“Such unique information spreads rapidly and widely. The arrival here of your transporting vessel was noted immediately. It was decided that no action was to be taken and that any investigations its personnel wished to carry out would be allowed to proceed without interference. Then your presence and that of your fellow human was detected. Swift correlation was made with your earlier presence on Daribb. Records of that encounter were reviewed. As a consequence, two decisions were rendered. The first was that if an amenable situation presented itself, we were to try once again to convince you to come with us and aid the Integument in its studies and research into human history and culture.”
“Forget it.” Ruslan gripped his sidearm more tightly. “What’s the second decision?”
The Vrizan officer was staring at him intently. “To use force to compel you to comply if the first decision failed to produce the desired result.” At a gesture from one slender many-jointed arm, the other Vrizan resumed closing in around the specimen.
Ruslan realized he could delay them no longer. Nor could he run fast enough to escape. All he could do was fire. He had no doubt that would produce the kind of reaction the Vrizan had described, probably leaving him provisionally paralyzed. No matter how valuable they considered him, if he killed someone they would be less likely to treat him with the kind of deference they were showing now. But if he surrendered to the Vrizan, before long the Myssari would find his lack of verbal communication puzzling, then alarming. Even if his smothered locator still showed him wandering safely, a lack of response on his part would rouse them to come looking for him. He would have to rely on that.
Forming up into an escort, the Vrizan led him out through the back of the ruined building. He was a bit startled to discover that their leader had been telling the truth about allowing him to keep his sidearm. No one tried to take it from him. Then it occurred to him that if they could smother his locator and communicator, they might well have the technology to do the same to his weapon. He hoped he would not be forced to find out.
In contrast to a Myssari driftec, the flyer they placed him in was larger and more powerful, plainly designed to cover longer distances at higher speeds. Rising much higher into the atmosphere than a driftec could manage, it then accelerated westward. Given the rate of speed at which they were traveling, it was not long before he started worrying how the Myssari, when they did start searching, were ever going to find him.
Left alone, he took the first mental steps toward resigning himself to a new life, in a new captivity. In the decades he had lived among them, the Myssari had been pleasant, even deferential. What would life among the Vrizan be like? Having now encountered them several times, he knew them to be more brusque, more contentious than his current longtime hosts. Except where he was concerned. The alien society into which he would be placed would be different, but his treatment might well be similar. How he would respond remained to be seen.
He would miss Kel’les, and Bac’cul and Cor’rin, and even Yah’thol. Then he thought of Cherpa and the sixteen children and started to weep. The Vrizan leader, having positioned herself near her prize, regarded the display with unconcealed curiosity.
“You expel salt water from your eyes. This is a voluntary physical reaction to your situation?”
“Yes and no.” Using the back of his bare right arm, Ruslan wiped at his face. “It is an involuntary human expression of sorrow that I’m making no attempt to repress.”
“You have no reason to grieve,” the Vrizan assured him. “You will be treated with the utmost care and respect and will be given whatever you wish.”
“I ‘wish’ to return to my friends.”
“They are not your friends. They are your keepers. You mistake cold scientific calculation for sincere friendship.”
He stared back at her, having a hard time trying to decide on which of the widely spaced eyes to focus. “As opposed to the Vrizan?”
She surprised him again. “No. We are also operating under the aegis of cold scientific calculation. The difference is that I am admitting it to you.”
17
When the atmospheric transit vehicle finally descended low enough for him to once more distinguish individual surface features, Ruslan found himself shocked at the size and extent of the Vrizan outpost. He quickly decided that “outpost” was inadequate to describe what he was seeing. It was at least a station and possibly large enough to qualify as a full-fledged base. The fact that the majority of it threaded its way along the bottom of a narrow, high-walled desert canyon could explain why it had not been detected by the initial, necessarily perfunctory Myssari survey.
He became aware that in addition to the team leader, another nearby Vrizan was watching him closely. Speaking Myssari, the alien responded to the human’s stare with an explanation.
“I am Abinahhs Uit Oln. You may call me by any of my three identifiers.”
Presuming the Vrizan was expecting a reaction, Ruslan complied. “I am Ruslan. You may call me by any one of three identifiers: angry, outraged, and uncooperative.”
“Sarcasm. The plentiful records left by your kind are rife with it. Fascinating to encounter it in life instead of merely in endless folios of dead speech. I am thinking it is even more effective in the original language than when transshipped via the feeble Myssari tongue.”
“In that case I am sorry you don’t speak my original language,” a glum Ruslan retorted, “so that I could provide you with multiple, more extreme examples.”
“In goodening time.” The Vrizan seemed remarkably even-tempered. “I look forward to it.”
“What about my unrelieved hostility?” Ruslan challenged him as their craft leveled off to land. “You have that to look forward to as well.”
The alien’s temperament was unshakable. “That will wither. Time and superior treatment are remarkably effective emollients.”
“I don’t believe I’ll have a chance to experience them.” The transport touched down with the slightest of bumps. “My friends are looking for me even as we speak.”
“I know that they are.” The Vrizan was no less certain than the specimen. “It is possible that they will locate this settlement before we can get you offworld. You will be interested to know that an appropriate Myssari vessel has already been dispatched in our general direction, though it is traveling at a slower speed, is still a considerable distance from here, and can have no idea of exactly where you have been taken.”
Ruslan replied with confidence. “You can be certain they’ll find me. And when they do, you’ll wish you…” He halted, frowning. Unsure of what he had just heard, he sought clarification. “Did you say ‘settlement’?”
“I am pleased that my command of a debased language is sufficiently competent for comprehension by a third party. ‘Settlement’ is the correct term, yes.” Rising from his seat, he gestured toward the back of the passenger compartment, his multi-jointed right arm flowing like a wave. “Please, Ruslan the angry, outraged, and uncooperative. Set aside your three harsh modifiers long enough to exit this craft of your own volition. It would displease me ethically and you physically were it to prove necessary to carry you off.”
Ruslan hesitated. Understanding that there was nothing to be gained by engaging in futile obtuseness (at least at this moment in time), he rose and followed the Vrizan. Two especially large examples of their kind fell in wordlessly behind him. He smiled with grim satisfaction. Though he had nowhere to run to, he was pleased by the notion that they feared such a possibility.
In contrast to the smooth architectural arcs preferred by the Myssari, Vrizan structural design favored conjoined shapes that could be sharply angled as well as curved. Startlingly, some of it was strongly reminiscent of buildings on Seraboth. That the structures boasted a more familiar appearance in no way made them inviting. He knew what the Vrizan wanted with him: the leader of the abduction team had told him as much. As a surviving human he was a living fount of information about his long-vanished kind. In return for details, explication, and explanation, they would doubtless treat him as well as Abinahhs claimed. There was no reason to do otherwise.