Orphans of Earth

by Sean Williams

  Hence the name, I guess, mused Alander, still stunned by the vast number of hole ships present in the system.

  “There are always pieces coming and going,” the Praxis was saying. “It is a dynamic process that is very difficult to control.”

  “And organic, again.”

  “You are grasping the essential difference between my species and yours. While you seek to transcend the flesh in which you evolved, I embrace it wholeheartedly. The Yuhl are my protégés. The arrangement serves us both quite well.”

  What if it didn’t? Alander wanted to ask. And what if it doesn’t serve humanity? He imagined the Mantissa swarming through space at the cusp between the Spinner/Starfish migrations, seizing what resources they could: both physical, in terms of the gifts and other valuable materials, and mental, in the form of new species happened across along the way. Will we be eaten, too, if we can’t see eye to eye?

  “The Fit are waiting/ready,” said the conjugator impatiently.

  Alander wrenched himself from the hole ship’s feed and back into the long, curving corridor.

  “Everything you need to know will be explained to you in due course,” the Praxis assured him.

  Alander glanced at Ueh, who still stood by him and whose alien body language suggested patient subservience. A full head taller than Alander, the situation was ludicrous, and it highlighted just how little he knew about any of the species currently impacting on his life. Just because he could exchange words with the Yuhl and the Praxis didn’t necessarily mean he understood them any better than the Spinners or the Starfish.

  But there was no reason not to try, he knew, even if the risk of making mistakes was high. He owed it to the surviving humans, if not to himself. After being eaten, he supposed, he could deal with anything.

  He took a deep and steadying breath. “Let’s get it over with, then.”

  Encased in his bubble of Earth-like air, he continued along the corridor to where the Fit waited.

  * * *

  He had imagined the Fit gathering in a tiered amphitheater, all shouting at once, but only the latter part turned out to be the case. The Fit as a whole didn’t gather physically, although they did congregate in one place when possible. Alander was shown to a room partitioned into many small areas, not dissimilar to the intestinal corridor along which he had been led to meet the Praxis. Among the increasingly familiar tangle of ornamental and functional installations—he was still unable to tell which was which—he saw many spine-encrusted Yuhl sitting at low desks, bent forward with their heads encased in fleshy helmets.

  Conjugator Yaise led him to an empty cubicle and gestured that he should sit.

  “Once more into the breach?” he said, his stomach sinking.

  “This is not like conSense,” said the Praxis.

  “What is it like, then?”

  “You’ll see.”

  Alander suppressed his misgivings and sat down in front of the desk. The helmet hung before him, and he felt as eager to slip his head into it as he would a crocodile’s mouth. Its interior wasn’t fleshy and veined like the interior of the Praxis but lined instead with millions of slender cilia that stirred in strange, geometric patterns. There was no obvious way for air to get in or out, which only exacerbated his apprehensions.

  He ran a hand nervously across his newly stubbled scalp. He felt Ueh come up behind him as though to protect his back, and he felt the stare of the conjugator watching him.

  Damn it, he thought. Then, without allowing himself the opportunity for second thoughts, he closed his eyes and thrust his head firmly into the helmet. He almost gagged as the cilia enfolded him, squirming against his skin like a flesh-eating anemone. It was much colder than he expected, and he flinched and tried to pull away as something pressed against his mouth and nose. But there was no way he could pull out of the helmet. A fleshy sphincter had closed around his neck, trapping him inside the squelching darkness. When the breath he held could sustain him no more, he opened his mouth to gasp for air, but found instead a torrent pouring down his throat. He wanted to scream out at the disgusting violation, but he was no more able to do that than he was able to wriggle free. He could feel alien hands on his back and arms, restraining his flailing body.

  He choked and spasmed for what seemed like an eternity, until, abruptly, everything cleared. The cilia were gone; the helmet seemed to have vanished. The pressure on his back and arms and neck and throat had simply evaporated, and he felt instead as though he was floating face-forward in free fall, his eyes closed and arms outstretched.

  “I am moderating this experience to a certain extent, including translation,” the Praxis’s voice intruded easily into the illusion. “But I assure you I’m not interfering with it in any way.”

  “What experience?” Alander asked. His voice sounded strangely muted and lonely. “There’s nothing here.”

  “I was just giving you a moment to adjust,” said the Praxis. “But if you are ready—”

  “I’m ready,” said Alander. He wanted to sound confident, but even he could detect his repressed panic in his words. “I guess.”

  It started, oddly, as an odor: a combination of many smells, both sweet and caustic. At first he put it down to the aroma from the helmet his head was encased in, but then he heard a faint noise in the distance, as though he was standing outside a theater in which a large number of people were shouting to drown out a conceit. The noise became louder, and he began to identify different strands within it, individual voices that stood apart from the rest by virtue of their volume or their eloquence. When the combined cacophony became louder still, he focused on one of those strands and realized as he did that he could discern words within it. Gradually it became clear that what he was hearing was the babble of the Fit, their linked minds all shouting simultaneously at one another.

  At first the rousing rabble frightened him, being as it was a new and, indeed, completely alien experience. He felt for a moment that he would drown in the flood of voices but was thankful, at least, that the Praxis was keeping the translations free of any double vocal streams, which would have only added confusion to the already overwhelming event.

  He also realized that he had some control over the situation. He was able to maintain some distance from the incessant and headache-inducing babble. For the first few minutes, he tried teasing apart the various voices and the threads of their conversations. Although what they were talking about didn’t make much sense—making him wonder if the Praxis’s translation was designed to obfuscate information he wasn’t privy to—he felt confident afterward of at least hearing any replies they offered him.

  “Can you hear me?” He found himself instinctively shouting to be heard over the racket.

  Voices and smells swirled around him like a fine, snakelike mist. From the writhing fog, a reply emerged, angry and indignant, and smelling of gunpowder: “Of course we can.”

  “I want to thank you for allowing me—”

  “What is it you want?” another voice shot from the rabble.

  “I—I want...” He faltered for a moment, wondering for whom he was actually speaking. What he wanted surely differed from what Axford or Hatzis wanted. “We want—humanity, that is, wants—to form an alliance with the Yuhl/Goel against the common threat we all face.”

  A barrage of replies erupted from the mist:

  “Alliance?”

  “He is already/dead!”

  “How can you help us?”

  He withdrew for a moment from the onslaught of voices and emotion, his entire being feeling as if he were trembling. But he knew he couldn’t afford to show any sign of weakness with these aliens and so quickly reimmersed himself into the almost impenetrable vapor of their protests, snatching at the comment he felt to be the most important.

  “I’m referring to the threat of the Starfish,” he said. He realized also that he didn’t need to shout at all; his voice would come across as a shout regardless of how much effort he put into it. “You regard them as
part of the Ambivalence. It—”

  “THE AMBIVALENCE IS INDIVISIBLE!”

  The response clearly came from many voices at once, and their combined protest was a painful and disorienting shriek. A smell like sulfur accosted his senses. For a moment he was confused, wanting to withdraw again from the voices.

  “What—?” he started, not knowing how to respond to such a unified outburst.

  “The Ambivalence gives—”

  “The Ambivalence takes away.”

  “One cannot exist without the other!”

  Flustered, Alander struggled for words. He had inadvertently given rise to a religious argument.

  “But surely it takes more than it gives,” he interjected. “Surely lives are more important than technological trinkets.”

  “Lives are lives,” said another voice. “Before the Ambivalence, we were a profligate race. We didn’t truly understand the gift of life.”

  “We squandered it,” said another.

  “We waned.”

  “But there is no more war now,” the first voice went on, their words carried on a subtle scent of cinnamon. “We have achieved a refined state.”

  A general hubbub rose at the pronouncement, like a cheer. Then: “PRAISE AND THANKS TO THE AMBIVALENCE!”

  “We are the Yuhl/Goel!” roared a familiar voice.

  “You are just humanity/riil,” put in another.

  “You are the already/dead.”

  “Yes, we are,” said Alander defiantly. “But we are also living creatures like yourselves. Surely the Praxis has taught you the importance of the flesh. Did you spurn it because it was not Yuhl/Goel?”

  “The Praxis is many things to us,” came a new voice, deep and measured. “It guides us.”

  “It teaches us.”

  “It tells us that you are not creatures of the flesh, but that you have spurned your bodies.”

  “It is true,” said Alander. “We did abandon our bodies—but only so that our species could explore space. We never abandoned the idea of our bodies. We carried our sense of physical self as an anchor to keep us sane, to protect who we are. Some of us, like me, have been unable to survive without it, and we returned to the flesh as soon as we were able. You must see that these are not the actions of a species that spurns the flesh; but rather they are the actions of one that has made a mistake and learned from it.”

  The mist settled momentarily, as did the various aromas. Then, bursting from the calm: “You seek exoneration for your actions?”

  “I didn’t know I had to,” said Alander.

  “We are not forcing you to do anything.”

  “You are coming to us for help.”

  “We merely seek to understand what it is you want.”

  Alander felt like he was being played with but forced himself not to rise to the bait.

  “We want many things,” he said. “But first and foremost, we want peace with all aspects of the Ambivalence. We do not want war; we do not want destruction. We want coexistence, not predation.”

  “And how do you hope to achieve this?”

  “The only way to achieve it is to cooperate,” he said firmly. “The details are not as important as that fundamental impetus. If we can agree to work together, the details will fall into place of their own accord, I am sure.”

  “We are not so sure,” one voice replied.

  “We already have peace with the Ambivalence.”

  “Why should we jeopardize that?”

  Alander was surprised when another voice from the mist answered for him: “We do not have peace with the Ambivalence,” it said, with the smell of freshly cut grass accompanying its words. “We have peaceful coexistence.”

  “They amount to the same thing.”

  “No, they are different! We survive because we exist in the fringes. If we stray beyond those boundaries, we risk upsetting the balance we have striven so long to maintain.”

  “Perhaps that would be a good thing,” said another voice.

  It occurred to Alander that he was starting to tell the voices apart. The strident voice with the near-fanatical interest in preserving the status quo was Zealot/Shrieking; the more measured but equally conservative tones of the one who had argued for peaceful coexistence was called Status Quo/Mellifluous. The new voice deservedly had the name Radical/Provocative.

  That wasn’t their real names, he assumed; these were simply titles that identified the individual’s character. Equally, he was sure that the names weren’t of his own creation. They were being given to him by the Praxis.

  “I think we have stifled in this niche, this rut we have dug for ourselves, long enough,” said the new voice. “It’s time for a change.”

  “What? And put our lot in with this bodiless rabble?” retorted Zealot/Shrieking. “With prey?”

  “And attack the Ambivalence?”

  “Is that gratitude?”

  “Attack is not the only option,” said Radical/Provocative. “There was a time when the Yuhl/Goel aspired to more than the parasitic lifestyle we currently enjoy.”

  A wave of shouting almost drowned out Radical/Provocative, but the alien persisted.

  “Yes, parasitic! Be outraged at the notion of what we do rather than what I say!”

  “You are talking about the Species Dream,” broke in Status Quo/Mellifluous.

  The hubbub eased, allowing Radical/Provocative to speak more freely. “That is what I am referring to,” he said. “Yes. But it doesn’t have to be a fantasy. We have the resources and the opportunity to make it all real. The only thing we lack is the will.”

  “The will to survive remains strong in us,” said a new voice: Stoic/Enduring. This voice had a hint of caramel lifting from it. “Perhaps too strong to take such a risk.”

  “It is a risk, but it’s a glorious one. This envoy from humanity/riil is proof of that. See how he defies what we regard to be self-evident? See how he challenges us to reinvent ourselves? He shames us with his very presence.”

  “What is the Species Dream?” Alander asked over the voices building in response to Radical/Provocative’s challenge.

  “It is an ancient aspiration of the Yuhl/Goel,” said Status Quo/Mellifluous. “When our people were first visited by the Ambivalence and were swept up in its journey through space, we very nearly did not survive. We adopted many of our current practices in order to ensure that what remained would survive. With the help of the Praxis, we formed a stable society that could outlive the eons yet was capable also of adapting to constant change. We no longer needed a home system in which to live. We are nomads, crossing the gulfs between the stars and scouring the universe for knowledge.

  “But some said that wasn’t enough,” he went on. “There were some who advocated that this was only a short-term solution, that the Yuhl/Goel need more than just survival in order to thrive. They argued that we needed a goal, an aspiration, and that that aspiration should be a new home somewhere, a permanent settlement in the wake of the Ambivalence, where we can establish ourselves as an independent civilization. That is the Species Dream.”

  “But time has demonstrated that we can live without it,” said Radical/Provocative, picking up the story with bitterness. “Time has seen us grow in strength. I say that this strength is only illusory. We have sown the seeds of our downfall with the very crops that keep us alive! We need the Dream—and now might be the perfect time to embrace it.”

  “What need have we for a home planet now?” snapped Zealot/Shrieking. “You would have us halt our progress! You would have us turn back and reenter the aeries!”

  “Your lies in my mouth!” Radical/Provocative spat.

  “I see no possible advantage to leaving the Ambivalence.”

  “We have everything we need right here.”

  “Minerals, resources, space—the Ambivalence gives all!”

  “What about freedom? What about pride?”

  “You mustn’t be hard on yourselves,” Alander interjected, wanting desperately to shift the su
bject away from the Yuhl’s shortcomings and back to humanity. “You have done what you needed to do in order to survive.”

  “There are limits,” said Radical/Provocative. “If the method is abhorrent, the results cannot be justified. And what might have been morally justifiable thousands of years ago no longer applies today. The simple fact is that we are able, now, to choose for ourselves. We have accumulated the resources to settle down. The only reason we continue as we do is in order to give us more space to expand—and creating more of something abhorrent hardly makes us better as a species.”

  Hatzis should be here, Alander thought. Radical/Provocative was definitely thinking along her lines.

  “I look at you,” Alander said, “and I see us. Humanity is facing the same choices you were when you first encountered the Ambivalence. If we choose the same as you, then in two thousand years or so, we might be in the same position you are now. Our species may be very different, but we face the same choices. Humanity, Yuhl, the Praxis—the Ambivalence forces us to decide what we as a species want and what we are prepared to do in order to obtain it.”

  “The Ambivalence tests us,” said Zealot/Shrieking, in a tone of agreement and a scent of tea tree oil. “It refines us.”

  “It distills from us the qualities that make us worthy,” said Radical/Provocative. “What about the species that didn’t survive? How many of those have we seen? They weren’t inferior to us; they simply made different choices.”

  “And we honor their passing,” said Zealot/Shrieking. “We honor all those who fall in the Ambivalence’s path. What more can we do?”

  “Help them,” said Radical/Provocative. “Join them.”

  “You would die with these humans rather than continue as we are?”

  “Our existence is already a form of death,” said Radical/ Provocative.

  “I don’t think dying will be necessary,” Alander said. “I’m certain that cooperation needn’t necessitate mutual destruction.”