Foreigner

  The thunderbeasts hadn’t liked being driven at first, and Cadool’s team had lost several excellent members: slaps from massive tails had literally flattened them against the rocks, or sent them flying through the air, every bone in their bodies shattered when before they hit the ground. But eventually even animals as stupid as these realized that the riders had been driving them toward lush forests, filled with hamadaja trees, their favorite fodder. And now they accepted herding with reasonable passivity. Why, Cadool had lost only one handler so far today…

  But, unlike the last several days, today the thunderbeasts were not being driven toward fresh trees. Cadool’s team was now riding in rough circles around the five giant animals whose heads were held dizzyingly high overhead, and whose tails were lifted so high off the ground that rider and runningbeast had no trouble galloping beneath the endless tubes of muscle and bone and flesh.

  The thunderbeasts had an advantage that Cadool had forgotten in planning the drive. Although from the ground the next valley was invisible, from the vantage points of the thunderbeasts, whose eyes were held twenty times higher up than were Quintaglio orbs, they could plainly see over the low hills, and could see, and perhaps even smell, the vast tracts of succulent vegetation. Everything would be lost if they went that way.

  Cadool was screaming at the lead thunderbeast, trying to get it to turn and go the other way. Two more riders were shouting out as well. Faster and faster they ran around the group of five beasts, hoping to draw their dull attention away from the nearby forest.

  “Come on!” shouted Cadool. “This way! This way!”

  At last the lead thunderbeast—the bull male of this herd—tipped its long neck down, the great expanse of it slicing through the air with an audible whoosh, and its head, about the size of Cadool’s torso, loomed in at ground level, coming up behind Cadool’s runner, and letting out a yell of its own. The sound reverberated as air was pumped through the tunnel of its throat. Its breath stunk of plants. But by the time it had come down to ground level, it had likely forgotten what it had been looking at a moment before. Cadool continued to ride in a circle, and the neck, an impossibly huge snake, sliced through the air to follow. The peg-like teeth could do little harm to anything except foliage, but Cadool’s mount plainly did not like having the thunderbeast’s head floating behind it. It bucked. Cadool moved his hands across the back of the runner’s skull, calming it. At last, the thunderbeast’s neck was pointing in the direction Cadool wanted the animal to go. He stopped circling and, with a cry of “Latark,” headed out through the gully between two steeper hills. The bull male began to lumber on, and the others—three females and a juvenile male—fell in behind, although one of the females kept looking plaintively back at the vast tracts of uneaten treetops behind them.

  The giants’ footfalls echoed off the hillsides, but in the distance Cadool could already hear another kind of thunder. Big weapons being fired. Cadool picked up the pace; no matter how fast he made the runningbeast go, the thunderbeasts had no trouble keeping up, for their legs were four times as long as Cadool was tall.

  The gully was narrowing, and it was clear the thunderbeasts didn’t like that; these animals hated going where they’d have trouble turning around, and although their necks could be held straight up, to rotate comfortably they’d need an opening at least eighty paces wide. The gully had already narrowed to only half that width.

  As long as the bull male didn’t panic, everything would be fine. If he did, if he decided to back up, the resulting cascade of huge bodies would doubtless crush Cadool’s team.

  Soon, Cadool could hear the slapping waves and the occasional report of weapons being operated. Closer now, closer. Around this bend. Come on, beasts! Don’t fail me now…

  And then, at last, an open expanse of beach, rich with black volcanic sands. And beyond, out in the waters, the three Other ships that had escaped the bombing, and farther from shore, two wide, flat Quintaglio barges.

  Cadool rode off to the left, getting out of the thunderbeasts’ way. The Others, no doubt, had clicked their teeth together—or whatever it was that they did to laugh—when they’d seen what the Quintaglios were going to answer their three remaining ships with. Barges! Simple barges!

  Cadool, now, was clicking his teeth…

  Barges overflowing with freshly cut hamadaja leaves, with ripe yellow henkar melons, with fronds from succulent pistaral plants…

  With every kind of thunderbeast fodder.

  Two giant barges full of it, floating now, just beyond the three Other ships, the barge crews now diving overboard, swimming out of the way…

  The bull male, hungry after the long march, caught sight of the barges and—Cadool clicked his teeth harder when he saw this—stuck a long, dry tongue out of its flat mouth and licked its face in anticipation—

  And then it charged, huge waves of water being sent up as it plowed into the surf, barreling out toward the barges…

  More waves as the largest female crashed into the water as well…

  And then the juvenile…

  And then the other two females…

  Great walls of water splashing everywhere, Cadool now thoroughly soaked on the beach…

  Huge waves being kicked up, the water now touching the bottom of the bull male’s belly…

  The three Other ships rocking back and forth wildly in the turbulence…

  Two of them directly in the path of the large male, pounding his way along, his tail slapping the water, huge gouts shooting up behind it…

  The females fanning out behind him, trying to avoid being splashed in his wake…

  A wall of flesh now, five giants pounding through the water…

  Ships rocking wildly…

  Water up to the middle of the bull’s belly now, the juvenile swimming freely, its head and neck sticking up above the waves…

  And then, the first of the Other ships capsizing as it was hit by the giant waves kicked up by the charging thunderbeasts…

  A big weapon on the deck of the second Other ship swinging around and firing at the bull male, the ship rocking back and forth so badly that the metal ball went almost straight up, then came plummeting down just slightly to starboard of the vessel, the splash of its impact nothing compared to the roiling waves already buffeting the ship, but still enough to momentarily get the bull’s attention, its long neck swinging around to look at the ship and then, almost nonchalantly, tapping the ship—just tapping it—with its long tail, the vessel breaking open as though it had been made of paper…

  And then the bull was upon the first barge, swinging his neck down to virtually suck the fronds and leaves and melons into his elongated gullet…

  And moments later, two females arriving at the same barge, moving to the far side to get better access, their long bodies rotating through water that came up to their shoulders, their tails stretching out endlessly behind them. The third battleship was desperately trying to get away, moving as fast as the wind would propel it but not fast enough to avoid being slapped by one of the tails, the ship actually lifting clear of the waves, its keel briefly visible, and then smashing back down into the surf, and cracking in two like a dropped egg.

  The juvenile and the third female made their way to the second barge, while Others tried to swim for shore, a shore now lined along its entire length with Quintaglio hunters, each one ten paces from the next, torsos tipped forward in fighting posture, just waiting for the enemy survivors to try to come onto dry land…

  For the rest of the afternoon, the thunderbeasts feasted on choice greens and frolicked in the crashing surf, oblivious to the carnage on the beach.

  Chapter 31

  Afsan was finally taken back to the imperial surgery, where Dar-Mondark tended to his wounds. There was no doubt that Afsan had internal injuries; in addition to his collapsed lung and spitting up blood, he had now passed bloody stool. The healer cleaned the wounds but didn’t risk digging after the metal pellet lodged in Afsan’s chest. Afsan slept for
a time, and when he awoke, Nav-Mokleb was waiting to see him.

  “How are you?” Mokleb asked.

  Afsan, lying on his belly on a raised table, groaned. “Not well,” he said. “I don’t think the talking cure will help me get over this.”

  Mokleb’s tail swished. “I’ve brought you a present,” she said.

  “Oh?”

  “The volumes of Saleed’s Treatise on the Planets. I’m returning them.”

  “You earned those, Mokleb.”

  “Aye, I did. But they mean much to you. And besides—”

  “Besides, I might wish to bequeath the complete set to someone.”

  Mokleb’s tail swished again. She changed the subject. “I’ve been thinking more about what we were discussing, and about why we react to the Others the way we do. I’ve developed an idea.” She leaned back on her tail. “By having the bloodpriests, generation after generation, select for strength and speed, we’ve turned ourselves into a race with, well, an exaggerated sense of masculinity.”

  “Masculinity?” said Afsan.

  “That’s a word we rarely use, of course,” said Mokleb. “The sexes are equal. Oh, females grow at a slightly slower rate than males do, but since Quintaglios grow throughout their lifetimes, that makes little difference. Jobs requiring strength and physical prowess can as easily be done by males as females. But in the animal world, we do often see differences between males and females. Take shovelmouths, for instance: the male is always much larger than the female, and has a much more ornate head crest. Or thunderbeasts: a bull male will control a harem of several smaller females. Or hornfaces: the length of the horns and the height of the neck shield are much greater in males. And in almost every kind of wingfinger, it’s the male who stakes out a territory, defending it against all other males, but allowing females to come and go as they please. But we Quintaglios are different. We’ve unwittingly bred for a tendency toward strength and aggression, and a by-product of that has been to minimize the differences between the two genders.”

  “But surely having equality of the sexes is laudable?”

  “Oh, indeed,” said Mokleb. “No question of it. After all, according to legend, females were formed from the fingers of one of God’s severed hands, and males from the fingers of the other. No reason one should be better than the other. But here’s the rub: equality doesn’t necessarily mean being the same. It’s possible to be different but equal. Yes, the male may be more ornate or more powerful in many cases, but the female controls mating, choosing the male, and also, of course, it is the female who brings new life into the world. Which is better? No one can say. Equal, but different.”

  “All right,” said Afsan.

  “But we’ve made ourselves, essentially, an all-the-same race, in attitudes and attributes. There’s little difference between a male and a female. And the traits we’ve accentuated through the culling are, in many ways, the worst and most antisocial traits of the male. And we’ve distilled those traits in both genders.”

  “I’ve never thought about it that way.”

  “And now, consider this: the Others are, well, less overtly masculine than we are. They’re physically smaller, they have less prominent jaws, and smaller teeth. They’re drably colored compared to us and they have only a weak sense of territoriality.”

  “So you’re saying they’re more like females?”

  “Ah, but if they were like our females, perhaps we’d have no problem facing them. But they aren’t; they don’t have the exaggerated masculinity of our females. And there’s something deep, something dark, within our spirits that can’t stand the sight of what we perceive as lesser males. We’ve exaggerated our own masculinity to the point where we’ve become a threat to anyone that doesn’t meet the same standards of robustness or aggression. I’ve seen plenty of Other corpses now. All the Others appear to be males; even female Others have folds of skin about the throat reminiscent of a dewlap sack.”

  “Then there’s nothing inherently evil about the Others,” said Afsan.

  “Nothing at all. The evil is within us. In fact, I’ll suggest that we know that on an instinctive level; that Toroca knew to hide his difference from his fellow Quintaglios because he knew how we might react to one we perceived as not as male as we expect.”

  “We destroyed every one of the Other ships,” Afsan said. “I doubt they’ll dare send more. So what do we do? You tell me we are bred to hate the Others because we see them as lesser versions of ourselves, or—I don’t know—perhaps as something we fear becoming. But if we can’t help how we feel, what do we do? You know the old saying, you can’t change Quintaglio nature.”

  “Ah, good Afsan, but we must. We’re going to need to do that if we’re to go to the stars.”

  The ruling room was empty except for Dybo, lying on the throne slab, and Toroca. “I take it you’ve finally got an answer for me?” said the Emperor.

  “Yes,” said Toroca.

  “Well?”

  “As you recall, the problem you set for me was to find a way to choose which eggling should survive. Almost every clutch consists of eight eggs; most females produce two or three such clutches in a lifetime. Obviously, to maintain a stable population, only one eggling may be allowed to live from each clutch.”

  “Yes, yes,” said Dybo. “But which one?”

  “I’ve given this matter much thought, Emperor. I want you to know that.”

  “I expected no less, Toroca. Now, what is your answer?”

  “My answer, Your Luminance, is this: it doesn’t matter which eggling we choose.”

  “What?”

  “It makes no difference. Or, perhaps said better: to refrain from artificially imposing selection criteria makes for more difference. More variety.”

  “I don’t understand,” said the Emperor.

  “It’s simple, really. You know my theory of evolution?”

  “Yes, of course. That’s why you were chosen to come up with a way to select which eggling should live. Survival of the fittest!”

  Toroca scratched the underside of his neck. “A regrettable phrase, that…Our bloodpriests have been selecting for physical robustness for countless generations. And what has that selection process made us? Territorial beings, savage beings.”

  “Then we should select based on intelligence,” said Dybo.

  “Forgive me, Emperor, but that, too, is wrong. Consider Afsan, for instance. A finer mind we’ve never known, but you yourself have teased him for his scrawniness. In a rock slide, he might die, whereas a bigger but dumber fellow might well be able to dig himself out. The point is, Emperor, there is no hard-and-fast criterion for fitness. As the environment changes, so, too, does the list of requirements for survival. And we’re about to change our environment more than ever before, for we are soon to leave this world and seek another. It would be folly to breed for any one particular characteristic, since we don’t know what sort of demands the new environment will put on us. No, good Dybo, what we need is variety, and the best way to ensure that is by selecting which egglings get to live at random.” He turned his muzzle so that there could be no doubt that his black eyes were falling on Dybo. “Some will be strong, some brainy, some perhaps neither of those things but nonetheless possessing qualities we might someday need.”

  Dybo nodded. “At random,” he said. “It’s not the sort of answer I expected, Toroca.”

  “I know, sir. But it is the right one.”

  “Every eggling would have a one-in-eight chance.”

  “Yes, Your Luminance. But more than that, there should be no culling of hatchlings. I’ve spoken at length now to Nav-Mokleb—I had no idea of the incredible damage we’ve done to ourselves through that ancient rite. No, instead we must simply select one egg—one egg, not one eggling—from every clutch, and let only that one egg hatch.” He paused. “I only hope that in the generations left before our world dies we can regain some of the other qualities we’ll need.”

  The pain in his chest made it difficult
for Afsan to sleep. He’d nod off for a time, only to wake again, the discomfort too much for him. The third or fourth time that happened, he let out a frustrated growl and slapped his palm against the lab table. With his other hand he scratched his chest, trying to relieve the itching caused by his scabbed-over wound.

  He lay there and opened his eyes. He’d been doing that more and more lately; since his eyeballs had grown back, there was no pain associated with having the lids open.

  Across the room, he saw a faint light.

  He saw—

  Across the room!

  A faint—

  No, a trick of his tired mind. He scrunched his inner and outer lids closed, rubbed them with the backs of his hands, and then opened them again.

  No mistake! A light…a faint rectangle against the darkness.

  A window. An open window, its shade left undrawn.

  Afsan pushed himself off the table and let himself down to the floor. Pain sliced through his side but he ignored it. He hobbled over to the window and gripped its ledge with both hands.

  It was the middle of the night—and, better still, it was odd-night, the night most Quintaglios slept, the night Afsan always preferred because the outdoor lamps were doused, letting the heavens blaze forth in all their glory, the phosphorescent band of the great sky river arching overhead. Four moons were visible, but they were all thin crescents, doing little to banish the stars.

  The night sky, cloudless, pitch black, resplendent, glorious. Just as he’d remembered it. All the nights he’d spent staring up at the sky came back to him: childhood nights, full of wonder and awe. Adolescent nights, full of longing and yearning. Nights as in apprentice, full of study and slowly gleaned understanding.

  His tail was fairly vibrating with joy. The pain, unbearable earlier, was now all but forgotten, pushed from his high mind by the magnificent sight. Old friends were beckoning. Why, there was the constellation of the Hunter, which had been called the Prophet in his youth. And, there, arching up from the horizon, Lubal’s hornface Matark. Straddling the ecliptic, the Skull of Katoon.