Gateways (26 page)

War, Xifora understand, is the natural condition of the Universe. Xifora are born with this knowledge. Xifora must kill or be killed, eat or be eaten. But, as Xibil has eloquently explained, sublimation of this instinct to survive by all and any means, and the sublimation of the instinct to defend these persons’ territory and these persons’ honor to the death, is the price of civilization. To honor that hard-won principle Xifor produced warships for the Federation and manned them and thrust them into battle. No longer were hatchlings killed, but instead sent forth in geometric numbers to Xifora the battleships. Xifora pride themselves that Xifora numbers and Xifora production were a major component of Galactic strategy.

Humans would have been defeated within hours and forced back into the nothingness from which they came if other Galactics, less committed than Xifor to the consensus principles of the Federation or sensing an opportunity for political advantage, had not protected the humans from the righteous rebuke of the Galactic Federation.

This person volunteered to be among the warriors, but Xibul insisted that this person’s best place was in Xifor councils, to help plan the tactics of battle and the strategies of the peace that would, sooner or later, follow. The end of war, Xibul counseled, is the time when scales are rebalanced
and adjustments are made, when the ready have the chance to seize power and to hold it, just as the Xifora nobility had seized the valleys millennia before. Xifor could become one of the major powers, perhaps the major power, in the Council rather than a junior member, seldom heard, often ignored. Xifora are small but Xifora will not be overlooked.

One of the tactics this person proposed, which became standard battle procedure, was the sacrifice of a part—a ship, a fleet, or a world—to gain an overall advantage. The peculiar advantage of this tactic is that it is rooted in Xifora physiology and evolution: in personal strife, clever Xifora emerge victorious by offering an arm while the other appendage wields a deadly weapon.

Envious rivals spread the rumor that the tactic originated with a subordinate and not with this person. Every administration is rife with such knife wielders; the secret to survival is not to offer a back to colleagues. Such an accusation was easy to dismiss: Xifor tradition and law prescribe that all products of labor or thought are the rightful property of the superior; the unfortunate subordinate died by accident before the subordinate could confirm this person’s primacy, but after that no question was raised.

Before the subordinate’s body was cold, the tactic was communicated to Xidan directly. Xibil was involved in discussions concerning the next envoy to the Galactic Council, the previous envoy having been killed when the envoy’s ship was attacked by a human vessel.

Only after the war did this person discover that the tactic of sacrifice had been discovered independently by humans. Even though humans are too soft to accept sacrifice willingly, humans have a strange custom in which those persons model human behavior in something called “games,” which those persons then apply to everyday behavior including war. Thus the tactic was not as successful as this person or Xidan had hoped, nor as Xibil had feared.

Xibil, to be sure, had accepted this person’s strategy as proper Xifora behavior, recognizing the fate of ingenious subordinates. Then as quickly as the war had begun the war ended in a truce. Xifor opposed the end of hostilities, but the envoy’s death left it with little influence, and even the passionate words of the assistant envoy, who had fortunately survived the attack that killed the envoy, went unheeded. Less hardened Galactics had tired of sacrifice and traded honor for peace.

Now was the time for Xifor to act. While other Galactics were fatigued by war and eager for peace at any price, Xifor determination and willingness to sacrifice would give Xifor the opportunity to seize the Galactic Council and shape the Federation future. Xidan turned to Xibil and asked
Xibil to accept the position of envoy to the Council. Xibil accepted on the condition that Xifor sacrifice its ambitions in behalf of Federation harmony and civilization.

Then Xibil met with an unfortunate accident.

In the tradition of Xifor, Xidan turned to Xibil’s assistant, and this person was named envoy but without the unnatural conditions for sublimating Xifora behavior that Xibil had urged. Many time periods elapsed before this person joined the Council and came to an understanding of the Council’s operation and secret levers of power. The Council is a large and deliberative body that, like a glacier, moves slowly but inexorably down hill. The Council is hard to stop and impossible to steer; the Council can only be shattered into maneuverable segments.

The Council was a devastating disappointment. This person had expected opposition but found turgid indifference. Other Council members were older and, let this be admitted in all humility, wiser. This person tried to move the inertia of the Council into action, with Xifor at its head. This person was listened to and agreed with but nothing happened. No opposition could be identified; no other person stood in the way; an accident to any person or group of persons would change nothing.

This person learned patience.

Patience brings with it an acceptance of the way things are, and a hope that change will emerge through a slow accumulation of minor alterations. That is not the Xifor way. It was the Galactic Federation way. The galaxy turns slowly, and the spiral arms are distant. The Federation is old, and it had gotten old by minimizing change and its accompanying potential for conflict. The emergence of humans had disturbed the Galactic balance; change had occurred, and the Federation didn’t like change. Now, with the Great Truce established, the Federation was ready to return to the ancient ways that had worked so well for so many eons, keeping aliens from the breathing tubes of other aliens.

And then word came of a new prophet emerging. Without a name, without an origin or place, without a species identification or description, a creature was rumored to have announced the possibility of transcendence—not the long Xifora way of deprivation and inner strength but an instantaneous mechanical ascension. This person cannot describe the state of chaos in the Federation Council that followed this unsubstantiated rumor. The old and wise Councilors became frantic and frightened. Evolution was understood by all, but evolution was slow and the massive Federation could adjust. Physical transcendence could happen instantly. A
person or a species could gain superiority. The current balance—some have called the condition “stasis”—was threatened. All sentient life might be terminated.

Councilors dispersed across the galaxy, fleeing home for consultation or consolation. This person did not, knowing that the change this person had sought had become change of another sort, but change nevertheless, and in change is the possibility of something better. Xifora share that with humans.

Xifora also share with humans a passion for transcendence. Not in the human way, for humans already believe they are a favored species, chosen for greatness, deserving of good fortune; while Xifora know that all life is a cosmic accident, an improbable joke, and that Xifora have been badly treated from Xifora’s earliest existence and must fight for everything. Somewhere, somehow, the universe owes Xifora transcendence.

Then came an intervention. This person was summoned to a meeting of soft-spoken aliens. What kind of aliens this person could not identify, for the aliens used distortion fields and translation devices to conceal their species. But the aliens made clear what this person had not yet suspected, that the Galactic Council was not the supreme legislators of the galaxy, or perhaps not the only supreme legislators, that other, unknown forces operated at a distance though perhaps even more effectively.

Whether economic, political, or religious, these forces acted with great decision and foresight. The aliens informed this person that the new religious fervor sweeping the galaxy could be a blessing or a threat. If true, transcendentalism could be the start of a new war that would destroy the galaxy, when one species achieved transcendence and tried to exert its superiority; or it could be the beginning of a new and greater Federation in which every species would achieve its own perfection and the galaxy would blossom with wealth, art, and goodwill. If untrue, transcendentalism could send the galaxy into a depression of disappointed expectations from which it might not emerge for millennia; or the concept of the new religion could be adopted by the proper authorities to set the galaxy on a path toward individual species betterment that would launch a new era of mutual aspiration and tolerance.

What transcendentalism is, the aliens said, must be discovered, and this person was ordered to find out, to join the pilgrimage, to determine if the Prophet was on board the ship, and to learn whether the Transcendental Machine was real and how it worked and to bring it back, or if this person could not do one of those things, to destroy the Prophet or the Machine before the Prophet or the Machine could be misused by the wrong persons or species.

This person reveals these truths now because the facts have become apparent: the Prophet is aboard the
Geoffrey
, although not revealed; and the Machine, therefore, may well be real; and other creatures aboard also have been commissioned by unknown powers—Jon and Jan, no doubt, and perhaps others. This person’s revelation may be doubted. Why should this person reveal this person’s mission? Reasons are many; the time for revelation is at hand. If this pilgrimage is to succeed, all must work for all.

And so, in full knowledge that this person was betraying Xidan’s trust and this person’s opportunity to seize greatness for this person and for Xifor, this person abandoned this person’s post without informing Xidan, found resources unexpectedly in this person’s accounts, and took passage for Terminal.

This person chose Terminal because of the direction of the Secret Power, but why did the many persons gathered here choose Terminal? This person will not recount the many difficulties this person had to overcome to reach the place from which this ship departed. All persons gathered here survived similar obstacles, and many others surely misread the signs and flocked elsewhere to wait for a ship that never came.

That would have been a proper fate for a Xifora.

The life of Sirians is dominated by their suns. Sirius is a hot, bluish-white star with a white-dwarf companion, and its planets are all gas giants except for a few rocky quasiplanets beyond the farthest giant’s orbit. The habitable worlds are all satellites, some of them larger than the planets of less dominant suns, and Komran is one of them. It revolves around the gas giant Sirians call Kilran.

Komran is the second-largest satellite of the fourth gas giant from the sun. As a satellite, it bakes in Sirius’s glare half a day and freezes in Kilran’s shadow for the other half, while Komran rotates a half-turn to bring each of its hemispheres alternately into the light and the shadow. Komran, then, is enslaved to Kilran but tyrannized by Sirius. Sirians must adjust to this complex climatic state.

Earth, I have learned, has a hot period of half a year over most of its surface followed by a cold period that lasts the other half. Komran has a summer and winter every day, a cycle moderated only by Kilran’s gravitational attraction, which Komran translates into internal warmth, and by planet-shine.

Life struggled to come into existence on Komran. Not only was life inhibited by temperature extremes, but the incessant movement of the world’s crust caused by Kilran’s constant push and pull trapped life-forms under falls of rock and surging seas, and the creatures that finally emerged were hardy and temperature-sensitive. They thrived for half a day in the warmth and shut down for half a day in the cold until, finally, they evolved more efficient mechanisms for controlling internal temperature in the form of their present beautiful radiating fins. It is this triumph of matter over energy that makes Sirians fierce competitors and even fiercer friends, and it is their unique planetary situation that makes Sirians special in the galaxy.

Sirians are live-born but immature, like larvae. They develop inside their fathers’ bodies for a period as long as they gestate inside their mothers. The maturing process, consuming special food stored for their nurturing during the mother’s gestation, is idyllic, and remembered by adults as the happy time when food was always available, when temperature was constant, and when there was no competition. It is this time that Sirians long to regain, that controls their lives and shapes their dreams.

For reasons that are beyond rational analysis, Sirians associate that dream with Sirius’s companion star. That white-dwarf sun is always assumed, never named. Although Sirius gave us birth, the companion gives us aspirations. To live in the feeble glow of its blessed rays is every Sirians’ consuming passion. But the companion star has no planets. Creation myths tell Sirians that our companion sun is the source of our existence, that it once was even larger than Sirius but was diminished by the nurturing of a group of worlds that were stolen away by his mate and given as satellites to the gas giants. In sorrow and dismay at the inevitable end of love, the companion sun at first became angry and red with rage, but weakened by the nurturing process and by the betrayal of its mate it collapsed into its present shrunken state, all life gone but a feeble glow.