Infinity's Shore (24 page)

Ling seemed ready to accept that her immediate boss might be criminal or insane, but with bulwarks of logic she defended her patron race. Lark had mixed feelings about demolishing such faith. He, too, had his heresies.

“I'm sorry, Ling, but my scenario still stands.

“Your first point only has validity
if it is true that the Rothen are our patrons.
I know that's the central premise around which you were raised, but believing does not make it so. You admit your people, the Daniks, are small in number, live on an isolated outpost, and see just a few Rothen. Putting aside mythic fables about ancient visitors and Egyptian pyramids, all you really have is their word regarding a supposed relationship with our race. One that may simply be a hoax.

“As for your second point, just look back at the way events unfolded. Ro-kenn surely knew he was being sketched when he emerged that evening, using his charisma
on the crowd and planting seeds of dissension. After living so long together, all six races are affected by each other's standards of beauty, and the Rothen were indeed beautiful!

“Ro-kenn may even have known we had the ability to etch our drawings onto durable plates. Later, when he saw Bloor's
first
set of photographic images, he hardly batted an eye. Oh, he pretended to dicker with the sages, but you and I could both tell he was unafraid of the ‘proof' being used to blackmail him. He was only buying time till the ship returned. And it might have worked—if Bloor hadn't uncovered and recorded Ro-pol's corpse, bare and unmasked.
That's
when Ro-kenn went hysterically murderous, ordering a massacre!”

“I know.” Ling shook her head. “It was madness. But you must understand. Disturbing the dead is very serious. It must have pushed him over the edge—”

“Over the edge, my left hind hoof! He knew exactly what he was doing. Think, Ling. Suppose someday Institute observers see photos showing humans,
and a bunch of very humanlike beings nobody ever heard of
, committing crimes on Jijo. Could such crude pictures ever really implicate the Rothen?

“Perhaps they might,
if that's what Rothen looked like.
But till Bloor shot Ro-pol's naked face, our crude images posed no threat to Rothen security. Because in a century or two those facial disguise symbionts won't exist anymore, and no one alive will know that Rothen ever looked like that.”

“What are you talking about? Every Danik grows up seeing Rothen as they appear with symbionts on. Obviously there will be people around who know …”

Her voice faded. She stared at Lark, unblinking. “You can't mean—”

“Why not? After long association with your people, I'm sure they've acquired the necessary means. Once humans are of no further use as front men for their schemes, your ‘patrons' will simply use a wide spectrum of tailored viruses to wipe out every Danik, just as they planned to eliminate humans on Jijo.

“For that matter, once they've tested it on both our peoples, they'll be in a good position to sell such a weapon to Earth's enemies. After all, once our race goes extinct, who will protest our innocence? Who will bother to look for other suspects in a series of petty felonies that were committed, all over the Five Galaxies, by groups of bipeds looking a lot like—”

“Enough!” Ling shouted, standing suddenly, spilling gold cocoons from her lap. She backed away, hyperventilating.

Unrelenting, he stood and followed.

“I've thought about little else since we left the Glade. And it all makes sense. Even down to the way the Rothen won't let your kind use neural taps.”

“I told you before. It's forbidden because the taps might drive us mad!”

“Really? Why do the Rothen themselves have them? Because they're more highly evolved?” Lark snorted. “Anyway, I hear that nowadays humans
elsewhere
use them effectively.”

“How do you know what humans elsewhere—”

Lark hurriedly cut her off.

“The truth is, the Rothen can't risk letting their pet humans make direct mind-computer links, because someday one of you Daniks might bypass sanitized consoles, draw on the Great Library directly, and figure out how you've been pawns—”

Ling backed away another pace. “Please, Lark … I don't want to do this anymore.”

He felt an impulse to stop, to take pity. But he quashed it. This had to come out, all of it.

“I must admit it's quite a scam, using humans as front men for gene theft and other crimes. Even two centuries ago, when the
Tabernacle
departed, our race had a vile reputation as one of the lowest-ranking citizen tribes in the Five Galaxies. So-called
wolflings
, with no ancient clan to stand up for us. If anybody gets caught, we'll make perfect patsies. The Rothen scheme is clever. The real question is, why would any humans let themselves be used that way?

“History may hold the answer, Ling. According to our texts, humans suffered from a major inferiority complex at
the time of contact, when our primitive canoe-spacecraft stumbled onto a towering civilization of star gods. Your ancestors and mine chose different ways of dealing with the complex, each of them grasping at straws, seeking any excuse for hope.

“The
Tabernacle
colonists dreamed of escaping to some place out of sight of bureaucrats and mighty Galactic clans—a place to breed freely and fulfill the old romance of colonizing a frontier. In contrast, your Danik forebears rushed to embrace a tall tale they were told by a band of smooth talkers. A flattering fable that indulged their wounded pride, promising a grand
destiny
for certain chosen humans and their descendants … providing they did exactly as they were told. Even if it meant raising their children to be shills and sneak thieves in service to a pack of galactic gangsters.”

Tremors rocked Ling as she held up one hand, palm out, at the end of a rigid arm, as if trying physically to stave off any more words.

“I asked … you to stop,” she repeated, and seemed to have trouble breathing. Pain melted her face.

Now Lark did shut up. He had gone too far, even in the name of truth. Raggedly, trying to maintain some remnant of her dignity, Ling swiveled and strode off to the acrid lake that lay below a boulder field of tumbled Buyur ruins.

Does anybody like having their treasured worldview torn away?
Lark mused, watching Ling hurl stones into the caustic pond.
Most of us would reject all the proof in the cosmos before considering that our own beliefs might be wrong.

But the scientist in her won't let her dismiss evidence so easily. She has to face facts, like them or not.

The habit of truth is hard to learn, and a mixed blessing. It leaves no refuge when a new truth comes along that hurts.

Lark knew his feelings were hardly a testament to clarity. Anger roiled, mixed with shame that he could not hold on to the purity of his own convictions. There was childish satisfaction from upsetting Ling's former smug superiority … and chagrin at finding such a motive smoldering inside.
Lark enjoyed being right, though it might be better, this time, if he turned out to be wrong.

Just when I had her respecting me as an equal, and maybe starting to like me, that's when I have to go stomping through her life, smashing idols she was raised to worship, showing off the bloodstained hands of her gods.

You may win an argument, boy. You may even convince her. But could anyone fully forgive you for doing something like that?

He shook his head over how much he might have just thrown away, all for the torrid pleasure of harsh honesty.

Ewasx

D
O NOT BE AFRAID, MY LESSER PARTS.

The sensations you feel may seem like coercive pain, but they convey a kind of
love
that will grow dear to you, with time. I am part of you now, one with you. I will never do anything to cause us harm, so long as this alliance serves a function.

Go ahead, stroke the wax if you wish, for the old ways of memory still have lesser uses (so long as they serve My purpose). Play over recent images so we may recall together events leading to our new union. Re-create the scene perceived by
Asx
, staring up in awe, watching the great Jophur warship,
Polkjhy
, swoop from the sky, taking the pirates captive, then landing in this tortured valley. Poor, loosely joined, scatterbrained Asx—did you/we not stare in tremulous fear?

Yes, I can stroke another driving motivation. One that kept you admirably unified, despite swirling dread. It was a cloying sense of
duty.
Duty to the not-self community of half beings you call the Commons.

As Asx, your stack planned to speak for the Commons. Asx expected to face star-traveling humans, along with creatures known as “Rothen.” But then
Jophur
forms were seen through our ship ports!

After some hesitation, did you not turn at last and try to flee?

How
slow
this stack was before the change! When knives of fire lanced forth from this mighty vessel, how did you react to the maelstrom of destruction? To hot ravening beams that tore through wood, stone, and flesh, but always spared this pile of aged rings? Had you then possessed the bright new running legs we now wear, you might have thrown yourselves into that roaring calamity. But Asx was slow, too slow even to shelter nearby comrades with its traeki bulk.

All died, except this stack.

ARE YOU NOT PROUD?

The
next
ray from the ship seized this multistriped cone, lifting it into the night air, sweeping the fatty rings toward doors that gaped to receive them.

Oh, how well Asx spoke then, despite the confusion! With surprising coherence for a stack without a master, tapping waxy streaks of eloquence, Asx pleaded, cajoled, and reasoned with the enigmatic creatures who peered from behind glaring lights.

Finally, these beings glided forward. The starship's hold filled with Asx's ventings of horrified dread.

How unified you were, My rings! The testimony of the wax is clear. At that moment, you were one as never before.

United in shared dismay to see those cousin toroids your ancestors sought to escape, many cycles ago.

We Jophur
, the mighty and fulfilled.

Dwer