Diplomatic Act

Chapter Three

To say that Dahnak was excited would have been gross understatement. He'd been studying humans and their culture for nearly fifty revolutions of their world about their sun, now, but never, never in his entire career as research xenosophontologist had he had an opportunity like this one! To actually get a chance to live among the primitives, studying their ways, getting to know them on a one-to-one basis. It was the research opportunity of two lifetimes and a download, at least!

He had to stop and remind himself that his primary mission had to come first. The Watchers' Council would never have agreed to this mad scheme if there wasn't a crisis on--and a bad one at that. And, of course, there was the matter of "Richard Devon Faraday," or "Harmon," or whatever his real name might be.

Dahnak was so excited, as he stepped off the dirt road and onto the cul-de-sac, that he briefly lost his na-lock. The Harmon mask he wore softened and blurred; the plaid of Clan MacLeod briefly reappeared, closely pursued in rapid succession by the tartans of Clan Macpherson, Clan Kennedy, and the pink, orange, and green stripes and dots favored by a primitive species of philosophically advanced arboreal annelids on a world some twenty-one hundred light years in the direction of galactic center. For just a moment, the sights and sounds of this primitive world bombarded his senses as raw and unfiltered data. The impact was staggering.

Sounds: a multitude of chitin-shelled arthropod flyers, hoppers, and burrowers rubbing various body parts to generate sound.

Smells: Plant pollen and reproductive scents. Decaying vegetation. Fumes from the incomplete combustion of petrochemical extracts in several industrial and transport applications. Body odor from the four-legged carnivore, including damp fur and partially digested meat. Metabolic waste products of a bewildering variety of life forms sublimating from the soil around him. A cloying lingering taste of ivasl, sharp, spicy, and a bit gwinklish.

Touch: The dry-wet cling of the nanosuit covering him from head to foot. The crinkly feel of hardened petrochemical extracts underfoot. Kinesthesia, and the insistent tug of a gravitational field far greater than he was used to.

Sight: Sight! A galaxy of light, stretching off from the foot of these mountains, stretching across flat and petrochemical-fume-cloaked terrain all the way to the horizon. Nearer at hand, the oddly shaped and sculpted clutter of the artificial caves these beings used for shelter. And light, everywhere light, as though these beings sought to banish the very stars overhead. The display of multi colored radiance they'd designed here was nowhere near as spectacular as that of the Drolid city-mountains, say, or of the Pelakid's delicate arcotowers. Still, for a diurnal species that tended to lapse into unconsciousness during the night hours, they certainly made a valiant effort at holding the night at bay.

Snasnet: Pingling and sharp, with just a touch of omniviance. He wouldn't even have noticed it if he'd been synched with his suit.

Wuffling: Deep, throbbing, and orange-red, with jubilose overtones. There was electrical current moving nearby, and a very great deal of it!

Magnetic: Unpleasantly in flux, thanks to those electrical fields. He'd expected to be able to navigate on this world by sensing the planet's magnetic field, but he could scarcely sense his own mag field, much less the planet's, with all of that wire-transmitted current about. His directional sense spun dizzyingly.

Dahnak had to stop and readjust. Vertigo clawed him, as did the far deeper and more insistent pull of gravity. He was in no immediate danger, though a fall in this gravity could result in serious injury. If the natives noticed him, however, wobbly, his face melting and running in a cascade of mingling but unmixed colors . . .

It took only a few seconds to regain control of his suit. His face controls were gone, but he could grab his left wrist and concentrate on the programming mantra, reestablishing his link. He could feel his mask settling back into place, feel the bewildering bombardment of sensations receding into a comfortable and controllable background. He held his hand a moment more, then took a deep breath and a tentative step. He still felt the effects of the planet's gravity, of course, but the nanosuit supported legs, back, and arches against the pull, adding its far greater strength to his.

He needed to get inside, out of sight, to make some minor adjustments.

Dahnak knew which cave had been occupied by the subject, of course. He'd been watching him long enough to have a pretty good idea of his habits. Still, sensory data from the high stratosphere or the research facility on the planet's moon or even from a cloaked transship parked just overhead were terribly limited when it came to observations of the inside of the cave. Infrared, motion scans, microgravitometric profiles, and wuffling scans were about all that could be picked up through the cave's upper sheathing of overlapping, desiccated hydrocarbons. There was simply no way of knowing what really went on inside any specific savage's cave dwelling.

With luck, Dahnak was about to fill in some missing pages to that particular story.

The door to the cave--no, the locals called them houses, his suit reminded him--was locked. Access required, not an electronic code, but a crude manipulation of steel blocks and tumblers deep inside the mechanical access device. That was simple enough to deal with. Confidently grasping the door's handle, he willed a sliver of the suit covering his hand to extend itself through the tiny opening in the metal knob, feeling out the blocks and lifting them out of the way. With a sharp snick, the locking mechanism released. Within his mask, Dahnak's eyes crinkled with the expression that signified amusement. He pulled the handle, and the expression faded.

The door wouldn't open.

"Wurr-urrrr . . ." the carnivore, which was leaning now against his legs, said somewhat plaintively. Its tail lashed back and forth in what looked like agitation, though the emotions associated with the involuntary movements appeared more excited than anything else. The being was pressing its long face into a corner between the door frame and the door itself, pushing ahead as if to open the way for his unaccountably slow-witted companion. When the door still didn't open, it looked up at him with brown and questioning eyes. Dahnak caught a flicker of its thoughts: in?in?in!food? happyhappyin?

"You want to go inside?" Dahnak asked the creature aloud. "So do I. Do you know how this works? Pressure sensitive, maybe?" Experimentally, he touched different parts of the door's surface, paying particular attention to the small, white button set into the stone of the frame just to the left of the door. He pressed the button and was rewarded by two musical tones, 660 cycles and 550 cycles per second. A human pianist on PBS would have called them E and C one octave up from middle C.

The door still didn't open.

This was ridiculous! He'd watched hundreds, no, thousands of televised images of humans opening doors, both electronic and mechanical. The locking mechanism was clear. It ought to open. He pushed. Then he pulled, though he knew from personal observation that this door opened inward. Nothing worked. The carnivore reached up with one foreleg and pawed at his hand and the handle, dragging at them. "Urr-rrrr? Urrr?"

"I'm sorry," Dahnak told the creature. He was beginning to wish he had a paleotechnologist with him. "I don't know how the zhasting thing works!"

His suit didn't seem to know either and could offer no help. On the broadcast images, a human simply put his hand on the handle and either pushed or pulled, and the door opened, assuming it was unlocked. Simple. Possibly there was another lock in place? He extended the nano from his fingertips again, exploring, a film of quicksilver a few tightly interlocked molecules thick flowing over every part of the door's stubborn internal mechanism. The thing was held in place by a tongue of metal extending into a metal-lined pit inside the door frame. Exploring further, he sensed the complicated pivot mechanism that moved the tongue in and out. Delicately, he tried turning the knob instead of pushing it and . . . ah ha! It turns!

The door clicked open, and the carnivore used its elongated primary sensory apparatus to nose through and into the house ahead of him. Cautiously, Dahnak followed.

He thrilled with the excitement of the moment, both hearts hammering and his dlool glands pumping away furiously. This, this moment was the crowning instant of his long and scholarly career! To actually stand inside a genuine human dwelling!

Remember! his nanosuit told him, a bit prissily. It's probably not a human who lives here!

Dahnak suppressed a quick quiver of his ribbles, a flash of annoyance. His suit read it, of course, but the nano was not programmed to react to his emotions. It continued, murmuring softly against the hearing organs at the base of his throat, and echoing the thoughts in the neural pathways of his brain.

Still, Harmon could have been expected to disguise his cave, so that the locals wouldn't know, the suit added. It might have been trying to mollify him.

>Keep in mind that Harmon may not be alien to these people,< Dahnak replied stiffly, forming the thought carefully in his mind and holding it there so the suit could read it. On a lower, unreadable level, he gave his race's equivalent of a mental scowl.

His nanosuit had been programmed by the faction that believed in Harmon-as-Alien, and Dahnak was not at all looking forward to having to argue his every thought and decision with his clothing.

If Harmon is non-human-- his suit began.

"Zhast, not now!" he said aloud. "Let me enjoy this!"

His suit's thought cut off abruptly, and he caught just a flash of irritation there. Maybe the thing had been programmed with emotions after all. He was going to have to have sharp words with Bliikas and his Alien-Harmon programmers when he got back.

He stood in the threshold, looking around. The carnivore padded up some steps to the left, claws clicking on the floor. He catalogued sounds, smells, wufflings, magnetic fields . . . but there was very little visual input to record. The place was curiously more cramped than he'd been expecting from the domiciles he'd seen on human television . . . and much, much darker.

Well, his suit's voice murmured in throat and mind, you could put the lights on. It sounded petulant, with a sarcastic edge. Ambient illumination in human dwellings is generally under manual control, you know.

"I know that!" This was becoming irritating.

Dahnak searched about, looking for the wall switch humans used instead of body sensors. Ah! There. He flicked the small lever and was rewarded by light . . . harshly yellow and nearly as bright as full midday on his native Klushtha, though still much dimmer than he'd been expecting, given this planet's brighter sun and what he'd seen on human broadcasts.

How full, how cluttered the house interior seemed! He was prepared for the sight, of course, since he'd seen countless human-cave interiors on TV, but the reality was just a little breathtaking. He stood in the doorway a moment, turning slowly, cataloguing each item and letting his suit provide the names, a whispering both against his organs of hearing and along the neural pathways of his brain. Tables . . . chairs . . . rugs . . . curtains . . . photographs. All so familiar from the human transmissions, and yet so . . . so alien.

There was so much there, a visual avalanche, that Dahnak felt his na-link slipping once again. He managed to grab hold in time, however, and keep his face in place. Zhast, this was never going to work if his face melted at every little psychic shock and surprise! Stay in control! Hold it together! He needed to see himself. Guided by his knowledge of the overall floor plan of this cave, as worked out by infrared and gravitometric scans, he began looking for the bathroom.

He knew that the different areas of the house had different names, sometimes associated with what one did there, and sometimes associated with what one kept there. Bedrooms, for instance, were where humans kept their beds, oddly smooth and rectangular thanj pads, but with plant, animal, or synthetic-fiber coverings and dust clots in the spaces underneath. Humans used them for sexual recreation, and possibly other things as well. The living room, obviously, was for living in, since it did not seem to be alive itself. The den, most likely, would be the living and young-rearing place for the carnivore, though TV broadcasts suggested that humans used them as well for similar purposes. Often, he knew, they kept their television receivers there, for a variety of social, religious, and educational purposes. The kitchen had something to do with nutrition, as was clear enough from Joy of Cooking and The Frugal Gourmet and any number of other, similar human broadcasts.

Up the steps--they didn't even use motivators?--and to the right, he found, first, the bedroom, and then, leading off from the bedroom, the cubicle that must be the bathroom. Yes, it was easily identified as such by the large ceramic container humans used to wash their bodies--bathing, it was called--which gave the room its name. Opposite the bath was a tiny bath for the hands, and a counter dazzlingly cluttered with bottles, metal cylinders, and less readily describable objects and artifacts of every shape and imaginable purpose. Strangest of all was the squat, roughly ovoid, ceramic object in the room's far corner, an object of decidedly unimaginable purpose. It possessed two hinged lids, both of which were up at the moment, and one of which was partly cut away in a peculiarly shaped semicircle, an unlikely kind of lid. There was a hole or tunnel leading down from the bottom of the ovoid basin, but despite this the container was half full of water. A handle extended from a ceramic box above and behind the basin.

What the zhast was it all for?

He would have to puzzle out its deep mysteries later. For now, he found another wall switch to increase the ambient illumination; when he flicked it on, he was almost blinded by the explosion of light from overhead, harsher, painfully bluer, and more intense than any he'd encountered so far in this dwelling, and he had to sharply ease back the light input from his mask's visual sensors. There . . . that was better.

A large sheet of glass layered over highly reflective material of some kind--mirror--covered one wall. He leaned forward, staring into the strange face of the creature whose likeness he'd appropriated.

It looked very much like most of the human faces he'd studied, surprisingly so, in fact, given the Harmon-as-Alien faction's contention that the Eldar were not related to the human savages at all. Preposterous! The only real differences lay in the high, smooth forehead, and in the styling of the fibrous white material growing from it. That last--the hair, as it was called--might not even be a true species distinction, since humans wore or didn't wear the stuff in a bizarre range of styles, colors, patterns, weavings, and lengths. Several Watcher doctoral theses had been transcribed concerning the probable religious and social connotations of varied hair stylings, but that had never been a field of particular interest to Dahnak, any more than their primitive, electrons-through-wires technology. He wondered what Jagluun would make of it, though. That worthy academic had devoted the past thirty-seven Earth years just to the depictions of hair as revealed by human TV broadcasts.

The problem, of course, was that after nearly fifty cycles of study Dahnak and his fellow researchers knew a very great deal about the species that called themselves human in some ways, but very little in others, and it was often difficult to tell which category was which. Nearly all that was known had been derived from the humans' own television broadcasts, and there was reason to believe that the content was heavily edited . . . or at least slanted in such a way as to provide a distorted view of their actual meanings. No rational sentient species could be as factious, as stupid, as bizarrely improbable in their statements and beliefs, as self-contradictory, as out-and-out unsane as human television suggested!

He relaxed control of his face, letting it pool and ripple like liquid mercury. For a moment, his true face appeared as the nanosuit flowed away from his head--pale blue, translucent skin and muscle over shadowy blue-gray bone, three red eyes blinking in a quick one-two-three pattern, top to bottom. The upper and lower eyes gave him excellent binocular vision. The middle eye could extrude slightly on a stalk of erectile tissue; by reshaping the eye slightly, he could change the focus, giving him a monocular zoom lens that could focus light in a range from close-up to telescopic.

Dahnak was a typical Kluj, slightly shorter, more slender, less massive than a typical human. Despite translucent skin, paired hearts, a blood chemistry based on cupric sulfate, three eyes, and the positioning of his organs of hearing and breathing in the throat, the Kluj had the distinction of being among the handful of species who were similar enough to the dominant intelligent species on Earth that disguise was possible. His overall shape was not so different from humans, in fact. For that reason, primarily, and for the less immediately obvious reason that their mental processes were in many ways similar to those of their subjects, Kluj Watchers had been assigned to the monitor station on Earth's moon; if direct intervention ever did become necessary in human affairs, Kluj xenosophontologists and contact personnel wearing full-support nanosuits could infiltrate human society undetected. Such intervention, of course, was to be avoided if at all possible. Emergent races were to be left strictly alone, free to develop in their own fashion. That, after all, was the First Principle of Unity.

Dahnak felt distinctly mingled emotions at that. On the one hand, intervention of a sort was now necessary, and the reason was that Dahnak's world, Klushtha, his species, and the larger Collective of Unity culture, were all in terrible danger.

On the other, he was about to realize the dream of a lifetime, to actually mingle with humans, to learn what they thought, how they thought, and why antiperspirants and laxatives, the right running shoe and the right cola, sexually exciting vehicles and the psychic hotline were all so vital to the smooth functioning of human society.

For Dahnak, it would be the high point of his career as a cultural xenophilosopher. The fact that he and his small Kluj cabal might also be saving Galactic Civilization was the final talo-glaze on the glammitz loaf . . . or, as the humans would say, the frosting on the cake. It was . . . convenient that saving the Galactic Unity could be fun, as well as intellectually satisfying.