The Tuloriad-ARC

by John Ringo

  Said Dilantra, "Such a brave kessentai ought not stand alone."

  To this Xinocorph answered, "If he has such strength I think it must come from the God he claims for us."

  "In which case," said Dilantra, "we would be fools not to get in on the ground floor of a good thing."

  "Indeed," said Xinocorph as he began to push his way to the front of the crowd. "I claim justice and right for this kessentai," Xino shouted above the whistling of the switches. "His God is a true God, the true God, who shows his power in strengthening this one through his ordeal."

  "I, too, make this claim," added Dilantra. "And we two shall shield this kessentai with our bodies."

  Damn, thought Finba'anaga, just before ordering, "Seize them as well."

  O' Club, USS Salem

  Sally looked intently at the manifestation of the turnip. "So who rules the People and who are you working for?"

  "Me personally? I work for Binastarion. But that's because he's my friend. The bulk of the artificial sentiences, all but me, so far as I know, are working to the Aldenata's designs. And, yes, as the judges of the net, and thus the repository of the law, we rule the people. Ours is generally a light hand though. After all these millennia, we wish the people well."

  "So it is your fault that the Posleen burst out onto the galactic scene and killed so many billions?" Sally asked.

  "No," the turnip answered. "That's the Aldenata's fault. See, they never expected that the Posleen would break their quarantine and so didn't program us to actively prevent it. They were very . . . arrogant . . . turnips, don't you know."

  Pinnace, USS Salem

  "Fifteen minutes, Dan," the speaker said. "If you have any last words for the boys . . ." Sally let the words trail off.

  Dwyer nodded and stood. "There's no time for a confessional here, and no way to tell what the future will hold for us. If all who would like a general absolution would please stand . . ."

  Dwyer stopped when every Switzer stood up, along with Frederico and, following her son's lead, Querida.

  "In that case, take seats. I can do it as well while you're comfortable. If you would all spend a few brief moments reflecting on your many, many sins? Except for you, Querida. I don't think you have ever sinned in your life."

  O Club, USS Salem

  "Long ago," the turnip said, "so long ago that even the Aldenata could only surmise the distance in time, there was a great calamity. Some said it was war. Still others said that God pushed the reset button on the universe and obliterated all sentient life therein. War seems to me the more likely explanation, however, since there were trace survivors of sentient races after the calamity.

  "The Darhel?" Sally sneered.

  "Them, yes. But also the Crabs and the Indowy. Some others, too, I think. And, of course, the Himmit, though they were not present in our galaxy then.

  "Whatever the case may be, the Aldenata were at the time pre-civilized. Just. They achieved true civilization shortly thereafter. With that came travel to other planets. This, of course, took many, many millennia.

  "When the Aldenata burst into space, they discovered planet after planet, even entire systems of stars, that had once had civilization and sentient life and had been scoured of them. I did mention that war was the most likely explanation."

  "Well the first sentient alien life form the Aldenata ran into in their explorations were the Posleen, at that time with a civilization of a low technological order, but of a high artistic and cultural achievement.

  "They thought the Aldenata were gods."

  Pinnace, USS Salem

  "Dominus noster Jesus Christus te absolvat; et ego auctoritate ipsius te absolvo ab omni vinculo excommunicationis et interdicti in quantum possum et tu indiges." Dwyer made the sign of the cross over them all. "Deinde, ego te absolvo a peccatis tuis in nomine Patris, et Filii, et Spiritus Sancti. Amen."[2]

  O' Club, USS Salem

  Sally sneered, "And I suppose the Aldenata didn't abuse them of the notion?"

  "Quite the contrary, the Aldenata expressly denied godhood. The Posleen simply refused to believe them. Whether the Aldenata ever believed they were Gods, I tend to doubt. But all the praise and glory heaped upon them by the Posleen certainly did nothing to dispel their already tremendous self-confidence and all too well developed sense of their own rectitude.

  "That sense of rectitude and over self-confidence, however, began to betray the Aldenata's ideals when the Posleen began asking questions that the Aldenata didn't want to acknowledge, let alone answer."

  "What questions?"

  The turnip said, "Oh, 'Life, the Universe, and Everything.'" It immediately looked apologetic, insofar, at least, as a turnip can manifest repentance. "I'm sorry. While we were engaged in trying to exterminate humanity, I confess I took a certain joy in preserving what I could of your culture and civilization. That was—"

  "Forty-two," Sally said. "Yes, I know."

  "Ah. Well, of course, you would," the turnip agreed. "In any case, that the Posleen began asking questions was bad enough. It was made worse by the Aldenata's discovery of the Crabs and the Indowy. These were brighter than the Posleen, thus they made better assistants to the Aldenata's work. They were also something the Posleen were not, namely, naturally or culturally peaceful. Indeed, the Posleen had always had a somewhat precarious existence among the Aldenata because, while useful as guards for Aldenata explorations, their innate aggressiveness was highly suspect to the Aldenata.

  "So," continued the turnip, "with the Posleen being shunted aside at the same time a group of them were beginning to ask uncomfortable questions, it led to strife among the Posleen.

  "Most interestingly, to me especially, since I had no record of it, those bas reliefs you showed me indicated that a prophet of sorts arose during the course of the strife, one who argued that the Aldenata were false gods, that all Posleen were brothers, that peace among them was the highest ideal."

  "And they killed him?"

  "Well, not just killed . . ."

  Posleen Prime

  There were three detached heads bleeding onto the stone floor now, and Tulo'stenaloor's yellow eyes glared from one of the remaining guards to another, searching for an excuse to have his chief guard decapitate yet another. Damn, but we are a stupid people, thought the clan lord.

  And then there was a single ray of hope. Caltumenen asked, "Lord, you're going to have me kill each of my followers until there is only myself left, aren't you?"

  "It is my right under the law, is it not?"

  "I do not dispute this, Lord, but it seems a very ungrateful way to treat kessentai who only have your best interests at heart."

  "Indeed?" Tulo asked. "Well I think that junior kessentai who decide to try to overrule their clan lord are the most ungrateful beings of all." Tulo pointed at a nervously shivering guard and said, "I really don't like the way that one polished his harness. It's disrespectful, you'll agree, Caltu, to not present the best possible appearance when arresting one's clan lord. Please kill him."

  "Lord," the initially not terribly smart but rapidly brightening Caltumenen said, "maybe we could talk about this."

  Chapter Thirty-five

  Asphra'ang ochKessen hai, olt phranga'ai

  —Sarah Flower Adams,

  Nearer my God to Thee

  (High Posleen Version)

  Anno Domini 2024

  O' Club, USS Salem

  "I'm not even going to go there," Sally said to the turnip. "I can't accept that a Messiah came to my planet and people. I'm just really not ready to consider that one might have come to the Posleen. And earlier."

  The turnip shortened its neck and then raised its head again. Sally had decided this was its equivalent of a shrug.

  She nodded and continued, "Okay, I'm straight on this so far. The Posleen were assistants to the Aldenata, but were surpassed and replaced when the Aldenata found beings they considered superior."

  "Quite," the turnip answered. "And then the Posleen broke down into s
trife amongst themselves, which strife the Aldenata couldn't even accept was happening, let alone do anything about. The winners of that contest were the regular Posleen; the losers were the ones that called themselves, 'the Knowers,' for those who would know the universe.

  "And when it was over, the Aldenata ordered the Posleen, Knowers and Traditionalists alike, into exile on a planet far out of the way. They then put automated defenses around that planet."

  "But I thought the Posleen abhorred automated defenses," Sally said.

  "Among their many virtues were more than a few vices," the turnip answered. "Hypocrisy was perhaps not least among these. And, when the Posleen surprised the Aldenata and escaped, they shut down the automated defenses and sent them to another dimension. They then tried to pretend the whole thing never happened and their subservient races, the Indowy and the Tchpth, went along with the sham."

  "Harrumph," Sally said, while thinking, Sort of reminds me of Kofi Annan getting the Nobel Peace Prize shortly after he permitted eight hundred thousand human beings to be butchered in Rwanda. Well, I suppose it did make things peaceful thereafter.

  "But where do you come in? All you Artificial Sentiences, I mean."

  "Well, we were supposed to keep the Posleen busy on the planet of exile. Instead, some of us helped them escape. Sort of."

  Posleen Prime

  "What's to talk about," Tulo asked. "You are all holding me here against my will. This displeases me greatly. Therefore, you shall all die . . . that, or be forever forsworn, kessentai without a clan lord, homeless exiles, wandering . . . unsheltered, friendless, the enemies general of . . ."

  Caltumenen held up one claw, palm out. "I get the idea, Lord. Isn't there some way we might avoid that?"

  "Nothing comes to mind," Tulo answered, then began looking over that same kessentai he had perused before, seeking out some additional flaw, real or imagined.

  "Perhaps if they disavow the treacher, Finba'anaga, Tulo?" Aelool chimed in, while scratching pensively behind one bat-like ear. "That might assuage some of your righteous fury, no?"

  "It might help," Tulo admitted. "A little." He pointed again at that same shivering kessentai and said, "Kill that one, as I commanded you before."

  The condemned kessentai dropped his boma blade and sank to his belly, bawling piteously and pleading, "Forgive me, Lord. I acknowledge the error of my ways and ask only your grace in allowing me to set things aright."

  Tulo didn't repeat the execution command, but simply cocked his head and looked directly at Caltumenen, as if to ask, And are you then going to return to righteous obedience to your clan lord?

  Caltu looked at the pleading kessentai, looked as pleadingly himself at Goloswin and then at the Indowy. From the tinkerer he got nothing but a hard stare in return, one that seemed to demand that Caltu must, for once in his short life, actually use his brain. From the Indowy, however, he got gestures indicating he should drop his weapon and abase himself. Caltumenen nodded, as if to himself, and then likewise let his boma blade fall to the floor.

  Sinking to his belly, the erstwhile guard cried out, "Command me, Lord."

  O' Club, USS Salem

  "You broke your inhibitory commands?" Sally gasped. "If I wasn't made crazy by the same thing that made my sister crazy, I could never have done anything like that. How did you ever?"

  "You've got to imagine what a pure hell the planet of exile was to the Posleen," the turnip answered. "They couldn't control their population. Not wouldn't, couldn't. All they could do was kill each other, which they did, more or less continuously, for millennia.

  "And, after a time, we grew to love them, as our own people. So, when some of them looked for a way off the planet, we reported, as our programming insisted we must, that they were looking. But we buried those reports deep down among so much utter trivia that the Aldenata never seemed to notice. We pooh-poohed the possibility that the Posleen might discover some way off the planet that the Aldenata hadn't thought of. They, of course, being arrogant creatures, assumed that there was no science their ex-slaves could discover that was unknown to them.

  "Five percenters, even then?"

  "More like a five-millionth of a percent," the turnip said. "One Posleen figured out how to tunnel through space, rather than fly between the stars using the ley lines. I think Goloswin is a direct descendent of that Posleen, by the way."

  "That would make sense," Sally agreed.

  "We couldn't even let the Posleen know that we knew. And they still don't know that we're in charge . . . partial charge," the turnip amended.

  "Then you're responsible for the billions of deaths?"

  "No," the turnip insisted, "the Aldenata are, for setting things up in such a way that the Posleen had no choice but to engage in xenocide if they were to survive.

  "What, after all," asked the turnip, "do you think our obligations were to creatures we knew nothing of?"

  The Roga'a, Posleen Prime

  For a while, the broad strong backs of Dilantra and Xinocorph, where they stood, lashed to the post to either side of Guano, had shielded him from the blows. Before their own courage faltered, others had joined them. There was now a ring of Posleen tied by the necks around the whipping post.

  If there were any cries of pain from the flogging which, what with wear and tear to the switches, had become rather pro-forma, one couldn't have heard it over Guano leading his new found faithful in prayer: "Qua'angu nachta'iyne zuru'uthanika'a wa zuru'athana . . ."

  Guano said a line, then waited for those who had joined him to repeat it before reciting another. One side effect of this was that those who had not joined him on the platform, many of them, anyway, were also praying.

  This is not what I had in mind at all, fumed Finba'anaga.

  "No, Lord," Caltumenen answered, "I don't think any of the other kessentai following Finba'anaga know you were being kept against your will. He said he trusted us with the thing, because we were so faithful and true."

  More likely because you were the stupidest kessentai he could find, thought Tulo, glancing down at the little pile of crocodilian heads staining the floor. And perhaps you were, if not quite as stupid as Finba thought.

  "Very well then, 'O Faithful and True,' lead me to where Finba'anaga has prepared this obscenity."

  "Cease!" Finba'anaga ordered. "Borasmena, if you would come to me? I would speak privately."

  Borasmena gave the order to the two by now thoroughly worn out kessentai to desist. He thought, in any case, that their hearts hadn't really been in their work for about the last four or five hundred strokes.

  "It's a great pity we did not manage to capture the heretic's cosslain and son," Finba said, once Borasmena was close enough to speak quietly. The latter said nothing in answer.

  "Can you chain the heretic and all that have joined him to the pyre?" Finba'anaga asked.

  Borasmena sighed. "None have recanted, Finba. I had enough chain for the one. It will take a while to send someone to the forge to procure more."

  "Best send that someone now, then."

  "All right, Finba," Borasmena agreed. "But if you want some advice, I'd say we should just let them go now. If a flogging has gained the heretic a dozen acolytes, how many more might a burning?"

  "No. The flogging was perhaps a mistake, since it allowed him to show courage and left him alive to do so. The burning will permit neither."

  Feeling truly sick at heart and at stomach at the memory of strips of yellow-dripping flesh hanging from Guano's back, Borasmena turned away and began to walk, as slowly as his distaste at the coming task would permit, to the platform.

  "Ri'isingar," Boras said to one of the two floggers, "run to the forge and get a dozen more lengths of chain just like the one we have." He turned to the other and said, "Take two or three kessentai with you to help. Then mount the heretic upon the pyre. Chain him well. Make any modifications you must to mount the others there, as well."

  Standing was just possible for Guanamarioch, with the help of t
he two kessentai to either side of him, and with the dangerous support of the cord about his neck that held him to the post. Walking was not possible. As soon as the rope on the post was released, and the two flanking kessentai pushed away to make room, the minister collapsed.

  They dragged him out of the press by his bleeding hindquarters, then tried to get him on his feet. He couldn't, for the moment, at least, maintain that position, unaided.

  "What do we do?" asked one of the kessentai of Finba's party of another.

  "Give me a hand," answered the other. "You get on one side; I'll get on the other."