Orphans of Earth

by Sean Williams

  “Speak now, while we will listen,” came the dismissive reply. “Why are you here?”

  “For the same reason as last time,” Alander answered. “Humanity wishes to ally itself with the Yuhl/Goel.”

  “Why?” The word was called out by three or more voices, coming across as an ear-piercing shriek.

  “So that we can be free to pursue the Species Dream,” he said.

  “How?” the shrieking voices continued.

  “That’s not important,” he said defensively. “Freedom is in an end to itself.”

  “But you are already free to pursue the Species Dream,” put in a voice Alander recognized as belonging to the Yuhl called Status Quo/Mellifluous. “No one is holding you back.”

  “But it is something we cannot achieve on our own. We need your help. And it’s just possible, judging by what I heard last time, that you need our help in return.”

  A sound not unlike hail rattling on a metallic roof resounded throughout the dark. Alander put it down to a number of the Fit laughing.

  One voice lifted from the noise: “We have already heard this one’s preposterous prattle!”

  “Who are the others?” asked another. “What do they want with us?”

  “Envoy/catechist Ueh/Ellil,” said Status Quo/Mellifluous, the alien’s voice coming with a suggestion of cumin, “tell us what you have learned about these people.”

  “They are stubborn,” said the Yuhl. “But they are also resourceful. At the time of First Contact with the Ambivalence, their primary system was more advanced than ours, despite having suffered significant losses in recent decades. Their societies experience great conflict as a matter of course, and this fuels a cycle of boom and bust that on the whole projects technology and knowledge in an upward direction. Their social structures lean toward central leadership, but once achieved finds that the equilibrium is unstable and quickly fractures. Again, this cyclic pattern tends to result in an overall improvement in quality of life, but at some cost. They are not natural cooperators. Issues of dominance and genetic relationships still color much of their interactions. Even among those they call engrams, who have dispensed with physical bodies in order to achieve sublight interstellar travel, there exists a strong tendency to retain corporeal urges. They impersonate the flesh, unwilling to let go.”

  Alander was impressed. So much, he thought, for Ueh not having much to do on Sothis.

  “The Praxis would approve of this,” said Status Quo/Mellifluous. “That explains why it has us consort with the bodiless/prey on this occasion.”

  He recognized the term bodiless/prey even though he had not heard it since his first encounter with the Yuhl, when Asi/Holina, the other half of the helot pair Ueh had belonged to, had used it to describe the disembodied Axford.

  “If we didn’t have bodies,” he said, “would you have ignored us?”

  “Yes,” said Status Quo/Mellifluous. “That which has no flesh is of no concern to us. Our paths do not overlap.”

  “Your needs don’t overlap, you mean.” Hatzis spoke for the first time, her voice accompanied by the faint but unmistakable sensation of human skin touching. “If you’re not competing for the same resources, you can safely ignore them.”

  “Should this not be so?”

  “Humanity has concepts such as altruism and sympathy,” she said. “We would help you, under those circumstances.”

  “It would be safer to say that you would help unless it hurt you too much,” clarified Ueh. “All generosity has its limits. And we know our limitations.”

  “So you’re saying it’s easier to watch us die than help us live?”

  “In social terms, it could be argued that the cost is much higher,” said a new voice. Alander was glad to hear from Radical/Provocative again, even though he came with a strange aftertaste, like vinegar. “Our conscience weighs heavily enough as it is. When our resources were limited and our survival precarious, then we could justify standing aside while other species fell under the Ambivalence. But now we are strong and confident; perhaps now we should seek allies and make them strong, too. As the Praxis has said in the past, variety promotes life.”

  “But this is not the Praxis’s decision,” said Status Quo/ Mellifluous. “It is ours.”

  “Are you seeking to trigger one of your cycles of violence with us?” asked a new voice, needle sharp and cutting. Alander knew instinctively that its name was Probing/Inquisitive. “Would that be what you intend by declaring war upon us?”

  “You decoded our broadcasts, then,” Hatzis said.

  “It was no trivial matter to find the quantum key you used, but not beyond us.” Probing/Inquisitive seemed to enjoy her discomfort. “We have been wondering how to respond to your announcement.”

  “And have you decided?” asked Hatzis. She sounded calm and unperturbed, which surprised Alander. Given her current position among aliens, and given that these aliens were aware of her intention to wage war upon them, he would have expected her to be a little more apprehensive.

  “To do no more than we already have. You hardly comprise a military threat. Now that you have lost the element of surprise, you will find our scouts vulnerable no longer.”

  “Perhaps a cycle of violence is just what you need,” said Axford, all gunpowder and smoke.

  “Ah, the warrior speaks.” Probing/Inquisitive made the rasping noise that broadly correlated to a Yuhl’s chuckle. “But what does he mean?”

  “I mean that you’ve been stable for too long. You’ve lost the edge.”

  “What edge is this? We are vital, thriving, and versatile. How could we not be, when every few days see us in a new system, a new section of the galaxy, confronting new challenges and reaping new rewards?”

  “You’re scavengers,” Axford put in sharply. “You live off the scraps that fall from the Spinners’ table.”

  “It is a rich and fertile niche,” the alien defended. “If we didn’t occupy it, someone else soon would.”

  “To their detriment, too.”

  “You seem very sure of yourself, Francis/Axford, and yet you did not know us before. How can you say that the Yuhl/Goel are in any way lessened?”

  Probing/Inquisitive was beginning to sound annoyed, and Alander stepped in before Axford could do any permanent diplomatic damage. “We cannot help but be followers of the Species Dream,” he said. “Never having known an alternative, we seek that with which we are familiar. But that doesn’t mean the idea is foolish, just because it comes automatically. It might be that we, like most plants, require a firm foundation on which to grow. A life of constant travel in the company of the Ambivalence might not be the right environment for us to thrive.”

  “I understand what you say,” said Probing/Inquisitive after a moment’s pause. “But you don’t need our permission to follow the Dream.”

  “It would certainly be easier to do that if you weren’t so busy attacking our colonies,” said Hatzis. “As you said, you’re thriving. We’re not. If a cycle of violence is what it takes to safeguard our resources, then that’s what you’ll get.”

  “To your detriment, surely,” said Status Quo/Mellifluous. “Such a war would be pointless. We don’t want it, and you can’t win it.”

  “So we might as well cooperate,” said Radical/Provocative. “There must be another option besides conflict and avoidance.”

  “To what end?” asked Status Quo/Mellifluous.

  “Change is an end unto itself,” Radical/Provocative argued. “The Praxis would agree—”

  “And again I say that this is not a matter concerning the Praxis. What happens to us has little bearing on its fate.” Status Quo/Mellifluous’s voice was firm and rich with exotic spices. “It will find other feeders, just as it had others before us.”

  “Then why do we place such importance on what it thinks?”

  “Because that is important. While our lives are entwined, its opinions are supremely relevant. It has served us well, just as we have served it. Our mutual dependency
is synergistic.”

  “It’s a parasite!” exclaimed Radical/Provocative, provoking a collective gasp from the assembled Yuhl that startled Alander. “And we are parasites, too. The Praxis is not so much a bearer/favored to the Yuhl/Goel, but a cancer sucking us dry!”

  Amid the rising hubbub of the Fit, Axford’s voice rang out: “I think we’re arguing about the wrong thing. The Praxis isn’t your problem. If anything, it is the solution. Your problems began the day your species encountered the Ambivalence.”

  “PRAISE AND THANKS TO THE AMBIVALENCE!” came an answering chant from the Fit, but it sounded halfhearted. Doubt had been sown.

  “From your point of view, it must seems so,” said Status Quo/Mellifluous after the echoes of the chant faded.

  “Of course it does, because right now we are where you were two and a half thousand years ago. People are dying every day; whole colonies are being destroyed. In a week or two we might not even exist. How can we look at it any other way?”

  “We are different,” said Ueh. “I have observed consistent deterministic tendencies among your people: you look for reasons, for something to blame. We do not think that way. For us, some things happen by a confluence of events, many of them seemingly irrelevant. The universe follows its own path, and we are swept up in it. Sometimes there are reasons and we do not see them, just as sometimes there are no reasons and you invent them.”

  “We didn’t invent the attacks on our colonies,” said Hatzis.

  “But that’s not the point.” Axford sounded exasperated, and Alander wondered how genuine it was. “The attacks are minor, and we could argue from here to eternity about who crossed the line first. In the end it doesn’t matter. It is irrelevant. What does matter is the Starfish. We’re not inventing that.”

  “No, you are not.” The voice of Status Quo/Mellifluous was soft, but it rose with perfect clarity out of a sudden silence. “Before the Ambivalence, the Yuhl possessed just two worlds and several satellite colonies. The Ambivalence brought us riches unimagined. Then it brought death.” Status Quo/Mellifluous paused, and a brief, hollow silence fell.

  “You were there?” Alander asked, amazed.

  “A few of us have been kept alive well beyond our natural years by the gift you call I-suits. We have endured more than you can imagine.”

  “No doubt,” Axford said. “But this underlies the point I’m trying to make. You know what it feels like to watch your civilization die.”

  “And I know that humanity/riil will die also, unless it follows the path of the Yuhl/Goel. There are no other options.”

  “None at all?”

  “The number of futures open to anyone within the influence of the Ambivalence is just two: death or assimilation.”

  Startled by the fatalist sentiments, Alander realized only then that the nature of the Ambivalence had been fundamentally mistranslated. The Yuhl didn’t think of it as a god, a deity with aspects of good and evil in whose shadow they crawled and by whose grace they lived or died. The notion of decision in this case had more to do with the results of a coin toss than conscious will. The Ambivalence was to them more like a physical phenomenon than a god, at most a giant machine, clunking and rattling its way through the universe completely oblivious to the creatures that lived among its cogs and levers. Whether it was comprised of one species or two, or even a thousand, was irrelevant. The Ambivalence was taken as a single, incomprehensible whole rather than any number of equally incomprehensible component parts.

  “There are in fact three options,” put in Radical/Provocative. “We have the Species Dream.”

  “We would gladly adopt the Species Dream if we could only find somewhere to live,” Status Quo/Mellifluous said, more for the benefit of the Fit’s human guests than Radical/Provocative. “The fact is that none of our deep scouts have ever succeeded in their quest to find a safe location. The few that return from their reconnaissance have brought inconclusive data. Remember: the Ambivalence is traveling through space at a sizable multiple of the speed of light, and we must maintain that velocity if we are to remain in our niche. Also, the scouts cannot use the ftl communicators for fear of exposing themselves. They must explore potential systems quickly, then return in time for the Mantissa to mobilize. It is a difficult task.”

  “Perhaps too difficult,” said Alander. “Perhaps you are setting your standards too high.”

  “Our standards must be high. If we make the wrong decision, we will be destroyed by the Ambivalence. Just because a probe or two explored a tiny percentage of the wake and survived does not mean that a permanent settlement will. Who knows what might follow the Ambivalence?”

  “You think the Starfish could be just the vanguard of something larger?” Hatzis asked uneasily. Alander could understand that unease, too. The thought was truly a disturbing one. If it was true, then it didn’t matter what the Yuhl/Goel or humanity did; ultimately, the very last trace that they had ever existed would soon be cleaned away.

  “It is not something I would like to put to the test,” said Status Quo/Mellifluous. “To move from the shadow of the Ambivalence could mean our death.”

  “No more than staying here!” There was a bitter and smoky edge to Radical/Provocative’s voice. “I have spent my entire existence in the underbelly of the Ambivalence. I am tired. Sometimes I think that I would rather risk death than an eternity in such a limbo.”

  “That is your choice,” said Status Quo/Mellifluous severely.

  “Is it?” asked Radical/Provocative. “I propose that those who wish to should be allowed to attempt the Species Dream. Perhaps you’re right, and we can’t do it alone. But here we have allies who are eager to assist! We may never have such a chance again.”

  “The Fit will never agree to—”

  “Does it need to?” cut in Radical/Provocative. “Why can’t those who wish to leave do so? We would demand only the resources due to us, in proportion to our numbers. Once gone, you would never have to worry about us again.”

  “Split the Mantissa?” Again, the Fit sounded collectively mortified. A fragrance not unlike fear accosted Alander’s senses. At the same time, a number of Yuhl simultaneously spoke. It was impossible for a moment to tease out individual concerns, but the general feel was one of incredulity.

  “Do you propose such a thing in seriousness or simply to get a reaction?” demanded Status Quo/Mellifluous.

  “I wouldn’t propose it if I wasn’t serious,” said Radical/Provocative.

  “Exactly how many of you are there?”

  “You would become yuhl/riil!” protested a voice from the crowd.

  “We must not split the Mantissa,” said another.

  “It would be madness!” from yet another.

  “Perhaps it is time for some madness, then!” said Radical/Provocative.

  Alander found himself being seduced by the insidious pessimism of the conversation. He struggled to lift himself out of it, not knowing if it was natural or something to do with his modification by the Praxis. Centuries of hiding and predation were hard to resist.

  “None of this helps us,” he said, shouting to be heard over the hubbub. “If we wanted to commit suicide, we’d just throw ourselves at the Starfish and be done with it!”

  “Perhaps we can’t help you,” said Status Guo/Mellifluous firmly. “Which brings us back to where we started, when you first spoke to us. I said then as I say now: why should we jeopardize our peaceful coexistence with the Ambivalence for the sake of humanity/riil?”

  “And why should it be suicide?” spoke up Axford. “I can understand the Yuhl being uneasy about disturbing their precious peace with the Ambivalence—even if I disagree with it. But have you ever seriously considered the alternative?”

  “Attack the Ambivalence?” Status Quo/Mellifluous sounded truly outraged by the suggestion.

  “Listen: we’ve been trying to communicate with the Spinners and the Starfish at either end, ever since they first arrived. And I daresay that you once did the same unt
il you gave up and decided to simply go along for the ride. But we need to try something different. They’re already decimating us, so we certainly have nothing to lose by showing some resistance. And who knows? Maybe hurting them is just the way to get their attention. And once we have it, that changes everything.”

  “Or we have done nothing except waste lives,” said Status Quo/Mellifluous.

  “Our lives are wasted living this way, anyway,” said Radical/Provocative.

  “I think it’s an acceptable risk,” Axford jumped in quickly. Like Alander, he clearly didn’t want the heated argument between these two Yuhl to dominate the proceedings. “Given time, I might have tried it myself. But I’d need to beef up my know-how a little in order to increase my chances, and I’d go into it expecting to get my ass kicked—but if nothing else, at least I’d have tried. And who’s to say it won’t work?”

  “I am,” said Status Quo/Mellifluous against a backdrop of agreement. “How do you know where to attack it? Are you planning to flail about blindly, hoping to hit something?”

  “We have a target,” said Axford evenly. “The system we call pi-1 Ursa Major is proving a problem for us. Something’s in there—something that wants to stay hidden. I think it’s the Starfish, and I think that we should attack them while we still have the opportunity to do so. This could be our chance to break the pattern.”

  “It still won’t work,” Status Quo/Mellifluous continued pessimistically. “The Ambivalence either destroys or ignores; there is no middle ground. Attacking it will only bring about our destruction!”

  “How do you know that? Have you ever tried?”

  “Of course not! To do so would—”

  “You’ve never even tried?” Axford’s voice expressed unrestrained scorn. “In all the centuries you’ve been living in the Ambivalence’s armpit, you’ve never once tried to tickle it? No wonder some of you are calling this a kind of living death. You losers gave up and now expect everyone else to—”

  “Frank, hold it.” Hatzis cut across a wave of angry protest that was spreading throughout the Fit. “We’re not here to throw stones—at the Yuhl or the Ambivalence. We’re here to explore options.”