Lords of the Seventh Swarm

Chapter 5

Felph turned back to Gallen and Maggie, marched boldly up to them, and bowed so low his wispy hair nearly scraped the floor. Gallen had thought he would wear a crown of some type, a Controller to order the Guides his children wore, but he wore only a small device mounted into his skull, behind his right ear.

“I’m very pleased to make your acquaintance, Gallen, Maggie,” Felph said, nodding to each in turn, smiling pleasantly. “May I introduce you to my beloved children-Arachne, Hera, Zeus, Hermes, and little Athena.”

Felph’s children each bowed in turn, none of them speaking a word. Apparently Felph had forbidden them to speak.

And yet, and yet, can eyes not sometimes speak as loudly as words?

Gallen knew how much wearing a Guide, even for a few days, had pained Maggie. Now he looked into the eyes of Felph’s creations. The oldest, Arachne, smiled weakly; everything about her posture, her trembling smile, begged. “Please, free us.”

The children-for though some were older than Gallen, he still saw them as children-hovered behind Felph, bright, intelligent, eager for attention.

Lord Felph finished his introductions, and said, “I hope you enjoy my hospitality.”

“As do I,” Gallen said, cautiously. “Are you certain you want us to stay the evening?”

“Indeed, of course.” Felph chuckled. “Don’t fear. I play the eccentric only for the sake of the locals. It keeps them away. So you see, there is nothing to worry about, really. Besides, we haven’t had dinner yet, nor have we discussed my proposed terms of employment. I’m very wealthy. I’m sure you’ll find the terms … fascinating.”

Felph stood taller, then gazed fixedly at the bears. “I see you also brought your pets?”

“Orick and Tallea are my friends, not my pets,” Gallen said. “They do talk.”

“Talking pets?” Felph murmured, intrigued. “Like parrots and macaws and whatnot?”

“I’m very pleased to make your acquaintance,” Orick blurted, rising on his hind legs, trying to ease Gallen’s obvious distress at Felph’s comments. “Your palace is remarkable!”

“Well, yes, thank you,” Felph said, somehow delighted that the bear would speak to him. He reached out and pinched the fur above Orick’s left paw. “Isn’t it a bit warm in there?”

“Only when I build a fire,” Orick jested, then laughed, as did Lord Felph.

“Well, I’m very happy to meet you,” Felph told Orick once again, and Felph graciously took both of Orick’s paws in his hand at once, then shook lightly, as if with a dear friend. Felph glanced at Gallen. “Charming bear-a talking bear, really. Now, to dinner.”

As the people of Ruin mounted the florafeems outside, Felph led Maggie and the others through the great hall to a wide corridor that opened into a spacious formal dining room. An enormous table carved of a single slab of white marble sat in the center of the room. The walls had been covered in dark rosewood and inlaid with gold. A single chandelier lit the center of the room, a chandelier with tiny glow globes hidden in a golden net, hung with huge cut diamonds that glittered brilliantly.

Twenty server droids lined the walls. A sumptuous feast was set, with six main meat dishes, several types of bread and rolls, and a dozen dishes of vegetables and fruits, not to mention desserts and liqueurs. Maggie had dined at state banquets on half a dozen worlds, but nothing compared to Lord Felph’s table.

The servant Dooring went to the table, pulled out Felph’s chair, then seated the others in turn. Orick and Tallea could not properly sit at a table, so Dooring removed the chairs, letting the bears stand.

Felph let his guests eat their repast in silence, careful to avoid any talk of business, for to do so was taboo in many cultures. It was an odd and eerie meal, for Felph talked casually of many things-the great drought which would end in a few weeks as Ruin neared Brightstar and the polar caps began to melt, the commercial value of various relics found on Ruin, the outrageous excesses of the governor in a nearby star system who wanted to annex Ruin, and so on. But it was not Felph’s choice of topics that Gallen found to be eerie, it was simply that his children did not speak. Obviously, Lord Felph had forbidden them.

Gallen felt suspicious of his motives.

When the last dessert was finished an hour later, Felph pushed his chair from the table a foot, a formal sign that dinner had ended. Gallen did the same.

“Now to business,” Felph said, folding his hands over his belly, “unless you are still hungry?”

“No,” everyone said in unison, including Orick. It was a rare meal that served enough even for that bear.

“Good, good.” Felph nodded thoughtfully. He stared at Gallen. “As you may have noticed, I keep very few human retainers. My droids handle the vast bulk of my work-cultivating the fields, mining the hills. They work as technicians and factory workers, servants and cleaners-all here in the depths, under the palace. I reserve humans only because of their versatility. It is rare that I seek to hire a human. The palace is self-sufficient. I even export some small items. Yet-I need your services, Gallen O’Day.”

Gallen nodded. “Is it a criminal you want to apprehend? If so, this fine dinner, thought much appreciated, was hardly necessary. Tracking criminals is what I do.”

Felph smiled and shook his head. “It is not a criminal I seek. It is a deed I want done, an artifact-an ancient Qualeewooh artifact-that I would like you to acquire.” Felph folded his hands and raised them to his chin, watching Gallen’s face. “You have seen the jungles of Ruin from space? We call them the tangles, for the trees of Ruin become tangled together into such strange and impenetrable masses, that the word `jungle’ somehow does not do them justice. At the base of every tangle is a lake or sea, and the native dew trees float on these waters, spreading broad floating leaves that cover the water completely. The dew trees themselves are enormous, sometimes fifty meters wide, and their roots may anchor a thousand meters deep into the ocean, while the trunks rise fifteen hundred meters in the air. On these dew trees, parasitic plants grow-ribbon trees and fire brush and a thousand forms of fungus, until all of them twist into an impenetrable mass.”

“I’ve seen them from space, but not close up,” Gallen said. Indeed, when Gallen had landed, it seemed that he had little choice of spots to set camp. The land that was not desert on Ruin seemed to be the impenetrable tangle, and so Gallen had landed in a clear desert, where native predators might not prove too bothersome.

“The tangles are filled with wildlife. Florafeems, like the ones you rode here, feed in the foliage at the top, and thousands of other species of animals live in the canopy, some of them hundreds of meters into the growth, where perpetual darkness reigns.

“The predators in the tangle are-unusually nasty, let us say. Evolution has given them certain advantages over the human form. Their nervous systems give them superior reflexes-which let them react about twice as fast as humans do, and their muscles process energy at a more rapid rate.”

Gallen smiled wryly. “So they are nasty enough to keep you from your artifact?”

“Other men have gone searching for it. I’ve sent killer droids into the tangle, trying to recover the object of my desires-I’ve even sent in a dozen of my own clones. No one has managed to retrieve it for me.”

“So, you are saying it’s dangerous?” Gallen asked.

“For normal men. Perhaps even for you. No Lord Protector has ever tried the deed. I would, of course, provide droid escorts, the finest military weaponry “

“Yet even then, you don’t expect me to succeed.”

“Why would you say that?” Felph asked.

Gallen nodded toward Felph’s children-to Arachne and Hera, Athena. “You don’t let them speak. You’re afraid they’ll ruin the deal, talk me out of it.”

Felph grinned. “Very perceptive. I should have known that a Lord Protector would be so perceptive. To put it candidly, I am unsure of your chances. If I thought the venture fruitless, I wouldn’t even entertain this notion.”

“You told me that I would find your offer interesting,” Gallen said. “I’m not exactly interested in dying.”

“Of course not,” Felph said.

“So what do you offer?” Gallen asked. “I assume the reward justifies the risks?”

“I would, of course, take precautions before sending you in. I’d clone you, download you memories, so that should you fail, you will have lost nothing. Beyond that …” Felph spread his hands wide, indicating his palace, “whatever you want.”

Orick gasped, and even Gallen sat back in surprise. Gallen could imagine a lot. As he gazed at the opulence around him, he realized that Felph really would make good on his offer.

“That’s right,” Felph said. “I am four thousand years old, and in my youth I inherited more money than I could ever spend. That has been invested and accruing interest for ages. I control the economies of fifty worlds. If you acquire the artifact I desire, I will give you,” he shrugged, “half.”

Gallen’s heart pounded. Maggie reached over, clutched his arm under the table. A warning? Did she want him to jump at the offer, or back away from it? He glanced at her, and her face was set, wary. She was telling him only to be careful, he suspected.

But he couldn’t be careful. Only days ago she’d begged him to flee the civilized worlds, get her away from the dronon. Government officials, sympathetic to Gallen’s plight, had loaned Gallen a ship.

“What would be worth so much?” Gallen asked.

“The Waters of Strength,” Felph said.

Gallen asked, “What makes them so valuable?”

Felph shrugged. “I’m not certain that they are. At the very least, they intrigue me. That intrigue has held me here on this planet for six hundred years. But if the legends are true, then it is said that in ancient times the Qualeewoohs brewed the Waters of Strength, and those who drank them made four great conquests.” He raised one hand and counted off on four fingers, “Self. Nature. Time. And Space.”

Gallen shook his head. “That seems a bit much to expect from a potion. What proof do you have that it exists?”

“There are many accounts of it in Qualeewooh histories. It was brewed some thirty millennia ago, at the dawn of the Age of Man,” Felph said. “As for evidence of its continued existence, there is ample evidence. What evidence would you have?”

Gallen shrugged. “A thirty-thousand-year-old Qualeewooh, telling me where to find it.”

Lord Felph raised a brow. “All right,” he said. “Fair enough. Follow me.”

He got up from the table, and Gallen followed him out the corridor, back into the great hall, and out another passageway. Maggie followed at Gallen’s back, along with the bears, Felph’s children, and Dooring.

The passageways led to a road that wound outside the palace itself, and Gallen saw that night was full upon them, but though the stars dusted a cloudless sky, Brightstar outshone them all, more like a brilliant moon than a star. Gallen could see quite well, and indeed felt the heat of the star. He followed Felph through a garden of dahlias in shades of white and black, then down into a great chamber, an ancient chamber carved by the Qualeewoohs.

Felph reached into his pocket, pulled out a glow globe, and held it aloft. “If you look up here, you can see writing on the walls, most of it in a tempera made from colored clays mixed with pulp from bark.” There was indeed writing on the ceiling, intricate designs of stylized Qualeewoohs painted in vivid reds, blues, yellows, and greens. There was a queer feeling to the place. Strange scenes on the ceiling depicted birdlike creatures in armored helms, who carried knives on their wing tips, battling beasts in the heavens. The hall was ten meters across, but less than two meters high. By the odd proportions, one sensed it had not been burrowed by human hands. The symbols were obviously stylized, yet there were intricacies in the work that astonished Gallen. It was like nothing ever painted by a human. On one wall was a set of symbols that gave off ominous overtones. They depicted yellowish fanged beasts, like upright jackals with large ears, apparently dancing in a green mist.

“What do these symbols mean?” Maggie asked.

“No one knows,” Felph said. “Each mating pair of Qualeewoohs writes in their own private language, which they teach their children, but the children themselves create their own version of that language at adolescence. The result is that after a few generations, even the Qualeewoohs can’t decipher the family writings. But Qualeewoohs tell me that the private languages tell mostly of common things nearby nesting sites, feeding grounds, and the attendant dangers at each. But there is much more personal information that the Qualeewoohs don’t share with us-mystic teachings and magical rites.”

“You mean that the Qualeewoohs are still alive?” Orick asked. “I thought that they were all killed or something. That’s why the planet is called Ruin.”

“Not killed,” Felph said. “They are rare, but not extinct. We’re in a period called `the bone years,’ when their members become quite few. It’s a planetwide drought. And of course, over the past few centuries, their numbers have dwindled lower than ever. Poachers, you know.”

“I still cannot believe people would kill them,” Gallen said, not bothering to conceal his outrage.

“Perhaps if you’d met a Qualeewooh, you’d understand,” Felph answered. “They are feral. Their ancestors reached great heights of civilization, but the descendants are poor representatives of their species.”

He brought the light to a corner, where a glass case had been built into one wall. “Here you can see some spirit masks-Qualeewooh masks made of lacquered leather, with some inlaid silver fangs, and writing painted on the masks. The Qualeewoohs make these when they reach adolescence, then have them permanently glued to their faces. The masks cannot be removed. When a Qualeewooh dies, its body is left behind as being nothing, something merely cast off. But the dead Qualeewooh’s mate will bring the mask back to one of its favorite aeries.” He raised the globe toward the wall. The birdlike masks were about three feet from nose to head, and just the width of a human face. Gallen got the distinct impression that the empty eye sockets on the gray-blue masks were gazing out at him. “You said you wanted to speak to a dead Qualeewooh. Open the case. Put on a mask. As I remember, the center one there is quite well-made.”

Gallen looked at Felph suspiciously. The hair rose on the back of Gallen’s neck. On Tremonthin, the Inhuman had downloaded memories of past lives into Gallen. And somewhere, Gallen felt he had lost a bit of himself in a sea of otherness. He dared not put on the mask.

“What do the masks do?” Gallen said.

Felph frowned in thought. “The methods for making a spirit mask are kept secret from humans, so it is difficult to explain precisely how they work. The means for producing them is taught by the `ancestors,’ the Qualeewoohs’ word for gods. I cannot explain it any better than to say this: you and I would say that these masks are receivers. The masks let the Qualeewoohs’ dead ancestors speak to them.”

Gallen said, “But earlier tonight, Herm said that wearing the masks drives you insane.”

Felph smiled secretively. “Some would say that it drives you divine. It is true that long-term exposure to alien thoughts might … confuse some. But there is little harm in short-term exposure. Please. You said you wanted proof of the Waters. This is part of the evidence.”

Gallen immediately stiffened. Felph seemed more than a bit mad himself. He had worn the masks, of that Gallen felt certain. Perhaps the mask had made him insane. Certainly a normal man would not have howled for his guests to leave his party, would not have bayed like a wounded hound almost as soon as they entered his home. Felph was insane, and possibly dangerous. Gallen didn’t trust his judgment, didn’t want to don the mask. Yet a certain morbid fascination gripped him. Gallen wanted to know for certain that Felph spoke the truth.

Gallen went to the case, pulled out the mask that Felph had indicated-a mask of deep purples with threads of red among the silver writing. He took a deep breath, then held the strange birdlike mask up to his face with both hands. Almost immediately he stiffened, as if bracing himself for a blow. Wearing the mask somehow seemed suffocating-though Gallen could breathe easily enough. It was an odd sensation. He felt as if-his head had elongated, as if it were pulled into a far place.

Almost immediately he saw something-a vision one might call it, and the oddity of it repelled him. At first, his mind could not make sense of what he saw. A world as flat and featureless as a sea of molten lead, skies in banded shades of yellow and crimson, and green birds of light wheeling through the skies. One of the birds was flying toward him, growing larger and larger in his field of vision, and its thoughts seemed to pummel Gallen. Half-formed questions formed in Gallen’s mind-questions that he felt, curiously, must be answered once posed.

He choked back a sob, then drew the mask away, shoving it toward Felph. He found that he had dropped protectively to one knee.

He blinked rapidly and shook his head, as if trying to wake from a disturbing dream, then said weakly. “All right. I believe you.”

“What, what did you see?” Orick nearly shouted.

“It is not so much what you see,” Felph said. “It was what you think and feel. The ancestors speak to your whole soul-your hopes and desires and dreams.”

Orick asked, “What did they say?”

Gallen shook his head. “They asked me …” he struggled for words, “if I could seek for the Waters of Strength. To seek with my whole being. They told me to find … peace?” He frowned, as if uncertain of the message.

Maggie looked to Gallen, then to Felph, incredulous.

Felph said, “Would you like to try it, Maggie, Orick? Do you want to hear the voices of the ancestors?”

Maggie shook her head vigorously. Orick and Tallea declined the offer.

“Such a shame,” Felph said. “Perhaps you’ll change your mind. Here: this mask is for you, Gallen, since you had the courage to wear it. It’s quite valuable. It dates to the thirty-third ascendancy, a historical period that ended about three thousand years ago. The finest masks were made then.” He presented the mask to Gallen with a bow. Gallen took it, gingerly, put it under his arm.

“I–I don’t get it,” Orick said. “You said that the Qualeewoohs had conquered time and space. If that’s true, why don’t you bring us one?”

Felph smiled broadly. “Well, Orick, that is hard to explain, and I don’t know the answer for sure myself. The Qualeewoohs say that the ancestors are `flying between the stars.’ I think that phrase means, quite frankly, that they do not exist in the physical universe. They have been transformed into something else, something that travels to another dimension, where time and space as we know them no longer exist.”

Maggie seemed astonished at this. She pushed up at her mantle, as if to shove it from her head. She did that at times when it was downloading too much information to her. “That would require a more sophisticated level of technology than even we have!” she said. “We’ve never crossed dimensional boundaries.”

Felph shrugged. “Qualeewooh technology differs from ours, yet I doubt it is ‘more sophisticated.’ “

Maggie said, “This is incredible. My mantle has no information on these masks; as a Lord of Technology, I should know something of them.”

Gallen’s own mantle whispered to him. “The nature of the artifacts discovered here has been classified as secret. It is vital that such technology not fall into dronon hands.”

Until now, Gallen had thought it exceedingly odd that the government would conspire to hide an entire world. Now he got an uneasy feeling that they had stumbled onto something darker and more important than he ever would have imagined.

Softly, Maggie asked, “What proof do you have of such a level of technology?”

“Ah,” Felph smiled. “I see your reservations. A technologist doesn’t want dreams and alien voices whispering in her ear. She wants hardware.” He bent his head. “Unfortunately, not much has survived the past twenty thousand years. You can search the aeries-the Qualeewoohs call them cloo holes, but all you will find are cave paintings. But some evidence exists. Come back here, into this passage.”

Felph hobbled to a hole that had been excavated in the back of the chamber, then led them through a corridor that sloped down, then suddenly opened into a far larger chamber, an almost perfect oval.

Here, things were far different from the room above. Felph had installed a very dim continual light on one wall. Mounted on the wall opposite from the light was bolted a metal panel with graceful lines etched deeply into it. Whereas the previous walls had all been covered with exotic pictographs, these loops and whorls were clearly different. They didn’t seem to be writing. They didn’t represent anything.

“Can you guess what this is?” Felph asked.

Maggie drew close and studied the metal panel. “This isn’t the low-quality silver we’ve seen on Qualeewooh spirit masks. This is a solid sheet of platinum.” The panel was nearly two meters tall and ten long. “Something this big had to have been milled in a foundry.” She studied the grooves in the metal. They followed two separate tracks, mirror images of one another, that led from the floor to the ceiling and back down again in graceful sweeps. “It looks like writing etched into the metal,” Maggie said, uncertain.

But even Gallen guessed that these weren’t pictographs, not representational characters at all. “These etched tracks are so narrow and deep: the grooves must have been cut with a laser.” When she examined the etchings closely, she suddenly bolted backward in surprise.

“A recording?” Maggie said, astonished. “These grooves are an audio recording?”

“More than just audio!” Felph said. “It’s an audiovisual recording from the second expansion, approximately thirty thousand years ago. This predates nearly every civilization on Earth. Our ancestors were just learning to shape stone, while these people were developing laser technology and recording studios, performing brain surgeries and actively terraforming their own planet to make it more suitable. You should see the stone aqueducts on Fire River-over four thousand miles of covered aqueducts in all-and most of it is still usable.”

Felph brought a small device from the pocket of his robe, something that looked like a high-tech top-a spindle on a round spool with a thin, curved handle. He placed it in one of the grooves on the lower right-hand corner of the metal plate, and twisted. There was a snapping sound as a lock snicked open. A heavy rumbling followed.

A hole opened in the stone floor, and a statue began rising up, revealing the shape of a birdlike creature sculpted from colored glass. The figure was corroding, miserable in appearance, but Gallen could sense the general appearance of the being.

The Qualeewooh had light-colored feathers on its chest, while the longer plumage on its wings was mostly tan with some green tips at its wings. The statue showed the creature with its wings upraised, and Gallen could distinctly see the tiny hands-each with four long fingers, at the apex of each wing. The Qualeewooh’s brownish neck was long and slender, with a blaze of white at the throat, and its head held a large beaklike snout, with many teeth that were needlesharp, including two large pairs of upper fangs that reminded Gallen of a boar’s tusks. As with any bird, the eyes were set on each side of its head, so that the Qualeewooh could see in any direction above, below, or to either side. Somehow, even from only this crude icon, Gallen would have recognized that this creature was sentient.

But this creature seemed more than intelligent. It carried itself with a pride, with a majesty, few humans could have aspired to. Perhaps it was the spirit mask that the statue wore. This particular mask was formed of platinum, inlaid with cabochons of dark blue azurite. The spirit mask flamed up and outward into some mystical crown, and the glass eyes of the statue stared deeply from this mask, secretive, wise-but mostly, most frighteningly, malevolent.

There were other oddities about the statue. On its fingers the Qualeewooh wore heavy rings, each shaped like a long, raking claw. On its chest it wore a bandolier with many tiny implements that might have been tools or keys.

There, in the dark room, gazing at this ancient glass statue that barely caught the light in the darkness, Gallen felt a primal, palpable fear. Something about this creature made him step back. He suspected this was no representation of a Qualeewooh lord or philosopher. This was a demon.

The sight of the statue affected the others in the same way. Everyone had moved back from it. Felph appeared not to notice. He still had his little device in the track on the platinum wall, and now he placed an identical device into a groove on the lower right side. “These are models of the spindles a Qualeewooh used. I’ve motorized these, so that they’ll play over the recording. In ancient times, there were no motors. A nest mother would have stood here, a spindle in each claw, flapping her wings to play the recording. You can imagine what it would look like.”

He pretended to grab both implements and begin running them through the narrow grooves, pulling them toward him, raising them slightly, then pushing them back out along their tracks, then pulling them back in.

The result of his odd motions was that Felph suddenly looked as if he were a bird, mimicking the motions of flight, flapping his wings.

When he finished his demonstration, he reached down to the spindles, pushed a button on each one, and the spindles actually began to move.

A quavering sound issued from the spindles, remarkably loud. It was a song-reed pipes, thunderous drums, some strange instrument that might have been a wood paddle scraping over stone.

It was a marvelous melody-rich, exotic, completely alien and yet immediately recognizable as music. One could hear high winds whistling through crevices, the music of flapping wings and beating hearts.

Qualeewoohs were singing in that song, too.

The ancient Qualeewooh language was raucous, with many squawks among its frantic whistling. It was a dramatic weaving of sound, like voices crying in a jungle over the peeping of frogs. The Qualeewoohs’ cries reverberated throughout the chamber-a challenging tone that might have been voicing curses or deprecations.

Orick shouted in astonishment, “Look in its eyes!”

Gallen stared into the eyes of the statue, and saw that somehow-he could not see the source-an image was being projected through the statue. In the black depths of the statue’s eyes Gallen could discern five Qualeewoohs winging over the red deserts of Ruin, soaring over rocky bluffs. From overhead, a second flock of Qualeewoohs plummeted with deadly grace from cloudy skies, diving into their fellows, talons stretched out, apparently fitted with metal spurs. The attackers slashed the necks and wings of their adversaries. A squawking roar filled the room, as if a hundred Qualeewoohs shrieked in pain and terror, then the image focused on two Qualeewoohs who soared and dived, battling in the sky.

The sounds softened, almost breathless, and Gallen suspected this recording recounted the tale of these two Qualeewoohs. It must have been an epic battle, for it lasted more than ten minutes, and Gallen was astonished at what he saw-Qualeewoohs flying in complex loops, twisting dives, terrifying strikes and heroic dodges.

In the end, one Qualeewooh plummeted in a dazzling pattern, as if trapped in a whirlwind, spiraling down. In the last second of its attack, it reached out with one wing, where its tiny hand carried a thin blade, and smote off the head of its adversary.

Thus the adversary tumbled to earth, end over end, its head somersaulting in the air.

The vanquishing Qualeewooh soared on over the plains, master of all it surveyed.

For the next several minutes of the recording, all one could see was a lone Qualeewooh flying through endless empty skies, accompanied by a ringing song that could only have come from some type of pipes or whistles, unaccompanied by other instruments, until at last the remaining Qualeewooh reached a mountain aerie and entered a cave.

In the back of the cave, Qualeewooh chicks huddled in downy feathers, shaking amid the shells of their eggs, snaking querulous peeps as the dark lord approached, beak open, displaying his razor-sharp teeth.

There the tale ended.

Gallen’s logic told him that this recording showed a major battle between good and evil. If so, something was certainly amiss. This was not a heroic tale as he understood it: of the Qualeewoohs who had fought, the loser was not the aggressor, but the defender. The defender, a smaller Qualeewooh, had worn a simple spirit mask of bright silver, unadorned with any gaudy stones. In all the encounters, it had heeled away, retreating with great speed and desperation toward a distant line of hills. True, it did rake its attacker on occasions, but only in self-defense.

And the song, the strange song at the end that sounded like reed pipes, seemed to Gallen not to be trumpeting victory, nor sounding an anthem of peace.

Instead, it was a bewailing tune, a howling. I am the dark god of the skies, the icon had cried. Through victory I am diminished.

When Felph’s spindles reached the lowest bottom corners of the panel, the song ended. The glass statue receded down into the floor, where the stone doors slid back in place with a snick.

Felph turned around, pocketed the devices that let him play the recording.

Gallen stood in the solemn chamber, with his friends around him. Beside him he could feel Maggie standing close, shivering from fear. Gallen remained utterly silent, the alien music ringing through his head. No one spoke. No one wanted to be the first to break the spell the Qualeewooh music had woven. The whole battle, the symbolism, was utterly alien. But Gallen felt that, somehow, he understood.

He wondered how this cave had appeared to the Qualeewoohs, thirty thousand years ago: many nesting sites had probably been here in the cliffs. The chicks would have come into this cave, in the darkness, Gallen imagined. Perhaps the chicks would have been small, so young they hadn’t grown their adult plumage. So they would have been ugly, gangling things with small wings and large heads.

A priestess would have stood before the platinum panel and waved her wings, as if taking flight. Immediately the dark god would rise behind her, its malevolent intent glowing in its eyes. Each chick would have had its head turned to the side, gazing at the dark god with one eye only. Perhaps the victim of the murder symbolized the priestess in her flight. That sounded somehow right.

Gallen realized that the defender in the battle had been lighter of color. Female, perhaps? The death of virtue, the end of civilization. That’s what the dark god brought.

He stared at the scene in his imagination, lost in thought, until Felph said quietly, “I first came to Ruin nearly seven hundred years ago, as an archaeologist. I was part of a team that discovered this site. All the others, they’ve moved on to other worlds, other ruins. But I’ve stayed to study the Qualeewoohs and their civilization.

“You see, they are not unlike us. Their ancestors were violent hunters, lords of the skies. They traveled in great flocks that darkened the heavens. When they descended on the twisted jungles, they carried off what they desired.

“And like our ancestors, they grew to be too numerous, and began to war.

“But they were not really like us,” Felph mused, and his tone was somber. He stared at the floor, his dark eyes unfocused, his gaze directed inward.

“Man was content to live with war, and even gloried in it. But the Qualeewoohs never romanticized it, never saw it as a necessity, nor even really tolerated it. “

“What happened to them, then?” Orick asked, his deep voice full of awe. “Why did they die out?”

“They haven’t, as I said,” Felph answered. “But if our astrophysical models are correct, things here changed about thirty thousand years ago, during the fourth expansion. Ruin circles a small sun, as you can see-one too small to regularly burn away the planet’s polar ice caps. Darksun drew close to its larger sister every six years in a very elliptical orbit, and when the suns reached perigee, the combined light provided enough heat to melt the polar caps here on Ruin. With this melting, water would fill the shallow seas, and as the tangles enlarged, the local flora and fauna populations would explode for a few years.

“But about twenty-eight thousand years ago, something changed the orbits. It may have been that a large planetary body passed through the system, or even hit Darksun, skewing its orbit, making it more and more elliptical. On a cosmic scale, the variations in orbit appear minor, but the changes here on Ruin have been dramatic.

“The result has been that the six-year cycle now takes three hundred years to complete. The free water here on Ruin is becoming more and more concentrated at the poles, and now, even when the ice caps do melt, they can’t melt completely.”

“So the Qualeewoohs died out?” Maggie asked.

“No, not exactly,” Felph said. “Their numbers were on the decline even before this tragedy. That is what intrigued me about them you see, Qualeewoohs are intelligent creatures-smarter than the average human who isn’t genetically enhanced.

“No, they weren’t dying out. What happened is this: in the early days of human technology, our ancestors’ innovations concentrated in several areas-the production of shelter, transportation, food, and weapons of war.

“But the Qualeewoohs never needed these. They needed no transportation. Because they were winged creatures, they were free to hunt and move at will. Indeed, I can find no evidence that, outside of litters for carrying their sick, the Qualeewooh ever created any kind of vehicle.

“As far as shelter goes, their needs seemed minimal. The Qualeewoohs, unlike humans, cannot live in extreme cold. Their wings and necks dissipate too much heat, so they were never free to expand beyond their lower temperate regions. Nor can they nest near the tangles, where predators steal their eggs. So they nest in mountainous areas above the tangles-and there were plenty of nesting sites.

“Also, the Qualeewoohs, unlike humans, are pure carnivores. The ancients did develop methods of ranching-controlling predators and unwanted herbivores. The tangles provided them with hundreds of different natural pesticides and whatnot. But because the Qualeewooh are carnivores, their numbers naturally stabilized at smaller populations than human populations would. Indeed, food became the predominant limiting factor in their expansion.

“But war, of course, was their big problem. When driven by hunger, Qualeewoohs engaged in the worst sort of cannibalism. A well-fed Qualeewooh is a magnificently moral creature, but when a Qualeewooh starves, when its brain suffers from a lack of sugars, it enters a dark state that the Qualeewoohs call ‘The Voracion.’ A Qualeewooh, so afflicted becomes a terrible, mindless predator-slaying anything but its own mate in an effort to survive. Thus, starving adults would forage into the nesting territories of enemy flocks, slaying the females, eating eggs and chicks. In lean years, terrible things happened.”

“In an effort to abolish the slaughter, the Qualeewoohs focused their research efforts. The Qualeewoohs did not seek to protect themselves from their neighbors, as humans did. Mankind developed all sorts of fascinating myths about how other tribes of humans were ‘evil’ and inferior so we could continue to justify our war efforts.

“But among Qualeewoohs, who could fly, there was no boundary between peoples. A global language developed early in their civilization, along with two or three very similar global cosmologies, and everyone understood one another. One Qualeewooh could join with any flock he or she chose, and, it appears to me, the Qualeewoohs’ territorial instinct never developed as strongly as did mankind’s.

“And there is one more thing you must understand: the Qualeewoohs were brilliant mathematicians. They could estimate populations of animals, count their citizens, study the prevailing weather, then calculate accurately how many of their own people they could supply with food and water.

“So when the Qualeewoohs turned to the problem of war, they took a pragmatic approach. Instead of trying to search endlessly for new sources of food and water, instead of trying to defend themselves from the inevitable depredations of others-their technology focused on self-control.”

“You mean to limiting their numbers?” Gallen asked.

“No,” Felph said. “That was but a small part of their program. I mean that they turned toward social and genetic manipulation. That they practiced genetic manipulation is obvious. We’ve found fossilized plants from the tangle and compared their DNA to that in current samples. The dew trees, which serve as the platform for all other life here on Ruin, show a common pattern of genetic manipulation across twenty-three separate species. The Qualeewoohs inserted the instructions for a common root and hibernation system through all those species. It is only because of these genetic manipulations that any life at all still thrives on this planet.

“But even more importantly than their manipulations of the flora and fauna, they developed a genetic upgrade which they spread among their own kind. They inserted a gene into their thirty-second chromosome that makes it terrifying, utterly intolerable, for one Qualeewooh to be near another adult of the same sex. The very sight of an adult Qualeewooh of the same sex sends both individuals into flight. “

Gallen considered. The Qualeewoohs had not been territorial, but by assuring that any two Qualeewoohs of the same sex who saw each other would immediately flee, you created a tremendous buffer zone between territories. Yet something more happened. You dismantled society. The Qualeewoohs who had developed the technology he’d seen here had been flock animals, nesting together. Social, communicative. But they’d doomed their descendants to become solitary hunters, living in exile.

To Gallen the implications seemed horrifying.

Felph looked up at him, a gleam in his dark blue eyes, and stroked his beard. “Mankind chose to tolerate violence, to seek eternal expansion in the hopes of outrunning his own overpopulation. But the Qualeewoohs, in spite of the fact that they are raptors, could not live with such a choice. For them, the only purpose civilization ever served was to find the root of their own violent nature, then destroy it. Better to end civilization, they decided, than to live with the madness.”

Tallea said, “How sad. Think of all they lost!”

But Orick simply shook his head. “How noble. Think of all they gained!”

“Indeed!” Felph said. “You see it. The Qualeewoohs are utterly unlike us in so many ways. With mankind, our whole system of values is incongruous, illogical. But the Qualeewoohs’ society works for them-in many ways far better than ours ever worked for us.

“That is why I’ve stayed here for so long. I’ve studied their social relations, considered the implications in our own society, weighing them against the dronon threat.”

Gallen found Felph’s tone very disturbing, incongruous. Half an hour ago, he’d talked casually about how humans slaughtered modern Qualeewoohs. Now he spoke reverently of their respect for life. Gallen recognized that Felph’s respect for the Qualeewoohs was directed toward “the ancestors,” the Qualeewooh gods, as he’d called them earlier.

Modern Qualeewoohs, in spite of the fact that they were kindly philosophers, in spite of the fact that they glued spirit masks to their faces in order always to be guided by their ancestors, were somehow not worthy of Felph’s respect. He saw them as creatures, not creators.

His position annoyed Gallen. Felph seemed to have an almost schizophrenic attitude about the creatures.

“What conclusions have you reached?” Maggie asked, and there was an edge to her voice, a threat. She, too, was perturbed by Felph’s attitudes.

Gallen recognized the source of Maggie’s concern. Felph’s genetic experiments, the way he treated the people above, the way he enslaved his own children-all suggested Felph was involved in something sinister. Could he be an aberlain, Gallen wondered-altering the human genome to fit his own whims, seeking to modify his own children as the Qualeewoohs had done? Gallen glanced at Felph’s beautiful, silent children. His slaves.

“Conclusions? None, for certain,” Felph said. “I suspect the Qualeewoohs’ solution was at once noble and desperate beyond anything I could condone. They doomed their descendants to lives of isolation. They doomed their species to eventual extinction. And they lost too much in their quest for peace-the opportunity for social discourse that we as humans take for granted.

“Still, I could almost congratulate them for the devil’s bargain they made, if not for the dronon. In time, the Qualeewoohs’ shortsightedness will condemn this world. The Qualeewoohs never anticipated alien invaders, either human or dronon. This world, with its dull red sun, is a perfect habitat for the dronon. When the Lords of the Swarms discover this place, as they surely will, the Qualeewoohs won’t be able to defend themselves.”

“Perhaps that won’t happen for a long time,” Gallen said.

“One could only hope,” Felph replied. “Unfortunately, what seems long to us is actually a short time on a cosmic scale. Five hundred years, a thousand? The Qualeewoohs don’t have that long.”

Gallen said, “Don’t you think mankind can find an answer to the problem?”

“No,” Felph answered. “What answer could we come up with? The dronon have had plenty of time to duplicate most of our higher technology in the past eighty years. A full-fledged war is almost too horrific for either species to consider, not when entire worlds would burn to ash.

“Mankind, I think, would gladly strike up negotiations for treaties with the dronon, but the dronon psyche does not allow for such things. They seek dominion above all, while mankind putters about, trying to find peaceful solutions to the problem.

“I hear-I hear,” Felph continued, “that some humans back in the Milky Way have finally won the title Lords of the Sixth Swarm. But what will they do with it?”

“I couldn’t say,” Gallen answered, stifling the urge to laugh at the irony. What would Felph think if he knew that at this very moment he was entertaining the Lords of the Sixth Swarm?

“I’ll tell you what they should do,” Felph said emphatically. “They should go to each dronon queen in each hive of the Sixth Swarm and sterilize them. Then let it be known to the lords of the other swarms that if they challenge mankind again, and mankind wins, this will happen to their swarms. That’s what we should do! With the extinction of their swarms as a threat, the dronon would never dare challenge us again.”

Maggie said, “But, if you destroyed the Sixth Swarm, you would be committing genocide against dronon on hundreds of worlds.”

“Not genocide-” Felph argued, “sterilization. Those living on such worlds could continue to live out their natural life spans.”

Orick shook his head. “I don’t think that will happen. I don’t see how we could do it.”

“Certainly the Tharrin will never do it,” Felph said. “But I suspect that many of our human leaders throughout history might have done it. Unfortunately, we’ve given over our free agency to a pack of sniveling aliens who haven’t got the fortitude to do what needs to be done.”

“The Tharrin aren’t aliens,” Orick said.

“Of course they are-aliens of our own creation.” Felph considered for a moment. “What we need is a new kind of civilization, with leaders strong enough to meet the challenge imposed by nonhuman sentiments.”

This is what Gallen had been waiting for. Felph hadn’t admitted to being an aberlain. On most worlds throughout the universe, the work of aberlains was strictly illegal. Only on Tremorithin did mankind work assiduously to create new subspecies of humans to populate new worlds.

Maggie said, “And is this the work you’ve chosen for yourself, to create this new society?”

“Of course,” Felph said. “Someone must rise to the challenge.”

“Isn’t it illegal to engage in genetic manipulations on humans?”

“Ruin doesn’t belong to the Unity of Planets, so of course none of their laws apply. We’re sovereign here.”

“What of your local laws?” Gallen asked.

Felph seemed astonished by the question. “I really haven’t made up any, yet.” He studied their faces, saw their surprise. “You see, Ruin’s constitution was written several hundred years ago by me and two colleagues. As a jest; we decided to form a monarchy. With only three of us on the planet at the time, it seemed a simple solution to any political problems. We drew straws, and I won. As an independent world recognized by the Unity, anyone who wants to settle here must swear to obey the laws of our constitution-and accept me as sovereign. As a result, I’ve retained my title of `Lord Felph.’ “

“What of the people who live on your world? Don’t any of them object?” Gallen asked in astonishment.

“Object? Why would they object?” Felph asked. “People only object to government when it makes demands of them. I make no laws, levy no taxes. With the excess supplies I generate, I feed and clothe anyone who wants. No, no one objects to my reign. How could they?”

In the moment of silence that followed, Gallen furrowed his brow, then said. “Lord Felph, you’ve supported your view that the ancient Qualeewoohs created the Waters of Strength, and you’ve argued persuasively that they had at least some fairly high levels of technology. But one concern nags me. What makes you think the Waters of Strength still exist?”

Felph shot Gallen a knowing smile. “There are those who have tasted it. They bear witness.”

“But you said no one has reached it!” Orick blurted.

“No human,” Felph corrected. “There are creatures, animals in the tangle, with curious traits.”

“Such as?” Gallen asked.

“They are nearly immortal,” Felph said. “Oh, you can slay them, but they regenerate in a few hours. They attack as dumb animals do, with cunning, but lacking foresight. Come into the tangle with me, Gallen, on a small excursion, and I’ll show you what you’re faced with.”

This seemed so improbable that even Gallen dared not speak for a moment. “Predators?” Gallen asked. “These are the predators you want me to fight?”

“I did not say it would be easy,” Lord Felph answered. “It might take you a few trips. But you, or one of your clones, could make it.”

Gallen shook his head thoughtfully. This would take some consideration.

Maggie said, “I understand that you want to hire me for something?”

“Possibly,” Felph said. “At the very least, I would like to download the memory crystals from your mantle, particularly with emphasis on nanotech modifications to human life-forms. I can pay well, say a thousand credits per gig of nonduplicatory information?”

Maggie said, “I won’t give you information as an aberlain unless you are forthright with me. I won’t do anything immoral. I must know exactly what you are creating.” She glanced up at the beautiful children that hovered around Felph, mute witnesses to the conversation. Felph was controlling them through their Guides, forcing them to keep silent during this entire evening. It was an eerie, ghastly thing to behold.

Felph folded his hands together, put them up to his chin, and gazed at Maggie. “Indeed, I suppose you must know, mustn’t you?”

He cleared his throat. “You saw the people of Ruin, tonight, didn’t you? Scholars, eccentrics, poachers-they are all much alike, ragged creatures who live only to fill their bellies, procreate, entertain themselves. And occasionally scratch where it itches.

“The universe is filled with such people. They do nothing of import, think nothing of import, say nothing remarkable. They are of no more consequence than the beasts of the field. They take up space on a planet, nothing more. Their whole lives are wasted.”

“They’re important in the eyes of God,” Orick said. “No one is a waste. Christ said that God sees even the falling of a sparrow, and we are far more important than a sparrow!”

“You are a Christ worshiper?” Felph asked.

“Aye,” Orick said.

“If man is more important than the sparrows, then why does your God promise us a hell? I’ll tell you”-Felph gazed fiercely at Orick-“your God’s hell is nothing more than a dumping ground for human waste. That is why your Scriptures tell us that it will be so full. Few will make the grade. It has always been so, in any theology.

“You’ve seen the filthy people of my world? Once every generation, some young child will come to me, asking to learn, asking for a way off this world. I have teaching machines here, free for the asking. There are ways to improve one’s self. I take such children as servants, have them work a few years, then arrange for their transport off this rock, if that is what they want. But so few make the grade, so few want to be anything more than human waste.”

Orick was becoming furious at Felph’s words. “I can’t believe that!” he roared.

“Alas, I wish it were not so,” Felph grunted. “We fear the dronon. We fear that they will enslave us. But what value is our freedom, I beg to know, if we do nothing with it? What value are our lives if they pass by, as unremarked as a breeze?”

“A good life is its own reward,” Orick said.

Felph peered out at him from bushy eyebrows, his eyes amused and glittering. “I would say that any life-good or bad-is its own reward. A gluttonous life may seem fine and pleasant to a glutton, but I doubt that your Christ would say that such a life is a good, or that it is a reward.”

“A sinless life leads to greater reward,” Orick said.

“Then by all means, let us all lead sinless lives,” Felph said. “But if I understand aright, it is not enough just to avoid sin. One must openly wage a war for good-wield the vibro-blade of chastity, et cetera?”

“The sword of truth,” Orick corrected. “Whatever. You get the idea.”

Felph’s argument with Orick had run its course. Maggie said, “So, you are trying to create people who are not part of the dirty masses? How, exactly, do you plan to do this?”

“The answer is simple,” Felph said. “I’ve created children who crave.”

“Crave what?” Gallen asked.

“You seem angry with me,” Felph said. “Why?”

Gallen said, “I don’t believe we should meddle with our children in this way.”

Felph pointed accusingly at Maggie’s belly, at the swell of a child in her womb. “Isn’t that meddling? Aren’t you taking this life lightly? If you give birth naturally, you have no idea what will be born, what you are giving life to. Would you not want your own children to crave to be something more than-than some twenty meters of gut with attached gonads?”

“Of course,” Gallen said. “We all want our children to excel. But I don’t experiment on the unborn! I prefer to have my children naturally.”

“Experiment? Why damn you, you ignorant ass!” Felph shouted. “What is that thing in Maggie’s belly but an experiment! You merely hope for the best. You create it, you let it grow, you nurture it. But it is nothing more than an experiment concocted by two foolish children who have no grasp of the responsibilities they’re accepting. Giving birth naturally is no great virtue. Dogs do the same! Nature does not care one whit for your child. It doesn’t mind if your son is born a monstrosity with two heads and no heart. It takes no pity when your child whines in the night from hunger, or when it shivers from cold. It does not hope and dream and work for your child. Nature is so … arbitrary. Damn you, to trust your child into the benevolent care of an uncaring nature, then to berate me with such a tone!” Felph clenched his fists and glared at Gallen, his head shaking from side to side in his rage.

Instead of becoming more angry at Felph’s arguments, Gallen actually grinned. Perhaps it was Felph’s courage, his stubbornness. In the past several years, Gallen had gained such a reputation as a bodyguard-and then as a Lord Protector of entire worlds-that no one outside of Orick dared berate him. Yet here this old man, someone Gallen could knock over as easily as if he were a cornstalk, was shouting at Gallen like a maniac.

“Forgive me,” Gallen said, with a nod of deference. “I’d never considered genetic engineering as an obligation, rather than a choice. Still, I worry at what you are doing to your own children.”

“They crave,” Felph said, “as I told you!”

“But what do they crave?” Orick asked. Of them all, the bear seemed most horrified by Felph. Maggie seemed to be reserving judgment. Gallen now found himself favorably disposed toward Felph. The little bear Tallea had been quiet, nonjudgmental. As a refugee from Tremonthin, she had seen thousands of subspecies of mankind. The idea of engineering one’s offspring perhaps did not seem so horrific to her.

Felph told Orick, “My children crave everything: glory, honor, power, knowledge, carnality. They seethe with it, more than you will ever imagine! So I have, given them what they need to attain the heights they desire-strength, cunning, beauty!”

“A new race of leaders? That is what you want?” Maggie asked, suspicious.

“Precisely! We will no longer be led by alien Tharrin,” Felph exulted. “I’m creating new leaders, with all the attributes that mankind revels in!”

Orick growled, “With all of mankind’s weaknesses? You say they crave honor and power? Won’t this lead to jealousies and corruption? You want to rid us of the compassionate Tharrin and put these in their place?”

“We are at war! We are at war!” Felph shouted.

Gallen was disappointed by this. Felph was just another crackpot out to create a race of supermen. It seemed that everywhere he went, someone was trying to define what mankind ought to become. Perhaps it was merely the age he lived in. With the dronon threatening the very existence of mankind, every aberlain in the galaxy was concocting some scheme to overcome the threat. As a species, mankind would have to grow or die.

“I don’t think that either my wife or I will work for you, sir,” Gallen said, finally. He turned away, began walking toward the stairs that led up out of the darkened cavern. He expected the others to follow. Orick hurried after him, and Tallea followed.

But Maggie hesitated, as if still lost in thought.

“Wait!” Felph shouted. “Where are you going? I didn’t give you permission to leave yet! You haven’t given my offer proper consideration! At least think about it!”

Maggie turned to Gallen. “Wait a minute.”

Gallen looked down the stairs at her. She gazed up at him, confusion showing in her face.

“Gallen, he’s right.”

“Right?” Gallen asked. “To be manipulating his children this way?”

“No, he’s right … to be fighting. Maybe his work won’t do any good. Maybe it will come to nothing. But at least he is trying, and if we stayed here to work with him, we would be fighting the dronon. You’re the one who always wants to fight.”

She let the words hang in the air. For weeks they had been arguing this point. Gallen was tired of running. He wanted to fight the dronon. But he couldn’t challenge them without Maggie at his side. If such a fight would risk only their own lives against the dronon, Gallen suspected that Maggie would stand beside him in such a battle, and they’d live free-or die together. But Maggie had a child in her belly. They couldn’t jeopardize the babe. So Gallen had agreed to run with her, to hide, until after the child was born.

But now she was telling him that they could make a stand here. They could fight the dronon from here. She wanted to accept Felph’s offer.

She touched her own belly, feeling the heaviness of the child growing in her. From the top of the stone stairway, Gallen looked down into the dark hole, the ancient stone Qualeewooh ruins, where Felph stood in the darkness holding a glow globe, the light faintly playing upon the gloriously beautiful faces of his children.

Maggie said softly, “I have one more question before we decide whether to accept employment. Lord Felph, why do your children all wear Guides? Why do you keep them enslaved?”

Felph stammered, “Freedom is such an important thing, a tool that is used for ill as often as good. I want them to value it, to learn to use it correctly. So I give them only as much as I am certain they can handle. In time, when I trust them, I will remove all restraints.”

Gallen considered this. Maggie abhorred the Guides. She’d lived with their restraints under Lord Karthenor.

“Freedom is such an important. thing,” she said, “that I fear even you should not be its arbiter. How can they learn to use a tool they do not hold? Give your children their freedom, and perhaps they will learn as much from its misuse as they will from its proper use.”

Her words seemed to stun Felph, for he stood gaping at her, considering her proposal. Maggie continued, “You told Gallen that he could name any price for his labor. Here is the coin I desire: I can persuade Gallen to stay and work for you on one condition. So long as we choose to remain here, you will remove the Guides from your children.”

“In time-in a hundred years or so they may be ready-” Felph stammered, “We don’t have a hundred years for them to learn!”

Maggie said. “You imagine that the dronon will be here in five hundred years, but the dronon have built keys for the world gates. They’re here in the Carina Galaxy now.”

Lord Felph, master of Ruin, gave a strangled little cry of astonishment, then dropped his glow globe so that it clattered on the stones as its light grew dim.