F. Wilson - The Tery

So he did. But it irritated him more and more each day to hide his intelligence. Previously taciturn by nature, he had now developed an insatiable urge to talk to other humans. But there was no one to listen. Rab was always busy or surrounded by Talents, and when Tlad arrived, he and Rab spoke of things that Jon could not understand. So he was forced by ignorance to remain silent.

So now he sought out Tlad — who was human yet did not seem to require the company of other humans. Perhaps he would accept the company of a tery who craved to be with another human on an equal footing. They were both aliens, outsiders, standing apart from the rest of the culture — Tlad by his own choice, the tery by heritage and decree of law.

Tlad was not at his hut, had not been there recently by all signs. Perhaps they had traveled different paths; the tery passing him on a parallel course. Jon waited for a while, then decided to scout through the area between the hut and the new camp of the psi-folk.

Eventually, he came to a familiar clearing. Looking to his left he saw what he had come to call the shimmering fear. And something else.

Someone was in the field. A man…

Tlad.

Jon watched him approach the shimmering fear. He moved quickly, steadily, like someone who knew exactly where he was going and was anxious to get there. He walked right up to the shimmer — and into it!

The shimmer enveloped him and he disappeared!

Jon ran forward with his heart thudding in his throat. Tlad was in danger and he had to help. But where was he? Had whatever hid inside the shimmering fear drawn him in and swallowed him? Or was Tlad immune to the fear? Was he part of it?

The questions fled unanswered as he felt the first tentacles of terror and revulsion coil around his chest and throat and begin to squeeze. But still he ran. He ran until he felt he could no longer breathe, until his legs became stiff and rigid. And when he could no longer run, he walked — slowly, painfully forcing each limb forward until he entered the shimmer.

Suddenly the forest disappeared. His vision shifted and melted into a blur. All that was left was the fear that buzzed around and through him. Still he forced himself on, one more step…one more step –

The shimmer was suddenly gone.

And with it, the fear.

He stood panting and sweating in a cool, odorless room that seemed to be made out of polished steel.

Not three paces ahead of him, Tlad sat with his back to him. He was staring at a portrait of a man on the wall above him. Jon opened his mouth to speak…

…but the portrait spoke first.

"I regret having to say this, Steven, but I'm going to have to turn down your request. As you well know, the Federation Defense Force intervenes only in strictly limited circumstances, and your request for intervention on Jacobi IV does not meet the narrow criteria set forth in the LaNague Charter. The imposition of a protectorate in this case would be at odds with the very purpose of the Cultural Survey Service, which is to preserve and promote human diversity. The psis you've described on Jacobi IV are well on their way to establishing a truly tangential society; intervention by an interstellar culture at this point would stifle them. Your talented friends will have to find their own way out of this predicament, I'm afraid. I wish them all the luck betweeen the stars.

You may help them, of course, but only with the native materials at hand.

Good Luck, Steve, and out." #

"Damn!" he said through clenched teeth as he angrily cut off the playback.

No sense in running through it again. It was painfully obvious that this was an irrevocable decision on the part of the higher-ups. He had expected a rigid, by-the-rules response, but that didn't lessen his frustration.

"Of all the stupid narrow-minded —"

He turned and froze at the sight of the tery standing in the lock, staring at him.

"Jon?"

"You live within the fear?" the tery said, a tone of awed wonder in his gruff voice.

"The fear?"

He was so stunned by Jon's presence that he didn't catch the reference.

"The shimmer —"

"Oh, that!" He realized that Jon meant the craft's neurostimulatory repeller. "I use it to keep out people and curious creatures. But how'd you get past it?"

"I thought Tlad was in trouble. I came to help."

He saw how Jon was still panting and trembling, how his fur was soaked with sweat.

"You came through the field?" He was moved. The field induced an almost irresistible flight response in the autonomic nervous system of any mammal within range. Very potent. It took guts to get past it. "Thank you, Jon."

"But you are not really Tlad, are you?" Jon said.

For all his beastial appearance, this tery had such a quick mind. Dalt tried to match his quickness but could come up with no lie that would ring true enough to save his cover. He thought carefully before he spoke. The tery respected him, felt indebted to him — he had come through the fright field because he thought Tlad was in trouble. Why destroy that store of confidence with an obvious fabrication?

"No, I'm really Dalt. Steven Dalt."

"But you are still my friend, are you not?" Jon asked with a pleading innocence and sincerity that Dalt found touching.

"Yes, Jon, I'm still your friend. I'll always be your friend. I'm here to help the teries and the psi-folk, and I'll need your help most of all to do it."

Jon was staring around at the ship's interior.

"Can we leave here? I don't like it here."

"Of course. But first…" Dalt reached a hand toward the tery's right shoulder and removed a fine silver thread. "You won't be needing this tracer any more. I planted it on you before you went to Adriel's rescue. I've got them here and there among the psi-folk. Helps me keep track of things."

He laid the thread on one of the consoles, then picked a small disk from a slot by the lock and placed it in the tery's hand.

"Hold onto this as we walk through the ‘fear.' It will protect you from it. I've got one in my belt buckle."

Together they walked undisturbed through the shimmer that hid Dalt's craft, and the neurostimulatory field that guarded it. They stopped in the shade of some neighboring trees.

Dalt seated himself cross-legged on the grass and motioned for the tery to join him.

"Get comfortable and I'll tell you all about myself. After I'm done I hope you'll know enough to want to keep what you've just seen a secret."

"As long as it helps Adriel and the others."

"Good enough."

Where to begin? he thought. This isn't going to be easy.

He started with a historical perspective — how the mother world devised an ingenious method to colonize the stars and get rid of all its malcontents, dissidents, and troublemakers in a single stroke: a promise of one-way passage to an Earth-type planet to any group of sufficient size that wanted to set up the utopia of its choice. It became known as the era of the splinter worlds, and there was no shortage of takers. Soon most of the habitable worlds in a sphere around Earth were peopled with all sorts of oddball societies, most of which collapsed within a few years of landfall.

The Shaper colony proved an exception. Its pioneers were all well-grounded in science and technology and managed to build a viable society. Their goal of a world of physically perfect human telepaths was close to completion when the Teratol clique took over. That was when teries were formed; that was when the Hole was started; and finally, that was when the virus that caused the Great Sickness — the pandemic holocaust — was born.

A small group of the surviving Shapers banded together during the plague. They saw their civilization coming apart and wanted something preserved, so they gathered samples of all the available technology of their time into one spot and sealed it up. They then wrote a brief history of the colony in five volumes and buried it for posterity. Before they, too, succumbed to the Great Sickness, they beamed the contents of the volumes into space.