Ascending

'But it is five thousand years with Tired Brains!' I snapped. 'That is another difference between you and me.'

'It was necessary,' Esticus said. 'To make sure you didn’t get too…' His golden cloud broke into a large number of thready wisps surrounding two little lumps — perhaps suggesting a horde of my people vastly outnumbering the two Shaddill.

'We wanted children,' Esticus continued, 'but the Soft Ones changed us somehow so we couldn’t… it didn’t happen naturally. They wanted to be sure we were Tahpo: the last of our kind. Lucky for us, this was originally a colony-building ship; it still had full terraforming capabilities and a supply of frozen fertilized ova. We altered the DNA in the ova just a bit to create a human-shaped race and… well. You really are like us, Oar, even if there isn’t much external resemblance.'

I still did not think it could possibly be true; but Festina was nodding to herself. In a quiet voice, she said, 'If we get out of this, Oar, I’ll show you pictures of a Chihuahua and an Irish Wolfhound — unquestionably the same species, but different as night and day. External appearance just isn’t a reliable guide to cellular composition.' She turned back to the Shaddill. 'So you wanted Oar’s corpse to test the Blood Honey. Just out of curiosity. You had absolutely no thought you might take the big step.'

Esticus turned his eyes toward Immu; she looked back at him. For a moment, they did not speak… and although they were horrid fur-beetles, the image arose in my mind of lovers from some tale of romantic misapprehension: the kind of lovers who fervently want the same thing but believe the other does not want such a thing, so they say, 'No, no, I do not want that either.'

Fools! I thought. They both wish to transform, but they fear to admit it. I could see it in their eyes — as if some deep-down Shaddillish part of me knew instinctively how to read such googly insect expressions. Perhaps Immu and Esticus had once feared the honey fountain, but now they longed for it. Even if it meant death, they wanted release… but each was holding back for the sake of the other.

'You are both quite absurd,' I told them. 'Are you not secretly eager to jellify yourselves? I believe you have been so for years. Yet you each think the other person is afraid, so you say nothing — never mentioning what you feel, for fear of upsetting your mate. Is that not the case? You have been shielding one another needlessly for five thousand years, because you are the stupidest creatures in the universe.' I pointed to the Blood Honey filling the fountain. 'Please jump in now, and get out of our lives.'

The Tahpo/Shaddill/Fuentes stared at me pop-eyed for a good five seconds; then they looked back toward each other, their mandibles moving with great slowness. Esticus whispered something — a real whisper coming out of his mouth, not the cloud above his head. Immu whispered back. In a moment, they were nose to nose, whispering, whispering… and holding each other’s hands as their great shovel-tails slid forward to entwine.

Festina leaned toward me. 'If they’ve just been holding off for the sake of each other… that’s so fucking soppy, I may puke.'

'It is not soppy, it is merely ridiculous,' I told her. 'Many creatures in the universe are ridiculous. Besides,' I continued, 'these two claim to be the same species as I… and I am such a one as may soon succumb to a Tired Brain. Perhaps Shaddill brains get Tired as well, especially after five thousand years. The Shaddill may not fall dormant, but perhaps there comes a point when they do very little actual thinking.'

'Perhaps,' Festina agreed, watching Immu and Esticus whisper. 'I’ll be ecstatic if they decide to go for a Blood Honey skinny-dip. Once they’re in ‘Soft Form,’ I don’t think they’ll see us as threats — the jelly-guys aren’t afraid of humans or any other species at our development level. With a bit of luck, we’ll be free to go; for that matter, they might give us this ship. Once they jelly out, they won’t need it anymore.'

'You mean they will say, ‘Now we see the light,’ and all will be well? We will not get to punch anyone!'

Festina tapped my jacket with one finger. 'You’re an Explorer now, Oar. The ideal outcome of any Explorer mission is to walk away safely — not to kick butt, not to make your opponents cry uncle. I don’t know if there’s ever been a mission where Explorers faced alien enemies and the enemies said, ‘So sorry, we won’t bother you anymore… and by the way, take the keys to our spaceship.’ But by God, every Explorer prays for something that works out so tamely. Tameness is good. Tameness means you live another day.'

'But they are horrendous villains!' I whispered. 'They may seem like foolish beetles, but they and their kind have wreaked havoc throughout the galaxy. On my people. On your people. On the Divians and the Cashlings and all those other species the Shaddill uplifted. Long ago, Cashlings were a sensible species, but now they are vain and obnoxious: is that not a result of the Shaddill’s deeds? And Immu said they did it deliberately! They intended to make the entire Cashling race silly and ineffectual; in a spirit of utter selfishness, these harmless-looking beetles have degraded billions of creatures into jokes.'

'You think I don’t know that?' Festina replied. 'You think I don’t know how humans and everybody else have been screwed around? Hell, Oar, Homo sapiens is a travesty of what it once was; the whole damned Technocracy is lazy, stupid, and corrupt, all thanks to a bunch of fur-balls who didn’t give a fuck how much trouble they caused, so long as it let them avoid a scary decision. That infuriates me, Oar the whole damned thing makes me livid. I want to snap the mandibles off these shitheads and stuff ’em down their rotten little throats. But I’m not in the business of vengeance; as always, I’m just trying to make the best of a crappy situation. So we grit our teeth, forget that the Tahpo have fucked over more sentient creatures than anyone else in history, and just cross our fingers the last two will remove themselves from the playing field. Once they’re gone, once everybody on our side is safe, then we’ll see if we can fix the damage these bastards have caused.'

This plan did not please me at all: letting the villains quietly achieve transcendence after all the disruption they had wrought. But I did not have time to devise an alternate strategy because Immu and Esticus were turning our direction. Their faces looked just as ugly as ever… but their mandibles moved less frantically, as if some inner tormenting tension had eased away.

'You were correct,' Immu said. 'We had both… we had both been foolish on each other’s behalf. All this time…' She made a rasping noise in her throat. 'We intend to transform as soon as possible.'

'I’m fucking thrilled for you,' Festina replied. 'Now before you go all jiggly, please release our ships… or even better, tell your computers to obey our instructions and let us take care of—'

'Before any of that,' Immu interrupted, 'we have to make sure the Blood Honey is effective. It’s been centuries since anyone used it, and some of the ship’s systems are failing from sheer old age. Therefore, we must still try our experiment.'

She turned to stare directly at me.

'Uh-oh,' Festina said. She turned toward me too. 'What?' I asked. 'What experiment?'

Then I remembered. 'Oh.'

The Nature Of Cowardice

'The fountain shouldn’t hurt you,' Esticus said, his shovel-tail twitching nervously. 'We’ve analyzed the Blood Honey as well as we can. We think it’s still all right; we just aren’t sure.'

'But it will turn me into jelly! Purple jelly!'

'If it works,' said Immu, 'you’ll be a million times more than you are now. Transcendent. With power and intelligence far beyond your wildest dreams.'

'But I will be purple jelly! I do not wish to be jelly, regardless of the quality of its dreams.'

Immu stepped toward me. It was the first time she had ventured out of direct contact with Esticus. 'Weren’t you the one who called us cowards for refusing to change?'

'You were cowards!' I cried. 'And you still are — if you cannot muster the courage to act unless I do it first.'

'All right,' Immu said, taking another step toward me. 'So we’re cowards. We’ve thought of ourselves that way for thousands of years — the most cowardly dregs of a race noted for how much it loved to hide. We’re willing to do one last cowardly thing.'

She took another step toward me. Festina moved in between us. 'You don’t want to do this,' she told Immu, ignoring the mandibles that twitched right in front of her face. 'If you dump Oar into the fountain and it kills her, the League of Peoples will consider you murderers. You yourself said it was too risky to try with a living person.'

'At this point,' Immu answered, 'I’m willing to take the gamble.'

'And it isn’t really a gamble,' Esticus said, scurrying up beside his wife. 'We’ve done everything possible to check that the honey’s okay. So long as we make our best efforts to ensure Oar’s safety, we won’t be held responsible if something goes wrong.' He reached out tentatively to touch my arm. 'It’ll transform you into something amazing. Really.'

I pulled sharply away from him. 'I do not find jelly amazing. I should very much hate turning soft.'

'But,' said Immu, 'it will cure your Tired Brain.'

Suddenly, I felt as if everything in the world had gone silent. The fountain continued to burble, the Shaddill swished their mandibles together, Festina breathed softly… yet those sounds all seemed very distant. Very quietly I said, 'It will cure my brain?'

'Yes,' Immu replied, her translation cloud sliding closer to me. 'The honey adjusts cellular activity and

DNA… especially anything related to mental capacity. It vastly expands your intellectual power; and in the process, it will correct the genetic blockages that make your brain Tired.'

'That’s right,' Esticus put in most eagerly. 'We’ve, uhh… you’re not the first of your people who’s gone through this test. Back at the very beginning, when we were certain the Blood Honey was still good, we… we captured one of your men and we… he thanked us afterward, he really did. Before he left to join the Soft Collective. He thanked us, then teleported away by sheer force of will. So there’s nothing to be afraid of, and everything to be gained.'

I turned to look at the fountain, still gushing with thick-flowing honey. Out near the edge of the basin, the surface of the pool was calm — like a mirror of clear crimson, barely rippled by the splashing in the middle.

It did not surprise me to see two fiery red eyes glimmering up from the liquid’s glossy surface.

The Pollisand had led me to this room. He had promised to cure me, and guided me straight to the remedy I needed. He had simply neglected to mention the medicine would turn me into purple gloop.

One should never trust alien promises. I ought to have known that by now.

'Perhaps someday,' I said, 'it will become necessary for me to take this step.' I turned to Festina. 'If I become such a one as does nothing for weeks on end and refuses to answer no matter how nicely you speak, you have my permission to take drastic action rendering me into a jellylike state. But not yet!' I glared at the two Shaddill. 'Do you hear me? I do not wish to bathe in Blood Honey at this time.'

'Perhaps not,' Immu answered, 'but you’re going to anyway.'