The Far Shore of Time

She wriggled her neck at me in gentle reproof. “If our ancestors had thought that way when our planet was overrun, you and I would not be having this conversation. Life is worth saving, Dannerman. Offspring are worth having. Always.” She flipped her neck in a complicated curve, and then asked politely, “Has Djabeertapritch told you all you want to know about our nest?”

“Not everything,” I said, and then I hesitated for a moment. Maybe I was a little annoyed with Beert for not promising to make me a Pat, but I didn’t feel like being tactful. I said, right out, “I know this is a sensitive matter, but is it true that you don’t get along with your cousins in the Beloved Leader base?”

Beert gave me a shocked, warning hiss, but the Greatmother answered at once. “We are all one folk, Dannerman. It is, however, true that some of the ways of our cousin Horch have changed greatly in the long, long time we have been separated from them, while this nest has kept to the old ways.”

“The ways of your home planet?”

“Of our particular home planet, the Two Eights. There were many planets inhabited by our species when we were taken, Dannerman, and each had its own customs. Now there are even more. The Two Eights was one of the newest and smallest at the time, with only eight sixty-fours of sixty-fours of sixty-fours of sixty-fours of inhabitants.” I calculated quickly: something less than 150 million. “Most of the other Horch planets were much larger. When the Others came-But perhaps Djabeertapritch has told you all this?”

“Not all, I think.”

She gave Beert that quick, reproving neck-twist. He said hastily, “I have been busy with the cousins, Greatmother, as you know.”

She patted his arm affectionately. “Of course. Well, you know, Dannerman, that all through our star-going history we Horch had met many strange species, a few of them nearly sentients. Those we always treated with kindness-as, you have seen, we in this nest have treated you yourself, Dannerman. When the Others’ scoutship came to our world it was the first time another species had come through space to us. The ones who came to us were not the Others themselves. The Others were too frail to come to the surface of our planet, but they sent their subject species, and those were welcomed. All that they asked was given to them. They did tell us of the Eschaton; that was one gift of the Others. It was the only one.”

She looked inquiringly at Beert, who was twitching restively. “They also gave us death,” he growled.

She sighed. “Yes, that is so. It is what the Others often give, and they have many ways of giving it. They alter the reaction of a star, so that it goes nova, or change the orbit of a small planetoid so that it collides with the planet they would destroy. They can bring about an emission of poisonous gases from a planet’s oceans if they choose. Or they can do what they did to our Two Eights. In their laboratories the Others developed a terrible new disease made out of the proteins of our own bodies, and they spread it secretly among us, and we began to die. Many, many of the people of our planet died. Nearly all. On the Two Eights fewer than sixty-four sixty-fours survived. Those were the ones who were brought here, and we are their descendants. Or,” she corrected herself somberly, “the descendants of those who survived what happened here. The Others interrogated our first generations without mercy. Many of us died here as well, usually in great pain. Even when we no longer had any information to give, we were still valuable to the Others, because we were still genetically Horch. So from time to time they seized numbers of us and carried them away, to test new diseases and weapons on them; and that is what our lives were like, Dannerman, for eights of generations-until our cousins of the Eight Plus Three came and set us free.”

Abruptly the Greatmother sat straighter on her bed. Her head sprang up to mine, until her pointy, hard-skinned nose was almost touching my own.

“Now I will give a more complete answer to your question, Dannerman. The Eight Plus Threes have treated us very well; they shared everything they have with us, and they offered to take anyone who wished to a Horch planet to live. Most of my nest did go, willingly. A few of us did not. Our cousins have had a long history of struggle and warfare, which we did not share. It has changed them, as our lifetimes of captivity have changed us. We in this nest wish to make a different life for ourselves, though we do not know how.

“But we intend to try.

“What you must remember is that we are all still Horch, Dannerman. We will never do anything to harm our cousins. Djabeertapritch understands this well. You must understand it, too.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

When we left the Greatmother, Beert’s bubbly mood was restored. “She likes you, Dan,” he said on the way down the staircase, his neck dancing with pleasure. “Now we can act. Do you remember our earlier conversation?”