Clarke, Arthur C - Fall of Night 02 (50 page)

 
          
 
"That is always true of a single
species," Seeker said casually.

 
          
 
Alvin
's forehead knitted with annoyance.
"And you?"

 
          
 
"There has been some tinkering since your
time," Seeker said.

 
          
 
"This is our time!"
Alvin
said sharply.

 
          
 
Seeker leaned back and did not reply.

 
          
 
"Look," Cley said, "how do you
talk to Vanamonde?"

 
          
 
"Badly.
To reach
it we must step through the thicket of the Ur-human mind-set."

 
          
 
"Thicket?"
Cley asked.

 
          
 
"A swamp is perhaps a better term. It is
ingrained in Vana-monde's being."

 
          
 
"It has some of us in it?" Cley felt
a spurt of elation. This was at least some mark her kind had left in the great
ruined architecture of time.

 
          
 
"In the growing struggle, speed is
essential. To link our own abilities with Vanamonde requires connections only
you and your kind can make."

 
          
 
Cley's eyes narrowed suspiciously. "The
Ur-humans you manufactured?"

 
          
 
"Yes, they will be used. Seranis and the
others of
Lys
have schooled them in the talent, a labor
of great difficulty in such a short time."

 
          
 
"You're manufacturing us, using us like,
like—"

 
          
 
"Of course."
Alvin
was unbothered. "That is in the nature
of the hierarchy of species."

 
          
 
"You have no right!"

 
          
 
"And we have no wrong."

 
          
 
Seeker made a rude noise and twisted its mouth
into an unreadable shape. Clay realized that it conveyed human expressions only
when it wished to.

 
          
 
"There is no moral issue here,"
Alvin
went on, casting an irritated glance at
Seeker. "These matters transcend the concept of rights. Those ideas attach
to strategies societies use to maintain order and station. As concepts they
have no validity in the transactions across the gulf that separates us."
Alvin
smiled, as though he knew this was the sort
of thing Ur-humans did to take the edge off a stark statement.

 
          
 
Cley said, "That's incredible. We have an
obligation to each other, to treat everyone as holding natural rights."

 
          
 
Natural to what?
Seranis sent.

 
          
 
Cley answered. To anything and anybody who can
think.

 
          
 
Think what? These are not times like those in
which your kind evolved. Now there are many beings, large and small,
who
carry self-awareness.

 
          
 
Cley covered her own inner confusion with.
Then they have to be accorded their own dignity.

 
          
 
Dignity does not mean they can step outside
the inherent ordering ordained by evolution's hand. Seranis gave Clay a look of
concern, but in her striations of quick thought there was an underlayer of
annoyed impatience.

 
          
 
"Look, I have to think about all
this," Cley said.

 
          
 
Alvin
said, "There is no time for the kind
of thinking you do. The moment is upon us."

 
          
 
Cley turned to Seeker. "What should I
do?"

 
          
 
Seeker smacked its lips as though hungry.
"I do not subscribe to their ideas.
Or to yours.
Both are too simple."

 
          
 
"Seeker, I need support from you."

 
          
 
"Your actions I can assist,
perhaps," it said. "It is true, as the Supras say, that your innate
abihties are needed."

 
          
 
"No, I didn't mean help with their fight.
I want you to—well, tell them they're wrong, that they're treating my people
like, like animals. "

 
          
 
"I am an animal. They do not treat me as
you."

 
          
 
"You're not an animal!"

 
          
 
"I am not remotely human."

 
          
 
"But you're, you're . . ."

 
          
 
"I am like you when I need to be. But
that is to accomplish an end."

 
          
 
"What end?" Cley asked, her
confusion deepening.

 
          
 
"To bring you here at
this time.
To unite you with Ur-humans, as I promised." It glanced
at Alvin and Seranis. "I knew the Supras would probably fail to do
so."

 
          
 
Across
Alvin
's face flitted an expression Cley could not
read, but the nearest equivalent was a mixture of irritation and surprised
respect.
Alvin
said warily to Seeker, "It would have
been simple to bring you here, had the Mad Mind not managed to learn how to
enter our ships. And you could not have known it would understand that so
quickly, much less that it could find these Ur-humans among all the ships we
have."

 
          
 
"I could not?" Seeker grinned.

 
          
 
Cley felt something pass between Seeker and the
Supras, a darting note of complex thought.
"Seeker!
You have the talent."

 
          
 
"Not your talent.
But
no matter."
Seeker turned to Cley. "I believe this issue must
be resolved now, so I shall do it."

 
          
 
Alvin
said sternly, "I cannot allow so
crucial a matter to—"

 
          
 
"Do as they say," Seeker said to
Cley.

 
          
 
"But I—"

 
          
 
"If you wish to think in terms of the
structure of rights, then consider a point." Seeker brought a nut toward
its mouth but fumbled and dropped it. "The others of your kind—and I do
not believe they are your 'people,' for they are not yet people at all—will
certainly die if you do not."

 
          
 
Alvin
scowled. "You can't be sure of
that."

 
          
 
Seeker did not immediately answer. Instead it
pulled the carcass of a small rodent from a snag in its pelt and began to
casually gnaw on it. The Supras all looked askance at this. Cley remembered how
delicate and rarefied their own food had been, like eating clouds.

 
          
 
Seeker licked the carcass sensuously and said,
"You remember the era of simple laws?"

 
          
 
Alvin
frowned. "What? Oh, you mean the age
when science discovered all the laws governing the relations between particles
and fields? That time is of no relevance now."

 
          
 
Seeker closed one eye and let one side of its
face go slack, as if it could slip halfway into sleep. Cley wondered if this
was some arcane joke.

 
          
 
Seeker said, "The Ur-humans found all
such laws. But to know how gravity pulls upon a body does not mean even in
principle that you can foresee how many such bodies will move. The prediction
of any real system is beyond the final, exact reach of science."

 
          
 
Alvin
nodded, but Cley could tell that he did not
see where this subject led. Neither did
she
. And time
was running out, she thought with irritation, while these two argued over grand
principles.

 
          
 
"True,"
Alvin
said, "but that is ancient philosophy.
Quantum uncertainty, chaos—these forever screen precise knowledge of the future
from our eyes."

 
          
 
Still with one eye closed, Seeker said
"And what if this were not so?"

 
          
 
"Then we Supras would have discovered
that long ago,"
Alvin
insisted. "Such knowledge would reside in the lore of
Diaspar."

 
          
 
Seeker blinked with both eyes and animation
returned fully to its face. At the same moment Cley felt a burst of talent-talk
like unrecognizable bass notes. Some Supras stirred uneasily. She realized that
Seeker had complied—it had sent some sort of message while carrying on this
lofty discussion.

 
          
 
Seeker said, "Much has been discovered
since strata of learning were laid down in Diaspar."

 
          
 
A note of doubt entered
Alvin
's voice. "The humans who came after
our kind, those who left—they found such ability?"

 
          
 
Seeker said, "No. That is not open to
your order of being."

 
          
 
"Beast, are there higher orders which
know science?"
Alvin
looked around at his fellow Supras, who seemed distantly amused by this
conversation.

 
          
 
Seeker said, "None you can readily see
standing before you."

 
          
 
"Magnetic minds, then? Even they merely
use science,"
Alvin
said. "They do not truly comprehend it."

 
          
 
"There are other methods of comprehension
which come out of the sum of species."

 
          
 
Alvin
's head jerked with surprise. "But we
are discussing the fundamental limits on knowledge!"

 
          
 
"This 'knowledge' of yours is also a
category," Seeker said, "much like 'rights.' It does not translate
between species."

 
          
 
"I cannot understand how that can
be,"
Alvin
said primly.