Ascending - James Alan Gardner [107]
And apparently, Cashlings were very foolish indeed. Nimbus told me of numerous Cashling misdeeds he had observed over the years while riding in female Zaretts: Cashlings neglecting to pack sufficient hydrocarbons for long voyages…never bothering to calculate an optimal flight path, but simply aiming toward the apparent position of one’s destination…forgetting the difference between internal and external gravity, and consequently landing their spaceships upside-down…
I giggled at that, but Nimbus said it was Not Funny, Oar, It Was Tragic. At one time, the Cashlings had been a great people—intelligent, sensitive, and thoughtful. They had created some of the greatest visual art in the galaxy; they had cared passionately about color and form and meaning. But that was long ago and those artworks were gone: sold off to pay for foolish games and amusements from other species. Soon there would be nothing left…and no one could tell what the Cashlings would do with themselves when they could no longer squander their ancient heritage to pay for short-term diversions.
“Perhaps,” I suggested, “they will rouse themselves from fruitless indulgence and embark upon lives of industry.”
Nimbus’s mist swirled a moment. “No, Oar. They’re no longer capable.” He paused. “A lot of non-Cashling planets have Cashling communities: outreach crusades travel all over the galaxy, leaving bored drop-outs on every planet they pass. If someone doesn’t take care of those Cashlings, they simply languish and die; they’re too accustomed to having everything done by machines. That includes machines to rear their children—if a baby comes along, a Cash-ling mother has no idea how to raise an infant and no desire to learn. As a result, there’ve been lots of Cashling children raised by foster parents from different races…and those kids are just as useless as other Cashlings, no matter what their adoptive families do. Petulant. Disdainful. Negligible attention span. Unable to function, unwilling to be taught.” Nimbus made a sighing sound. “Even children brought up with no knowledge of Cashling ways still grow up to be Cashlings. Every last one of them. Nature completely defeating nurture.”
“But why is that odd?” I asked. “Rabbit babies grow up to be rabbits. Wolf babies grow up to be wolves. All creatures have instincts, and instincts cannot be erased.”
“But Cashling instincts have been erased,” Nimbus whispered intensely. “That’s the point, Oar, that’s the whole point. Cashlings haven’t always been useless. Before they were uplifted, they had a thriving ambitious culture. If nothing else, they certainly possessed the instinct to raise their own children. Now they don’t. None of them. Too flighty and easily bored. The only ones with the tiniest bit of initiative are the prophets, and you can see what they’re like.”
His misty hand wafted dismissively in the direction of Lord Rye and Lady Bell. “It’s not surprising that affluence leads some people to indolence, but there should be others who buck the trend. Cunning schemers who want everybody else under their thumb, or strong-willed crusaders who fight to change the world. Cashling history has had plenty of striking individuals, both good and bad…but not in the past few millennia. No conquerors, no heroes, no devils, no saints.” He paused. “The only way to explain such a universal absence is some crucial degeneration in the Cashling genome: a dominant mutation that’s made them all peevish and ineffectual.”
“In other words,” I said, “some dire calamity has afflicted them with Tired Brains.”
“Exactly. And the same thing is happening to other species. Fasskisters, for example—the greatest masters of nanotech in our sector, but these days they hardly work at all. Oh, they still take jobs if they find the assignment amusing (and if the