Are they machines?
Are they denizens of some ancient submarine civilization?
Are they invaders? Do they see us as invaders?
Are they Buyur?
I’ve been avoiding thinking about what’s really eating away at me, inside.
Come on, Alvin. Face up to it.
I recall those final duras, when our beautiful Wuphon’s Dream shattered to bits. When her hull slammed against my spine. When my friends spilled into the metal monster’s mouth, immersed in cold, cold, cold, cruel water.
They were alive then. Injured, dazed, but alive.
Still alive when a hurricane of air forced out the horrid dark sea, leaving us to flop, wounded and half dead, down to a hard deck. And when sun-bright lights half-blinded us, and creepy spider-things stepped into the chamber to look over their catch.
But memory blurs at that point, fading into a hazy muddle of images — until I awoke here, alone.
Alone, and worried about my friends.
XXVI. THE BOOK OF THE SLOPE
We know that in the Five Galaxies, every star-faring race got its start through the process of uplift, receiving a boost to sapience from the patrons that adopted them. And those patrons were bestowed the same boon by earlier patrons, and so on, a chain of beneficence stretching all the way back to misty times wken there were more than five linked galaxies — back to the fabled Progenitors, who began the chain, so very long ago.
Where did the Progenitors themselves come from?
To some of the religious alliances that wrangle testily across the space lanes, that very question is anathema, or even likely to provoke a fight.
Others deal with the issue by claiming that the ancient ones must have come from “somewhere else,” or that the Progenitors were transcendent beings who descended graciously from a higher plane in order to help sapient life get its start.
Of course one might suggest that such facile answers simply beg the question, but it’s unwise to suggest it too loudly. Some august Galactics do not take it kindly when you point out their inconsistencies.
Finally, there is one cult — the Affirmers — who hold the view that the Progenitors must have self-evolved on some planet, boot-strapping to full sapiency all by themselves — a prodigious, nigh-impossible feat. One might imagine that the Affirmers would be more friendly to Earthlings than most of the more fanatical alliances. After all, many Terrans still believe our race did the very same thing, uplifting ourselves in isolation, without help from anyone.
Alas, don’t expect much sympathy from the Affirmers, who see it as arrogant hubris for mere wolflings to make such a claim. Self-uplift, they maintain, is a phenomenon of the highest and most sacred order — not for the likes of creatures like us.
Dwer
It did no good to shout or throw stones at the glavers. The pair just retreated to watch from a distance with blank, globelike eyes, then resumed following when the human party moved on. Dwer soon realized there would be no getting rid of them. He’d have to shoot the beasts or ignore them.
“You have other things to keep you busy, son,” Danel Ozawa ruled.
It was an understatement.
The clearing near the waterfall still reeked of urs, donkey, and simla when Dwer warily guided Danel’s group across the shallow ford. From then on, he borrowed a tactic from the old wars, reconnoitering each day’s march the night before, counting on urrish diurnal habits to keep him safe from ambush — though urs were adaptable beings. They could be deadly even at night, as human fighters used to find out the hard way.
Dwer hoped this group had lazy habits, after generations of peace.
Rising at midnight, he would scout by the light of two smaller moons, sniffing warily each time the trail of hoofprints neared some plausible ambuscade. Then, at dawn, he would hurry back to help Danel’s donkey train plod ahead by day.
Ozawa thought it urgent to catch up with the urrish band and negotiate an arrangement. But Dwer worried. How does he expect they’ll react? Embracing us like brothers? These are criminals. Like Rety’s band. Like us.
The spoor grew fresher. Now the urs were just a week ahead of them, maybe just a few days.
He began noting other traces. Soft outlines in the sand. Broken stone flakes. Fragments of a moccasin lace. Smudged campfires more than a month old.
Rety’s band. The urs are heading straight for the heart of their territory.
Danel took the news calmly. “They must figure as we did. The human sooners know a lot about life in these hills. That’s valuable experience, whether it can be bought, borrowed—”
“Or tortured out of ’em,” Lena Strong finished, whetting one of her knives by the evening’s low red coals. “Some urrish clans used to keep human prisoners as drudges, before we broke ’em of the habit.”
“A habit they learned from the queens. There’s no call to assume slavery is a natural urs behavior. For that matter, back on Old Earth humans used to—”
“Yeah, well, we still have a problem,” Dwer interrupted. “What to do when we catch up.”
“Right!” Lena inspected the knife-edge. “Do we pounce fast, taking the urs all bunched together? Or do it hoon-style — picking them off one at a time.”
Jenin sighed unhappily. “Oh, Lena. Please stop.” She had been cheerful throughout the journey, until hearing all this talk of fighting. Jenin had joined this trek in order to be a founding mother of a new race, not to hunt down beings who had once been her neighbors.
Dwer’s heart felt the same pain as Jenin, though his pragmatic side agreed with Lena.
“If we have to, I’d rather do it fast,” he muttered, glancing at the donkey carrying their most secret, unspeakable “tools.”
“It shouldn’t come to that,” Danel insisted. “First let’s ascertain who they are and what they want. Perhaps we can make common cause.”
Lena snorted. “Send an emissary? Give away our presence? You heard Dwer. There’s over a dozen of ’em!”
“Don’t you think we should wait for the second group, then?” Jenin asked. “They were supposed to be right behind us.”
Lena shrugged. “Who knows how long they’ll take? Or if they got lost? The urs could find us first. And there’s the human tribe to consider.”
“Rety’s old band.”
“Right. Want to let them get killed or enslaved? Just on account of we’re too scared to—”
“Lena!” Danel cut her off. “That will do for now. We’ll see what’s to be done when the time comes. Meanwhile, poor Dwer should get some sleep. We owe him whatever rest he can get.”
“That ain’t half what he’s owed.” Lena muttered, causing Dwer to glance her way, but in the pre-moonrise dimness, he could make out only shadows.
“G’night all,” he said, and slipped away to seek his bedroll.
Mudfoot looked up from the blanket, chuttering testily over having to move. The creature did help warm things up at night, which partly made up for its vexing way of licking Dwer’s face while he slept, harvesting perspiration from his forehead and lip.
Dwer lay down, turned over — and blinked in surprise at two pairs of giant round eyes, staring back at him from just three meters away.
Jeekee glavers.
Normally, one simply ignored the placid creatures. But he still couldn’t shake the memory of that pack of them, clustered greedily around a dead gallaiter.
He tossed a dirt clod vaguely their way. “Go on! Get!”