Short Fiction Complete, page 49
My purpose!
I’m sure you’ve guessed. Spork, which means moron, Spork, the Tepen killer, Spork of the Ayor, Spork, ensnarer of the planet-sized beast, Spork, Ruler of Civilization, has always been destined to be Spork, Galactic Co-ordinator.
Alas!
I still have not twinned.
Spork and the Galactic Council
I
That lanky and increasingly greying Human, Trod Gerard, sweeps loose-skinned fingers across direct action buttons. Silent signals pass and co-ordinations couple. “After so many years I still have difficulty adjusting to your sudden appearances, Spork. First there, then pop and you’re not, and the wind slaps to fill the void.”
I, Spork of the Ayor, and now Spork, Co-ordinator of the Ruby Galaxy, respond to his kindly and thin smile with a broad, white-toothed one. My former mentor and first Human friend (excepting the deceased Tony Randolph) waves me to an over-softened chair. I humour his thoughtful intent as though I, too, must rest direct action muscles.
I sit.
“Drink?” he asks kindly.
I wave it aside.
He frowns, deep lines adding to his natural age. “Spork –.”
I wait.
“It is going badly. The co-ordination can’t be.”
It is no Human brag for me to say that I was destined to be Galactic Co-ordinator of the Ruby Galaxy. My Human mother and father were bred for the position, and I am their offspring. Something more than normal Human attributes are required to peacefully plan one million Human settlements, and even more when populated galaxies multiply. I nod in the Human affirmative. “Yes. I’m aware of the magnitude, Trod.”
He sighs. “Well – I knew you would be. Advisors? Any of the Ayor, or the Human to explain how severe is the problem?”
I count for him. “There is the Ayor who’ve taken co-ordination as their twinning. And those Humans you’ve assigned: Computer Engineering, Galactic Statistical Extrapolations, Scientists and Sociological Topologists. . . .”
“Not those, Spork. Sure, they’re all necessary in keeping the peace for impossible numbers, and for controlling our massive data inputs. I speak of those who would know, and can be friends, and who can also speak to you without seeking favour.”
I thought to have already puzzled out most Human emotion and behaviour equations incidental to communicating between Humans. I am wrong. The more tasks I assume, the more I seem to fumble. My natural inclinations are blunted, my efforts to do that for which I am born seem equally futile. Even extended use of my otherwise well-endowed brain structure if used for twenty-four hours each Human day is insufficient, such is the load. I sigh. “What is it Trod Gerard?”
“You’ve successfully and admirably intermingled the two species, Ayor and Human, Spork. Scientists, historians, musicians – all walks of life – they do well together. Ayorian integrity and non-competitiveness – their nature, I guess – well, they do well together.
“Humans? Well, they’ve adapted as Humans always do. . . .”
“I’ve sensed all of that, Trod. If it were not so, I’d have solved that problem first, or withdrawn my Brethren.”
Usually outspoken, Trod now hesitates, waving his right hand and closing it like a fan. “The Ruby Galaxy is fragmenting.”
I had only recently gained the experiences of Ayorian colonies through grouping records, including some Humans. Though the Ayorian experiences spanned tens of thousands of individual experiences scattered across the total galaxy, I had sensed the fragmentation. I suspected. But humbly, I ask, “How can you be sure?”
Sadly, congenially, as is his way, he shakes his head and answers, “I understand your difficulty my good hybrid friend. Without that magic of co-ordinator genes inherited from your parents you’d have no interest in this overwhelming problem. Without Eme and the Ayor, you’d have no physical being. Without their protection and the granting of life, you’d have little identification with the Ayor. But alas, paradoxically you’d also not be alive. It is a long, difficult struggle for Human to understand Human. How much more difficult for you, Spork of the Ayor, a hybrid Ayorian-Human, raised and cultured by the simple-structured and most naive Ayor, to understand the unpredictable, complex, often fragmented Human?”
Trod’s thesis was so. Until we’d killed the evil Tepen, those terrible offshoots from mainstream Ayor, we’d been primitives sliding toward extinction. Then until capture of the Beast of Planet Two we’d not known of other life beyond our beloved and throbbing Enithra.
And always, everywhere, under the most varied circumstances, I strove to understand the Human, in particular that unspoken language of bodily movements and swiftly changing emotions.
The Ayor hover freely above what to Humans must be a ravenous jungle, and their fine surface differences are unseen by Human light receptors, to be known only by uniquely accepted goals and subtle ways of relating – alike to the Human as metal objects stamped from automated assembly lines. Humans, contrariwise, are as different and unpredictable and volatile as the molecules of steaming water.
“Humans have a racial conscience, a group motive,” I assert, but not strongly.
“Perhaps. Since Humans disguise their true racial purposes so successfully, even to themselves, you need to discover it for what it is before attempting to guide it.”
As supreme commander of the Ruby Galaxy I make absolute decisions over the use of death devices and I control with finality all planetary and system-wide resources. But as it had been with the Quations system and the Human planet of Feren, where I’d first met this blunt and amiable teacher, I was most happy for Humans to guide themselves. Acquiescing, I rephrase, saying, “Perhaps it is more accurate to say that I rechannel the nature of Human goal substitutes, minimizing Human suffering and death. . . .”
“Ah. There you begin to perceive truth, Spork. You can never be sure that you are guiding Human goals or goal substitutes until you know the Human. All the studies and guidelines and statistics and trends and correlations and computers and patterns cannot give you that whether worked up by Ayor or Human.”
“Then what –?”
He lifts long and aging fingers, pushing one of those ubiquitous buttons. On a screen before us flashes a long, modernized assembly line fabricating instant doors that permit all to step from planet to planet and place to place with the swiftness of Ayorian telekmass. Again his fingers flick, and there are the doors themselves, and hundreds of queuing Humans waiting to travel to somewhere. “Your first cause and symptom,” he points.
I peer closely with Human eye receptors that can bore through the purples and ultraviolets and infrareds of sprawling Enithra, and I see nothing. “Explain,” I prod cautiously.
“Jobs. Hundreds of millions of jobs were lost from spaceship industries.”
“But is it not cheaper and simpler to move goods and people by our instant hyperdrives?” I naively ask, deeply puzzled.
“Of course. But what replaces functions of old? There are great upheavals. Struggling new power alignments in communications and technology. Stabilizing feedbacks in Human society are suddenly terminated. These are conditions that create differing power alignments, and trouble.”
Again his finger moves and punches, and the screen shows statistics that taken alone deceive. “The Instanters,” he says, pointing to one bulging curve. “And over here; The Hypers. Some want your technology and welcome it, Spork. Some do not, wanting only old ways.”
II
This is my learning period. How can I, Spork of the Ayor, so recently of Enithra’s ignorant jungles, presume to control the destinies of hundreds upon millions of Humans scattered across the millions of planets?
Changing to one of the Human clothing patterns, a bright red cloth that winds about and is not embellished by my crest, I transport to Enithra IV my newest headquarters planet located near one edge of the Ruby Galaxy. This sphere, unlike some of the other Enithra-formed Ayorian dominated planets, is also adapted for Human living so that Enithra’s natural life will not chip and hew away at Human blood and minerals and muscle and fats. It is relatively unpopulated, used primarily as a switching point, and everywhere is sensed the slow growing Human greenery.
Flat gravity channels flow like irresistible rivers. I step there with direct action muscles, permitting myself to be locked downward and tugged along. Human trade places float by in endless variety. People move in and out, attracted by signs that display colour and motion and entice sometimes with scents and subtle stimulants. My eighty mile telekmass limitations prevent me from assessing all the newness, but everywhere I can sense is the sorting and regrouping and exchanging of monetary symbols for goods.
Even in little things Ayorians are easily understood: Their childlike hide and seek games that eventually strengthen their maturing telekmass senses; their docile and learned acceptance of twinning problems which, when once grasped, becomes their very nature, their essence of personality and life, until final resolution and twinning. . . .
I sought to study the Human in like manner, looking for his basic motivation in those sales appeals and goods that distract and motivate to separate the Human from monetary awards. How disappointing to observe that so much is simply redirection of instinct for procreation, or enhancement of personal ego, often both.
“Do Humans bury motives from themselves,” I wonder often, “As Trod Gerard suggests?”
The first world of my sampling was once dominated by manufacture of the old style and costly hyperdriven ships. Humans by the thousands are retraining. Many will become experts in the maintenance and repair of our instant doors, while others will move successfully elsewhere finding a new and profitable employment. Some will choose to retire, accepting their guaranteed wage from whatever world called home.
As on Enithra IV I join the flowing rivers, the Human tides that sweep back and forth before windows all glossed and decorated and perfumed. No modern gravity slides these walks, but durable rock and concrete that pushes hard back against direct action muscles.
I walk and sense and study.
One message flashes repeatedly in rental space above us. Stripped of its sexual undertones and the ever present effect of clever moving male and female figures, it simply conveys the message, Come to Star-Drive Hall at seven tonight. Learn what Star-Drive has in common with Star-Communications.
The Hall is designed especially for the confrontation of Human speaker with sitting Humans. Video and sonic amplifiers cleverly enhance the single image, one Human who stands in such a way that all light receptors easily focus at his point. Were it not for Ayorian senses I’d have from the beginning felt strong empathy with his cause, such were the subtle and many means and devices used to bond together the audience.
He speaks at first softly, explaining the common bond that lay quite naturally between the communications industry and the transportation industry. He plays on Human emotion, impressing, tightening, reinforcing, sympathizing, empathizing–. They applaud politely at first, and then they whistle and cheer, finally giving a standing ovation.
No Human will suffer job displacement, none will hunger, or go roofless. Yet the speaker swiftly ties together images of hunger and loss of pride and goal substitutes until hardly anyone that evening but does not feel a personal future threatened.
Two large and sterile moons gloom over us as we walk from the hall. The air glistens with a promise of frost. Street lights sway in short golden arcs. I bow my head and listen, envisioning reports that will soon flow into Enithra III: Transportation and Communication join forces, forming larger Hyper Org.
With a tiny glimmer I begin to understand all of those brief messages, especially what they do not say.
As I travel, sampling and testing from world to world, I find Human love and patience in children and mothers and fathers and between friends and within great religious movements. Self-sacrifice is not unlike that of Ayorian for Ayorian. Slowly my original visualization of grasping, egocentric, self-seeking Human begins to dissolve, until I understand that Humans are biologically undifferentiated, that evolution, as with the Ayor, is still at work, and will be for many hundreds of thousands of years. I begin to discriminate between the fine differences within individual motives and between groups and sub-groups. Somewhere deeply buried within their abstractions and circumlocutions and misdirections seems to be a deep genetic purpose. Often I speculate if their concept of Godhood is that single, overpowering, genetic drive.
Then one day on a world remote and black as the charred moons buzzing about it I suddenly recognize how strongly similar are the Human and the Ayorian, how each race holds similar motives, although biologically so dissimilar. And I ponder on how this can be, for I have merely replaced one puzzle with another, as seems to be true of all twinning problems.
III
Ayorian twinning teaches that the solution to one philosophical puzzle only brings on another. Human direct science teaches that the solution to one scientific problem only brings on another. Whether or not I’d deciphered the Human genetic motive, and whether or not I was correct in surmising that Ayorian and Human species have identical life goals, my most urgent problem was still to redirect Human goal substitutes.
Once as a small Ayorian child I floated steady and silently before an Ashenter Vine, fascinated by the behaviour of two small insects. The diminutive Anual moves by spurts teleporting from branch to branch up and down the vine. Its goal: to find a depression where it can weave a non-organic covering. Some days later it will teleport from beneath its covering, now buoying itself in clean Enithra air by means of clusters of tiny hydrogen sacks. Metamorphosised, it sparkles jewel-like, a creature of the air with ability to hover on slender strings or to teleport great distances.
As I fastened Human light receptors on this activity, the Ormef insect, huge and balloon-like, dull in colour, with telekmass capacity about the size of my fist, also observed. Every bit of its feeble mass sensing spread outward into a fine weblike network. It strained mightily to teleport the smaller Anual to its large stomach sack.
The Anual moved in discrete jumps apparently carefree and even unconcerned.
Just as the power relation was to fade, the Ormef jumped, and the Anual was gone – now Ormef food inside its big sack.
The dull Ormef is genetically designed so that coupling power ratios depends upon angles, not upon gross strength. This symbolism always seemed pertinent to my job as Co-ordinator. So long as Humans maintained constant alignment with their genetic goals, life treated them kindly. The least variation from their common theme, and Humankind became torn asunder – as, it seemed, so did individuals within the human species.
Hadn’t this also been true of my Brethren, the Ayor?
Conveying my final perhaps naive conclusions to Trod Gerard, I say, “The solution has always been apparent, but not its means. We need the Co-ordinators back. No group of Humans or their machines in cluster can provide for all necessary research and co-ordination and feedback.”
Trod is pleased with my progress. His office, near mine on Enithra IV, glistens in silver and gold but also comforts me with soft ultraviolets and black cloths that drape over and hide harsh citadel lines, blending them into warmth and comfort.
When I nod, he touches a silver stud and speaks, explaining that the costly search for surviving co-ordinators will begin. Thousands of leads pour inward with the brevity and efficiency of an organized galaxy. Perhaps eighty percent of the inhabited worlds are so well organized that no one Human can be lost, or hidden therein.
Another ten percent are so poorly colonized that no strangers can hide unbidden.
Roughly ten percent are poorly organized, or uncontrolled, and it is on these worlds that sustained efforts begin.
More facts are learned. Trod gathers the information and synthesizes, and one day explains to me, “They’ve dispersed. Maybe twenty five years ago. Your parents were among them.”
“All dead?”
“No. Some must be in hiding.” He drums slender, wrinkled fingers.
“They know we need them. Why do they not come?”
“Spork,” he sympathizes kindly, “How many suppressive societies have you and the Ayor overcome?”
“Seven.”
“How many did not permit any knowledge of the old Co-ordinators?”
“Four.”
“And the others?”
“Your Quations, small, indifferent. The Miner’s Association, even more indifferent. The Beast –.”
He waves. “The Beast doesn’t count.” Softly, like speaking to a small child, he poses the question: “If you are fleeing for life, what will you do? For your sake and – ah your children?” He paused, I believe, at the thought that I am yet untwinned.
All modern and Human methods have failed. I finally reason and conclude that I must search. Who else thinks as I do?
But it is impossible to search for hiding and brilliant survivors of the mad purges on ten thousand likely planets. Still there is no other working postulate.
First, through the Trasla doorway, to a planet orbiting with a velocity similar to Enithra’s. But it is harsh with ultraviolets, light so painful to my sensitive light receptors that surely it will be equally painful to others genetically similar. Passing this lone conclusion back eliminates one hundred and twenty worlds, leaving me but nine thousand, eight hundred and eighty more.
What else can I do, but make random jumps, and sense, and think?
L’Con, an interesting name, means Peace. The planet is temperate pole to pole with great masses that are fertile and surrounded by tempering narrow water passages. City life is controlled, permitting only that which is necessary for comfortable survival. Small village groups surround larger domains, but the village pattern dominates inside the larger, too.
Art and music and dance and literature are exported, and all that I sense is peaceful. The more I give thought to the overall pattern – the gestalt – the stronger is my feeling, my intuition. Creative arts? Well co-ordinated and sensible planning? Peace? Genuine peace?
