David Brin - Infinity's Shore

But I can’t do it. I cannot look at this place with joy. Earthling values keep me from seeing these creatures as lustrous beings. They deserve kindness and pity — but not envy.

It was his own heresy. Lester tried to look elsewhere. But turning just brought to view another cluster of “blessed.” This time, humans, gathered in a circle under a ilhuna tree, sitting cross-legged with hands on knees, chanting in low, sonorous voices. Men and women whose soft smiles and unshifting eyes seemed to show simplicity of the kind sought here … only Lester knew them to be liars!

Long ago, he took the same road. Using meditation techniques borrowed from old Earthling religions, he sat under just such a tree, freeing his mind of worldly obsessions, disciplining it to perceive Truth. And for a while it seemed he succeeded. Acolytes bowed reverently, calling him illuminated. The universe appeared lucid then, as if the stars were sacred fire. As if he were united with all Jijo’s creatures, even the very quanta in the stones around him. He lived in harmony, needing little food, few words, and even fewer names.

Such serenity — sometimes he missed it with an ache inside.

But after a while he came to realize — the clarity he had found was sterile blankness. A blankness that felt fine, but had nothing to do with redemption. Not for himself. Not for his race.

The other five don’t use discipline or concentration to seek simplicity. You don’t see glavers meditating by a rotten log full of tasty insects. Simplicity calls to them naturally. They live their innocence.

When Jijo is finally reopened, some great clan will gladly adopt the new glaver subspecies, setting them once more upon the High Path, perhaps with better luck than they had the first time.

But those patrons won’t choose us. No noble elder clan is looking for smug Zen masters, eager to explain their own enlightenment. That is not a plainness you can write upon. It is simplicity based on individual pride.

Of course the point might be moot. If the Jophur ship represented great Institutes of the Civilization of the Five Galaxies, these forests would soon throng with inspectors, tallying up two thousand years of felonies against a fallow world. Only glavers would be safe, having made it to safety in time. The other six races would pay for a gamble lost.

And if they don’t represent the Institutes?

The Rothen had proved to be criminals, gene raiders. Might the Jophur be more of the same? Murderous genocide could still be in store. The g’Kek clan, in particular, were terrified of recent news from the Glade.

On the other hand, it might be possible to cut a deal. Or else maybe they’ll just go away, leaving us in the same state we were in before.

In that case, places like this refuge would go back to being the chief hope for tomorrow … for five races out of the Six.

Lester’s dark thoughts were cut off by a tug on his sleeve.

“Sage Cambel? The … um, visitors you’re, ah, expecting … I think …”

It was a young human, broad-cheeked, with clear blue eyes and pale skin. The boy would have seemed tall — almost a giant — except that a stooped posture diminished his appearance. He kept tapping a corner of his forehead with the fingertips of his right hand, as if in a vague salute.

Lester spoke gentle words in Anglic, the only language the lad ever managed to learn.

“What did you say, Jimi?”

The boy swallowed, concentrating hard.

“I think the … um … the people you want t’see … I think they’re here … Sage Cambel.”

“Lark and the Danik woman?”

A vigorous nod.

“Um, yessir. I sent ’em to the visitors’ shed … to wait for you an’ the other Great Sage. Was that right?”

“Yes, that was right, Jimi.” Lester gave his arm a friendly squeeze. “Please go back now. Tell Lark I’ll be along shortly.”

A broad grin. The boy turned around to run the way he came, awkward in his eagerness to be useful.

There goes the other kind of human who comes to this place, Lester thought. Our special ones …

The ancient euphemism tasted strange.

At first sight, it would seem people like Jimi fit the bill. Simpler minds. Innocent. Our ideal envoys to tread the Path.

He glanced at the blessed ones surrounding Knife-Bright Insight — urs, hoons, and g’Keks who were sent here by their respective races in order to do that. To lead the way.

By the standards of the scrolls, these ones aren’t damaged. Though simple, they aren’t flawed. They are leaders. But no one can say that of Jimi. All sympathy aside, he is injured, incomplete. Anyone can see that.

We can and should love him, help him, befriend him.

But he leads humanity nowhere.

Lester signaled to his blue qheuen colleague, using an urslike shake of his head to indicate that their appointment had arrived. She responded by turning her visor cupola in a quick series of GalTwo winks, flashing that she’d be along shortly.

Lester turned and followed Jimi’s footsteps, trying to shift his thoughts back to the present crisis. To the problem of the Jophur battleship. Back to urgent plans he must discuss with the young heretic and the woman from the stars. There was a dire proposal — farfetched and darkly dangerous — they must be asked to accept.

Yet, as he passed by the chanting circle of meditating humans — healthy men and women who had abandoned their farms, families, and useful crafts to dwell without work in this sheltered valley — Lester found his contemplations awash with bitter resentment. The words in his head were unworthy of a High Sage, he knew. But he could not help pondering them.

Morons and meditators, those are the two types that our race sends up here. Not a true “blessed” soul in the lot. Not by the standards set in the scrolls. Humans almost never take true steps down redemption’s path. Ur-Jah and the others are polite. They pretend that we, too, have that option, that potential salvation.

But we don’t. Our lot is sterile.

With or without judgment from the stars — the only future humans face on Jijo is damnation.

Dwer

SMOKE SPIRALED FROM THE CRASH SITE. IT WAS against his better judgment to sneak closer. In fact, now was his chance to run the other way, while the Danik robot cowered in a hole, showing no further interest in its prisoners.

And if Rety wanted to stay?

Let her! Lena and Jenin would be glad to see Dwer if he made the long journey back to the Gray Hills. That should be possible with his trusty bow in hand. True, Rety needed him, but those up north had better claim on his loyalty.

Dwer’s senses still throbbed from the din of the brief battle, when the mighty Danik scoutship was shot down by a terrifying newcomer. Both vessels lay beyond the next dune, sky chariots of unfathomable power … and Rety urged him to creep closer still!

“We gotta find out what’s going on,” she insisted in a harsh whisper.

He gave her a sharp glance, demanding silence, and for once she complied, giving him a moment to think.

Lena and Jenin may be safe for a while, now that Kunn won’t be returning to plague them. If the Daniks and Rothens have enemies on Jijo, all the star gods may be too busy fighting each other to hunt a little band in the Gray Hills.

Even without guidance from Danel Ozawa, Lena Strong was savvy enough to make a three-way deal, with Rety’s old band and the urrish sooners. Using Danel’s “legacy,” their combined tribe might plant a seed to flourish in the wilderness. Assuming the worst happened back home on the Slope, their combined band might yet find its way to the Path.

Dwer shook his head. He sometimes found it hard to concentrate. Ever since letting the robot use his body as a conduit for its fields, it felt as if voices whispered softly at the edge of hearing. As when the crazy old mulc spider used to wheedle into his thoughts.