“From Perepume, yes. I know there are humans on my world, and the humans call the planet Chottem. Perepume is a separate part, a…continent. I have memory of a world called Thairy and one called Fajnard. My people live on both of those as well, and so do humans. I know the names of a lot of other worlds, all of them occupied by different people, all spread out and joined together by…channels, ropes…”
“Wormholes?” I offered.
“Spcc’ci in my language,” she crowed. “Yes, wormholes. The whole network is huge. Almost none of the people in it know about all the other people in it, but my people know secret ways to get from place to place very quickly. And I know the story, the one I said both you and your grandmother should hear.”
“The one you woke me up about,” I said.
“That one. Yes.”
“Well, nighttime is a good time for storytelling. Let me turn out some of these lights. Open the stove door and bring the teapot over here, Glory. We’ll sit in firelight.”
And then, to Falija, “Tell the story.”
“In the long, long ago, the Gentherans came to Earth the very first time…”
“Not that long,” I said. “It was only a century or so.”
“No.” Falija’s eyes glowed in the light of the stove. “You mustn’t interrupt the story. The first time Gentherans decided to visit Earth thousands and thousands of years ago, they discovered your people living in caves and making crafty things with their hands and thinking crafty thoughts. Your people fought with each other quite a lot. The Gentherans are a curious people, very interested in other beings, and they thought your people were intriguing, so they took some of them to Fajnard, near where a lot of my people, the Gibbekot, live. They gave the humans a place with caves to live in, near good soil where they could plant crops. After that it seemed like no time at all, they were overcrowded and began to fight with one another.
“So, the Gentherans decided to change the humans a little, not so much as would make them unhuman, but enough to make them less likely to overcrowd and fight. Sometimes a Gibbekot baby dies before the mother-mind leaves the mother’s head, and when that happens, our doctors can take the partial mind and give it to other creatures. So the Gentherans obtained an unfinished mother-mind from my people, one that had our language in it and some of our other talents, and the Gentherans cloned enough of these mother-minds to give them to all the humans.
“In the humans, it had an unforeseen side effect. Some Gibbekot are almost telepathic, and the partial mind that they cloned for humans had that quality, and in the humans it was stronger! Suddenly, the humans understood one another better, they stopped lying and cheating and fighting each other, their lives became much more contented, and remarkably, they passed the mother-mind on to their children! They named themselves the vabil ghoss, which is to say those having insight, in my language. ‘Enlightened ones,’ I guess you’d say.
“Both the Gibbekot and the vabil ghoss still share the highlands of Fajnard very happily. In time, they dropped the vabil part of their name and were known just as the Ghoss. Ghoss do some things better than we do, and we do some things better than they do, and Ghoss went with my people when colonies were established on Thairy and Chottem.”
I frowned in concentration. “Your people must have liked us a good deal!”
“The Gentherans had a special reason to be interested in humans. That’s why they’re so set on helping you. Gloriana, you know your cousin Trish? You’ve told me about her, and I’ve seen her because I was curious. She’s not quite complete, and I’ve even heard you, Grandma, feeling sorry for her.”
“So?” said Gloriana.
“In time long past, an armada of Gentheran ships was traveling near a variable star, and the radiation caused a mutation in all the unborn babies. They were born physically deformed and mentally limited. Their fingers never developed, they couldn’t stand erect or learn to speak, and because of that they couldn’t access their mother-minds and were forever trapped in babyhood. Even though they couldn’t mature into true Gentherans, they did mature sexually and were able to have children. Because they were mute and crippled, our people called them, ‘the afflicted.’ Our people grieved over them just as you do over Trish, Grandma.
“When the Gentherans found your race, oh, many thousands of years ago, they had some of the afflicted ones with them. Your people were…silly about them. They just loved them. Your people, especially your children, were just delighted with these poor, handicapped Gentherans, and the poor, handicapped Gentherans liked them just as much.
“As soon as this was known, Gentherans began bringing their handicapped ones to Earth. Your people adopted them. Some of them lived with you, some moved out into the wild, some even evolved into other types, but they were all…happy, as they could never have been among Gentherans…”
Into the silence, I said, “She’s talking about cats, Gloriana.” I stared at Falija, trying to figure something out. “Falija, your people are the Gibbekot, right? Then who are the Gentherans?”
“The spacefaring moiety of us,” she said. “Half of us are spacefarers, the other half are settlers, but we’re all one people.” She sighed. “The afflicted were no longer such a great sorrow to our people because they were happy. Everywhere there are humans, they’re still happy, and we owe their happiness to you.”
“Anyone would have loved them!” cried Gloriana.
Falija replied, “Not as you do. Gibbekot are not perfect. No creature is perfect. Gentherans expect their children to be like themselves, and they grieve when that is not so. Seeing the unfortunates still makes us uncomfortable. Ever since then, the Gentherans have felt a debt to humans, and they’ve kept in touch with Earthian people, even though they’re not happy about the way humans behave.
“Up
