Before the Storm - Michael P. Kube-McDowell [90]
“You think maybe if a Qella came in here, he’d see the answer right away?”
“I’m saying that these markings may have been made not just for Qella eyes, but for Qella minds.”
Lando frowned and shook his head. “Even if you’re right, that doesn’t get us any closer.”
“Artoo is the only one of us capable of seeing the entire chamber at once. I can send him alternate sets of perceptual parameters, which I am retrieving now from the Institute for Sentient Studies on Baraboo. They have the most comprehensive collection of neurocognitive models that exists. Artoo can reprocess the image according to the parameters I provide, and project it for us to see.”
“Sounds a lot like trying to fill out a sabacc on a draw of four cards to me.”
“Luck is chance informed by applied knowledge,” said Lobot. “You said so yourself.”
“I did?”
“You did. Stand by.”
It is said on Gaios that a seed does not know the flower that produced it. What is true of seeds and flowers is true of civilizations and worlds. In the long history of the galaxy, many a family tree has grown too tangled to be clearly remembered by either ancestor or descendant.
On a thousand thousand worlds and more, life erupted from creation’s crucible of energy and time—and vanished into extinction in an eyeblink.
On a hundred thousand worlds and more, life erupted from the crucible and would not be dislodged, brandishing cleverness and fecundity as its weapons against entropy and change.
On ten thousand worlds and more, life erupted from the crucible and then transcended it, learning to bridge the unbridgeable distances, venturing forth as explorer, and settler, and conqueror to worlds far from that which gave it birth.
And some of those worlds touched with the gift of life in time passed it on to their own children, until the gift had been passed across the eons to a million worlds, flower begetting seed begetting flower until the galaxy itself sang of it. But in all the history of all that is, no species anywhere has ever known its whole heritage, for memories are shorter than forever, and the only witness to those hard first births is the Force itself.
The people who called themselves the Qella had no children of their own. No colony worlds owed them allegiance. No free worlds owed them honor. The Qella had possessed the tools to leave their homeworld, but they had lacked a sufficient reason.
But the Qella had parents, parents they scarcely remembered, but to whom much of what they were and knew could be traced. The parents of the Qella had called themselves the Qonet, and they had had many offspring, as had their parents, who called themselves the Ahra Naffi. So although the Qella had no children, they had siblings in some number, and cousins close and distant in numbers beyond counting.
It was with the hope of finding such kin as the Qella might have that Lobot sifted the archives of the Institute for Sentient Studies. Lobot knew no more about the family history of the Qella than did the Qella themselves, but he knew the patterns and principles that applied. His hope depended not on luck but on a well-chosen search algorithm, the thoroughness of the archivists, and the fruitfulness and resilience of the Ahra Naffi line.
Or, at least, so Lobot would forever claim. Luck was Lando’s game, and Lobot preferred to distance himself from anything so ephemeral and unpredictable. It was a silent rivalry, and Lobot took unvoiced pleasure from the times when Lando’s way failed him and Lobot’s own succeeded. He prided himself on playing a more precise and controlled line, where competence counted for more than chance and diligence was rewarded more often than daring.
This time the reward was the mind-prints of the Khotta, of Kho Nai.
The image Artoo was projecting covered only part of one wall, but incorporated the patterns of the