John chose the biochem lab for their meeting site, since it was too small for refugees to take shelter there. The power was off, so they set their flashlights on top of cabinets and high-tech equipment the power outage had rendered temporarily silent. The room was so cold, their breath steamed.
“Is there any way to get the power back on, in here?”
“Probably,” Herve Sinclair frowned, “if we could find enough cable to reconnect it to our power plant. We’ve been digging under the snow to find broken connections, trying to restore power to the shelters. I’m afraid we haven’t had much luck finding cable. Our maintenance warehouse was scoured clean, right down to the foundations. We managed to cannibalize enough cable from damaged labs and living quarters to bring the shelters back on-line, but there wasn’t enough to do small labs like this one.”
John nodded. “That’s one problem easily solved, anyway. Rapier carries spare power cable for just this kind of emergency. Put a crew to work looking for the broken ends and we can splice into your power plant within minutes.” He spoke into his comm link. “Rapier, open your rear portside cargo bin, please. Herve Sinclair will be coming out with a crew for that power cable.”
“Understood, Commander.”
Sinclair, pausing on his way out, directed a wan smile at the comm link. “You can’t know how good it is, being rescued. We’d all but given up hope.” That said, he vanished into the swirl of snow. Dr. Ivanov volunteered to fetch Alison Collingwood, their biochemist, and her technician, Arnie Kravitz.
The moment they were gone, John turned to the Tersae. “All right, Chilaili,” he said quietly, “I’ve been very patient, but it’s time you answered a few questions.”
“What do you wish to know, John Weyman?”
It was positively uncanny, hearing human speech coming out of a mouth not even remotely designed for it. The effect reminded John strongly of trained parrots, a disturbing image under the circumstances. The deep shadows cast by their narrow flashlight beams only heightened the strangeness. “For starters,” he narrowed his eyes, “tell me everything you know about this biochemical weapon.”
“I do not understand. I was deeply confused by your words, earlier. Please explain what a ‘biochemical weapon’ is.”
Bessany spoke a shade too quickly, before John could answer. “You remember that time we talked about what causes illness, don’t you, Chilaili?”
“The tiny living things you spoke of?” she asked, swinging her gaze around to peer at Bessany. The alien cocked her head downwards, since Bessany was nearly a full meter shorter than the Tersae. “Yes, I remember very well. I have tried to teach the clan the things you said, to keep these tiny living things from harming us. We wash everything more frequently now, and when I care for the injured and the sick, I wash my fingers and claws with very hot water, carefully boiled. There has been less sickness, since we began this.”
“I’m glad, Chilaili,” Bessany said with conviction. “Very glad. A biochemical weapon is a tiny thing—sometimes alive, sometimes not—that causes illness. One so terrible, everything exposed to it dies. If someone knows how, they can take things that are merely dangerous, things that might only make you very sick, and change them into something deadly.”
The Tersae’s pupils dilated. “As the Ones Above altered us?”
Chills ran down John’s spine.
“Yes, Chilaili,” Bessany nodded. “Exactly like that.”
“But the Ones Above have never given us such a thing.”
“You’re sure?” John asked sharply.
The Tersae turned that eerie gaze on him once more, causing alien shadows to leap across the walls. “I am a master katori, John Weyman. I would know such a thing. It is my duty to heal my clan of any illness. Such a thing would put the whole clan at risk, so I would have to know.” The Tersae hesitated a moment then, as though struck by a sudden thought. Even John could read the sudden uncertainty in that alien face, those alien eyes.
“What is it, Chilaili?” Bessany asked gently.
“My mother died when I was fifteen summers old, the same age Sooleawa is now. She was killed while hunting. It is possible my mother died before she had the chance to tell me of such a thing. But,” an odd sigh gusted past her beak, “my father’s mother believed I was fully trained. She had spent much time with my mother, assisting her, for my mother’s mother died young, also, which left the clan with only one katori to treat the sick and the injured. It is why she thought my mother would have taken great care to teach me all that she knew, because she had lost her own mother so young.”
“So it’s possible your mother didn’t tell you?” John asked.
“That is possible, yes. Or that my mother’s mother may have known, and died before she could pass on the knowledge. But I cannot believe that only a clan’s katori would have known such a thing existed. Such an important weapon would have to be known, not only to the katori, but also to the war leader and the akule.”
“The what?” John frowned.
“He- or She-Who-Looks-Up.”
“The priest or priestess who speaks the words of the Oracle,” Bessany translated. “From what Chilaili and Sooleawa have told me, the Oracle is some kind of radio transmitter/receiver. The Ones Above speak through them and the clans can ask their creators questions.”
Another chill touched John’s spine.
Chilaili was nodding, in grotesque parody of a human gesture. “Yes, this is so, John Weyman. The Ones Above always speak to us through the Oracles. We have never seen their faces directly, only flat images of them. We have never seen the wondrous machines they build to fly between the stars. The weapons they gave us were stored long ago in the deepest caverns of the winter nests. Could such a weapon survive for so many years?”
John did not like what he was hearing. “Yes,” he growled, “it could. Possibly for hundreds of years.”
Chilaili’s pupils dilated. “That is frightening,” she whispered. She was frightened, too. Even John could see it. Her hands were shaking and her voice was unsteady. “Our grandmothers’ grandmothers might not have known had such a thing been left so many years ago. But surely a clan’s akule, at least, would know? And the akule would be honor-bound to reveal the secret to the katori and the viho, the war leader. It would endanger the clan, not to tell them.”
Chilaili’s fright shook John, dispelling his suspicions far more effectively than any protestations of innocence. “What about the other clans?” he asked. “Might they have something like this? Or do you talk to anyone outside your clan?”
The Tersae clicked her beak softly. “Yes, I have spoken with the katori of other clans. We trade widely when the clans are not warring with one another. There are often summer meetings of the katori from neighboring clans, to share ideas and new discoveries. What we katori speak of amongst ourselves is just as serious as this ‘biochemical’ weapon, yet not one of the other katori has mentioned such a thing.”
“Chilaili,” Bessany asked, “in these wars between clans, would the war leaders use weapons given them by the Ones Above to fight each other?”
She clicked her beak again, more rapidly this time, giving John a strong sense that Chilaili was in distress. “It is forbidden,” the Tersae whispered, glancing uneasily toward the ceiling as if afraid her gods would overhear, “but in my mother’s grandmother’s day, it is said a terrible war full of bitter hatred broke out between two clans far to the south. It quickly became altsoba, total war.”
“Total war?” John echoed. “Like your war against the humans?”
“Yes,” Chilaili said with devastating simplicity.
“Tell me more about this altsoba. The one in your mother’s grandmother’s day.”
“Before the fighting was done, the two clans had used all the weapons given them by the Ones Above. Weapons that explode with terrible noise and force, weapons that fly through the air very quickly, weapons that throw lethal projectiles. Both clans were destroyed. The worst of the bombs left nothing but great holes in the earth where the winter nests had been, holes as large as this valley, where nothing would grow for years afterward. When I was still a nestling, the clan’s akule used stories about this war to instill proper awe toward the power of the Ones Above and their weapons. But none of the tales told of this altsoba mention anything like a living weapon that kills within a few heartbeats. I cannot believe that a clan pushed to the edge of survival would fail to use this terrible weapon against an enemy, if the clan knew it existed.”
“From the sound of it,” John said roughly, “that’s exactly what they did at Rustenberg.”
Chilaili had no answer for that.