The War with the Belatrin. Don Webb

      BORGO PRESS BOOKS BY DON WEBB

      Do the Weird Crime, Serve the Weird Time: Tales of the Bizarre

      A Velvet of Vampyres: Tales of Horror

      The War with the Belatrin: Science Fiction Stories

      Webb’s Weird Wild West: Western Tales of Horror

      COPYRIGHT INFORMATION

      Copyright © 1992, 1997, 1998, 2011, 2012 by Don Webb

      Published by Wildside Press LLC

      www.wildsidebooks.com

      DEDICATION

      For Harlan Ellison,

      For everything—

      But today for buying “Ching Witch”

      ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

      “The Five Biographies of General Gerrhan” was first published in Science Fiction Age, Jan. 1997, and also in To the Stars—and Beyond: The Second Borgo Press Book of Science Fiction Stories, edited by Robert Reginald, Borgo Press, 2011. Copyright © 1997, 2011, 2012 by Don Webb.

      “The Coming of the Spear” was first published in Amazing Stories, December 1992. Copyright © 1992, 2012 by Don Webb.

      “Tamarii Notebook” was first published in More Amazing Stories, Tor Books, 1998. Copyright © 1998, 2012 by Don Webb.

      “Talking to the Enemy” is published here for the first time. Copyright © 2012 by Don Webb.

      “The Fleeing” is published here for the first time. Copyright © 2012 by Don Webb.

      “A Tale from the War” was first published in Science Fiction Age, Vol. 1, No. 1, 1992. Copyright © 1992, 2012 by Don Webb.

      “Mars 1, Burroughs 2” is published here for the first time. Copyright © 2012 by Don Webb.

      THE FIVE BIOGRAPHIES OF GENERAL GERRHAN

      I am Thomas Dam-Seuh Lasser.

      I have written five biographies of General Helen Lyndon Gerrhan, who died in my bed shortly after the battle of ­Lister IV in the early decades of the Belatrin War. Most of my biographies have been suppressed, as have my earlier fiction, because of the effect the books were perceived to have on Terran and Siirian morale. However, the recent thawing up of writing gives me a chance to tell of the books’ creation, and I do so, not out of bitterness for my long imprisonment, nor out of chance to renew my craft as writer, but out of the love for those scholars who will come along after me and put this brief essay in my collected works. The books of the past were a great help to me during the century of my imprisonment. The past is all prisoners have; there is no present beyond that first day which sets the pattern of their imprisonment, and there is no future since the future belongs to a god called Hope, who is forbidden to prisoners.

      The first thing I want to say is that I did not know General Helen Lyndon. I will tell you what I experienced with her, but I have remembered (that is to say recreated)­ that incident so many times, I would put no more faith in its details than I would in any of my other fictions.

      The War was new then. No one had seen one of the black Belatrin cruisers and lived to tell the tale before Helen. ­The Seventeenth Division of the Allied Force had been detached to the Lister system merely to observe the ­Belatrin. All of our encounters had ended in total annihilation of our forces, so the Seventeenth was merely to ­gather data and run away. There had been twenty-five­ dreadnoughts in the fleet; most had been destroyed by the Mind-Bomb. Three tried to take on a single Belatrin ­cruiser, and were vaporized. General Gerrhan’s ship The­ Pegasus tried to warp away, but a streamer of the weapon we ­later came to call the colours touched the ship. Most of ­the crew died in transit. General Gerrhan and two of her aides survived. We didn’t know at that time that willpower was the key to holding off the effect of the colours.

      The three were Allied heroes. Everywhere they went, they were lionized. So they wanted to go somewhere—some backwater oniell colony or commercially pointless planet. ­You can’t get any more commercially pointless than Angkor ­III.

      In those days I lived on the government dole. The social engineers had tried to attract artist and writer types to the planet by establishing a good entitlements program. Writers will do anything rather than work for an honest wage. Except writing, of course, the real bane of our existence. I made love to exotic offworlders who looked like they had money.

      I met her at Mary Denning’s King Suravarman’s Dive. It was full of local culture, exciting Angkorese music, flame sculpture, and our lovely cuisine. In short it was a tourist hell-hole.

      She looked rich. Real rich. She had bright pink eyes like a rabbit, some lovely Maori tattoos, and her teeth were chrome. She looked like she was mean, and that she wanted someone to be mean to her. Her hair was long and purple, and­ it was the only thing she was wearing.

      She was exactly my type. If I had been any poorer, any offworlder would have been exactly my type. She told me her name was Zohra Sibawaih. I told her my real name, and that my sister’s name was Zohra (which is true).

      I bought her a drink, she complimented me on my first book, Stealing My Rules. I knew then she had some very expensive data link. She hadn’t even looked blankly to access the knowledge. But we both knew what the evening was about.

      We went back to her hotel. We ordered some Noroolian­ spice tea. When our outlines got a little blurry we made ­love. A little roughly, which was when I figured she was­ military. Just before the telepathic rush came on, the­ colours hit.

      She suddenly went into extra sharp focus. She looked­ like she was trying to scream.

      Then the telepathic effect from the tea started. It wasn’t the rush of sex that you take the tea for. It wasn’t even thoughts. When the telepathic rush hit me, I was paralyzed.

      It was a series of geometric shapes and colors, that hurt you and hurt you, and made you feel like your brain was bleeding. It was simple shapes at first, just a little too big to fit in your mind, and it was colors that you knew. ­Then it was colors not of this universe, not sane colors, but colors with a meaning all their own. And shapes that shouldn’t work out. And the smell of hot metals and of sex ­and of flowers that bloom in some pandemonium, and the shapes start tearing your mind to pieces. Then frenzied strains of an inhuman music, which decades later I can still remember. ­When I think about it, I can almost see shadowy satyrs and bacchanals dancing and whirling insanely through seething abysses of clouds and smoke and lightning. I could feel the­ colours sucking at her bone marrow, boiling her blood, shorting out her nervous system. There were pains and pleasures beyond endurance, and other moods and feelings there are no human words for—for humans weren’t meant to feel them.

      How long did this last? A couple of minutes objectively, thousands of years subjectively.

      The colours stopped. I saw that a mere handful of bluish dust lay upon the bed, next to me. Then I fainted. I got up late in the night, and I went home. I thought of calling the police, but what would I say: “My one-night ­stand disintegrated?”

      Allied Security sent a flyer to pick me up that afternoon. They’re not real gentle, AS, they tore off the top of my house, and picked me up with a scoop. They flew me off to their headquarters.

      A Free Machine interrogated me.

      No, I did not know she was a general.

      No, I had not met her before.

      No, I did not cause the disintegration.

      No, I did not know that something similar had happened to her aides.

      No, I was not a spy.

      They used a variety of mind probes on me. They weren’t as advanced with those things then as they are now. Parts of my life were sucked away for good.

      Then they took me to see the captain, a Siirian named U’ssmahzzrizzssuibz. It was molting, and tiny bits