by Paul Lucas
We had really made an outing of it, complete with a packed lunch. After the harrowing events of the past few weeks, it was sheer pleasure to get away and relax and talk shop.
Everyone one was still in a flurry over our discoveries in the Underworld, and most of the able-bodied of our people went down at least once to gawk at what had been hiding under our Tower all this time. Some got into arguments--which had Captain McDevitt in a near-apoplexy--that all the Builder wonders just discovered in fact belonged to the Myotans, since they were all discovered in our Tower. But of course we would have little to no idea what to do with most of them, and most usually brought that up lately just to annoy the Myotan-sized human.
Well, most at any rate. Cloud and Azure, always mated in their dislike of the humans, were partly serious about challenging anyone who tried to remove the artifacts, and suggested to Flier that he ask for concessions from the humans--like even bigger and better guns--before they be allowed to examine them further. So far our Chieftain had resisted, but he admitted that the idea had some merit and weighed what to ask the humans for. Not the humans on the Niven’s Folly, but those that ran the KN and their exploration office.
The battle with the Xique had made our leader rethink many decisions of the past few years. There was some merit to Cloud’s assertion that more and better guns, which the humans had always been reluctant to trade with us for, might have turned the battle in our favor much sooner. We spoke of such at length only a few nights ago around a late-night hearth fire, while my husband was tapping away at his computer and Windrider had slunk into a deep sleep.
He spoke that perhaps we had been too generous, too grateful to the humans for all their gifts. That if we were going to help them explore the Shard and save our world, then perhaps we should be better prepared to face the dangers that all that entails. And that meant becoming stronger in any way we could.
Of course I repeated to him all the arguments my husband had told me when we talked of the same thing. That too much knowledge given too quickly can prove dangerous. You do not give children burning torches until they learn to respect what fire can do. So it must be with us, we must accept the fact that the KN simply knows more about such things than we do. Besides, from all that I had read, I knew that the KN was much more open with us than a large majority of the peoples they contacted.
Our chieftain only nodded curtly, segueing into a dour, silent brooding. I know he respected my opinions on the matter but I could also tell he was questioning the wisdom of my position. He just wondered, in a final, hushed whisper before he gathered his mate and returned to their quarters, how much like the humans we would have to become to make sure nothing like the Xique ever befell us again.
His question haunted me for a long time afterward, my tool fingers running semi-accusingly over the human-made jeans I now habitually wore, for in truth I had no answer for him.
I tried the spell again, and again no burning hands. “Spirits! What am I doing wrong?”
“Are you visualizing the photon transformations right?”
“I do not know. And do you have to use the term ‘photon’ so much? How about if I just think in terms of light?”
Windrider harrumphed. “Is that what he is talking about? Why can you humans not just say what you mean? Perhaps your translator-box needs fixing.”
I turned toward my mentor. “Photons are what light is made of.”
Windrider rolled her eyes. More human nonsense. Light was light.
Louis continued, “I guess it doesn’t matter what you visualize light as, as long as you can visualize the transforming part. Remember, you’re using the Nanotech Matrix to transform the light around your hands. Here, I’ll show you again.” Louis chanted a few words under his breath and wiggled his fingers in a short but complex pattern. A nimbus of fire sprung up surrounding his hands, dancing and leaping with his every movement.
Windrider walked up and tentatively reached out for the flames. She looked surprised that they gave off no heat.
“A hologram,” Louis explained. “Like the ‘sun spirits’ you call, only smaller and more tightly focused.”
“It is a small fire spirit?” Glider asked.
“No, no. It’s an optical illusion of a fire. The spell isn’t restricted to the image of fire, either. It’s any small-scale image you want manifested within about a meter of your body. You want a glowing blue aura around your skin or a third eye to open on your forehead, this is the spell you’d use. We call it called FX. It’s used mostly to impress pretty girls in bars and primitives in the Outlands.”
Our Shaman looked at him askew. “Primitives? Like us?”
Louis’s ‘flames’ petered out as he held up his hands placatingly. The spell only had a short duration. “No, that’s not what I meant. I mean, you guys used to be pretty primitive but you’re better now.”
“What do you mean, ‘used to be?’” I asked
Windrider snapped her wings, her muzzle crinkling in annoyance. “Yes, what?”
Louis looked at Amethyst, who held no mercy in her bemused smile. “You got yourself into this,” she said matter-of-factly. “You’ll have to get yourself out.”
Louis shrugged. “Well, look. It’s just that when we first contacted you, you weren’t, you know, that sophisticated. But you’re better now! You’ve got guns and better metalworking and gliders and stuff like that!”
I frowned. “In other words, we are more like you humans. And that makes us better”
Louis looked genuinely puzzled. “What’s so wrong with that?”
I recalled Flier’s comments of the other night. Even though I brushed off his words then, they returned with enough force to truly flare my anger at Louis. “Nothing, if we were human. But we are not!”
Amethyst tched at her crewmate. “Gossamyr’s right, you know. Didn’t you take a Cultural Ethics in college? You know, respecting Outland societies? The value of Otherness?”
The human grunted. “Amethyst, the only reason you respect someone else’s ‘Otherness’ is so you can have new targets to shoot at. But all that Old Earth Prime Directive crap is for more primitive cultures. These guys aren’t like that anymore. They’re almost...
This time I could feel my fur rankling. “‘Almost?’”
He looked at me, alarmed to see me so angry. “Whoa. You’re taking this way out of context. I guess what I mean is that you’re becoming more human-like, as a group. You guys are mostly human, genetically. Why wouldn’t you want it to go further?”
I shook my head. “No one would argue that your people possesses better tools than we do, and that we have much to learn from you. But to say we were more primitive simply because we lacked sophisticated tools is completely false. Take those tools away from both sides and we are as good as any human.” I caught Windrider smiling and nodding in approval in my direction.
“And any human is as good as you?”
“Of course.”
Louis planted his hands firmly on his hips. “And do you feel the same way about the band of human nomads who’ve set up camp by the river a twenty kilometers away?”
“What? I--I don’t know. I’ve never really thought about it.”
“Mm-hmm. And what about the band of Felinoids you say pass through the area every few years? Are they your equals? How about the Otterkin that live two days’ march beyond the hills? Or the Xique? Or all the other nomads who occasionally come through your territory?”
Windrider and I were silent.
Louis nodded his head. “Yeah, I thought so. I’ve overheard the way you people talk about your neighbors. You think you’re better, more enlightened than them. You know, Lerner used to fill out weekly reports during his first year here for the passing helistat captains. He mentioned it a number of times. If it’s someone more primitive than you, you’re superior. But if you meet someone more sophisticated, you’ve got to be treated as an equal. Well, tell me this, Gossamyr: would you have even contemplated marrying Lerner if he had been one
of those human nomads, dressed in a Dhaki skin loincloth he hadn’t washed in a year?”
“Louis,” Amethyst spat. “That’s enough. You’ve made your point.”
He flopped his hands at his sides in exasperation. “I am so sick of hearing and reading about one culture or another a helistat comes across and having them act all arrogant because they’ve built some mud pyramid or whatever just like a thousand other Outland civilizations have done! I mean, we’re the ones who actually got to the point where we understand what's going on and taking all these risks trying to save the whole freakin’ Shard! You’d think people would give us a little respect! But no! They can’t admit to being even a little bit less than we are because that might bump them down on the technological food chain a few notches!”
His tirade wound down, and an awkward silence stretched on for several heartbeats. “And is that how your people feel,” I finally said ever so quietly, “about the Others? Or the Builders? Or even the people of old Earth?”
He had no answer for that.
“You forget that unlike many of the other peoples you mentioned, I have actually been to your Known Nations. I have read your books, watched your television, listened to your leaders. How much of what you have built was done trying to prove yourselves the equal of peoples that were clearly greater than you? Do you not want, either now or at some point in the future, to be considered the equal of the Builders or the Earth people?”
“But you don’t understand,” he said, all of his earlier bluster evaporating. “We are them. The peoples of old Earth and the Builders were both our ancestors. One begat the other, and in turn begat us.”
“Are you so sure of that? Or do you only tell yourselves that?”
He bowed his head. “But it has to be true.” He sounded like he was trying to convince himself more than anyone else. “We are their inheritors.”
I opened my mouth for a retort, then thought better of it.
When the humans first came into our lives, they were very evasive on what they believed. Did they put their faith in the spirits? Did they worship the sun and earth, as did some of their nomad human brethren? Perhaps they believed in nothing at all?
Eventually we learned that they subscribed to a huge plethora of different beliefs. They had no unifying faith as did we and many of our neighbors. Ask any of the KN humans what they believed, and inevitably the answer would differ significantly in some way or another from his fellow humans, even if that human was a member of the same so-called religion.
But I learned that what unified them was not a belief in the mystical, as with my people. It was a faith in their past, or at least what they believed was their past. That they were carrying on a tradition of greatness started by civilizations I had read about in their books; the Greeks, the Romans, the Chinese, the Americans. And, to a greater extent, the Builders. Ever since the beginning, I had been very curious to discover what drove my husband’s people, so over the years I had read the histories from the Great Library that had so inspired them.
In doing so, I discovered something very similar to the KN’s current attitude. The Americans had had a phrase for it: Manifest Destiny. The belief that they had a very special, very specific destiny to fulfill. For the Americans, Manifest Destiny had meant expanding across a continent. Their belief drove them to create a powerful nation. But it also had a great price: the destruction, imprisonment, and assimilation of dozens of indigenous cultures and a century of unprecedented environmental degradation. They were still trying to repair the damage to their own society and surroundings caused by that ill-conceived Imperialist frenzy when the last books chronologically contained in the Great Library were being written.
Looking at Louis now, I could almost see the zealousness that drove the early Americans. The same unwavering belief in the righteousness of their chosen path, and the lesserness of anyone in their way. Now, the KN was considerably more enlightened and advanced than the myopic Victorians, but still, what price would their Manifest Destiny exact? What “lesser” peoples would fall victim to it?
Mine, perhaps?
Amethyst wisely decided to change the subject in the midst of the growing uncomfortable silence. “So, uh, Gossamyr, where has your husband been? I haven’t seen much of him in the last week.”
I shrugged. “He has been very busy with all the artifacts in the Underworld. I am surprised you are not down there with them.”
She shrugged. “Not much I can do, except some heavy lifting here and there. Nothing really threatening down there except a whole lot of dark. Might as well stay up here out of the more technical-minded’s way. At least in the daylight I occasionally have something to shoot at.”
“Well, Lerner’s most excited about the artifacts I found in that hidden room, trying to decipher the markings on it. He said that some of the script is indeed a variation of Myotan pictograms, maybe a more ancient form.”
“The other script he says is some kind of language he has never seen before. It is not in any of the KN databases. He thinks it may even be derived from the original Builder language. He is hoping that if he can get the Myotan script translated, that may act as a “rosy stone” for the other language.”
“That’s ‘rosetta stone,” Louis said.
Windrider observed, “you do not seem too happy with all this, Gossamyr.”
I ruffled my wing membranes in irritation. “That is all he has been doing the past week. He seems to be becoming obsessed with it. I mean, the artifacts have been there for who knows how long, and another helistat will not pass through for two months. I do not see what the rush is.”
“And he has no time for you?”
“That is not it. Well, not exactly. He has been obsessive about his work before. I am used to being ignored in such times, and I do not mind it very much, as I know the work he does is important. But this time, he has taken it to an extreme, he rarely eats and goes without sleep for days. He even refused a tattoo session the other night.”
Louis and Amethyst looked at me in bewilderment, but Windrider arced her brows high in understanding. How could the humans understand how sacred the tattoos were to us, how important they were to the bonding of husband and wife?
“It must be important,” Amethyst said, “if he’s devoting so much time to it. And there is a lot of money at stake.”
I frowned at the mention of human money. It caused so much trouble, even here, it seemed. “I hope its worth it.”
The Orc woman smirked. “For his sake, eh?”
I tried the FX spell again. This time my mind was clear enough to focus on it properly. I cupped my hands as if I was holding a particular part of my husband’s anatomy as illusory flames exploded between my palms. “For his sake, yes,” I said with a mock-threatening smile. The other females snickered.
Louis came out of his dour silence. “You did it!”
“I just pictured the light around me dancing to the song of my mind, changing in color and shape to the tune of my thoughts.”
“More poetic than my heisenberg transformation of photons, but, hey, whatever works. Both obviously must produce the same kind of visualizations needed to activate the spell. Just remember you always need that image immediately after the gray-scale and energy imaging.”
I tried the spell again, failing. Then again and succeeded, this time generating a sky-blue aura around my body. Not to be outdone, Louis made electrical arcs dance in a lazy spiral from his head to his toes. It took Windrider another half-hour to learn the spell, thank mostly to advice from me. I wasn’t sure if she was having trouble with Louis’ human-centric description of the thought-language or if she was just more comfortable with me explaining it to her.
Small shadows passed before the sun, announcing the arrival of several youngsters as they wheeled down from above. They were already yelling excitedly as they landed, before we got them to calm down and tell us their news slowly.
"I do not know really what the big deal is," said Darkeyes, the eldest of th
e two youngsters at nine. His much smaller sister Treeleaf had only taken her first wing two years before, and hung close behind her older brother shyly. "But all the adults in that lab-oar-ah-torrie were very excited," Darkeyes continued, "and sent us to get all of you. I guess they found something in there they can talk to. And it talks back!"
THIRTY-SIX
Sometimes I fear for my adopted people. I don’t mean physically or materially. They were well off before humans ever came to the Tower, and the past several years they have seen a boom of material wealth because of trade with the KN. I imagine this trend will only continue in the years to come, and will multiply tenfold when the helistat base is finally completed and the Tower becomes in essence an extension of the KN.
No, what I fear for is the Myotan soul, as it were. Ten, twenty years from now they will not be what they are now. They will have diluted much of their culture because of constant human contact. They are still in the phase where they see the KN and all its wealth and power through envious eyes, not understanding, with the possible exception of Gossamyr and Cloud, the vast changes that will have to come. And of course their opinions of it are polar opposites.
Much has been made in some circles of the parallels between the Myotans and some Native American tribes, and between KN explorers and the imperialist Europeans who first explored North America. I have always been dubious about this comparison. The Myotans have a unique culture in their own right, with few similarities to peoples like the Sioux or the Iroquois, and the Known Nations are in no way interested in conquest. The sheer scale of the MegaShard would make that impossible anyway.
But contact with the KN has begun a process of irrevocable change in Myotan culture, change which may not necessarily be for the better. The people I had become so enchanted with when I first came here with the Sword of Thorena probably will not exist in recognizable form within a few generations. Even if all human contact stopped immediately, it would do no good. They have seen now what is possible, and will not want to stop until they have all that we do and more.
