Eric Flint - Mother of Demons

"That's all very sane and logical, Mr. Coh-Julius. But let me ask you a question. Would you rather have an ocean with whales or without them?"

He frowned. "What is this, some kind of trick question? With whales, of course."

"You are pleased, then, at the fact that the Earth's oceans are teeming with whales?"

"Sure!"

"Hmm. Yet it's a fact-I'm an historian, as I said-that the whales were only saved from extermination because of the actions of people who were not driven by logic but by an irrational passion. The type of people you call 'ecofreaks.' Had it not been for them, the great cetaceans would have disappeared. For it is also a fact that during the period of the great whale slaughtering, sane and logical men such as yourself stood to one side. Clucking their tongues at the barbarity of it all, of course, and shedding tears over the plight of the poor whales. But always quick to correct the scientific errors of the 'ecofreaks,' as if genocide and failing a biology quiz were of equal weight in the judgement of history."

She relaxed, slightly. "Mind you, I take some pride myself in my own rationality and logic. But I am an historian by profession. And if there is one thing that historians know, it's that nothing great was ever achieved except by those who were filled with passion. Their passion may have been illogical, even bizarre to modern people. Their understanding of the world and what they were doing may have been false. It usually was. But they were not afraid to act, guided by whatever ideas they had in their possession. Do not sneer at such people. You would not be here without them."

Silence followed for a moment. Indira was surprised to see that there was not a trace of irritation in the face of the man opposite her. Instead, Julius was gazing at her with a strange look. Interest, she suddenly realized.

Koresz spoke. "I fear I shall have to exercise my medical skills, lest Julius bleed to death from the many great wounds inflicted upon him."

Laughter erupted, with Julius joining in.

"If I'd known there was an historian in the vicinity," he chuckled, "I would have kept my mouth shut. 'Keep your fat lip buttoned around historians,' my mother alway told me. 'They're too smart for you.' "

Indira peered at him suspiciously. "That's a crude attempt at flattery."

He looked surprised. "What do you mean? It's the simple truth. There's no subject on earth as complex and intricate as human history. I get dizzy just thinking about the variables. Makes the double helix look like a tinker-toy! And there's no comparison to that mindless one-two-three the physicists putter around in."

"You're just jealous, Julius," laughed a woman sitting to his left.

Julius' rubbery face twisted into an exaggerated sneer.

"Jealous? Of what, Ruth? The money they shower you plumbers with? Sure. But I wouldn't be a physicist for all the money in the world." He shuddered. "God, think of it! Spend your whole life counting the elementary particles. How many are there, anyway? Bet I can count them all on my fingers."

He began imitating a toddler.

"Dis widdle piggy is da lepton. An' dis widdle piggy is da quark. Dere's six a dem! Or is it eight? Such a big number! An' dis widdle piggy-oh, boy, is this fun or what?"

Again, the circle erupted in laughter. When the laughter died down, Julius was watching Indira. For a long few seconds, they stared at each other in silence. Then the great warm smile spread across his face, and Indira felt her heart turn over.

I don't believe this, she thought to herself.

But it was true. Within three days, they were lovers. The weeks which followed, before they reluctantly entered the coldcells, were the happiest of her life.

Her reminiscence was interrupted by a commotion in the village below. No, she reminded herself, looking down into the valley, the "homeheart." She sub-vocalized the owoc hoot, trying, as always, to improve her pronunciation. The sounds produced by the owoc speaking tubes-evolved from ancestral water siphons, Julius had speculated-were very difficult for humans to reproduce. Children, with the plasticity of youth, managed fairly well. But she could only make herself passably understood. Julius never managed at all.

The difficulty was not due simply, nor even primarily, to the difference in sound-producing apparatus. The siphons of the gukuy were generically similar to those of their owoc cousins. But she had no trouble speaking any of the gukuy languages which she had encountered. Gukuy thought-processes, and the languages in which they were expressed, were much closer to the human norm than the strange gestalt-concepts of the owoc.

That's because the gukuy approach life the way we do. As a place to establish control, and mastery. A place to manipulate, to change to our liking. A place to conquer. A place to kill.

It was mealtime. The humans were gathering at the center of the homeheart, wearing their khaki-colored feeding scarves. The owoc givers appeared, moving slowly into the excited crowd of children. The boys and girls surrounded the huge beings, hooting affection and stroking their mantles. Their parents-themselves not much older than children-hung back with greater dignity. Each human held a bowl, made from the thick outer integument of awato-plants ("oh, hell," Julius had said, "let's just call it 'bark' "; then he'd muttered something to the effect that if he ran across Willi Hennig in the afterlife he was a dead duck). The owoc givers began regurtitating into the great tureens located at the center of the homeheart. When they were done, each human would scoop a bowlful of the khaki-colored paste and retire to eat it.

Even after all these years, the sight made her queasy. She herself ate the childfood, of course. She would die without it. But she still refused to participate directly in the process. Julius or one of the children would bring her a bowl, which she would eat at a distance. Trying to pretend it was lukewarm porridge. The children had no such compunctions at all. They had never eaten anything else, and took it for granted. Even their parents had only the dimmest memories of a life without childfood.

Julius had tried to find a substitute. His search had become desperate, once it became clear that not all of the humans could survive on the childfood. His daughter, among them.

But he had failed. Completely.

"Goddammit," he had exclaimed once, "if only Estelle had survived the crash! She was the biochemist. I'm just a paleontologist. I can tell you why and how I think every form of life I've seen on this planet evolved, and how they're related to each other, and where they fit into the ecological zones and niches. But I can't tell you why we can't eat anything. Except the childfood."

He rubbed his face wearily. "I know it's a metabolic problem. It has to be. Most of the children seem to thrive on the childfood, after an initial period of adaptation."

A long silence had followed. She hugged him, knowing he was feeling the loss of his daughter. Ann had been a plump, cheerful five-year-old girl, who, when she died in her father's arms only a few months after the crash, had looked like something out of a death camp.

"All the proteins, the amino acids-everything humans need to survive-are out there in that alien biosphere. If they weren't, none of us would still be alive. But there's something about the way they're put together that the human digestive system can't handle. Except that most of the children can survive-survive well, in fact-once the plants have been broken down in the owoc guts."

He rubbed his face again. "But I don't know why. After all this time, all I know is that meat is poisonous and we can only eat vegetation if the owoc process it." A dry, humorless laugh. "And we knew that within two months."

The first two months had been a nightmare, horror piled upon horror.