The Road to Hell

Chapter Twelve

December 17th

In a quiet Ricathian corner of Sharona, Soolan chan Rahool stretched his toes and sucked coconut milk out of a freshly broken shell. The rough-barked tree at his back and the hopeful, grinning Minarti clan youngsters gamboling at the tree line reminded the simian ambassador just how much he loved his job. The chimpanzees shrieked in a high glee, making noises not unlike human toddlers. And he chuckled and laid his own coconut at his elbow, where it would be handy, to set about cracking open the pile of coconuts the Minarti clan grandmother had decided were snack for the day.

The thump of a round rock against a pointy rock made neat drinking holes in the hairy coconuts. He struck each one twice for easy sipping, fully aware that one of the older chimps minding the youngsters was watching him for quality control. Chan Rahool didn’t mind in the least.

He’d served two and a half years in the Ternathian Army almost a decade ago as a Voice. His superiors there had graciously marked his early discharge as “due to excess force capacity,” but chan Rahool liked to be honest with himself. He’d been released from service because he was an awful Voice and a poor fit for military service in general. His Voice range was barely more than line of sight at the best of times, his secondary talent as an Animal Speaker wasn’t all that useful to the Army, and the strictures of military life had simply made no sense to him.

But the simians didn’t care that they had to come all the way up to arms length to talk to him. And they appreciated that he preferred to wear a webbed belt suitable for hanging many bags of sugared nuts rather than a slimmer one matching uniform trousers and approved of by some uniform board at headquarters.

It amused chan Rahool even now that he owed the military for his dream job. Without the heavy shoulder muscles built from years of punitive exercise, chan Rahool’s limited Voice range would have again stunted any hope at a career.

Instead the embassy recruiter had asked that first wonderful interview question: “How do you feel about climbing trees?”

Chan Rahool’s answer, “Do I have to wear shoes?” won him the apprenticeship. Being willing to climb triple canopy jungle to visit orangutan nests earned him a career.

Ternathia’s Combined Simian Embassies tried hard to be a traditional government organization with hierarchy charts and field position rotations. Chan Rahool found it amusing. His fellow ambassadors were all much like him in their love of outdoor places and a relaxed life with minimal oversight.

Chan Rahool honored his former noncoms’ efforts to instill a sense of organizational pride by actually reading all the silly instructions that came from CSE and composing much shorter summaries for his fellow ambassadors. He liked to distill and emphasize the parts that truly mattered. To make sure they got read, he packaged the letters with bottles of his local moonshine.

He’d learned that from the military too. There’d been a supply corps armsman who’d always found a way to incentivize attention when he really needed something.

Chan Rahool’s current clan, the Minarti chimpanzees, preferred their alcohol as fermented fruit but they tolerated his preference for the liquid form and would even supply him with arm loads of suitable fresh fruit in exchange for a ration of bottles in the dry months between the wet seasons.

That private exchange might have been why chan Rahool was always able to reach his assigned clans. So he wasn’t at all surprised when a big chimp, quite a bit more mature than the youngsters he habitually shared coconut with, knuckle-walked up to the official embassy cabin and sat down on the veranda.

Chan Rahool didn’t make a habit of feeding the youngsters there, but for the adults he tried to keep drinking in the house or on the porch. The fragility of glass was sometimes a difficult concept, and he didn’t want shards scattered in the roots and rocks where they’d be hard for him to clean up properly.

With a grin, chan Rahool began distributing snacks. The young chimps caught the thrown pieces of coconut, and chan Rahool ambled back to do his ambassadorial duty.

* * *

The gray dappling the older simian’s back fur distracted chan Rahool momentarily from the sheer mass of muscle underneath it. Then the simian turned and displayed even more muscle and a weapon belt and chan Rahool’s eyes widened. He was no chimp. The silverback gorilla’s smug expression shocked chan Rahool so much, that he opened the door and invited him in before he quite placed where he’d last seen a look like that.

It certainly wasn’t on any simian in the Minarti clan. No, that was the look a veteran infantry armsman had given him once when he’d had a few too many and decided he was tough enough to out wrestle anything. Chan Rahool was significantly stronger now, but he was also far too sober to want to wrestle a silverback…especially a silverback who chose to wear a sharpened eight inch tusk at his belt.

What kind of animal even had an eight inch tusk? Chan Rahool mentally labeled the silverback as Tusk immediately. The simian undoubtedly had a name of his own, but he was unlikely to bother to tell it to chan Rahool what it was.

Tusk walked straight through chan Rahool’s home and opened the back door to admit two more silvers and a smaller decidedly elderly female nearly white with age. White-hair entered with a pronounced, regal assurance and assembled her guard-that was what they had to be-around her as she took possession of the house.

Chan Rahool was quite certain that three such powerful males wouldn’t have come to a place pitiful enough to be granted to the CSE for a cabin to fight for territory, and the grandmother of the matrilineal Minarti chimps had assured him that he was considered a youngster for the purposes of male hierarchy and wanted more shoulder mass before he could begin challenging to attract a female. He hoped that would apply to gorillas as well.

“Good morning Ma’am,” chan Rahool said. It didn’t seem like a bad start. Chimps were usually peaceable, happy creatures with the straightforwardness of a toddler…once he figured out what they wanted. Gorillas, well, chan Rahool had never worked with gorillas. He reached out a hand to touch White-hair’s closest knuckle to begin to translate her thoughts.

Tusk made a discouraging noise and batted chan Rahool’s hand back.

‹A BOWL OF SHRIVELED FRUIT.› Chan Rahool almost fell over. ‹A bowl of shriveled fruit,› White-hair pushed the picture at him again, a bit more gently but with added details of pink and blue kittens painted on the outer rim of the bowl that chan Rahool recognized as one of the mismatched dishes from his own kitchen.

Somehow he got the sense that she was doing the pictorial equivalent of speaking loudly with exaggerated enunciation. What he strongly suspected might be the most senior simian ever to speak with a CSE representative had come to visit him. And she’d already decided he was an idiot.

The problem was that chan Rahool didn’t have any fermented marula fruit. Why hadn’t they gone to their own ambassador?

Chan Rahool was rewarded with a series of images in fast succession starting with medicinal plants and ending with giggling chimp babies. Right. He’d arranged for the Minarti’s exchange of medicinal herbs for periodic medical care. No good deed goes unpunished. I figured out what grand dame Minarti wanted, so now I get all the hard cases. Of course that one was easy because Dorrick over with the Nishani told everyone about the trade of chimp mineral rights for human medical care. The only tricky part was that the chimps asked me instead of the other way around.

White-hair grunted to demand back chan Rahool’s attention.

‹Fruit in a bowl› again. The picture changed flashing through a series of other fruits he might offer instead.

White-hair didn’t seem to have any qualms against leafing freely through his mind for useful images. He hadn’t known simians even had Voices, if Voice was really the right term for it. For that matter, he hadn’t known they had Talents at all! Should he call her a Human Speaker? Or should-

White-hair snapped a command punctuated by clicks and cheek flexing, and Tusk hopped over chan Rahool’s kitchen table, landed lightly, and began flinging open cupboards. Chan Rahool followed quickly hoping to catch any falling dishes before they shattered and further ruined the embassy visit.

Tusk snorted.

A much fuzzier picture formed: ‹neatly stacked bananas or maybe some type of plantain,› with an over layer of intense humor from Tusk.

Nothing fell, chan Rahool noted with amazement.

Tusk lifted a bottle from the most recent batch of moonshine and proffered it to chan Rahool: ‹an image of an open bottle with shriveled fruit inside.›

“Oh, right, get the drinks.”

White-hair grunted a snorting laughter at the final comprehension.

Chan Rahool put back Tusk’s bottle. He grabbed instead the bottle of single malt from the back of a high cupboard. After a moment’s reflection, he also pulled out two bags of his favorite nuts. Grand dame Minarti usually wanted just the ’shine, but sometimes she tried some of the snacks he ate along with it, and he considered the dried jerky and the assortment of cheeses and sausages in his cold storage.

‹Cheese.› White-hair rejected the meats and expressed a decided interest in trying the cheeses. All of them.

* * *

Tusk nicked the rest of the single malt when the gorillas left. The other two grabbed the moonshine. Soolan chan Rahool didn’t even notice.

The cheese was long gone. Part way through the meeting, he’d been sent back to the kitchen to get all the jerky and sausages, too, but he didn’t really care about that, either. No, what he cared about was that his job had just gotten a whole lot harder.

These simians weren’t actually cheerful happy outdoorsmen. Or they probably were, but they weren’t only that. They’d obviously been playing their cards close to the chest with the embassies for quite a while. There had to have been humans here and there who’d had higher level contact, but who really listened to that kind of loner?

Today White-hair had decided to go all in. And unless chan Rahool had drastically mistaken something, she was doing it because some really big bluish fish had told them it was a good idea.

Also, she wanted to start colonizing the new universes. Not just move to open jungles in near universes but, if he understood the images right, the White-hair gorilla matriarch wanted tribes of simians moved to the furthest outbound universes bordering Arcanan held worlds. Chan Rahool’s mind boggled. None of the simians he’d worked with had ever expressed any interest in leaving Sharona. Sure, some clans were established in nearby universes, but those resettlements had been done on human initiative. He helped the Minarti exchange messages with Minarti sister clans on New Sharona from time to time, but they hadn’t seemed to understand when he’d told his chimps about the human war with Arcana. He’d only told them because in his worst nightmares the Arcanans managed a strike deep enough to threaten the simians too.

He hadn’t thought they even really understood the concept of other universes. But someone must have figured it out, because White-hair had given him a perfectly clear view of the outbound Sharonian portal.

Chan Rahool vaguely remembered a training lecture mentioning a few early portal exploration crews who’d taken a pair or two of higher order monkeys with them for deep explorations. It had been one of things he’d disregarded when none of the groups he was assigned to had any interest in multiverse travel.

He rubbed his throbbing head. This was going to be an impossible report to write up for the CSE. So he didn’t.

Instead he dashed off a note to Dorrick, who was over with the Nishani chimp clan. Technically, Dorrick was the senior chimp ambassador. There was even a CSE org chart that said chan Rahool reported to him, and chan Rahool grinned evilly to himself at the thought. It was amazing how useful military training could be.

A carefully detailed report, complete with a requisition for more cheese, was folded up and stuffed in the mailbox with Dorrick’s name written in bold print on the front. Of course the mail was only taken twice a month when the postal Flicker snatched everything in the box out to the depot, and at the depot they’d sort it and wait another two weeks before sending it on to Dorrick with the routine mail. If Dorrick even read it, chan Rahool would have two more weeks before anything could go back out to the depot and be rushed priority up to CSE.

He felt it was only fair to leave the CSE in the dark for another six weeks. The bureaucrats with no field experience continually tried to claim simians couldn’t tell the difference between sweet tree-ripened and cheaper green-picked fruit. They deserved to be left to rot. All they could do was try to stop him, and Soolan chan Rahool did not want to be the one to tell that steely-eyed gorilla matriarch he’d elected not to deliver her message because some bureaucrat didn’t understand the need.

Chan Rahool didn’t understand it either, but White-hair hadn’t been much interested in his comprehension. She’d been more concerned about his recall, and after testing that aspect of his Voice Talent with a few memories of what could only have been her great grandbabies bounced back and forth, he’d gotten the distinct sense that he’d passed.

And earned a massive headache. So many pictures, so quickly, and with such intricate detail…they’d hurt. He’ played them back in slow motion and the pain had eased.

White-hair had expressed herself satisfied and had directed him to present these images to his human White-hair. Chan Rahool had thought immediately of Emperor Zindel and the impossibility of a low-level simian ambassador getting a hearing with the Emperor of Sharona.

White-hair had cuffed him lightly and rattled his head. She’d refused to believe humanity could be other than a matriarchy. She’d given him a picture of Empress Varena instead.

How did they know what the Empress looked like? The picture was a bit old, but still!

His attempt to explain the difficulty in seeing the Empress had been met with Tusk snarling in his face. His old noncoms could have taken lessons from the gorilla.

The report to Dorrick double-checked and tucked carefully into the postal box, chan Rahool set out to arrange a meeting with the Empress Consort of the known Sharonan universes.

He might have had the makings of a soldier after all.

* * *

At the heart of the known Arcanan universes, Garth Showma celebrated winter as only Andarans could: with marches, ice dances, and dragon flights over the frozen falls. Snowfall Night, when the faculty and students of Garth Showma Institute filled the fall’s basin with floats and hung the sky with faerie lights, drew crowds even from Mythal and Ransara.

Her Grace Sathmin Olderhan capably arranged it all each year, and this year was no different…in that respect, at least. There were plenty of other differences, unfortunately, all of them revolving around the hideous news which had reached New Arcana less than two weeks ago.

The only good news was that Jasak was alive and unhurt. Which, she had to admit in her fairer moments, was far more important than anything else. But every other word of the terse hummer reports from Governor mul Gurthak in Erthos about events in the universe which had been-all too aptly for her taste-christened “Hell’s Gate” had only made the unmitigated extent of the disaster clearer and clearer. That contact with another human civilization, after more than two centuries of inter-universal exploration, should have ended in massacre and carnage was bad enough. The news that Arcana’s newly acquired enemies possessed some new, bizarre, and very deadly technology of their own only made it worse. But worst of all, her son had been caught in the middle of it-had been the officer whose command first encountered these “Sharonians” and fought the first battle with them.

The public-predictably, in Sathmin’s opinion — had reacted to the news with mingled shock, fear, and ferocity. And after digesting Two-Thousand mul Gurthak’s report, she couldn’t really blame the man-in-the-street for reacting exactly that way. Unfortunately, the official dispatch from mul Gurthak differed in several critical particulars from the private message which had already reached Sathmin and her husband from Jasak. There were no aspects of mul Gurthak’s report which contradicted Jasak’s account, but there were certainly some very significant differences of emphasis. Nor had the two-thousand’s dispatch made any mention of Jasak’s decision to declare the two surviving Sharonian prisoners his shardonai…or of the reasons which had impelled him to do so. And she knew her husband had cherished some dark suspicions about the reason Jasak’s private message had reached New Arcana almost a full week before the governor’s official dispatch. Given the hummer priority accorded to official messages, if there was a discrepancy in arrival times, mul Gurthak’s report should have arrived before Jasak’s, not after it.

Thankhar had decided to adopt a wait-and-see posture, and Sathmin hoped it had been the right call. It wasn’t that she thought they had any other option-the plain truth was that they didn’t know much more about events than anyone else in the Union’s government-but she hated the waiting. And she hated the murmurs already floating around where people thought she wouldn’t hear about them. While mul Gurthak had expressed his personal approval of Jasak’s actions and decisions under the circumstances as Jasak had then understood them, not everyone else agreed. For that matter, even mul Gurthak’s approval had been qualified by those deadly words “under the circumstances.”

Sathmin Olderhan had not been the Duchess of Garth Showma for over thirty years without learning to read between the lines of official statements and recognize the hidden daggers wrapped in carefully chosen turns of phrase. And mul Gurthak was shakira. That was more than enough to set her every cat’s whisker of suspicion acquiver under the best of circumstances, which these most definitely were not. And much as she loved her husband, he was Andaran to his toenails. He would not launch any sort of preemptive defense of his son until he knew to his own satisfaction what had happened, and that was enough to drive even the most loving wife to screaming distraction…at least in the privacy of her own mind. Besides-

Enough, she told herself firmly. Thankhar’s right. You can’t do anything about it until you know more, and nothing you can do is going to get Jasak back home one second sooner than he’d get here anyway. And whatever else happens, you still have a Snowfall Night to coordinate, so you’d better get back to doing it!

She smiled slightly at the acerbic edge of her own thoughts, drew a deep breath, and turned resolutely back to her responsibilities.

Magister Loriethe from the college would be arriving for a mid afternoon review with a final update on the Institute’s plans for the midnight grand finale, and Sir Kalivar of the Sarkhala Boy’s School was begging an invitation to have his students join in the Children’s March. Sathmin was inclined to grant the late addition if he’d also be willing to supervise the distribution of candy at the children’s pay call.

But first she had to dress. The staff jokingly called her around-the-estate skirts and blouses “women’s combat utilities.” The clothes didn’t have nearly enough pockets, but other than that, Sathmin didn’t object to the description. In her younger days, before Thankhar, she would have gone to Snowfall just as she was, watched the endurance competitions and enjoyed camping out on the frozen ground to get the best spot for the dragon flight show. The festival was better organized now, but she also had to put up with being one of the things the people came to see. And that involved hiring a dressing assistant.

Tellemay Lissia arrived precisely on schedule-Sathmin loved that about the woman-and produced a multitude of clothes from her baggage, any of which would certainly do fine. Tellemay always produced outfits that fitted the occasion and Sathmin was blessed with spending no more time deciding what to wear than her husband did. Uniforms were a magnificent invention, in her opinion. It was a pity most women-even in Andara-positively rebelled at the idea of all wearing the same thing. Until Sathmin managed to convince her fellow officer’s wives to adopt some manner of civilian uniform, however, she could always depend on her capable dresser.

“Delightful to see you again, Your Grace,” Tellemay said. “I’ve found the perfect things for you today. The absolute perfect! Classic pre-Hathak period reimagined with softened lines and in all the newest colors.” The dresser gave Sathmin a measuring look and added, “And yes, I’ve added pockets. Small ones that don’t ruin the lines. Stand just there in the middle and I’ll have this fitting done for you in no time at all.”

Sathmin complied, and she immediately turned her mind back to more interesting things.

The flights participating in the dragon air show had confirmed. She needed to check with Corilene about the repairs on the estate’s second slidercar. It would be needed to bring the last demo pilots from the landing grounds back to the falls after they flew their passes. The 2038th training wing had confirmed the extra dragon fodder had arrived. The full storerooms and stockyards should be more than enough to keep all the performing dragons comfortably fed.

“I didn’t hear until I went to pick up the new fabric samples, but I suppose you heard with the very first hummer arrival this morning,” said Tellemay as she pinned a coat sleeve.

“Pardon, what?”

Sathmin looked at Tellemay in surprise as the dresser’s comment pulled her mind back from planning details for Snowfall Night. The woman usually spent these moments talking about fashion and why she’d selected the pieces presented for the day’s outfit and hinting about what she was planning for events later in the year, with extra commentary about the occasions when Sathmin would be seen by senior officials or especially large crowds. Those sorts of questions could be answered almost automatically, using only a corner of her surface thoughts to monitor the process, but there was something about Tellemay’s tone.…

“Heard what Telley-dear?” Sathmin asked.

“Oh, you hadn’t heard yet!” Tellemay’s voice rose in delight to be first with the news. “It’s the Sharonians. The truce is over!”

“What?” Sathmin stared at her, stunned by the way the news echoed with her own earlier worried. The truce was over?! How? Why? And what was it going to mean for Jasak and-

“We’re back at war,” Tellemay continued blithely. “My cousins are so happy. They were afraid they’d miss it all.”

“Miss it?” Sathmin felt vaguely like she’d entered some other dimension-and not one with a portal route back home to New Arcana.

“Yes, Your Grace. Miss the war. We’ll trounce them all very soon, so the youngest boys will still miss it. But Ollie’s a Trooper out with the Second Andarans now. His brothers are all very jealous that he’ll have combat experience and the war won’t last long enough for them to get any.”

Sathmin placed the names quickly. Ollie Lissia was a reliable young man who’d run his father’s textile shop and supplied most of the cold weather gear for the 2nd Andaran Scouts. He’d finally convinced a retired uncle to come manage the place long enough for Ollie to do a two-year enlistment.

Ransarans and Mythalans would never understand, but as an Andaran of course he’d had to do it. Family deferment or not, a well brought up Andaran boy would fight dragons barehanded if that’s what it took to do his basic service tour. And here was Tellemay, his proud cousin, delighting in the chance of her family member returning with a combat service badge on his shoulder. But-

“Are you sure about the truce?” Sathmin clutched at the hope Tellemay had misheard something.

“Absolutely sure. Everyone’s been getting hummer messages all at once. They don’t say what their orders are or where they’re headed, of course. But the war’s back on. I’m amazed you didn’t hear first. I suppose His Grace was at the Commandery by the time the first hummers arrived.” Tellemay paused a moment to adjust and repin a gather on Sathmin’s left shoulder. “Everyone’s been saying how taken by surprise they were and how the Commandery kept the secret perfectly.”

“I don’t understand,” Sathmin said. “Are you saying we broke off the truce talks?”

Tellemay sniffed. “When you say it like that, Your Grace, it just doesn’t sound right. I’m sure that couldn’t be it. The troop letters just say we won a battle and that they’re excited about the next one. The news’ll say more in the morning, won’t it?”

* * *

“They want what?” Shalassar Brintal-Kolmayr snapped up from her seat.

Intern Pelgra tried to melt into the Cetacean Embassy floor and only managed to look more puppyish instead. Not the kid’s fault, Shalassar reminded herself, and brushed past the young Cetacean Speaker to confront the orca at the pier herself.

‹What have you taunted this silly intern with, Teeth Cleaver?›

‹I?› The black and white cetacean lifted himself for a flip above the water. ‹The youngling does anything I ask. I quite like it. I would not taunt it.›

‹Her.› Shalassar corrected automatically. The orca had a tendency to not acknowledge genders in pre-adolescence, but since they didn’t attribute gendered pronouns to prey either, she didn’t care for the implications.

‹As you like› The orca flipped a smiling face above the waves. ‹I merely told that girl calf I wanted to take a train migration.›

Shalassar considered the orca’s great bulk. Teeth Cleaver was significantly larger than the dolphins and porpoises who sometimes expressed interest in entering the aquarium cars to take tours of the insides of the shorelines.

‹I suppose you’ve also got a large-mind or two who’d like to come with you?›

The orca snorted a cetacean laugh with his blowhole.

‹Little fish bowl trains much too small for large-minds. I will fit, just, if the train’s migration isn’t too far.›

‹And why do you want to squeeze and “fit, just, for a not too far” trip?› Shalassar countered.

‹It is practice. If it works, I will tell large-minds and they will sing you reasons.›

This did not reassure Shalassar. ‹Why can’t the dolphins do this “practice”?› She didn’t mention the porpoises. They were included in the mix of sentient cetaceans technically, but the creatures were generally significantly less bright than the dolphins or any of the larger cetaceans. Among all the intelligent sea life, the whales were the deep thinkers, with the thunder-flukes especially reveling in it.

A pod of dolphins played a half mile or so distant, and Teeth Cleaver examined them for a long moment. The orca didn’t eat sentients. They were always quite clear on that. But from time to time some of the cetaceans would add in a proviso.

The orca didn’t eat sentients, now.

The dolphins had been at the pier themselves just an hour or so previously enjoying some of the fish treats provided by the Cetacean Institute. But just this minute, they found reason to play further away. Teeth Cleaver’s presence had nothing to do with it. Of course.

‹You see them.› Teeth Cleaver said. ‹I see them. They swim, swim, swim always away.›

‹But they can see just fine themselves. What can you do on a train that they can’t?›

And why are the thunder-flukes interested? Shalassar added, only to herself.

‹I› Teeth Cleaver said, ‹can be orca.›

Shalassar stopped unable to refute this unassailable argument.

Teeth Cleaver blew a fine mist and settled deeper in the water, all but vanishing. ‹I am black.› He spun beneath the water displaying the clean milky belly that would camouflage him from below. ‹I am white.› He burst out of the water for a high twisting leap. ‹I am powerful!› The splash sent ripples racing in all directions. ‹They› He snorted a derisive splatter of water in the direction of the pod. ‹are merely gray.›

Shalassar wiped the spray off her face. Cetacean Speaker Talent granted the ability to hear, but not always to understand.

‹How far do you think a “not too far” trip would be?›

‹Nine thousand one hundred and eighty miles› Teeth Cleaver replied promptly. ‹Round migration trip.› He added. ‹But for practice, train does not swim away on the rails. I go on stopped train. And train stays stopped as for Sings Badly and the plant roe harvest watching. Sings Badly will do math. Cal-cu-late time for nine thousand one hundred and eighty miles. I practice in car for this time. Next to Institute. With fish.›

Shalassar did her own mental calculation of the approximate cost to feed a full-grown orca for days on end.

‹Only one orca in the car at a time.› She countered.

Teeth Cleaver agreed with a smile. ‹Until large-minds sing otherwise. Only one orca in each car.›

‹Only one car.› Shalassar added.

‹Only one car for practice.› The orca agreed.