by David Brin
The zealot chief replies—
“Who says they will go free? Let them dwell among us for the rest of their natural spans, living as deterrents to alien vileness.”
“And after that? How foolish to think in terms of mere lifespans! Star-gods ponder long thoughts. They plan long plans. To slay us now or in fifty years, what difference will that make, in the grand scheme of things?”
Some onlookers murmur agreement. To others, however, it is as if the sage has made a fine joke. They laugh in various ways and shout, “It makes a big difference to those now alive!”
“Anyway,” the urrish leader of the zealots adds — “You are wrong to say they had not yet attacked us, or attempted (villainous) harm. To the contrary, our (justified) explosive feat stopped their (vile) scheme just in time!”
Soot-stained and fatigued, Lester Cambel sits on a nearby boulder. Now he lifts his head from his hands, and asks—
“What do you mean by that?”
“I mean their (foul) intent was to begin a program of annihilation by igniting (fratricidal) war among the Six!”
The gathered onlookers absorb this silently.
Knife-Bright Insight demands — “Can you prove this?”
“Solid (irrefutable) evidence is on the way. But first, should you not hear (supportive) testimony from your own (highly revered) fellow sage?”
Confusion reigns, until Phwhoon-dau steps forward to speak. Our hoonish colleague has been strangely silent, taking little part in events, save to carry Vubben downhill from the ill-starred pilgrimage. Now his long, scaly spine unbends, as if glad to pass a heavy burden.
“It is too short a time that I have had to ruminate upon these matters,” he demurs.
“You would ruminate a geologic age, dear friend,” Lester Cambel jests in a gentle way. “Even your most tentative wisdom is greater than any other, except the Egg’s. Please share it with us.”
A deep, rolling sound emanates from Phwhoon-dau’s pendulous, vibrating sac.
“Hr-r-rm… For almost two jaduras, I have kept careful records of statements made by our guests from space, especially those spoken formally, as if written by someone else for the sky-humans to say aloud. I had several linguistic reference works from Biblos, which I sometimes consult when judging disputes between individuals of different races, speaking different tongues. Despite our local dialect devolution, these works contain useful charts regarding syntax and variable meaning. I do not claim great expertise — just a backwoods practicality — in scrutinizing the aliens’ statements.”
“But you reached conclusions?”
“Hr-r. Not conclusions. Correlations perhaps. Indicating a possible pattern of intent.”
“Intent?”
“Intent… r-r-rm … to incite divisiveness.”
Ur-Jah comments from the wallow where she curls in exhaustion from the futile rescue effort, scratching for survivors amid the smoky ruin of the aliens’ station.
“This is not the first tine such a susficion has veen raised. We all have anecdotes to tell, of innocent-sounding renarks which sting gently at first, like a shaedo-fly, laying eggs that fester a wound that never heals. Now you say there is a consistent fattern? That this was vart of a deliverate flan? Why did you not sfeak of this vefore?”
Phwhoon-dau sighs. “A good scholar does not publish provisional data. Also, the aliens seemed unaware that we have retained this skill, charting the meaning in phrases. Or rather, that we recovered it with the Great Printing. I saw no reason to leak the fact too soon.”
He shrugs like a traeki, with a left-right twist. “I finally became convinced when Ro-kenn spoke to us all, during the pilgrimage. Surely it occurred to some of you that his aim was to strike sparks of dissension with his words?”
“It sure did!” Lester Cambel growls. Assent echoes loudly from many humans present, as if to convince others of their sincerity. Hoofed urs stamp uncertainly, their hot tempers clearly frayed from the long enervating night. Only hard-won habits of the recent Peace have kept things calm till now.
Phwhoon-dau continues. “The formal dialect of Galactic Six used by the Rothen star-god allows little room for ambiguity. Ro-kenn’s disconcerting words can have but two possible interpretations. Either he is tactless to a degree beyond all stupidity, or else the objective was to incite a campaign of genocide against human-sept.”
“Against their own veloved clients?” Ur-Jah asks, incredulous.
“That is irrelevant. Even if the Rothen claim of patronhood is true, why should they care about one small, isolated band of feral humans, long cut off from the race as a whole, genetically inbred and several hundred years out of date, perchance even defective, psychologically backward, polluted by—”
“You’ve made your point,” Lester interrupts testily. “But in that case, why pick on us?”
Phwhoon-dau turns to our human peer, umbling apologetically. “Because among the Six, man-sept is greatest in its technic lore, in its imperfect-but-useful recollection of Galactic ways, and in its well-remembered skill at the art of war.”
There rises a muttering from some qheuenish and urrish listeners, yet no actual disagreement. Not from anyone who knows the tale of Battle Canyon, or Townsend’s Ambush, or the siege of Tarek Town.
“All of these factors make your kind the obvious first target. Moreover, there is another reason. The effect your race has had upon the rest of us. As newcomers, when your rank was lowest, still you opened your sole treasure, your library, to all. After your great victories, when your status towered highest, you refused many privileges of dominance, instead bowing to the sages, accepting limits called for by the Great Peace.
“It is this record of restraint that makes you dangerous to Rothen plans. For what good is it to incite war, if your intended victims choose not to fight?”
Yes, my rings, we observe/note the crowd’s reaction. A hush as Phwhoon-dau evokes images of reconciliation, gently dousing still-simmering sparks of resentment. It is a masterwork of mediation.
“Once men-sept is gone,” Phwhoon-dau goes on, “it would prove simple to goad disaffection among the rest, pretending secret friendships, offering assistance. Handing over tailored plagues, for instance, letting each race come up with clever ways to deliver death bugs to their foes. Within less than a generation the job would be complete. The sparse record left in Jijo’s soil would show only that six sooner races once sank low here, never reaching redemption.”
Uneasy silence, greets this scenario painted by our hoonish sage.
“Of course, none of this is proven,” Phwhoon-dau concludes, rounding to stab a finger toward the zealot chieftain. “Nor does it justify the horrors we have seen this night, perpetrated rashly, without consulting the sages or the Commons.”
The urrish rebel lifts her head high, in order to peer over the crowd toward the east. With a glad snort, she turns back to Phwhoon-dau.
“Now arrives your proof!” She whistles jubilantly, helping shove an opening through the ranks of spectators, as dawn reveals dusty figures galloping down the trail from the Holy Glade.
“Here, also, is your justification.”
Lark
Harullen called down from the crater’s edge. “You two had better come up now!” the heretic shouted. “Someone’s going to catch you and it’ll mean trouble. Besides — I think something’s happening!”
Physical and emotional exhaustion had taken their toll of the gray aristocrat’s polished accent. He sounded frantic, as if serving as reluctant lookout were as risky as poking through perilous wreckage.
“What’s happening?” Uthen shouted back. Though a cousin to the qheuen above, Lark’s fellow biologist looked like a different species, with his scarred carapace streaked by gummy ash. “Are they sending a robot this way?”
Harullen’s leg-vents fluted overtones of worry. “No, the machines still hover protectively over Ro-kenn, and the two servant-humans, and the cadavers, all surrounded by a crowd of local sycophants. I refer to a commotion over where th
e sages have been holding court. More zealots have arrived, it seems. There is ferment. I’m certain we are missing important news!”
Harullen may be right, Lark thought. Yet he was reluctant to leave. Despite the stench, heat, and jagged stubs of metal — all made more dangerous by his own fatigue — dawn was making it easier to prowl the ruins of the buried station in search of anything to help make sense of it all.
How many times had he seen Ling vanish down a ramp into these secret precincts, wondering what lay inside? Now it was a blackened hell.
I aided the zealots, he recalled. I gave them copies of my reports. I knew they were going to do something.
But I never figured anything as brutal as this.
Neither had the star-gods, who clearly never guessed that angry primitives might still know how to make things go boom.
They never asked the right questions.
“I tell you something’s happening!” Harullen shouted again, making no effort at originality. “The sages are in motion — toward the aliens!”
Lark glanced over at Uthen and sighed. “I guess he means it, this time.”
His friend had been silent for some time, standing over the same spot. When Uthen replied, it was in a low voice that barely disturbed the ash beneath his feet.
“Lark, would you please come look at this?”
Lark knew that tone from past field trips, exploring for evidence of Jijo’s complex living past. He picked his way toward the qheuen, slipping gingerly between torn metal braces and seared, buckled plating, lifting his feet to kick up as little of the nasty dust-ash as possible.
“What is it? Did you find something?”
“I— am not sure.” Uthen lapsed into GalSix. “It seems I have seen this before. This symbol. This representation. Perhaps you can confirm?”
Lark bent alongside his friend, peering into a recess where the rising sun had yet to shine. There he saw a jumble of rectangular lozenges, each thick as his hand and twice as long. Uthen had scraped aside some half-melted machinery in order to reveal the pile. One slab lay near enough to make out a symbol, etched across its dark brown surface.
A double spiral with a bar through it. Now where have I seen—
Lark’s hand reached where Uthen could not, stroked the rectangle, then picked it up. It felt incredibly light, though now it dawned on him that it could be the weightiest thing he had ever touched.
“Are you thinking what I’m thinking?” he asked, turning it in the light.
Uthen plucked the slab from his hand, holding it in a trembling claw.
“How can I not be?” the qheuenish scholar replied. “Even half-animal, reverted primitives should recognize the glyph of the Great Galactic Library.”
The “evidence” lay strewn across the trampled grass. Ro-kenn’s piercing eyes surveyed a tangle of wires and glossy spheroids that the zealots had recently brought down from the Valley of the Egg. Clogs of dirt still clung to a necklace of strange objects, from where it had till lately been buried, next to the holiest site on Jijo.
Two clusters of onlookers formed semicircles, one backing the assembled sages, the other reverently standing behind the star-god. Many in the second group had been patients at the forayers’ clinic or believed their claims of righteousness above all law. Among the humans on that side, faith in their rediscovered patrons seemed to glow, depicted by Lark’s new rewq as intense red fire, surrounding their faces.
Gone was the Rothen’s prior mien of furious wrath. Ro-kenn’s humanoid features once more conveyed charismatic poise, even serene indulgence. He spent another dura looking over the jumble of parts, then spoke in prim Galactic Seven.
“I see nothing here of interest. Why do you show me these things?”
Lark expected the young urrish radical — leader of the rebel zealots — to answer, as both plaintiff and defendant, justifying her group’s violence by diverting blame to the aliens. But the young dissenter kept well back, huddling with a crowd of humans and urs, consulting texts.
The hoonish sage, Phwhoon-dau, stepped forward to confront the Rothen emissary.
“We seek to ascertain whether these tools of high acumen are yours. Tools which some of our children found, within the last turning of Jijo’s axis. Tools which someone buried surreptitiously, in close contact with our beloved Egg.”
Lark watched Ling’s reaction. Since he already knew her pretty well, no rewq was needed to translate her shock of recognition. Nor the embarrassment that followed as she worked things out in her own head. That’s all I needed to know, Lark thought.
Ro-kenn seemed nonchalant. “I can only guess that some among you natives placed it there — as your foolish rebels placed explosives under our station.”
Now Ling’s reaction was to blink in surprise. She didn’t expect to hear him lie. At least not so baldly, with no time to prepare a smooth performance.
Glancing to one side, the star-woman noticed Lark’s scrutiny and quickly looked away. Lark wasn’t proud of the satisfaction he felt, over the reversal of their moral positions. Now it was her turn to feel ashamed.
“Use your instrumentalities,” Phwhoon-dau urged the tall Rothen. “Analyze these implements. You will find the technology far beyond anything we Six can now produce.”
Ro-kenn shrugged with an elegant roll of his shoulders. “Perhaps they were left by the Buyur.”
“In that place?” Phwhoon-dau boomed amusement, as if Ro-kenn had made a good-natured jest. “Only a century ago, that entire valley glowed white-hot from the Egg’s passage to the upper world. These tendrils would not have survived.”
The crowd murmured.
Lark felt a tug on his sleeve. He glanced around to see that a short blond figure — Bloor the Portraitist — had slinked up behind, bearing a box camera and tripod.
“Let me shoot under your arm!” the photographer whispered urgently.
Lark felt a frisson of panic. Was Bloor mad? Trying this in the open, with the robots at their wariest? Even if Lark’s body shielded that angle, people on both sides would see. Despite Phwhoon-dau’s masterful performance, could they count on loyalty from everyone in the milling throng?
With a helpless sigh, he lifted his left arm enough for Bloor to aim at the confrontation on the Glade.
“Then I have no other explanation for these items,” Ro-kenn answered, referring to the snarled mass of gear. “You are welcome to speculate to the extent that you are able, until our ship arrives.”
Ignoring the implied threat, the hoonish sage went on with an air of calm reason that made the Rothen seem edgy by comparison.
“Is speculation required? It’s been asserted that several sets of eyes observed your robots, on a recent foggy night, deliberately implanting these devices underneath our sacred stone—”
“Impossible!” Ro-kenn burst forth, temper once more flaring. “No life-forms were in any position to witness on that night. Careful scans beforehand showed no sentient beings within range when—”
The Rothen emissary trailed off midsentence, while onlookers stared, awed and amazed that an urbane star-god could be suckered by so obvious a ploy.
He must be awfully accustomed to getting his way, Lark thought, to fall for such a simple trap.
Then a strange notion occurred to him. Many Earthly cultures, from ancient Greece and India to High-California, depicted their gods as spoiled, temperamental adolescents.
Could that be racial memory? Maybe these guys really are our long-lost patrons, after all.
“Thank you for the correction,” Phwhoon-dau answered, with a graceful bow. “I only said it was so asserted. I shall rebuke those who suggested it. We will take your word that there were no witnesses on the night that you now admit your robots planted these strange, alien devices next to our Egg. Shall we leave that aspect now and proceed to why they were planted in the first place?”
Ro-kenn appeared to be chewing on his mistake, working his jaw like a human grinding his teeth. Lark’s rewq showed a discolored swath
that seemed to ripple across the upper part of the Rothen’s face. Meanwhile Bloor whispered contentment as he took another picture, pushing a cover slide over the exposed plate. Go away, Lark silently urged the little man, to no avail.
“I see no further purpose to be served by this session,” the alien finally announced. He turned and began to move away, only to stop when confronted by the gaping crater where his station once lay, recalling that he had no place to go.
Of course Ro-kenn could climb aboard a robot and simply fly off. But till either Kunn’s aircraft or the star-ship arrived, there was only wilderness to flee to. No shelter beyond this glade filled with inconvenient questions.
A shout rose up from the cluster of urs and men over to the left. The huddle broke, revealing a beaming Lester Cambel, burdened by several large-format volumes as he hurried forward. “I think we found it!” he announced, kneeling with several assistants beside one of the spheroidal knobs that ran along the tangled mass of cable. While an aide pried at the box, Lester explained.
“Naturally, none of us has the slightest idea how this device works, but Galactic tech is so refined and simplified, after a billion years, that most machines are supposed to be pretty easy to use. After all, if humans could pilot a creaky, fifth-hand starship all the way to Jijo, the things must be darn near idiot-proof!”
The self-deprecating jest drew laughter from both sides of the crowd. Pressing close to watch, the throng left no easy or dignified avenue for Ro-kenn or his servants to escape.
“In this case,” Cambel continued, “we assume the gadget was meant to go off when all the pilgrims were in place near the Egg, at our most impressionable, perhaps as we finished the invocation. A good guess would be either a timer or some remote control trigger, possibly a radio signal.”
An aide succeeded in getting the cover off, with an audible pop. “Now let’s see if we can find something like the standard manual override switch they show on page fifteen-twelve,” Lester said, crouching closer, consulting one of the open volumes.
Ro-kenn stared at the book, filled with crisp diagrams, as if he had just seen something deadly creep out of his own bedsheets. Lark noticed that Ling was looking at him once again. This time, her expression seemed to say, What have you been hiding from me?