No, Adrian thought, following. I am a poor friend. I should have the courage to tell you things you do not want to hear.
But trying to talk science with a slyth was difficult on the best of days. Adrian’s pointed questions about slythii reproduction, for example, had been greeted with blank stares.
Where did the young ones come from? From the forest, of course. Rukha and his brothers did not find it unusual that juvenile slyth should creep like foundlings from the underbrush, no parents in sight, to join the herd. Gender and reproduction were foreign concepts, unrelated to the slyths’ immediate lives, and hence uninteresting.
Adrian and Rukha trudged past rustic buildings, winding deeper into the forest. Equipment sheds and research outposts loomed through the trees.
“You are thoughtful,” Rukha said as they stepped off the high-traffic pathway and onto a subtle slythii trail. “Have you no questions for me today, Ah’drahn? You are always full of questions.”
Adrian hesitated. Should he tell Rukha about the data strip? Slythii appreciated bluntness, and Rukha certainly had a right to know the truth. But Adrian didn’t want to bring up the data strip right now. The slyth would be distressed if he knew an Ascension had been recorded.
Perhaps he could approach the topic obliquely, leaving the data strip out of it. Laying the groundwork for future conversations.
“Have you ever wondered,” Adrian said at last, “Whether it would be such a bad thing? If no guardian came to collect Ghazii’s spirit, I mean.”
“Your thoughts sit strangely, Djudin. Of course I do not wonder.”
“What if I told you that the guardians are parasites? That they’re feeding of the bodies of your dead?”
“Then you would be tragically mistaken,” Rukha said, unperturbed. “I do not wonder about such things, Ah’drahn, because my ancestors have already done so. This thing is known. A Truth-seeker has written it.”
“Written?” Adrian said, surprised. “On the stone pillars, you mean? The cliffs that run parallel to the roadway?” The strange engravings, like hairline fractures across the rocks, had puzzled human colonists for decades.
“The very same.” Rukha emitted a rippling sigh. “I will try to explain. I am a hlath-ha-zhanai, a seeker of Truth. It is the closest role we have to your scientists. It is the reason I choose to concern myself with your people, when other slythii do not.
“Someday, when the change begins to take over my body, I will leave words of value for my people. I will condense the massive sea of data about your strange, starfaring people into powerful statements of truth, and I will engrave those truths on one of the pillars. You are a complex species. I believe I will need two or three sentences.”
“That’s all?” Adrian asked, startled. “After an entire life spent studying humanity, you’ll only write down a few statements?”
“I will write that which is of value,” Rukha affirmed, “and allow the rest to pass into oblivion.”
“What about everything else?” Adrian demanded. “Your studies, your years of effort? Why bother acquiring knowledge, merely to let it be forgotten?”
“That which is of value remains,” Rukha replied placidly. He swung his head around to regard Adrian with one bobbing eye. “I have noticed that your people place great stock in information, as though knowledge were a treasure to be hoarded.”
“It is,” Adrian said. How could he say this in a way Rukha would understand? “Knowledge is the most precious of acquisitions.”
“You humans . . . you carry many details that are not useful.” Rukha stretched, as though searching for words. “I will use an example. We once discussed fruit, and the reason it falls from the tree, yes?”
“Because of gravity. Yes.”
“And what is this ‘gravity,’ according to your scientists?”
“A phenomenon by which objects attract each other.”
“And the cause of this attraction?”
“The interactions between atoms.”
“Why should the atoms behave in this way?”
Adrian faltered. “They just do.”
“Ah,” Rukha’s head lifted, the slythii equivalent of a smile. “You have described the phenomenon in iteratively more complicated detail, and yet you are no closer to answering the original question. When the talking is finished, you and I must both accept that this truth merely is.”
“It’s not about explaining fundamental truths,” Adrian objected. “It’s about understanding our world. Knowledge of gravity helps our engineers design ships like the one that brought us here.”
“And yet most of your people are not engineers.”
“Of course not.”
“Why are they then taught of this ‘gravity,’ Ah’drahn?” Rukha appeared to be truly curious. “How do their choices flow differently, because one has put a name on the reason the fruit falls?”
Adrian felt strangely out of footing. How had this conversation turned around on him so quickly? “Look, you can’t guess in advance which knowledge will be useful. Some is, some isn’t, and your best bet in life is to learn everything you can about, well . . . everything.”
“No one can understand everything, Ah’drahn. It is foolish to try. It leads to incomplete knowledge, which is more dangerous that ignorance.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Ignorance leads to indecision, a dangerous state. But incomplete knowledge leads one to err with conviction, a far more hazardous event. This is why each Truth-seeker devotes his life to a single topic: To ensure that his writings will be of value.”
“Like the writings about the guardians?”
“Yes. A good example. If I did not know that the guardians escort the souls of the dead, I might mistake them for carrion birds and drive them from my brothers’ shells. This would be a great tragedy.” Plod, plod. Thump. “This is what I mean when I say your science is not useful. Why preserve trivial masses of data, when only the culminating conclusion matters?”
It was the most information Rukha had ever offered about the philosophy of his people. Adrian’s mind spun.
The engraved stone pillars were not, as Adrian had previously supposed, a collection of cultural histories. They were a blasted set of alien commandments; imperatives stripped of all meaning or justification, pressed in stone and left to dominate the lives of all who followed.
“So that’s it?” he demanded, appalled. “You’re going to accept the conclusions of a slyth who’s been dead for thousands of years?”
“The hlath-ha-zhanai would not have written truths of which they were not certain. Unless something has changed, as it did when your people descended from the sky, there is no need to duplicate past efforts.”
“But what if they made a mistake?”
“That which is of value remains,” Rukha said firmly.
The narrow trail continued. Soon they were stepping on eggshell-thin fragments, a clear sign that they had reached the slythii burial grounds. The Kahn-ti, as they were called, stretched across two full hectares of forest, littered with fragments of exoskeleton; ominously devoid of bones. As they picked their way beneath the thinning tree canopy, he spotted the mottled brown husks of the Deceased, nestled like boulders among the tree trunks. Above them, crooning tuneless songs among shadowed branches, weaved the bright yellow eyes and curving beaks of the ghondui.
The sight sickened Adrian. The clawed, yellow-eyed guardians were not wise spiritual mentors. They hadn’t come to escort the dead into the greater life. They’d come to plunder them.
At the far edge of the fields, a crowd of slythii had assembled. Rukha shoved through the mass of bodies, asserting his right as the Deceasing’s blood-kin. They had emerged together from the forest, along with five others, scraping through the underbrush on their tummies, with eyes and ears still tightly closed. Among the slythii, that bond was as precious as sibling relationships on Terra. Perhaps even more so, as there were no parents to care for the foundlings.
Rukha came to an
abrupt halt. They had come to the place Rukha’s brother had chosen for his death.
The Deceasing lay in a heaving huddle, nearly encased by the flaky crust of a hardening exoskeleton. His neck and legs, curled in against the torso, were already fused in place. His lungs, wheezing, powered rippling bellows along his rib cage. Beneath the hardening slime, cracked patches of skin wept like a tree stripped of branches in springtime. Ghazii’s mucus pores, dormant throughout his long life, had begun to create his coffin.
Above him, attracted by the sweet scent of his decay, clustered a dozen yellow-eyed guardians. They hissed as Adrian approached, a grating rattle that seemed to settle in his spine. That hiss was an honored sound among the slyth; a sign that the guardians prepared to escort the Deceasing to the greater world. Adrian heard only the sound of a parasite preparing to maim.
It doesn’t matter, he told himself. Ghazii will be dead either way. Where’s the harm if the creatures feed off his body?
The Deceasing had spotted them. The mottled head lifted, a long wheeze indicating the struggle to draw breath. His body shifted, cracking the shell in several places to let the sap bleed through.
“Rukha.” Ghazii’s voice—half-whisper, half-cough—revealed the strain of his transformation. “I thought you would not come.”
“I delayed to fetch the human, Ah’drahn.”
Ghazii’s lungs created an unpleasant sound. “Who was it that crawled with you from the forest, him or me? Fine ways you have of honoring your brother.”
“He is more interesting than you.”
Adrian, accustomed to the blunt honesty of slythii conversation, recognized the affection that ran beneath the words. Rukha would miss his brother greatly.
Ghazii coughed and blinked to clear the worst of the mucus from his eyes. “It is not long. I feel the change within.”
Rukha brought one eye close to Ghazii’s bleeding face. “I will greet you again in the greater life.”
“Pah!” Ghazii’s desiccated snort was loud enough to startle nearby slythii. “Back,” Ghazii wheezed. “I cannot breathe in this crowd. You—” his murky gaze fell an Adrian. “You stay.”
Ghazii’s brothers murmured at this breach of tradition, but complied with the will of the Deceasing. Adrian stepped into the open space, close enough to touch the forming shell with his fingers had he chosen to. There was something about the crust of hardening slime along Ghazii’s body. Something familiar . . .
“You do not believe the ways of our people,” Ghazii said. “Do not answer. I have sensed it. I do not believe them either. I have spent my life defying the ancient customs, and claimed I took no thought for the greater journey.” Ghazii’s voice lowered. One round eye pinned Adrian with its gaze. “But to you; you who does not condemn me for denying the will of my forefathers... to you I may confess this: I am afraid.”
Ghazii’s voice was hardly more than a whisper. He closed his eyes and grew still. A gasping sigh crept through his teeth, the sound of lungs being emptied by the constriction of inner webbings; of airways being closed off forever.
Ghazzi’s brothers returned in a wave of flesh. They thrust their heads at Ghazii’s congealing corpse, rumbling encouragement which he may or may not have heard. The flow of mucus increased, hardening unimpeded now that muscles no longer writhed beneath the exterior.
Adrian, watching at a distance, jolted in surprise. The way the shell thickened; the way the contours settled . . . “Blazing novas. It can’t be!”
He pressed between lumbering shoulders to reach the encrusted body. He studied the slime in horrified fascination.
Rukha’s words haunted him. Incomplete knowledge is more dangerous than ignorance.
Adrian, studying the slythii for so many years, had overlooked the obvious. He had never asked the most important question: Biologically speaking, why would a species create a protective shell around its dead? What possible evolutionary advantage could it offer?
Overhead the guardians stirred, feathers stretching like funeral shrouds. Rough-edged squawks cut the air as they jostled for position above Ghazii. Yellow eyes peered downward, intent.
Adrian watched the scene in a kind of frozen horror. It would have been so easy for Ghazii’s brothers to defend him. The ghondui’s claws, edged enough to shred human flesh, could not have pierced Rukha’s leathery hide. But Ghazii’s brothers just lowered their heads, beginning to keen in a complex pattern of pitches that resembled music.
They did not know that Ghazii wasn’t dead.
How could they know? They had never heard of a chrysalis. No one had told them that life forms could exist in a comatose state—without food, without oxygen—while biology wrought its magical change upon the body.
“Rukha,” Adrian said, urgent. “Rukha, the guardians must be kept away from Ghazii!”
The branches overhead erupted in screeching. A single guardian, large and bedraggled, separated from the others and dropped to the ground. It began to crawl along Ghazii’s body, pecking, testing, poking . . .
“No!” Adrian shouted, switching, in his alarm, to his own language. “Don’t you understand, he’ll be killed! He’ll never emerge from the chrysalis . . .”
“Calm yourself,” Rukha reprimanded mildly. “The guardians have come for Ghazii after all. My lungs are filled.” He took a breath and trumpeted in praise of the dead.
Adrian pulled the data strip from his pocket, even though he knew it was too late. Even if he could make Rukha watch the recording, even if Rukha could be convinced . . . the guardian was about to deposit its eggs. There was surely a window of opportunity, during these few precious minutes before the shell hardened. Once the ghondui’s eggs were sealed inside, there’d be no way to get them back out.
Adrian’s groping fingers, still fumbling with the data strip, brushed against his taser. He snatched it from the holster and targeted the guardian.
Windows of opportunity cut both ways. If Adrian could keep the creature from ovipositing for just a few minutes . . .
All right, Rukha, Adrian thought. You say the only knowledge that matters is knowledge that affects actions? Well, this knowledge is affecting my actions. Here, now.
He compressed the trigger.
The guardian screeched, stiffening. The slythii snorted, stamping in dismay as the guardian convulsed and flopped onto its side.
Rukha, in the sudden panic, was the first to realize what had happened. He had spent more time with humans than the others. He had seen tasers function, and knew that this odd, outstretched motion of a human arm could immobilize a distant object. The look he gave Adrian was beyond outrage.
“What have you done?” Rukha hissed. His massive forefoot struck Adrian’s hand with numbing force. The taser flew from his grip, sliding across the ground. “Ghazii was lucky to earn a guardian! Now his spirit must walk in eternal sorrow.”
“Rukha, listen!” Adrian shouted to be heard above the noise from the slythii. “The guardians aren’t what you think. The Ascension isn’t what you think.”
How could he explain? He didn’t know half the words he’d need in the slythii language; many of them didn’t exist.
Adrian lifted the data strip and triggered its holo-display. A blazing pillar appeared in high magnification freeze frame. No spirits, there. Just six immature ghondui, glowing from the chemical reaction that had propelled them into the sky. It was not hard to imagine how the event had been mistaken for something ethereal.
“Look. Look here,” Adrian said, raising the display.
But Rukha was attacking.
Slyth often expressed feelings physically. This, however, was no minor display of annoyance. Rukha was enraged, rising high on his hind legs, weight preparing to drop.
Adrian dodged the crushing feet, scrambling toward the fallen taser. Rukha, hissing in fury, lowered a broad foot onto the weapon, splintering it.
Adrian dodged behind a pack of slythii, gaining respite as Rukha turned to nose the stirring guardian. The paralyzing effect of t
he taser had almost worn off. If the milling slythii would just trample that parasite instead of crooning at it like deranged hens . . .
But the slythii breathed snorts of relief, stepping anxiously aside as the guardian rose and fluffed its feathers. It produced the eerie, rattling hiss characteristic of its kind and clambered again onto Ghazii’s chrysalis.
Adrian rose, ready to lunge at the guardian, but a massive foot pressed into his back, pinning him to the ground.
“I’m trying to help,” Adrian gasped, struggling. Once the guardian inserted its eggs beneath the hardening shell, Ghazii’s death was certain.
The foot lowered, making it difficult to breathe. Its owner—one of Ghazii’s many brothers—lowered his head and said with calm but implacable conviction: “Do not interfere.”
Adrian tried again, lifting the data strip. Its little holoscreen was still running, white fountain blazing beyond the dark shadows of treetops. If they would just look . . .
“No more weapons.”
With a bone-jarring strike, the slyth knocked the strip from his hands. The device struck a rock, flickered, and went dark against a splatter of mud.
Adrian glowered. What good was proof, when no one would listen?
Poor Ghazii would never complete his metamorphosis now. His two-phase life cycle had been truncated, abruptly, at the completion of the larval stage. So apparently, had the metamorphosis of every other slyth in this community. The chrysalides, every single one of them, had been commandeered by the parasitic ghondui, a circumstance that was unspeakably ominous at the species level. Where were all the post-metamorphic slythii? Were there even any left? And how much longer would it take before juvenile slythii stopped creeping from the forest to replace the ranks of the Deceasing?
Adrian’s chest felt the strain of the slyth’s foot, pressing him downward. By craning his neck, he could see the ghondui atop Ghazii’s chrysalis, pecking, poking, prodding.
Ah, Ghazii, what might you have become?
That loss, the loss of learning what a post-metamorphic slyth looked like, cut more deeply than any of the others.
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