Part 6 (2/2)
My orders go forth to all my brethren in both Languages, in ever-widening circles through the forest and beyond: ”Conceal the Dawn People. Watch for Humans. Dissuade them from entering the Forest of the Dawn. Find the missing Dawn People of Riverbank Tribe. And await my further instructions.”
Perhaps what I fear is untrue. Yet what else has Sebya to offer Humans? Native lifeforms will not nourish them, and only in the seas has their Terran life cycle been allowed to flourish. Our world is a light one, with useful metals buried far deeper than on other planets. Our sun is small and pale compared to those under which Terra's sons thrive; Sebya is far from their Galactic trade lanes. The only thing we have of value is the Dawn People themselves...and the abilities which I have bred into them.
I beseech the stars, let it be something else. Even as I reach out with the Inner Voice, out to my Elders who can counsel me even now I hope that the Humans have found something else of value on Sebya. For if they are truly after the Dawn People, if they truly know our secret...then the work of ages must come to an end in nothing but ruin.
I wait, as my cry goes forth into empty interstellar dark.
Elders, tell me of the Human called Darineb Khria. Tell me, that I may find my suspicions false.
I fear that there will be no happy answer to that cry.
You have been told, Little Ones, that the Hlutr grow slowly; that your years are to us as hours. And indeed this is true, else how could I have directed the very evolution of your race? Yet what you have heard is also false, for when we wish we can live rapidly indeed, and your hours might seem to us as years. Fast or slow, however, the total duration of our life is the same. To live fast is to die sooner. This is a price we do not often pay.
Today I pay gladly, to protect the efforts of ages of my kin. I am old, I have lived more than three-quarters my allotted span- and if I feel already the approaching chill in my upper limbs, the numbness of roots that is the first whisper of death...at least I know that my life is spent on the greatest project my folk have ever imagined.
The grey morning does not lighten, even as we turn to follow the path of the hidden sun. About me in the damp, my brethren Hlutr weave a curtain around the Forest of the Dawn. This curtain is part the swish and sigh of the Second Language, part the brooding glower of seventies upon seventies of Hlutr, part the unheard song of the Inner Voice pitched for the Human soul to hear. My brethren set out this curtain for one purpose alone: to keep Humans out of the Forest. To keep the Dawn People safe.
Meanwhile, I must examine the Humans.
I have driven shoots throughout the Human settlement, so that now there are bits of me in their gardens, clinging like vines to their stone walls, even in the dark depths of their storage chambers far below the surface. So distant that they are nearly independent of me, these shoots watch and listen as men and women go about their daily business. Now I give my full attention to those far pieces of myself. My many-colored leaves turn and twitch though there is no wind, and I strain to make sense of all the different impressions they bring me.
I know Human speech, harsh and rude as it is...I listen, waiting for some hint to tell me where I might find Darineb Khria. I must live very fast indeed, now- with typical animal frenzy, the Humans are doing thousands of things at once. My mind races, trying to interpret and understand all that I hear and see. I fear that no Hlut will ever be able to completely comprehend the Humans- so much that they do is meaningless, mere motion without any possible purpose. Yet I cherish them, in my way, and I would not wish them gone from the Universal Song.
As the sun climbs toward zenith, one sc.r.a.p of Human speech draws my full attention: ”What do you want done with them, Doctor Khria?”
I have found my adversary at last.
Two Humans are walking in a garden. Behind them floats some Terran contraption- a metal box all of winking lights and circuits and artificial limbs like the dangling tendrils of an uprooted tree. I do not trust Human machines. This the Humans have done, which we cannot understand: they have created minds of silicon, minds which can think seventy times itself seventy times faster than the Hlutr at their best. But you, Little Ones, you will understand, if your evolution goes....
But no. I am sure that one of the Humans must be the one I seek. Yet both of them turn to look at the floating box, and it speaks.
”Throw the bodies into the sea, like the others. And make sure they don't float back ash.o.r.e.”
At first I think the box to be some Human sort of communications device, and I spread my senses wide trying to locate the speaker on the other end. Then I feel the songs of the Inner Voice that come from that courtyard, patterns that can only have their source in the minds of sapient creatures: two faint echoes, such as Humans generate- and one song much stronger, steadier, almost relentless in its singleminded beat. The metal box...is alive.
Sebya spins madly beneath me, and it is as if I feel solid soil slipping away under my roots. What sort of creature have these Humans created? Within that box is a living Human brain, a brain that is at one with their electronic circuits and computer devices. The sheer power of that mind! Why, it approaches the cla.s.s of Hlutr mentality.
It still speaks, and I listen carefully. There must be no mistake.
”I'm certain that we're on to something here. I need to examine more of these creatures. A dozen, from different areas. Send out as many hunting parties as necessary. Bounty of two hundred thousand soldos for each of the first twelve brought in.” It is silent for a moment. ”I'm having more sophisticated genotyping equipment sent from Neordan. The s.h.i.+p should be here by nightfall; I want the equipment unloaded and set up in my lab the instant it arrives.”
”Yes, Doctor Khria.”
”Go.” The two Humans depart quickly. There is another moment of silence, while the metal box floats across the courtyard toward a door. It pauses, and gla.s.s lenses track in the direction of my twitching leaves. For just an instant, that powerful mind sends out a single melody of the Inner Voice and I have the feeling that Darineb Khria is staring through my leaves and into the very depths of my being. We confront one another silently, tension keen like slumbering lightnings in the still, wet air. Then the moment is over, the door slides shut, and Khria is gone.
In my place on the side of the mountain, I s.h.i.+ver. My fears are realized.
A Human geneticist- and one whose brain is linked to Human computers. Such a combination is formidable. And how much more so when the Human's brief lifespan is expanded by artificial means, so that he can follow genetic change through generations. Then, the ability of that Human might even approach the power of a Hlut.
Might threaten Hlutr plans and hopes.
You see, my Little Ones, the Hlutr race will not live forever. You think this odd, even shocking- you Dawn People whose short lives burn out in a few sevens of Sebya's revolutions, who know that the Hlutr around you are more ancient than the forest or the streams. You are amazed to hear me talk this way- I who am older than mountains, I who have felt the continents s.h.i.+fting beneath me. And my Elders are more aged still. The Eldest of us all, She who sits at Her place in the Secluded Realm...She is as old as stars, as old as life itself in the Scattered Worlds.
And yet the Hlutr shall pa.s.s. Not soon; but there will come a day when even the youngest of us shall die, when Hlutr yet unborn will drop their leaves and give up their spirits to the Universal Song. This is the way of the Song.
Long before we go, however, we will have made our successors.
This is our dream, and this is my work. On Sebya, and on a few similar worlds, Hlutr Elders work at creating the race who will succeed us. You, my Dawn People, are that race. Born of Hlutr tissue, every step of your development guided by Hlutr minds...you are fas.h.i.+oned to become even greater than we.
Of all the candidates, the Dawn People of Sebya are furthest along the road to maturity. And of all the candidates, thus far you alone have been given the secret to Hlutr strength and greatness. Locked away in your genes, awaiting a biochemical release that will come when the Elders deem you ready, is the ability to change the very structure of life. To create the chemicals which will guide other lifeforms along the paths you will choose.
Each Hlut is a living laboratory of genetics, far beyond poor Human skill- and each Dawn Person, as well, has that potential built into her cells.
This is the secret Darineb Khria has learned. And worse: I fear that he seeks to release your slumbering power, and use it for his own ends.
One of my brethren is aware of my concern. He stands very near the Human seaside cities and has made them his lifelong study. Sister, he sings to me in the calm melody of the Inner Voice, Perhaps the Human Khria wishes to use his knowledge for the betterment of life. It would not be the first time that Mankind has contributed to the Universal Song. This is true, for everywhere Humans go, they take new forms of life with them. Human-bred plants and animals share the forest with native life, to the enrichment of both.
Yet they bring discord as well, I remind my brother. It took their Empire a dozen Human generations to repair the damage it did to the ecologies of seventies of worlds. Every generation since has seen its destructive wars, its excesses of misused strength and simple carelessness.
Look with me, Elder. He shows me a city of Humans, where men and women stand together on a crowded field of skycraft, waving bright placards and speaking loudly to pa.s.sersby. They have heard of the deaths of the Dawn People, and they attempt to convince their brethren to hunt no more.
A n.o.ble effort, I admit. Yet still I would as soon trust in the curtain which the Hlutr weave around the forest, to stop the hunting.
I too, Elder. But we do not know everything about Khria. It is possible that he wishes to learn about the Dawn People so that he can help them...or help others.
It is possible. But I have heard the song of Khria's mind, and I do not think it likely that his motives are benign.
I must know for sure.
My cry for information about Darineb Khria has gone unanswered. The planet Nephestal is a unique source of knowledge, and the Hlutr Elders there receive seventies of queries daily from all over the Scattered Worlds. Usually a Hlut is in no hurry, and a few extra days or years do not matter. But now I need an answer quickly.
There is a way. For although we Hlutr are bound to the earth by our roots, and rarely leave the spot where we broke soil, yet you must not think us limited. Through the First and Second Languages we can converse with one another though the breadth of the planet lay between us- and through the Inner Voice we can leave planet entirely and fly the winds of s.p.a.ce.
Nephestal lies so far from Sebya that a beam of light dispatched when the first Dawn Person spoke her first recognizable word would still be on its way today- yet that distance is nothing to the Inner Voice, when there exists an intellect on Nephestal able to echo my mind's song. Volunteers from the Free Peoples of the Scattered Worlds, most of them strongly empathic or even gifted with telepathy, wait for just such a need...and then give their bodies over entirely to offworld Hlutr visitors. I have projected myself onto Nephestal before, in the course of my early training; now I marshall my strength to do this thing again.
A host is found. I sing, I cast forth my being. There is a moment of extreme cold, a taste of the winter that will one day claim my leaves, my branches, my essential song itself- then I s.h.i.+ver, and I am in an animal body amid the snows of Nephestal.
Most animal races love centralization. This is a consequence of their physiology: every system in their bodies has a center, a heart or brain or master gland. I have made certain, Little Ones, that you are free of this bias; while the Hlutr gave you the biochemical structure to allow free movement for part of your lives, we also took care to retain your essential plant-hood, and no one part of you is more vital than another.
Still, centralization can have its uses. What brain or heart is to the animal body, the planet Nephestal is to the Free Peoples of the Scattered Worlds. There, scarce 210 pa.r.s.ecs from the boundary of the Galactic Core, the Daamin have built a joyous and peaceful world that is the cultural and intellectual center of the thriving Galaxy.
My host is of the race of Aveth.e.l.l, and she is well-used to carrying Hlutr visitors. After a few moments of introduction, she withdraws her consciousness into deep meditation, giving me full control of her body and her mind.
Soon I am at the library, which rises in a series of delicate buildings from a low island in a lake next to the forest of the Hlutr. Briefly I sing greeting to my fellows and Elders, then I enter the library itself.
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