turned a corner, "determined assassins invariably find a way."

  Nadurovina nodded thoughtfully. "In that event we would have something of an answer by roundabout means, wouldn't we?" Rothenburg did not know what to say in response to this cool, detached calculation. "But I do not think that will be a problem. The Pitar may very well believe that we are testing them with words. If they are the responsible party, as Mallory continues to insist, then they will gladly go along with any test they believe will help to remove them from the list of suspected peoples. If they are not responsible and their participation in the atrocity is nothing more than a figment of Mr. Mallory's addled imagination, no harm will have been done."

  "Not to human-Pitar relations, maybe," Rothenburg objected, "but what about to the patient?"

  "Time to roll the dice, Erhard."

  He smiled thinly at his colleague. "Easy to say when it's not your sanity that's at stake."

  His retort clearly troubled her. "In spite of what you may think, I don't recommend this course of action easily or without qualms, Major. However inchoate, I am quite aware that Mr. Mallory is our only connection with whatever happened on Treetrunk. I have no more desire to see him lose his strengthening grasp on reality than you or anyone else. But I am the senior officer here, and I am the one being pressured for answers. Not inf
ormed speculation, not reasoned hypotheses, but answers. Whatever happens if we confront Mr. Mallory with his terrors, whatever the consequences, I am the one who will have to answer for them. I am prepared to take that risk."

  "Again, with somebody else's dice." Rothenburg refused to let his colleague and superior off the hook. "In spite of initial impressions I find myself liking this Mallory."

  "It is not his likability that is at stake here. For what it is worth, I like him, too. But in the resolution of this frightful mystery, neither his life, nor mine, nor yours, means anything."

  "All right. I'll cosign on the requisite directives so long as you accept ultimate responsibility."

  She found herself walking toward the exit. Outside were languid breezes and the scent of orchids, the warm, moist aroma of mother Earth. Upstairs lay a lonely, frightened man who might hold the key to cataclysm, if only they could drag the proof or denial of it out of him.

  "As senior officer on site, I have no choice. So I might as well do it willingly. You will commence the necessary arrangements?"

  He nodded. "I'll handle my end of things. How long before you think you can have one or more of them here?"

  "One should do, I think. If we make too much of a show of it they may become suspicious. We want them to react, not anticipate. I will discuss with Dr. Chimbu a means of monitoring Mr. Mallory's reactions even more effectively than we do now. We will need to record everything that happens in the finest detail for study later."

  "In case he locks up, or blanks out again, or dies?" Resigned to the turn of events Rothenburg might be, but he was not happy about them.

  Nadurovina ignored the sarcasm. "Yes. In case any of those eventualities unfortunately come to pass. I hope they will not."

  "What about having the nurse present - Tsue or Tsoy or whatever her name is?"

  "Irene Tse. She should be there. She is good for him. She does a lot of little things."

  Rothenburg was moved to reluctant admiration. "You don't miss much, do you, Colonel?"