Acts of Conscience (42 page)

Thirty parsecs. “Hardly anything at all, in the scheme of things.”

“Four hundred million years ago, what you call the Local Group of galaxies was more or less cleared of intelligent life. Eighteen million species. Give or take a few hundred thousand.”

Give or take. “And you think by wiping out humanity, this can somehow be prevented from happening again?”

Long silence. Then it said, “That is the theory.”

“You don’t sound convinced.”

More silence, then, “Were I convinced, I would not be here, Gaetan du Cheyne.”

Across the way, hulking shadows in the darkness. The wolfen were gathered, making a great, open circle around the kneeling, praying dollies. Praying for what? Deliverance? What if I rise up now, grab my guns, and drive the wolfen away? Will the dollies be grateful?

One of the wolfen got to its feet, lurched forward into the circle. One of the dollies screamed. Screamed and turned, began to run away. A single bound, a crunch of jaws. The dollie was silent, chewed, swallowed.

From the mass of remaining dollies, a soft moan, prayers disrupted.

The Kapellmeister said, “It screamed for salvation, Gaetan du Cheyne.”

Salvation. I said, “Do the wolfen known how the dollies feel about their lot in life?”

Silence, then, “I believe they do.”

I said, “I imagine most humans never think about their food animals. I know I never did.” Never? Did I think steaks came from a synthetics vat or something? Maybe so.

The Kapellmeister said, “Perhaps that is evidence of the wolfen’s moral superiority. Perhaps not.”

Another wolfen stood and stepped forward. This time a dollie stood from the kneeling crowd and walked forward, head held high, until it was within reach of snapping jaws. The crunch seemed... unpleasant. I said, “Have you entered rapport with dollies?”

The Kapellmeister said, “The wolfen prefer that I do not.”

Another wolfen, walking over to the kneeling group, this time singling out a dollie who cowered and cried out as the jaws descended. I said, “Will they eat them all? Even the gravid females?”

“Yes. This is a breeding group, the reason the dollies are raised.”

Christ. “I wonder how the dollies came to... serve the wolfen.”

“Think about it, Gaetan. In all likelihood, the wolfen’s breeding schemes are what gave the dollies intelligence. They are as much a creation as your own cats and dogs.”

Among other things, whispered the library AI.

“Why would they create sentient food animals?”

“Such animals would need less looking after.”

No one has ever asked why humanity would go to the trouble of creating sentient tools. “If the wolfen die and humans live, will the dollies be saved?”

“Probably not.”

As I sat watching, three more dollies were eaten, one by one, the first two taking it well, standing tall and brave, this one silent, that one gabbling its desperate prayers, the third one crawling on its belly shrieking apparent horror as the jaws came down and closed upon it. The remaining dollies, watching their numbers whittled away, seemed increasingly shaken, more and more falling silent, lying huddled, shivering, prayers forgotten as the end approached.

Probably not, rather than certainly not. How would these dollies, here and now, feel, if they knew there was even a
chance
they could escape this life, live on, relatively secure, relatively happy, their lot in life no more horrible than dancing for drunken men who would sometimes fuck them?

I thought about the dollhouse dollies, dancing their little cowgirl dances, straddling men’s laps and... Hell. Maybe, every night, they kneel by their little beds and thank some unknown goddess that they’ll never wake up as wolfen shit, fertilizing a baarbij bush.

I said, “You have to wonder what’s the right thing to do. Other than nothing, of course.”

Silence, punctuated by dollie screams, the sound of wolfen eating. Then the Kapellmeister said, “One is indeed required to wonder.”

Well. That other thing. “Do you know about the... unknown spacecraft encounter by one of our exploratory missions?”

“The military encounter at Regulus? Yes.”

“How?”

“We have something like faster-than-light radio, Gaetan. Your scientists will discover it soon enough. If there’s... time.”

“Don’t they represent the same sort of danger as humanity?”

“The argument has been made. Since the coming of humans, we’ve done a little looking around, and inspection of the... neighborhood, if you will. They’re called the Tertris. They’ve been star faring for a few thousand years. They’re quite warlike.”

“Seems like an odd coincidence that they’ve turned up, here and now, doesn’t it?”

Silence. Then the Kapellmeister said, “No. One of the few things that has stayed the hand of the party wishing to terminate human civilization is the possibility that the... evolutionary clock of the Local Group of galaxies was synchronized by the event of the Shock War.”

“Synchronized?”

It said, “The Old Galactic Civilization, of which we were a part, grew up gradually, since the infancy of the universe. First one intelligent species, then two, then a few, then several, over a period measured in billions of years. Eventually, we reached a metastable state in which all the sentient species of the Local Group were emerged, welded into a single great culture, uniform throughout the region.

“We were... at the beginning of a new age, our ships just beginning to quest outward, probably the galaxies of other clusters, looking for signs that ours was not the only civilization.” “Why didn’t you just... listen?”

“Civilization propagates faster than its signals. The universe isn’t old enough for that methodology to be practical.”

“Even with this... FTL radio of yours?”

“The number of communication modalities is a transfinite number. No practical data processing system can monitor a sufficiently large bandwidth to create a statistically significant likelihood of positive detection.”

“So you went looking.”

“For a little while. We found species isolates, of course, and primitive local empires, all more or less by chance. Time passed and our culture fragmented, despite everything. In the stagnation of our... aloneness, we found meaningless philosophical disunities to squabble over.”

“Like what?”

“It doesn’t matter, Gaetan. We found something to fight about. And then we killed each other. Not quite down to the last being.”

“So there are other survivors like yourselves?”

“Perhaps.”

“These... Tertris?” Not likely what they
called
themselves, just some neologism the pod software had constructed for me to hear.

“No. We’ve ascertained they evolved locally, over approximately the same timescale as humans, on a world near the intersection of the Saggitarius Spiral Arm and its Aquila spur. While we were looking, we also found some folk calling themselves the Khaara, distally up Orion Arm a few thousand parsecs, and, in the Perseus-B Spiral Arm, a large, militant civilization of beings named øStennh. You humans will like them, when... if you meet them.”

If. “All with faster-than-light spacecraft?”

“Yes.”

“And all evolved in this galaxy at the same time?”

“An argument has been advanced that the Shock War leveled the evolutionary schemes of the seventeen galaxies known to be involved. Such a theory cannot be proven, of course, but it would imply that the Local Group is about to blossom forth with advanced civilizations, all at once.”

“That seems mighty unlikely. Wouldn’t different species evolve at different rates?”

“Not in the context of neutral molecular evolution.”

“Cultures then? All the same?”

“No. But the theory says they will arrive more or less together, over a period of just a few million years.”

“Do you believe that?”

“My belief is immaterial. The... interventionist party wishes no one to believe it, since that would render the actions they propose more... difficult.”

“What if it’s true? Will you go out and slaughter thousands of species, possibly millions?”

“That is what has been proposed.”

“Isn’t that
just
how you describe this Shock War? The obliteration of...”

“Frightened beings will make irrational decisions.”

“So the
status quo ante
you seek is a Local Group emptied once more of life, in which the Kapellmeisters alone survive?”

“Correct.” I looked up then and realized that the last dollie had been consumed while I wasn’t paying attention.

Sixteen: When I got up

When I got up, midway through the next morning, Tau Ceti standing in the middle of the northern sky, the whole a burnished vaulted of green-tainted blue, all the wolfen were gone. No sign of the dollies, other than a patch of dried mud my eyes kept shying from; no sign of a baarbij bush ceremony or...

I stood outside, watching the Arousians pack up their camp, smelling the faint aftertang of their breakfast fire. “What will they do now?”

The Kapellmeister said, “There are other wolfen families they wish to investigate. I’ve arranged a rendezvous for them with a pack that hunts near the coast, a hybrid breed of white and yellow desert wolfen.”

“Pale cream wolfen?”

The Kapellmeister’s eyes floated in a way that I knew meant a shrug-of-insignificance. “They have no name for themselves, were never numerous enough for the Groenteboeren to name.”

Right. “I suppose they’ll be... needing you.”

“No, Gaetan. Everything has been arranged in advance.”

I felt a crawl of unease, a will to speak, suppressed by... nothing. Nothing at all. Christ, I feel like I’m asking some girl for a date... “It’s time for me to pick up my cargo for 40 Eridani.”

The Kapellmeister seemed to study my face for a long time. Then it said, “Would you mind if I came along?”

I felt a surge of relief, the same one you feel when the girl you’ve propositioned say
yes
and reaches for her belt buckle. “I’d like that.”

The Kapellmeister said, “The rapidly evolving skin discoloration on your face is interesting.”

“Great.”

o0o

We stopped for a picnic lunch atop a low, grassy hill out in the middle of nowhere, out where the forests and hills of the antarctic give way to the brassy flatlands of the Koperveldt. I dropped the camper just below the crest of the hill, had gotten out and started setting up my chair and a little table where I could get the best view of an empty landscape, had started puttering about with the food while the Kapellmeister took off in search of its small game.

Not much to see out here. A few puffy white clouds under a now too-familiar blue-green sky. A plain of coppery grass. A sudden, startling realization that I was fairly sick of Green Heaven. That’d I’d be damned glad to be getting away, going to another world, seeing new things, new people, new beings, new places. I never once, as a child, imagined myself visiting 40 Eridani A, of having adventures on little Epimetheus, on giant Prometheus. What the hell do I know? Rich landowners living in big estates on Epimetheus, lording it over an industrial serf society that’s developed on Prometheus. Nothing worth dreaming about at all. It would have been like escaping from the horrors of school to the wonders of my father’s job.

After a while the Kapellmeister came back with one more small, silent thing that died, paralyzed, so it’s neck could be sucked.

I munched an extra-rare roast beef sandwich, white bread stained pink here and there by the juice, sucked on yet another nameless, tasteless beer. “What provisions will you need for the trip? I mean...” I motioned at the thing it was draining now.

The Kapellmeister said, “We can get what I need at any big pet store in Orikhalkos.”

Cold chill. “You aren’t going to be eating cats and dogs in front of me, are you?”

Silence. Then it said, “No, I favor laboratory rats. I also like what you call stewing hares, available on Green Heaven from most culinary supply stores.”

Something over there now, specks moving against distant reddish-yellow grass. I put my sandwich down and got up, went over to the camper cab and rummaged out a pair of binoculars. “Hmh. Dollies.”

“I see them, Gaetan.”

Dollies, meaning somewhere nearby there’d be a troop of wolfen. There. A brief glimpse of a white wolfen peeking from cover. If it’d been a red, I’d never have seen it.

The library AI whispered, Apparently, there are no red wolfen left on the koperveldt, human predation having finished them off over time. However, due to their presence on the Opveldt, red wolfen remain the dominant subspecies. Koperveldt remains home to isolated bands of brown, white and yellow wolfen.

I could see more wolfen now, slinking through the grass beside their neatly marching dollies like so many Indian scouts. I said, “Do you think the relationship between the wolfen and dollies could be induced to change?”

Silence, then the Kapellmeister said, “Perhaps. Who would have the right to induce such a change?”

“Do the dollies have rights?”

“Ask the wolfen.”

Right. I said, “So long as the wolfen continue to... use the dollies, few humans will sympathize with their plight.”

The Kapellmeister said, “Even among my own people, with a far broader perspective, that is a common perceptual problem. Not many of us sympathize with the plight of humanity either.”

I took down the binoculars and looked at it. “Last night I found myself wondering what has gone on in the greater universe, in all the ages since the Shock War.”

It said, “Some of us have been wondering that as well.”

I said, “When the... Interventionists do what they intend to do, the... disturbance may attract attention. I keep imagining that some... instrumentality may come to investigate. That it may decide your folk represent some kind of... danger.” It’s eyes shrugged, a pattern suggesting the universe was full of interesting possibilities. “The Passivist Party has raised just such an eventuality.”

I heard a distant
pock
, echoing from the plains below. I put the binoculars to my eyes and looked again, knowing exactly what I’d see. Yes, there they were, a small party of human hunters rising from the long grass opposite the trail the dollies were forging, rifles leveled. Off to one side, I could see a wolfen, sprawled in the grass, torn open, already dead.