Infinity's Shore (17 page)

“This would have been incredibly useful during our survey!”

“That's why I never showed it to you.”

Ling answered with a curt nod. Given their disagreement over the lightness of gene raiding, his attitude was understandable.

Finally, she closed the volume, stroking the cover. “I am honored by this gift. This
accomplishment.
I find I cannot grasp what it must have taken to create it, under these conditions, just the two of you.…”

“With the help of others, and standing on the shoulders of those who came before. It's how science works. Each generation's supposed to get better, adding to what earlier ones knew.…”

His voice trailed off as he realized what he was saying.

Progress? But that's Sara's apostasy, not mine!

Anyway, why am I so bitter? So what if alien diseases wipe out every sapient being on Jijo? Weren't you willing to see that as a blessing, a while ago? Didn't it seem an ideal way to swiftly end our illegal colony? A harmful invasion that should never have existed in the first place?

Over the course of Uthen's illness, Lark came to realize something—that death can sometimes seem desirable in abstract, but look quite different when it's in your path, up close and personal.

If Harullen the Heretic had lived, that purist might have helped Lark cling to his belief in Galactic law, which for good reason forbade settlements on fallow worlds.
It was our goal to atone for our ancestors' egotistical sin. To help rid Jijo of the infestation.

But Harullen was gone, sliced to bits by a Rothen robot, and now Lark grappled with doubts.

I'd rather Sara were right. If only I could see nobility here. Something worth enduring. Worth fighting for.

I don't really want to die.

Ling pored through the guidebook again. Better than most, she could appreciate the work he and Uthen spent their adult lives creating. Her professional esteem helped bridge the chasm of their personalities.

“I wish I had something of equal value to give you,” she said, meeting his eyes again.

Lark pondered.

“You really mean that?”

“Of course I do.”

“All right then, wait here. I'll be right back.”

At the rear of the shelter, the g'Kek physician indicated with twined eyestalks that Uthen's condition was unvaried. Good news, since each change till now had been for the worse. Lark stroked his friend's chitin carapace, wishing he could impart comfort through the gray's stupor.

“Is it my fault you caught this bug, old friend? I made you go with me into the station wreckage, rummaging for alien secrets.” He sighed. “I can't make up for that. But what's in your bag may help others.”

He lifted Uthen's private satchel and took it back to Ling. Reaching inside, he felt several slablike objects, cool to the touch.

“Earlier, we found something that you might help me learn to read. If you meant your promise.”

He put one of the flat lozenges in her hand—pale brown and smooth as glass, with a spiral shape etched on each face.

Ling stared at it for several duras. When she looked up, there was something new in her countenance. Was it respect for the way he had cornered her? Trapping her with the one other trait they shared—a compelling sense of honor?

For the first time since they met, Ling's eyes seemed to concede that she was dealing with an equal.

Asx

C
ALM DOWN, MY RINGS. NO ONE CAN FORCE YOU to stroke wax against your will.

As traeki we are each of us sovereign, free not to recall intolerable memories before we are ready.

Let the wax cool a little longer
—a majority of rings demands—
before we dare look again.

Let the most recent terror wait.

But our second cognition ring demurs. It insists—we/i should delay no longer confronting the dread news about Jophur, our terrible cousins, arriving on Jijo.

Our second ring of cognition reminds us of the Quandary of Solipsism—the riddle that provoked our traeki founders to flee the Five Galaxies.

Solipsism.
The myth of the all-important self.

Most mortal sapient beings hold this conceit, at one level or another. An individual can perceive others by sight, touch, and empathy, yet still reckon them as mere figments or automatons. Caricatures, of little importance.

Under solipsism, the world exists for each solitary individualist.

Examined dispassionately, it seems an insane concept. Especially to a traeki, since none of us can thrive or think alone. Yet egotism can also be useful to ambitious creatures, driving their single-minded pursuit of success.

Madness seems essential in order to be “great.”

Terran sages knew this paradox from their long isolation. Ignorant and lonely, humans wallowed in one bizarre superstition after another, frantically trying concepts that no uplifted species would consider for even a dura. According to wolfling tales, humans wrestled endlessly with their own overpowering egos.

Some tried
suppressing
selfness, seeking detachment. Others subsumed personal ambition in favor of a greater whole—family, religion, or a leader.

Later they passed through a phase in which individualism was extolled as the highest virtue, teaching their young to inflate the ego beyond all natural limits or restraint. Works from this mad
era of the self
are found in the Biblos Archive, with righteous, preening rage flowing across every page.

Finally, Just before contact, there emerged another approach.

Some of their texts use the word
maturity.

We traeki—newly uplifted from the pensive swamps of our homeworld—seemed safe from achieving greatness, no matter how many skills our patrons, the blessed Poa, inserted in our rings. Oh, we found it pleasant to merge in tall, wise stacks. To gather learned wax and travel the stars. But to our patrons' frustration, we never found appealing the fractious rivalries that churn the Five Galaxies. Frantic aspiration and zeal always seemed pointless to our kind.

Then the Poa brought in experts. The
Oailie.

The Oailie pitied our handicap. With great skill, they gave us tools for achievement. For greatness.

The Oailie gave us new rings—

Rings of power.

Rings of self-centered glory.

Rings that turned mere traeki into
Jophur.

Too late, we and the Poa learned a lesson—that ambition comes at a cost.

We fled, did we not, my rings?

By a fluke, some traeki managed to shuck these Oailie “gifts,” and escape.

Only a few wax-crystal remembrance cells survive from those days. Memories laced with dread of what we were becoming.

At the time, our ancestors saw no choice but flight.

And yet … a pang of conscience trickles through our inner core.

Might there have been another way?

Might we have stayed and fought somehow to tame those awesome new rings? Futile as our forebears' exodus now seems … was it also
wrong?

Since joining the High Sages, this traeki Asx has pored over Terran books, studying their lonely, epochal struggle—a poignant campaign to control their own deeply solipsistic natures. A labor still under way when they emerged from Earth's cradle to make contact with Galactic civilization.

The results of that Asx investigation remain inconclusive, yet i/we found tantalizing clues.

The fundamental ingredient, it seems, is courage.

Yes, my rings?

Very well then. A majority has been persuaded by the second ring of cognition.

We/i shall once again turn to the hot-new-dreadful waxy trail of recent memory.

Glistening cones stared down at the confused onlookers who remained, milling on the despoiled glade. From a balcony high a-flank the mountain ship, polished stacks of fatty rings dripped luxuriously as they regarded teeming savages below—we enthralled members of six exile races.

Shifting colors play across their plump toruses—shades of rapid disputation. Even at a great distance, i/we sense controversy raging among the mighty Jophur, as they quarrel among themselves. Debating our fate.

Events interrupt, even as our dribbling thought-streams converge.

Near.

At last we have come very near the recent. The present.

Can you sense it, my rings? The moment when our dreadful cousins finished arguing what to do about us? Amid the flashing rancor of their debate, there suddenly appeared forceful decisiveness. Those in command—powerful ring stacks whose authority is paramount—made their decree with stunning confidence.

Such assuredness! Such certainty! It washed over us, even from six arrowflights away.

Then something else poured from the mighty dreadnought.

Hatchet blades of infernal light.

Emerson