Star Wars_ The Adventures of Lando Calrissia - L. Neil Smith [158]
The Other indicated silent sympathy. He, too, had experienced the discomfort of uncertainty, and, despite his almost unimaginable life-span, and the relatively recent character of the events, for far too long. Uncertainty was like that. However, that had been the very purpose of the plan. Over the countless eons of their existence, the One, the Other, and the Rest had become, in a manner of speaking, too perfect, too well-informed. It had become all too easy to anticipate events simply from long experience with reality, excellent sources of information, and well-practiced logic.
Ironically, it was in that manner that the One had originally foreseen racial stagnation and eventual death did these comfortable circumstances continue. He had advised all concerned that an element of the unknown be reintroduced. They, of course, had seen the sense of it and agreed (with a cordiality that was itself symptomatic; a more vital, lusty people would have included a number of individuals who were contrary just for the sake of contrariness.) Their first experiment in guesswork, partial knowledge, and risk was maturing now, a process some thousands of years in the making.
“Do you suppose …” the Other began, unconsciously reviving a long-unused turn of phrase as he let the unproductive thought trickle away. At that point speculation was futile. He knew as well as the One what consequences, in all their manifest likelihoods, were possible, from a vast unprecedented enrichment of their ancient, already lavishly complex culture, to its uttermost destruction. These were not beings to whom such gambling came easily or naturally—which was yet another reason why it had become necessary. “Do you suppose …?”
The One replied, “I do not know—How truly unsubstantial a sensation! For the first time in eons we shall learn New Things, regardless of the outcome. These we shall have to integrate with the old, producing syntheses unlooked for. I feel … this emotion must be very much as our ancestors experienced when scarcely anything was known, and everything remained yet to be learned. It is little wonder they were half mad and came close, times without number, to destroying themselves.”
After a long period of silence, the Other said, “I have learned a New Thing already.” In the tone of his voice there was an odd, semiforgotten, yet somehow familiar difference.
But excitement tinged the voice of the One: “Please tell me—what is it? I, too, must learn this New Thing, and we must pass it on to—”
“I have learned that the prospect of learning New Things makes you unreasonably loquacious. I am not certain—there it is again, that ‘not knowing’—that this is altogether good.”
“I believe,” the One replied rather stiffly, “that you have reinvented humor. And I am not certain whether that is good.”
Klyn Shanga raced through endless night to join his makeshift squadron. Considering his three careers—soldier for his nation-state, farmer upon military retirement, soldier again for a hastily united and inevitably defeated Renatasian System—this last, the seeking of ultimate vengeance, was quite the strangest.
Shanga leaned back in his patched and shabby acceleration couch, carefully placing his feet between control pedals, stretching his long legs and arching his back to relieve an aching stiffness born more, on this occasion, of emotional tension than of lengthy travel. He was well practiced at that, having logged an incredible number of intersystem parsecs in his unlikely machine.
His blaster, its grips polished smooth by use, its muzzle bright with holster-wear and pitted by many more firings than it had been designed for, once again clung comfortingly to his thigh. It was not that having the weapon made him a whole man; like most professional soldiers, he