Extremis (32 page)

“You can? You can detect
selnarm
sendings that are so distant from you?” Ankaht’s eyes were intense, excited.

Jennifer blinked, looked at Ankaht, and suddenly realized that she’d been feeling all of her thoughts “out loud.” “Uh, yeah. The more distant the
selnarm
is, the fainter it gets—sort of like a whisper heard through layers of blankets.”

“Yes, but this is excellent news indeed. Most hopeful.”

And Ankaht, who seemed distracted by a quick calculation of the importance of Jennifer’s newfound level of sensitivity, evidently didn’t shut her own
selnarm
down enough—or Jennifer was becoming so attuned to it that she was able to look behind the equivalent of the Arduan’s privacy curtain—

—where she saw/felt deep worry, bordering on terror. A slow, costly war in which only one thing was certain: every day, the chances of a settlement, of peace, were slipping further and further away.

—and concern over her own people, the Children of Illudor. But not just in terms of their safety from humans—although that was in there, too—but from each other, both in their factions and as individuals. The Arduans were…coming apart somehow. A schism? A culture war? Jennifer couldn’t make it out, but one thing was clear.

She had to do everything she could to help Ankaht. She opened her
selnarm
as wide as she could and with (urgency) asked: “What can I do to help?”

* * *

Ankaht responded to Jennifer’s extraordinarily strong, clear
selnarm
pulse with a
befthel
—a tri-blink—and an inadvertent glance at the smart-boards that were the opposite wall. The sudden stillness in the collective
selnarm
of her researchers, observing from the other side of those boards, told Ankaht that they had sensed and understood Jennifer’s sending. And knew its world-changing—and potentially race-altering—significance: beyond any doubt or debate, Jennifer Peitchkov was a person. And if one human could be a person, then…

Ankaht turned back toward the human—the
person
—eagerly. “Jennifer, here is the best way you can help me right now. I must understand your people better. Much better. To us, your world and your lives are unthinkable, so much so that many Arduans find it all too easy to decide that, living in such a world, humans cannot be truly intelligent.”

“And you need to be able to explain humans to your own people in order to get enough of them to change their opinion of us. And maybe stop this war.”

“Exactly.”

“Then tell me what you don’t understand, and I’ll try to explain—if I can.”

“Jennifer, we stand mute and horrified by what, to us, looks like the unbridled chaos of your lives, the almost infinite uncertainties.”

“Such as?”

“Such as your bizarre pre-mating rituals, based on what you call secondary sex characteristics. Such as the number of your permanent pairings that end in what you call divorce. Such as the abandonment of countless of your children. Such as the thousands who cling to a life wracked by the pain of terminal diseases or the physical misery and mental anguish of decrepitude. Such as the bizarre means whereby you educate your young, which to us resembles nothing so much as the way some of you still hunt avians: you discharge knowledge and learning like your shotguns discharge pellets, firing bits of data and training again and again into the milling mass of every new generation. All in the hope that enough of those Firstlings are struck, and changed, by these kernels of knowledge. We cannot fathom how you can, or why you would, live with so much uncertainty, wasted effort, and surety of pain and suffering. To us, these are scenes out of a place which, in our culture, is akin to what you label ‘hell.’ But we never associated such a place with fire or physical torment. For us, hell is more like your legend of Bedlam—a place of eternal, inescapable insanity, barbarity, and chaos. We call it
xenzhet-narmat’ai
.”

Jennifer had wondered how she’d wind up feeling as this less-than-charming depiction of human existence came rushing out at her. However, by the end of it, she found herself to be mostly sad and bemused. She let Ankaht see that, and sent: “I have no argument with any of your depictions. Just this one proviso to apply to all of them: it’s as good as we can do. After all, we don’t have
selnarm
, and we don’t have any evidence of God, the way you feel you do. The way I see it, each Arduan starts life with certainties—of communication and immortality—that each human spends her whole life trying to attain. But that almost never happens, and so we have to accept those uncertainties—and many more—as a burden which we must bear until the day we die.”

Ankaht expressed (gratitude, respect) for Jennifer’s lack of defensiveness or anger. And she followed with, “It is most interesting that you relate our social differences, in part, to our different perceptions of deity. In your lives, religious thought seems less—how should I put it?—
central
than it is in ours. We are always mindful of how we, and the world, are expressions of the unfolding will and intents of Illudor.”

Jennifer shrugged. “Well, given your belief—or, from your perspective, your knowledge—of having many lives and undying souls, that makes sense. But for us”—Jennifer shook her head—“well, lots of people claim that as the domain of science expanded, the domain of spirituality contracted. They say that technology was the inevitable foe of a belief in God and an afterlife. I’m not sure I believe that. But this much seems true: the first religious myths—well, they don’t seem to make a lot of sense to us anymore.”

“So where, then, lies the ultimate authority for designating what is good and just, and what is evil and unjust?”

“Oh, a lot of that still comes from religion—if only indirectly. A lot of our governmental structures carry on ideals that began in religions. But not all religions boiled it down to ‘good or evil, heaven or hell.’ Some, like Hinduism, sort of separated the issues of morality and the issues of existence into two different discussions.”

“In what way?”

“Well, I’m not an expert on Hinduism, but you can talk about good and evil as entirely separate from creation and destruction, life and death. In a lot of the other old religions, death was always associated with evil. But in Hinduism, death is a force that is every bit as necessary as life, in order to create a balanced existence and universe.” Jennifer smiled. “The old Shiva-Vishnu, yin-yang thing.”

But as Jennifer sent these concepts to Ankaht—the duality of destruction and creation, of the Shiva-Vishnu and yin-yang dyads—Ankaht found it equating to a very old, almost forgotten Arduan concept, that of
assed’ai
. And, like a lived epiphany—the kind one experiences before its full significance can be recognized—Ankaht thought:
This is what we lack. This is what is tearing us, the Children of Illudor, apart. We have strayed from this concept of
assed’ai
, of a dynamic equilibrium between countervailing forces. Our troubled
narmata
, our loss of the other castes, our friction between
Destoshaz
and
shaxzhu
: obsessed with polarized conflicts, we have forgotten this simple principle of balance—or worse yet, have evolved in such a way that it is no longer natural for us to embody it.

Jennifer had detected Ankaht’s simultaneous distraction and excitement. “Did I say something wrong?”

Ankaht sent (reassurance, energy, clarity). “Not at all. You have said something very, very right. Something I needed to hear. We have this concept of balance, too, but for us it has become a medical principle, the one you label
homeostasis
. We have allowed its earlier, social meaning to atrophy. And realizing this is a great—perhaps a crucial—lesson for me, Jennifer Peitchkov.” And Ankaht physically leaned back, so as to take in the human with all three eyes: it did feel as if she were seeing Jennifer for the first time. “I apologize, Jennifer Peitchkov.”

“What for?”

“For my, for our, arrogance.”

“You don’t seem arrogant at all to me.”

“And we did not see it in ourselves, either. For we were convinced that, having no detectable
selnarm
, you were thus a benighted species. But now I see that we have at least as much to learn from you as you have to learn from us. Maybe more.”

Jennifer laughed. “Think of that, the mind-readers having something to learn from us—and you furnished with an all-seeing eye!”

Ankaht understood the concepts of
all-seeing
and
eye
, but there seemed to be a metaphoric referent that she was missing. However, she did not miss Jennifer’s sudden retraction of
selnarm
and (embarrassment, apology). “Sorry,” the human muttered aloud. “That was a little too…casual, I guess.”

(Reassurance.) “Not at all, Jennifer. But I do not understand. What is this ‘all-seeing’ eye?”

Jennifer relaxed, brightened (relief). “In a lot of human mythology and symbolism, a single eye was often represented as all-seeing. Sort of the eye of God. In Hinduism, many of their gods were actually represented as having a third eye”—Jennifer stopped in mid-thought, interrupted by a sudden spike of both recognition and reflection—“and yeah, it was always depicted right where
yours
is. Your larger, central eye, I mean.”

Ankaht could hardly contain or discipline her outpouring of (wonder, surprise, hope, bafflement). “Jennifer, I must ask to make sure I have understood you correctly. Are you saying that you have images of Arduans in your prehistory?”

“No, not Arduans, but creatures with a third eye. And that eye—if I’m remembering correctly—was able to see into what various mystic traditions have called a ‘spirit world’: a place invisible to us, where the gods and the truths of the universe were to be seen.”

An eye that could see the face of Illudor: Was it possible? Had some long-dead human, gifted as was Jennifer,
seen
this? Could it be chance?
Ankaht felt her spine hit the chair’s backrest. (Shock.) “Jennifer, this—this is most extraordinary. This whole day has been most extraordinary. And hopeful. Very hopeful. I wish I could continue, but I must report these many new breakthroughs, that we may move forward just that much more swiftly. And I must confess, I am quite tired.”

“Me, too.” But the human also signaled (gratification, hopefulness).

* * *

When Ankaht returned to the observation room, queries and congratulations buffeted her—but she stressed (wait) and sent discreetly: “Let us move to the adjoining conference chamber. Jet’hem, please keep monitoring our subje—our guest.”

“Of course, Elder.”

As she led them into the conference room, Ankaht could feel the
narmata
wash around her with an undercurrent of something like reverence. “Elder,” enthused Ipshef, the cognitive-science prime, “this is everything you hoped for. Now we can apply these lessons to the other human artists and we will have—”

“We will have not much more than we have now, Ipshef.” (Resignation, regret.) “The key is Jennifer. The new vocoder and I were only the catalysts for our breakthrough today. The source of our success, and our hope, is Jennifer herself. Her sensitivity to
selnarm—
and her rudimentary ability to project it—far outstrips any analogs we have observed in her fellow artists. That makes her the most important asset in our attempts to establish full communications with the humans. Indeed, it makes her too important, I fear.”

“What do you mean, Elder?”

(Rue, anxiety.) “Ipshef, I have learned a human saying in my reading of their books: ‘Don’t put all your eggs in one basket.’ In this case, I am concerned that so much possibility, so much hope and change, is sited in the potentials of one person. It makes all our efforts for communication, and even peace, far too vulnerable.”

“Yes,” commented Orthezh of Linguistics, “it is a pity her gift seems so rare, racially. Possibly it is has declined to the point where it is a deeply recessive trait in the human genome now.”

Ipshef mused, “It is so difficult to imagine their lives, to picture it as if one of us were condemned to live without
selnarm
. And when I do, I find myself reconsidering the extremes—and the perversities—which we observe in the humans and think: ‘I might have to employ much the same methods, were I without
selnarm
, yet wished to make my thoughts known to the rest of the Children of Illudor.’ ”

Orthezh registered (realization, insight). “Except that we would mercifully discarnate any such blighted being rather than compelling them to live on in a world so dark and so silent. So, of course, we have never had one of our sisters or brothers actually experience the limitations that are the daily reality of the humans.”

Ankaht radiated (relief, gratification, pride) in response to Orthezh’s insight. “Yes, this is one of the major reasons why the initial phases of interspeciate translation and communication have been so difficult: because we had no analogous experience from which to extrapolate an understanding of their existence. They live in a world so desperately isolated that we would have defined it as a living hell.”

Nektshezh felt a pang of sudden, terrible (pity). “We must help them.”

“The charity of that thought cannot help but bring joy to the face of Illudor,” Ankaht thought warmly at her xenobiology prime, “but let us not go from loathing the humans to pitying them. As hard as it is for us to imagine, they feel no lack in their lives. The humans laugh, love, dance—and, I begin to suspect, they treasure their lives as we cannot imagine. And now, I must leave.”

“To rest, Elder?”

“To think—and to prepare.”

* * *

Ankaht struck first with the left foot and followed through with a ripping slash by the
skeerba
claws on her right hand. She then pivoted on her left foot as it landed, pulling her right foot around from the rear in a whiplike sweep.

This
maatkah
maneuver—Hurricane Turns—evolved into Wave Curls Under: she performed a half-cartwheel, half–front-flip that brought both her feet over from behind, sawing radially around her low center of gravity and down through the target in quick succession.