"Well, maybe—"
Doctor-Cavan-a stopped speaking as the door opened. "Commander?" a warrior called. "Observation Post Five report (something) enemy air activity."
"Probably just their (something) (something)," the commander said, pulling a metal cylinder from his waist as he moved to the door. "Hold that thought, Doctor. I'll be right back."
He stepped outside, leaving the door open behind him. Stealthily, Prr't-zevisti slipped out behind him. It was the first chance he'd had in nearly three fullarcs to get out of the metal room, and no matter what the risks, he was determined to make the most of it.
Not much had changed out there since his last trip. A few more of the equipment piles had disappeared, and it occurred to him that it might be possible to deduce from that whether or not the Humans were running low on supplies. But on the other side, it might just mean they were moving things around to other parts of the stronghold.
"(Something) here," the commander's voice said. Prr't-zevisti looked around, spotted the other standing a couple of strides off to the side next to one of the equipment piles. He had a flat rectangular device propped up on top of the pile, with the metal cylinder he'd taken from his waist held up near his mouth. Some sort of recorder, obviously—
"Post Five, Commander," a faint voice came from the cylinder.
Prr't-zevisti frowned, moving as close to the commander as the walls of the metal room allowed. So it wasn't a recorder, but a communication device. Probably would have recognized that sooner if he'd had the same darklight sensitivity now that he'd had before he was raised to Eldership. He looked around as the voice continued talking, wondering if he could spot the darklight relay. Or, for that matter, would even know what a Human darklight relay looked like.
"Interest (something)," the commander said, turning back toward the metal room. Prr't-zevisti's attention snapped back with the movement; he didn't want to risk either being seen or getting caught by a closing door. "Hang on; let me check something." The commander rounded the corner of the room and stepped into the doorway—
And abruptly, the faint background of Elderdeath annoyance exploded into a knife edge of pain.
Prr't-zevisti gasped, the sheer unexpectedness of it freezing him writhing to the spot. He barely heard the commander and Doctor-Cavan-a speaking, his full attention on the torment driving through him like a million twisting needles. The universe seemed to swirl around him as waves of dizziness joined with the pain and nausea—
And then, as suddenly as if a switch had been thrown, it was gone. He gasped again, fighting to bring the world back into focus. The commander was still standing in the doorway talking to Doctor-Cavan-a, pointing to his right away from the metal room with the hand that held the cylinder. He finished the gesture, brought the hand back in front of him again—
And Prr't-zevisti jerked in agony as the Elderdeath pain again lanced through him.
But only for a beat. He had barely enough time to gasp when the pain again shut off.
It seemed harder this time to regain his balance and equilibrium; the Human commander seemed to be walking up a slanted wall as he stepped away from the doorway and back to his equipment pile. With an effort Prr't-zevisti fought his way through the dizziness, almost too drained to be angry. So it had finally happened. His captors had finally tried a full-fledged Elderdeath attack on him. But he'd survived it, and he hadn't given himself away.
Maybe they hadn't expected him to. Doctor-Cavan-a had stepped to the door of the metal room now, looking at the commander and paying no attention to either his fsss cutting or Prr't-zevisti himself. The commander, for his part, was still talking into his cylinder as if nothing at all had just happened.
The cylinder.
Prr't-zevisti stared at the device, an icy chill creeping across the last residue of Elderdeath ache. The cylinder. Moved into the doorway, into direct line with his fsss cutting, as the Elderdeath attack began. Taken away as it ended. And moved briefly out of line with the commander's gesture during the equally brief lull in the attack.
And suddenly Prr't-zevisti had it. The truth. The horrifying, devastating truth.
The Humans' Elderdeath weapons weren't weapons at all. They were communication devices.
Prr't-zevisti hovered there, staring at the commander and Doctor-Cavan-a, his mind spinning with shock. The report from the study group on Base World 12 had included a claim by the Human prisoner that it was the Zhirrzh survey ships that had started the space battle. Warrior Command and the Overclan had dismissed it as a lie.
But it hadn't been a lie. Not from the prisoner's point of view. As far as he knew, the Humans had done nothing more aggressive than attempting to communicate.
And had promptly been fired on. In what the Zhirrzh commanders had naturally considered to be pure self-defense.
Which meant that this entire war was nothing but a gigantic mistake.
Numbly, Prr't-zevisti made his way back into the metal room, settling into his corner and down into the grayworld. A mistake. A horrible blunder of misunderstandings.
And if this war, then why not all the others? All of Zhirrzh history—all the wars of defensive conquest against aliens who'd attacked them on sight. Had all of those wars been sparked by similar mistakes?
There was a sound, and Prr't-zevisti moved back to the edge of the lightworld. Doctor-Cavan-a had come back inside the room, followed by the Human commander. They held a brief conversation, something with a lot of words Prr't-zevisti didn't understand, and then the commander went out again, closing the door behind him.
For a few beats Doctor-Cavan-a sat quietly, staring at the door. Then, exhaling audibly, she turned back to her work on the fsss sample. Trying, if her conversations could be believed, to understand its importance to the Zhirrzh.
And Prr't-zevisti came to a decision.
He came up to the closest edge of the lightworld, a small dark voice in the back of his mind reminding him as he did so that this whole thing could be nothing more than an elaborate stratagem, a trick to draw him finally out into the open. But it was a risk he had to take. If there was even a small chance that he'd stumbled on the truth here...
His movement caught Doctor-Cavan-a's attention. She turned her head and froze, her mouth dropping soundlessly open as she saw him—
23
It was a long, lonely drive down the dusty roadway that led north toward his mother's house. Thrr-gilag saw only a few buildings along the way, farmhouses and related outbuildings, most of them fairly distant from the roadway. The only other vehicles he passed were lumbering planters out working the fields. Little to see, little to do except for the largely automatic process of driving down a deserted roadway.
It left him a lot of time for thought. They weren't pleasant thoughts. He tried to concentrate on the attempt to save the possibly alive Prr't-zevisti from probable death, and to speculate on how such a success might be bartered into reinstatement of his bond-engagement to Klnn-dawan-a. But there were too many ifs in the whole equation; too many ifs and possibles and maybes and doubtfuls. And even if it all worked out perfectly, there would always be the weight of his mother's crime working against it.
His mother. Thrr-gilag sighed, feeling a twinge of guilt. With all the rest of the flurry that had accompanied it, the truly basic consideration hadn't even occurred to him until midway through the flight from Unity City. Thrr-pifix-a had tried to steal her fsss because she didn't want to become an Elder.
She'd failed. Which meant that choice had now been taken away from her. And Thrr-gilag still couldn't decide whether he was relieved or saddened by that.
There were a half-dozen Elders hovering around his mother's house as he pulled up in front of it. "Hello," one of them said as he stepped out of the runabout. "Who are you?"
Thrr-gilag eyed him. "Why?"
The other seemed taken aback. "I was just wondering. I'd heard something happened here last latearc, something involving Overclan warriors and some kind of criminal activity. Just wondered if you knew anything about it."