Acts of Conscience (41 page)

Library: Their mother, perhaps.
Kalyx
’ biologists theorized that, when a fertile female dollie reaches a certain advanced age, she begins laying eggs which can develop into a new generation of... mothers and fathers.

Something being communicated. As I watched, the female wolfen turned to look at the Arousians, who stood still, as though turned into the plants they vaguely resembled, wolfen looking at one, then another.

Glink, glink, glink
.

Wolfen turning to peer at the spot where the Kapellmeister huddled.

Glink, glink
.

Giant wolfen turning to look at me, as my bowels turned to water.

In the background, unnoticed, apparently, by anyone but me, the dollies knelt and chanted in whispers, just like the other times’ I’d... well, no. Something different now. Unison broken by dollies who faltered. And those two over there, seeming to hold hands. To one side of the pack, a dollie had fallen prone, seeming to cry, a succession of soft, high chirps, unable to say it prayers...

The Kapellmeister said, “I think it’s safe for us to come forward now, Gaetan.”

Safe
? What the hell danger were we in? I looked at the big male, big enough to take me down in two quick bites, but it was still motionless, staring at the Arousians’ fire, as though uninterested in the goings on.

When the Kapellmeister trotted forward into the firelight, I followed it reluctantly, feeling the wolfen’s mottled eyes on me, conscious of the Arousians, still motionless in the background, quietly making their filmed record, conscious of the dollies’ choked whispering, mingled with the sound of little girls’ tears.

Stood by the campfire, before the foremost female wolfen, the
mother
, who stood looming over me, looking down, inspecting me, breathing on me, breath with a stink like burnt-up candy.

Quite likely, whispered the library AI, a gravid, fertile female will have a substantially different biochemistry than one of the more normal neuter females, as a child’s prepubescent body odor is so different from an adult’s.

Right, In any case... I imagined myself a dollie, imagined that great head leaning down, mouth open in a horrid grin, breath like a jet of steam in my face,
Our Father, who art in
...

The Kapellmeister said, “She is called
Belovèd Light of Her Daughters, Walking in Dry Sand
.”

Inanely, I stammered, “How do you do, uh...”

The Kapellmeister’s box make a series of clipped, metallic barks, nothing at all like words.
Belovèd Light
jerked, seemed to peer at the box on the Kapellmeister’s back, made a little sidewise
yip
out of the corner of her mouth. Sat tall on her haunches then, eyes boring down at me. Barked once, twice, thrice, so loud it hurt my ears, faint echo coming back out of the wilderness.

The Kapellmeister said, “She is happy to see you, Gaetan du Cheyne.”

Happy to see me? “Um. Why?”

The Kapellmeister said, “Though early researchers, in the days of
Kalyx
, investigated the intelligence and life-cycle of the wolfen, no human has ever... spoken to them.”

“Oh.”

The Kapellmeister said, “Word of your presence here has spread quickly, Gaetan.”

“Why should they care? They’ve had... endless contact with humans.”

“No one talks to the wolfen in the killpits.”

“Are they interested in the Arousians, too?”

“Of course.”

“What do they want?”

The Kapellmeister said, “I think I know, I think you do too. Shall we find out?”

Do I know? What would
I
want, walking in the wolfen’s... paws? I looked down at the Kapellmeister, saw that its talking/listening hand was extended, tentacles spread, extended toward me. Christ, I... “Aren’t you going to use it on... them?” A quick nod toward the big female wolfen looming over us, eyes bright with... whatever brightens the eyes of a monstrous alien carnivore.

The Kapellmeister said, “Perhaps you misunderstand what’s going on here, Gaetan.”

Do I? I glanced over at the Arousians. Still motionless, huddled around their instruments, but with an... air of expectant waiting? How the hell would I know a thing like that?

The translator AI whispered, The Kapellmeister has made rapport with you. Just so, it has made rapport with the Arousians. And the wolfen.

I looked back at the wolfen, then down at the Kapellmeister, saw it read my face, saw happiness bloom in the float of its eyes. I sighed, slowly sank into tailor’s seat on the grass by its side. Said, “All right, Miss
Belovèd Light
. Let’s talk.”

The Kapellmeister said, “Mrs.
Light
, please.” Just a trace of mirth in its generated voice.

Then the black hand engulfed the back of my head.

Click
.

Soft voices, the sweet voices of girl children, chanting in unison, praying together: “Holy Mother, Belovèd Light, She Who Walks in Majesty Before Us All, You Who Have Chosen to Take Us unto Your Bosom: grant us the wisdom to accept the Your Grace, grant us the courage to face Passage through the Jaws, grant us...”

Sudden, stark memory of myself, stripped naked, tied to the Wheel of Men’s Repentance, in the dim shadows of the Hall of Kali Meitner’s Grace, whispering the prayer they’d taught me, Kali Meitner, belovèd of God, who suffered for our sins, lend me the grace to suffer as you suffered at the dirty hands of...

I remember the priestess slapping me across the face, fingernails raking my skin, making me bleed, shocking me back to there and then: “We’ll have none of
that
, filthy, polluting boy!”

Even though I knew, I don’t think I expected the whip.

Certainly hadn’t anticipated the reality of its pain.

Over the chanted dollie prayers, I heard a girl’s voice sob, “Oh, Goddess, why? Now I’ll never see the egg...”

Another: “Shhh. Courage. Your egg will be hatched in a better place.”

I felt anger sizzle.

The translator AI whispered, There is no way of knowing, Gaetan, how much of this is being supplied by the Salieran pod software. How likely is it the dollie’s cultural symbolism would so closely match your own?

Um. Not very. The little girls’ tears...

The wolfen loomed over me, mottled eyes rolling slowly in their sockets, still unreadable but no longer so... empty. Looking at me. Seeing... no way to know what. The great jaws moved, articulations flexing, a quick sequence of metallic barks. Understood: “I cannot bid you welcome, human being.”

So. I struggled to speak, but my larynx seemed paralyzed, muscular tissues bunching and twisting, but... the box on the Kapellmeister’s back began to bark, and I understood that I’d said, “Oh? Why not?” Great. Trust the likes of me to come out with some inane...

The wolfen’s head rolled to one side with what appeared to be mirth. Then she said, “Well. I think even you must understand that we don’t like what’s happening to us, to our world.”

I tried to think of something to say. Nothing, really. What do they expect? No way for me to... I felt myself try to nod, listening as the pod made a short
yap
I understood to be the verbal equivalent of a nod. So. Trust the software?

The wolfen said, “We know perfectly well, have known for a long time, that as the human presence grows, our own must diminish. We understand that, one day, fairly soon as these things go, there will be no more wolfen.”

Is that a hard thing for a being to know? I said, “Extinction is... difficult to face.”

That amused roll again. She said, “My daughters tell me that among your kind, even personal extinction is feared. It surprises us you’d so casually let another species slip away.”

Much less send it packing, hmh? All I could do was feed a shrug into the Kapellmeister’s pod.

She said, “My daughters tell me that not all humans are like the ones who rule here on what you choose to call Green Heaven.” It seemed to glance at the Arousians, still frozen behind their camera tripods. “My daughters tell me these stick-bug things are... protected somehow. Perhaps even nurtured.”

I thought about what Mace Electrodynamics was doing in the Sigma Draconis system. Nurturing? Maybe you can call it that, keeping other humans away, helping the little stick-bugs out just a bit. While pillaging their star system of all its wealth. I said, “Is that what you want? To be... nurtured?”

“We’d like you to leave, of course. This is
our
world.”

I nodded again, listening to the dollies pray. What do they think is going to happen to them next? What do they
know
? I said, “Fat chance.”

The wolfen’s head rolled slowly, side to side. “We understand. Perhaps this... nurturing?”

Another wolfen leaned slowly forward, stretching out its neck, seeming to sniff me the way a dog sniffs an uncertain dinner. Then she said, “We understand the stick-bug people are trying to escape from human nurturance.”

I started to shrug, felt something interrupt, then the Kapellmeister’s generated voice said, “In their travels, Arousian students have learned much about human legal systems, Gaetan. They contemplate moving against MEI through the courts.”

“What the hell good would that do them?”

The Kapellmeister said, “Are they better off as they are?”

How the hell should
I
know?

The first wolfen said, “At first, we wondered if the stick-bugs were to humans as dollies are to us, but it is manifestly not so. We know so very little about your worlds beyond the stars. In our ignorance, we merely thought you’d come from... somewhere beyond the sea. Some unknown land.”

I sighed, but the translator pod was silent. Finally, I said, “You know we won’t leave. You know the humans who live here won’t lift a finger to save you. Maybe you’ll breed in the zoos and survive that way...” There are dolphins in the oceans of Kent, round Alpha Centauri, even now, though they’re long gone from Earth.

The wolfen said, “That is not survival. Best then for us to die.”

I felt the anger sizzle again. “How noble.” I turned and looked at the dollies. “What about them?”

“They have no way to survive on their own. When we go, they go.”

“Maybe not.”

The wolfen seemed to peer into my eyes. “We’ve seen what you do to the ones you capture. It’s not something we’ve been able to understand.” She sat back on her haunches, tilted her head back and seemed to look up at the stars. Finally: “When we heard about the coming of the stick-bug people, when we heard about a human wandering the veldt, in the company of a peculiar beast that could talk through a box and weave magic with its paw...”

I tried to image what they must have thought. Failing, I said, “If there was a realistic way you could be saved...” No more than a useless expression of sympathy. Done my best already, you see.

She looked back at me. “Tell me true, human being: How many worlds are there, in the land beyond the sky?”

I thought, A hundred billion stars in each of a hundred billion galaxies...

The Kapellmeister’s voice said, “They have no concept of those sorts of numbers, Gaetan. In any case, human scientific knowledge about the scale of the universe is incorrect.”

Interesting. “By how much have we undercounted?”

“Your culture hasn’t defined such numerical concepts yet.”

The box made a quick series of yips, and then the wolfen said, “That many?” Looking over its shoulder at the others then. Even the motionless, separate male seemed... I don’t know. Taken aback? She turned to me again, and said, “And on every one of those worlds are there... beings who speak and think?”

“No.”

“Have you humans settled all these stars?”

Twelve colonies, a few hundred systems visited, explored... I said, “Not even all the stars you see tonight.”

The wolfen said, “Is there a world somewhere so poor, so worthless, that no human will want it?”

My God.

The wolfen said, “On all the plains of Green Heaven there are no more than thirty thousand wolfen left alive. You could hide us
all
in a tiny corner of some great human hive.”

I said, “You don’t really know what you’re saying.”

The wolfen female stared at me for a long time. Then it said, “No, human being, we do not.”

o0o

Darkness. Fires burned down. Arousians gone into their tents, gone to whatever unknown thing they call a bed. Maybe nothing. Thinking about the way they were put together, I can imagine they sleep standing up, like horses. I took a long pull from the flat-tasting beer I’d gotten from the camper’s refrigerator, and said, “Do all conscious beings sleep?”

The Kapellmeister said, “No. Most evolutionary schemes are more differentiated from terrestrial norms than what you find here on Green Heaven.”

“You know a lot about the universe. A lot you haven’t said.”

“We’ve known each other for such a short time. Eventually...”

“How much time do we have?”

Long silence. Then it said, “Not long, perhaps.”

Perhaps. I tried to visualize those... unknown energies, unleashed on human worlds. Fire from the sky? Or something quicker than that, something entirely more devastating? I said, “If humanity is destroyed, will the wolfen survive?”

“Unfortunately, no.”

Christ. “If your people decide to... do away with us, how will it be done?”

“There is a simple machine called an electromagnetic pulse phaser which can be used to explode the cores of main-sequence stars.”

Jesus. “What about people in protected habitats? In the outer solar system, there are hundreds of millions of...”

“These explosions will be far more devastating than you imagine. For a few days, this spiral arm will shine with the light of a trillion suns.”

I tried to picture that. “Won’t that... sterilize all the worlds in this neighborhood? Including yours?”

“We know how to protect ourselves. We survived the Shock War, after all.”

Ah, yes. That. I said, “How bad will it be?”

“I estimate any life forms within thirty parsecs of such an explosion will be destroyed.”