properties of personality with its kind.
Dwer knew the game to play was “hard to get.” So he let his idea leak out in the form of a fantasy … a daydream. When Rety tried to interrupt again, he made a slashing motion for quiet while he went on picturing what a spider might do to convince him it was real. The sort of thing Dwer would find impressive.
The mulc being’s next message seemed intrigued.
Truly?
And why not?
The new dross to which you refer already had me concerned. Those great heaps of refined metal and volatile organic poisons — I have not dealt with such purified essences in a very long time.
Now you worry that the dross might fly away again, to pollute some part of Jijo beyond reach of any mulc being? You fear it may never be properly disposed of?
Then worry no more, my responsible little ephemeral! It will be taken care of.
Just leave it to me.
Alvin
I WAS RIGHT! THE PHUVNTHUS ARE EARTHLINGS! I haven’t figured out the little amphibians yet, but the big six-legged creatures? They are dolphins. Just like the ones in King of the Sea or The Shining Shore … only these talk and drive spaceships! How uttergloss.
And there are humans.
Sky humans!
Well, a couple of them, anyway.
I met the woman in charge — Gillian is her name. Among other things, she said some nice words about my journal. In fact, if they ever succeed in getting away from here, and returning to Earth, she promises to find an agent for me and get it published.
Imagine that. I can’t wait to tell Huck.
There’s just one favor Gillian wants in return.
Ewasx
OH, HOW THEY PREVARICATE!
Is this what it means to take the Downward Path?
Sometimes a citizen race decides to change course, rejecting the destiny mapped out for it by patron and clan. The Civilization of the Five Galaxies allows several traditional avenues of appeal, but if all other measures fail, one shelter remains available to all — the road that leads back, from starfaring sapience to animal nature. The route to a second chance. To start over again with a new patron guiding your way.
This much I/we can understand. But must that path have an intermediate phase, between citizen and dumb beast? A phase in which the half-devolved species becomes lawyers?
Their envoys stand before us now, citing points of Galactic law that were handed down in sacred lore. Especially verbose is the g’Kek emissary. Yes, My rings, you identify this g’Kek as Vubben — a “friend and colleague” from your days as Asx the traeki. Oh, how that sage-among-sooners nimbly contorts logic, contending that his folk are not responsible for the debt his kind owes our clan, by rule of vendetta. A debt of extinction.
The senior Priest-Stack aboard our ship insists we must listen to this nonsense, for form’s sake, before continuing our righteous vengeance. But most of the Polkjhy crew stacks side with our Captain-Leader, whose impatience-with-drivel steams with each throbbing pulse of an angry mulching core. Finally, the Captain-Leader transmits a termination signal to Me/us. To faithful Ewasx.
“ENOUGH!” I interrupt Vubben in loud tones of Oailie decisiveness. All four of his eyestalks quail in surprise at my harsh resonance.
“YOUR CONTENTIOUS REASONINGS ARE BASED ON INVALID ASSUMPTIONS.”
They stand before us/Me, frozen silent by our rebuke. A silence more appropriate to half animals than all that useless jabber. Finally, the qheuen sage, Knife-Bright Insight, bows her blue-green carapace and inquires:
“Might we ask what assumptions you refer to?”
Our second cognition ring performs a writhing twitch that I must overcome with savage pain jolts, preventing the rebellious ring’s color ceils from flashing visibly. Be thou restrained, I command, enforcing authority over our component selves. Do not try to signal your erstwhile comrades. The effort will accomplish nothing.
The minirebellion robs Me of resources to maintain a pontifical voice. So when I next speak aloud, it is in more normal tones. Yet the message is no less severe.
“Your faulty assumptions are threefold,” I answer the thoughtful blue qheuen.
“You assume that law still reigns in the Five Galaxies.
“You assume that we should feel restrained by procedures and precedents from the last ten million years.
“But above all, your most defective assumption is that we should care.”
Dwer
IT WAS NOT ENOUGH SIMPLY TO COAX THE MULC beast. Dwer had to creep close and supervise, for the spider had no clear concept of haste.
Dwer could sense its concentration, shifting fluids and gathering forces from a periphery that stretched league after league, along the Rift coast. The sheer size of the thing was mind-boggling, far greater than the mad little alpine spider that nearly consumed Dwer and Rety. This titan was in the final stages of demolishing a vast city, the culmination of its purpose, and therefore its life. Millennia ago, it might have ignored Dwer, as a busy workman disregards the corner scratchings of a mouse. Now boredom made it responsive to any new voice, offering relief from monumental ennui.
Still, Dwer wondered.
Why was I able to communicate with One-of-a-Kind? And now this spider, as well? We are so different — creatures meant for opposite sides of a planet’s cycle.
His sensitivity, if anything, had increased … perhaps from letting the Danik robot conduct force fields down his spine. But the original knack must be related to what made him an exceptional hunter.
Empathy. An intuitive sense for the needs and desires of living things.
The Sacred Scrolls spoke darkly of such powers. Psitalents. They were not recommended for the likes of the Six, who must cringe away from the great theater of space. So Dwer never mentioned it, not to Sara and Lark, or even Fallon, though he figured the old chief scout must have suspected.
Have I done this before? He mused on how he coaxed the spider into action. I always thought my empathy was passive. That I listened to animals, and hunted accordingly.
But have I been subtly influencing them, all along? When I shoot an arrow, is it my legendary aim that makes it always strike home? Or do I also nudge the flight of the bush quail so it dodges into the way of the shaft? Do I make the taniger swerve left, just as my stone is about to strike?
It made him feel guilty. Unsporting.
Well? What about right now? You ’re famished. Why not put out a call for nearby fish and fowl to gather round your knees for plucking?
Somehow, Dwer knew it did not work that way.
He shook his head, clearing it for matters close at hand. Just ahead, rounded silhouettes took uneven bites out of the arching star field. Two sky boats, unmoving, yet mysterious and deadly as he drew near. He swished a finger through the water and tasted, wincing at some nasty stuff leaking into the fen from one or both fallen cruisers.
Now Dwer’s sensitive ears picked up noise coming from the larger vessel. Clankings and hammerings. No doubt the crew was working around the clock to make repairs. Despite Rety’s assurances, he had no faith that the new day would see a Rothen starship looming overhead to claim both its lost comrades and long-sought prey. The opposite seemed rather more likely.
