David Farland - Lords of the Seventh Swarm

Gallen said, “I don’t believe we should meddle with our children in this way.”

Felph pointed accusingly at Maggie’s belly, at the swell of a child in her womb. “Isn’t that meddling? Aren’t you taking this life lightly? If you give birth naturally, you have no idea what will be born, what you are giving life to. Would you not want your own children to crave to be something more than-than some twenty meters of gut with attached gonads?”

“Of course,” Gallen said. “We all want our children to excel. But I don’t experiment on the unborn! I prefer to have my children naturally.”

“Experiment? Why damn you, you ignorant ass!” Felph shouted. “What is that thing in Maggie’s belly but an experiment! You merely hope for the best. You create it, you let it grow, you nurture it. But it is nothing more than an experiment concocted by two foolish children who have no grasp of the responsibilities they’re accepting. Giving birth naturally is no great virtue. Dogs do the same! Nature does not care one whit for your child. It doesn’t mind if your son is born a monstrosity with two heads and no heart. It takes no pity when your child whines in the night from hunger, or when it shivers from cold. It does not hope and dream and work for your child. Nature is so … arbitrary. Damn you, to trust your child into the benevolent care of an uncaring nature, then to berate me with such a tone!” Felph clenched his fists and glared at Gallen, his head shaking from side to side in his rage.

Instead of becoming more angry at Felph’s arguments, Gallen actually grinned. Perhaps it was Felph’s courage, his stubbornness. In the past several years, Gallen had gained such a reputation as a bodyguard-and then as a Lord Protector of entire worlds-that no one outside of Orick dared berate him. Yet here this old man, someone Gallen could knock over as easily as if he were a cornstalk, was shouting at Gallen like a maniac.

“Forgive me,” Gallen said, with a nod of deference. “I’d never considered genetic engineering as an obligation, rather than a choice. Still, I worry at what you are doing to your own children.”

“They crave ,” Felph said, “as I told you!”

“But what do they crave?” Orick asked. Of them all, the bear seemed most horrified by Felph. Maggie seemed to be reserving judgment. Gallen now found himself favorably disposed toward Felph. The little bear Tallea had been quiet, nonjudgmental. As a refugee from Tremonthin, she had seen thousands of subspecies of mankind. The idea of engineering one’s offspring perhaps did not seem so horrific to her.

Felph told Orick, “My children crave everything: glory, honor, power, knowledge, carnality. They seethe with it, more than you will ever imagine! So I have, given them what they need to attain the heights they desire-strength, cunning, beauty!”

“A new race of leaders? That is what you want?” Maggie asked, suspicious.

“Precisely! We will no longer be led by alien Tharrin,” Felph exulted. “I’m creating new leaders, with all the attributes that mankind revels in!”

Orick growled, “With all of mankind’s weaknesses? You say they crave honor and power? Won’t this lead to jealousies and corruption? You want to rid us of the compassionate Tharrin and put these in their place?”

“We are at war! We are at war!” Felph shouted.

Gallen was disappointed by this. Felph was just another crackpot out to create a race of supermen. It seemed that everywhere he went, someone was trying to define what mankind ought to become. Perhaps it was merely the age he lived in. With the dronon threatening the very existence of mankind, every aberlain in the galaxy was concocting some scheme to overcome the threat. As a species, mankind would have to grow or die.

“I don’t think that either my wife or I will work for you, sir,” Gallen said, finally. He turned away, began walking toward the stairs that led up out of the darkened cavern. He expected the others to follow. Orick hurried after him, and Tallea followed.

But Maggie hesitated, as if still lost in thought.

“Wait!” Felph shouted. “Where are you going? I didn’t give you permission to leave yet! You haven’t given my offer proper consideration! At least think about it!”

Maggie turned to Gallen. “Wait a minute.”

Gallen looked down the stairs at her. She gazed up at him, confusion showing in her face.

“Gallen, he’s right.”

“Right?” Gallen asked. “To be manipulating his children this way?”

“No, he’s right … to be fighting. Maybe his work won’t do any good. Maybe it will come to nothing. But at least he is trying, and if we stayed here to work with him, we would be fighting the dronon. You’re the one who always wants to fight.”

She let the words hang in the air. For weeks they had been arguing this point. Gallen was tired of running. He wanted to fight the dronon. But he couldn’t challenge them without Maggie at his side. If such a fight would risk only their own lives against the dronon, Gallen suspected that Maggie would stand beside him in such a battle, and they’d live free-or die together. But Maggie had a child in her belly. They couldn’t jeopardize the babe. So Gallen had agreed to run with her, to hide, until after the child was born.

But now she was telling him that they could make a stand here. They could fight the dronon from here. She wanted to accept Felph’s offer.

She touched her own belly, feeling the heaviness of the child growing in her. From the top of the stone stairway, Gallen looked down into the dark hole, the ancient stone Qualeewooh ruins, where Felph stood in the darkness holding a glow globe, the light faintly playing upon the gloriously beautiful faces of his children.

Maggie said softly, “I have one more question before we decide whether to accept employment. Lord Felph, why do your children all wear Guides? Why do you keep them enslaved?”

Felph stammered, “Freedom is such an important thing, a tool that is used for ill as often as good. I want them to value it, to learn to use it correctly. So I give them only as much as I am certain they can handle. In time, when I trust them, I will remove all restraints.”

Gallen considered this. Maggie abhorred the Guides. She’d lived with their restraints under Lord Karthenor.

“Freedom is such an important. thing,” she said, “that I fear even you should not be its arbiter. How can they learn to use a tool they do not hold? Give your children their freedom, and perhaps they will learn as much from its misuse as they will from its proper use.”

Her words seemed to stun Felph, for he stood gaping at her, considering her proposal. Maggie continued, “You told Gallen that he could name any price for his labor. Here is the coin I desire: I can persuade Gallen to stay and work for you on one condition. So long as we choose to remain here, you will remove the Guides from your children.”

“In time-in a hundred years or so they may be ready-” Felph stammered, “We don’t have a hundred years for them to learn!”

Maggie said. “You imagine that the dronon will be here in five hundred years, but the dronon have built keys for the world gates. They’re here in the Carina Galaxy now.”

Lord Felph, master of Ruin, gave a strangled little cry of astonishment, then dropped his glow globe so that it clattered on the stones as its light grew dim.

Dooring never got much respect from Lord Felph. Ignored half the time, worked like a slave the rest. But today … today had been a nightmare-organizing a sumptuous dinner for the entire planet, one that Lord Felph promptly sabotaged, followed by a trip to chauffeur the new employees via florafeem, followed by a late night of minor surgeries to remove Felph’s children’s Guides. Afterward he’d had to clean the dining halls, and, last of all, he now stood before Gallen’s ship, the Nightswift , which only moments before had been flown to Felph’s hangars on autopilot.