Honor - Kevin Killiany [29]
“What happened after you were successful?”
“They became afraid.” Copper sighed again, a heavy sound.
“That’s when the Tznauk’t began killing K’k’tict,” Corsi said.
Copper said nothing, rocking.
“Do you know why the Tznauk’t are coming here, toward your tree town?”
“Yes.”
Corsi watched him rock for a long ten-count.
“Could you—” She stopped herself, recognizing she’d almost invited another dead-end yes. “Would you explain to me why?”
Copper stopped rocking, turning his bandaged face toward her as though regarding her through the poultice. “They know of our birthing caves,” he said at last, his voice heavy. “Of the place of emergence. They know we can live nowhere else.”
Corsi gaped.
Spot’s “tease her name” since her emergence.
She’d wondered why she’d never seen any K’k’tict young, never realizing she’d been taken on a tour of their nursery. They gave birth or laid eggs or whatever the process was called in the mineral spring cave. Dozens of spheres that looked like glass globes, which became something like fish, then something like tadpoles and then “emerged” as chiptaurs. The ones she had taken to be attendants were what? In day care?
Head Nurse hadn’t been fat; she’d been pregnant.
On the heels of that thought came the realization that the K’k’tict metamorphic process, whatever it was, must be violent. At each stage of development, the larger the inhabitants of the pools, the fewer there had been.
She set that speculation aside and focused on the situation at hand.
“Are there other caves?” she asked. “Other birthing places?”
“We know of no other.”
Corsi realized moving the K’k’tict away from the Tznauk’t’s landing site was out of the question. They could not abandon their young and they had no place else to go.
“Do the Tznauk’t know the location of the birthing caves?” Corsi held on to one last hope of misleading the invaders, gaining the K’k’tict some time. Time for what she wasn’t sure. Negotiations?
“Yes,” Copper said simply. Then, anticipating Corsi’s follow-up question: “They asked. We told them.”
Corsi scrambled to her feet and stalked away. It was that or call Copper a suicidal idiot to his face. When death had landed on their doorstep, they had gone out and invited their own destruction.
If the K’k’tict would give back her phaser she’d solve their problem—decisively.
No, she wouldn’t, she admitted a few steps later. The Prime Directive was clear. Events on this world must be allowed to follow their natural path. She could not interfere. She could not…
Could not reveal the existence of advanced technology or life on other worlds…
“Cortzi?”
Corsi spun, startled.
Spot was seated, eyes bandaged, in a patch of darker shade at the base of a root column. As with Copper, others were sitting in attendance, but moved off as Corsi approached.
“How did you know it was me?”
Spot swung her head close to the ground. “You are the only one who walks on two legs,” she said. “Nothing thumps about like you.”
“Why will your people not fight?” Corsi asked when she was settled beside her former nurse. “If you do not, the Tznauk’t will destroy your birthing cave. The K’k’tict will be no more.”
“Then the K’k’tict will be no more,” Spot said. “We share life. We are one spirit. How can we harm our own spirit?”
“This isn’t a time for philosophy,” Corsi couldn’t keep the edge of frustration from her voice. “This is a time for action, for survival.”
“If we harm others, we do not survive,” Spot answered. “We share life—”
“You won’t share life for very long,” Corsi cut her off angrily, “if you don’t do something to stop the slaughter!”
“But we shall do something to stop the…hurting.”
“You will? How?” Corsi snapped. “Because unless you’re disguised Organians, I don’t think you stand a chance.”
Spot batted at her left ear.
“I do not know what that is.” She sounded hurt. “But we are preparing, those of us who will meet the Tznauk’t.”
“Meet the Tznauk’t?” Corsi tried to soften her voice. “What are you talking about?”
“We know where they will enter the world,” Spot