David Brin - Infinity's Shore

“What’s that?”

Ling inhaled deeply. “Rann and Kunn are privy to knowledge about the Rothen that most Daniks never learn. Rann has even been to one of the secret Rothen home sites. Most of us are never so blessed. When not on missions, we dwell with our families in the covered canyons of Poria Outpost, with just a hundred or so of our patrons. Even on Poria, the two races don’t mix daily.”

“Still, not to know something so basic about those who claim to be—”

“Oh, one hears rumors. Sometimes you see a Rothen whose face seems odd … as if part of it was, well, put on wrong. Maybe we cooperate with the deception by choosing at some level not to notice. Anyway, that’s not the real issue, is it?”

“What is the real issue?”

“You imply I should be horrified to learn they wear symbionts to look more humanoid. To appear more beautiful in our eyes. But why shouldn’t the Rothen use artificial aids, if it helps them serve as better guides, shepherding our race toward excellence?”

Lark muttered, “How about a little thing called honesty?”

“Do you tell your pet chimp or zookir everything? Don’t parents sometimes lie to children for their own good? What about lovers who strive to look nice for each other? Are they dishonest?

“Think, Lark. What are the odds against another race seeming as gloriously beautiful to human eyes as our patrons appear? Oh, part of their attraction surely dates back to early stages of uplift, on Old Earth, when they raised our apelike ancestors almost to full sapiency, before the Great Test began. It may be ingrained at a genetic level … the way dogs were culled in favor of craving the touch of man.

“Yet, we are still unfinished creatures. Still crudely emotional. Let me ask you, Lark. If your job were to uplift flighty, cantankerous beings, and you found that wearing a cosmetic symbiont would make your role as teacher easier, wouldn’t you do it?”

Before Lark could answer an emphatic no, she rushed ahead.

“Do not some members of your Six use rewq animals for similar ends? Those symbionts that lay their filmy bodies over your eyes, sucking a little blood in exchange for help translating emotions? Aren’t rewq a vital part of the complex interplay that is your Commons?”

“Hr-rm.” Lark throat-umbled like a doubtful hoon. “Rewq don’t help us lie. They are not themselves lies.”

Ling nodded. “Still, you never faced a task as hard as the Rothens’—to raise up creatures as brilliant, and disagreeable, as human beings. A race whose capability for future majesty also makes us capricious and dangerous, prone to false turns and deadly errors.”

Lark quashed an impulse to argue. She might only dig in, rationalizing herself into a corner and refusing to come out. At least now she admitted that one Rothen might do evil deeds — that Ro-kenn’s personal actions might be criminal.

And who knows? That may be all there is to it. The scheming of a rogue individual. Perhaps the race is just as wonderful as she says. Wouldn’t it be nice if humanity really had such patrons, and a manifest greatness waiting, beyond the next millennium?

Ling had seemed sincere when she claimed the Rothen ship commander would get to the bottom of things.

“It’s imperative to convince your sages they must release the hostages and Ro-pol’s body, along with those photograms’ your portraitist took. Blackmail won’t work against the Rothen — you must understand this. It’s not in their character to respond to threats. Yet the ‘evidence’ you’ve gathered could do harm in the long run.”

That was before the stunning news — that the Rothen ship was itself captured, encased in a prison of light.

Lark mused over one of the mulc spider’s golden eggs while Ling spoke for a while about the difficult but glorious destiny her masters planned for impulsive, brilliant humanity.

“You know,” he commented. “There’s something screwy about the logic of this whole situation.”

“What do you mean?”

Lark chewed his lip, like an urs wrestling with uncertainty. Then he decided — it was time to bring it all in the open.

“I mean, let’s put aside for now the added element of the new starship. The Rothen may have feuds you know nothing about. Or it may be a different gang of gene raiders, come to rob Jijo’s biosphere. For all we know, magistrates from the Galactic Migration Institute have brought Judgment Day as foretold in the Scrolls.

“For now, though, let’s review what led to the Battle of the Glade — the fight that made you my prisoner. It began when Bloor photo’d the dead Ro-pol without her mask. Ro-kenn went livid, ordering his robots to kill everyone who had seen.

“But didn’t you once assure me there was no need to delete local witnesses to your team’s visit? That your masters could handle it, even if oral and written legacies survive hundreds or thousands of years, describing a visit by human and Rothen gene raiders?”

“I did.”

“But you admit gene raiding is against Galactic law! I know you feel the Rothen are above such things. Still, they don’t want to be caught in the act.

“Let’s assume credible testimony, maybe even photos, finally reach Migration Institute inspectors next time they visit Jijo. Testimony about you and Rann and Kunn. Human gene raiders. Even I know the rule—‘police your own kind’—prevails in the Five Galaxies. Did Ro-kenn explain how the Rothen would prevent sanctions coming down on Earth?”

Ling wore a grim expression. “You’re saying he played us for fools. That he let me spread false assurances among the natives, while planning all along to strew germs and wipe out every witness.”

Obviously it was bitter for her to say it.

Ling seemed surprised when Lark shook his head.

“That’s what I thought at first, when qheuens fell sick. But what I now imagine is worse yet.”

That got her attention.

“What could be worse than mass murder? If the charge is proved, Ro-kenn will be hauled off to the home sites in dolor chains! He’ll be punished as no Rothen has been in ages.”

Lark shrugged. “Perhaps. But stop and think a bit.

“First, Ro-kenn wasn’t relying on disease alone to do the job.

“Oh, he probably had a whole library of bugs — infectious agents used in past wars in the Five Galaxies. No doubt starfaring qheuens long ago developed countermeasures against the germ raging through Uthen’s lymph pipes right now. I’m sure Ro-kenn’s concoctions will kill a lot more of us.”

Ling started to protest, but Lark forged ahead.

“Nevertheless, I know a thing or two about how pestilence works in natural ecosystems. It would be a complete fluke for even a string of diseases to wipe out every member of the Six. Random immunities would stymie the best-designed bugs. Furthermore, the sparser the population got, the harder it would be to reach and infect dispersed survivors.

“No, Ro-kenn needed something more. A breakdown of the Commons into total war! A war that could be exploited, pushed to the limits. A struggle so bitter that each race would pursue its victims to the farthest comers of Jijo, willingly helping to spread new parasites in order to slay their foes.”

He saw Ling struggle to find a way around his logic. But she had been present when Ro-kenn’s psi-recordings were played — sick dream images, meant to incite fatal grudges among the Six. Those present weren’t fooled because they were forewarned, but what if the messages had been broadcast as planned … amplified through the compelling wave forms of the Holy Egg?

“I will tell of this, back home,” she vowed in a low, faint voice. “He will be punished.”

“That’s gratifying,” Lark went on. “But I’m not finished. You see, even by combining plagues with war, Ro-kenn could never guarantee annihilation of all six races, or eliminate the off chance that credible testimony might be passed down the generations — perhaps stored in some cave — to finally reach Institute prosecutors. On the other hand, he could influence which race or sept would be left standing at the end, and which would perish first. There is one, in particular, whose fate he knows well how to manipulate. That one is Homo sapiens.