I tried again. <I wish to be a friend. I am here to … > I was about to say that I was there to help. But no, that wasn’t it anymore. <I am here to learn from you.>
More rapid hand gestures. Emotions cooled. And then, very suddenly, all three of them spun. I was forgotten. Something was coming from the forest across the clearing. Something large.
It walked on six legs, each as thick as a tree trunk, a knuckling walk. It had a low-slung head that swung from side to side as it walked. The beast was armored with clunky, leatherish plates all down its back.
It was huge but would not have seemed like any sort of threat had I not seen the reactions of the blue creatures. They clearly saw it as a danger. The emotion was all too easy to feel.
Then the beast began to move and I reciprocated their emotion. I would never have believed something so big could move so fast.
More of my fellow blue quadrupeds appeared, rushing up from all angles, racing to cut the monster off before it could reach the cluster of scoops. My three companions attacked as well, headlong, heedless.
I followed at a tearing speed, my hooves kicking up clods of dirt as I ran. The first of my “brothers” reached the monster. The beast killed two effortlessly. It paused to eat, to rip the two martyrs apart and swallow them, all but ignoring the brave stabs of their fellows.
It was a sadly one-sided battle. And I should have stayed out of it. I had not come to fight. But I was, physically at least, one of these creatures, and there would be very little of the companionship I craved, very little learning, very little relaxation so long as they were being massacred.
I drew my handheld beam weapon and shot the monster in the head. It died and fell in a heap.
From that day on I was a welcomed, revered member of the tribe.
They had no name for their race, no special gestural label for their species, only hand-words for their tribe. As far as they were concerned, their planet was irrelevant, their species a useless abstraction. They were this tribe, this group, and no more.
It was I who came up with the hand-word for their race and, for the benefit of my own word-oriented brain, a spoken name as well.
I named them Andalites.
I lived with the Andalites for many years. Happy years, by and large. They were primitive people. Their gestural language consisted of fewer than two hundred words or phrases. They had no art, no science, no agriculture. But they had already evolved from pure grazers, herd members, into distinct individuals. They had potential.
I lived with them, and refused to teach, refused to interfere. On one other occasion I employed my weapon to fend off a monster’s attack. But that was all. Aside from that I was an Andalite, concerned with keeping the fire going, with maintaining the roof of my little scoop, with carefully avoiding overfeeding in dry weather, with tending the trees so they would drop their delicious leaves at harvest time, with all the simple minutiae of daily life.
Most of all, I had friends. I “spoke” with living beings who spoke back, not with the canned, programmed, expected responses of computers or dead memories, but with the wonderful unpredictability of life.
I was no longer lonely. I no longer bore the weight of the galaxy on my inadequate shoulders.
From time to time I would return to my other self in orbit and download all my new experiences and memories. That other me was grateful, eager. That other me savored every detail. Felt the warmth of closeness. A warmth denied me since the death of Aguella and Lackofa.
I married.
Her name was Tree. The Andalites only used a dozen or so names — Tree, Water, Star, Grass, and so on. Probably twenty percent of the females in the tribe were named Tree.
We had a child: Star. But Star died soon after birth of a disease that attacks the Andalite young.
I had watched entire worlds die. I had lost my own race. How could I care so much about this one small, unsteady creature? How could her death cut me so deeply?
The pain was awful. Unbearable. And yet I was glad to learn that I could still feel.
The disease that had killed her was easily curable. The orbiting me took only a few seconds to discover the pathogen and work out simple countermeasures. I had the power to keep any Andalite child from dying of that disease. I could ensure that no other Andalite parent would ever experience that same loss.
I had the power.
I had the power to do it all: to eliminate predators, to wipe out disease, to ensure an adequate food supply, to biologically alter the Andalites so that they …
I had that power. I had used that power before, and ended up annihilating worlds.
And yet, how could I not? How could I not wipe out disease? How could I not stop evil?
“You hide here among these primitive creatures,” I berated myself. “You cower and run from Crayak and do nothing to stop him. You want to solve the easy problems and avoid the larger ones? Is that your morality, Toomin the Ellimist?”
Tree came to me and made the hand-words for “child.”
“You want to have another child?” I signed back, incredulous.
“Yes.”
“But another child may die, too, my wife.”
“Yes.”
“Then why have another child? If not the disease, then the monsters, or a famine. Why have another child?”
“Disease take one,” Tree admitted. Then, with growing defiance, “Monster take one. Famine take one. More children, some live.”
I had another child. And this one did not fall prey to the illness. We named him Flower.
By the time Tree died of old age Flower had become a leader of the tribe. His sister Grass was married herself.
