Wheeled figures moved among the meadows, looking after protected ones who lived in thatched shelters beneath the trees. It was a refuge for sacred simpletons — those whose existence promised a future for the Six Races — according to the scrolls.
Several of the blessed ones gathered around Knife-Bright Insight, clucking or mewing in debased versions of Galactic tongues. These were hoons and urs, for the most part, though a red qheuen joined the throng as Lester watched, and several traeki stacks slithered timidly closer, burbling happy stinks as they approached. Each received a loving pat or stroke from Knife-Bright Insight, as if her claws were gentle hands.
Lester regarded his colleague, and knew guiltily that he could never match her glad kindness. The blessed were superior beings, ranking above the normal run of the Six. Their simplicity was proof that other races could follow the example of glavers, treading down the Path of Redemption.
It should fill my heart to see them, he thought.
Yet I hate coming to this place.
Members of all six races dwelled in simple shelters underneath the canyon walls, tended by local g’Keks, plus volunteers from across the Slope. Whenever a qheuen, or hoon, or urrish village found among their youths one who had a knack for innocence, a gift for animal-like naivete, the lucky individual was sent here for nurturing and study.
There are just two ways to escape the curse bequeathed to us by our ancestors, Lester thought, struggling to believe. We could do as Lark’s group of heretics want — stop breeding and leave Jijo in peace. Or else we can all seek a different kind of oblivion, the kind that returns our children’s children to presentence. Washed clean and ready for a new cycle of uplift. Thus they may yet find new patrons, and perhaps a happier fate.
So prescribed the Sacred Scrolls, even after all the compromises wrought since the arrival of Earthlings and the Holy Egg. Given the situation of exile races, living here on borrowed time, facing horrid punishment if/when a Galactic Institute finds them here, what other goal could there be?
But I can’t do it. I cannot look at this place with joy. Earthling values keep me from seeing these creatures as lustrous beings. They deserve kindness and pity — but not envy.
It was his own heresy. Lester tried to look elsewhere. But turning just brought to view another cluster of “blessed.” This time, humans, gathered in a circle under a ilhuna tree, sitting cross-legged with hands on knees, chanting in low, sonorous voices. Men and women whose soft smiles and unshifting eyes seemed to show simplicity of the kind sought here … only Lester knew them to be liars!
Long ago, he took the same road. Using meditation techniques borrowed from old Earthling religions, he sat under just such a tree, freeing his mind of worldly obsessions, disciplining it to perceive Truth. And for a while it seemed he succeeded. Acolytes bowed reverently, calling him illuminated. The universe appeared lucid then, as if the stars were sacred fire. As if he were united with all Jijo’s creatures, even the very quanta in the stones around him. He lived in harmony, needing little food, few words, and even fewer names.
Such serenity — sometimes he missed it with an ache inside.
But after a while he came to realize — the clarity he had found was sterile blankness. A blankness that felt fine, but had nothing to do with redemption. Not for himself. Not for his race.
The other five don’t use discipline or concentration to seek simplicity. You don’t see glavers meditating by a rotten log full of tasty insects. Simplicity calls to them naturally. They live their innocence.
When Jijo is finally reopened, some great clan will gladly adopt the new glaver subspecies, setting them once more upon the High Path, perhaps with better luck than they had the first time.
But those patrons won’t choose us. No noble elder clan is looking for smug Zen masters, eager to explain their own enlightenment. That is not a plainness you can write upon. It is simplicity based on individual pride.
Of course the point might be moot. If the Jophur ship represented great Institutes of the Civilization of the Five Galaxies, these forests would soon throng with inspectors, tallying up two thousand years of felonies against a fallow world. Only glavers would be safe, having made it to safety in time. The other six races would pay for a gamble lost.
And if they don’t represent the Institutes?
The Rothen had proved to be criminals, gene raiders. Might the Jophur be more of the same? Murderous genocide could still be in store. The g’Kek clan, in particular, were terrified of recent news from the Glade.
On the other hand, it might be possible to cut a deal. Or else maybe they’ll just go away, leaving us in the same state we were in before.
In that case, places like this refuge would go back to being the chief hope for tomorrow … for five races out of the Six.
Lester’s dark thoughts were cut off by a tug on his sleeve.
“Sage Cambel? The … um, visitors you’re, ah, expecting … I think …”
It was a young human, broad-cheeked, with clear blue eyes and pale skin. The boy would have seemed tall — almost a giant — except that a stooped posture diminished his appearance. He kept tapping a corner of his forehead with the fingertips of his right hand, as if in a vague salute.
Lester spoke gentle words in Anglic, the only language the lad ever managed to learn.
“What did you say, Jimi?”
The boy swallowed, concentrating hard.
“I think the … um … the people you want t’see … I think they’re here … Sage Cambel.”
“Lark and the Danik woman?”
A vigorous nod.
“Um, yessir. I sent ’em to the visitors’ shed … to wait for you an’ the other Great Sage. Was that right?”
“Yes, that was right, Jimi.” Lester gave his arm a friendly squeeze. “Please go back now. Tell Lark I’ll be along shortly.”
A broad grin. The boy turned around to run the way he came, awkward in his eagerness to be useful.
There goes the other kind of human who comes to this place, Lester thought. Our special ones …
The ancient euphemism tasted strange.
At first sight, it would seem people like Jimi fit the bill. Simpler minds. Innocent. Our ideal envoys to tread the Path.
He glanced at the blessed ones surrounding Knife-Bright Insight — urs, hoons, and g’Keks who were sent here by their respective races in order to do that. To lead the way.
By the standards of the scrolls, these ones aren’t damaged. Though simple, they aren’t flawed. They are leaders. But no one can say that of Jimi. All sympathy aside, he is injured, incomplete. Anyone can see that.
We can and should love him, help him, befriend him.
But he leads humanity nowhere.
Lester signaled to his blue qheuen colleague, using an urslike shake of his head to indicate that their appointment had arrived. She responded by turning her visor cupola in a quick series of GalTwo winks, flashing that she’d be along shortly.
Lester turned and followed Jimi’s footsteps, trying to shift his thoughts back to the present crisis. To the problem of the Jophur battleship. Back to urgent plans he must discuss with the young heretic and the woman from the stars. There was a dire proposal — farfetched and darkly dangerous — they must be asked to accept.
Yet, as he passed by the chanting circle of meditating humans — healthy men and women who had abandoned their farms, families, and useful crafts to dwell without work in this sheltered valley — Lester found his contemplations awash with bitter resentment. The words in his head were unworthy of a High Sage, he knew. But he could not help pondering them.
Morons and meditators, those are the two types that our race sends up here. Not a true “blessed” soul in the lot. Not by the standards set in the scrolls. Humans almost never take true steps down redemption’s path. Ur-Jah and the others are polite. They pretend that we, too, have that option, that potential salvation.
But we don’t. Our lot is sterile.
With or without judgment from the stars — the only future humans face on Jijo is damnation.
Dwer
SMOKE SPIRALED FROM THE CRASH SITE. IT WAS against his better judgment to sneak closer. In fact, now was his chance to run the other way, while the Danik robot cowered in a hole, showing no further interest in its
