If the Trivids could be made to see reason.
If there were a way to take Magrison without their permission.
If.
In the midst of lighting a bowl of herbs—he claimed the intoxicating effect was essential for his nightly ceremony—Mukh’than said, “Do you know, we could satisfy ourselves with bringing back a scraping of Magrison’s skin. After all, telling the human beings where to find him is almost as good as managing an actual capture.”
Barath had thought of that. “They would have no reason to believe us. Samples were sent everywhere the Humans even thought of looking for him. Some have gone missing and later turned up in fraudulent claims.”
“I know. But we could make a visual record. Bring back pictures.”
“A child could fake those.”
“But between the DNA and the pictures and their hunger to see this man caught—they would investigate, wouldn’t they?”
Barath picked at the scab forming over his scaleworm sore. “The humans would still find a way to give full credit to whoever made the actual capture. We’d wind up with a small finder’s fee, nothing more. No, it has to be all or nothing. We have to be the ones who bring him back. He has to be ours, if we want to earn the full reward.”
Mukh’than lowered his face over the rising mists. “You sound like one of the Trivids. They consider him theirs, too.”
“They’re ignorant,” Barath said. “They can’t know the kind of monster he is.”
Mukh’than was just a silhouette shrouded by a curtain of malodorous vapor. “And maybe it’s just as ignorant for us to think that monstrousness on his scale can be reduced to a commodity for our profit. Maybe that’s why we’re not fit to have him.”
The words hung heavy in the little sleepcube, with Barath remaining silent not because he concurred but because he saw no possible response to a statement so completely at odds with his own sensibility. Searching for signs of betrayal in the Riirgaan’s sudden, unexpected burst of idealism, he wished he knew what the homeworld of the Riirgaans was like. It would be helpful to know if Mukh’than found the unrelenting mugginess of Irkiirish, or the forsaken wilderness of this world in general, an unbearable hell he would forsake principles to leave. After a long pause, he said: “You want him as much as I do.”
“I have already said I do,” Mukh’than said, as he lowered himself into the mists. “But perhaps not for all the same reasons.”
Our Human once worked hard to earn his keep among us. When he was young, and the muscles still clung tightly to his oddly-proportioned bones, he made a point of helping us with the thousand and one small chores necessary to support our lives here. When a hut needed building, the Human lent his strength to the task; when food needed gathering, the Human grabbed a spear like the rest of us; when a child wandered off into the woods and needed finding, the Human searched as diligently as the Firstfather, Secondfather, and Firstmother. Even when we put down the work of our daily lives and sang hymns of praise to the spirits who built all things, our Human sat among us and raised his atonal voice with as much fervor as the most religious holies among us. It was a heroic effort, even if it was doomed to failure, for our Human knew as well as we did that he was not one of us and never could be, not even if the Spirits themselves came down from the sky to declare him an honorary member of the People. He trumpeted his alienness with every word that emerged, foul and unnatural, from his strangely-shaped lips; he came from a world where people walked on air and ate food that never touched the ground and mated in obscene couplings involving only Firstfathers and Firstmothers. Everything he said about his life among the people who had rejected him reinforced our awareness that he was different, that he was strange, and that he rendered us different and strange as well just by the act of living among us. He knew this, too, I think; and throughout the years of his life it made him as lonely as any creature had ever been.
When the next morning’s negotiations began, the villagers all carried the human’s crude totems around their necks. By the time their apparent spokesperson, a wizened member of the maw-chested sex, finished chanting an interminable string of gibberish that might have been anything from legal preamble to heartfelt prayer, Barath’s head throbbed from sheer frustration. How nice it would have been to be able to resolve this by knocking their obstinate heads together!
Barath could only wonder how much Mukh’than was simplifying the story to accommodate the limited comprehension of the audience. These were people who had never been outside their swamp, who had never used weaponry more advanced than sharpened sticks, who had never seen more than a couple hundred of their own kind in one place. They were people who knew almost everybody in their world by sight, with the odd passing stranger a rare but tolerated anomaly. How could they comprehend a war fought worlds apart, over abstractions, between strangers who had never laid eyes on each other?
It was impossible.
But that’s what Mukh’than needed to explain.
The hours crawled as the Riirgaan finished what he needed to say, but the time for words came to an end with daylight still remaining. Mukh’than returned to Barath’s side, sweat glistening on the flat pads beneath his eyes. He grasped a water tube and sucked it dry, then wiped the moisture from his flat line of mouth.
Barath couldn’t stand it. “What?”
Riirgaan feelings are impossible to read on their faces, but Mukh’than still managed to look haunted. “I think I may have made a mistake.”
“What?”
“I told them that Magrison’s victims outnumbered the leaves on the trees.”
“And that’s wrong?”
“Not if I’m trying to earn points for eloquence,” said Mukh’than. “But very wrong if I’m trying to win their hearts. Images like that reduce a disaster to poetry, make it unreal, harder to comprehend—a joke compared to a familiar presence they’ve treasured all their lives.”
“Tell them more, then.”
“Saying more would only weaken what I’ve said so far.”
Barath watched the Trivids confer among themselves. It was easy to tell that the villagers respected the gravity of their decision; they’d formed two dozen groups of three, lowered their heads and begun to mutter their soft liquid sibilants. Many fingered the Human totems around their necks, as if seeking comfort in a simulation of the man they had known. Another, a ridge-backed specimen who might have been moved by Mukh’than’s case, gripped the doll so tightly that it punctured the doll’s canvas skin, freeing the pebbles inside to spill onto the ground like parodies of blood droplets pouring from a wound. Several emitted a sour blaat that might have been their equivalent of weeping. Or laughter. It was impossible to tell whether they were devastated, or just rendered uncomfortable by the Riirgaan’s evident belief that they should be.
Watching them, Mukh’than said, “Has it occurred to you, my friend, that this is all about monsters?”
“Eh?”
“Think about it. Our departed Tchi companion committed crimes that rendered him a monster in the eyes of his people. The Human Being we traveled with did the same. I know that you are no longer welcome among your own kind, for reasons you’ve neglected to share—and that the pathetic creature we wish to take into our custody is also notorious for reasons that make him a monster of the first rank. Did I ever tell you why I live in filth, rather than ever face another of my own kind? I promise you, you’ll find it most instructive.”