III

Chichuntu was a sublimely beautiful world, elegant and refined as its inhabitants. The Wais were ornithorps: tall, quiet, manicured of manner and appearance, rarely flustered, and always comfortable no matter what their surroundings.

They possessed the kind of self-control, Caldaq thought, that had always eluded the Massood. Their uniforms were never dirty and they walked as if dancing. Polite they were in conversation, and formally correct without being unctuously so. Wais society was perhaps the most complex in the entire Weave. Every movement, every gesture and inflection contained multiple levels of meaning and implication, usually comprehensible only to another Wais. Compared to their own language and culture, those of the other races were simple, almost childlike. They were also natural mimics. The combination made them unsurpassed linguists.

Because of this, Wais worlds were often chosen to serve as regional command bases despite the formalized protests of the inhabitants. It was pointed out that because the Wais were so polite and correct, their presence and indeed their society itself had a meliorating effect on the more contentious members of the Weave, where everyone lived in fear of giving casual offense to his neighbor.

It was hard, however, to become upset during a discussion moderated by a Wais, to shout imprecations and insults to a Wais translator knowing that it would automatically moderate both accusation and response. Oftentimes shame and embarrassment prevented trouble before it could happen.

A regional command center seemed out of place on a world like Chichuntu. On Massoodai, for example, it would have been sited far away from any metropolitan area, or buried deep within granite mountains. The Wais had insisted on placing it within the boundaries of a major city park, and had proceeded to beautify it with fountains and landscaping.

Indeed, this whole world was one vast park, Caldaq mused. It was not to his liking. Too many hedges, too many closely planted trees. He would have preferred open plains, where trees clustered in small, defined places or grew respectable distances from one another. Where a Massood could move traditionally, as his ancestors had traveled, fully utilizing his long legs, covering distances with great strides. Not in pursuit of trade or quarry, but something more honorable.

To run long, leap far, jump high: that was what the Massood did best. It was because of that tradition, because sport held importance within Massood culture, that they had turned out to be one of the few Weave races suited to combat. It was a task they had assumed reluctantly, as would any intelligent species.

But someone had to do the actual fighting. The S’van and the Hivistahm and the Lepar and even the Wais contributed much in the way of support, but when it came to combat they were not of much use.

Besides the Massood, only the Chirinaldo made decent soldiers, and those dizzy heliox-breathers were poor companions on a blasted battlefield.

He adjusted his dress vest and shorts, smoothing out the short gray fur that peered from beneath the hems. The irises of his eyes were a lighter gray, the vertical pupils almost black. At the same time he tried to relax. That was something of a contradiction in terms. A Massood could not really relax. Immaterial on the battlefield, it often kept them from promotion to command positions, where the presence of a calmer S’van was more reassuring.

Therefore it was doubly significant that Caldaq, being not only Massood but young, had been given captaincy of a ship.

The honor was not unprecedented, but it was uncommon. Awareness of this only contributed to his nervousness. The trimmed whiskers at the end of his muzzle twitched maniacally.

Curling one upper lip, he dug with a neatly trimmed claw at a bit of food that had lodged between two molars. Extracting the fragment, he examined it idly, glanced around to make sure no one was watching him. Ancestors forbid a Wais should catch him spitting on their groomed grounds. He derived a perverse pleasure from doing so.

What did Command want with him? His thoughts were a jumble of hopes and suspicions.

He made a last check of his person, which would have seemed immaculate to any but a Wais, ran a claw tip over his teeth one more time, and paused briefly to sniff the air ahead. It smelled of green growing things and flowers. There were flowers everywhere on this world. It confused his sense of smell.

Regional Command was located in an unprepossessing structure surrounded by a decorative lake. Once long ago he had accompanied his parents to such a place. They had been soldiers as well, though none had risen so high. He was acutely mindful of his responsibilities.

His parents hadn’t wished to be fighters any more than he had, but since the Massood were just about the only Weave species which did not go into shock on the battlefield they had little choice. At least there was no lack of backup and support from those many races they helped to defend. The Massood did not have to manufacture any tools, grow their own food. Everything was done for them by those Weave peoples incapable of participating in combat.

The black tuft normally present at the tip of each ear was missing from his left one. He flicked it repeatedly with a finger, a nervous habit. It was a genetic shortcoming often remarked upon by females. It marked him as distinctive, though not necessarily attractive.

Inside, he followed the readout display which floated in front of his eyes, guiding him.

What do they want with me? he wondered. On the whole, I’d rather be running.

He was a fine runner, too. Not as good a jumper, which was surprising considering his height. His most pronounced talents, however, were not visible, such as his ability to pause and consider before leaping into battle.

The Amplitur, now, could simply bioengineer such desirable characteristics into their client races. Since the Weave could not, it was forced to make use of existing biological diversity among its citizens, diversity which sometimes threatened to tear the fragile coalition apart. Internal dissension was commonplace. Only the threat posed by the hated Amplitur held it together.

Massood edginess could contribute to this dissension when concentrated in the confined compartments of a ship. A nervous captain wasn’t considered the most suitable to command a warship crewed by members of very different, highly argumentative races. Only Caldaq’s ability to control his natural instincts had enabled him to achieve that exalted position at such a youthful age.

Other Massood frequently asked how he’d managed it. He tried to explain that it was a matter of thinking differently, of controlling one’s feelings as much as one’s metabolism. Easier to speak of it than put it into practice, they replied.

He was several floors above the lake when the automatic door admitted him to his destination, after first running a thorough check on his identity. The Amplitur were not above reengineering similar physical types within their dominion to resemble members of Weave species and then sending them forth to instigate trouble on specific worlds.

For example, one of the Amplitur client peoples closely resembled the Hivistahm, and they caused considerable trouble every time their agents were slipped onto a Hivistahm-populated world. It was left to the locals to root out the infiltrators, which they did with varying degrees of success.

He didn’t much care for the Hivistahm. They were scaly green complainers, always dreaming of home, their fine-boned fingers capable of engineering and tech work beyond the ability of the most skilled Massood. Somber, homesick, and serious, they were not the best of company on a long voyage. But their dedication and talents made them invaluable to the war effort.

Caldaq was grateful that there were no client races of the Amplitur who resembled the Massood.

Brun was waiting for him. Like many S’van, he occupied an executive position, having risen far faster in the command hierarchy than was possible for any Massood. Caldaq was not jealous of this. It was the way things were.

Like the Massood the S’van were mammalian. There the similarities ended. The S’van were short vegetarians, not as sophisticated as the Wais but more so than the Massood. Their squat, hirsute bodies were clad in practical clothing devoid of adornment. They were given to boisterous love songs and highly emotional renditions of complex poetry.

Though not the linguists that the Wais were, they were comfortable among strangers, from the fighting Massood to the simple and often incomprehensible Lepar. Their nonthreatening appearance was a major reason why they were able to get along so well with representatives of many different species.

Mentally they were lightning-quick, invariably making the right decisions at difficult moments. Not just for themselves, but for everyone else. It was only natural that they should rise to positions of importance.

If someone was smarter than you, it was a fact to be accepted, not an opinion to be argued. You could object, take command yourself, and die nobly, or let a S’van make the right battlefield decision and live. War was not a sport. Caldaq was content to take orders from hairy, good-natured S’van, as were the rest of the Massood.

It was different with other races. Because of its very nature a Wais giving orders could be insufferable. That inbred attitude of superiority rapidly grew tiring. But the S’van entertained no such illusions, cultural or otherwise. They were regular people. Just smarter than everyone else. If one irritated you, you could pick it up and toss it out the nearest window. Metaphorically speaking, of course. In many ways it was the S’van and not the Wais who held the Weave together.

Brun was typical of his kind. Much older on the relational scale than Caldaq and half his height. Stocky, tailless, with a blunt flat face displaying rounded grinding teeth. Tightly curled black hair spilled over his head like oil from a fountain, trimmed to expose the eyes, nostrils and mouth. The impenetrable beard, like a creeping jungle, had to be cut back every three days.

Though his salutation was cheery as ever, Caldaq thought he detected an uncharacteristic undercurrent of concern. Save for him and his host the office was empty. This was flattering but it also made Caldaq wary. He was being singled out for something. Whether good or bad he did not yet know.

For all that Brun was so much shorter he didn’t seem so. Perhaps it was the air of confidence which accrued to many S’van. Perhaps it was the fact that he was a regional commander.

“Problems?” Caldaq spoke fairly good S’van. Like its originators it was deceptively simple. The language was capable of vast elaboration.

“What do you think?”

Caldaq considered. “It is rumored that the Amplitur and Crigolit are massing with the T’returi for a major assault in the vicinity of the Jiidge worlds.”

“Then you know as much as anyone else.” Brun’s voice was liquid and perfect. He paced away from the Massood—not out of fear or dislike but so he wouldn’t have to crane his neck as much to see the captain’s gaze.

The commander led him through a door and into a refulgent starfield. Stepping into a projection room was exactly like emerging from the hull of a ship into deep space. Except the stars were not real but rather exquisite simulations which could be expanded or contracted like the field itself at an operator’s whim.

As they walked through the projection the room automatically sensed where their feet would fall and provided the necessary transitory support. It would supply steps or downramps as required.

Each point of light could be enlarged to show an entire system. Caldaq recognized many of them. After all, the display encompassed only a small part of the galaxy. It was difficult enough to try and memorize the relative positions of the worlds of the Weave, the Amplitur, and those in the immediate vicinity without trying to deal with the incomprehensible vastness beyond.

Other dots when expanded would reveal themselves to be ships, or whole fleets. Within the projection a complete corner of the galaxy was represented, with its inhabited worlds, suns, nebulae, and baffling instruments of warfare. He noted combat activity in the Protan Sector. With Brun’s permission he voiced a request to the machine. That portion of the projection obediently expanded to show individual vessels orbiting a world. Everything he was witnessing in miniature was happening in real time, parsecs distant. It gave one pause.

Not the projection itself. That was simply a superb example of Hivistahm-O’o’yan workmanship based on S’van design and a probable Turlog overview.

No, what was truly awesome was the idea of trying to conduct war on a galactic scale, moving ships and personnel through hundreds of parsecs of real space. To keep the conflict lumbering along required every iota of scientific and technological skill both the Weave and the Amplitur could muster.

What wore you down, Caldaq mused, was not the Amplitur’s skill in combat or their ability to make the best use of their allies. It was their patience, the sense of inevitability they strove to project. No matter how many defeats you inflicted on them, no matter the extent of their losses, they never entertained thoughts of surrender.

Hundreds of years ago it had been accepted that they would have to be utterly destroyed in order to end the war. A daunting project when one considered the fact that the location of the Amplitur homeworld was unknown. The Weave hadn’t the slightest idea how far back in the starfield it lay, or even in what direction. There were times when the task seemed hopeless.

The alternative was terrifyingly simple. You didn’t have to fight the Amplitur. All you had to do was join them in their Purpose, become one more component of whatever structure it was they were dedicated to building.

Trouble was, they held all the controls. If you gave in, as one or two species had, there was no going back. No chance to reconsider. In all the hundreds of years it had been fighting, the Weave had yet to encounter a single race that had been allowed the privilege of changing its mind. The Amplitur were careful. There could be recalcitrant people, but not recalcitrant genes. Give in to the Amplitur, give in to their Purpose, and you acknowledged their right to mess with your DNA.

Now that was truly frightening.

Caldaq ordered the expanded scene to return to scale. World and orbiting vessels vanished, subsumed once more by the immensity of their surroundings.

Brun led him on. There was no up or down inside the projection, no back or forward save as it related to your own perception. Many became uneasy inside the projection and had to be led out. It made the Wais uncomfortable. A huge, powerful Chirinaldo with its love of bright illumination would have found it intolerable. Caldaq thought the darkness and simulated stars relaxing.

“You are anxious to fight.” Brun had climbed a couple of invisible steps and turned, now eye to eye with his companion. Caldaq could have matched his ascent, but that would have been impolite.

“No one with half a brain is anxious to fight. Better to say I am impatient to participate. It is what I have been trained to do.”

“And in an exemplary manner, too. I’ve studied your record. There are those who think you show exceptional potential. Based on personal acquaintance, I naturally dispute that.”

A joke, Caldaq knew. His whiskers quivered and his nose twitched, as did the tips of his fingers. The S’van were always joking. They could joke about extinction, or the end of entropy. The Massood had their own sense of humor. It was only that the S’van’s was so much more … expansive than anyone else’s. That, and the fact that one never knew for certain exactly what they meant. They were so quick.

“Relax. I didn’t call you in here to make fun of you.” Brun stared into the depths of the projection, eyes gleaming between beard and forelocks.

“Your rapid ascension and an overview of your work suggest that you might be suited to a special mission.”

They were going to give him a ship, Caldaq thought. Because of his “special temperament,” as it was so delicately phrased in his records. He would not be the first Massood so honored, but it would mark him as unique because of his age. Members of his lineage would be proud.

The S’van was watching him, his teeth clicking softly. Another sign of amusement. That was one thing about the S’van. Whenever their intellectual superiority started to grate, they would inevitably inject an interracially comprehensible obscenity or something else to lighten the atmosphere. Caldaq sometimes wondered if they did this because they were inherently jovial or because they were nervous about the reactions their superior intelligence might stimulate among less mentally endowed peoples.

“The ship’s name is … well, I don’t know the Massood analog, actually, nor even the S’van. She’s Hivistahm-built, of course. All the newest technology. Fully multispecies serviceable to accommodate just about anybody in the Weave. Not big enough internally to suit the Chirinaldo, but then what is?

“Not your usual warship. Been specifically modified and equipped for extended Underspace travel.”

“A sabotage mission?” Caldaq fought to control his excitement, was betrayed by the quivering of his extremities and the dilation of his pupils. This was a chance to make a name for himself and his lineage.

“Where am I being sent? And what of my mission and crew?”

“You’re to be assigned quite a mix. Fellow Massood among them, of course. Not all have been preassigned. It was felt you should have leeway to engage specific officers you might want to work with in the event that …”

“Gratefulness for that.” It was the Massood manner to say what one wished to when one wanted to. Used to dealing with Caldaq’s kind, the S’van took no umbrage at the interruption.

“You may have anyone you wish, provided they can be spared from their present positions. You’ll have a full complement of Hivistahm techs with the usual O’o’yan companions, a top-notch Lepar work crew, and at least a couple of Chirinaldo. A Wais or two.”

Caldaq winced. “Must I?”

Brun cocked his head slightly to one side. “What would you do if your mechanical translators failed?”

“Manage with gestures, if necessary.” Caldaq’s upper lip curled in amusement, showing sharp teeth.

“Sorry, Captain. You’ll have to take them. Also a few S’van.” Brun added the last offhandedly. The S’van strove always to maintain a low profile. “And I think you will have a Turlog.”

Caldaq was surprised at that. The vessel they were assigning him to must be larger, its mission more important, than he had hitherto expected.

There were not many Turlog, not even on their homeworld. They differed substantially from every other race in the Weave. Indeed, it was whispered they had more in common in many ways with the Amplitur than with species like the Massood or Lepar. But they had no love for the Amplitur, or their Purpose.

They weren’t antisocial so much as solitary by nature. Though hermaphroditic, they laid eggs and did not bud like the enemy. Any species which evolved without the need for intersexual contact had no need to seek or develop the companionship of its own kind.

It was a shame there were not more of them, because they had the unique ability to concentrate on two and occasionally three separate subjects at the same time. This made them especially valuable in combat situations, when strategy and tactics were being implemented.

While not throwing themselves wholeheartedly into the war, they had recognized the danger posed by the Amplitur and had joined the Weave specifically for the purpose of combating them. They were long-lived and slow to reproduce. To have a mature individual assigned to one’s vessel was viewed in some quarters as the best of all possible good-luck charms.

“Where exactly,” Caldaq asked with Massood directness, “am I going with this ship?”

“I’ll show you.”

Brun led him through the starry void until Caldaq sensed they had crossed all the way to the opposite wall of the projection chamber. In any event, the star systems which now surrounded them like paralyzed glowbugs were unknown to him. They stood on the edge of the unfamiliar.

He heard a tapping sound. “You’re going here.” Caldaq saw that the Commander was rapping on the black wall.

“I do not understand.”

“You’re going out. Out into the rim.”

“But there’s nothing there. That region is unexplored, unstudied.”

“Actually, I think there’s a bathroom there.”

As far as Caldaq was concerned, this time the S’van humor fell flat. Brun sensed as much and continued in a more serious vein.

“You are going hunting, but not for Amplitur, or Crigolit, or any others. You are to search for potential allies.”

Caldaq’s mind whirled. He knew that on the rare occasions when a warship could be spared from combat it might be sent out to try and expand the Weave, though most new allies arrived in the form of spacefaring peoples who encountered the Weave in the course of their own travels. It was much the same with the Amplitur.

But while such far-ranging expeditions sometimes encountered life, it was rarely intelligent and hardly ever useful. To the best of his knowledge, only two species capable of contributing even minimal support to the war effort had been so contacted since the conflict had begun.

In other words, such journeys were a vast waste of time.

It was not what he wanted to do. It was not what he had been trained for. His family lineage bespoke a different destiny.

He tried to hide his feelings, but his lips drew back to show teeth. It was not so dark that the S’van failed to notice.

“You’re upset. Don’t be. This work is important.”

“Be that as it may, it is work the O’o’yan or Hivistahm or even the Lepar might do. Well, perhaps not the Lepar. But others. Why the Massood?”

“Any expedition into the unknown must prepare for every conceivable contingency. We know neither the boundaries nor extent of the Amplitur’s influence. There is always the chance they may have allies in sectors we do not suspect. That is a possibility that must be contemplated.”

“Let someone else contemplate them!”

Brun remained calm. It was useless to try dressing down a Massood for insubordination. “You expected a front-line vessel, perhaps a landing command.”

“I am expected,” Caldaq replied carefully, “to fulfill certain expectations.”

The commander sighed. “I am familiar with the Massood and their hierarchy of familial obligations. Believe me, you will be more than fulfilling them by carrying out this command.

“You were selected because of your unique temperament, your ability to control yourself in moments of crisis. It is because of this, if I may be permitted to stretch a point, Turlog-like capability that you have risen to the position you now hold. Certainly an experienced S’van or Hivistahm captain could lead such a mission, but it was felt that there would be advantages to having a Massood in command.”

Caldaq hesitated. “Then you expect to encounter trouble out there.”

Brun’s teeth clacked softly. “We don’t know what to expect out there. If we knew what to expect, we wouldn’t have to send a vessel to go look.”

“Communications?”

“There’s all sorts of electromagnetic babble, just like there is everywhere else, but whether it’s spewed by pulsars or unknown astrophysical phenomena or something else we’ve no way of telling at such a distance. The galaxy, my young Massood, is vast: the portion occupied by the Weave and the Peoples of the Purpose, very small. Again, if we knew these things, we would not have to send you to find them out for us.”

Though still displeased, Caldaq was calming down. After all, what more did he have a right to expect? Command of a landing force on a critical contested world? True, he had participated in half a dozen combat situations, but to fight and to command were very different matters.

What more natural than that they should test someone promoted beyond his years with captaincy of a vessel to be sent into a potentially threatening but noncombat situation? The experience would be good for him. The S’van was right. The S’van, affectionately curse them, were always right.

They were offering him an advanced ship with an experienced, diverse crew. Specialists aplenty. He would not have to order S’van, for example, to fix a broken condensate, or use Lepar in a fight. There would be a Turlog to help design tactics and Chirinaldo to manage large weapons systems. He’d never worked with either species before, but anyone commanding a large-scale operation would have to do so.

It was one thing to give orders to fellow Massood, something very much different to do so to a Chirinaldo. Experience.

They parted in the manner of S’van and Massood, Caldaq having acquiesced to the directive.

But he was still unhappy.