“Don’t judge from a single example,” the older Dornaani almost snapped. “You should see my rooms. The latest in environmental controls and medical monitors. Speaking of which, the human’s dermis is emitting droplets. Is he ill?”
Riordan shook his head and tugged open his duty suit’s smart collar. “Not ill, Thlunroolt. Just hot.”
“But the droplets?”
“Perspiration. It’s our primary way of shedding heat, cooling our skin.”
“Ah. Yes. Now I remember. It has been a long time since I observed humans.”
You observed humans? Riordan’s interest in the conversation increased sharply, although not as fast as the room’s humidity.
The older Dornaani sat and, in one smooth motion, laid aside his stick, rolled on to his belly, and slid into the pool. He emerged on the far side, where he removed lids from two earthenware containers. He did not exactly wade back to his guests; his progress was more akin to a swimming walk.
Thlunroolt laid the containers down between Riordan and Alnduul. “I chose juices that will suit a human palate and biochemistry.” The lower margin of his eyelids wrinkled. “Or so I believe.”
Riordan hoped his concluding tone was mischievous, but was not entirely sure.
“You looked alarmed, human. Do not be so. If the juices do not agree with you, my medical resources are as excellent as I have claimed, even for an exosapient such as yourself.” Thlunroolt’s mouth may have twisted slightly. “You may rest assured that the technological pedigree of our local services is well above those you might associate with your current surroundings.”
He noted Riordan’s renewed attention to the patches and tattoos on his body, tapped the meandering path of circular and oval objects that began on his arms and wandered down his lean, seamed flanks. “These are dosing appliques for life-prolongation. The modalities vary: retroviruses that induce gradual modifications of key organs for greater durability and vigor, stimulation of hunter-killer phages that detect and consume cells poised for faulty replication, and rejuvenatory stimulants for the immune and cellular replacement systems.”
Riordan leaned forward. “How long do Dornaani live?”
Thlunroolt’s gills flittered shut. “How long do humans live? The answer to any such question depends upon many variables. Modern Dornaani that are reasonably healthy and prudent have natural lifespans of one hundred fifty to one hundred seventy Terran years. This is the unaided maximum for our species, achieved after millennia of grooming our genes both to remove weaknesses and amplify our body’s capacity for self-rejuvenation. With gene therapy such as mine and, at need, cloned replacement organs, we can live as long as three hundred fifty to four hundred fifty years.”
He moved a finger so it rested upon one of his tattoos. “I see you have also noticed these permanent markings. They are not what you call ‘body art.’ For those of us who elect to wear such markings, they declare our ideology-affinity matrix. I am familiar enough with human facial expressions to see that you have misunderstood. These are not analogous to your race’s ritual markings of group or tribal allegiance. These”—he ran his long fingers from armpit to waist—“record my heritage, deeds, and choices, including matrices that signify my preferred epistemological and ontological methodologies and the philosophical and cosmological postures they have led me to adopt.” He paused, burbled through the crooked line of his mouth. “Be at ease, human; I do not expect you to understand.”
Riordan smiled. “But I think I do. They are a public statement of the biographical and intellectual factors that have given rise to both your concrete world view and metaphysical outlook.” Riordan took a breath. “More or less.”
Thlunroolt’s mouth straightened into a rigid line; his eyelids nictated so quickly that Riordan barely saw it. “That is an adequate perception. If crude.”
Alnduul lowered his head, possibly in an attempt to conceal a wry twist of his mouth.
Thlunroolt was still staring at Caine. Without warning, he exited the pool in a single bound. “Have you had sufficient refreshment?”
“I, um—”
“Excellent. Follow me. There is much to see.” Winding himself into a modern environmental wrap that he snatched from a gnarled, fibrous hook beside the door, he exited without looking back.
Riordan looked after him, then at Alnduul. “Eccentric,” he muttered.
“Unique,” Alnduul corrected.
Chapter Nineteen
APRIL 2124
ROOAIOO’Q, BD +66 582
After three hundred meters, the dense cover—mostly goldenrod trees and five-meter tall clusters of Day-Glo green tubules—began thinning.
“Silence, now,” Thlunroolt murmured, even though none of them had uttered a single word during their walk.
They emerged into a glade dominated by an almost perfectly oval pond, hemmed in on three sides by trees. The fourth side was a sand-and-scree shore, beyond which the roofs of primitive structures were visible. Several Dornaani were standing near the water, two of adult height, the remainder considerably shorter and thinner in build. The young had vestigial fins along their spines, their arms, and the top of their heads. They were staring fixedly toward what was, from Riordan’s perspective, the right-hand bank.
Thlunroolt gestured to the general scene. “A breeding pool. There are shallows on both the right- and left-hand shores. The direction in which the younglings are looking is the bank where the spawn shall begin their crossing. The opposite bank is where they shall complete it.”
Riordan looked at the latter side more closely. “It’s higher, and there’s more overhanging vegetation. Is that chance?” He peripherally spied Thlunroolt glance at Alnduul once again, whose only reaction was another wry look.
Thlunroolt rested on his walking stick. “You have keen eyes, human. The bank along the shallows to the left is notched by small inlets. Those are the First Calling grottos.”
“First Calling?”
“Mature Dornaani quickeners—you would inaccurately call them ‘males’—shall be in those shallows when the newly hatched young swim across. The quickeners’ aquatic movements reprise the basic kinesthetics of their respective Callings. The younglings who complete the crossing gravitate to one of those grottos based on the pattern of motion they find most pleasing or congenial to their sensibilities. That determines much of their initial mentorship.” He stared out at the pond. “At least, it does here.”
Riordan waited before asking, “And elsewhere?”
Thlunroolt stared up into the sky. “Elsewhere, these ways have been forgotten. They are too troublesome to preserve, or even replicate. New fertilizations are now so rare that they must be arranged in advance.”
Riordan frowned. “But there must still be some need for them. Otherwise, your race would have died out. Wouldn’t it?”
Thlunroolt met his eyes. “Over eighty percent of all Dornaani reproduction is now fully artificial. Reasons vary, but since we do not have families such as you conceive them, natural reproduction has become either a distinctive choice or merely a curiosity for primitivists. Our species’ replacement rate dropped into negative integers several thousand years ago.” He stirred the water slowly with his walking stick. “Very few of us remain truly active. This diminishes the personal affiliations and social networks that sustain a species, keep it evolving, growing.”
Caine hardly knew what to say after such a melancholy summation. He leaned back, inhaled deeply. The lily scent was particularly strong here. The glade was calm, but not completely silent; the sound of animals, of wind, of water created a natural soundtrack to go along with the serenity of the place. Riordan sighed. “I certainly didn’t expect to find this on my first visit to a Dornaani world.”
“Oh?” Thlunroolt’s stick trailed agitated bubbles. “And what did you expect?”
“I suppose I envisioned sleek machines, busy cities.”
The stick stopped making slow circles in the water. “You are disappointed?”
&nb
sp; Caine shook his head. “No, just surprised. I didn’t expect visits to sites of natural beauty.” He paused. “It’s reassuring.”
“Reassuring? In what way?”
Riordan drew another deep breath. “It’s easy to imagine that when a race achieves the level of technology, of mastery, that you have, that it might forget the importance of”—he waved his hand at the pastoral scene—“all this. It’s nice to discover that Dornaani still appreciate it.”
Thlunroolt’s stick started tracing slow, watery circles again. “I must disabuse you of your optimistic impressions, human. Do not expect to find such a place on our other worlds. Those of us on Rooaioo’q have made a very conscious and costly decision to live this part of our lives, the propagation of our species, in keeping with our biological origins and cultural roots.” He withdrew his stick from the pond. “Rooaioo’q is not known for serenity, human. We are known for being intentionally simple. In all the least flattering intimations of that term.”
“As in simple-witted?”
Thlunroolt moved away from the water’s edge. “We have been called far worse. But enough of that. Alnduul, you and this human will be housed near here so that we may—” He stopped as if struck. The old Dornaani’s eyes narrowed, focused on something over Riordan’s shoulder.
Caine turned.
Irzhresht had appeared where the narrow trail widened into the glade. Her limbs sagged; her breathing was labored. “Alnduul, if you mean to return to the Olsloov, we must—”
“You should not be down here at all,” Thlunroolt articulated with great formality. “It is unhealthy for you. And very possibly, for us.”
Irzhresht’s eyes opened very wide, rims quivering. Her markings and mottled stripes darkened, became maroon-mauve.
Alnduul walked to her quickly. “I thank you for bringing this message to me personally, Irzhresht.”
“I had no choice. Someone on the planet has blocked communications.”
Alnduul met her gaze steadily. “I understand. Return. Wait for me.”
“I shall.” Irzhresht backed out of the glade. Riordan had the strong impression that she kept her face toward Thlunroolt out of caution, not respect.
Alnduul turned back to the older Dornaani after the sounds of Irzhresht’s retreating footsteps faded. They stared at each other for at least ten seconds. If Riordan had any place else to be, he would have headed there in an instant.
“You cannot trust lojis.” Thlunroolt’s utterance was more raw than any Caine had heard emerge from a Dornaani. He was not sure whether it had been directed at Alnduul or at him.
Alnduul gestured toward Caine with one hand, spiked the fingers of the other down toward Thlunroolt’s spatulate feet. “You would put a guest in so awkward a position? He has no—”
“No what? No need to know the truth, that our race is split down the middle? That any overture from a loji may be an invitation to treachery, to doom?” Thlunroolt turned toward Riordan. “Would you not say the same of the Ktor, even though they too are human?”
“I—I don’t know.” When Caine had begun his journey to the Collective, he thought he’d anticipated almost every path a conversation there might take. Now he was struggling to find any words at all. “We’ve only met a few Ktor. There might be others who are less predatory, less obsessed with conquest and dominion. And to presume that we know the entirety of their society from those few we’ve met would be—”
“Racism? And do you believe that is the basis of my reaction?”
Before Alnduul could intervene, Riordan answered. “Isn’t it?”
Thlunroolt became very still. At first, Riordan suspected that, like Irzhresht, he had become persona non grata. But when the old Dornaani resumed speaking, his voice was calm. “No, my reaction does not arise from racism. Not as you mean it. I do not care about the shape of the loji. But I do care about what causes that shape.”
He waved a warding hand as Alnduul stepped closer. “Do not interrupt. You will travel with Riordan for many months, so you will have many opportunities to make your many rebuttals.”
The old Dornaani turned toward Caine, approached to within arm’s reach. “The loji consider green worlds pestilential affectations, objects of senile nostalgia. They are born, live, and die on rotating space habitats they call rings. They have done so for thousands of generations and pride themselves on having no need of help, either from each other or the rest of our species.
“They are organized into guilds or associations that you would call gangs or tribes. But the aspirations of your world’s criminal collectives are paltry in comparison to the near-universal desire of lojis: to live in a universe purged of all creatures that require green worlds in order to exist.”
Thlunroolt held up a hand in response to Riordan’s startled blink. “Do not take my word for this, human. Rather, when you return to Olsloov, ask Irzhresht what her tattoos mean. At the very least, you will discover that they are badges of allegiance, conferred only after blood oaths—or acts.”
Caine found himself leaning away from the agitated old Dornaani. “Loji society: is that what the Dornaani were like, earlier in your evolution?”
Thlunroolt pounded the end of his stick into the ground. “No! The opposite! The loji have not slid backward. They have jumped forward into a devolution, a darkness, of their own conception and creation. In our primitive state, there was no room for, and no thought of, such internecine violence, such horrible rites of passage, of survival.”
Riordan frowned. “What do you mean, rites of survival?”
Alnduul looked away.
Thlunroolt placed both hands firmly upon the top of his walking stick. “The loji rings are utterly sterile: artificial complexes with little gravity, no germs, no diseases, and no greenery, not even hydroponics. Is it any surprise, then, that they themselves have become almost completely sterile? And when they do breed, shall I tell you what they have in place of this?” He gestured toward the breeding pool and its bucolic surroundings, did not wait for Caine’s encouragement to continue his tale.
“In the water behind me, there are small but ravenous pisciforms. They have, since time beyond reckoning, culled our spawn as they emerge from their eggs. However, these pisciforms cannot survive in a low gee environment. Furthermore, the loji consider them ‘extraneous’: unnecessary biota and thus, expendable.”
Riordan was careful to bring Thlunroolt back to his original point slowly, calmly. “You mentioned a rite of survival?”
Thlunroolt kneaded the head of his walking stick. “The rite is an outgrowth of their inability to breed, to cull, naturally.” Thlunroolt’s lids nictated rapidly, quivered. “They use their own younglings, still half-feral, to hunt the spawn. To devour their own kind. They starve the younglings for days, just to ensure that they become kinslayers even before they can speak.” He glared at Alnduul. “Am I exaggerating?”
Caine was horrified to witness his friend look away again. He turned back toward Thlunroolt. “But don’t you—even the lojis—have laws against murder?”
“Spawn are not deemed persons until they exit the far side of the pool, so their death cannot be deemed murder. But that does not mean we cherish them any less. They are our future and so, during the culling, we must actively resist our ancient instinct to aid them. However, the loji, in their rings of spinning metal and rolling cylinders of rock, are relentlessly trained to acquire different instincts. Brutal instincts.”
Alnduul’s voice was gentle. “Not all loji who come to maturity in those places are endued with their ways.”
Thlunroolt raised a single accepting finger. “True, but how can we ever be sure which loji those are? How may we reliably distinguish the hidden predators from those who come to the Collective to legitimately seek their way in our society?”
Alnduul backed away. “I have no answer to your queries. And now I must leave.”
“You mean to depart with the loji?”
“I do. She sensed your rejection.”
&
nbsp; “Yes. And so?”
“And so, I would be a poor mentor if I took any action that she could construe to mean that I share your opinion of her. So to show solidarity, I must accompany her back to Olsloov.” Alnduul glanced at Caine. “If you are not comfortable in this place, you should return with me now. I will make planetfall again tomorrow.”
Riordan wanted to be back in his cabin on Olsloov, to get away from the ghastly nightmare images that the old Dornaani had painted. But he also sensed that there was much more to be learned from Thlunroolt, some of which might prove useful as Caine’s journey toward Elena took him deeper into the Collective. “No. I’ll stay.”
Alnduul’s eyelids cycled once. Then he slid into the spread-hands posture of both greeting and farewell. “Enlightenment unto you both.”
Thlunroolt returned an abbreviated version of the gesture, muttered the same mantra. He watched Alnduul walk away, burbled fitfully.
Riordan watched along with him. “You do not agree with his reasons for leaving?”
The seamed old Dornaani’s dental shearing plates grated together: an irritated sound. “In fact, I do agree with his reasons. Once one has accepted the role of mentor, one must be extraordinarily scrupulous in such matters. My disagreement is with his choice of postulant. But, as your colloquialism has it, that is spilt milk under the bridge.”
It took Riordan a moment to decipher the perverse amalgam of human colloquialisms. It had evidently been a very long time since Thlunroolt observed humans. “You and Alnduul seem to know each other quite well.”
Thlunroolt gestured for Riordan to follow him back up the trail. “We should. I was his mentor.” Noticing Caine’s surprise, he shook the fingers of one hand loosely, dismissing the topic. “Surely you guessed that. No? Well, you will understand us, and our ways, much better after tomorrow.”
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