Damon Knight - Orbit 16

“So long as they do hatch?” said Mattu, an intolerable light in his huge pink eyes.

“Somebody has to care. Valene cares.”

“She does not,” said the D.A. (Dumb Ass.) “The members of the Ruling Council bring me reports of the humans who dominate this planet. Every ten millennia, the Valenians come up and destroy billions. This life span has showed us humanity beyond his pubescence. Man has cities, a struggling culture, and he reaches for the stars. Man cares about life and death. He wishes to continue. The Valenians don’t care. There, Beloved Friends, is the situation.”

Valene made a few short comments. “Surely there is more, Mattu. Your argument is rational to a point. I seek to see beyond it.”

“Then hear my next words,” said Mattu in sonorous tones. “The life span of the Valenians is twelve Earth months. The life span of mankind is seventy Earth years.”

“I fail—” said Valene.

“The love of life is a thing,” said Mattu.

“It exists?”

“Beloved Queen and Lover, it does, outside of us.”

“Uncanny.”

“Think deeply.”

“I’m trying.”

“Mama, Mama, see me, love me,” I cried. “All groups are minorities. Integration is possible only for Valenians. I don’t want to die.”

“What is this?” The peaceful eyes of Valene rested on Mattu.

“The Devil’s Advocate isn’t wishy-washy.” Mattu’s throat might have been rusty, so creaky were the noises it created.

“That’s me, that’s me, a Devil’s Advocate,” I said. “Mama, do you love Blacky and me?”

“Valene loves you.”

“Shut up, Wasp,” said Blacky.

“Tell her, Mama,” I said. Walking on my hands to Valene, I paused and allowed my bare soles to rest on the Fur of her breast. “She’s trying to kill me with conscience, Mama. Once and for all, put her in her place. She is a curiosity, only that. Remember the day you and your slave squadron first flew in the sky during this life span? On that day, you spied a curiosity down below on the ground. The Valenians love brilliant curiosities. The brain of the Valenian inspires the body to know pleasure. Tell this black nigger why your slaves didn’t spear her along with the other humans on the street below.”

“Shut up,” screeched Blacky.

“Tell her, please, Mama.”

“Very well.” Valene looked sleek and peaceful and satiated. “I am attracted to vividness. That day I soared above man’s city. My slaves dropped spears wherever I commanded. My favorite color is a combination of blue and black, or rather, I love that which is in contrast to my own pristine colorlessness. On that day, I saw a stunning sight. My beloved color could not be hidden. It was down there on the street.”

Blacky was blubbering. “Don’t say it, don’t, don’t.”

“She spared you because you’re a nigger,” I yelled.

“The sun glistened on your body,” said Valene.

Said I, “You were mother-naked and sweating up a storm in the hot sun. Remember how the crowd hollered for you to spread your legs so they could feed you peanuts. You’re nothing but a peanut-grabbing little nigger.”

Blacky screamed, leaped, spat. She hunched on her ass and cried. “It ain’t justice, Mama. All my life, my being a nigger was the Reason.”

“Amen,” I said.

I held Blacky close and talked.

“You ever had a boy?”

She said no.

“Me either. You think we missed anything?”

She said yes.

“My mama loved me even though I had two incurable deficiencies,” she added, after a while. “I was black and I was a girl.”

“Aw, that doesn’t matter,” I said. “Everybody is a girl.”

“Funny, but you’re right. Underneath, we’re all girls. Except I never made love and I never made sex.”

“You were too little.”

“Which reminds me of the third deficiency.”

“You mean your being a midget?” I said.

Shoving her back against me, she whispered, “Did you ever in all your born days meet up with anybody freakier?”

“Old Mattu would say none of those three things are deficiencies.”

“That’s why I like him,” she said. “He’s tolerant.”

“No, he isn’t. He starts from a whole new premise. Tolerance is a dirty word, and he knows it.”

Blacky took my hand and kissed it. “I want you to do me a favor. I’d do it myself if I wasn’t scared to ride one of the bugs. What I want you to do is take Dalia on a crusade. I want you to kill every white person you see.”

“God!”

“I wish I was a Valenian. In a few months they’ll all be dead, except for Mattu, and he’ll be gone, too. Only the eggs will be left. Wish I could go with them eggs. This world is shit. I want you to kill Whitey and then the nest life span will be easy for the new Valene and her people. Nigger won’t build anything up. In ten millenniums, Nigger will still be eating bananas for dessert after he’s had his cousin as a first course.”

“I have no objections to slaughtering anyone who eats with ten fingers. I’m hard, I guess.”

Dalia and I cleaned out NYC. Whitey lay everywhere. Boats in the harbors left daily, but that made it easier to pick off those mothers.

We extended our reach and cleared the continent in a few weeks. Blacky had unleashed a tiger. The first day out, Dalia and I took along a squadron of slaves. We thought we would need that many spears. We were overestimating the enemy. It made me wonder if all victims of a genocidal ploy became so demoralized that they turned into lame-brained sheep. Perhaps simply knowing someone loathed your meat so much that he wanted to stuff every atom of it into the grinder created a psychic shock that traveled from limb to limb, or person to person, and numbed the entire carcass or race.

I wondered what the human reaction would have been had they known the Valenians didn’t hate them, or, in fact, seldom thought of them. One good lawyer, bending Valene’s ear for a while, could have saved homo sap a deal of agony.

Dalia had a few hundred spears in her arsenal. They were stiff feathers that grew on her stomach. A feather could grow back in a few days. The smaller ones were about five feet in length, hollow toward their base, but very tough and pointed at the tips. Their lethalness lay in the force and accuracy of Dalia’s toss. Her big eyes could spot a snake from a quarter-mile up, and so in control of her body was she that she could erect a pore and pop a spear into the snake’s head before it crawled twelve inches.

Did I love Blacky, after all? Why else would I do such a thing for her? More likely, doing her bidding satisfied an inner craving of my own. Man of my flesh, you were such a sniveling sinner. Your thievery caused starvation and pain. There was more than enough money to conquer all our enemies, but you siphoned it away before it could be used for that. Pollution, poverty, disease and the stars were what we wanted, needed, to conquer, and we could have succeeded if you thieves hadn’t stolen our blood. You, I mean you, who ripped off the box of pencils, the tractor, or ten percent of the till you were supposed to protect. Every little bit hurt.

The men of my flesh ran like rats as the squadron shadowed the sun, those days. But they were bigger than rats and easier to stab. I was merciful and directed my pilots to aim for the head. Besides, it made the slaves more enthusiastic. Going for a target made better sport than just dumping a load.

“Did you do it?” said Blacky.

“I did.”

“Do you feel guilty?”

“Why should I?”

“Well, considering that you put down every Whitey in the country—”

“Nobody will ever do that,” I said. “Some personalities are basically slime and spread out over the woodwork like a coat of paint. You can’t spot them and they survive. They’ll always continue. There are plenty of them left.”