Nicole stopped in front of it. "We don’t have food. What is your name?"
The Drac seemed to study upon the question for a moment. Then it looked up at the treetops. "In the Madah…" It looked at Nicole. "You may call me Shalda."
She pointed at herself and the sergeant in turn. "Joanne Nicole and Amos Benbo."
Shalda looked puzzled. "You carry your line-names into the Madah?"
"Our family names? Why not?"
"The shame of it. Dah! Something humans wouldn’t understand. You speak Dracon adequately; that should help."
Another vehicle came along and stopped next to the three. The driver stuck its yellow head out of the window, giving Benbo and Nicole only a passing glance. "Chova, vemadai! You may beg here, but do not hold conventions! Move off! Chova!"
The driver waited until all three turned and walked toward the hill. When they had walked a few paces, they heard the car hiss away. Shalda continued toward the hill.
Nicole looked at the Drac’s face.
"If it is so shameful, Shalda, why are you here?"
"I have nowhere else to go. The Madah is now my land."
Benbo walked faster and pulled up on the Drac’s other side. "We met a Drac on the hill. It said that war isn’t talma. What did it mean ?"
Shalda stopped and closed its eyes. "It is talma, human."
"The other Drac said it wasn’t. What is talma?"
They both looked at the Drac as Shalda appeared to struggle with something inside itself. "Talma." It lifted a hand and touched the thick blue stripe that looped its neck. "Did this other vemadah wear a blue mark such as this?"
Nicole shook her head. "No. Its robe was plain white."
Shalda’s hand tightened around the fold of its robe containing the blue stripe. "This, humans, is the mark of Jetah ve Talman. I am a Master of the Talman, master of paths. The one you describe must be very young, as well as very ignorant. To follow talma, one must follow the war against the United States of Earth. I have constructed the diagrams myself." Shalda released its robe and held the same hand out, first toward Benbo, then toward Nicole. "Are you males or females? Except for pictures, I have never seen humans before."
"Benbo is male; I am female."
Shalda studied them, each in turn, then shook its head. "I suppose there is a purpose in it." It held its hand out toward the hill. "I must hurry. There is food to find before the night comes."
Benbo grabbed the Drac’s arm. "If you think the war is right, why are you in the Madah?"
Shalda pulled its arm from the sergeant’s grasp. "It is none of your concern." Which answered the question. The Drac turned and walked toward the hill.
"Hoorah for Johnny Zero." Benbo turned toward Nicole. "Funny thing; I never thought of the Dracs having cowards."
She studied the sergeant’s face. The wall of anger and contempt he hid behind enabled him to function when others crouched in their holes, paralyzed with terror. That and his fear of being called a coward-thinking himself to be a coward.
There was Colonel Nkruma eating pronide capsules in the name of duty; a duty that was so much easier for him than facing humiliation. Nicole studied herself. She could keep fighting when everything in her head was screaming because on some lower level she was simply following her own rules. My precious, predictable rules. And I fear losing those regulatory reference points to reality more than I fear the Dracs.
"There are all kinds of cowards, Sergeant. It’s only the honest ones that have to carry the name."
Nicole glanced after the departing Drac, then turned to see Sergeant Benbo looking up at the sky. He pointed a finger. "Major! Major! It’s a raid! Hell, but it’s the Force!"
Nicole looked up, and after a second or two, she could make out the black spots of a USEF fighter squadron in formation-no, a full fighter-bomber wing! It seemed as though she was rooted in that street for hours-but only a second could have elapsed. Then those specks were on top of them. Benbo leaped, hit Nicole in the stomach, and sent her gasping to the ground.
In the next few moments, the world of Ditaar went up in heat and flame.
The forces of the sound explosions picked her up, shook her, and tossed her back to the ground. Slightly above the thunder of the blasts and howls of flying shrapnel, she heard Benbo screaming a curse. As repeated concussions numbed her mind and body. for an instant she saw Mallik’s face.
Then there was nothing.
FOUR
Tocchah walked toward the fires of its people, the footsteps of the enemy warriors close behind. Tocchah looked up to the night sky, praying silently: Aakva, Parent of All, strike this Uhe and its army down! Strike them down in flame and thunder!
Tocchah. receiving no response, looked back down at the path and continued walking, but spoke to the darkness that followed it: "Have you ever noticed, Uhe, that you can never find a god when you need one?"
"Yes, Tocchah. I have noticed."
…Her head in a vise… lungs filled with oil-soaked cotton, her ears ringing so loudly…
…At some point she realized that she was walking; stumbling down some road through the smoke and silence.
She stopped, wiped the back of her hand across her mouth, and looked at the blood on her hand. It was dark red and thick; almost dried. She wiped her face again. The blood had been coming from her nose, and the flow had already stopped.
"Benbo?"
She lowered her hand and stood, weaving in the street, looking for the sergeant. He was nowhere in sight. She closed her eyes, her head shattering with pain. There was nothing but smoke, and she sank down upon her knees and sat on her ankles. Confused; sleepy. There was something she knew she should be doing, but couldn’t force herself to remember what.
She opened her eyes to tiny slits. The smoke drifted to one side, letting her see the fuzzy outline of a structure. She closed her eyes, rubbed them, and looked again.
A large building… half of a large building. The land surrounding the ruined portion was swept clean save for a few uprooted smoking trees. The bright lemon-colored patches in the other side of the building eventually resolved into images of bodies.
Mauled, broken, crushed bodies. They were Dracs… Drac children. The flames were just beginning to lick at them.
"Sergeant! Benbo, where in the hell are you?"
The pain of her shout doubled her over until her forehead almost rested upon the ground.
There was a weak cry. Almost like a treed kitten. She sat up, lowered her hands, and listened.
More cries. There were several of them. From behind her came the sounds of shouting, cursing, wreckage being moved. The cries came from in front of her. From the crushed building. Nicole pushed herself to her feet and fought against waves of nausea as she stumbled toward the horror of the half-building.
The weak cries seemed to come from there. Closer and she stepped inside the stones of the crumbled wall, realizing that the bodies that she could see weren’t the ones doing the crying. She sagged against the stones. Even a Drac needs a mouth, throat, lungs, and life-all of the above-to cry out. The scraps of flesh exposed by the destruction were all missing too many things.
Again the cries. She pushed from the wall and forced her way through the wreckage into the relatively undamaged portion of the building.