Uthacalthing sighed. No, Kault’s one-track mind was concentrating on a completely different subject. There was no use trying to draw him away from it with subtle clues.
“What are the invaders up to now?” he asked.
“Well, first of all, I am picking up much less excited military traffic. Suddenly they appear to be engaged in fewer of those small-scale fights up in the mountains than they were days and weeks ago. You’ll recall we were both wondering why they were expending so much effort to suppress what had to be a rather tiny partisan resistance.”
Actually, Uthacalthing had been pretty certain he knew the reason for the frantic flurry of activity on the part of the Gubru. From what the two of them had been able to piece together, it seemed the invaders were very anxious to find something up in the Mountains of Mulun. They had thrown soldiers and scientists into the rough range with apparent reckless energy, and appeared to have paid a heavy cost for the effort.
“Can you think of a reason why the fighting has ebbed?” he asked Kault.
“I am uncertain from what I can decipher. One possibility is that the Gubru have found and captured the thing they were so desperately looking for—”
Doubtful, Uthacalthing thought with conviction. It is hard to cage a ghost.
“Or they may have given up searching for it—”
More likely, Uthacalthing agreed. It was inevitable that, sooner or later, the avians should realize they had been made fools of, and cease chasing wild gooses.
“Or, perhaps,” Kault concluded, “the Gubru have simply finished suppressing all opposition and liquidated whoever was opposing them.”
Uthacalthing prayed the last answer was not the correct one. It was among the risks he had taken, of course, in arranging to tease the enemy into such a frenzy. He could only hope that his daughter and Megan Oneagle’s son had not paid the ultimate price to further his own convoluted hoax on the malign birds.
“Hmm,” he commented. “Did you say there was something else puzzling you?”
“This,” Kault went on. “That after five twelves of planetary days, during which they have done nothing at all for the benefit of this world, suddenly the Gubru are making announcements, offering amnesty and employment to former members of the Ecological Recovery Service.”
“Yes? Well, maybe it just means they’ve completed their consolidation and can now spare a little attention to their responsibilties.”
Kault snorted. “Perhaps. But the Gubru are accountants. Credit counters. Humorless, selfish worriers. They are fanatically prim about those aspects of Galactic tradition that interest them, yet they hardly seem to care at all about preserving planets as nursery worlds, only about the near-term status of their clan.”
Although Uthacalthing agreed with that assessment, he considered Kault less than an,impartial observer. And the Thennanin was hardly the one to accuse others of being humorless.
Anyway, one thing was obvious. So long as Kault was distracted like this, thinking about the Gubru, it would be useless to try to draw his attention to subtle clues and footprints in the ground.
He could sense movement in the prairie all around him. The little carnivores and their prey were all seeking cover, settling into small niches and burrows to wait out midday, when the fierce heat of summer would beat down and it would cost too much energy either to give chase or to flee. In that respect, tall Galactics were no exception. “Come,” Uthacalthing said. “The sun is high. We must find a shady place to rest. I see some trees over on the other side of the water.”
Kault followed without comment. He appeared to be indifferent about minor deviations in their path, so long as the distant mountains grew perceptibly closer each day. The white-topped peaks were now more than just a faint line against the horizon. It might take weeks to reach them, and indeterminably longer to find a way through unknown passes to the Sind. But Thennanin were patient when it suited their purposes.
There were no blue glimmerings as Uthacalthing found them shelter under a too-tight cluster of stunted trees, though he kept his eye “peeled” anyway. Still, with his corona he thought he kenned a touch of feral joy from some mind hiding out there on the steppe, something large, clever, and familiar.
“I am, indeed, considered to be something of an expert on Terrans,” Kault said a little later as they made conversation under the gnarled branches. Small insects buzzed near the Thennanin’s breathing slits, only to be blown away every time they approached. “That, plus my ecological expertise, won me my assignment to this planet.”
“Don’t forget your sense of humor,” Uthacalthing added, with a smile.
“Yes,” Kault’s crest puffed in the Thennanin equivalent of a nod. “At home I was thought quite the devil. Just the sort to deal with wolflings and Tymbrimi pixies.” He finished with a rapid, low set of raspy breaths. It was obviously a conscious affectation, for Thennanin did not have a laughter reflex as such. No matter, Uthacalthing thought. As Thennanin humor goes, it was pretty good.
“Have you had much first-hand experience with Earth-lings?”
“Oh, yes,” Kault said. “I have been to Earth. I have had the delight of walking her rain forests and seeing the strange, diverse lifeforms there. I have met neo-dolphins and whales. While my people believe humans themselves should never have been declared fully uplifted — they would profit much from a few more millennia of polishing under proper guidance — can admit that their world is beautiful and their clients promising.”
One reason the Thennanin were in this current war was in hopes of picking up all three Earthling species for their clan by forced adoption — “for the Terrans’ own good,” of course. Though, to be fair, it was also clear that there were disagreements over this among the Thennanin themselves. Kault’s party, for instance, preferred a ten-thousand-year campaign of persuasion, to try to win the Earthlings over to adoption voluntarily, with “love.”
Obviously, Kault’s party did not dominate the present government.
“And of course, I met a few Earthlings in the course of a term working for the Galactic Institute of Migration, during an expedition to negotiate with the Fah’fah’n*fah.”
Uthacalthing’s corona erupted in a whirl of silvery tendrils, an open show of surprise. He knew his stunned expression was readable even to Kault, and did not care. “You… you have been to meet the hydrogen breathers?” He did not even know the trick of pronouncing the hyper-alien name, not part of any sanctioned Galactic tongue.
Kault had surprised him once again!
“The Fah’fah’n*fah.” Again Kault’s breathing slits pulsed in mimicry of laughter. This time, it sounded much more realistic. “The negotiations were held in the Poul-Kren sub-quadrant, not far from what the Earthlings call the Orion sector.”
“That’s very close to Terra’s Canaan colonies.”
“Yes. That is one reason why they were invited to take part. Even though these infrequent meetings between the civilizations of oxygen breathers and hydrogen breathers are among the most critical and delicate in any era, it was thought appropriate to bring a few Terrans along, to show them some of the subtleties of high-level diplomacy.”
It must have been his state of confused surprise, but at that moment Uthacalthing thought he actually caught a kenning from Kault … a trace of something deep and troubling to the Thennanin. He is not telling me all of it, Uthacalthing realized. There were other reasons Earthlings were involved.
For billions of years, uneasy peace had been maintained between two parallel, completely separate cultures. It was almost as if the Five Galaxies were actually Ten, for there were at least as many stable worlds with hydrogen atmospheres as planets like Garth and Earth and Tymbrim. The two strands of life, each supporting vast numbers of species and lifeforms, had almost nothing in common. The Fah’fah’n*fah wanted nothing of rock, and their worlds were too vast and cold and heavy for the Galactics ever to covet.