Unmoving, Cynbe waited.
The decompression chamber finished its cycle and Gunnar Heim stepped out. Thin dry atmosphere raked his throat. Even so, the fragrances overwhelmed him. He could not tell which of them—sweet, acrid, pungent, musky—came from which of the plants growing from wall to wall, reaching to the ceiling and arching down again in a rush of steel-blue leaves, exploding in banks of tawny, crimson, black, and violet blossoms. The reduced gravity seemed to give a lightness to his head as well as his frame. Feathery turf felt like rubber underfoot The place was tropically warm; he sensed the infrared baking his skin.
He stopped and peered about. Gradually his eyes adjusted to the ember illumination. They were slower to see details of shapes so foreign to Earth.
“Imbiac dystra?” he called uncertainly. “My lord?” His voice was muffled in that tenuous air.
Cynbe ru Taren, Intellect Master of the Garden of War, fleet admiral, and military specialist of the Grand Commission of Negotiators, trod out from beneath his trees. “Well are you come, sir,” he sang. “Understand you, then, the High Speech?”
Heim made the bowing Aleriona salute of a ranking individual to a different-but-equal. “No, my lord, I regret. Only a few phrases. It’s a difficult language for any of my race to learn.”
Cynbe’s beautiful voice ranged a musical scale never invented by men. “Wish you a seat, Captain Heim? I can dial for refreshment.”
“No, thank you,” the human said, because he didn’t care to lose whatever psychological advantage his height gave him, nor drink the wine of an enemy. Inwardly he was startled. Captain Heim? How much did Cynbe know?
There would have been ample time to make inquiries, in the couple of days since this audience was requested. But one couldn’t guess how interested an Aleriona overlord was in a mere individual. Very possibly Heim’s wish had been granted at Harold Twyman’s urging, and for no other reason. The senator was a strong believer in the value of discussion between opponents.
Any discussion. We may go down, but at least we’ll go down talking.
“I trust your trip hither was a pleasant one?” Cynbe cantillated.
“Oh… all right, my lord, if, uh, one doesn’t mind traveling with sealed eyelids after being thoroughly searched.”
“Regrettable is this necessity to keep the whereabouts of our delegation secret,” Cynbe agreed. “But your fanatics—” The last word was a tone-and-a-half glissando carrying more scorn than Heim would have believed possible.
“Yes.” The man braced himself. “In your civilization, the populace is better… controlled.” I haven’t quite the nerve to say “domesticated” but I hope he gets my meaning.
Cynbe’s laughter ran like springtime rain. “You are a marksman, Captain.” He advanced with a movement that made cats look clumsy. “Would your desire be to walk my forest as we discuss?
You are maychance not enrolled with the few humans who set ever a foot upon Alerion.”
“No, my lord, I’m sorry to say I haven’t had the pleasure. Yet”
Cynbe halted. For a moment, in the darkling light, they regarded each other. And Heim could only think how fair the Aleriona was.
The long-legged, slightly forward-leaning body, 150 centimeters tall, its chest as deep and waist as spare as a greyhound’s, the counterbalancing tail never quite at rest, he admired in abstraction. How the sleek silvery fur sparkled with tiny points of light; how surely the three long toes of either digitigrade foot took possession of the ground; how graciously the arms gestured; how proudly the slim neck lifted. The humans were rare who could have dressed like Cynbe, in a one-piece garment of metallic mesh, trimmed at throat and wrists and ankles with polished copper. It revealed too much.
The head, though, was disturbing. For the fur ended at the throat, and Cynbe’s face-marble-hued, eyes enormous below arching brows, nose small, lips vividly red, wide cheekbones and narrow chin—could almost have been a woman’s. Not quite: there were differences of detail, and the perfection was inhuman. Down past the pointed ears, along the back and halfway to the end of the tail, rushed a mane of hair, thick, silken fine, the color of honey and gold. A man who looked overly long at that face risked forgetting the body.
And the brain, Heim reminded himself.
A blink of nictitating membrane dimmed briefly the emerald of Cynbe’s long-lashed feline eyes. Then he smiled, continued his advance, laid a hand on Heim’s arm. Three double-jointed fingers and a thumb closed in a gentle grip. “Come,” the Aleriona invited.
Heim went along, into the murk under the trees. “My lord,” he said in a harshened tone, “I don’t want to waste your time. Let’s talk business.”
“Be our doings as you choose, Captain.” Cynbe’s free hand stroked across a phosphorescent branch.
“I’m here on behalf of the New Europeans.”
“For the mourned dead? We have repatriated the living, and indemnified they shall be.”
“I mean those left alive on the planet. Which is nearly all of them.”
“Ah-h-h-h,” Cynbe breathed.
“Senator Twyman must have warned you I’d bring the subject up.”
“Truth. Yet assured he the allegation is unbelieved.”
“Most of his side don’t dare believe it Those who do, don’t dare admit it.”
“Such accusations could imperil indeed the peace negotiations.” Heim wasn’t sure how much sardonicism lay in the remark. He stumbled on something unseen, cursed, and was glad to emerge from the bosket, onto a little patch of lawn starred with flowers. Ahead rose the inner wall, where some hundred books were shelved, not only the tall narrow folios of Alerion but a good many ancient-looking Terrestrial ones. Heim couldn’t make out the titles. Nor could he see far past the archway into the next room of the suite; but somewhere a fountain was plashing.
He stopped, faced the other squarely, and said: “I have proof that New Europe was not scrubbed clean of men—in fact, they retreated into the mountains and are continuing resistance to your occupation force. The evidence is in a safe place”—Goodness, aren’t we melodramatic?—“and I was planning to publicize it. Which would, as you say, be awkward for your conference.”
He was rather desperately hoping that the Aleriona didn’t know the facts of life on Earth well enough to understand how forlorn his threat was. Cynbe gave him no clue. There was only an imperturbable upward quirk of mouth, and: “Seeming is that you have decided upon another course, Captain.”
“That depends on you,” Heim answered. “If you’ll repatriate those people also, I’ll give you the evidence and say no more.”
Cynbe turned to play with a vine. It curled about his hand and reached its blossoms toward his face. “Captain,” he sang presently, “you are no fool. Let us assume your belief is truth. We shall speak of a folk in wrath under the mountain peaks. How shall they be made come to our ships?”
“They’re fighting because they expect help. If representatives of the French government told them to return here, they would. The parley can be arranged by radio.”
“But the entity France, now, would it so cooperate?”
“It’d have no choice. You know even better than I, a majority of the Federation doesn’t want to fight over New Europe. About the only thing that could provoke such a war is the plight of the settlers. Let them come back unharmed and… and you’ll have your damned conquest.”
“Conceivable that is.” Light rippled red down Cynbe’s locks when he nodded. His gaze remained with the blooms. “But afterward?” he crooned. “Afterward?”