She was in her own stateroom, the lights dimmed except the work light on her desk. “What is it this time?”
“We might have to take off, fast, to escort the Dancers back to Midway.”
“I guess the living stars decided to shower more blessings upon us,” Desjani commented. “Fast? We can’t get the fleet ready to roll that far in a short time.”
“I know. How much of the fleet should we try to bring?”
She spread her hands. “You said it. Fast. As many of the battle cruisers as we can get ready, and enough light cruisers and destroyers to match. We can cannibalize fuel cells from the ships that aren’t coming to overstock the ones that are going. If we only have a few days to work with, that’s the best option.”
Geary thought about it, calling up ship status reports, then cursing under his breath as he remembered that they were all falsified. He would have to order individual ship captains to send him accurate reports. “I think you’re right. We need to go fast through Syndic space. Get in and get out before the Syndic government on Prime can find out and block any of their gates to our use. Can we do that?”
“I’ll have my officers run the numbers, but I think so. We’ll use the Syndic hypernet gate at Indras again? Indras is a lot closer to Prime than Midway is, but that’s all to the good since longer hypernet trips take less time than shorter ones. As long as we enter Midway’s gate to get home before the Syndics can block it, we’ll be home free.”
“As home free as we can be in Syndic space,” Geary corrected. “The Syndics shouldn’t have time to set up any nasty ambushes.”
Unless they already had some ambushes ready to go.
At least he had a little more time to get his ships ready for this operation.
“Now,” Charban said. Diamond had continued in-system and was only a couple of light-minutes distant from Dauntless, making a real conversation possible if also awkwardly drawn out waiting for a reply to come back. “The Dancers say they must leave now.”
Fourteen
“But what does ‘now’ mean to them?” Geary asked, hoping for some ambiguity in the answer.
“It means right now, this moment, this time, go,” Charban amplified when his answer came back a few minutes later. “That’s exactly what the Dancers communicated to me when I asked that question. I also asked what would happen if we couldn’t go now, and they said we go. It’s pretty much an ultimatum. We escort them home, or they start off on their own.”
“They must be bluffing! Jumping back all that way would take forever.”
“They could be bluffing,” Charban admitted. “I’d never gamble with a Dancer because I can’t read their emotions at the best of times. But we can’t rule out the possibility that the Dancers have tricks we don’t know about when it comes to jump drives,” Charban said. “As well as the possibility that they may be able to endure much longer periods in jump space than humans can. They somehow got to Durnan a long time ago.”
And if the Dancers headed home on their own, leaving the entire Alliance with no idea of whether or not they had made it through Syndic space in one piece, there would be hell to pay. “I need twelve more hours to get a task force together,” Geary insisted. “That’s the absolute minimum time. I need a strong enough force to protect them, and a strong enough force to defend itself against any threats we might encounter. Tell them that. Twelve hours. Have they said anything about our offers to send a ship all the way back with them, with representatives?”
When the reply came, Charban was rubbing his head with both hands as if trying to drive away a headache. “Their answer is not yet. They’re not saying no, they’re not saying yes. The Dancers are saying not yet.”
What did “not yet” mean to a Dancer? With humans, it could mean a delay of minutes, hours, days, or years. And yet the Dancers hadn’t had any trouble conveying exactly what they meant by “now.” “The government won’t like hearing that, but I don’t know what we’re supposed to do to change the Dancers’ minds. That ship carrying the official alien liaison team won’t be here for close to two more weeks at best anyway. What about individual representatives?”
“I have suggested myself, I have suggested Dr. Shwartz, I have asked if there is anyone they would be willing to accept.” Charban smiled. “Not yet.”
“What about the unraveling thing? Is that related to their sudden desire to leave now?”
“They won’t say.”
Geary felt a headache of his own coming on. “General, I have to admit if it was me dealing with the Dancers I would be having a very hard time not getting really, really upset with them. I know they think differently than us, but I believe that you are right that they are also deliberately not telling us some things.”
Charban nodded and sighed. “Yet I am certain that they mean us well. Maybe they are treating us in the same way they would treat others of their own species. I don’t know. I can’t get angry about anything with them because that might shut off my ability to learn more. I have learned that the only way to maintain my sanity when dealing with the Dancers is to take a very contemplative approach, meditating at appropriate times and frequently telling myself not to keep carrying the old woman.”
Geary eyed Charban’s image. “The old woman?”
“Haven’t you ever heard that story? It’s a very old one.” Charban paused to think. “There are two men walking through a town where the streets are muddy. They come to a place where an old woman who has been shopping is trying to leave her vehicle and reach the sidewalk. But all of her helpers have their hands full of her packages, and if they put the packages down to help her avoid the mud, they will get the packages muddy. All they can do is stand there while the old woman screams at them. One of the two travelers walks up to the old woman and gives her assistance to reach the sidewalk. She doesn’t thank him but just stomps off, followed by her helpers, as the two travelers go on their way. The other traveler spends the rest of the afternoon wondering why his friend helped that mean person, and finally, as they stop for the night, he asks, Why did you help that unpleasant person? His companion looks at him in surprise, and says, I put that woman down this morning. Why are you still carrying her?
“I have to be like that with the Dancers. I have to not carry anything that frustrates or angers me but approach every communication without that kind of baggage.”
Geary laughed despite his worries. “You’re a better man than I am, General. Put together a detailed report of your conversations with the Dancers since you returned to Varandal. I need to have that left here and sent on to the government and fleet headquarters after we depart, so no one accuses me of kidnapping the Dancers. Tell them twelve hours. Get more time if you can. But I need twelve hours.”
“Understood, Admiral.”
Geary rapped his head with one fist out of frustration, then checked the status of frantic efforts to prepare ships for the unexpected mission. He called Captain Smythe on the auxiliary Tanuki. “What are the chances of Inspire being ready to go in twelve hours?”