Jack McDevitt - The Devil's Eye

Let's go.

Well, let it never be said a Kolpath can't take a hint. I dived in and struck out for shore. He came in behind me and stayed with me. When we got to the beach, the Mutes froze as they are inclined to do on celebratory occasions. They were all looking at us, and I knew they were talking to him. It was an eerie experience, and it ended simultaneously for everyone. As if someone had fired a gun. They simply dispersed. I walked over to the Mute who'd come after me and formed the words thank you as clearly as I could. He looked back at me and cringed. By then, I'd been around them long enough that the cringe didn't surprise me. But I wondered whether he understood the message I was trying to send.

Later that evening, when I saw Selotta, I told her about it. She said yes, there'd been a sighting of a school of vooparoo during the early morning. Of course, she added, I was free to translate the word any way I liked. A vooparoo was a creature very much like a coelenterate, or jellyfish, with a soft gelatinous structure and long, trailing tentacles. It varied in size from near-microscopic to about ten meters. The ones seen in the vicinity of the beach had been big, and a warning had been issued. Even the very small ones, she explained, delivered a painful sting. The bigger ones were lethal to Mutes. Nobody knew how such a bite would affect a human, but I was pretty sure it wouldn't have been helpful. "I guess," she said, "the people on the beach didn't want you to be the first to find out."

Selotta's home was a white-and-gold villa at the edge of town. The walls were dark-stained to a degree that most people would have found oppressive. The furniture was large, the rooms were wide, and the ceilings were high. I found myself constantly climbing up onto armchairs. Even Alex was lost in the

vastness of the rooms. The villa had an enclosed deck, with several chairs and a table. The evening of the vooparoo , I was out there with Selotta while the kitchen made dinner. Alex was, as usual, buried in Mute ancient history. Kassel hadn't come home yet. He'd been involved during the last few days in a political squabble over commercial licensing, so he'd been late getting in every evening. "Don't let him joke with you," said Selotta. "It's always like that. He pretends to be annoyed, and keeps saying he won't stand for election next term, but I've heard all that before. He likes being mayor, and the voters seem to like him. So I guess he'll be at it for a while." She'd been preparing special meals for us. Despite her best efforts though, and those of the AI, the food tended to be much the same thing every day. But it was digestible, and that was all that mattered. She had an order in somewhere for food that she said would be more to our liking, but the delivery had been delayed. It was a long way to Khaja Luan, the nearest human world. We were talking about Kassel when Giambrey called. "I got some good news," he said. "The Assemblage is going to issue a statement tonight, in a few hours, declaring a cease-fire. Our people in the Confederacy expect them to respond in kind."

It called for a celebration.

Selotta had neighbors who, believe it or not, wanted to meet us. So they came over that night, six of them, plus a couple of older children. Equipped with voice boxes. Things were somewhat tense at first until we all got used to one another. Mostly we talked politics. How life would be better if we could, as one of them said, "stop the nonsense." In the end we raised glasses of fruit juice to ourselves, Mutes and people, one for all and all for one. Mutes, by the way, do not toast happy occasions with liquid beverages the way we do. That may be because they've never discovered alcoholic drinks or anything else that distorts awareness. Maybe alcohol wouldn't work on them. I don't know. Alex thinks it's because of their telepathic dimension, that it would be bad form to introduce confusion into someone else's mind. Selotta had no idea why we would bother with such a pointless exercise. She added that she couldn't see that I had an explanation for it either. But they all played along. The neighbors thought the raising of the glasses a quaint custom, and I suspected if they could laugh, they'd have been doing so. So we drank to Ilya Frederick, who was our woman in the Confederacy and who would, we all hoped, be able to talk sense to the politicians. A female looked my way. She was young, and did not have a voice box. She and Selotta exchanged something. Then Selotta looked at me: "Kasta says it is all right for me to tell you this. She thinks it is a pity that there are not more humans like you and Alex. She thinks you are the exceptions. And that your brothers and sisters cannot be trusted." It didn't matter. They caught on, and we toasted everybody. After we'd drunk to Salud Afar, one of them, the biggest Mute I'd ever seen, offered his hope that something could be done for that unhappy world. "As they have done something for us ." "And what have they done for us?" Selotta asked, knowing the answer, I'm sure, but wanting it said aloud. "Why," he said, "they brought us Chase and Alex." He was a giant, and his name came out as Goolie, or something like that. He lived alone in a stone house just off the beach, Selotta explained. He'd been a teacher at one time, but now simply spent his time reading.

Kassel arrived while things were still going strong, and he happily joined the celebration. He'd heard the good news about the announcement from his own sources. We partied into the night. Dancing was something the Mutes didn't do well. In fact, they didn't do it at all. Their music didn't encourage it, but eventually Alex invited me onto the middle of the deck and we danced under the stars while the Mutes watched with whatever reactions they might have had. Later, in private, Selotta told me they'd grown somewhat alarmed because they'd feared it might be the prelude to

a sexual encounter. In plain sight. After all, she added, who knew what humans were capable of? "But," I said, "they would have been privy to everything we were feeling. How could they think that?" "That's the whole point," she said. "We did know what you were feeling." "Oh." "So who knew where it was going to lead? And, by the way, we have nothing against sex, even occasionally in public, but I don't think anyone would have been quite prepared for a display by two humans." "Right." "I'm sorry. I see I have offended you." "No, Selotta. Not at all." The neighbors had gone home, and Alex and Kassel were outside on the deck doing man talk. "It's good to have you here," she said. "Thank you." "You will forgive me, but humans are sometimes hard to understand. I know you would not willingly harm anyone." "That's so." "Are you a standard type?" "Beg pardon?" "Are your attitudes more or less typical of everybody?" "I think so. You've visited Earth. What do you think?" "It's too confusing to try to sort out a crowd." I looked at her for a long time. "I think most individuals are reasonable. And have no inclination to harm others." "Then how do you explain your history of wars? And criminal violence? I don't understand it-" "I don't either. We tend to get together in groups, tribes , and we do things, and support actions, that we would never think of doing if we were alone." I looked across at her. "It's a characteristic we've never been entirely able to shake off." Well," she said, "now that I think of it, I don't guess we're that much different."

The AI maintained a search of the news channels for word that the Confederacy had reacted. The response came just before we retired for the evening. There wasn't much of it Alex and I could make out. Just a formally dressed Ashiyyurean seated comfortably in front of a mountain-scape portrait looking across the room at us while music played in the background and Selotta and Kassel picked up whatever message was being relayed. We knew it had become official when they turned and looked directly at us. "Very good," said Kassel. "The Confederates will observe the cease-fire, and they express their hope that it will be possible to achieve a more permanent arrangement. They've even offered reparations for the Monsorrat incident." The current round of fighting had been triggered by the destruction of the Mute cruiser Monsorrat with its escort at Khaja Luan. It had been carrying a diplomatic team when it was destroyed with all hands. Three of the four destroyers serving as its escort had also been damaged or destroyed. The attack appeared to have been inadvertent, the result of a communication breakdown, but that hadn't mattered very much. It seemed as if everything militated against a peaceful relationship. I mentioned the tribal theory to Alex that night as we were heading to bed, and he agreed that there was probably a lot of truth to it. "Sometimes I think," he said, "there has to be an Other , an enemy against whom the tribe can rally. Check Haymakk Colonna," he said. Colonna had famously remarked that peace between the Confederacy and the Mutes would come on the day they found a common enemy.