Infinity's Shore

“I must admit it’s quite a scam, using humans as front men for gene theft and other crimes. Even two centuries ago, when the Tabernacle departed, our race had a vile reputation as one of the lowest-ranking citizen tribes in the Five Galaxies. So-called wolflings, with no ancient clan to stand up for us. If anybody gets caught, we’ll make perfect patsies. The Rothen scheme is clever. The real question is, why would any humans let themselves be used that way?

“History may hold the answer, Ling. According to our texts, humans suffered from a major inferiority complex at the time of contact, when our primitive canoe-spacecraft stumbled onto a towering civilization of star gods. Your ancestors and mine chose different ways of dealing with the complex, each of them grasping at straws, seeking any excuse for hope.

“The Tabernacle colonists dreamed of escaping to some place out of sight of bureaucrats and mighty Galactic clans — a place to breed freely and fulfill the old romance of colonizing a frontier. In contrast, your Danik forebears rushed to embrace a tall tale they were told by a band of smooth talkers. A flattering fable that indulged their wounded pride, promising a grand destiny for certain chosen humans and their descendants … providing they did exactly as they were told. Even if it meant raising their children to be shills and sneak thieves in service to a pack of galactic gangsters.”

Tremors rocked Ling as she held up one hand, palm out, at the end of a rigid arm, as if trying physically to stave off any more words.

“I asked … you to stop,” she repeated, and seemed to have trouble breathing. Pain melted her face.

Now Lark did shut up. He had gone too far, even in the name of truth. Raggedly, trying to maintain some remnant of her dignity, Ling swiveled and strode off to the acrid lake that lay below a boulder field of tumbled Buyur ruins.

Does anybody like having their treasured worldview torn away? Lark mused, watching Ling hurl stones into the caustic pond. Most of us would reject all the proof in the cosmos before considering that our own beliefs might be wrong.

But the scientist in her won’t let her dismiss evidence so easily. She has to face facts, like them or not.

The habit of truth is hard to learn, and a mixed blessing. It leaves no refuge when a new truth comes along that hurts.

Lark knew his feelings were hardly a testament to clarity. Anger roiled, mixed with shame that he could not hold on to the purity of his own convictions. There was childish satisfaction from upsetting Ling’s former smug superiority … and chagrin at finding such a motive smoldering inside. Lark enjoyed being right, though it might be better, this time, if he turned out to be wrong.

Just when I had her respecting me as an equal, and maybe starting to like me, that’s when I have to go stomping through her life, smashing idols she was raised to worship, showing off the bloodstained hands of her gods.

You may win an argument, boy. You may even convince her. But could anyone fully forgive you for doing something like that?

He shook his head over how much he might have just thrown away, all for the torrid pleasure of harsh honesty.

Ewasx

DO NOT BE AFRAID, MY LESSER PARTS.

The sensations you feel may seem like coercive pain, but they convey a kind of love that will grow dear to you, with time. I am part of you now, one with you. I will never do anything to cause us harm, so long as this alliance serves a function.

Go ahead, stroke the wax if you wish, for the old ways of memory still have lesser uses (so long as they serve My purpose). Play over recent images so we may recall together events leading to our new union. Re-create the scene perceived by Asx, staring up in awe, watching the great Jophur warship, Polkjhy, swoop from the sky, taking the pirates captive, then landing in this tortured valley. Poor, loosely joined, scatterbrained Asx — did you/we not stare in tremulous fear?

Yes, I can stroke another driving motivation. One that kept you admirably unified, despite swirling dread. It was a cloying sense of duty. Duty to the not-self community of half beings you call the Commons.

As Asx, your stack planned to speak for the Commons. Asx expected to face star-traveling humans, along with creatures known as “Rothen.” But then Jophur forms were seen through our ship ports!

After some hesitation, did you not turn at last and try to flee?

How slow this stack was before the change! When knives of fire lanced forth from this mighty vessel, how did you react to the maelstrom of destruction? To hot ravening beams that tore through wood, stone, and flesh, but always spared this pile of aged rings? Had you then possessed the bright new running legs we now wear, you might have thrown yourselves into that roaring calamity. But Asx was slow, too slow even to shelter nearby comrades with its traeki bulk.

All died, except this stack.

ARE YOU NOT PROUD?