Transcendental (12 page)

Wars are mass confusion; no one knows who is winning until one side turns and runs or loses its will to continue and sues for peace. Only the historians are able to decide who came out ahead and on what terms, and they are often wrong. Interstellar wars are far more difficult to evaluate. News of battles comes only after many cycles, and even then the information is unreliable. How many of the enemy ships were destroyed? How were they identified? What had their mission been? How many ships did the Dorians lose? What were our casualties? How many colonies were destroyed on each side, how many planets laid waste? How many replacement ships have been built? How many crews have been trained? Do we have sufficient resources to withstand the terrible drain of conflict?

Many cycles will be required before any of this becomes clear. The historians are still computing.

At first our enemy was the humans. They were the newcomers, the troublemakers. We fell upon them near the Sirian frontier, and massacred their ships. I tried to stop it, but I had no time after the orders came. And then the humans retaliated, their ships appearing in our midst out of wormholes that we did not suspect, or detect, and wreaked havoc on our fleet. Only the superior organization of my crew allowed the Ardor to survive, damaged as it was. We were the only ship in the fleet to emerge without a casualty, despite being in the midst of the action.

At first the high command accused us of cowardice, but visual records proved the opposite. And then I was given command of a fleet and told to attack the humans in return. I disobeyed. I contacted the human fleet commander and spoke to her in my broken Glish and arranged a meeting. Face-to-face we worked out our differences and I returned to my superiors with the offer of peace. Again I was placed on trial for treason. I almost resorted to a personal challenge of the court, once more, but refrained and argued my case with all the urgency and eloquence I could command.

Reluctantly the high command accepted the terms, and we allied ourselves with the humans against the Sirians and then with the humans and the Sirians against the Aldebarans, and with the humans, the Sirians, and the Aldebarans against the Alpha Centaurans. Finally, exhausted with battle, the galaxy strewn with broken ships, broken worlds, and broken creatures, we made a peace. Ten years of war, a thousand broken planets, and a thousand million casualties, and nothing more. Never again, we vowed, would we go to war. Anyone who broke the peace would be turned upon by all the others. Boundaries were established, spheres of influence were agreed upon, mechanisms for settling disputes were created. We would study war no more.

I returned to Doria a hero, commander of a battle group that had won every engagement, the inventor of new strategies of command and tactics, but most of all, the crafter of peace. I thought I could challenge the high command. I thought my innovations in training and organization would provide a strategy for change. I thought I might even compete to be the successor to the High Dorian. But instead I was once more placed on trial for disobedience and treason, and escaped punishment only through the basic right of personal combat. The high command had succeeded once more. Doria had won but not in the Dorian way, and the high command, and Doria itself, was not ready to accept victory on any terms but those that emerged from its own traditions. It had used me and now was prepared to throw me away.

I did not blame the high command or Doria. I wasn’t good enough. I realized my failings as a Dorian, as a sentient creature. Perhaps no one was good enough. Not on Doria, nor on any world. At least we had peace, and I decided to retire to a world at peace, to a galaxy at peace.

But peace was not so simple. The galactic powers had to set up an interspecies board to evaluate new inventions and their potential for creating change and conferring superiority on one species or another. All such developments, like the human space elevator, had to be shared by all.

And then came transcendentalism with all its mystery and promise. Now, perhaps, I could be good enough, and here I am.

*   *   *

The group dispersed with the silence that in galactic culture represented acceptance or, sometimes, approval, and sought sleep or rest or contemplation, as individual needs and species behavior patterns determined.

CHAPTER EIGHT

Riley awoke with the memory of Tordor’s story still winding through his head. He wondered if his pedia was responsible, but for once it was blessedly silent.

When he emerged from his cubicle he found a group of galactics gathered in front of the view screen. He extracted a scanty first meal from the dispensers on the opposite wall: an ambiguous citrus drink in a sealed container with a built-in sipping tube and a bag of unidentifiable synthetic grain. He began sipping the drink as he moved to a spot just behind the group staring at the screen. A stranger would have wondered whether the equipment had been activated. The screen was almost completely dark, with only a flicker of light in the upper right-hand corner that could have been mistaken for static.

“A goodly number of our fellow pilgrims have risen early,” Riley said to Asha, who was standing behind the flower child.

“Some do not sleep,” Asha said.

“Like you.”

“I rest.”

“I don’t see Tordor.”

“Perhaps his storytelling tired him,” Asha said.

“Or maybe it was the artfulness,” Riley replied, and squeezed a bit of cereal into his mouth.

“But it was a fine story,” Asha said. “What do you suppose he meant by ‘soul’?”

Riley motioned to Asha that they should move away from the galactics gathered in front of them. He did not know how well they could hear—if they could hear; the flower child had no apparent auditory organs … but some conversations should be limited. “He was referring to a remark I made to him earlier—that we needed to understand each other better, to peer into one another’s souls. He dismissed it then as ‘human mysticism.’ We should note the Dorian capacity for irony.”

Asha joined him in his strategic withdrawal, although she seemed impatient with his precautions. “The Dorians look plodding and passive, but they have a reputation for subtlety. Grazing leaves time for long, slow thoughts.”

“A boy’s will is the wind’s will,” Riley’s pedia said, “and the thoughts of youth are long, long thoughts.”

That doesn’t make sense, Riley thought.

“Rumination and ruminant come from the same root,” Asha continued. “Don’t underestimate Tordor.”

“And don’t believe his stories,” Riley said, finishing his breakfast. “I understand. What about our situation?” he continued, nodding toward the view screen.

“The captain has announced that the nexus ahead is some days’ journey from here and that we should expect no change until further notice.”

“And how are our fellow pilgrims reacting?” Riley said. “Sometimes it’s hard to tell. But now…” He gestured at the galactics clustered like statues in front of the view screen.

“Even galactics have moments of uncertainty,” Asha said. “They have a long history of encountering the unknown and somehow making it galactic—”

“They weren’t that good with humans,” Riley said.

“They thought they knew us, and what they knew they didn’t like—the aggression, the arrogance—the kind of behavior galactics have forgotten they themselves ever exhibited. Now they think only about the good of all. Or so they believe.”

“We should have been happy with the crumbs they were willing to let fall our way,” Riley said.

Asha dismissed his sarcasm with a wave of her hand. “But none of them has ever been this far into the unknown, with no way back. Their galactic confidence doesn’t work well out here. They may turn catatonic.”

“And yet they continue.”

“That’s the contradiction. The pull of the transcendental on the other side balanced against the fear of the unknown.”

“Why do they do it?” Riley asked.

“Why do you do it?”

Riley shrugged. “I’m not like them. Someday I’ll tell you why I’m here.”

“I can’t wait,” Asha said. “I have long suspected that you don’t believe in transcendence.”

“I’m a hardheaded ex-soldier,” Riley said. “I believe in what I can see and touch.”

“And maybe you think you can’t be improved,” Asha said.

“Rather that there’s no practical method for making improvements outside of self-discipline and learning from one’s failures. A man is what a man is; he recognizes his deficiencies and tries to conquer them or plans around them.”

“So—why are you here?”

“Because you’re all here,” Riley said. “You and the others—you believe in spite of everything you know, in spite of everything life has taught you. Maybe you’re right.”

“These galactics,” Asha said. “Their experience teaches them that there is always something new, something better. But they don’t equate that with good; for them change is dangerous. But they have to go find it because to leave it undiscovered is even more dangerous.”

“That isn’t too much different from most humans,” Riley said. “But there are always a few humans, among the rest, who don’t believe in the status quo, who look to the future for something better, who believe that in change there is hope. Maybe these galactics belong to that group.”

“Or maybe they’re sent to make sure that the kind of creatures you’re describing don’t return to endanger the status quo.”

Riley would have replied but he was interrupted by the entrance of Tordor from the corridor outside the passengers’ quarters. The weasel followed him.

Tordor said, “Xi reports that he has found the bodies of Jon and Jan in the cold-storage locker.”

*   *   *

“This person was checking food stores when the human equivalent withdrew because of cold,” Xi said. Even in translation, the “cold” reference seemed scornful. “Xifora are raised to ignore personal suffering.”

“Xifora have the evolutionary advantage of being able to regrow lost appendages,” Riley said. “Humans have only one set that must last their entire existences. What happened in the storage locker?”

“This person seized the opportunity to explore two remote cabinets that the human equivalent had avoided. The frozen bodies of the two missing humans were in them.”

“Does the human equiv—the crew member—know that the bodies have been discovered?”

“The human equivalent has no knowledge.”

Riley looked at Asha. Her expression didn’t change. He looked at Tordor, but Tordor’s alien face was always unreadable. He looked back at the weasel named “Xi.” He must remember that.

“I never forget,” his pedia said.

“This person—I thank you for this important information,” Riley said. And then to Asha and Tordor, “What do you think this means?”

Asha shrugged.

Tordor said, “The captain told us otherwise. Only he knows why, or why the bodies are in cold storage.”

“And what are we to do about them?” Riley said, gesturing at the galactics some meters away staring silently at the display of their celestial isolation.

Tordor flicked his proboscis. “They will adjust.”

“For masters of the galaxy,” Riley said, “they seem remarkably fragile.” Their enraptured positions were beginning to concern him. Many of them hadn’t moved since he entered the lounge.

“Masters are only masters in their own domains,” Tordor said. “Remove them and they are even less confident than those who have never known security. Galactics have known vastnesses, but these are not the vastnesses they know.”

“And if they don’t adjust?” Riley insisted.

Tordor flicked his proboscis again. “They will die.”

“And you think Asha and I are not affected because we’ve never been secure in our positions?”

Tordor blew through his long nose. “The polite answer is that the Big Gulf is no more intimidating to humans than the galaxy itself. You have emerged too recently to be affected by the unknown.”

“The impolite answer,” Asha said, “is that humans are too stupid to realize the peril of the unexplored.”

“So much for the pursuit of the transcendental,” Riley said. He glanced again at the group in front of the view screen, who represented the best, perhaps, of the ancient species that discovered spaceflight long before humanity discovered fire and took dominion over their spiral arm of the galaxy.

“It propels us all,” Tordor said, “from the earliest cluster of cells surrendering their comfortable individual existences in order to sample the untested potential of cooperation.”

“Evolution equals transcendence?” Riley asked.

“Except evolution has become too slow,” Asha said. “Technology has accelerated everything. The environmental change that once took long-cycles now takes only short-cycles and sometimes even days. Such time-spans magnify dangers, and change transforms conditions as we watch.” Tordor waved his proboscis in what appeared to be agreement. “For a time sapient creatures such as ourselves substituted social evolution, an attempt to direct natural transcendental forces into safe channels. But we were fools.

“We didn’t understand that technology is the new evolution,” Asha said, “Like robots, like computers, technology reaches a point where it grows and changes and evolves into something new and strange and unimaginable.”

“And so,” Tordor said, “the Transcendental Machine was inevitable. We may be fortunate that technology has produced the Transcendental Machine and not the transcendent machine; that technology has offered us the opportunity to perfect ourselves rather than technology itself.”

“If, indeed, we are perfectible,” Riley said. He turned toward Asha. “You seem to know a lot about galactic matters.”

“I spent a good deal of my life among galactics,” Asha said, “while you were fighting them. Someday I may tell you about it.” She smiled as if to indicate that she knew she was repeating Riley’s own nebulous promise. “But galactics are only humanity writ large. They evolved as we did, and from a beginning that none of them understand any more than we do ours. The only difference is that they have had thousands upon thousands of years to get accustomed to difference and how to coexist with it. Now they must face it again. Whether they can adjust again is the question they must answer.”