Far Side Two
Copyright© 2025 by Gina Marie Wylie
Chapter 10
I
Danei listened to the radio report of Andie’s embassy to her father. She turned to Charles ashen-faced, tears streaming down her face. “Oh, Charles!” She flung herself into his arms, burying her head on his chest.
Charles leaned down and kissed her hair, then lifted her chin. “Why, my love?”
“You told me to lie. I thought lying was something the Starmen do. I heard the War Leader’s plans and ignored them, thinking they were just brags.”
“Danei, we have an officer’s code and not lying is not only held in great esteem, we hold honor courts for suspected liars and if they lose they are discharged. Even lying to an enemy ... you are not allowed to pledge your honor and then lie. Why are you unhappy?”
“Charles, my father is hated by the rest of the family. My two older brothers died trying to win his approval, but they were like him. Arrogant bullies who thought they have the right of every argument. My mother left him; under our laws she had to give up her children. She crawled on her hands and knees before me, apologizing to me for leaving me with him. I told her not to be silly, just go. And I was sixteen and eligible the next year for the Sea Academy ... I was going to leave and never come back. I went and that was a dozen years ago and I’ve never been back.
“I thought the War Leader was ... exaggerating.”
“Well, I’m surprised too. When I left she didn’t know much about the Far Side doors. Evidently she has learned a lot. Let me talk to her for a moment. I’ll speak in Tengri.”
He picked up the radio microphone. “Danei is sorry, Miss Schultz; from her description her father is a dick. She says that she thought you were less than candid about meeting her people. You didn’t tell me either.”
“Charles, think. The Tengri have organized two lines of ships to intercept you. Yes, I think you can avoid them, but telling those waiting? To give them hope and then have to tell them, ‘Oops! Sorry, the Tengri got them!’ What kind of choice is that? And it would have been just as unconscionable to tell you and to ask you to not to tell her.”
Danei spoke loudly. “I am sorry for disbelieving you, War Leader.”
“You know we took a Tengri girl prisoner. She was forever preceding anything she said when we told her about us with the words ‘You say.’ Kris Boyle tells me that once she took her across our nation, she has never used them again. I think your society places a very high value on truth, just like the Tengri ... whereas my people don’t place a high value on truth, and it is true: of late the average person has lost the concept of personal honor. But not our soldiers or our sailors and many of the rest of us. You don’t have to apologize to me or anyone for doubting our word. Trust comes from the experience of a person’s deeds. One of our great leaders was most pragmatic about it: he dealt with our enemies using the thought, ‘trust, but verify.’”
Danei glanced at Charles, leaned close to kiss him, then spoke to Andie again. She knew she was going to hurt him.
“War Leader, I love Charles with every fiber of my being. If my father opposes our marriage, or if an important enough person opposes it, they will forbid a marriage. Marriages are supposed to have issue; Charles tells me that will not be possible between us.”
“And if you marry him anyway?” Andie asked.
“I would lose my position, most people would shun me. Yes, couples marry and over time, if they prove childless, under our laws a couple childless for ten years are automatically divorced. Children are considered a duty of the B’Lugi.”
“Your society is a society where there is continual war. How do you handle the inevitable orphans?”
“They live in homes for those without families. I have always wondered about the fairness of that. Most are there through no fault of their own.”
“You think ill of us because of our ease of lying. And my people would have great problems with your people’s ease in throwing children on the ash heap. Intolerance is another word for that ‘ease,’ and as you say those children are bereft through no fault of their own.”
II
Erica had mapped the waypoints the male dralha stopped at each night. She recorded the impressions it had, and when it spent the fifth day flying over land continually she recorded that as well, as well his landing at a nest on the other end of the island they thought was the size of Ireland.
Then came the problem with the German submarine crewman who was affected differently than any other person who had been touched by the dralha. She thought the explanation of him losing his adaptation to submarines would never fly, but several of the Special Forces soldiers said while it wasn’t common, it did happen. True, more often a person couldn’t adapt to subs at all, like those who couldn’t handle the Big Moon. She was hopeful that he was going to as immune to mommy-dearest as she was. Then she realized that the reason she was still her own mind was the same reason still had his--mommy-dearest was getting older and she lost more than a step or two.
A week after Gregor had settled in to his new role, one of the comm techs came to her. “Erica, I think we need to call Monica down from Siran-Ista. The Tengri have started using a new code, although I think it’s a cipher. But whatever is, it’s not brain-dead simple like their other stuff.”
“Why can’t you just send a transliteration to her?”
“Erica, it’s a cipher. This needs a honkin’ big supercomputer to break and maybe not then. The message has 406 code groups, each and every one different. We usually get a hint because they code the sender and destination at the start of the message, but they have started sending those in clear, as well as the time and date. Although they are using 6 letters groups to code the metadata.”
Erica called Monica on the secure line, and Monica sent the raw data back to Earth. A little while later heard from Andie. “We are hurting for Tengri linguists and we are hurting for B’Lugi linguists. I trust you, Erica, and you will have the final say. Tell Linda I want three for each; we’ll ship them to Farallon and have the B’Lugi teach both classes and have a half dozen people learning English. Charles Evans is still eight weeks from home; you are my back up B’Lugi linguist. Get with him for language lessons. Best if the lessons are from Captain Danei. Things are happening fast; I don’t want them to spin out of control. Language is one of our major vulnerabilities.”
“Yes, Andie.”
III
Councilor Hardan arrived at the Council Hall and made his way to the main room, and took his usual seat. The conversation that had been ongoing when he arrived ceased. He felt a chill from the room; moreover there were more than a hundred spectators, which was unusual.
“Sorry for my delay,” he said, assuming that was what the others were upset about.
“You were ordered here six hours ago, Councilor. And that was two hours after the visit from the War Leader of the Starmen’s deputy when she came to you,” Councilor Mangani said.
He had been long been at odds with Mangani; he let the words roll off his back like before.
“As I said, I was at my villa.” Then he replayed the words in his mind and quailed. They knew about the embassy of the Starmen?
“And your villa is two hours away; four hours round trip,” Mangani said. “What do you have to report of the Starmen?”
“They gave us fake weapons; while the radios they gave us worked and transmitted voices, they stopped working in an hour.”
“Gave, Councilor?” General Haslem said. “Or delivered when they were threatened?”
Another of his fellow councilors spoke, Councilor Angemai, the only woman among the councilors. “Who am I, Hardan?”
“Councilor Angemai, Councilor of Science. You should address me with the same courtesy I give you.”
“You speak of weapons. At least one of them was real. Did you bring it?”
“My people are studying it even now, Councilor Angemai.”
“You speak of radios that transmit voices. Surely you have one to give to the Science Directorate?”
“As I said, Councilor, my people study them.”
Councilor Angemai stood. “By his own admission Hardan convicts himself of treason. Let us shoot him and be done. The War Leader of the Starmen is in the audience and she says differently. You say differently. The War Leader reports she is contact with Captain Danei. Admiral Glennie has talked to the captain with the Starmen’s radios. She passed the codes that she is not under duress.”
“Probably faked; I thought it was faked,” Councilor Hardan responded. What was going on? Only belatedly did he remember that Council Angemai had said the War Leader was present. His eyes lighted on the lightest complexion in the room. A child! The child saw his eyes were on her. She stood up and brandished one of the Starmen weapons.
“I was cast away in Arvala by evil men who tried to steal my inventions. One is in prison and most of his confederates are dead. Our king who directed the treachery has been thrown down. We are handicapped -- only two of we Starmen speak Tengri and no one is very good at B’Lugi yet. It takes a while to learn a new language.
“Captain Danei has been learning the Starmen’s language and one of my soldiers is learning B’Lugi. They are trying to avoid the Tengri patrols seeking them even now. We had initially thought to wait until they were safe to tell you about her ... but events have proceeded apace. I have come, in addition to everything else, to petition for Captain Danei. She asks permission of her father to marry a man who can’t give her children. There are many orphans among the B’Lugi and she is willing to adopt some. We Starmen despise a people who don’t take care of their children. Children are the future of a people, Councilors of the B’Lugi. I am told orphans are left to fend for themselves. Among my people there are many more volunteers to take such orphans than there are orphans. Councilors of the B’Lugi! You treat your orphaned children ill!”
“Just the orphans,” Councilor Mangani said.
Andie made a rude sound; all knew it was dismissive.
“Councilor Hardan, what do you say to the very serious charges levied against you?” Councilor Angemai said, trying to bring the discussion back to things she would prefer to discuss. “I have yet to hear you respond.”
“Lies, all lies.”
“Councilor Hardan our laws require new inventions to be reported to the Science Directorate at the first available moment. I have seen the effectiveness of the Starmen’s weapons. Several have spoken since your meeting with the Starmen to people at a far remove from Farallon,” Councilor Angemai said. “You have failed in your duty. I move you be set down and an investigation started to see if you intended to claim the inventions of others to your own gain.”
“I lead the Directorate of Education. New technology is within my purview.”
Andie had been whispering a translation of the proceedings to Melek, who mostly stayed silent.
Now Melek stood and spoke while Andie translated. “We have many fighting orders in the Arvalan army. The Chain Breakers were dedicated to returning east and liberating the descendants of our ancestors who stayed behind that we might escape. We were met in our new lands by predators, like those that attacked Captain Danei, those we named the dralka. We created a Dralka fighting order. Another fighting order was formed to fight the tarin, great beasts three, four times as tall as a man. We had the Sea Fighters, because we were sure that we would need to fight to get back east and there were the Wall Guards. We had built great walls to keep out the worst of the predators, and the Wall Guards patrolled those walls.
“And so it was for fifteen hundred years. When Andie and her liege, Kris, came among us the old ways were failing. The Dralka fighting order was in the ascendency, there were renewed dralka attacks, and they wanted all the other fighting orders to be subsidiary to the Dralka order ... eventually to be consumed by the Dralka fighting order. The Dralka leaders made a mistake; they attacked Andie and Kris -- and thus losing everything, because we of Arvala do not make war on women.
“Andie tells us her government has three branches; they have fought long and hard to keep the branches separate and equal. Some of the other governments on her world are outright one-man governments, like the Tengri Imperium and our own kingdom. Andie’s nation has grown the strongest by having steady laws for much of their history, and the people chose their leaders. Of late, men have tried to eliminate the three branches.
“My King has noted that governments that have worked for a long time should not make changes lightly. You should think long and hard about if you really want to change your government now when you have long fought off the Tengri.”
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