Grail (27 page)

“Some of us are,” Tristen affirmed. “It’s sometimes curable.”

Danilaw caught his eyes, and the lifted eyebrows over them. The First Mate had the arch wit of a sharp old man, and despite the youth of his features, Danilaw had to remind himself that these people were
all
older than he.
It’s like dealing with elves. But it’s not elves exactly
.

Danilaw said, “Bear with me. Will you admit for the sake of argument that we—humans, in our current technological state—are not, except under extreme circumstances,
experiencing any competition in the natural world except among ourselves?”

The alien Captain steepled her fingers. “If, by the natural world, you exclude the Enemy.”

“The Devil,” Captain Amanda said.

Perceval’s lips compressed into the thing they did to hide a smile, but it was Cynric who answered. “Space,” she said. “Entropy. The inevitable heat death of the universe. That is the Enemy. I suppose you could call it the Devil, if you liked. It is the opposite of life and breath and negentropy, in any case.”

Danilaw heard Amanda breathe deep of the thin alien air. “The Enemy,” she said. “It is the Enemy of life.”

Perceval smiled.

Danilaw could not restrain himself from glancing around the table. But having done so, and nodded in understanding, he forged on. “I believe finding yourself neck-deep in space, or deprived of all the fruits of our primate ingenuity in any hostile environment, counts as an extreme circumstance for purposes of this discussion. Can we agree on that?”

After a glance at her Captain, Cynric said, “We can.”

“At last,” Amanda said. “Common ground.”

That, at least, startled Mallory into a snort of laughter. Perceval was still smiling, if you could call that a smile. If smiling, for her, were not a prelude to aggression.

Danilaw raised and spread his hands, drawing attention, gathering focus. “In short, we have outcompeted the Hell out of everything. Thus, in that we are as Gods to the rest of”—he flagged, until Amanda mouthed a word at him—“of creation, it is incumbent upon us to treat with that
creation
as would honorable Gods—to protect and preserve, to limit our influence, to allow it scope.”

The aliens were frowning at him, or at least that was how he interpreted the variety of their expressions. Tristen
scratched the side of his nose. Perceval, around her scowl, remained impassive.

Cynric breathed deep and sighed. “I do not mind sounding ignorant,” she said. “The part of me that was easily shamed is dead—and good riddance to it.”

Even
, Danilaw thought,
if it was a fragment of your humanity?

But apparently she wasn’t actually a mind reader after all, because rather than reacting with indignation, she continued the thread of her question. “If you coddle the world,” she said, “how does the world grow? As we are a part of creation, part of our purpose is to produce stress on other elements of creation. We force the evolution of other species as they force—or facilitate—ours.”

There was something behind that word,
facilitate
, Danilaw thought. He didn’t have the time to ferret it out now, but patience would be his reward.

“We have a thing,” he said, “that we call The Obligation. It is made up of many smaller Obligations, each carefully defined, but the essence of it is this: leave the world better—healthier, more complete, more diverse—than you found it.”

“Isn’t that,” Cynric said, “condescending? Doesn’t that set humankind in a kind of stewardship over every other species? Doesn’t that make us the colonialists, responsible for the well-being of primitives?”

Danilaw sat back. He would need time to consider this tack, he thought, before he could argue it successfully.

But Cynric wasn’t done. “Doesn’t that deny the agency of the nonsentient? Doesn’t it argue that we are somehow responsible for them?”

“When we became more able to compete,” Danilaw said, uncomfortable, “we became responsible. We become responsible to protect the natural world. When we become stronger, we become stewards.”

“The world does not reward timidity,” Cynric said.

Tristen placed a hand on her forearm, his long fingers so pale they barely showed against her garb of purest white. “Sister,” he said. “This might not be the time to plumb the depths of philosophy.”

But Cynric shook him off. “Does your philosophy not set humankind apart from nature?” she said. “You speak of protecting the natural world, but nature protects nothing. Nature does not believe in a fair fight. For every mouse, there is an owl. For every spider, there is a wasp. The world destroys to feed itself; it is a zero-sum game, and life consumes life. There is only so much carbon in any given carbon cycle.” She smiled now, as if confident she had one. “Who the hell set
you
up in loco parentis to the natural world?”

“With power,” Danilaw said, “with strength, there comes responsibility. With maturity come the burdens of maturity. Self-discipline. The acceptance that we do not always get to have what we want just because we are strong and we want it. You are stronger than me. Does that give you the right to take what is mine? Does that give you the dispensation to rob or rape me?”

“Not the privilege,” Tristen said, fingers lacing and unlacing, fisting and unfisting. “But the facility.”

“And in your world, are such things permitted without question?”

Perceval’s hidden smile was growing more patent by the moment. “To prevent such things,” she said, “such abuses of power, that is why we have knights-errant, and Captains, and all of Rule.”

“When they are not abusing that power their own selves,” Mallory qualified. “Not that
that
would ever happen.”

Perceval snorted. Danilaw decided he rather liked the androgynous necromancer after all.

“When you have an extreme advantage,” Danilaw said, “the gentlemanly thing to do is to reserve its use for those
who share it. Or to choose to compete only with equal opponents, and leave the bullying to bullies.”

Cynric leaned forward on her elbows. “I’m not sure if that’s egalitarian or condescending.”

“Cynric,” Perceval said warningly, as Amanda stiffened beside Danilaw. Under the table, Danilaw placed the back of a hand against her thigh. She startled almost imperceptibly before releasing her held breath and turning to him.
Primate pissing contests
.

Having studied Danilaw’s face for a moment, Amanda turned back to the aliens across the table. “I understand your point,” she said. “In assuming the role of protector, we deny agency. But we deny agency to creatures that may or may not desire it—”

“When you assume stewardship for everything, you domesticate everything,” Tristen said.

Out of the corner of his eyes, Danilaw saw Amanda nodding, though he kept his attention firmly on Perceval and her crew. “And if we do not assume stewardship, we exploit everything.”

Tristen let his folded hands fall apart to lie on the tabletop, pressed flat. “Except for what exploits us,” he said. “Tell me, Administrator Bakare. Does your world have rats on it?”

“Rats?” He nodded. “Rats and roaches. They follow humanity everywhere.”

“Mmm,” Tristen said. “In that relationship, who has evolved to exploit whom?” He shook his head. “I do not think, Administrator Bakare, that we are all that different. I do not think that we interact with the world and each other with such deep moral differences. I think we have different terms for what we do—that what you term The Obligation, we term Chivalry. But I do think we have common ground, and I think we can find more.” He paused. “My people, you understand, are very adaptable.”

*   *   *   

After the meeting, Samael in all his patchwork magnificence showed Danilaw and Amanda to the quarters they’d inhabit for the rest of their trip home. It was not a long walk—apparently Captain Perceval had seen merit in keeping them centrally located—but it was as full of revelations as every other walk around the corridors had been.

Walking on yielding moss down a spaceship gangway, Danilaw began to understand that the entire starship was an ecosphere—an ecology far more delicately balanced than that of Fortune. And far more aggressively managed. It revealed something to him about the Jacobeans’ culture and experience, if he thought on it carefully. Of course, evolution must be managed. Of course, a biosphere must be maintained.

They had never known another way.

Thinking distracted him, but neither Amanda nor Samael seemed inclined to make small talk, so he needed not divide his attention. It might have been better if he had, however, because he tripped and almost fell when he realized that the large, ornately floral shrub that they were about to pass along the corridor wall was in fact moving. Walking, or not precisely walking, toward them.

It was a bundle of spear-shaped leaves and boles, six tiger-striped, fuchsia-and-lemon flower heads bobbing above its back. Danilaw shied back against the corridor wall as it turned to him; on his left, he felt Amanda do the same.

The giant, self-mobile orchid turned to them and bent its thorn-fanged flower faces into something that looked like a smile. “Welcome, visitors,” it said, and kept walking.

Samael had drawn ahead, and with a glance to Amanda, Danilaw hurried to catch up. Beside him, Amanda stretched her legs. “Talking plant,” she whispered.

He nodded. “I noticed.”

On behalf of his Captain, the Angel of Biosystems apologized for the size and inelegance of the quarters before
vanishing in a scatter of withered petals and beetle wings, leaving Danilaw feeling as if he had just choked on his tongue.

The “cramped” quarters they would share were half again as large as the crew habitat on the
Quercus
, and every square millimeter was soft with life. Mosses ran up the bulkheads so that Danilaw could not tell if the architecture of the space—an
anchore
, Samael called it—was truly all but cornerless or if it had merely been softened by centuries of growth. Vines—heavy, swaying, and hung with flowers Danilaw did not recognize—curtained two padded alcoves lined with fluffy blankets and pillows absorbent, springy, and soft.

After the Angel left, Amanda took a slow spin at the center of the room, diffuse light dappling her hair. “I don’t know how we’ll adapt,” she said, giving Danilaw a glance through her eyelashes he could only regard as flirtatious.

He smiled back and plunked himself on the mossy edge of the nearer bunk. The tough, yielding little plants were warm above and cool below, exactly as if they had been warmed by the sun. He held his hand out into those spots of light that had scattered across Amanda’s head and shoulders. They shifted, the vining leaves draping the ceiling turning in the breeze from the ventilation ducts. Full-spectrum, warm against his skin.

Behind the vines, rusty stains climbed the mesh the plants twined through, and Danilaw could see where centuries of growth and death had stretched the holes and torn the strands.

Danilaw felt his face prickle. He took a breath and let it out again—moist, verdant, and warm.

This world was old and worn. And if they could give this much space to two itinerant diplomats, it was not as full of strangers as Danilaw had feared. Actually, the near emptiness of all those corridors was beginning to sink in and make sense.

“They are underpopulated,” he said, with a gesture to this space, empty and just waiting.

Amanda, frowning, nodded and glanced aside. For a moment, they were in silent understanding. It had been a long, hard road in coming here. What compassionate human being could ask them to move on?

Yet what merely natural world could assimilate everything that surrounded him now without being consumed or destroyed?

Danilaw got up, crossed springy turf, and took Amanda’s hand. She turned to him, startled; he hoped it would look to the observers he presumed existed as if they were secret lovers. He couldn’t risk speaking; he could not even risk spelling against her palm.

Probably every word that Danilaw and Amanda said to one another was being recorded, every gesture analyzed. Probably, they had no privacy at all. These were not people, Bakare thought, who were likely to discard any available advantage. They were not stupid, they were not prone to losing for its own sake, and they were accustomed to constant struggle.

He compared that to his own people, who were no longer accustomed to playing to win, and felt a chill.

So he looked in her eyes and thought, as hard as he could,
We cannot allow these people to make landfall
, and hoped the message would be read in the cast of his features, the alteration in his pheromones.

And maybe it was, because she held the eye contact for almost ten seconds, and after she looked down, she nodded.

When the aliens had left and the rubble of the state dinner was cleared, Perceval reclaimed her Bridge and—mostly—her solitude. Her First Mate stayed with her; her Angel was already in residence, here as everywhere. But the rest of her executive crew knew when to let well enough alone.

This was one of those times, and though she cursed herself for being so predictable, she was grateful of their solicitude.

She stood behind the green bank of her command chair, hands resting on the back, and let herself lean. Hard, until her fingers dented the sod, and the scent of crushed violets and bluets surrounded her.

“Ariane had a backup,” she said.

Tristen was behind her, and she had stripped off her armor and returned it to its locker, but the rasp of his hair told her he nodded. “The signature is … unmistakable. Even Gerald, who ruined all of us, drew a few lines. Ariane kills whatever crosses her path because it pleases her to exert that kind of power, and then justifies it later.”

“The massacre,” Nova said, in that voice that reminded Perceval a little too fiercely of Dust, and his libraries of literature and history and ghosts, “is a tradition of tyrants from immemorial history. Destroy the enemy unto the last child, and sow the earth with salt around his bones.”