Raeder entered the darkened room and the holograms of the various queens turned to look at him. Their mandibles began clicking almost immediately. He blushed and the clicking became louder as they noted this sign of embarrassment.
"Welcome, Commander Raeder," Queen Tewsee said. "Come and be seated by me."
They were actually alone in the room except for her first and second assistants, but Raeder felt the presence of the other queens, though they were in attendance only as color and light.
"Please forgive us our amusement, Commander," the orange queen said. "But it really was funny."
"Thank you, highness," Raeder said with a slight bow, "for being so understanding of our ignorance. I assure you I was as surprised as you were."
"Oh, I doubt that," the green queen said mildly.
There was a round of mandible clicking at that. This was an informal meeting and the tone was very light. With the exception of Tewsee who, to Raeder, seemed to radiate tension.
"Tell us about your people, Commander," Tewsee invited.
"For the most part," Raeder said, "we're a peaceful people. Our military was designed primarily to ward off and deal with raiders, something I gather the clans are familiar with." He seemed to detect a slight stiffness at that. All right, no references to bad things happening between Fibians, he thought. "We call ourselves the Commonwealth," he went on.
Raeder described the government as best as he could, wishing he'd paid more attention in civics class. As he'd been warned he would. But even Ms. Prinny couldn't have imagined I'd be trying to explain this stuff to giant, sentient insects. He told them that the Commonwealth extended to over three hundred planets scattered throughout the galaxy.
"You mean that you don't settle an entire section before moving on to the next?" the orange queen asked. "How very haphazard."
"Well," Raeder said, "it seems to work for us. For the most part." He would have been grinning sheepishly if his face hadn't been frozen. "We can and often are methodical in our methods," he explained. "But the urge to explore," and exploit, "and to be first is very strong in us."
"Are you saying, Commander," Tewsee asked, her head cocked at an angle that expressed astonishment, "that if a human settlement exists in a sector then . . . in some way that sector is spoiled?"
Raeder went blank for a moment. It was a good question. Now how did he answer it without making the whole human race sound completely nuts?
"Actually, for some of our people, the answer to that question would be yes. But these would be the exception, the explorerstrue pioneers, and not the general run of people. Most people, when they leave their home planets, want to be going somewhere that has already been explored and settled to a certain extent."
"So there is more than one kind of human, beyond what you call racial differences?" Cembe, the orange queen, asked. Her pedipalps indicated confusion, one held palm up, one down.
"More like individuals who have preferences which they pursue. Enough people have similarities in their choices that they become a type of person, regardless of racial characteristics." Did that make any sense at all? Raeder wondered.
"It's so very mammalian," Lesni said with a quirk of her purple head.
"Well it would be, wouldn't it?" the green queen responded acidly.
There were mandible clicks at that and Raeder applauded politely, his hands producing a sound very like their clicks.
"Do go on, Commander," Tewsee invited.
Ah, where was I?
"Naturally, exploring one's sector is something of a luxury in a settlement's early days." Settlement is such a wonderful word, Raeder thought, grateful to the queen for mentioning it. It has such a homey, nonaggressive sound. Settlement's a much better word than colony. "Once a planet is rich enough to mount an expedition to methodically map its surroundings though, it's also populous enough to have people who want to be somewhere different, perhaps develop a new settlement. So when the explorers discover a planet that will welcome human habitation there are always people ready to follow them there, rather than waiting for a new planet to be discovered in their own sector."
The queens were silent as they contemplated this.
"Essentially," Cesat, the yellow queen, said with careful precision, "your people have claimed three hundred systems without fully settling or exploring any of them."
"Well, three hundred planets anyway," Raeder said. "I really don't know if the Commonwealth has a policy about this sort of thing." He shrugged and spread his hands. "In all the time we've been in space we've never encountered another sentient species before the Fibians. So there may not even be one, because it never mattered before."
Quiet astonishment met this remark.
"Well," Saras, the green queen suggested, "you should come up with something because this pell-mell race through the stars is unacceptable."
"But there are infinite systems, your majesties," Raeder said soothingly.
"No resource is inexhaustible," Tewsee said gently.
"And thinking that one is can be a sure source of disappointment at least and disaster at worst. If your people have settled any planets in Fibian-claimed systems they will have to vacate them!" The green queen's body language became unmistakably aggressive with this pronouncement.
"Your majesties," Raeder said, "I'm only a humble commander in our military. I'm not a diplomat and I have no business trying to conduct discussions with you as though I were. I have no authority over such matters, none whatsoever."
"It is certainly a matter to consider when those with more authority do come to us," Tewsee said. "For now, perhaps, let us turn the discussion to lighter matters."
For the next hour they discussed such minor matters as travel and trade and the drill team. Which, despite its disgraceful entrance, had completely enthralled the queens, one and all.
"It was a disaster," a worried Raeder confided to Sarah later that day. "They learned a lot that they didn't like and I didn't learn anything but that."
"What didn't they like?" Sarah asked, taking another bite of sandwich.
"They don't like the way we colonize. What they do is inhabit the first hospitable planet they come to, then they explore and exploit the entire system before they even attempt to find another."
Sarah nodded thoughtfully.
"Yeah, that sounds like them. They're pretty methodical," she said. "They fight that way, too. Methodically. It's probably why they haven't beaten us completely. We keep pulling the rug out from under them." She smiled. "Good thing for us we're unpredictable."
"But they're learning." Peter threw down his sandwich after only one bite. "Those hit-and-run missions were something they picked up directly from us, and when I say us I mean us!" He rubbed his forehead and groaned.
"That was inevitable," Sarah said with a sigh. "They're an intelligent species and any successful species is adaptable." She threw up her hands and shrugged elaborately. "Not our fault."
"Have you noticed we're all using body language more?" he asked.
She grinned.
"Surewe're adapting." She rose and tossed her lunch debris in the disposal. "Listen, you haven't blown it. You told them you couldn't answer certain questions, you told them you weren't authorized to do things. I can't see how you could alienate them by being honest." She moved to the door and turned to smile at him. "And never forget Clan Snargx. Their behavior has put all of the clans in a very poor light. One they'll want to get out of as soon as they can, you mark my words."
"Nrgun calls forth the splendor of Lince!" Hoo-seh called out. Queen Tewsee's first assistant pounded a staff on a hollowed wooden box, the sound echoing from the unshrouded chamber walls.
This great room was a sacred place to all Fibians, the ancient meeting place of their kind from the days when tools were made of bronze, at once arena and court. It had no amenities; the floor was dirt, the walls stone, the ceiling branches with mud plastered into the gaps. The only ornaments were suitably barbaric: catching-nets and spiked metal clubs, like squares of barbed bronze net on the end of long poles, weapons from the savage childhood of the race.
No changes beyond necessary repairs had been allowed for millennia. The great palace had been built around it, holding the chamber in its center like a secret. It was the very center of Fibian civilization.
As soon as the echoes died away, in the space nearest Clan Nrgun's queen, bloomed the green holo-image of Queen Saras, of Clan Lince, the second oldest of the clans.
"Nrgun calls forth the splendor of Bletnik!"
Across from Saras and to Tewsee's left appeared a holo of Queen Cembe of the orange clan, third oldest. Hoo-seh called on Clan Streth and the yellow queen, Cesat, appeared. Finally he called on Clan Vened and Lesni, the purple queen, manifested.
Each queen held a lump of fat in her pedipalpspoverty food and quite disgusting to their refined palates. In order to speak, to question, they must take a bite of fat and chew it while they spoke. It cut down on unnecessary questions and long-winded speeches. Each queen took a tiny nibble of fat now.
"Who calls us here, and why are we called?" the queens chanted in unison.
"I call you," Tewsee said, and she moved forward to stand in a circle of light that matched their own images. She bit into the cube of fat in her pedipalp. "I call you not merely to witness the first meeting with a new species," she said, "but to tell you of an evil that works to destroy one of our clans and perhaps ultimately the peace of all our clans."
The formal beginning thus completed Tewsee draped herself over the couch her first assistant brought forward. She bit into the fat again, claiming the right to speak.
"With them the humans brought a child of Clan Snargx," Tewsee said. "He came to be on their ship through a most remarkable accident. But that is a story for another day. Naturally, when I became aware that the humans had a Fibian child on their ship I demanded that he be brought to me."
Around her the queens clicked mandibles in quiet agreement.
"Satisfied that the humans had done him no harm, I questioned him as to how one as young as he came to be in space at all." She paused, her head slightly bowed, and with a delicate swipe of her pedipalp she wiped away a crumb of fat from her chelicerae.
"Snargx makes war upon these Commonwealth humans, ostensibly in aid of their human allies, called Mollies," she said at last. "There is more to it, of course, though our human visitors are reticent. Theirs is a military ship, and thus not crewed by diplomats. I suspect their leader is afraid of telling us too much. Fortunately my young source does know the reason for this war, or thinks he does. It seems the humans have encountered a huge field of naturally occurring antihydrogen. Sna-Fe doesn't know why the humans his clan is aiding don't want the other humans to have it, but they are willing to fight to keep it for themselves."
Saras of Lince, the green queen, took a bite from the lump of fat she carried, thus gaining herself the right to speak.
"Snargx must have known of these humans for a long time to become embroiled in a war on behalf of one human clan against another. Why have they kept them secret from the rest of us?" she asked. "Has anyone heard a word about humans before now?"
All of the queens indicated no.
"So . . . why was the child of Snargx in space?" Lesni, the purple queen, asked. She scraped the fat from her tongue with her chelicerae and pulled it off with her pedipalps, patting it back onto her lump.
Tewsee took a sizable bite, to the silent respect and wonder of her fellow queens.
"The silence of our sister clan in regard to humans might seem strange if it didn't occur simutaneously with their discovery of this unique natural resource. Then Syaris' silence becomes ominous."
The queens shifted uneasily. Several signaled disagreement.
"According to Sna-Fe," Queen Tewsee continued, "Syaris and her ladies and their daughters are having offspring at an incredible rate. They've been doing so for the last fifteen years. Children such as he are brutally trained and ruthlessly shipped off to war as soon as they are coordinated and strong enough to manage weapons. Thousands of them have been killed in battle already."
There were gasps and gestures of negation from all around the small circle of queens. The yellow queen, Cesat, took a bite.
"But we have only this child's word on this," she pointed out. "The humans might have done something to him, tortured him perhaps, into making these wild accusations."
Tewsee was still chewing and so could answer instantly.
"Nothing that my finest physicians could find in a number of examinations indicates that Sna-Fe was mistreated in any way by the humans. If anything, even according to the child himself, they went out of their way to be kind and helpful to him. Nor have I told you the worst of what Snargx has done. They have not only eaten humans . . ."
There was another collective gasp at that and Saras of the green clan chewed and spoke.
"That is an outrageous charge!" Saras made a gesture of repulsed disbelief. "To think that a civilized people such as we would eat an intelligent being is incredible! Besides, they are allied with humans. Surely such a barbaric act would destroy their relations."
"To be fair, Sna-Fe has never actually seen this with his own eyes, but only heard rumors of such," Tewsee admitted.
Around her the queens made satisfied gestures that said, I knew it!
"It is mere slander then," Cesat said. She turned her yellow head aside in a gesture that expressed embarrassment at Tewsee's naivete.
"However," Tewsee continued, chewing doggedly, "Sna-Fe has witnessed with his own eyes . . ." The blue queen began to pant with stress. "Punishment drills . . ."
Overcome, Tewsee turned her back to her fellow queens as she struggled to regain her composure. Behind her the others exchanged troubled glances.
"Tell us," Lesni encouraged around a tiny nibble of fat.
"He has seen officers and once a lady . . . eating Fibians."
"No!" Cesat sprang from her couch. As an afterthought she bit a piece of fat and spoke again. "I cannot believe that! Cannibalism?" Her whole body rejected the idea. "Why? Why would Syaris do such a thing? And why should we believe the humans when they say such things?"
"But the humans haven't said these things," Tewsee said firmly. "It is a Fibian that makes these claims. With your permission I will have him come in."
Her fellow queens exchanged glances, then one by one nodded their agreement. Hoo-seh quickly moved to the door and with a gesture and a quiet word invited the young Fibian inside.
Sna-Fe had never felt smaller in his short life as he looked around at the circle of queens. Gray with terror he threw himself onto his face before them, and lay shivering.
The queens, taken aback by this display, were silent. Fibian children were usually full of confidence and delighted to make the acquaintance of a female. Even children as old as this one.
Tewsee went to his side and stroked the child's back gently until he could be convinced to stand up and face them.
"Tell my fellow queens who you are, child," Tewsee invited. "Or rather, who you were."
"I am Sna-Fe, a third-degree weapons technician, late of the second battle cohort of Clan Snargx, under the direct command of Lady Sysek, who is fifth lady to Queen Syaris."
"Fifth lady!" exclaimed Saras. She waved a green arm. "There should be no more than three at this point in Snargx's settlement of their sector."
"There are seven ladies, majesty," Sna-fe told her shyly.
"Seven?" Lesni exclaimed.
"That I know of," Sna-Fe added.
Purple was the youngest clan next to red and it had taken them three hundred years to need seven ladies. "Syaris has been queen for less than seventy years," she said. "She can't possibly need seven!"
"That would depend on what her plans are," Tewsee murmured.
"Are you a good tech?" Cembe asked with an encouraging dip of her orange head.
"Yes, your majesty," Sna-Fe said. "I was at the top of my class."
"What of those who do not make good techs?" the yellow queen inquired. "What happens to them?"
"They are put to work on farms or in factories," Sna-Fe told them.
"And what of those who are lazy or naughty and don't work hard on the farms or in the factories?" Tewsee asked.
Sna-Fe looked down, shifting from foot to foot as his chitin went gray again.
"You may answer, child," Tewsee said. She placed a gently encouraging pedipalp on his head. "No one will blame you for what you must say."
"They are destroyed, your majesty," Sna-Fe said quietly. "Sometimes they are made an example of and are eaten, pieces of their bodies distributed to those whose work has not been satisfactory, as a warning."
"This is a lie!" Saras stated. Her chitin had a sickly green tint to it. "It is not possible, and it makes no sense!"
Tewsee looked at Saras with sympathy. Syaris had been one of her daughters, and Clan Lince had been proud of her rise to queen of a new clan.
"I agree that it makes no sense," she said aloud. "Are there more questions you have for my child?"
There were, and though the answers were painful to hear, the queens kept asking until they were convinced.
"Still," Saras insisted, "we should also question these humans. The child knows nothing of the politics of this situation."
"Agreed," Tewsee said. "But I think we've endured enough this day. Let us retire and give thought to what we've learned and think of what we'll ask the humans."
"Agreed," the exhausted and troubled queens said in unison.
"Tomorrow then," Tewsee said. "At the same hour."
She watched the queens blink out in sequence, turning her head aside at the defeated posture of Saras. Sharing her burden hadn't lightened it, and she was ashamed of being the one who had told them. She wondered, as they all must be wondering, what had happened to the red clan to have made them such monsters.
She stroked Sna-Fe's tense back.
"Come," she said, "have dinner with me. And then we can play a game of nalls. Would you like that?"
The young Fibian nodded. Then he looked up at the queen.
"I did not lie, your majesty. Really I didn't." His pedipalps begged for belief.
"I know you did not, my son. But it is hard to hear these things and we do not want them to be true." She lifted his head with one claw-tipped finger. "But they are true, and now we must think of what to do."
Sun-hes was visibly nervous. Raeder did not find it reassuring that the protocol expert was fidgety. The Fibian paced from side to side of the corridor, tugging at the silk on the walls with each of his clawed feet in succession. If he's ready to climb the walls, how should I be feeling? the commander wondered.
The protocol expert came up to him, his pedipalps in the second degree of respect.
"Did I tell you that if they wish you to join the discussion they'd give you a lump of fat?" he asked.
Raeder nodded.
"If you wish to speak you must chew the fat," Sun-hes said.
"You have done a fine job of instruction," Peter told him, making soothing motions with his hands. "If anything goes wrong, no one will be able to blame you. Your work has been flawless."
Sun-hes rotated his pedipalps one around the other to indicate his distress. "I simply cannot feel that way," he said. "Though I thank you for your support," he added hastily, with a respectful gesture.
Far be it for a protocol expert to cause offense, the commander thought wryly.
"With your excellent instruction and Ms. Trudeau to advise us we should do just fine," Sarah reasured the Fibian.
She and Peter crossed glances. He could imagine what she was thinking. Who would have thought that we'd one day be comforting a Fibian. Less than a month ago they were an enemy that literally ate humans alive, and would have caused nightmares even if they didn't. Now they were people, and damn nice people, too.
"I suppose I am still unnerved from the . . . incident," Sun-hes confided.
"Anyone would be," Sarah soothed.
Especially poor Ticknor, Peter thought.
The protocol expert, convinced that good manners could overcome any obstacle, had arranged an "accidental" meeting between himself and the linguist in the corridor of the science section. Mr. Ticknor was still under sedation.
And poor Sun-hes could probably use a hit of something himself. Raeder studied the nervous alien. There was a definite hint of gray around his . . . mouth, the commander supposed.
The great barrier of wood, definitely not a door, slid aside and Hoo-seh, Queen Tewsee's first assistant, stood before them.
"Clan Nrgun calls forth the representatives of the Commonwealth," he intoned.
"Uh" Raeder held up a finger and rushed over to him. "We are representatives of our ship, the Invincible," he said. "We have not come here as official representatives of the Commonwealth."
There was a pause while the first assistant digested this.
"Good going, sir," Marian Trudeau, the ship's lawyer, whispered.
"Clan Nrgun calls forth the representatives of the Commonwealth ship Invincible," Hoo-seh said, rather more loudly, as though to quell any other quibbles the humans might have.
The Welters and Sun-hes filed in behind Hoo-seh.
Peter was surprised by what he saw; it looked a great deal like simulations he'd seen of medieval human great halls. Between the dark soil of the floor and the smoke-blackened walls and ceiling the giant queens were the only touches of color in the place.
Hoo-seh led the humans to a circle of their own; the sixth circle of the great circle of queens, which should have held a representative of Clan Snargx. Hassocks of a sort, with bundles of silk on them to act as cushions, had been provided for their comfort. Raeder and his people held their hands in the first degree of respect and bowed their heads to Queen Tewsee.
"Please be seated," she invited them. When they had done so she said, "In the interest of saving time and energy, we feel it is time for plain speaking. You may dispense with the protocol of chewing the fat."
"As you wish, your majesty," Raeder said. "Though I may be constrained from speaking by the need to . . ."
"We will tell you what we know," Tewsee interrupted. "I think you'll find that we are quite well informed. Well informed enough that there is very little you need to keep from us for security reasons."
Peter swallowed with difficulty.
"Thank you, your majesty," he said.
"We know that you are at war with a set of humans who call themselves Mollies. My new son tells me that everyone in Clan Snargx finds these humans to be absolutely insane. Yet, for some reason Snargx has allied itself with them against the Commonwealth. My son tells me that the Commonwealth Star Command are excellent soldiers, clever and swift to battle. But then we knew that from the way you aided our own people in expelling the Snargx raiders from our territory."
Raeder silently bowed his head in acknowledgement. Thank you, Sarah.
"We know that what you are fighting over is a field of naturally occurring antihydrogen which the Mollies wish to keep from you. Now, tell us more."
Raeder could feel his mouth dropping open.
"That . . . sums up the situation very well, your majesty," he said after a moment. "What sort of information can we add to what you already know that will clarify things further?"
"Why do these Mollies want to keep this resource from you?" Saras asked.
Raeder faced the green queen.
"They want to bring about the fall of our civilization," Peter admitted. He couldn't see how telling them that would hurt the Commonwealth. Heck, it might even gain us some sympathy.
"It would seem that insanity is not the exclusive province of Clan Snargx," the purple queen said.
Saras turned her head to glare at Lesni. She was disconcerted enough by the accusations leveled at her daughter without snide remarks being made.
"Why would they do this?" Tewsee asked.
"I don't know if you Fibians have a religion," Raeder began.
"Please explain," Cesat said. Her yellow pedipalps gestured curiosity.
"In the simplest terms possible, it is a philosophy that assumes the existence of an interested supernatural being," the commander said. "Humans have a number of these philosophies and sometimes large numbers of us grow incredibly ardent about our beliefs in those philosophies. To the extent that we will go to war over them, and suffer privation and death to defend them. The Mollies are such an obsessed group of people. They will risk everything to further their beliefs."
"But what exactly do they believe, Commander?" Cembe, the orange queen, regarded him quizzically.
"I'm really not all that well acquainted with their beliefs," Peter said. "They're very secretive about them until you've joined their ranks, and even then reveal little until you've been with them awhile and they're sure of your devotion to their cause. What we of the Commonwealth do know, because the Mollies have told us this, is that they believe we are evil and must be stopped from spreading that evil across the stars."
"I don't know if you're evil," Saras said. "But I do believe you should stop spreading across the stars as carelessly as you have been."
"That will be an issue for another day," Tewsee assured the green queen. "For now let us concentrate on Snargx and their involvements."
Saras conceded the point with a gracious gesture.
"Why do you believe Snargx is helping these strange people?" Lesni asked.
Raeder hesitated and Trudeau looked at him for permission to speak. He gave it with a nod.
"In law," she said to the queens, "it's a good rule of . . . it's a good rule to ask, who profits? If the Commonwealth didn't have the ability to leave its planets for trade then we would cease to exist as a power. The Mollies would welcome this. They've also stated that they have no intention of exploiting the antihydrogen field for themselves. This would seem to leave that resource open to claim by whoever comes along."
The queens went absolutely still at that, and remained so for several minutes.
They must have thought this too, Peter thought. It's the only logical reason I can think of for their fighting on behalf of the Mollies. The Mollies hated their own race, surely they must despise the aliens even more. I'll never believe the Fibians have been converted.
"I sincerely doubt," he said into the silence, "that they've been converted to the Mollies' beliefs."
"No," Tewsee said. After a moment she spoke again, this time directly to her fellow queens. "With such a resource at their disposal Snargx would be a very formidable force."
She left that thought alone for them to contemplate, and contemplate it they did. The humans, Tewsee noted, grew restless after only a few moments. She ignored them, concentrating her attention on the queens around her, watching their every small movement in hopes of gaining knowledge of their thoughts.
"This cannot be allowed," Saras said at last, her voice grating like the scraping of two stones. "No clan should be so much more powerful than another. It upsets the balance and invites evil."
"It must be stopped," Cembe agreed with a firm jerk of her orange head.
The others signaled their consensus.
"This resource belongs to the human Commonwealth," Tewsee declared.
She watched her sister queens narrowly to catch any sign of disagreement. There was none; each of the queens signaled her consent to this with unmistakable firmness.
"It is not that we do not desire it," Tewsee explained to the humans. "It is that it would disturb our peace, upset the balance of our civilization. Worse, it would seem to endorse the evil for which Clan Snargx has been responsible. We will stop them from aiding your enemies. Now, all that we need to do is decide how."
Hoo-seh appeared at Raeder's side.
"If you will be good enough to accompany me, Commander," he said respectfully.
The commander and his party bowed to the queens, backed away for ten steps, then followed the first assistant from the room. Peter was almost to the barrier when the soft clicking of mandibles alerted him to the fact that his silk cushion was stuck to his butt.
"You could have told me," he said to Sarah out of the side of his mouth.
"I didn't notice," she whispered. "I was trying to unstick mine from my own tush."
Hoo-seh clicked mandibles at the sight of the humans trying to dislodge a material that only stuck to their hands.
"If you will allow me?" the Fibian asked.
"Allow you?" Raeder said. "I beg you."
In a trice, and with the assistance of Sun-hes, the Fibian had them cleaned up.
"What happens now?" Raeder asked the first assistant.
"You will be informed, Commander," Hoo-seh answered. "For now I advise you to return to your ship. Send home any Fibians who are still visiting with you. When the queens adjourn they will be ready to move and you must go with them.