Timothy Zahn - Warhorse

Beyond it was another world.

For a minute he just stood there, still inside the lock, taking it all in. The lighting was muted, indirect, and restful; the air cool and dry, with wisps of movement that reminded Roman somehow of forest breezes. Various art-type items—small sculptures as well as flats—were scattered at irregular intervals across the walls and ceiling. Irregular; yet despite the lack of symmetry, the whole arrangement still somehow managed to maintain a unified, balanced look. Every square centimeter of wall and deck space not otherwise used was covered with soft-looking green carpet. The latter, at least, Roman recognized from Amity’s spec sheets: a particularly hardy variety of moss which had been adopted by the Tampies as a lowtech air filtration and renewal system. But even here, expectation was incomplete—instead of something with the faintly disgusting appearance of terrestrial mosses, the Tampy version looked far more like just some exotic synthetic carpeting.

The pro-Tampy apologists often claimed that the aliens’ aesthetic sense was not only highly developed but also entirely accessible to humans. If this was a representative sample, Roman thought, that claim was an accurate one.

“Rro-maa?” a grating voice came from outside the lock.

This was it. Steeling himself, Roman stepped out onto the moss—it yielded to his feet just like carpeting, too—and turned in the direction the voice had come from.

And for the first time in his life was face-to-face with a Tampy.

It was, actually, something of a disappointment. What with the conflict between races that had slowly been building over the past ten years—and with the contentions of people like Ferrol that the Tampies were a looming threat to humanity—Roman had apparently built up a subconscious image of Tampies as creatures who, despite being shorter than humans, nevertheless projected an aura of strength or even menace.

The short part he had right; but the rest of it was totally off target. The Tampy whose misshapen face was turned up to him was thin and delicate-looking, his narrow shoulders hunched slightly forward in a caricature of old age, his hands crossed palms-up at his waist. His skin was pale—a sickly, bedridden sort of pale—and the cranial hair tufts poking out at irregular intervals looked for all the world like bunches of fine copper wire.

The overall image was one of almost absurd frailty, and in that first moment it seemed utterly incredible to Roman that such creatures should even be taken seriously, much less considered a threat.

And then he remembered Prometheus… and the half-comical picture vanished in a puff of smoke. No, the Tampies were indeed creatures to be taken seriously.

Belatedly, he focused on the yellow-orange tartan neckerchief knotted loosely around the Tampy’s neck. That particular color combination belonged to—“Rrinsaa?”

he tentatively identified the other.

“I am,” the Tampy acknowledged. “You are Rro-maa?”

“Yes, I’m Captain Roman,” Roman nodded. “I wasn’t expecting to be met here.”

The Tampy made a quick fingers-to-ear gesture—the aliens’ equivalent of a shrug, Roman remembered.“Do you wish to see all?”

It was, actually, a tempting offer. If the rest of the Tampies’ decor was as unusual and imaginative as that in the corridors, it might well be worth taking the complete tour. But that would have to wait for another time. “No, thank you, Rrin-saa,” he said. “For now, I’d just like to see your command center.”

“I do not understand.”

“Command center. Control room?—where you keep track of the Amity’s movement and issue any necessary orders.”

“I do not issue orders, Rro-maa,” Rrin-saa said. “I do not rule.”

For a moment Roman was tongue-tied. “Ah… I’m sorry. I thought you were the one in charge of this half of the ship.”

Rrin-saas’s mouth opened wide, as if in parody of a human smile—the Tampy equivalent of shaking his head. “I speak for all,” Rrin-saa said. “I do not rule.”

“I see,” Roman said, although he didn’t, exactly. Anarchy, or even rule by consensus, didn’t seem a good way to run a starship. “But if you don’t rule, who does?”

Fingers to ear. “You do, Rro-maa.”

“Uh… huh,” Roman said. It was slowly becoming clearer… “You mean that since your people agreed to put a human—me—in command of the Amity, then I’m to give you all your orders?”

“That is correct.”

It couldn’t be entirely correct, Roman knew. At the very least, they’d arranged their own billeting and duty rosters without any input from the human half of the ship, and almost certainly such simple housekeeping operations would continue to be so handled.

Which implied some sort of chain of command… which Rrin-saa didn’t seem interested in talking about. “Where are the repeater instruments from the bridge, then?” he asked.

“With the Handlers.”

Roman nodded. “Take me there, then, if you would.”

The Handler room was just aft of the bow instrument packing, in a mirror-image position to Amity’s bridge. Sitting in the center of the room, a Tampy sporting a green-purple neckerchief sat humming atonally to himself, his eyes wide open but paying no attention to Roman or Rrin-saa. To the left, arranged in random patterns against the inner wall, were the repeater instruments; to the right, a second Tampy sat pressed against the outer wall, his face turned at a painful-looking angle to stare forward out the viewport, his head engulfed by a large multi-wired helmet. The wires of which went to a basket-mesh case, inside of which—

Roman forced himself to look… and actually, it wasn’t too bad. Provided he remembered that the hairless, piglet-sized creature was supposed to look that way; and that it was safely asleep, not dead; and that its wired-up brain neurons had as much sheer computing capability as the Cordonale’s best mainframes.

The Tampies’ computer, he knew, used basically the same arrangement. Not so simple, but still elegant.

“Sso-ngu,” Rrin-saa said, raising both hands toward the helmeted Tampy. “He speaks with Pegasunninni.”

“Pega—? Ah,” Roman interrupted himself. Pegasunninni would be the Tampies’

name for the space horse: Pegasus, with the proper identifying suffix tacked on.

“And the other is Hhom-jee?” he added, hoping he was pulling the proper neckerchief color scheme out of memory.

“That is correct,” Rrin-saa confirmed. “He is resting.”

“Ah,” Roman said again, eying the humming Tampy with interest. Tampy sleep was both more physically active than the human equivalent and also came at semiirregular intervals around the clock. A far cry from the normal terrestrial circadian rhythm, and one that had helped to poison quite a few of the early attempts at interspecies cooperation. Human workers could never quite believe the Tampies weren’t simply goofing off, and Roman would bet that the human habit of going into a coma for a straight thirty percent of the day had been equally annoying to the Tampies. Though no one knew for sure; the Tampies had never discussed the matter. “I gather he’s here to take over when Sso-ngu needs sleep?”

“That is correct,” Rrin-saa said. He repeated his earlier two-handed gesture, this time toward Hhom-jee. “There is one other who talks to Pegasunninni.”

“Yes, I remember that there were three Handlers listed on the crew roster.” Roman nodded toward Sso-ngu and the hairless caged animal. It wasn’t so bad the second time. “I’d like to take a closer look at the amplifier helmet, if it wouldn’t disturb him.”

“Do not approach.”

Roman paused, halfway into a step. “Why not?”

“He speaks with Pegasunninni,” Rrin-saa said.