Dirge - Alan Dean Foster [20]
Many more thranx perished in repeated attempts to staunch the mindless slaughter. So too did several humans who were working or studying in the confines of the hive. The fanatics had come armed and ready to fight. But despite their determination and their murderous weaponry, they were not trained soldiers. The close confines of the hive, whose details were known to its inhabitants but foreign to the attackers, was likewise a detriment to their barbarous cause.
By the time the Reserva rangers arrived, many of the invaders were already deceased or dying, surrounded by small mountains of thranx dead. When the first soldiers disembarked from a transport hastily ordered inland from the nearest military base at Recife, it was nearly all over.
Acclaimed as martyrs by their fellow fanatics and accorded grudging admiration in less demonstrative quarters by their “civilized” xenophobic supporters, the ravagers of the Amazon hive achieved the media exposure the brave, luckless Adjami had foreseen for them. Fortunately, the response of the majority of the population was embarrassment and apology. Reparations proposed by a guilty government were refused with the explanation that the thranx did not believe in materialistic expressions of sorrow. On the other hand, the many letters and expressions of regret from ordinary citizens were received thankfully and with elaborate gestures of gratitude.
Not even such a catastrophe could obscure the effect the Pitar, who considerately offered condolences of their own to their fellow visitors to Earth, were having on human society. A pair (they never traveled alone) even visited the devastated hive to investigate the tragedy and offer commiseration on behalf of their government. Their compassionate presence was duly noted and monitored by the planetary media, who managed to give greater play to the mission of the Pitar than to the suffering of the hive’s inhabitants, many of whom had lost friends, coworkers, and even relatives in the debacle.
While the media focused on the origins of the small but lethal fraternity of fanatics and strove to trace their sponsors, and the government representatives assigned to study the disaster tried to piece together evidence that might lead to proof of conspiracy and complicity beyond what was readily apparent, a meeting took place immediately after the confrontation that was to have much more far-reaching consequences for human-thranx relations than the aftermath of the savage raid itself. None present could have foreseen the results. Certainly none could have predicted the direction they would eventually take. In retrospect this was not surprising.
Who could have suspected that greater things would arise from dealing with the future of the dead than the future of the living?
4
Father Pyreau picked up the gun without thinking. Here, in the depths of the alien hive, he was having difficulty breathing. He was mildly claustrophobic, and wide-open spaces and lofty cathedrals were his preferred venue. Deep beneath the surface of the Amazonian earth, lost in a warren of high-tech thranx tunnels, he had long ago loosened his collar.
Lately there were many times, too many times, when he wanted to forget it altogether, to resign his position in the clergy and seek elsewhere the fulfillment that the church no longer gave him. He had been preparing for the regular Sunday service at the base when the emergency call had sounded. Swept up in the uncharacteristic alarm that followed, he had found himself on the transport rocketing inland before he knew what was going on. A superior officer had spotted him and, despite his initial protests, requisitioned his presence.
“I have a feeling your services are liable to be in demand, Padre.” The major had not been very informative, but Pyreau could hardly