Hour of the Horde

16

There was no darkness aboard the egg-shaped craft that was transporting all twenty-three of the Fighting Rowboat’s crew to the command ship of the Center Aliens, but Miles had the feeling that if it had been dark, Luhon’s eyes would have glowed in the obscurity like the fierce eyes of a cat in the night.

“We shamed them into it!” Luhon said almost in a whisper in Miles’ ear. “When we talk to them, friend Miles, remember that! They’d decided to run, but when we attacked, we shamed them into coming back to fight!”

Miles said nothing. Within him was an awareness that both the problem and its resolution had been wider and deeper than Luhon or any of the others understood. But there was no time for him to explain this to them. Luhon’s words still echoed in his ear even as the gray ship transporting them seemed to melt away, and they found themselves apparently hanging in space at the midpoint of the interior of one of the huge Center Alien vessels.

They hung or stood there like bodies at a point where gravity balanced in all directions. It was a little like being in a fun house full of distorting mirrors. For looking about casually, Miles could see that they were literally miles in every direction from the interior surface of the globe shape surrounding them. They were too far away to make out the fact of what was abnormally and immediately apparent to them—that the whole interior surface of this globe was filled with individuals of the Center Alien race and their allies. It was as if an auditorium were to be built in the shape of some huge ball, with seats completely covering its inner surface.

When Miles glanced generally at the interior of the globe surrounding him, he saw only a blurred grayness in the far distance, illuminated by a light that seemed to be nowhere in particular but filling all the interior space equally. However, when he looked directly at any one spot on the interior globe face, it was as if some telescopic window had suddenly materialized between him and that point. All at once he was staring into the faces of the aliens seated or standing there, as if no more than ten or a dozen feet separated them from him.

Clearly, this gathering was in honor of the crew of the Fighting Rowboat. But, clearly also, the occasion was something more than a mere celebration. Miles felt, with his new sensitivity, a puzzlement reaching out toward them from the surrounding audience. He and his crewmates were being viewed with a strange curiosity and no little lack of understanding.

Suddenly they were joined at their midpoint position by two of the Center Aliens. To Miles’ eyes, these still wore human forms. But he was understanding enough now to realize that while he saw them in this fashion, Luhon would be seeing them with the shape and features of Luhon’s race—and so on, individually and differently with each one of the rest of the crew.

Miles reached back into his own mind for support, and the now-familiar overdrive reaction abruptly flowed through him, making his vision sharp and clear. Deductions clicked in his mind like totals on an efficient adding machine. The two Center Aliens who had appeared looked no different than all the others he had seen, but the deductive section of his mind told him that they must be different. These two would not have been chosen at random to stand and talk to the crew of the Fighting Rowboat before the eyes of the—was it hundreds of thousands or millions?—that occupied the inner surface of the globe, watching them. No, it was more likely—in fact, it was almost a certainty—that these two were as close to being the supreme authorities among the Center Aliens as any of that race available here and now.

A nudge of Luhon’s elbow against Miles’ ribs reminded him of the other side of the equation. Luhon was waiting for Miles to speak, because Miles was their leader aboard the Fighting Rowboat. But Luhon, like the rest, was fiercely expecting that Miles would charge the Center Aliens with cowardice. The gray-skinned alien was waiting for Miles to remind the Center Aliens that they had fled the Battle Line, had run, and that the battle would have been lost if it had not been for the suicidal wild attack of the Fighting Rowboat.

Miles, through a mind that was as clear as a perfect lens held up to a powerful light, saw himself caught between the points of view of two groups, neither of which really understood what had happened.

“We have brought you here to do you honor,” said the taller of the two Center Aliens. Deductively, for all the lack of variance of feature in this one, as in the others of his race, Miles judged him to be old—probably very old. Once more Luhon’s elbow bored sharply into Miles’ side.

“Thank you,” said Miles. “We appreciate the fact that you want to honor us. But there’s a question we want to ask you—all of you.”

“Ask anything you wish,” replied the Center Alien, and Miles could feel the millions of individual minds all around them, as if the distance at which they were was at once hundreds of miles and only a few feet away, focusing their attention on him and on the question to come.

“Why did you come back?” Miles asked. “You told us that there was no hope of winning the battle. But after we attacked alone, it seems you changed your minds. Of course, we all know the results. The Silver Horde was driven off. But what are we supposed to think about your actions, first running and then returning? Were you wrong in your first judgment of how the battle would go? Or did the sight of us attacking alone make you more aware of your own responsibilities to stand and fight?”

There was no immediate answer to Miles’ question. The two Center Aliens stood looking at him as if they were consulting silently with the uncountable numbers that surrounded them, watching. Finally, the taller one spoke again.

“Forgive me,” said the Center Alien, “if I seem to insult you by mentioning once more your barbarian condition. But if you were not so primitive and emotion-driven, you would have understood by now why we came back. The fault is ours, of course, being the older and more capable people, for not realizing you had not understood.”

“Then perhaps you’ll explain it now,” said Miles.

“Of course,” said the Center Alien. “May I remind you that it was not an organic decision—our conclusion that our joining battle with the Silver Horde could only result in our defeat? It was a computed decision, the logical result of many factors considered and handled by nonliving devices which are far superior to the aggregate decision-making possibilities of even our minds. The factors of the situation were made available continually to these computational devices. At Decision Point, their assessment was plain. The Horde had a tiny but undeniable edge in the total of probability factors needed for victory. We could not logically hope to fight them and win. Therefore, we made the only sensible alternative decision: that all those within the Battle Line should flee and attempt to save themselves as well as possible, in order to have the largest possible number of intelligent, technologically trained individuals with which to rebuild the galaxy after the Horde had passed.”

“But you changed your minds,” said Miles.

“No,” answered the Center Alien. “We are advanced beyond the point where we could, as you say, change our minds—make an emotional judgment at variance with the results of our computations. We came back, not because we ‘changed our minds,’ but because new computations gave us a different answer.”

“New computations?” demanded Miles.

“Of course,” replied the Center Alien quietly. “I imagine even you can understand that by attacking as you did, you could introduce a change into the factors on which a judgment of the battle’s outcome had been figured. Three matters of sheer chance affected the present situation and altered the future picture built on that situation. First, here was the fact that you had suicidally, and against all reason, chosen to attack alone against the total might of the Horde. Second, there was the fact that your attack came from what had been the farthest end of our Battle Line. Third, there was the fact that reacting with the instinct of their race, the total fleet of the Silver Horde began to turn to meet your attack instead of ignoring it and allowing it to be absorbed, and yourselves obliterated, by the smallest fraction of its number necessary to deal with you. These things, as I say, altered the factors of the situation. Now I am sure you understand.”

Beside Miles, Luhon’s elbow no longer urged him on. With his sensitivity, Miles could feel the other crew members, behind him, baffled but equally spellbound.

“Perhaps. But explain it to me anyway,” said Miles.

“If you wish. You have earned whatever explanation you desire,” said the Center Alien. “As I said, your illogical, suicidal attack altered the factors of the situation—not only to our view, but evidently to the Horde’s as well. Your attack, alone, must have been something they could not understand, so that they expected the worst and turned their full strength to crush you. Our devices recomputed and found, as a result, that where before the slight but decisive edge of advantage had been in favor of the Horde, now because of your action there was an equally slight but decisive edge of advantage in our favor.”

The Center Alien paused. Miles could feel all the eyes within that huge globe on him and his companions.

“So,” the Center Alien went on with the same unvarying tone of voice, as if he were discussing something of no more importance than the time of day, “we came back and engaged the Horde after all.”

For a moment, within Miles’ brilliantly burning mind, a faint flicker of guilt awoke. With an ability to understand that he would not have had if he had not been in overdrive, he read clearly and sharply some of the meanings behind the Center Alien’s words. The individuals of this race, for all their lack of apparent emotion, wanted to live as badly as he did. Also, while their decisions were governed by their computing devices, they had no means of knowing whether that computation was ultimately correct or not. They had only known that the answer they got was the best that could be gotten within their power and the power of their computers. So, just as they had fled without shame—but undoubtedly with as deep an inner pain at the thought of what they were doing in abandoning their worlds to the onslaught of the Horde—they had returned without question. They had returned with as deep an inner courage as was possible to them, to enter a battle which they could not be sure they would win.

Miles felt Luhon stir against him. There was a quality of indecisiveness in that movement that announced that the gray-skinned crewmate was cut adrift from his earlier fierce desire to make the Center Aliens admit to cowardice. Now it was plain they could not be taken to task at all in the sense that Luhon and the others had envisioned. For they had done nothing, after all, but be true to their own different pattern of behavior.

“Thank you,” said Miles. “Now we understand.”

“We are glad you understand,” said the taller Center Alien. “But since this is a moment for understanding, there is something we would like to ask you.”

“Ask away,” said Miles, already expecting what was to come.

“Of all who joined us in the Battle Line,” said the Center Alien, “you twenty-three were the only ones who did not obey our order to retreat and save yourselves. Instead, you did a clearly reasonless thing. You attacked the Silver Horde alone. Yet all of you are thinking beings, though primitive. You must have realized that nothing you could do would make any difference to the question of whether your native worlds and peoples would escape or survive the Horde once it was among the stars of our galaxy. Also, you must have known that by no miracle whatsoever could your one tiny ship so much as slow down the advance of the Horde for a moment. In short, you knew that attacking them could do no good, that it was only a throwing away of your own lives. Older and many times advanced over you as we are, we should understand why you would do such a thing. But we do not. Alone, with no hope, why did you attack the Horde the way you did? Was there some way you could guess that by attacking, you would bring the rest of us back to join you in fighting after all?”

It struck Miles then, with the clarity of his overdrive-sharpened mind, that this was the first time he had ever heard one of the Center Alien race ask a question. Obviously this could mean only one thing. It must have occurred to this advanced race that the only reasonable possibility was that Miles and the others had some means of calculating the battle odds within their own minds and bodies which was superior to the calculating devices the Center Aliens themselves used.

“No,” answered Miles. “We didn’t expect you back. We knew we were attacking the Horde on our own, and we knew what had to happen if we met them alone.”

“Yes,” said the Center Alien. There was a second of silence. Then he went on—to Miles’ extrasensitive perceptions, it sensed, a little heavily. “We were almost certain that you could not have expected help. But, seeing you did not expect help, the question remains of why you did it.”

“We had no choice,” said Miles.

“No choice?” The Center Alien stared strangely at him. “You had a clear choice. Your choice was to leave, as you had been ordered to do.”

“No,” said Miles.

Once more he was conscious of standing between two points of view: the point of view of the Center Aliens and that of his crewmates—neither of whom fully saw and understood the situation and what had taken place in their meeting with the Horde. It was up to Miles now to satisfy them both, even if he could make neither understand what he now understood.

“Maybe it’s because, as you say, we’re primitive compared to the rest of you in the Battle Line,” said Miles slowly. “But our choice wasn’t a head choice, it was a heart choice. I don’t believe I can explain it to you. I can only tell you that it’s that way—with us. You can’t take people like myself and those here with me, who care for their own races, and set them out between those races and an enemy who threatens utter destruction—and then expect that we whom you set there will be able to step aside, leaving our people unshielded, simply because logic dictates that we’re going to lose if we try to fight the destroyer.”

He paused. From the beginning the huge globeful of watchers had been silent, and there was no more silence now than there had been before. Yet Miles felt a certain extra focusing of attention on him, a metaphorical holding of the breath by the hundreds of thousands or millions who were listening. He went on.

“Probably,” he said, “there’s no way for me to make you understand this. But in running away without fighting the Horde, we were leaving our people—probably to die. And we couldn’t do that. We aren’t built that way—so that we can cold-bloodedly save ourselves if they’re likely to be wiped out. To save ourselves under those conditions would have required a self-control greater than any of us has.”

Once more he paused. The globeful of listeners still listened.

“Our peoples,” Miles said, slowly, “are part of us, you see—the way our arms and legs are parts of our body. We couldn’t any more abandon them just to save ourselves than we could coolly submit to cutting off all our arms and legs so that the useless trunks of our bodies would be left to survive. If our people had to face death, the least we could do—not the most, but the least— was to face that death with them. It wasn’t any thinking decision we made. I repeat, it was an instinctive decision—to kill as many of the Horde as we could before we were killed. It wasn’t any different for us than if we’d come back and found our planets turned to desert, our people dead—and then we’d run into the Horde. Then, just as we did here, we’d have tried without thinking to kill as many of the Horde as we could before we were killed ourselves.”

Miles stopped talking. The silence that followed his words this time was a long one. But at last it was broken by the taller of the two aliens standing with the crew of the Fighting Rowboat at midpoint.

“We were right originally then,” said the Center Alien slowly. “It was a part of your primitive nature that caused it—and we could not understand, because it is a part we have long abandoned. You are still on that early road from which we departed a very long time ago. Do not think, though, that we are less grateful to you because of what you have just told us.”

He turned a little so that his gaze was directly on Miles. The Center Alien seemed almost to speak directly and privately to Miles.

“No matter from what source it sprang,” said the Center Alien, “from will or mind or instinct, the fact remains that what you did changed the battle picture and resulted in our saving our galaxy. What can we do for you and these others to show our gratitude?”

Miles had been prepared for the question. Now he answered quickly before any of the others from the Fighting Rowboat could speak up.

“We want to stay independent,” said Miles, “and much of what you could give us might not be good for that independence. But there are a few things… Now that we’ve been brought together aboard the Fighting Rowboat, we’d like our races to stay in touch. So give us ships then, or show us how to build our own ships, so that our twenty-three different races can communicate and travel among our separate worlds.”

“The ships and the knowledge you ask for are yours,” said the Center Alien. He hesitated. “And if in the future you should want more than this from us, we will arrange a method of communication so that you need only ask.”

“Thanks,” said Miles. “But I don’t think we’ll be asking.”