Diplomatic Act

Chapter Four

Dahnak, Thujan, and the other Kluj conspirators weren't really breaking the law, if for no other reason than that there were no laws written down anywhere that said what they were doing was illegal. Still, this sort of thing simply wasn't done, not among civilized cultures.

Civilized or not, a small group of Kluj Watchers had elected to take matters into their own hands.

It was a terribly dangerous time, both for the galactic metaculture that called itself the Unity, and for the half-savage inhabitants of this world called Earth. The worlds of the Unity were being torn by the storms of religious and philosophical dogma, as myriads of civilizations adhered to one of the two great Answers of Being. Humans, though, had a different problem, with larger political factions--nation states and crumbling empires--dissolving into smaller and smaller subsets, all tearing at each others' ears. It was, Dahnak thought, no wonder at all that the Eldar, if they were going to reappear in the galaxy, would reappear here.

This was a critical time for the human species, perhaps the most critical in its history. Another brief century or two would tell the story, one way or the other, of whether they would destroy themselves in war or overcome its causes, whether they would establish themselves as a prosperous, spacefaring species or descend into overpopulated squabblings over the dwindling resources of a single world, whether, in fact, they would survive at all or become as extinct as the proverbial Dhlalatan throlox.

No matter which path they took, however--extinction or survival, war or peace--the Kluj Watchers were pledged not to interfere, and for that reason, Dahnak had always been forced to study the human civilization from a distance, never allowed to mingle with them, to study them up close as a researcher should. He had accepted those restrictions as a matter of course--there were, after all, no alternatives--but for fifty years he'd dreamed of the possibility of one day getting to know humans directly, by talking with them, instead of sifting through their bizarre and often contradictory television transmissions.

And then, in the space of a few tens of Earth days, everything had been transformed.

Two things had happened to change the long-established status quo, two sets of circumstances, really, that had happened in apparent isolation from one another, yet showed the telltale signs of QIS, the great mystery of Quantum Indeterminate Simultaneity. Humans would have called it coincidence, but Dahnak knew better, of course.

First, there'd been the appearance of Harmon on Earth, a being, human or nonhuman--

Non-human, his suit murmured sulkily.

>Shut up,< he replied.

--who openly claimed to be a member of a race calling itself the Eldar and who proclaimed on the Star Peace television broadcasts that peace and peaceful coexistence were the great prime virtues of existence.

Interesting linguistic QIS, that. In Kluj legend and myth, there was a race called the Kaala Tah, ancient and hyper-intelligent entities who'd spread through the galaxy hundreds of thousands of cycles ago, forging the great, first Pax Galactica among the warring and half-civilized species then occupying this spiral arm. With magical-sounding empathic powers still poorly understood, they'd ended wars, waged peace, brought understanding, and then, at the seeming apex of their glory, they'd vanished.

The curious fact was that many other species in the Unity had similar, even identical legends and traditions of their own. The Ssadir spoke of the Shcheschi'no'gvah, the Goragon of the Rarascht'na, the Pelakid of the Larkal.

Kaala Tah, in the language of the Kluj, meant simply "Old, Wise Ones." Other races of the Unity called them other things--Naka-ja, Yamer Isthah, Ptschai, a thousand others. All translated more or less as . . .

The Ancient Race.

The Old Ones.

The Elder Ones.

The Eldar.

Coincidence? Dahnak didn't think so. As a Kluj scientist, he was well acquainted with those mathematical approaches to chaos theory and synchronicity that, coupled with quantum dynamics, suggested that all events are interrelated to some degree and that true coincidence is impossible. He believed all-heartedly in the implicit Interconnectedness of All, a metaphilosophical concept that was the basis for the Unity's creation.

So where had the Old Ones, the Eldar, gone? For a half a million Earth years, there'd been no word, no sign of them. Galactic civilizations had risen and fallen, until even all records of what the Eldar had looked like had been lost and nothing remained but the stories. Most within the Unity's galactic culture--the Collective, as it was known--assumed that they'd gone on to some higher and nonmaterial plane of existence. Others were certain that they'd made contact with Something Wonderful, a highly evolved intelligence of godlike scope, power, and wisdom far off around the curve of the cosmos and had left en masse to meet with it and enhance their own evolution. A few of the grumpier academics who'd studied the question stubbornly insisted that the Old Ones had simply gotten disgusted with what passed for intelligence in the galaxy in those days and gone on extended vacation, determined to wait until something worthy of their advanced minds evolved for them to talk to.

Several Earth weeks ago, a new television program had begun beaming its message of peace and enlightenment out into space at the speed of light. It was called Star Peace, and neither Dahnak nor his fellow Watchers and academics could decide what to make of it. What all agreed on was that, inexplicably, the Eldar had seemed suddenly to reappear on a primitive world on the outskirts of the Unity after half a million Earth-years, preaching again their message of peace, harmony, and cultural diversity.

All of that had been confusing--and exciting--enough. The Eldar, back in the galaxy again! There were so many questions. Why had they chosen to manifest themselves to the savage protosentients of Earth? Why were they ignoring Collective society? Where had they been for half a million years, for Kaala Tah's sake?

But a second factor had entered the equation at almost the same time as the reappearance of the Eldar, and that was the reason Dahnak now found himself fulfilling his career's ambition, continuing his researches among the human primitives, instead of from afar. There was a terrible danger that, for the first time in millennia, war--actual brutal, bloody, uncivilized, dirty, killing, interstellar war--was about to be unleashed within the Unity. The crisis of the Two Answers of Being, which had been quietly building now for six thousand years, had reached a new and unanticipated nadir; news from Klushtha and from Unity Prime itself was universally and abysmally bad. A scant few Earth days ago, the Nagrech had threatened to break off all relations with Unity, and other races siding with them might break off as well. War fleets were gathering, ambassadors were being recalled, and the Galactic News Network was running in-depth specials on the Crisis.

War was imminent.

The Kluj, above all, were a peaceful people, true disciples of the great ancient prophets of Kaala Tah. The Harmon-as-Alien and the Harmon-as-Human factions had united in a rare burst of common goal and purpose. The Unity needed help, and from none less than the lost Eldar themselves.

Which was why Dahnak found himself . . . here.

Since it still wasn't clear exactly what the Eldar's connection was with Earth, and since it was quite clear that Harmon was on Earth preaching peace--and the Kaala Tah knew the humans needed that message as much as anyone!--the small cabal within the Kluj Watchers' Council had decided on several points of immediate action.

First: the Eldar Harmon would be approached and asked to intervene in the Ssadir_Nagrech crisis. If any being could defuse the looming interstellar war, it was he.

Second: because it was vitally important under the constraints of the First Principle of Unity that Earth's culture not be disrupted in any way, Harmon's sudden disappearance had to be disguised. A single Kluj, armed with all of the information gathered about humans over the years, would infiltrate human society, disguised by a carefully programmed nanosuit to look, smell, and wuffle exactly like the vanished Harmon. The deception would only last for a local day or two--long enough for the Council to consult with Harmon and determine the best course of action.

Dahnak had been chosen to act the part of the abducted Harmon, to make certain that the human culture was impacted as little as possible. And in the meantime, he would be able to gather all of the first-hand data he could on the lives, customs, and thoughts of the bewildering species that called itself Man. Disguised as Harmon, he would insinuate himself into human society, unnoticed, unobserved . . .

Looking into the mirror, Dahnak completed a meticulous inspection of the skin of his real face, making certain that there was no inflammation or abrasion that might inhibit his control of the na-mask. Satisfied at last, he began letting the liquid nano trickle up and over his face once more, drowning blue, see-through skin, lipless slit of a mouth, and three rapidly blinking red eyes.

For a moment, he couldn't see . . . but then the nano surface formed human-looking eyes that began relaying visual information, not to his real eyes, but through his skin along molecule-thick slivers of nano and into his central nervous system. All of the senses, after all, whether sight, hearing, or wuffling, are processed and interpreted by the brain, not by the organs that gather the information in the first place.

As he watched, the silvery liquid, defying gravity by adjusting its own surface tension, grew thicker, bulging up here, flattening out there, obeying its programming and returning to specific, remembered shapes and textures. It molded itself anew into the Harmon face, building up the forehead into the characteristic, twin-lobed dome that Dahnak had studied for so many hours on Earth's moon, extruding itself as tens of thousands of individual fibers curling to his shoulders. As the nano kept reforming itself, the quicksilver texture roughened, losing its silvery reflectivity, then darkened as the material keyed itself to just the right reflective properties. Skin coloring could be tricky . . . and all the more so because the television transmissions the Kluj had been intercepting for all of these years were keyed to different base colors. Objects that clearly did not change color in fact--such as Harmon's face--might appear redder one time, greener another, more blue a third, as though the image had been originally collected through colored filters, or under colored lights, for some reason.

No one had yet been able to explain the phenomenon, though some academics, notably Laakenthu and Quijistri, thought that humans must possess some slight ability to change their own coloration, just as krothas and other small Klushthan branchhuggers could change from blue to brown to gray to purple, matching the color of their background as a form of protective camouflage.

If so, it was a vestigial ability, and not one that humans ever mentioned in their TV broadcasts. Interestingly enough, a very great deal of the social difficulties weighing down humans at the moment seemed to center on the fact that there were several distinct coloration patterns among them . . . though they rarely mentioned it directly. That certainly supported the notion that they could change color at will, at least to some extent, since, logically, arguments about which skin color was best or most esthetically pleasing or the best camouflage could only arise if the creatures could control it.

In any case, that was a question for later research, if he had the time. For now, he had a good idea of the range of colors possible for Harmon/Richard Faraday, and he settled on a median blend of ocher-pink_pale brown, a repugnant color that reminded Dahnak of scavenging scrotworms back on Klushtha. It took a few moments for the coloring to settle into place--with a couple of flashes of plaid and polka-dots as the nano readjusted--and then he was looking once again into the face of the Eldar Harmon.

He still wasn't sure, however, whether he should maintain the Eldar face or reconfigure for Richard Devon Faraday. The Council had argued the point long and hard before he'd left the moon for Earth a few hours ago, and the consensus had been that he should appear as Harmon.

Of course, his suit reminded him. The Faraday persona, after all, is nothing more than a clever disguise adopted by Harmon when he leaves the studio complex where the Star Peace programs are made. Since you are here to replace Harmon, obviously you should be Harmon.

The suit had dropped its sulky tone in favor of one that bordered on the condescending.

>I'm not sure that decision was correct,< he told it. He was more than willing to discuss the matter, if his suit didn't get strident about it. >The evidence suggests that Harmon lived here as Faraday, not as Harmon.< Gently, he guided the suit into a reshaping of the Harmon face, draining away the huge frontal lobes, shortening the hair and turning it from white to brown, bringing the head growth back over the top . . . until he was looking into the face of Richard Faraday.

He couldn't hold it, however. The face blurred and ran, the forehead bulged, the white hair dropped to his shoulders, as the Harmon face reasserted itself. For a flickering moment, the face in the mirror shifted back and forth between Harmon and Richard, a Doctor Jekyll_Mr. Hyde transformation unable to decide which way to go. "Stop it!" he ordered the suit aloud.

It's not my fault! the suit snapped back. Make up your mind!

The face settled back into Harmon's almost-human features.

Turning, he walked back into the bedroom, trying to look about the place with a philosopher-scientist's calm detachment. He would stay Harmon for now. It was simpler than getting into an argument with either his suit or his indecisiveness.

The place was appallingly primitive--not the sort of dwelling you'd expect for a member of a wise and ancient superior race, no modern conveniences, no communications center or twablers, nothing but prestellar, prenano, preposterously primitive furnishings just a few small steps up from the stone age.

Thoughtful, he walked over to the thanj pad. The bed was odd in its shape, odder still in its texture. It wasn't heated--there seemed to be no provision for infrared radiation save the radiated body heat of the inhabitants--and it wasn't crinkly at all.

Perhaps Eldar don't derive the same comfort from feeling it crinkle and snap beneath them as they move that Klujans do, his suit suggested. They are alien, after all.

>That's not the point. Here, hidden away inside this house, Harmon could have had any furnishings he wished. This . . . this . . .<

Bed, the suit said, supplying the word.

>This bed is identical to what we've seen countless times on human television. It suggests that Harmon enjoys human reproductive ceremonies. How is that possible, if Harmon is not human?<

The suit had no answer for that. Dahnak continued his methodical exploration of the room. Over there. Some of those printed, representational decorations featured . . . not Harmon, but Faraday. One in particular, on the bureau, showed Faraday, another human that Dahnak recognized as a female of the species, and the carnivore, tongue lolling like the bright pink grasping member of a Zanchedi.

He picked the image up, studying it. In detail Faraday looked very little like Harmon. That simple fact had made it extraordinarily difficult to locate Harmon in the flesh or identify his dwelling place, since the television broadcasts of Star Peace evidently were not transmitted from the place where the programs were made. Identifying any one entity on the surface of the Earth was an astonishingly difficult task--akin to identifying one particular znat among the swarming hordes of its labyrinthine burrow-hive. There were so many beings crowded onto the planet, especially within this stretch of artificially reshaped desert the natives called Los Angeles. Even nonhuman intelligences didn't stand out well in such tumbling, organic chaos.

As matter of cold fact, Harmon had been located purely by accident when his enlarged, bald dome of a head reflected a flash of light to a Watcher in a cloaked transship passing overhead. Curious, the Watcher had zeroed in his optical scanners and spotted the Eldar in a parking lot behind a cluster of dilapidated-looking buildings, a warehouse or something of that sort.

Harmon had been leaving one of several trailers parked behind the building. Once his general location was established, cloaked transships had concentrated on the spot, remote mag-tagging him as if he were a migrating klol, tracking his every movement. They'd proved, conclusively, that he spent most of the day inside one or another of those big warehouses, that at the end of the day he entered one of those trailers, always the third from the end, and emerged a short time later looking like Richard Faraday. After that, he entered one of the swarming myriads of transport devices and was conveyed to this dwelling place in the region known as Hollywood Hills. Sometimes he left the house, but usually he stayed inside, save for periodic excursions up the dirt road on the mountain above. Early the next morning, he would be picked up by the same vehicle and returned to the warehouses. He would enter the third trailer from the end, emerge two hours later as Harmon, and the cycle would repeat. The times varied, and thus far, the routine repeated on five days out of every seven, but overall, Harmon seemed tied to an unvarying schedule.

But so many questions remained, demanding answers. Presumably--at least, according to the Harmon-as-Alien theory--Harmon donned a nanosuit inside the third trailer to make himself look like "Richard Faraday," to hide his identity as an Eldar on Earth. But why didn't he take it off, even when he was home and alone? Who was the female? What was her relationship with Harmon? Why had they been represented together like this, with him as Faraday, and the print framed in brass and placed on a bureau?

Every aspect of what Dahnak saw only reinforced his growing conviction that Harmon was not, could not be a member of a nonhuman species. It was as though he were an ordinary Earth human deliberately pretending to be an Eldar as he delivered his message of tolerance and understanding on Star Peace.

It confirmed what Dahnak and Vanandra and the rest of the Harmon-as-Human faction had contended all along--that there were hidden Eldar somewhere, who were somehow controlling Harmon, dictating his message, perhaps even controlling his actions. If so, Dahnak's mission had just become terribly complicated.

He would need to find the real Eldar.

He replaced the framed print carefully. It was clear that, no matter whether Harmon was Faraday or Faraday was Harmon, the entity's mission here on Earth was of the utmost importance. Like the Unity, Earth was poised on the brink of war, as thousands of factions across the inhabited face of the planet attacked one another with words and primitive weapons, divided by the most bizarre and incomprehensible causes.

Obviously, Harmon was here to defuse the looming war. His sudden disappearance might easily precipitate a final, global conflict, which was why Dahnak had been assigned the task of filling in for Harmon in his absence. While he was here, he was to gather information on who and what Harmon was, why the Eldar had returned, and from where, and whether they planned to rejoin Collective society.

And in his spare time, of course, Dahnak could study humans--up close and personal--as much as he wanted to, so long as he didn't give away the fact that he was a nonhuman, or that his subjects were the focus of intense extraterrestrial interest.

He returned to the kitchen area, thoughtful. The carnivore was waiting for him there with a hopeful expression, its tail so enthusiastically wiping the smooth surface of the floor that Dahnak wondered if the creature had been deliberately gene-engineered as an organic floor polisher or furniture duster.

"Well," Dahnak said, squatting to meet the creature face to face. "I know you are addressed as `Jimbo' or as `boy.' Maybe you can tell me something about the being who lives here with you."

happyhappysmellsfunnyscratch?ears!scratch?smells funny!

If the creature was intelligent, it was certainly not an intelligence of the same order as Harmon . . . or even as Richard Faraday. Not unless its conceptualizations were radically alien from those of humans.

Jimbo continued sweeping the floor, while inhaling large numbers of air molecules from the vicinity of Dahnak's nanosuit covering.

smellsfunnysmellsfunny . . .

Dahnak held out one hand and concentrated. Liquid nano shaped itself into a flat, rectangular case, the scanner he'd used on Harmon when they'd met on the mountainside. Evidently, his suit needed some fine tuning. The dog was extraordinarily sensitive to smells, and Dahnak's deception needed to be perfect. As the recorder played the real Harmon's smells back to the suit, the suit adjusted its surface chemistry. The movements of Jimbo's tail became more urgent.

happy!happy!scratch!ear!happy!food?

He reached out and scratched Jimbo behind the ear, as he'd seen Harmon do so many times before. There was so much to learn!

He hoped he would be able to pull this thing off.