Footfall

12. MESSAGE BEARER

And the LORD said, Behold, the people [is] one, and they have all one language; and this they begin to do: and now nothing will be restrained from them, which they have imagined to do.

Go to, let us go down, and there confound their language, that they may not understand one another’s speech.

The Herdmaster’s family occupied two chambers near the center of Message Bearer. Space was at a premium. The sleeproom was not large, though it housed two adults and three children. It was roomier now; the Herdmaster’s eldest male child was aboard one of the digit ships that would presently assault the target world.

The mudroom, smaller yet, gave privacy. Some discussions the children might be permitted to hear, but not this one.

Herdmaster Pastempeh-keph lay on his side in the mud. He was far too relaxed for his mate’s aplomb. “It’s a thoroughly interesting situation,” he said.

K’turfookeph blared a trumpet blast of rage. A moment later her voice was quietly intense. “If your guards heard that they’ll think we’ve lost our reason … as your Advisor has. Keph, you must dissociate yourself from him!”

“I can’t. That is one of the interesting aspects. The sleepers expected to wake as masters of the ship. They are as docile as one could hope, and no more. Fathisteh-tulk was their Herdmaster. They will not permit me to remove him completely from power, not even if they know him to be insane. They would lose too much status.”

K’turfookeph sprayed warm water along her mate’s back. He stirred in pleasure, and high waves marched toward the high rim of the tub. Gravity was inconveniently low, so near the ship’s center. But any force from outside would destroy the ship before it penetrated so far.

She asked, “Then what can be done?”

“Little. I must listen to him. I am not required to obey his suggestions.” The Herdmaster pondered. The War for Winterhome was finally under way, and his relaxation time was all too rare. He resented his mate’s encroachment on that time. “Turn your mind around, Mother of my Immortality—”

“Don’t play word games with me! It’s half a year until mating season, and we don’t need soothing phrases between us, not at our age.”

He sprayed her, scalp to tail, making a thorough job of it, before he spoke again. “Your digits grasp the handle of our problem. The mating cycles for sleeper and spaceborn are out of phase. It makes all controversy worse. The seasons on Winterhome will be out of phase for both … Never mind. Turn your mind far enough to see the humor. The sleepers never considered any path but to conquer a new world. We spaceborn have spent seventy years in space. We feel in our natal-memories that we can survive without a planet. We know nothing of worlds. The dissidents want to abandon Winterhome entirely.”

“They should be suppressed.”

“That can’t be done, Keph,” he said, using the part of their name they shared in common — as no other would. “It would split the spaceborn. The dissidents may be one in four of us by now — and Fathisteh-tulk is a dissident.”

“Chowpeentulk should control him better! She’s pregnant; it ought to mean something to him—”

“Some females have not the skill sufficient to control their mates.”

Irony? Had she offended him? She sprayed him; he seemed pleased rather than mollified. A male as powerful as the Herdmaster didn’t need to assert himself over his mate … She said, “The situation ca

“No. I fear for Fathisteh-tulk, and I don’t like his clear successor. Can you speak to Chowpeentulk? Will she control him?”

She shifted uncomfortably, and muddy water surged. “I have no idea.” A sleeper was not in her class; they didn’t associate.

Tones sounded. The Herdmaster stretched and went to dry himself. It was time to return to duty.

The target world already bore a name in the Predecessor language.

The species had been nomads once. The Traveler Herd had become nomads again. But when mating season came, even a nomad herd must settle in one place until the children had been born.

Winterhome.

Winterhome was fighting back. Its rulers were no longer an unknown. Despite damage and loss of lives, Pastempeh-keph was relieved.

During the long years of flight from the ringed planet, the prey had not acted. The Herdmaster and his Advisor debated it: had they been seen? Electromagnetic signals of the domestic variety leaked through Winterhome’s atmosphere and were monitored. Most of it was gibberish. Some was confusing, with pictures of enormous spacecraft of unrealistic design. What remained held no word of a real starship drawing near.

Then, suddenly, beams were falling directly on Thuktun Flishithy. Messages, demands for answers, words promising peace before there had been war: first a few, then more, then an incessant babble.

What was there to talk of? How could they expect to negotiate before their capabilities had been tested? But the prey had sent no missiles, no ships of war. Only messages.

The Breakers wondered if the prey might not know how to make war. This violated all the Herdmaster knew of evolution. Yet even when the attack began, the prey did little. The orbiting satellites didn’t defend themselves. Half of them were gone in the first hour. Warriors braced to fight and die veered between relief and disappointment.

But the natives did have weapons. Not many, used late, but … a long scar, melted and refrozen, lay along Message Bearer’s flank, crossing one wing of a big troop-carrying lander. Digit ship Forty-one might still operate in space, but it would never see atmosphere. Four more digit ships had been destroyed in space.

Missiles still rose from the planet’s surface, and missiles and beam weapons still fired from space. A few satellites remained in orbit. Message Bearer surged under the impact of a plasma jet, and trembled as a missile launched away toward the jet’s origin.

Oh, yes, the great ship had suffered minor damage. But this was good, in its way. The warriors would know, at least, that there was an enemy … and now they knew something about the alien weapons, and something about their own fighting ability. And the Herdmaster had learned that he could count on the sleepers.

He’d wondered. Would they fight, these ancient ones? But in fact they were doing well. Ancient they might be, considered from their birthdates; but frozen sleep was hard on the aged. The survivors had been eight to sixteen years past sexual maturity. They had run the ship for four years before their bodies had been frozen; they knew its rooms and corridors and storage holds as well as those who had been born aboard.

“Permission to report,” said Attackmaster Koothfektil-rusp.

“Go ahead.”

“I think we’ve cleared everything from orbit, Herdmaster. There could be something around the other side of Winterhome, moving in our own orbit. We’ll have to watch for that. We find four missiles rising from Land Mass Three. Shall I send them some bombs?”

“No. Wasteful. We’ve done enough here. Defensemaster, take us out of here, out of their range.” Most of the native weapons would barely reach orbit — as if they were designed to attack other parts of the planet. Knowing the launch site was enough. It could be destroyed just before the troops went down to test the prey’s abilities.

The digit ships could trample lesser centers before they descended: destroy dams, roads, anything that looked like communication or power sources. He hoped it would go well. His son Fookerteh’s eight-cubed of warriors would be in the first assault. K’turfookeph was much concerned about him, though pride would never allow her to admit it …