Old Man's War Boxed Set 1 (82 page)

“Of course,” Gau said.

“But isn’t that the way of things. Life surprises.” OrenThen turned again to go.

“How will I know when you’ve reached a decision?” Gau asked.

“You’ll know,” orenThen said, not looking back.

“How?” Gau asked.

“You’ll hear it,” orenThen said, and turned his head back to the general. “That much, I can promise.” Then he turned back and walked to his transport, and with his escort drove away.

Gau’s lieutenant approached him. “What did he mean when he said you’ll hear his answer, General?” he asked.

“They chant,” Gau said, and pointed toward the colony, still under spotlight. “Their highest art form is a ritualized chant. It’s how they celebrate, and mourn, and pray. Chan was letting me know that when he’s done talking with his colonists, they would chant their answer to me.”

“Are we going to hear it from here?” the lieutenant asked.

Gau smiled. “You wouldn’t be asking that if you’d ever heard a Whaidi chant, Lieutenant.”

Gau waited the long night, listening, his vigil occasionally interrupted by the lieutenant or one of the other soldiers offering him a hot drink to keep him alert. It wasn’t until the colony’s sun rose out of the eastern sky that Gau heard what he was listening for.

“What is that?” the lieutenant asked.

“Quiet,” Gau said, and waved his annoyance. The lieutenant backed off. “They’ve begun their chanting,” Gau said a moment later. “Right now they’re chanting a welcome to the morning.”

“What does it mean?” the lieutenant asked.

“It means they’re welcoming the morning,” Gau said. “It’s
ritual
, Lieutenant. They do it every day.”

The morning prayer rose and fell in volume and intensity, continuing on for what seemed to the general a maddeningly long time. And then it came to a ragged, hesitant ending; Gau, who had been pacing through the latter parts of the morning prayer, stopped stock-still.

From the colony came a new chant, in a new rhythm, growing progressively louder. Gau listened to it for several long moments and then slumped, as if suddenly tired.

The lieutenant was at his side almost instantly. Gau waved him off. “I’m fine,” he said. “I’m fine.”

“What are they chanting now, General?” the lieutenant asked.

“Their anthem,” Gau said. “Their national anthem.” He stood up. “They’re saying that they won’t leave. They’re saying they would rather die as Whaidi than live under the Conclave. Every man, woman and child in that colony.”

“They’re crazy,” the lieutenant said.

“They’re patriots, Lieutenant,” Gau said, turning to the officer. “And they’ve chosen what they believe in. Don’t be disrespectful of that choice.”

“Sorry, General,” the lieutenant said. “I just don’t understand the choice.”

“I do,” Gau said. “I just hoped it would be different. Bring me a communicator.” The lieutenant hustled off. Gau turned his attention to the colony, listening to its members chanting their defiance.

“You always were stubborn, old friend,” Gau said.

The lieutenant returned with a communicator. Gau took it, keyed in his encrypted code and opened it to a common channel. “This is General Tarsem Gau,” he said. “All ships recalibrate beam weapons and prepare to fire on my mark.” The spotlights, still visible in the morning light, disappeared as the ships’ weapons crews recalibrated their beams.

The chanting stopped.

Gau nearly dropped his communicator. He stood, mouth agape, staring at the colony. He walked slowly toward the edge of the bluff, whispering something softly. The lieutenant, standing nearby, strained to hear.

General Tarsem Gau was praying.

The moment held, suspended in the air. And then the colonists took up their anthem once more.

General Gau stood on the edge of the bluff overlooking a river, now silent, eyes closed. He listened to the anthem for what seemed like forever.

He raised his communicator.

“Fire,” he said.

Jane had gotten out of the medical bay and was waiting for me on the porch of our bungalow, eyes up at the stars.

“Looking for something?” I asked.

“Patterns,” Jane said. “All the time we’ve been here, no one’s made any constellations. I thought I’d try.”

“How’s it going?” I asked.

“Terrible,” she said, looking at me. “It took me forever to see the constellations on Huckleberry, and they were already there. Making up new ones is even more trouble. I just see stars.”

“Just focus on the bright ones,” I said.

“That’s a problem,” Jane said. “My eyes are better than yours now. Better than everyone else’s. They’re
all
bright. That’s probably why I never saw constellations until I came to Huckleberry. Too much information. You need human eyes to see constellations. Just another piece of my humanity taken away.” She looked up again.

“How are you feeling?” I asked, watching her.

“I’m fine,” Jane said. She raised up the hem of her shirt; the slash in her side was livid even in the dim light, but far less worrisome than it had been before. “Dr. Tsao patched it up, but it was healing even before she got to it. She wanted to take a blood
sample to check for infection but I told her not to bother. It’s all SmartBlood by now, anyway. I didn’t tell her that.” She dropped her hem.

“No green skin, though,” I said.

“No,” Jane said. “No cat’s eyes, either. Or BrainPal. Which is not to say that I don’t have increased capabilities. They’re just not obvious, for which I’m grateful. Where have you been?”

“Watching the director’s cut of the Whaidi colony annihilation,” I said. Jane looked at me quizzically; I recounted what I’d just been watching.

“Do you believe it?” Jane asked me.

“Do I believe what?” I asked.

“That this General Gau was hoping not to destroy the colony,” Jane said.

“I don’t know,” I said. “The discussion was honest enough. And if he simply wanted to destroy the colony, he could have done it without having to go through the mime show of trying to get the colony to surrender.”

“Unless it was a terror tactic,” Jane said. “Break the colonists’ will, get them to surrender, destroy them anyway. Send the evidence to other races to demoralize them.”

“Sure,” I said. “That only makes sense if you’re planning to subjugate the race. But that doesn’t sound like how the Conclave is supposed to work. It sounds like it’s a union of races, not an empire.”

“I’d be careful of making assumptions based on one video,” Jane said.

“I know,” I said. “But it’s bothering me. The video the CU gave us shows the Conclave simply destroying the Whaidi colony. We’re supposed to see the Conclave as a threat. But the video I’ve just seen says to me it’s not that simple.”

“That’s why it was edited out,” Jane said.

“Because it’s ambiguous?” I asked.

“Because it’s confusing,” Jane said. “The Colonial Union sent us here with specific instructions and gave us the information to support those instructions, without the information that would cause us to doubt them.”

“You don’t see that as a problem,” I said.

“I see it as tactical,” Jane said.

“But we’ve been working on the premise that the Conclave is an immediate and genocidal threat,” I said. “This suggests it’s not.”

“You’re back to making assumptions without much information,” Jane said.

“
You
knew about the Conclave,” I said. “Is a genocidal Conclave consistent with what you know?”

“No,” Jane said. “But I’ve said before that what I know about the Conclave comes from Charles Boutin, who was actively planning treason against the Colonial Union. He’s not credible.”

“It still bothers me,” I said. “I don’t like it that all this information was kept from us.”

“The Colonial Union manages information,” Jane said. “It’s how it keeps control. I’ve told you this before. It shouldn’t be news now.”

“It makes me wonder what else we don’t know,” I said. “And why.”

“We can’t know,” Jane said. “We have the information the Colonial Union has provided us on the Conclave. We have what little I know. And we have this new portion of video. That’s all we have.”

I thought about it a minute. “No,” I said. “We have something else.”

“Can you two lie?” I asked Hickory. It and Dickory were standing in front of me in our bungalow’s living room. I was sitting in my
desk chair; Jane stood to my side. Zoë, whom we had woken up, was yawning on the couch.

“We have not yet lied to you,” Hickory said.

“But you can clearly evade, since that’s not what I asked you,” I said.

“We can lie,” Hickory said. “It is a benefit of consciousness.”

“I wouldn’t call it a benefit,” I said.

“It opens up a number of intriguing possibilities in communication,” Hickory said.

“I suppose that’s true,” I said. “None of which I’m interested in right now.” I turned to Zoë. “Sweetheart, I want you to order these two to answer all my questions truthfully, without any lies or evasions.”

“Why?” Zoë said. “What’s going on?”

“Please do it, Zoë,” I said. Zoë did as I asked.

“Thank you,” I said. “You can go back to bed now, sweetie.”

“I want to know what’s going on,” Zoë said.

“It’s not something you need to worry about,” I said.

“You order me to have these two tell you the truth, and you want me to believe it’s
not
something I need to worry about?” Zoë said.

“Zoë,” Jane said.

“Besides, if I leave there’s no guarantee they won’t lie to you,” Zoë said, moving quickly before Jane could finish. Zoë knew she could negotiate with me; Jane was much more of a hard-ass. “They’re emotionally equipped to lie to you, because they don’t care about disappointing you. But they don’t want to disappoint
me
.”

I turned back to Hickory. “Is this true?” I asked.

“We would lie to you if we felt it was necessary,” Hickory said. “We would not lie to Zoë.”

“There you go,” Zoë said.

“Breathe a word of this to anyone and you’re spending the next year in a horse stall,” I said.

“My lips are sealed,” Zoë said.

“No,” Jane said, and came over to Zoë. “I need you to understand that what you’re hearing here you absolutely cannot share with anyone else. Not Gretchen. Not any of your other friends. Not anyone. It’s not a game and it’s not a fun secret. This is dead serious business, Zoë. If you’re not ready to accept that, you need to leave this room right now. I’ll take my chances with Hickory and Dickory lying to us, but not you. So do you understand that when we tell you not to share this with anyone, that you
cannot
share it with anyone else? Yes or no.”

“Yes,” Zoë said, staring up at Jane. “I understand, Jane. Not a word.”

“Thank you, Zoë,” Jane said, and then bent down and kissed the top of Zoë’s head. “Go ahead,” she said, to me.

“Hickory, you remember when we had the conversation where I told the two of you that I wanted you to hand over your consciousness implants,” I said.

“Yes,” said Hickory.

“We talked about the Conclave then,” I said. “And you said that you didn’t believe the Conclave was a threat to this colony.”

“I said that we believed the threat to be negligible,” Hickory said.

“Why do you believe that?” I asked.

“The Conclave prefers that colonies are evacuated rather than destroyed,” Hickory said.

“How do you know this?” I said.

“From our own information on the Conclave, provided to us by our government,” Hickory said.

“Why didn’t you share this information with us before?” I asked.

“We were told not to,” Hickory said.

“By whom?” I asked.

“By our government,” Hickory said.

“Why would they tell you not to share this?” I asked.

“We have a standing order from our government not to share information with you on matters about which you are not substantially informed,” Hickory said. “It is a courtesy to your government, which requires security and confidence from our own government on numerous matters. We have not lied to you, Dickory and I, but we are not allowed to volunteer information, either. You will recall before we left Huckleberry that we had asked you what you knew of the status of this part of space.”

“Yes,” I said.

“We were attempting to discover how much of our knowledge we were allowed to share with you,” Hickory said. “We regret to say it did not appear you knew much. So we were not able to share much.”

“You’re sharing it now,” I said.

“You’re asking now,” Hickory said. “And Zoë has told us not to lie.”

“You’ve seen our video of the Conclave destroying the Whaidi colony,” I said.

“Yes, when you shared it with all of your colonists,” Hickory said.

“Did it match your own video?” I asked

“No,” Hickory said. “Ours was much longer.”

“Why would our version be so much shorter?” I asked.

“We cannot speculate why your government does the things it does,” Hickory said.

I paused at this; the construction of the sentence left a lot of room for interpretation.

Jane jumped in. “You said the Conclave prefers to evacuate
colonies rather than destroy them. Are you saying this because of the video or do you have other information?”

“We have other information,” Hickory said. “The video shows only the first attempt by the Conclave to remove a colony.”

“How many others have there been?” Jane asked.

“We do not know,” Hickory said. “We have been out of communication with our government for the better part of a Roanoke year. However, when we left, the Conclave had removed seventeen colonies.”

“How many of those were destroyed?” Jane asked.

“Three,” Hickory said. “The rest were evacuated. In ten cases the colonists repatriated with their races. Four chose to join the Conclave.”

“You have evidence of this,” I said.

“The Conclave extensively documents each colony removal and shares it with every nonmember government,” Hickory said. “We have information on all the removals up to our arrival here on Roanoke.”

“Why?” Jane asked. “What relevance does this information have to the two of you?”