Trial by Fire - eARC (85 page)

Caine nodded, but thought,
Something’s not right here. Apt-Counsel has got Visser and Sukhinin panicked. Me too, almost. And that means we’re probably not thinking clearly.
He turned to the Ktor. “I find this all a bit strange, Mr. Ambassador.”

“Admittedly, it would be unusual for the Arat Kur to have a strike force preaccelerated—”

“That’s not what I mean, Apt-Counsel. I mean, aren’t you supposed to be the Arat Kurs’ ally?”

There was a long silence. “Yes.”

“Then I’m a little puzzled. I understand why you are trying to help us contact the Wholenest leadership, but I don’t see how sharing your knowledge of Arat Kur military protocols is consistent with your role as their ‘ally.’”

“My earlier misdeeds made it incumbent upon me to make an extraordinary show of good faith. Strategically significant revelations were the only way I could readily earn your trust. Also, by presenting all the dangerous and uncertain military variables, it underscored the volatility of the situation. That, in turn, would logically make both parties see the urgency of reaching a peaceful settlement as quickly as possible. Unfortunately, I did not foresee that I would be ignored or rebuffed by the Arat Kur leadership.”

Every explanation seems plausible, but still—

The door opened. Ben Hwang entered, Darzhee Kut after him. Alnduul brought up the rear. Sukhinin, seeing Darzhee Kut, straightened, suddenly a redoubtable general of the Motherland. Caine could almost see the absent uniform and the litter of medals jostling for position on the left side of his chest. “Dr. Hwang, Ambassador Alnduul, at best, you failed to request permission to enter. At worst, you have brought a sworn enemy into a highly classified briefing and discussion.”

Darzhee Kut’s claws scissored and waved fitfully, far more animated than they had seemed to Caine only half an hour earlier. It was as if the Arat Kur had awakened out of a haze or a drugged state, just as he had when he recovered from his extended isolation on board the auxiliary command module. “Please. Do not dismiss me. I wish to talk to the Elders of the Wholenest.”

Sukhinin shook his head. “Talk is over. Now we finish what you started.”

“But I have rested enough and emerged from fugue. I am able to speak once again. I cannot be sure Homenest will listen to me, but I must try.”

Before anyone else could respond, Apt-Counsel spoke. “Delegate Kut, it pains me to observe that the only thing which has changed between now and the weeks prior is that Mr. Riordan has visited you. And from that visit, you may have inferred or learned what the humans can now do to your planet, and how close they are to carrying it out.”

“What if that is true? Is that not a reasonable motivation to speak?”

“It is also a reasonable motivation to advise your leaders to do what they have not tried yet: to engage the humans in negotiations for the purpose of stalling long enough for a strike force to arrive.”

Yeah, Apt-Counsel, but if you’re his ally, then why aren’t you helping him achieve that deception? Is this another attempt to prove your good faith by helping us—or are you jumping ship, maybe with an eye to eventually courting us as allies, the way you did at the Convocation?

Caine instinctively flinched away from that explanation. If anything, it was too simple, too obvious. But Apt-Counsel’s “observations” had galvanized human anxiety, had focused their attention upon the horrible necessity of ending the war with an act of genocide.

So, behind the first smokescreen of fear, Apt-Counsel might be indirectly trying to once again curry favor with humanity. But that, too, was too easy to foresee. So what was Apt-Counsel trying to achieve, behind both smokescreens, that would benefit the Ktor?

Darzhee Kut was rotating to face Caine, claws raised in appeal. “Riordan, please. I must speak to the Elders.”

I’ve got to intervene, but I’ve got to make sure that I’m not stepping into a trap.
With the Ktor, there was always the unseen dagger, the half-lie that wasn’t clear enough to call attention to itself when first uttered. Such as Apt-Counsel’s earlier claim that he only back-shot Caine to prevent the humans from capturing the Arat Kur ships. In retrospect, that was rubbish: when the Ktor had attacked, the radio was already being made available to Darzhee Kut. So eliminating Caine was no longer a military objective when the Ktor attempted it.

Caine’s thoughts snagged on another troubling detail
. Apt-Counsel’s attack also removed me before I could intercede in regard to their ground force suicides. So, another way to look at his actions would be this: after the Arat Kur ships were already lost, he was still willing to kill me to make sure that even the
planetside
Arat Kur died. But why?

One tentative answer offered itself.
The Arat Kur suicides and ship scuttlings do have one thing in common. They ensured that human and Arat Kur would share an intense mutual hatred, that they would no longer wish to communicate their thoughts or intents to each other except through weapons of mass destruction.

A reasonable hypothesis, insofar as it explained why Apt-Counsel attacked Caine five months ago. But it did
not
explain why he would help humans now. Indeed, if the Ktor objective was to keep enmity absolute and war perpetual between the two races, Apt-Counsel was defeating his own purpose. If the Arat Kur were exterminated, there would be no further interspeciate conflict to exploit.

It doesn’t add up. I’m missing something.
And Caine felt that as each sliver of a second slipped past, the undeterred momentum was building toward atrocity.
I’ve got to do, to say, something, if only to buy some time.
He turned toward Sukhinin, unsure what he was going to say, but sure that he had to intervene before—

Ben Hwang’s voice was quiet, just above a whisper, in his left ear. “Caine, do you have a moment?”

Damn.
“Not really, Ben. What’s it about?”

“The Ktor.”

“Oh?”
“Know thy enemy”—so always take the time to learn about them. Even now. No,
particularly
now.
“Sure.”

Ben gestured toward the reading lounge with a bend of his head, moved in that direction. Caine followed, making an apologetic gesture toward Sukhinin.

Hwang turned to face him as soon as they were in the small lounge. “I’m sorry I didn’t have this sooner. With the push to reverse-engineer and then manufacture the Arat Kur virus—”

“I know. Not much time for the other projects you had going. But we don’t have much time now, either. What do you have on the Ktor, Ben?”

“More mysteries, I’m afraid. I’ve had our three top xenophysiologists and macromolecular chemists working on simulations and biochemical models which would show how the exhausts from the Ktor environmental unit could be produced as the waste products, the ‘exhalations,’ of an ultra-cold-temperature organism.”

“And they’re still stumped.”

“Worse than that. They’ve concluded that, according to the laws of biological heat and energy exchange as we understand them, these gases simply do not fit with any foreseeable model of life based on methane, ammonia, or hydrogen fluorine. And so far as we know, those are the only three low-temperature compounds which are flexible and volatile enough to serve as the building blocks of a subzero, non-carbon-based biochemistry.”

“So what does that mean?”

“It means that either my team is not up to the task, or that these gases aren’t what the Ktor ‘exhale.’ And we know for sure they can’t be the gases they actually ‘inhale.’”

“How?”

“Because that gas mix can’t do the job of transmitting the necessary reactants to a cold-climate organism. The per molecule potential energy of cold weather gases is a great deal lower than those which are predominant in higher temperature regimes. So, according to our models, low-temperature creatures would logically need a very reactant-rich atmosphere, comparatively speaking. Unfortunately, the mix coming out of those oversized hot-water heaters couldn’t sustain a mouse-sized organism.”

Caine nodded, thought. “How confident are you of the team’s abilities?”

“Two were Nobel nominees. The third is a laureate.”

“I see. So, if we assume that your tragically underskilled team isn’t at fault, then all your findings add up to—what?”

“The first mystery.”

“There’s another?”

“Yes.” Hwang’s tone became a little more formal, a little more measured. “We have noted some oddities in Ktoran artifacture.”

“Their artifacture? Where did you find any of their artifacture lying around?”

“It was not lying around. It was embedded in your back.”

Of course. The manipulator arm would be a piece of invaluable forensic data. “Go on. What’s the mystery?”

“Its manner of production. We have subjected all of its components—the metal, plastic, and carbon-composite fittings—to extensive analysis. Everything from gross physical measurement to subatomic scans.”

“And?”

“And the lab studies return normative results on the probable fabrication processes involved in its construction. It’s just lightweight steel, with all the expected amounts of carbon, trace elements, surface annealing and ion-bonding. And atomic analysis shows that the polymers in the plastics are not synthetics. They were clearly derived from natural petroleum products. In other words, fossil fuel deposits.”

Caine frowned. “Wait a minute. If the Ktor come from a world where the life-forms are not carbon-based, then how the hell is it possible for them to have access to fossilized hydrocarbons?”

“That’s just the problem. It shouldn’t be possible, not unless the Ktor decided to go to our kind of environment to mine the components used in the creation of this object. And furthermore, they must have also decided to manufacture the arm there, too.”

“What leads you to that conclusion?”

“Because given the building blocks of life in a cold-climate biochemistry, and the indigenous atmosphere, ores, and temperatures which they imply, we should be observing different trace elements. We should also be detecting telltale signs of the different kinds of manufacturing processes which would be developed by, and used in, environments where the mean temperature is someplace south of minus-eighty Celsius. And to reemphasize your point, there shouldn’t be
any
fossil fuel deposits on their planets, at least not the carbon-based variety that are used to make plastics.”

“Well, as you said, Ben, they might have simply gone to a world like ours to harvest those resources.”

“Yes, but why
would
they? In order to travel to other worlds, the Ktor had to leave their own first. That makes it a certainty that, long before being able to mine
other
worlds, they had to evolve the equivalent of plastics using their own methods and resources. Meaning, by the time they had access to fossil fuels, they would no longer need them.”

Caine nodded. “And we would certainly expect to see some use of their own plastic equivalents in their artifacts.”

Hwang shrugged. “It’s what one would expect. But almost every piece of their machinery scans—and looks—like something we ourselves would have manufactured.”

“Like something we ourselves—?” And Caine felt his mind stop, spin, access a piece of data that he knew was significant even before he could reason out why. He found himself seeing the wisps of vapor curling away from Apt-Counsel’s life-support unit, found himself hearing his words again:
“Since the Arat Kur have not seen Ktorans any more than your race has, you yourselves could manufacture a device such as my suit to dupe them.”

Caine stood up slowly. “Of course. Jesus Christ, of course.”

Hwang rose. “What—?”

Caine did not hear the rest; he was already through the doorway, heading straight for Apt-Counsel, but not seeing him. Instead he could almost see visible pieces of the puzzle in the air before him, coming together, revealing probable answers.

Sukhinin saw Caine approach, smiled, raised a hand. “
Gospodin
Riordan, we were—”

Caine didn’t even look at him, but came to within a meter of Apt-Counsel before stopping. “Ambassador Apt-Counsel, you have been kind enough to share your insights regarding Arat Kur military procedure and mindset. I wonder if you would be kind enough to indulge one more request for your counsel. At this point, what would you recommend we do?”

The treads on the Ktoran life-support unit reversed briefly, as though a reflex to back up had been overridden at the last second. “As a general principle, I would recommend that you adopt a policy of patience and lenience toward the Arat Kur. But I must concede that, logically, I don’t see how you can extend any more patience and lenience than you already have.”

“Ambassador Apt-Counsel, if I didn’t know better, I’d say it sounds like you’re agreeing that we should exterminate the Arat Kur. As their ally, I’d expect to you to arguing steadfastly against such an outcome.”

“I did so as long as I had arguments that might reasonably stay your hands. I have consistently pleaded for clemency and patience, but with each passing day, your control over the Arat Kur grows increasingly uncertain and they remain obdurate and uncommunicative. Your leaders believe their antipathy to be unremitting and thus conclude that the Wholenest would launch a genocidal reprisal against you, if given the chance. I would suggest alternate perspectives if logic revealed any. But it does not.”

“So you assert that humanity would be the target of a genocidal reprisal if we were to spare the Arat Kur?”

“It is a common-sense projection. You have reproduced the virus which can decimate their race. You also possess examples of their technology and will soon have reverse-engineered those systems with the greatest strategic significance, achieving near or full military parity with them. This means that if they are to strike back, they must do so soon, and with great finality: enough to cripple your civilization to the point of being unable to return to their Homenest.”

Caine nodded slowly. “And then there’s the unspoken variable, the one which no one told us about before all this started: the Arat Kur fear of humans in particular.”