Warhorse

Chapter 30

“They’re late.”

Roman turned from his contemplation of the viewport and the scene outside it, and took a long look at Ferrol. Seated in the far corner of his office, as far from the desk and two guest chairs as possible, the other’s face and body language were alive with low-level tension. “They’ll be here,” Roman assured him. “Being late is one of those qualities that make Tampies so darn endearing.”

Ferrol snorted; but his tension seemed to ease a bit. “Right,” he said dryly.

Roman studied him. “You sure you don’t want a filter mask? Even with the air system going full blast some of their odors are going to get through.”

Ferrol took a deep breath, as if trying to get all the air he could while it was still clean. “Thank you, but no,” he said, glancing at the door. “I’m going to need to reprogram my reactions eventually, and this seems as good a time as any to start.”

“All right.” Roman cocked an eyebrow. “But no hitting then,” he warned.

Ferrol flushed. Apparently, he’d forgotten that little incident, so long ago, in Amity’s hangar. “No hitting, sir,” he promised.

The door buzzed. “Here they are,” Roman said; and the panel slid open to reveal Rrin-saa and Sso-ngu, their twisted faces almost hidden behind their filter masks.

“Come in,” he invited them, gesturing to the two guest chairs facing him. “Please; sit down.”

“We hear,” Rrin-saa said, leading the way into the office.

The door slid shut behind them, and as they settled themselves in the chairs Roman threw a glance at Ferrol. Still tense, but clearly under solid control. He would be all right, Roman decided. “So,” he said, turning his attention back to the Tampies.

“Dr. Tenzing tells me his people have done about all the work on the dead sharks that they can for the moment, so we’ll be ready to leave Kialinninni soon. I was hoping that you might have changed your mind about ending Amity’s charter once we’ve returned to the Cordonale.”

“We cannot,” Rrin-saa said. “We were lied to, Rro-maa. Lied into taking part in an unneedful killing. I have stated the Amity experiment is over, and I must maintain that stating.”

Roman nodded. “I understand,” he said. “Certainly, consistency is an important part of policy decisions. I just thought that, given that we now know exactly why Amity’s space horse breeding program worked, the basis for that decision might have changed.”

Rrin-saa’s head tilted briefly to the side. “We do not know why the breeding was successful,” he said, a note of firmness to his voice. “We know the presence of humans was necessary; that is all.”

So the Tampy was determined not to give a single millimeter on this. Not that Roman had really expected him to; in their own sedate way, the Tampies could be just as mule-headed as humans. “Well, then,” he told the other, “allow me to explain it to you. It worked because human beings, as you’re so fond of pointing out, are predators… and because an accelerated breeding cycle is how space horses respond to the presence of predators.”

“That is not yet proved,” Rrin-saa said.

“Perhaps not to Tampy standards of proof,” Roman countered, “but all the indications are there, and for us those indications are quite adequate. When two hundred space horses are not only willing but actually eager to attack a half dozen of their worst enemies, it’s pretty clear that their ecological pattern of defense is to fight back with sheer brute-force weight of numbers. And there’s only one way to get brute-force numbers.”

Rrin-saa hesitated, then touched fingers to ear. “You may be correct,” he allowed.

“You know I am,” Roman said. “Whether you’ll admit it or not. And that should be disturbing to you… because of all the aspects and patterns of nature which you’ve thought you understood, space horses have always been right up there near the top.”

“We do not claim all knowledge, Rro-maa,” Rrin-saa said. “We observe; we learn; we understand. Some understandings come swiftly, others only over centuries of study. The Tamplissta will ponder what we have observed, and will learn from it.”

“Good.” Roman flicked his gaze to Sso-ngu, back to Rrin-saa. “Then ponder this, as well, when you settle down to pondering things. You were wrong about space horses; I submit to you that you’ve been wrong about humanity, as well.”

Rrin-saa gazed back unblinkingly, his head tilting again to the side. “We do not yet understand you fully, Rro-maa. Yet, we understand you better than you perhaps know.”

Roman shook his head. “No,” he said. “You think you do, but you really don’t.

You’ve gotten it into your heads that we’re nothing more or less than tall, misshapen Tampies who can’t or won’t see the patterns of nature around us and who you’re determined to raise to your level of sensitivity even if it kills us.

You’ve held that picture for twenty years now, and refuse to let it go.”

“You are sentient creatures, Rro-maa,” Rrin-saa said. “You have power over the balances of nature, and thus have responsibilities toward them.”

“I understand what you’re saying,” Roman agreed. “And believe it or not, we do recognize and accept those responsibilities. But on our terms, not yours.” He took a deep breath, feeling the weight of history pressing down on his shoulders. He’d joined the Amity in hopes of stopping a war neither side would really win. This was very likely the last chance he, personally, would have of doing that. “You see yourselves as the guardians and preservers of nature, Rrin-saa,” he told the Tampy, speaking slowly and clearly. “You see the patterns and ecosystems, and you fit yourselves into them. Human beings are different. We see those same patterns, but then we mold them to our own needs.”

“You use them,” Rrin-saa corrected, his voice more whiny than usual. “And you then destroy them.”

Roman shook his head. “Use, yes; but destroy, no. Of course there’ve been exceptions; some of them disastrous. But most of the time we haven’t so much destroyed the patterns of nature as we’ve changed them. There’s a difference, you know.”

“But it is not your right to change them,” Rrin-saa insisted.

“And that’s exactly where you’ve been wrong all these years,” Roman told him. “It is our right. It’s our right because that’s where we fit into the patterns of nature: as beings whose gift is to build and construct and re-combine; to alter the faces of our worlds.” He pointed his finger at Rrin-saa. “And what’s more, as beings whose gift is to respect all such natural patterns, it’s your responsibility to allow us that freedom.”

The Tampies gazed back wordlessly, both with heads tilted sideways at nearly identical angles. Surprised, or deep in thought; Roman wasn’t sure which the gesture indicated. “Do you understand what I’m saying?” he prompted.

Slowly, Rrin-saa’s head returned to vertical. Pulling himself back together. “I cannot answer you, Rro-maa.” he said. “But I will speak to the Tamplissta. This is a thought that must be pondered by all.”

Roman breathed a quiet sigh of relief. “That’s all I ask, Rrin-saa. And while you all ponder, consider this, as well.” Picking up a small glass vial from the desktop, he offered it to Rrin-saa. “Do you have any idea what this is?”

Rrin-saa accepted the vial, peered cross-eyed at its contents. “It appears to be dust,”

he said.

“It is indeed,” Roman nodded. “Dust sweat, to be exact, taken from one of the dead sharks out there. Dust sweat which, we believe, contains a complete record of its last few minutes of life. The record of six powerful sharks trying desperately to escape as they’re telekened to death by two hundred maddened space horses.”

“Such death is part of the pattern of nature,” Rrin-saa said. “It is not the same as the hunt we were lied into assisting.”

“I don’t argue that,” Roman said. “My point is something else entirely. What do you think a shark would do if it Jumped into a new star system and encountered a dust sweat record like that?”

For a long moment Rrin-saa stared at the dust. “I do not know,” he said at last. “I know only that some predators would avoid a place where others had met death; that is all.”

“It’s enough,” Roman told him, feeling a warm surge of victory. He’d feared that the Tampies wouldn’t recognize the significance of the dust, or would deny it even if they did. But Rrin-saa had clearly chosen to be both honest and as open as Tampies ever were. “Because if the sharks follow that same pattern, then we’ve found our defense against them—a defense, please note, that doesn’t require you to kill the sharks or in any other way interfere with their normal ecological patterns.”

Rrin-saa peered over the vial at him. “Perhaps,” he said. “But only if there were sufficient dust. There is not.”

“No,” Roman agreed, smiling tightly, “But there will be. You see, one of the ways we humans alter our environment is by breaking interesting things like dust sweat down to their component molecules… and then duplicating them. We’ll be taking four hundred kilograms of the stuff back to the Cordonale with us; in a few weeks we can have tons of it made up, ready to scatter all through your systems.” He nodded at the vial in Rrin-saa’s hand. “So take that sample back to the other Tamplissta… and as you ponder the future of your relationship with humanity, consider that perhaps we were set here in space together for the express purpose of assisting each other. Each race complementing the other, each contributing talents and viewpoints the other lacks.”

“We do not wish to be your enemies, Rro-maa,” Rrin-saa said softly. “We never have wished that.”

“I’m glad,” Roman nodded. “We, too, don’t wish to be your enemies… but we also can never be your duplicates.”

For perhaps a dozen heartbeats the Tampies sat in silence. Then, shaking abruptly, Rrin-saa rose to his feet. “I will bring your words to the Tamplissta, Rro-maa,” he said. “We will ponder them.”

“That’s all I ask,” Roman nodded. “Then I will thank you for coming, and allow you to return to your preparations for departure.”

Sso-ngu rose to stand silently beside Rrin-saa. “Farewell, Rro-maa,” Rrin-saa said, the whiny voice oddly grave as, in unison, both Tampies traced a brief pattern in the air with their hands. “We have learned much aboard Amity. We trust you have learned, as well.”

Roman nodded. “We have indeed, Rrin-saa. Farewell.”

They turned to Ferrol, still sitting quietly in his corner, and repeated the handwaving gesture. Then, without looking back, they left.

Roman looked at Ferrol, feeling himself sag with the release of tension he hadn’t realized he was carrying. “I was starting to think that they weren’t going to notice you at all,” he commented.

Ferrol shrugged. “I wasn’t particularly worried either way. That was a nice speech, Captain—probably the most eloquent I’ve ever heard actually delivered from memory.”

“Thank you. Let’s hope it does some good.”

“It will, if they’re honest with themselves,” Ferrol said. “Misjudging their

‘helpless’ space horses that badly has got to have done something to that smug confidence of theirs. A good reappraisal of assumptions and prejudices ought to send a lot of them to the trash heap.”

For a moment Roman was tempted to point out Ferrol’s vast experience with reappraising prejudices. “It was worth a try, anyway,” he said instead.

“Right.” Ferrol hesitated. “So. We’ll be leaving for Solomon in a few hours, you said?”

“The Amity will,” Roman nodded. “I gather you won’t?”

Ferrol blinked. “How did you know?”

“You’ve been spending a lot of time on the laser to the Scapa Flow,” Roman reminded him, “which was at the time hanging around the Tampy ships. When couriers then started popping in and out, it was pretty obvious you were working a deal.”

“To be more precise, a deal was being worked on me,” Ferrol snorted. “It seems the Senate, in a burst of goodwill and friendship, has graciously offered the Scapa Flow and me to the Tampies to help round up their herd.”

Roman whistled under his breath. “Now there’s a job with steady employment.”

“Tell me about it.” Ferrol looked at the viewport. “I think even the Tampies were surprised that as many of the space horses hung around the system as did—more domesticated than anyone had realized, I guess. But they still lost nearly a hundred in those few hours after the battle, and the ones here that haven’t been netted and taken back to the corral yet are starting to leave now, too.”

“And the Scapa Flow, of course, just happened to have made records of the spots where each of them Jumped from?” Roman suggested blandly. “Just in case?”

“Just in case,” Ferrol agreed. “Anyway. At the moment, the plan is for us to lead a Tampy ship to where one of the space horses Jumped from, let their own space horse sniff out the target system from the dust sweat, then piggyback out there with them and round the thing up. We’ll bring it back, turn it in to the corral, and head out for the next one.” He shook his head. “At probably something like a week or more per space horse—well, as you said: really steady employment.”

“All of it, conveniently enough, at great distances from the Cordonale,” Roman pointed out. “Convenient, at least, from the point of view of certain parties to whom you could be an embarrassment.”

“The fact hadn’t escaped my notice,” Ferrol agreed sourly.

Roman eyed him. “The Senate is at least going to pay you for all this, aren’t they?”

Ferrol smiled tightly. “They have some piddling sum in mind, yes. Fortunately, I’ve been able to do a little dealing of my own, directly with the Tampies. For each capture they’ll be giving me—giving me, not the Senate—a credit of three weeks free use of a space horse and Handler team. And I mean free use, with no objections or handwringing or moralizing allowed.”

Roman nodded. Somehow, neither the fee nor the conditions really surprised him.

“You plan to go into the shipping business?”

“Hardly. I was thinking more along the lines of mid-distance planetary exploration, in the one- to two-hundred light-year range—survey stuff, like Amity’s first mission. Maybe keep an eye out for possible colony sites, too, for people who don’t mind being a a little isolated.” His lip twisted sardonically. “Who knows? I might even settle down somewhere out there myself. At a guess, I’d say the Senate would probably offer lots of government assistance to help me relocate off to the backside of nowhere.” He cocked an eyebrow. “What about you? Back to normal Starforce service again?”

“Unless the Senate taps me for the diplomatic corps,” Roman said dryly. “No, I’ll probably just be sent back to bordership duty once the Amity’s been decommissioned.”

Ferrol eyed him. “Not a good place to be if it comes to war,” he warned.

“Especially for someone like you who would hate like crazy to have to blow Tampy ships out of the sky.”

Roman shook his head. “It won’t come to war. Not now.”

Ferrol grimaced. “You’ll forgive me if I don’t put quite that much faith in this upcoming Tampy reassessment of humanity.”

Roman shook his head again. “You miss the point, Commander. I’m not counting on any philosophical reassessment; I’m counting on a very practical enlightened self-interest.”

Ferrol snorted. “I don’t think Tampies believe in enlightened self-interest.”

“Of course they do,” Roman told him. “That’s what species survival means: doing whatever is to the race’s own best interests. For the Tampies that’s always meant minimizing their impact on the environment while at the same time maximizing their benefit from that environment. I think that’s been the crux of our conflict, in fact: they’ve seen our activities as being exactly the opposite of their approach, intrusive without being especially beneficial. Now that we and our technology are going to be of some practical use to them, they’re almost certain to tone down on their criticism of our methods. Not stop entirely, mind you, but perhaps be more diplomatic in the way they present their complaints.”

Ferrol shook his head. “You’re reaching,” he said. “The Tampies have never yet toned down their ethical posturing just because it cost them something.”

Roman smiled. “Of course they have. Why else do you think the shared worlds’

problems haven’t exploded yet?”

Ferrol blinked. “You’ve lost me.”

“Well, just think about what the situation was like out there when Amity was first launched,” Roman reminded him. “A string of bombs, ready to go off—in fact, when that priority message came for us to get Lowry’s group out of that pre-nova system we both assumed it was a notification of war. Now, over a year later the explosion still hasn’t come. So why not?”

Ferrol eyed him suspiciously. “You’re not going to try and tell me that Amity’s space horse breeding program stopped a war, are you?”

“I am indeed,” Roman said. “Because suddenly being overly loud and obnoxious toward us carried the risk of costing something very valuable: space horse calves that they didn’t have to waste years going out and hunting down. And that’s going to be even more the case with the shark repellent. The shark repellent, and the shark tranquilizers, and the vulture repellent, and the space horse calvingstimulator, and all the rest of the things we’ll come up with once we’ve cracked the dust sweat molecular code. On our side of the balance, closer relations with the Tampies will give us increased access to space horses, and all the advantages that come with that.”

His gaze drifted to the viewport. Outside, just visible in the dim red light, he could see one of Amity’s lifeboats carefully skimming along the surface of one of the dead sharks, busily harvesting more of the precious dust sweat. “The universe runs on economics, Chayne,” he said quietly. “Not ethics, not rhetoric, not public opinion; but hard, cold economics. If there’s clear profit to be made on both sides by ending a conflict, the politicians will find reasons to cool the conflict down. If one or both sides see more potential profit in war, then there’ll be war. That’s the way it’s been throughout human history, and I don’t see any reason why it should change now.”

Ferrol exhaled audibly between his teeth. “You have a far more cynical view of the universe than I ever realized, Captain.”

Roman shrugged. “Perhaps. But I’ve always felt that simply refusing to face unpleasant facts doesn’t make you immune to their consequences, just powerless to make constructive use of them. Of course I’d prefer that our peace with the Tampies be built on something a little nobler than money… but I prefer it to having no peace at all. And the rest will follow eventually—the public opinion and political unity and all. It always does… if the economics can buy enough time.” He cocked an eyebrow. “So don’t be too quick to bury yourself away on some colony planet just as soon as you have enough space horse credits to get there. We’re going to need people like you in the next few years—people who are willing to buck the inertia of public opinion to do what they believe in.”

Ferrol smiled lopsidedly. “Even if what those people once believed in was war, warhorses, and genocide?”

Roman shrugged. “As Lieutenant Kennedy said,” he reminded the other quietly, “it is the end of an era.”