Ascending - James Alan Gardner [147]
Festina lifted the muzzle of her stun-pistol. “Think again.”
Immu made the raspy throat-noise. This time it definitely sounded like laughter. “You obtained that gun from our robots. Do you believe we would arm them with weapons that would affect us?”
“You might,” Festina replied. “For all your fancy technology, you don’t seem very smart.”
“We aren’t,” Esticus whispered. Immu gave him another hip-bump, this time making no effort to conceal it. She also made a hissing sound and clacked her mandibles in a gesture that was clearly a Shaddill short-hand for, “Shut up, you fool!”
“Here’s what I think,” Festina said. “I think five thousand years ago, your people were science whizzes who built this ship and a lot of other fancy stuff. Somewhere along the line, you developed a way to evolve to a higher state of being—to make yourselves smart as all hell, even if you ended up looking like blobs of purple jelly.” She glanced at the liquid spurting out of the fountain. “What’s this stuff called?”
There was a pause. The clouds over both Shaddill heads dimmed, as if they were trying to deal with some difficult concept and had to use all their power for the translation process. Finally, the mist above Esticus spoke softly: “Blood Honey,” it said.
Immediately, both speaker clouds brightened to their usual golden luster…or perhaps a bit shinier than before, greatly pleased with themselves for devising an elegant translation of the actual Shaddill name.
“Blood Honey,” Festina repeated. “Cute. Anyway, your people built Blood Honey fountains so you could all advance together. You carefully cleaned up the worlds where you lived, then you prepared to jelly out. The only problem was, some of you didn’t like the idea of turning into purple goop. I think it scared you shitless. So when everybody else went to bathe in the fountains, a bunch of you just turned tail. You buggered off on this ship, and you’ve been running ever since.”
“You mean,” I said, “these Shaddill ones are cowards? All others of their kind pursued Celestial Transcendence, while these turned away in fear?” I glared at the two furry beetles with contempt. Suddenly, I understood why Esticus had called himself Tahpo: the dregs.
“So how many of you are left?” Festina asked the beetles. “Hundreds? Thousands? Millions? Or could it be you two are the only ones who didn’t have the guts to change?”
Immu didn’t answer—just turned her head away and lowered her gaze to the floor. Her mandibles fell still, as if she were paralyzed with shame. Finally, it was Esticus who spoke, his fog-cloud dim and drooping.
“There were others once,” he said. “Many others. It isn’t an easy thing to contemplate changing to the Soft Form—even when you’ve been assured it will…expand your horizons.”
He closed his eyes: great brown eyelids rolled down from his forehead. “Once upon a time, this vessel was full of Tahpo. We spoke as if we were on a grand adventure—the last of our race, a single brave ship against a hostile galaxy. A grand, most noble adventure…and we formed a plan we all agreed was necessary for our survival. We would undermine lesser races before they could become our equals. There weren’t enough of us to compete any other way; our only defense was sabotage. So we all agreed. We all…”
Esticus’s mandibles suddenly clenched tight against each other. They squeezed for a long shuddering moment; then they fell limp and motionless. “We all agreed. But over the years—the long, long years—the others left, one by one. They found the courage to change…or perhaps it wasn’t courage but despair. Despair at what our lives had become.”
Esticus sighed. “In a way, we’d become as lifeless