Starfire Saga, page 69
Jemeret took his coffee and went to the couch, holding himself rigidly. Jasin Lebec followed him, his face impassive, but his concern apparent when I read him. I looked at Pel Nostro. “Pull our messages off the comsole, will you, Pel? And please let us know if there’s anything really important there.”
Pel Nostro hesitated a moment, unused to the role of errand boy, perhaps wondering if I were insulting him, but also curious about the messages I’d just given him permission to read.
Keli had taken her brother to the outermost of the small rooms, and I sensed she’d keep him there and fill him in until we sent for them. Sinet and Sandalari were censoring some of Tial’s food choices, and he was objecting strenuously, but good-naturedly. The Com Counselor watched us for a moment, then went to the comsole.
I took Mortel John’s arm and led him to the couch, pulling Coney along with my sting, but making sure we didn’t sit too near Jemeret. “What kind of experiment was it?” I asked the cyborg as we sat down.
“The MIs were—and are—fascinated by talent,” he answered, turning immediately toward Jemeret anyway. “Fascination is the best word to use,” he said almost apologetically. “They perceived something about it which resonated through all their predictive models.” He frowned. “You see, the MIs have a difficult time with individual consciousness. Theirs is a group consciousness, of which pieces are dedicated to individual efforts, but in which the unified whole is the greatest strength.”
I had a sudden flash of recall, sitting beside the sacred spring on the Plain of Convalee and Jemeret’s mind blazing out, linking all of the Boru into one, brief, transitory consciousness. I remembered the profound sense of belonging, the achingly perfect seconds of oneness, and I thought I understood.
Mortel John was continuing. “The MIs conjectured that, since human beings had created them, and since they, the MIs, had this group consciousness, human beings must be striving for it as well. They decided to see if they could help guide its creation.”
Jemeret was listening, narrow-eyed. I could almost sense his formidable mind cataloguing this new information for testing later, nearly professionally skeptical, while my tendency was to believe and accept, despite the fact that I knew the Com had lied to me on pertinent occasions before.
“Cloning was the first full attempt,” my teacher continued, falling easily into the old instructional relationship we’d had in the past. “A clone family has a crude kind of shared consciousness.”
“But the Drenalion are hardly a step upward for mankind,” Jasin Lebec said quietly.
Mortel John nodded. “The MIs had not understood that there is a real, extremely strong tendency in humans toward brutishness. When that tendency is triggered in a situation of incipient group consciousness, it becomes ‘gang’ consciousness.” He shifted his position on the couch, as if a little uneasy. “The mob lies very close to the surface,” he said. “That’s what the cloning experiment proved to them.”
“Why weren’t the Drenalion destroyed?” Jemeret’s question was sharp-edged, the core of his ever-present anger lying beneath it, but at least he was participating.
“They were a resource,” Mortel John answered. “Resources are never destroyed. Uses are found for them instead.” He returned his gaze to me. “Then, just about the time they were recognizing the failure of the cloning experiment, they discovered talent.”
“How?” That was Jemeret again. “Caryldon is twelve rolls away from the action here. However did anyone find us?”
Mortel John’s eyes went suddenly very sad. “I’m afraid that was my doing,” he said. “I was fully human then, younger than I’ve been frozen at, and I captained a ship called the Pentalume for the Discovery Section of the Merchant Fleet. My name was John Caryl.”
Jasin Lebec exhaled with a hiss. “The Pentalume was launched over two hundred years ago,” he said in a barely audible voice.
Mortel John regarded him with those dark, sad eyes. “She was a good ship,” he said. “I was, perhaps, not the best captain she could have had, but I was the one she got. I had been given orders to explore the Rigellian Sector, but I had dreams of glory, and I disregarded my orders. I went looking for the legendary original planet of man—I wanted to be the one who rediscovered the Earth. We all knew that the planet had been proscribed after the last of the Emigration Wars. Even now, this far distant, we believe that to have been historical fact. The few remaining rebels had sabotaged the Lume base on the Earth’s moon, where the first rollships were built and launched, but when they destroyed the base, they reduced the moon to chunks of radioactive rock and dust, much of which was caught in the planet’s gravitational field. The confederation of worlds, already settled as a result of the Lume technology—the precursor of the Com, if you will—simply decided that they would leave it alone. And they did. Eventually, it passed into legend. I wanted to bring it back out.”
“And you found Caryldon,” Coney said.
Mortel John nodded. “It was a fair guess at the area, a planet third from its primary, with the right density. Some other readings were anomalous, but I needed to put in for repairs. I didn’t expect to find inhabitants when I landed. I did, and when the MIs received my report, they sent me back again. By the time I returned, there was strong evidence of the development of talent.”
Pel Nostro came to the couch from the comsole with some message chips in his hand, but encountering a long, heavy silence, he sat down silently beside Mortel John. I wondered if he had known all along what we were only now learning.
At long last my old teacher said, “The MIs believed that mankind had found a niche in which to do the evolution they themselves could not create in humans. And when they saw the nature of the evolution, they realized it was not to be in the direction of group consciousness at all, and they revised their goals.”
“Why couldn’t they have left us alone?” Jemeret’s anger was blunter now.
“There were so few of you,” Mortel John answered. “The entire planet had fewer than fifty thousand people on it. The Com was responsible for billions. The MIs concluded that, if this was to be the nature of human development, they had to try to help produce it for all the citizens, and in the meantime, they might secure for themselves a useful instrument of control over the wasteful irrationality of human emotionalism. Then their predictive models would become infinitely more accurate, and their use of resources comparably more efficient.”
“What about you?” I asked him. “How did they come to create you?”
He looked, if possible, sadder. “A young talent is a barbarian if untrained,” he said. “Individualism coupled with talent leads to selfishness and needless destruction. There had to be a social unit, and it had to appear to provide the support that, say, a family would.”
“Or a tribe?” Jasin Lebec sounded bitter. I remembered how much of his life he had been alone.
“Yes, a tribe is a good human social unit,” Mortel John said. “The tribe is the polar opposite of the mob, and there is a tribal consciousness which can counteract the brutishness of the gang consciousness.”
“That doesn’t answer my question,” Jemeret said. “We were forming tribes. We were—are—training talent and raising it successfully. Why couldn’t the MIs see that we were better left alone?”
“They needed talent,” Mortel John said. “Once they knew it existed and knew they could not create it artificially themselves, they determined they would have to borrow it from the evolutionary line already in existence.”
Pel Nostro spoke for the first time since he’d sat down. “But if the tribal model was good, why didn’t the MIs just tell the government to co-opt all the talent on Caryldon and bring it whole into the Com?”
“Humankind had not evolved in the Com, but on a distant world isolated from the core,” Mortel John answered patiently. “Bringing all the talent in could destroy it. And Com society was not set up to absorb a tribal culture.”
“Well, it’s true we’ve grown well beyond that cultural model,” Pel Nostro said.
“Do you know yourself so little, Pel?” Mortel John asked. “In humans, self-centered savagery lies just out of sight even in the most ostensibly civilized. All of your institutions, all of your rules, all of your rituals, are for the purpose of keeping that savagery down, for the good of the species. Thus, the Drenalion—giving them the custody of human savagery allows you to deny it is a part of you. As an institution, the tribe is not a bad choice at any stage of development.”
I’d started shaking my head as he spoke, and I wasn’t aware of it until he was silent. “Savagery isn’t all there is,” I said with conviction. “It can’t be.”
“It isn’t,” Coney agreed firmly. “It’s balanced by compassion and kindness and a great many other redeeming qualities.”
Mortel John smiled at him, a very small smile. “Some people are special,” he said, “but they are few, and you are one of them. You have always been a peacemaker, Shems. You have always been able to put anger away from you. We are not much like you in the substance of our beings. Listen to me,” he added with sudden self-deprecation, “speaking as if I were still one of you.” He shifted his weight again. “Deny your angers to yourselves if you can, any of you.”
“I deny them.” Sandalari had risen from the table and stood upright, burning like a flame of vibrant beauty in the center of the room. I hadn’t even known she was listening. Coney glowed back at her, pride in her streaming from him, as apparent to me as if it were solidly visible.
“I am rebuked,” Mortel John said softly. “I had forgotten you, Sarai Gregson.”
“I’ve forgotten Sarai Gregson, too,” she said, gliding to the couch, bending and planting a full-hearted, affectionate kiss on his cheek, a gesture that astonished me because I would never have thought to do it myself. She slid past him and sat down next to Coney. “You must see, and you must tell the MIs, that they underestimate us. We have both parts of humanity within us—the vicious and the kind, the selfish and the altruistic.”
“I think they believe that,” the cyborg said, clasping his hands between his knees, “but I think they decided that you would not, left to your own devices, choose to emphasize the latter. You never have for long, you know. They decided to take a hand directly. So they changed me. I was the one who had found talent; I would be the one they would make their instrument to try to mold it.” He looked thoughtful. “I’ve never been clear on whether they considered it a reward or a punishment.”
“What do you consider it?” I asked him.
“I consider it the only life I have,” he said simply.
I don’t know what I expected; however, I know I hadn’t expected to want to weep. I touched Jemeret lightly just as he downed the rest of his coffee. He set his cup down with a crack and asked, “Do you recognize—do they recognize—that you’ve balled up proper and complete trying to raise talent to do your bidding?”
Pel Nostro jumped, whether from the entirely undiplomatic nature of the words or from the quality of the question itself, I couldn’t tell. His hand almost convulsively closed on the message chips.
Mortel John was, however, completely unruffled by the question. “They know now there are some variables they cannot account for,” he said. “They have determined that I am not, after all, necessarily the best instrument with which to attack those variables. Just the best available until now.”
He and Jemeret stared at one another for the space of three very deep breaths, and then my lord said in as low and hard a voice as I’d ever heard him use, “I am not an instrument.”
“Not of the MIs.” I’d said it before I knew I was even thinking of it, and when it came out, Jemeret’s gaze flew to me, his gray eyes steel instead of the smoke I was used to. I tried to wash everyone with the impression that I’d meant it as an emphatic restressing of his words. He relaxed minutely, even though I was not nearly as good at such washes as he was.
Pel Nostro cleared his throat. “Perhaps this would be the time for me to relate to you a few of the messages which have come in,” he said.
I reached out with my hand, not with the sting, laying it on Jemeret’s arm, feeling the corded muscles ease slightly under my fingertips. We had not talked about the starfire since we reached Orokell, even bubbled. I thought that we might have to soon.
“Go ahead, Pel,” Jasin Lebec said.
The Com Counselor looked down at the chips in his hands as if to refresh his memory of what there was to say to us. “Camla Steiner is dead,” he said, naming one of the three Class C government operatives who were on their way to Orokell to join us.
“How?” Jemeret asked sharply.
“The Gralume wobbled off roll point at the edge of the Brochid system and exploded when its Lume drive kicked in anyway. It could have been an accident.” Pel Nostro waited a moment to see if any of us would disagree, but we said nothing, so the Com Counselor continued, “Jara Deland still wants to give you all the Ml projections on talent working as a team, and I’ve set up a meeting with her here at mid-afternoon. She won’t be happy until she gets her meeting.”
“You didn’t tell her about our conversation with the MIs yesterday, did you?” I was unable to resist asking him.
“I am not a man with talent, Ronica,” he said with dignity, “but I am hardly an idiot.” I noticed that he had dropped the formality of my full name, and was gratified.
“Sorry,” I murmured.
He shrugged. “Not at all. I understand that there are marriages in which people share everything, and I would imagine that talent makes such a situation highly desirable. There are other marriages—and they need not be Brochidian to demand it—where the things withheld are often the things which help keep the couple together. It is likely that Jara and I have one of those.” He looked back at the chips in his hand, forestalling any other comments on what he’d said. “The situation on Nogdala 7 continues to worsen, and one of these is an appeal from the full Tribunal that you make some sort of scenario known to us very soon, or we will be forced to use other means.”
We all knew what those means were. “What does ‘continues to worsen’ mean?” I asked.
“We stopped and boarded a freighter headed from Nogdala 7 to Mokele and confiscated parts for another plasma disruptor, as well as a half ton of raw vikroid,” he explained. “Terrill Guthrie may be expected to fly out of orbit before he’s set his trajectory if this keeps up and you continue to do nothing.”
“Tell him we’ll be handling it shortly,” Jasin Lebec said.
Pel Nostro stared at him for a few seconds, but clearly decided against calling him a liar. Then he went on, “There is a concert tonight in Petion Hall, with the entire Orokell orchestra performing the Symphony of the Spheres in honor of the full assemblage of talent—”
“Dwindling, but assembling,” Jemeret said caustically.
The Com Counselor ignored him, determined to get through the messages. “—and they would take it quite kindly, as would we, if you could be present.”
Before either Jemeret or I could say anything, Jasin Lebec cut in smoothly, “We will be happy to attend, and please convey that to the orchestra.”
Pel Nostro was obviously relieved. “Then the usual spate of requests for appearances. I took the liberty of declining them all.” No one objected in the slightest. “Finally, there’s a strange message here for Ronica from the protodolphin colony on Sargasso.”
I was intrigued, and I could see that Jemeret was, too. “What does it say?” I asked.
Pel Nostro looked carefully at the chip, then put it into the reader and turned the volume up. “We heard you have returned from exile,” said the translator voice. “If you stop at Sargasso, there is a chance we can help. We understand that the need is great. Welcome back to the Com. Glon, for the Concourse.”
Jemeret touched me with his sting, inquiring. I shook my head slowly. I understood very well the significance of the four-word phrase “the need is great”—as did Coney, Sandalari, and Jemeret. What I didn’t know—what none of us could guess—was how the protodolphins had learned it; it had only been used on Caryldon.
Pel Nostro was looking at us with some bewilderment, for it was clear to him that something was happening, and he had no clue as to what it was.
“It could be a coincidence,” Coney said slowly.
“I’m not willing to take the chance that it is,” Jemeret answered. “May I have that chip, Pel?” He held out his hand, and the Com Counselor popped the chip out of the reader and gave it to him. Jemeret tucked it away in his jumpsuit’s thigh pouch. “Tell Anok Luttrell we’ll need a rollship at our disposal tomorrow morning.”
“Did you find out where M’Cherys and his followers were sent into exile?” I asked Pel Nostro.
“It’s a more complex question than it first appeared to be,” the Com Counselor said slowly. “I’ll have to ask for your promise that the information you receive will go no further than you.” But he didn’t wait for us to offer it.
I thought that surely Mortel John must either already know or at least have access to the information, but I didn’t ask for confirmation.
Pel Nostro went on, “One of the uninhabited continents on Ananda has been used as an exile planet for the messianic movements that arise among our member worlds. It’s shielded from the rest of the planet at a distance of two hundred nautical miles, so once someone is landed there, they’re there, barring a lander being sent for them.”
And then, of course, we all knew what Ananda had given the Com in its agreement.
“The transports carrying M’Cherys and his followers took nearly two years to arrive from the Jann-Bime system.” The Com Counselor spoke steadily. “We could use the rollships as far as there, but then they were needed elsewhere.”
“That gives them, what, eleven years standard on the world itself,” I calculated.
