A buzz filled the chamber. Kruts hammered it into silence.
"Proceed, Grand Admiral," he said.
"Of course, Captain. The mission, Lord Inquisitor, is to negotiate peace with the humans."
This time, instead of a buzz, there was an indignant hubbub. Kruts banged his gavel till the chamber stilled. "Lord Inquisitor, Lord Counselor, members of the fitness board," he said, "this hearing has grown to encompass far more than envisioned. I hereby adjourn the fitness hearing, and recommend that we deal first with this new development."
He scanned the gathering. "All spectators will leave the chamber until further notice. Security will escort the witnesses to the waiting room, except for the two humans, who will be taken to their quarters. Guards will remain with the humans to prevent suicide. Officers of the court, clear the chamber."
When spectators and witnesses had gone, the hearing board declared itself an emergency board, and elected Rear Admiral Tualurog as its chairman. Then work began on what to do about the predicament they were in.
Quanshuk, as a witness now, pointed out that no known empire except their own had exceeded twenty-eight habitable worlds. And their own had long since ceased to be an empire in its original sense. The second swarm had extended it to twenty-two worlds, and strained the power of the government to govern. The third swarm had set out with the understanding that it would form a sister empire, with loyalty to the same traditions, the Wyzhnyny species, and the high emperor-the ruler of the parent empire. But the sister empire would rule itself.
Two millennia and six swarms had spread the Wyzhnyny widely, but even so, the Wyzhnyny Empire occupied an expanse only a small fraction as large as the human empire.
During the day's meeting, no consensus developed regarding the nature of the human empire. The remarkable lack of high technology on any of the worlds so far conquered seemed to rule out a group of sibling empires. And the long interval without military resistance, and the considerable gap between fleet encounters, suggested the human core worlds were not well prepared for invasion.
But there was consensus on a new strategy, and it did not involve anything so outrageous as negotiation. Speed was the key, and further colonization would be postponed. Strike for the imperial core. When a star was found within detection range in hyperspace, the armada would emerge promptly, and determine from the electronic signature whether the system held a core world. A core world. If not, they'd generate hyperspace at once and speed onward. In that way they'd advance far more rapidly.
If they encountered a human fleet waiting in other than a core world system, they would bypass it, generate hyperspace and speed on. The first priority was to destroy the core worlds, and particularly the crown world.
When finally they fought, it would be with the humans' main fleet, and the battle would decide once and for all which life-form would survive. If they won, and they must, then scouting forces would be sent to search out the remaining core worlds. The fleet could then be sent to destroy their technical infrastructures. The following mop-up might take generations, but bit by bit they would exterminate the human life-form.
Rear Admiral Tualurog was elected grand admiral by acclaim. Quanshuk was stripped of rank and privileges, and sentenced to death by suffocation, for treason. Tualurog's first act as grand admiral would be to question the human known as Yukiko-a parent fixated in female phase-and learn, if possible, the location of the crown world.
Then he intended to kill both humans. Evil was evil. It was probably contact with the prisoners that had corrupted Qonits, and through Qonits, Quanshuk. He would take no chances.
Chapter 60
Strange Message
"Blessed Buddha!" Foster Peixoto barely breathed the oath, while Chang Lung-Chi watched and listened silently. The screen showed only Ramesh lying in trance, but the words!
For many months, Annika Pedersen had channeled faithfully. And presumably accurately, Terran as Terran, and Wyzhnynyc as Wyzhnynyc. All seemingly without knowing what she did, or that she did anything at all. David MacDonald and Yukiko Gavaldon always spoke in Terran, except for a few, infrequent Wyzhnynyc interjections. While Qonits' words… Seemingly they'd been channeled as faithfully as Ramesh's vocal apparatus allowed, whether slurred Terran from Qonits' lipless mouth, or Wyzhnynyc muttered to his throat mike or spoken to his guards.
But now Annika and Yukiko were clearly in very different surroundings. David was either absent or silent, while Yukiko murmured only occasional soothing words to the savant. Everything else was in an incomprehensible mixture of Terran and Wyzhnynyc, in Wyzhnyny voices that differed in pitch, tone, and personality.
But the numerous intermixed Terran words included the labial phonemes, all properly sounded! A Wyzhnyny could not have pronounced them that way. It was as if Annika was mentally translating from Wyzhnynyc into Terran, live, so far as her mental database allowed. And what she could not translate, sent in the original Wyzhnynyc! At least that's how it struck the president, and the prime minister agreed.
The proceedings seemed to be a legal hearing of some kind.
Peixoto and Chang were listening for the second time. When the chamber was cleared again by the-judge?-and Yukiko and Annika had been sent to their cell, Peixoto turned off the recorder/player. "This is incredible!" he said. "Unimaginable!" Then switched on his desk comm. "Gisella, connect me with the university. This is urgent!"
A page interrupted Professor Pelle Clough in class, with a murmured, "The president and prime minister want to speak with you at once." Puzzled and only half believing, the professor took the call. It was brief, but extremely exciting. After dismissing his students, he was picked up on the roof by a security floater, and taken to the Palace of Worlds.
Linguistics was a modest department in the Institute of Antiquities, but within his specialty, Pelle Clough was prominent worldwide. He taught and had written fascinating books on the history and evolution of languages, was reputedly expert in a dozen, and competent in perhaps a dozen more. Which implied a rare, intuitive sense of language.
He had, of course, never heard Wyzhnynyc. But he and the two leaders played and replayed the cube, and with the help of the PM's artificial intelligence, wrung as much understanding as they could from it. They quickly agreed it was a courtroom proceeding, and Peixoto was a lawyer with courtroom experience. Before they were done, they'd gotten the sense of it. It seemed that Grand Admiral Quanshuk was being tried for malfeasance, or treason, or both.
And what seemed almost certain-he'd sent an envoy, Chief Scholar Qonits, as a negotiator to the Commonwealth, apparently with David MacDonald as an aide. The thought first dumbfounded, then excited the two statesmen.
They'd hardly finished-Clough hadn't left yet-when they were interrupted by Burhan Gokhale with another recorded channeling. This one was ugly, shocking, and very short. An apparent question was barked, repeatedly. Seemingly in Terran, but unintelligible, as if by someone who'd never tried to speak it before. Perhaps getting the words from the Wyzhnyny's shipsmind via an ear button.
Clearly Yukiko understood it. She cried out as if in pain. "I don't know! God help me I don't!… Please don't hurt her! She's harmless! She can't… "
Abruptly the recording ended, leaving the eavesdroppers with no doubt at all. Annika was dead, and Yukiko either was or soon would be.