Last Shadow (9781250252135)

by Card, Orson Scott

  “Don’t hope,” said Ruqyaq. “They’re never going to mate with you. Because if we’re still human enough to mate with people like you, we’re far too human.”

  Blue blushed and laughed, and Sprout laughed too. The Yachachiyruna of this world lived on two different continents, and used boats to pass between them. One of the continents was dominated by the fast-growing human colony and the Formics and pequeninos who dwelt alongside them. Another continent was given to ravens, whom the Yachachiyruna sometimes visited. And this third continent was where the Yachachiyruna mined for metals and coal, and made their factories on the leeward coast, where the prevailing winds would usually carry away the smoke of manufacture.

  “This is our Earth,” Ruqyaq had once told Sprout. “Nest was merely a training ground, where we learned our science and engineering and languages. But here, we can become one nation and then several nations and perhaps many nations, with languages developing freely. Here we can have a history of our own.”

  Sprout wished that he could believe that humans and Yachachiyruna would always get along and respect each other’s borders, but he knew too much of history to have much real hope of it.

  “I have a tale, a brief tale, to begin with today,” said Ruqyaq.

  Everyone fell silent.

  “It’s a story of two brothers, who were kidnapped away from their father when they were little, and raised in a metal cave for many years. But their mother was with them, and taught them to be kind to each other, and kind to other children trapped in the cave.

  “The brothers were curious about the worlds where people lived under the open sky and felt sunlight and warmth on their skin in the day, and grew cold in the winter. And one day they were magically taken from the cave and placed in a world where they had never been before. There were strange magical creatures there, and also there were diseases that had once threatened to kill everybody. And there was a strange kingdom full of perils but also wonders, like talking birds and creatures who swung in trees and had hands for feet.”

  Sprout didn’t understand why Ruqyaq was telling a story that was obviously about Sprout and Blue. But he could see that Blue was enthralled, so he said nothing; and besides, why would Sprout want to interfere with a master storyteller?

  “I wish I could tell you,” Ruqyaq continued, “that the brothers were able to slay the enemies of their people and save their family from danger, but that would be a lie. They fought alongside their comrades and they were brave and clever, so when the victory came, they had earned their place in the triumph. But it is not the story of that war that I wish to tell.

  “Instead, the first time the older brother visited the strange kingdom, he was set upon by some of the magical birds, who tormented him and came close to slaying him. But with remarkable courage, he refused to fight with them. None of the birds came to harm at his hands, and finally they gave up trying to kill him, and gave him great honor, as a powerful foe who refused to flee but also refused to fight. Not one of the birds had suffered any harm from him, even though he had suffered much harm from them.

  “So the birds led him to a feeble old wizard, who had almost no magic, but who had some tales to tell. And the wizard told the older brother the story of his people and many other things about the strange magical kingdom.

  “In time, the brothers and their friends decided to leave the magical kingdom forever, because there could never be trust and peace between them. But the older brother remembered the feeble old wizard, and the birds whose respect he had earned, so when he went back to the world he had come from, he took with him all the people of the old wizard who wanted to come, and all the magical birds who wanted to come, and he gave them lands where they could be safe.

  “And in all of this, his younger brother was in complete agreement, for when the feeble old wizard met the younger brother, he learned that the older brother had told him everything, so it was as if the younger brother was not a stranger at all. He already knew and loved the magical birds, and he already knew the feeble old wizard’s stories so well he could tell them all himself.

  “That is why, whenever the brothers visited the lands they had given to the birds and the wizard, they were received as kinsmen, as providers, as fathers to the people of these lands, for they had been saved and brought out of captivity into a land rich in fruits and nuts, in seeds and insects, in soil that could grow crops and rocks where metals could be mined. Everything was owed to these brothers, and songs were sung about them in all the languages of the birds. The end.”

  The other Yachachiyruna gave the grunting sounds that were their version of applause, and the ravens also made approving sounds.

  “What did you think of my story?” asked Ruqyaq.

  “I think you gave the brothers credit for far more than was in their power to do,” said Sprout.

  “You are mistaken,” said Ruqyaq, “for if you had not listened to my story and told a believable version of it to the other Travelers, we would not have been transported to the freedom and plenty we now enjoy.”

  Sprout gave it a little thought and realized that Ruqyaq was right, at least to a degree. The vids of Sprout’s experience with the kea and with Ruqyaq had been a vital part of the descolada project’s understanding of the peoples of Nest, and even though it was Jane who had done all the transporting, she was responding to the desire of Sprout’s heart, to save his wonderful new friends from the dire enemy that had already slain so many keas.

  “It was a good story,” said Blue. “I hope to live such a life as to make it true.”

  Ruqyaq laughed at him. “How I wish you could swing through the trees with me! It’s so exhilarating, like flying and yet always close to the earth, with the smells of life all around.”

  “I wish I could, too,” said Blue. “But I’m not foolish enough to climb a tree and try to keep up with you.”

  “I know,” said Ruqyaq. “You would certainly fall and die or be crippled, and that would take all the pleasure out of it for me.”

  “And for us,” added Sprout.

  “Unless being dead is very pleasant,” said Ruqyaq. “That’s a tale I can’t tell, because nobody has come back to report on it.”

  “You said this was the first story,” said Sprout. “Do you have another?”

  “It’s not really a tale,” said Ruqyaq, “because it’s both true and not very interesting.”

  “True stories are best,” said Blue. “Even if they’re not designed to be entertaining.”

  Sprout was proud of his brother, now that they were both becoming men. As in the story, he was glad that the two brothers were close, so that what happened to one might as well have happened to the other.

  Ruqyaq changed branches, so that now his feet were touching the ground as he sat on the branch. “I need my feet connected to the soil for this story. It’s about the makers of the Yachachiyruna.”

  “About how they made you?” asked Blue.

  “Only at the end,” said Ruqyaq. “I must tell you why they became the people who could make us out of themselves.”

  A silence fell upon the clearing.

  “They lived among the high mountains, our ancestors, who spoke the holy languages of Quechua and Aymara.”

  “And Guaraní,” murmured one of the Yachachiyruna.

  “Keep silence,” said another.

  “There was nobody among the Huapaya who spoke Guaraní,” said yet another.

  “Should have been,” said the first.

  “Are we done with old and pointless disputes?” asked Ruqyaq.

  His fellow Yachachiyruna muttered apologies and fell silent.

  “I will call them the mountain people,” said Ruqyaq. “Nobody in the wide world knew they existed, except tribes that lived in the jungles to the north and east, or along the seashore where they fished for their food. But in this isolated place, with no one to teach them, they taught themselves.

  “There was a plant that had no real use, except that it formed little knobs of har
d flesh underground. And now and then, in times of famine, some of the mountain people would dig up one of these knobs and try to eat it. It was hard to eat and had an unpleasant flavor when they ate it raw. And if they washed it before boiling it or roasting it, the people who ate it became very sick.

  “They learned that they could roast it and eat it as long as they left the dirt on the skin of the knobs, for the dirt apparently contained the antidote for the poisons.

  “They became so skilled with the preparation of these little knobby roots that the knobs became an important source of food for the mountain people even when there was no famine. They began to plant them, and nurture them, and by choosing which of the knobs to replant and nurture, they made the roots more delicious and less poisonous.

  “This shows that already the mountain people understood how to genetically alter a living thing by selective breeding. And they didn’t confine this skill to the potatoes which became their gift to the whole world. There was another plant, related to the potato vine, that produced tiny red berries that were tart and sweet and delicious. The berries could be collected together and crushed and boiled to make a sauce, and the mountain people began to breed them to give more and more berries, and bigger and bigger ones.

  “The cultivation of these berries became widespread, and when they reached another people far to the north, they carried the breeding even farther, because these people did understand breeding, but they did not realize that there is a time to stop making changes. This is why they took a perfectly fine little cereal grain and bred it larger and larger until the grain grew into huge cobs covered with massive grains. The yield per hectare of ground was great, and by drying and grinding these huge grains they could feed large populations in every season, so they were very pleased with themselves.

  “But when they got their hands on the berries that the mountain people had bred, they did the same ridiculous thing—they grew the berries to be big fat fruits, and all the delicacy and beauty was gone.

  “The mountain people, though, remembered to keep all things in proportion. The desert people from the north gave the world maize, and it was a good gift, ugly as the giant cobs had become. The mountain people gave the world potatoes, the most complete and nutritious crop ever grown on Earth. And both peoples created tomatoes. The mountain people made them sweet and juicy. The desert people made them huge.

  “Did the world thank the mountain people? Of course not. They were enslaved and oppressed. But they kept alive the heart of the mountains, and when the day came that they could go out into space, they became once again great miners and hewers and builders, and they also became great breeders, though now they chose to be breeders of birds.

  “Some of them had befriended and studied ravens and keas, because they were the smartest of all birds, smarter than any of the other animals that humans had worked with. The Huapaya kept breeding them carefully, to be smarter and smarter, until the ravens understood human speech and grasped the way the humans were breeding them.

  “At that point, when the Huapaya fled the realms of Earth to escape an invading enemy, the ravens took over their own breeding, until all the ravens could understand human speech and many could speak it. They learned to operate machines that the humans made for them, until at last the ravens, and to a degree the keas, became sentient beings, equal partners with the humans, equally entitled to freedom and prosperity, equally capable of acting cooperatively to improve everyone’s lives.

  “But in the spaceship, the mountain people did as the ravens did—they bred themselves. They had enough science to alter their own genes directly, so they could create a race of humans who no longer had flat feet, but could grasp with four hands, and swing through null-gravity environments, and grip both tools and the pipes and beams that they clung to. These new people were trained as engineers, repairing the spaceship, making new parts, inventing new machines, improving everyone’s life.

  “They were not human anymore, by then. They had the minds of humans, the desires, the memories, the lore of humans, but they could not interbreed without losing the improvements they had been given. When they reached the planet Nest, they could swing through trees and travel much faster than the regular Folk, and the Yachachiyruna befriended the clever birds and proved that they could all live together in harmony.”

  Sprout had already heard a version of this story, but the surrounding Yachachiyruna seemed to hear it as their own epic.

  “We are the heirs of the mountain people,” said Ruqyaq. “We control our own evolution as the ravens do. We satisfy our own desires as the keas do. We build machines better than any other humans, and invent whatever we need. Someday, just as all humans now cultivate and eat potatoes, all humans will come to us for machines. And in the meantime, we will breed ourselves into ever greater perfection. We are the mountain people.”

  And among the listeners there came a chant: “Yachachiyruna. Yachachiyruna.” Even the ravens joined in.

  When silence returned, Ruqyaq spoke in a normal voice to Sprout and Blue. “I know, Sprout, that I told you a version of this story before, but without the story of our heritage in genetic science. Your people are great geneticists, but so are we.”

  Sprout waited, but Ruqyaq said no more.

  Then he understood what he was being asked.

  “Ruqyaq,” said Sprout. “Friend of my heart. You are genetic scientists at heart, whether you do it by modifying genes or by selective breeding. My family also altered our own genes, to rid ourselves of a defect and to enhance our intelligence. We also separated ourselves from the rest of our species, though Blue’s and my existence shows that we can still interbreed with regular humans.”

  “Our stories then are very different, but also very similar,” said Ruqyaq.

  “Would the Yachachiyruna wish to learn what my people know of genetic science?” asked Sprout. “Perhaps we can all grow wiser by pooling our knowledge.”

  Ruqyaq bowed his head gravely. “Sharing knowledge is a sacred thing, and if you teach us you will lose the advantages you have over us because you know so many things that we don’t know.”

  “Will you use the knowledge we share to make war against us?” asked Sprout.

  “I say that we will not,” said Ruqyaq, “but I am only one. Likewise, you say that you would share, but you are only two.”

  “We are only two brothers,” said Sprout, “but we are both superb students of genetic science. We two know enough in our own minds to teach you everything that is now known in the Hundred Worlds and among the leguminids and the Ribeiras.”

  “You truly know all of that?”

  “We know how to access all of it, and we understand all the principles,” said Blue. “This is not empty boasting. We are young, but we’re pretty amazing.”

  Ruqyaq laughed. “That is the most modest bragging I have ever heard, and the most boastful modesty.”

  “Confer with your people,” said Sprout. “If they agree to vow never to make war against flat-footed humans using the genetic knowledge we will pass on to you, then we will spend as long as it takes, coming to you frequently to teach and to answer questions, while you also teach us from your lore and wisdom.”

  Soon the gathering dispersed. Bidding a fond farewell to Ruqyaq, and acknowledging and saluting Yachachiyruna and ravens alike, Sprout and Blue returned home to their mother’s house.

  Blue took both of Sprout’s hands in his. “What have we done, Brussels?”

  “We will continue the work of Prometheus,” said Sprout.

  “And if the gods send an eagle to devour our livers,” said Blue, “the ravens and keas will swarm them and mob them and drive them away.”

  “Why shouldn’t the sentient species all share what they have?” asked Sprout.

  “You notice they didn’t ask us to share the secret of detouring,” said Blue.

  “Jane wants that ability to die with the people who now know how to do it. The power of going anywhere instantly is more than any person s
hould have,” said Sprout.

  “Except us?”

  “So far we’re using it fairly and wisely, to the benefit of all,” said Sprout.

  “We think, then, that we’re superior to all the peoples we aren’t giving this power to?” asked Blue.

  “We have the power,” said Sprout, “and we try to do no harm, but it would be better if no such power existed. When we’re gone, it won’t exist anymore.”

  “Until it’s discovered again,” said Blue.

  “But that won’t be our problem, and it won’t be our fault,” said Sprout.

  “Because we’ll be dead,” said Blue.

  “The dead commit no sins,” said Sprout.

  Then they went into the kitchen and annoyed their mother by snitching food that she was still in the midst of preparing.

  “You boys!” she said, driving them out of the kitchen with a spoon.

  “Don’t you know that we’re the heroes of the people?” asked Blue.

  “Yes I do know that,” Mother replied. “But that doesn’t mean you aren’t still brats.”

  Then, on impulse, Sprout grabbed his brother and half-dragged him back into the kitchen. There the two of them hugged their mother tightly, and refused to let go.

  “How can I cook if you crush me like this?” she demanded. At the same time, though, she hugged them back fiercely.

  “Thank you, Mother,” said Sprout.

  “For what?”

  “For choosing to bring us into this amazing universe,” said Sprout. “And for giving us minds capable of understanding the blessing we’ve been given.”

  Blue laughed. “What he said,” he murmured.

  “On balance,” said Mother, “it’s worked out pretty well so far. Now get out of the kitchen and let me finish. Your father and Thulium will be here soon, and I want to be able to serve as soon as they arrive.”

  “We are heroes of a story,” said Blue. “Ruqyaq said so.”

  “And he’s no fool,” said Mother.

  They each snitched one more bit of a couple of different things, but they knew their mother was only pretending to be angry, because she was proud that they liked her cooking well enough to want an early taste.