Ascending - James Alan Gardner [105]
“No…but how does that make them dangerous?”
Nimbus did not answer right away. Finally he said, “Think about people on your planet, Oar—the ones with Tired Brains. Suppose that instead of lying dormant in towers, they actually moved around. Suppose they had parties, they traveled to other cities, they pretended to practice spiritual devotions…but their brains were still Tired. It was all just sleepwalking. They never built or manufactured anything, they never did anything new, they never dreamed of change; they simply lived in automated habitats filled with machines that did the bothersome work of keeping everyone alive. Wouldn’t that be a form of hell?”
I did not answer immediately. The conditions Nimbus described were perilously close to the reality of my world—not just the state of my ancestors, but my own state through much of my life: creating nothing, and living by the grace of machines. “It would be most suffocating to the soul,” I said at last. “But I do not see how it could be dangerous to other persons.”
“It’s dangerous,” Nimbus whispered, “it’s terrifyingly dangerous. Because after seeing the Cashlings, everyone else wants to be that way too.”
The Resentment Of Vassals
“Everyone would wish to be Cashlings?” I whispered. “How can that be? They are awful.”
“Other species agree with you,” Nimbus replied, his whisper most gloomy. “They despise the Cashlings…then try to live exactly like them.”
“That is nonsense!”
“Yes, it is. But nevertheless, it’s happening. Believe me, I know—belonging to a vassal race teaches you a lot about your masters.”
“But you work for Uclod, not Cashlings.”
His mist fluttered. “Do you know how old I am?”
“No.”
“Over two hundred Terran years. I’ve worked for all the local races.”
I stared at him. “You are two hundred years old? That is quite most astonishing.”
“Why?” the cloud man asked. “You and I are Shaddill technology; you’re virtually immortal, so why shouldn’t I be? In fact, I should be more immortal than you—the Shad-dill created your race 4,500 years ago, while my race is less than a thousand. If the Shaddill continued to make scientific advances all that time, my design is 3,500 years more sophisticated than yours.”
“Oh foo!” I exclaimed in outrage. Then I remembered we were supposed to be whispering and glanced around guiltily to see if anyone else had heard me. The other people in the transport bay showed no signs of noticing—the room was large, and we were quite some distance removed. Besides, everyone was still listening intently to Festina speak of AlexanderYork…though mostly they were listening to the Cashlings ask irrelevant questions about the whole business. Festina could only utter a few words at a time before Bell and Rye interrupted with more pointless quibbles.
I turned back to Nimbus and whispered sharply, “You are not more advanced than I!”
“Maybe not,” he agreed. “I’m only a vassal race.”
“Do not pretend to be pitiable. I do not see anyone persecuting you.”
“Apart from the fact that I’m owned? That I’m a slave? That I’m sent to impregnate females I’ve never met before, I stay long enough to deliver the baby and get a bit attached to it, then off I go to some new master fifty light-years away, never to see my mates or children again? You don’t call that persecution?”
I stared at him…or perhaps I was staring at the infant Starbiter clutched tight in his belly. Perhaps it was not coincidence that he carried the child as a pregnant woman does—not in his hands but in the center of his being, at his body’s core. “Very well,” I whispered, “it is persecution. Your species is callously