Timothy Zahn: Warhorse

“Probably a diffraction effect caused by the dust sweat,” Trent said. “Or so goes the theory, anyway. Let me see if I can get some kind of direct reading on that.”

He was reaching for his console when the Dryden’s alarms suddenly began to trill.

“Anomalous motion, Captain,” Nussmeyer snapped. Unbidden, the main screen shifted to a tactical display, the laser targeting crosshairs swinging up over and past the bulk of the space horse.

“Easy, gentlemen,” Roman said, flicking over to the indicated screen even as his muscles tensed with anticipation. The anomalous-motion program had originally been designed to detect slow-moving ambush missiles; but this close to a space horse… “I doubt we’re being threatened here.”

“It’s a meteor, sir,” Trent identified it even as the telescope screen locked and focused on the object.

“As I said,” Roman nodded. “Nothing to do with us.”

“Maybe, maybe not,” Trent countered darkly. “It occurs to me that the Tampies could just as easily have something besides space horse fodder in mind for that rock. Like having the space horse telekene it through our hull.”

Roman frowned at him, a vaguely unpleasant sensation creeping into the pit of his stomach. Unthinking prejudice against the Tampies had been growing steadily across the Cordonale in the past few years, and he’d long since resigned himself to its existence. But to find it here on his own bridge…

“Lieutenant Nussmeyer,” he said quietly, “do you have a vector on that meteor yet?”

“Bearing toward the space horse, sir,” the helmer reported, sounding a little uneasy himself. “Projected intersect somewhere in the front-end sensory ring.”

Trent’s lip twisted. “Means nothing,” he said, stubbornly defiant. “Sir. The Tampies could be planning to throw it at us at the last second, once our guard is down.”

Roman cocked his head slightly to the side. “In that case, Commander, make sure our guard doesn’t go down.”

Trent held his gaze a second longer, then turned back to his displays without another word. Reaching again to his own controls, Roman turned one of the telescope cameras onto the space horse, keying it to track with the meteor’s projected intercept point. Trent’s paranoia aside, he had no doubt as to what the space horse wanted the rock for… and like the space horse itself, it was something he very much wanted to see. The display shifted slightly as the intercept vector was updated, came to rest on one of the sensory clusters: eight impressively colored organs, each a few square meters in area, grouped around a large expanse of otherwise unremarkable gray skin.

For a moment nothing happened… and then, without warning, all the organs darkened in color and the blank central region abruptly split open, its edges ridging upward in an odd puckering sort of motion. From off-camera the meteor appeared, to drop neatly into the opening. The edges smoothed down, the split vanished, and the organs resumed their original colors.

“Secure from alert,” Roman ordered, and as the trilling was silenced he looked over at Trent. The other’s back was stiff, angry looking. Probably had hoped the Tampies really were attacking the Dryden.

Had hoped to have his prejudices justified.

“I’d like you to run a complete analysis on the event we’ve just recorded, Commander,” Roman said into the silence. “Concentrate on the meteor movements—vector changes, interaction with local gravitational gradients, and so on. There’s a great deal we don’t know about space horse telekinesis, and it’s a blank area we very much need to get filled in.”

Some of the tension went out of Trent’s back. “Yes, sir,” he said. “I’ll get the programs set up right away.”

The tension level in the bridge faded noticeably, and Roman permitted himself a moment of satisfaction. A smart commander, he’d once been told, never rubbed a subordinate’s nose in an error when it wasn’t absolutely necessary to do so. In this case, it wasn’t.

Trent might be bigoted; but even bigots sometimes needed to save a little face.

Ambassador Pankau returned twenty hours later… with an agreement that was fully as much a charade as Roman had expected it to be.

“The Arachne colonists will be moving their power plant about thirty kilometers further downstream,” Pankau said, handing Roman the tapes and signed papers to be filed into the Dryden’s official records. “Aside from that, they won’t have to give up all that much.”

Roman could feel Trent’s eyes on him. “What about the settlement itself?” he asked Pankau, accepting the papers. “If they’re moving the power plant, won’t they have to move with it?”

Pankau grimaced. “Some of them will, yes. Not all.”

“And what,” Trent put in, “will the Tampies be giving up?”

Pankau turned a quietly official glare on him. “It just so happens,” he said evenly,

“that on this one, the Tampies turn out to have been right. The power plant was interfering with the local migration pattern of at least four different species of birds and animals.”

Trent snorted. “Any animal that can’t adapt its life around one lousy power plant deserves extinction,” he growled. “It’s not like the damn ghornheads are actually useful for anything.”

Pankau kept his temper, but Roman could see it was a near thing. “The ghornheads may not be, no; but the same can’t be said for the mrulla. Which keep the rodunis population down to manageable levels in the fields, and which in turn follow the ghornheads around like adoring puppies.” He didn’t wait for comment, but turned back to Roman. “Ccist-paa also tells me they’re having trouble with human poachers grabbing space horses from their Cemwanninni yishyar system.”

“‘Their’ system?“ Trent muttered, just loud enough to hear.

Pankau looked back at him, his gaze hardening. “Yes, their system. Like it or not, Commander, the Senate has relinquished all human claims there. The Tampies can make real use of a space horse watering hole; we cannot. Playing dog-in-themanger is hardly the action of civilized people.”

The words came out, Roman noted, with the automatic fluency of a practiced speech. Probably one Pankau had had to deliver a great many times. “I think we all understand the Senate’s rationale,” he put in before Trent could say something he might later regret. “There are equally valid reasons, I think, why renouncing all claim to a system is, in general, not a terribly good idea.”

“Well, there’s nothing that can be done about it now,” Pankau said, his tone slightly sour. “At any rate, Captain,” he continued, gesturing at the papers in Roman’s hand, “you and the Dryden now have official Tampy permission to enter the yishyar… and as soon as you drop me back at Solomon you’re to head out there and see if you can catch this troublemaker.”

Arachne to Solomon to the yishyar. This just got better and better. “I appreciate your attempts to soothe the Tampies, Ambassador—”

“My job is not to soothe Tampies, Captain,” Pankau cut him off, his voice frosty.

“It’s to carry out the orders and wishes of the Supreme Senate of the Terran Cordonale—and in this case, the Senate’s codified wishes are that unauthorized human ships stay the hell out of Tampy space.” He eyed Roman coldly. “Or are you suggesting that I don’t have the authority to send you on such a mission?”

That much, at least, wasn’t in question. Roman had seen Senate cartes blanches before, and was fully aware of the range of powers such papers held. “I don’t question your authority at all, sir,” he told Pankau. “But we’re talking a pretty long tour here for a ship the size of the Dryden. Two weeks to get you back to Solomon, six weeks or more from there to the yishyar system, plus the six-week return trip.