Orphans of Earth (16 page)

“We are humanity-slash-
riil
,” interpreted Axford with a shrug. “That’s the same word they used for prey before.”

“Predators and prey,” Hatzis sneered. “They’re stuck in a stratified worldview. If that’s so,” she said, addressing the captives, “where do the Starfish and the Spinners fit in? Are you trying to
become
them? Or maybe even beat them at their own game?”

The alien addressing them stood and stepped forward. Its mottled orange skin (or was it a bodysuit? Alander still couldn’t tell) gleamed under the thin membrane of an I-suit. It was very tall, standing almost a meter higher than Alander’s and Hatzis’s artificial bodies. The sides of its chest expanded, leaving a depression in the center large enough for a human fist, and the pigmentation on its face and upper body faded to a brown yellow.

“We are the
Yuhl/Goel
,” it said. “That is
all you need to know/all you will learn from us. Release us/kill us.
It makes no difference to the
Yuhl/Goel
or to you. Your fate is already decided.”

“What does
that
mean?” asked Hatzis.

“You are
humanity/riil.
You are
already/dead
.”

The alien sat down again, folding its enormous legs back up to its chest and turning away. It was a clear message: their discussion had ended.

“Well, they’ve got guts, I’ll give them that,” said Hatzis. “They’re not exactly in the best position to be threatening anyone at the moment.”

“I don’t think he needs to be,” said Axford. He seemed uncharacteristically worried.

“What do you mean?” asked Alander.

“I question
Mercury’s
translation of that last word,” he said. “I don’t believe that
dead
is quite what our friend here meant to say.”

“What, then?” asked Hatzis.

“I think the word
Mercury
was looking for was
extinct
.”

1.2.3

Extinct.

The word echoed dully in Thor’s mind. It struck deep, at the heart of her uncertainty, as well as her fear. If humanity really was
extinct,
then what would happen to Sol’s dreams and aspirations? What of immortality? What of ascending to the technological heights of the Spinners or the Starfish? What of becoming...?

She let the thought go, suddenly angered by the alien that had turned its back on her. She refused to let the argument end there; refused to allow these
scavengers
to dictate when the discussion had finished. They were her prisoners, for fuck’s sake!

“What the hell do you know about us?” she said angrily. “Who are you to tell us that we have no hope? Extinct? You bastards will go before we do!”

The alien didn’t respond. Its wing sheaths remained upraised, as though blocking her out, which only angered her more.

“Look at me, you fucker!” She pounded on the invisible barrier with both her fists.

A hand touched her shoulder, gently pulling her back.

“Take it easy, Caryl,” said Alander. There was a hint of amusement in his voice that didn’t do anything for her temper.

She wheeled on him. “These fucking parasites have been stealing our resources and destroying our colonies,” she yelled in his face. “Don’t tell me to take it easy! If we die, it’ll be because they—”

“Hey, can it, Caryl,” said Axford. She was about to turn on him as well until she saw him staring at the aliens. “Look.”

She looked to where he was pointing and saw the second alien raise its hands and press them to its temples. It spoke for the first time, keening a long phrase in its piercingly dissonant language. Its eyes might have looked at her, but she couldn’t tell. They were black, bottomless pools staring out of a fractured face.

“What’s it saying?” she demanded.

“I have no clear analogue for that expression,” said
Mercury.

“Display it, then,” said Axford.

Words appeared on the screen to Hatzis’s left.

THE SINGING OF THE already
/
dead HURTS MY EARS.

STRIKE THEM NOW, [UNKNOWN], AND SPARE THEM THEIR [UNKNOWN].

Hatzis faced Axford. “Well? Any ideas?”

“Bear with us, Caryl,” he scolded. “This isn’t easy. It’s like decoding two languages at once.” He thought for a moment. “The third term combines concepts of mourning or despair and anticipation; grief-in-advance, perhaps?” He shrugged. “I’m guessing the second term is a name, comprising perhaps both benefactor and malefactor. If I had to pick a human term, it would be
Ambivalence
.”

“The
Ambivalence
?” Hatzis scowled. The phrase sounded ridiculous.

“It’s the closest I can get.”

“ ‘The singing of the already-dead hurts my ears,’ “ Alander repeated.

“ ‘Strike them now, Ambivalence,’ “ Axford went on, “ ‘and spare them their grief-in-advance.’ “

“The Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away?” Alander offered with a wry smile. “Cute.”

“Are you telling me,” Hatzis asked, “that they think the Spinners and the Starfish are the same things? And they’re
worshiping
them?”

“It kind of makes sense when you think about it,” said Axford. “They have a keener sense of dichotomy than we do—if their math is anything to go by—so a god who provides gifts
and
destroys those that use them might make sense to them.”

“I don’t trust your translation,” she said bluntly.

“Or you don’t trust me,” said Axford with a smile.

Hatzis glared at him. “If you’re fucking with us, so help me, I’ll—”

“Why would I do that, Caryl?” He opened his arms innocently. “I call them as I see them. We’re in the same boat, here, remember?”

“Yeah, and according to these guys—” Alander gestured at the aliens from the position he’d taken up on the couch. “—that boat is sinking damned fast.”

Hatzis bit her tongue. She didn’t know who she was more pissed with: Axford, Alander, or the goddamn Roaches.

The Yuhl.
A voice broke across her thoughts. She was so startled that for a moment she didn’t recognize its source as her original in
Arachne. They have a name. If we ‘re going to understand them, then we should use it.

They’re monsters
, Thor returned.
They don’t care about us. To them, we ‘re nothing but walking corpses!

Maybe so
, said her original,
but we still have to establish communications with them. Let me take over.

Thor balked at the invasion but then surrendered control without argument. It would probably be much easier to observe for a while, anyway; give her chance to calm down. She wouldn’t have to make any decisions; she wouldn’t have to worry about Sol always looking over her shoulder...

An odd sensation passed over her as her original took control of her body while she adopted a conSense fix-up inside a nonrepresentational virtual space. She had to have something to hang onto, or else she would suffer severe disorientation similar to Peter’s.

This way, at least, she felt as though she were floating voluntarily along with her body’s movements, rather than enslaved to them.

“Tell us about the Ambivalence,” she heard herself say in a voice that was confident and self-assured, free of all the anger it had possessed moments earlier. “We wish to learn everything you know about it: where it came from; when you first encountered it; how you’ve managed to survive it.”

The second alien removed its hands from its head. It fluted a short passage that, once again, the hole ship failed to completely translate.

THE AMBIVALENCE [UNKNOWN] HAS ALWAYS [UNKNOWN].

[UNKNOWN] WE PRESERVE YUHL [UNKNOWN] SANCTUARY

IN DEPTHS ETERNAL.

“I can’t make this one out at all,” said Axford.

“Sounds like ordinary religious gibberish to me,” said Alander. “My guess is we’ve got ourselves a priest, here.”

“And the other guy is military.” Axford nodded enthusiastically. “That would certainly appeal to their sense of dichotomy.”

“You visit systems that have been destroyed by the Ambivalence,” Sol continued through Thor’s body. “Why is that?”

The answer was relatively clear-cut:

WE LEAVE [UNKNOWN] TO THOSE BEYOND.

“I think that’s ‘tribute’,” said Axford.

“Beyond hope? Beyond reach?” Alander frowned. “I can’t work out if they’re mourning the lives lost or the gifts destroyed with them.”

“The latter, I’d imagine,” said Axford.

“We are grateful to you for that service,” said Sol, taking Thor off guard not just with the words but also with a simple bow. “Your customs seem strange to us. But we are keen to learn more in order to prepare us for what will come.”

The alien priest—if that truly was his role—seemed to study Sol carefully through the invisible barrier. When it spoke again, it was without the ambiguity that hampered their previous attempts to communicate.

“It is always this way,” it said in terms
Mercury
had no trouble translating. With both sets of vocal cords working in synch, the words came out loud but not as shrill.

“What is?” Sol asked.

“There is no point fighting the Ambivalence,” the alien’s vocal cords continued in unison.

“But why not?” said Sol. “We don’t understand.”

“
Cannot fight gravity
,” came the reply, with the softer vocal stream following a second later: “
All things fall to blackness
.”

“What goes up, must come down,” suggested Alander.

Hatzis turned to face him. “If you’re not going to take this seriously, Peter, then why don’t you just get back to
Pearl
and leave it to me.”

Alander looked genuinely indignant. “Identifying philosophical congruencies is an important part of learning to identify with new cultures,” he said. “If we don’t—”

“All right.” Sol waved a hand, motioning him to silence. “I just thought you were being flip, that’s all.” She turned back to the alien, still not sure that Alander was completely with her. “How long have you known the Ambivalence?”

“The
Yuhl/Goel
has attended it for five
hundred/years.”

“Five hundred years?” said Sol. “That’s a long time.”

“I don’t think that’s right,” said Axford. “Both sets of vocal cords uttered the number ‘five,’ but they were from two separate sentences. I think the overlap could be a form of multiplying—such as, they’ve been in attendance for five times five hundred years.”

“Two thousand five hundred years?” Sol exclaimed incredulously.

“That’s if my guess is right,” said Axford. “It could be five hundred times five hundred. Either way, it’s a long time.”

“By our standards, that would be many generations,” Sol said to the aliens.

The alien’s head dropped slightly into its shoulder plates in an almost mechanical fashion. Perhaps, she thought, it was their equivalent to a shrug. “
Less than the snap of a wing sheath/to the Ambivalence
.”

“The blink of an eye,” Alander offered from the couch.

“I got that one, Peter.” To the alien priest she said, “If you’ve been following the Ambivalence all this time, why has it spared you?”

“We are the
Yuhl/Goel
.”

“Could humanity-slash-riil
become
humanity-slash-goel?”

The pattern of pigmentation on its face shifted. “
Humanity/goel?
” it exclaimed. Then it uttered a short burst of noise like a roomful of game show buzzers all going off at once.

“I think that was intended as an insult,” said Axford.

Alander shook his head. “We seem caught between military practicality and religious dispassion.”

“Is there anyone else we can talk to?” she asked the captives.

“We are the
Yuhl/Goel
,” said the other alien, without turning. “You are the
already/dead
.”

Sol turned to face the others. “This is getting us nowhere,” she said, frustrated. “These aliens have been following the Spinners and Starfish for twenty-five hundred years or more. This is a prime opportunity for us to finally learn something about them—and all they want to do is play word games.” She ran a hand across Thor’s android’s smooth scalp. “Any suggestions? I don’t think we can afford to give up on them just yet.”

“It sounds like they’re giving up on us,” said Alander dryly.

“Can you blame them?” said Axford. “They see it as their only chance at survival.”

Sol frowned. “How so?”

“Well, assume that what the Yuhl have told us is true, and these Spinners and Starfish have been playing destructive game of interstellar tag for the last two and a half thousand years or so—
at least.
In that time, the Yuhl might have witnessed many species standing up to the Starfish and being wiped out totally. Perhaps they attempted it themselves to start with but decided that it was hopeless. The only way to survive, they could have concluded, was to not get involved.”

“Stay in the middle, you mean?” said Alander. “Play it safe?”

“Safer even than that,” said Axford. “In the middle, you could get caught in the cross fire—and for someone like the Yuhl, or anyone trapped between two superpowers, there wouldn’t be much left in the end.” He shook his head. “No. I’m betting the Yuhl are on the sidelines, watching from a safe distance. In their minds, anyone attempting to go up against the Spinners-slash-Starfish are already dead. Taking sides is a quick path to destruction as far as they are concerned.”

“That doesn’t make sense,” said Sol. “Why not just settle somewhere once the Starfish have gone by? They must have come across thousands of possible planets they could colonize over the years.”

“They can’t,” said Alander. “Because they can’t be sure that the Starfish wouldn’t come back.” He looked at Axford. “Right?”

The ex-general nodded. “Maybe. If there’s a mighty whale swimming through the ocean gobbling up every fish that gets in its way, where would be the safest place? Near its tail, of course. That’s all the Yuhl are doing. If they hang back, how do they know the whale won’t turn about and come back for them? While they’re at the tail end and keeping up, they’ll never get eaten.”

“Nice imagery, Frank,” said Sol, “but meanwhile, they’re exploiting all of the other races that stand in the path of the Starfish.”