Venging

by Greg Bear

  She shook her head.

  "It's not new. It's been done, off and on, for tens of thousands of years. This time they believe they can make it work."

  "You were a fighter, once," she said. "Did they preserve your type?"

  Clevo nodded. "I had something that interested them, but not, I think, as a fighter."

  Prufrax looked down at her stubby-fingered hands. "It was grim," she said. "You know what we found?"

  "An extermination plant."

  "You want me to understand them better. Well, I can't. I refuse. How could they do such things?" She looked disgusted and answered her own question. "Because they're Senexi."

  "Humans," Clevo said, "have done much the same, sometimes worse."

  "No!"

  —No!

  "Yes," he said firmly. He sighed. "We've wiped Senexi worlds, and we've even wiped worlds with intelligent species like our own. Nobody is innocent. Not in this universe."

  "We were never taught that."

  "It wouldn't have made you a better hawk. But it might make a better human of you, to know. Greater depth of character. Do you want to be more aware?"

  "You mean, study more?"

  He nodded.

  "What makes you think you can teach me?"

  "Because you thought about what I asked you. About how Senexi thought. And you survived where some other hawk might not have. The overs think it's in your genes. It might be. But it's also in your head."

  "Why not tell the overs?"

  "I have," he said. He shrugged. "I'm too valuable to them, otherwise I'd have been busted again, a long time ago."

  "They wouldn't want me to learn from you?"

  "I don't know," Clevo said. "I suppose they're aware you're talking to me. They could stop it if they wanted. They may be smarter than I give them credit for." He shrugged again. "Of course they're smart. We just disagree at times."

  "And if I learn from you?"

  "Not from me, actually. From the past. From history, what other people have thought. I'm really not any more capable than you… but I know history, small portions of it. I won't teach you so much, as guide."

  "I did use your questions," Prufrax said. "But will I ever need to use them—think that way—again?"

  Clevo nodded. "Of course."

  —You' re quiet.

  —She's giving in to him.

  —She gave in a long time ago.

  —She should be afraid.

  —Were you—we—ever really afraid of a challenge?

  —No.

  —Not Senexi, not forbidden knowledge.

  —Someone listens with us. Feel—

  Clevo first led her through the history of past wars, judging that was appropriate considering her occupation. She was attentive enough, though her mind wandered; sometimes he was didactic, but she found that didn't bother her much. At no time did his attitude change as they pushed through the tangle of the past. Rather her perception of his attitude changed. Her perception of herself changed.

  She saw that in all wars, the first stage was to dehumanize the enemy, reduce the enemy to a lower level so that he might be killed without compunction. When the enemy was not human to begin with, the task was easier. As wars progressed, this tactic frequently led to an underestimation of the enemy, with disastrous consequences. "We aren't exactly underestimating the Senexi," Clevo said. "The overs are too smart for that. But we refuse to understand them, and that could make the war last indefinitely."

  "Then why don't the overs see that?"

  "Because we're being locked into a pattern. We've been fighting for so long, we've begun to lose ourselves. And it's getting worse." He assumed his didactic tone, and she knew he was reciting something he'd formulated years before and repeated to himself a thousand times. "There is no war so important that to win it, we must destroy our minds."

  She didn't agree with that; losing the war with the Senexi would mean extinction, as she understood things.

  Most often they met in the single unused weapons blister that had not been damaged. They met when the ship was basking in the real between sponge-space jaunts. He brought memory stores with him in portable modules, and they read, listened, experienced together. She never placed a great deal of importance in the things she learned; her interest was focused on Clevo. Still, she learned.

  The rest of her time she spent training. She was aware of a growing isolation from the hawks, which she attributed to her uncertain rank status. Was her genotype going to be preserved or not? The decision hadn't been made. The more she learned, the less she wanted to be singled out for honor. Attracting that sort of attention might be dangerous, she thought. Dangerous to whom, or what, she could not say.

  Clevo showed her how hero images had been used to indoctrinate birds and hawks in a standard of behavior that was ideal, not realistic. The results were not always good; some tragic blunders had been made by fighters trying to be more than anyone possibly could or refusing to be flexible.

  The war was certainly not a fib. Yet more and more the overs seemed to be treating it as one. Unable to bring about strategic victories against the Senexi, the overs had settled in for a long war of attrition and were apparently bent on adapting all human societies to the effort.

  "There are overs we never bear of, who make decisions that shape our entire lives. Soon they'll determine whether or not we're even born, if they don't already."

  "That sounds paranoid," she said, trying out a new word and concept she had only recently learned.

  "Maybe so."

  "Besides, it's been like that for ages—not knowing all our overs "

  "But it's getting worse," Clevo said. He showed her the projections he had made. In time, if trends continued unchanged, fighters and all other combatants would be treated more and more mechanically, until they became the machines the overs wished them to be.

  —No.

  —Quiet. How does he feel toward her?

  It was inevitable that as she learned under his tutelage, he began to feel responsible for her changes. She was an excellent fighter. He could never be sure that what he was doing might reduce her effectiveness. And yet he had fought well—despite similar changes—until his billet switch. It had been the overs who had decided he would be more effective, less disruptive, elsewhere.

  Bitterness over that decision was part of his motive. The overs had done a foolish thing, putting a fighter into research. Fighters were tenacious. If the truth was to be hidden, then fighters were the ones likely to ferret it out. And pass it on. There was a code among fighters, seldom revealed to their immediate overs, much less to the supreme overs parsecs distant in their strategospheres. What one fighter learned that could be of help to another had to be passed on, even under penalty. Clevo was simply following that unwritten rule.

  Passing on the fact that, at one time, things had been different. That war changed people, governments, societies, and that societies could effect an enormous change on their constituents, especially now—change in their lives, their thinking. Things could become even more structured. Freedom of fight was a drug, an illusion—

  —No!

  used to perpetuate a state of hatred.

  "Then why do they keep all the data in stores?" she asked. "I mean, you study the data, everything becomes obvious."

  "There are still important people who think we may want to find our way back someday. They're afraid we'll lose our roots, but—''

  His face suddenly became peaceful. She reached out to touch him, and he jerked slightly, turning toward her in the blister. "What is it?" she asked.

  "It's not organized. We're going to lose the information. Ship overs are going to restrict access more and more. Eventually it'll decay, like some already has in these stores. I've been planning for some time to put it all in a single unit—"

  —He built the mandate!

  "and have the overs place one on every ship, with researchers to tend it. Formalize the loose scheme still in effect, but dying. Right now I'm
working on the fringes. At least I'm allowed to work. But soon I'll have enough evidence that they won't be able to argue. Evidence of what happens to societies that try to obscure their histories. They go quite mad. The overs are still rational enough to listen; maybe I'll push it through." He looked out the transparent blister. The stars were smudging to one side as the cruiser began probing for entrances to sponge space. "We'd better get back."

  "Where are you going to be when we return? We'll all be transferred."

  "That's some time removed. Why do you want to know?"

  "I'd like to learn more."

  He smiled. "That's not your only reason."

  "I don't need someone to tell me what my reasons are," she said testily.

  "We're so reluctant," he said. She looked at him sharply, irritated and puzzled. "I mean," he continued, "we're hawks. Comrades. Hawks couple like that." He snapped his fingers. "But you and I sneak around it all the time."

  Prufrax kept her face blank.

  "Aren't you receptive toward me?" he asked, his tone almost teasing.

  "You're so damned superior. Stuffy," she snapped.

  "Aren't you?"

  "It's just that's not all," she said, her tone softening.

  "Indeed," he said in a barely audible whisper.

  In the distance they heard the alarms.

  —It was never any different.

  —What?

  —Things were never any different before me.

  —Don't be silly. It's all here.

  —If Clevo made the mandate, then he put it here. It isn't true.

  —Why are you upset?

  —I don't like hearing that everything I believe is a… fib.

  —I've never known the difference, I suppose. Eyes-open was never all that real to me. This isn't real, you aren't… this is eyes-shut. So why be upset? You and I… we aren't even whole people. I feel you. You wish the Zap, you fight, not much else. I'm just a shadow, even compared to you. But she is whole. She loves him. She's less a victim than either of us. So something has to have changed.

  —You're saying things have gotten worse.

  —If the mandate is a lie, that's all I am. You refuse to accept. I have to accept, or I'm even less than a shadow.

  —I don't refuse to accept. It's just hard.

  —You started it. You thought about love.

  —You did!

  —Do you know what love is?

  —Reception.

  They first made love in the weapons blister. It came as no surprise; if anything, they approached it so cautiously they were clumsy. She had become more and more receptive, and he had dropped his guard. It had been quick, almost frantic, far from the orchestrated and drawn-out ballet the hawks prided themselves for. There was no pretense. No need to play the roles of artists interacting. They were depending on each other. The pleasure they exchanged was nothing compared to the emotions involved.

  "We're not very good with each other," Prufrax said.

  Clevo shrugged. "That's because we're shy."

  "Shy?"

  He explained. In the past—at various times in the past, because such differences had come and gone many times—making love had been more than a physical exchange or even an expression of comradeship. It had been the acknowledgment of a bond between people.

  She listened, half-believing. Like everything else she had heard, that kind of love seemed strange, distasteful. What if one hawk was lost, and the other continued to love? It interfered with the hardfought, certainly. But she was also fascinated. Shyness—the fear of one's presentation to another. The hesitation to present truth, or the inward confusion of truth at the awareness that another might be important, more important than one thought possible. That such emotions might have existed at one time, and seem so alien now, only emphasized the distance of the past, as Clevo had tried to tell her. And that she felt those emotions only confirmed she was not as far from that past as, for dignity's sake, she might have wished.

  Complex emotion was not encouraged either at the Grounds or among hawks on station. Complex emotion degraded complex performance. The simple and direct was desirable.

  "But all we seem to do is talk—until now," Prufrax said, holding his hand and examining his fingers one by one. They were very little different from her own, though extended a bit from hawk fingers to give greater versatility with key instruction.

  "Talking is the most human thing we can do."

  She laughed. "I know what you are," she said, moving up until her eyes were even with his chest. "You're stuffy. You aren't the party type."

  "Where'd you learn about parties?"

  "You gave me literature to read, I read it. You're an instructor at heart. You make love by telling." She felt peculiar, almost afraid, and looked up at his face. "Not that I don't enjoy your lovemaking, like this. Physical."

  "You receive well," he said. "Both ways."

  "What we're saying," she whispered, "is not truth-speaking. It's amenity." She turned into the stroke of his hand through her hair. "Amenity is supposed to be decadent. That fellow who wrote about heaven and hell. He would call it a sin."

  "Amenity is the recognition that somebody may see or feel differently than you do. It's the recognition of individuals. You and I, we're part of the end of all that."

  "Even if you convince the overs?"

  He nodded. "They want to repeat success without risk. New individuals are risky, so they duplicate past success. There will be more and more people, fewer individuals. More of you and me, less of others. The fewer individuals, the fewer stories to tell. The less history. We're part of the death of history."

  She floated next to him, trying to blank her mind as she had before, to drive out the nagging awareness he was right. She thought she understood the social structure around her. Things seemed new. She said as much.

  "It's a path we're taking," Clevo said. "Not a place we're at."

  —It's a place we're at. How different are we?

  —But there's so much history in here. How can it be over for us?

  —I've been thinking. Do we know the last event recorded in the mandate?

  —Don't, we're drifting from Prufrax now.…

  Aryz felt himself drifting with them. They swept over countless millennia, then swept back the other way. And it became evident that as much change had been wrapped in one year of the distant past as in a thousand years of the closing entries in the mandate. Clevo's voice seemed to follow them, though they were far from his period, far from Prufrax's record.

  "Tyranny is the death of history. We fought the Senexi until we became like them. No change, youth at an end, old age coming upon us. There is no important change, merely elaborations in the pattern."

  —How many times have we been here, then? How many times have we died?

  Aryz wasn't sure, now. Was this the first time humans had been captured? Had he been told everything by the brood mind? Did the Senexi have no history, whatever that was—

  The accumulated lives of living, thinking beings. Their actions, thoughts, passions, hopes.

  The mandate answered even his confused, nonhuman requests. He could understand action, thought, but not passion or hope. Perhaps without those there was no history.

  —You have no history, the mutated shape told him. There have been millions like you, even millions like the brood mind. What is the last event recorded in the brood mind that is not duplicated a thousand times over, so close they can be melded together for convenience?

  —You understand that? Aryz asked the shape.

  —Yes.

  —How do you understand—because we made you between human and Senexi?

  —Not only that.

  The requests of the twins, captive and shape were moving them back once more into the past, through the dim grey millennia of repeating ages. History began to manifest again, differences in the record.

  On the way back to Mercior, four skirmishes were fought. Prufrax did well in each. She carried something specia
l with her, a thought she didn't even tell Clevo, and she carried the same thought with her through their last days at the Grounds.

  Taking advantage of hawk liberty, she opted a posthard-fought residence just outside the Grounds, in the relatively uncrowded Daughter of Cities zone. She wouldn't be returned to fight until several issues had been decided—her status most important among them.

  Clevo began making his appeal to the middle overs. He was given Grounds duty to finish his proposals. They could stay together for the time being.

  The residence was sixteen square meters in area, not elegant—natural, as rentOpts described it. Clevo called it a "garret," inaccurately as she discovered when she looked it up in his memory blocs, but perhaps he was describing the tone.

  On the last day she lay in the crook of Clevo's arm. They had done a few hours of nature sleep. He hadn't come out yet, and she looked up at his face, reached up with a hand to feel his arm.

  It was different from the arms of others she had been receptive toward. It was unique. The thought amused her. There had never been a reception like theirs. This was the beginning. And if both were to be duplicated, this love, this reception, would be repeated an infinite number of times. Clevo meeting Prufrax, teaching her, opening her eyes.

  Somehow, even though repetition contributed to the death of history, she was pleased. This was the secret thought she carried into fight. Each time she would survive, wherever she was, however many duplications down the line. She would receive Clevo, and he would teach her. If not now—if one or the other died—then in the future. The death of history might be a good thing. Love could go on forever.

  She had lost even a rudimentary apprehension of death, even with present pleasure to live for. Her functions had sharpened. She would please him by doing all the things he could not. And if he was to enter that state she frequently found him in, that state of introspection, of reliving his own battles and envying her activity, then that wasn't bad. All they did to each other was good.

  —Was good

  —Was

  She slipped from his arm and left the narrow sleeping quarter, pushing through the smoke-colored air curtain to the lounge. Two hawks and an over she had never seen before were sitting there. They looked up at her.