Forge of War (Jack of Harts) (23 page)

Charles shrugged.  “I wasn’t really coming
here
.  I was coming to
you
.”

“Ah,” John said in understanding.  “I must warn you that my answers may not please you.”

“I know,” Charles said.  “But I
trust
you.”

John nodded.  “You can trust me with anything.”  He spread his hands out wide again.  “So what questions do you have?”

Charles chewed his lower lip, considering how to say it.  Then he sighed and bulled right in.  “Have you dealt with the aliens out here?”

John pursed his lips and let out a long breath.  “Well, I’ve dealt with the Peloran of course.  I’ve met one of the Arnam too, but they don’t travel this far much.  I’ve also talked with a Roderan that came this way a time or two.  Not many alien converts yet, you know.  Why do you ask?”

Charles pursed his lips.  “My family has…extensive business interests.”

John’s lips thinned in displeasure.  “I know,” he said in the closest thing to a cool tone he’d used since seeing Charles.

Charles shook his head.  “I…I suppose you would.”

John waved that away as water under the bridge and smiled again.  “What are you beating around the bush about?”

Charles matched his smile, happy to have a friend he could turn to.  “I am trying to find if the names they give us are truly their names or…if they are choosing names to make us think they are something they are not.”

John blinked and Charles could see the wheels turning in his mind.  After a few seconds, John frowned and looked directly at Charles.  “You lost me.  Could you start from the beginning, please?  I have the feeling this is important.”

Charles smiled.  He had gotten his friend’s attention.  That was good.  He would need it.  “My family sent negotiators to the Roderan homeworld.  It is named Svarga.”

John rubbed his jaw and nodded.  “OK.  I gather that means something to you.  What?”

Charles leaned back in the pew.  He had John.  Now he just had to pull him in.  “I have done some research, and it happens that Rod and Svarga were ancient Slavic gods worshiped in what is now Russia before
that
came in and took over,” he finished with a wave at the cross.

“Oh,” John said in a voice that suggested deep contemplation.  “That’s…interesting.”

Charles smiled.  “Yes.  Then there are the Peloran and the Arnam.”

John frowned.  “What
about
them?”

Charles cleared his throat.  “The people who created them came from a planet called
Albion
, and the name the Peloran call them is the People of Danaan.”

John’s frown deepened, and Charles saw him pull something out of a deep memory.  “Isn’t Albion another name for…the British Isles?”

Charles chuckled, impressed that John had remembered that little datum.  “Yes it is.  The People of Danaan settled in Ireland possibly…four thousand years ago according to our histories.  It is also in some traditions a name given to the Otherworld, literally another world that the Celts sometimes found themselves traveling to.”

John rubbed his jaw in deep thought.  “That’s…
very
interesting.  I suppose this ties into the Shang’s arrival, doesn’t it?”

Charles nodded in approval.  “Yes.”

John licked his lips, looking uncomfortable with the discussion.  “I thought that was ruled a hoax.”

Charles smiled.  “It
was
ruled a hoax, by the best experts Washington could buy.  You know my family owns HW News, right?”

John nodded.

“Well, I saw the order to the media to report the hoax.  I also saw the original transmission and all the tracking information our satellites could generate on it.  It came from the Shang fleet,
not
from that rogue satellite.”

“Damn.  Sorry, Lord.”  John said with a glance towards the cross.  He turned back to Charles and shook his head.  “So are you going to say that something called the Shang actually
were
on Earth in the past?”

Charles smiled.  “Very close.  It was the Shangdi.  The Emperors of the Shang Dynasty of ancient China were supposedly sons of Shangdi, the ultimate god of their mythology.”

John sighed and covered his eyes with one hand.  “Why didn’t anybody report that when the Shang first arrived?” he asked in a pained voice.

Charles let out a long breath.  “They did. 
In
China
.  From what I uncovered on
American
news sources, they tried.  But every fax and cast that published it was hacked and burned.  The rest fell in line pretty quick.”

John frowned.  “How do you know this?”

Charles gave John a dangerous smile.  “Because one of the hackers that did the burning is on my father’s permanent payroll.

John’s frown turned angry.  “You’re describing an organized disinformation campaign by the government about the Shang,” he said in a dangerous tone that Charles well remembered from their youth.

Charles aimed a firm nod at his friend.  “Yes, I am.  The Shang
did
tell us that they are our gods.  They
did
tell us that they have returned.  I have seen the
proof
that they told us that.  Either they are telling us the truth, or they are lying.  I
intend
to find out which.”

John set his teeth and looked up at the cross.  “If they were lying, then our course is pretty clear.  We tell them to stuff it, right?”

Charles smiled as the shadow of the man John had once been slipped through the calm pastoral form he took now.  “Right.”

John turned back to him with a grim look.  “The other possibility is a bit more tricky.”

Charles met his look without any hesitation.  “That is a profound understatement.”

John sighed.  “And you’re here, talking to me, because you’re looking for…what…guidance?  From me?”

Charles smiled and pulled in a deep breath before answering.  “Yes.”

John turned to Dorothy.  “You have anything to add to this conversation?”

Dorothy shook her head.  “I am sorry.  I do not know.”

John frowned and aimed a long, considering look at her.  “Aren’t you a cyber?”

Dorothy smiled again.  “I
am
.  But I was born Terran, so what I remember is
Terran
history, not Peloran.  I am not…
cleared
to know the Peloran histories.  I could ask the Peloran members of my family, but…I would receive the same answer anybody else gets when they ask.”

“No answer at all,” Charles supplied when John looked curious.  “They neither confirm nor deny any question about our past, saying that it is our history and our task to learn it.”

John scratched his chin.  “That does match my experience with them,” he said with a nod of his head.

“The difficulty is that we only know the aliens who have come to us.  We cannot travel to them.  Our hyperdrives cannot travel that far, and Peloran hyperdrives are…hard to acquire even for my family.”

“So we can’t go to them and study their own histories?” John asked, a look of interest behind his eyes.

“Exactly,” Charles returned.  “The Peloran make it more difficult by not using race names like we are used to.  They use names based on
who
people came from.  To them, I am Charles of William, not Charles Edward Hurst.  The Albion were the People of Danaan, which some of our mythologies recognize.  The Peloran are the People of Govaan, which does not seem familiar.  The Arnam have their own name too, which is also unfamiliar.  Though I have found that to them we are the People of Awdaan.”

“Adam,” John whispered, a thread of pleasure in his voice.

Charles smiled at the slim thread he’d given his friend.  “Presumably.”

John frowned.  “So do they call the Chinese that?”

Charles frowned as well.  “As a race, yes, but from a cultural perspective, they are called the People of Huang.  He was the first great Chinese Emperor who united China.”

“Interesting.  So what do they call us?”

Charles smiled.  “The People of Washington.”

John chuckled.  “I should have seen that coming, I suppose.”

“Yes, you should have,” Charles said with an answering chuckle.

John clicked his tongue against his teeth in deep thought.  “It occurs to me that naming a people like that would require a deep understanding of their history.  It could take some time to develop that.”

Charles smiled again, glad to see the mind of his friend fully engaged in the discussion.  “Yes.  Do you remember that Aneerin spoke perfect English and several other languages when he made Contact?  They were obviously watching us long enough to learn our languages.  Now I have a theory that they may have been watching us at least as far back as the twentieth century, but it’s just a theory that matches some questionable reports from the past with what we
know
now..”

John chewed his lower lip.  “Tell me.”

Charles cleared his throat.  “Have you ever heard of the Foo Fighters?”

John gave him a confused look.  “The rock band?”

Charles coughed to disguise a laugh.  “The things the rock band
named
themselves after.”

John’s eyes narrowed.  “No, I haven’t.”

Charles pulled in a deep breath.  “Back during World War II, there were…reports from Allied and German pilots of craft that flew in formation with them.  The Allies called them Foo Fighters because they couldn’t figure out what they were.”  Charles shrugged.  “They actually had another word on the front, but you probably don’t want me saying it here,” he said with a wink.

John chuckled.  “I’ll trust your instincts on that.”

Charles gave him an innocent shrug.  “Well, these Foo Fighters never opened fire on either side, they just flew with them for a while, matched every move the pilots of the time tried, and then flashed away whenever they felt like it.  They did things only a craft with gravitic controls could manage.  Now these are just reports and stories, but…they were usually
cigar
-shaped, almost always with small fins or wings.”

John’s eyes widened and he rubbed his jaw in thought.  “Cigar-shaped?”

Charles nodded.  “A big long tube with some fins for weapons or wings.”  Charles lifted one hand up.  “Now most reports had them as silver, not white, but I’m betting you recognize the shape.”

“The Peloran,” John supplied.

“The Peloran,” Charles agreed.

“Damn.  Sorry, Lord,” he said with another glance at the cross.

Charles shook his head.  “If those reports were real and it really was the Peloran…”

“How much
longer
have they been watching us?” John filled in after Charles trailed off.

Charles raised one finger.  “Exactly.”

John shook his head.  “I don’t know.  It seems like a mouthful to accept.”

Charles shrugged.  “Arthur C. Clark said it long ago.  Advanced enough technology will look like magic to someone who does not recognize it.”

John nodded.  “Yeah, that makes sense, and I can even see it, from a theoretical point of view of course,” he noted with a stern look.

Charles smiled, accepting the conditions of the argument with good grace.

John cleared his throat.  “What I’m wondering about is…why did they leave?”

Charles blinked in confusion.  John had just completely lost him.  “What?”

John sighed.  “Let’s put it this way.  If you were a great and all powerful alien who is worshiped as a god, would
you
let some crazy cult show up and take all your believers from you?  And
then
spread out to all corners of the world, and
beyond
?”

Charles cleared his throat and looked up at the cross.  It was a good point.  “Look, we know the Albion died so that explains
that
.  As for the rest?  Well…the Peloran talk as if civilization died with the Albion.  Trade of goods and information alike.  Thousands of systems were destroyed, countless ships, and even
they
cannot begin to calculate how many people died.  Maybe everybody stopped coming here.”

John shook his head.  “No.  I don’t buy that.  Even one ship that came to Earth even a hundred years ago could have easily ruled us all.  One survivor of that war could have lived as a god here.  And if they’d been here before, they’d know how to get here.”

“That’s a good point,” Charles whispered.  He let out a long breath and chewed his lower lip.  “You may not like this, but a couple thousand years ago we
did
have a pretty important person show up and say he was the Son of God.”

John shook his head again.  “You’re right.  I
don’t
like that idea.”

“I’m just taking the discussion to the end point,” Charles said with an apologetic smile.