Golden Torc - 2 (20 page)

CULLUKET: Nevertheless, we now question the wisdom of continued dilution of our heritage.

IMIDOL: And above all, Coercive Brother, we question your scheme concerning the human operant, Elizabeth.

GOMNOL: So that's it.

ANEAR: Dear Adopted Brother: we of the Host harbor only goodwill toward those of mixed Tanu and human blood. And we embrace the loyal human golds, such as yourself, who have so enriched our lives upon this planet. But we must take care lest we squander our inheritance by engendering more and more hybrids.

RIGANONE: Tana's will would be better served by an increase of purebloods. The vigor of the Host has proved that the original Tanu strain may reproduce itself adequately, albeit at a slower rate.

KUHAL: Disaster awaits us if we continue to mate with humans! Our noble Brother Battlemaster warned us of this decades ago. But we were so bedazzled by the benefits offered by humanity that we would not listen to his admonitions.

CULLUKET: The prospect of children by the Thagdal and Elizabeth has forced us to listen.

GOMNOL: The King endorses my plan fully. Eagerly!

EADONE: As Aluteyn and I have done. And yet... I must admit to some misgivings concerning the role of humanity in our High Kingdom. The Thagdal, too, has pondered this matter. For this reason we have commissioned the human anthropologist Bryan Grenfell to conduct a culture-impact study so that we may better understand the patterns of the psychosocial currents, both beneficial and inimical.

KUHAL: We of the Host have no need for human anthropology! Our racial instincts alone are sufficient to show impending calamity!

IMIDOL: We and our Mother have seen what must be done if the Tanu heritage is to survive. Once Elizabeth's genes merge with ours, the true Tanu will be doomed. We say: Put an end to all bastardization! Return to the ancient way before it is too late!

ALUTEYN: Throw out the babies with the bath water? Piffle! You and Nodonn are only afraid your precious dynasty might get nudged out of power.

EADONE: Nevertheless, Craftsmaster, our Coercive Brother Imidol has raised a serious point.

NONTUSVEL: Dearest Sister-we are convinced of its seriousness!

GOMNOL: O Adopted Kinfolk, look at this matter rationally. This yearning for the good old days is futile. I've studied the records of the Lord Historian Seniet. Have you forgotten how it really was before the coming of humanity? Would you go back to living in crude strongholds in the wilderness? Would you revert to the hunter-gatherer culture of the Firvulag? You lived like savages before we shared our technology and our genes with you!

NONTUSVEL: Not really, Gomnol dear. It was a simpler life, that's true. Not nearly so grand. But we had the ramas to serve us. And our young people were interested in crafts then-

ALUTEYN: Not like the damn dilettantes nowadays. Wasn't for the humans and the hybrids, the whole economy'd go to pot.

NONTUSVEL: Now, Aluteyn. You exaggerate. I am a First Comer

like you, even though I have only been Queen for eight hundred years. We had a good life in those early days. We hunted for food as well as for sport. There was some trading with the Firvulag for gems and furs and useful herbs and trinkets. And we bartered our splendid textiles and glass armor to them. Do you remember how valiantly our warriors

fought when the Grand Combat was celebrated fiercely afoot, hand to hand, with no human levies standing between our fighters and the Old Foe? Do you remember those battles on the Firvulag's Field of Gold, and how we would rejoice when we captured their Sword of Sharn and bore the trophy home in triumph? And perhaps they would wrest it back from us in the year following, but we would train and scheme and strengthen our brains and muscles for the next Combat and win! Those were the days, dear Craftsmaster! But now... for forty years running we have bested the Firvulag in the Combat with the aid of human and hybrid warriors. How stale the victory becomes. What if the Foe become so discouraged that they refuse to fight?

MAYVAR: It would show that they, at least, had evolved.

DIONKET: Morally, if not mentally.

CULLUKET: Lord Healer, you cannot expect me to sit unprotesting as you and the Venerable Kingmaker flirt with heresy against our glorious ideal of battle!

ALUTEYN: Dip your heresy in chaliko flop, boy! I say, what we need are fewer head-wallopers and more technicians! These simple joys of barbarism are all very well. But I'm the one who'll have to keep the glass-ovens stoked and the food and drink coming to the table. I remember how it was, chivvying Tanu crafters who were more interested in battling and screwing and Hunting than in getting a day's work done. Oh, the old-time ways had their charm! I'll concede that I wallowed in gore and flung thunderbolts with the best of 'em. But you can't give up progress any more than you can pretend the time-gate never opened. It did! The humans came. We used them. And now the good old days are gone.

NONTUSVEL: We could restore the best parts of them.

KUHAL: We are not against material progress, Craftsmaster. Only against the erosion of our Tanu ideals and their replacement with alien human values. The pacifistic sentiments of Lord Dionket and Lady Mayvar and their factions are well known-call them heresy or moral evolution. But the majority of us don't share their philosophy. It is a philosophy of weaklings, of hybrids, and of humans!

GOMNOL: Our Psychokinetic Brother distorts reality. All torced humans, excepting a few abnormals who have not reacted favorably to the mental amplification, are loyal to the Tanu race. As to the erosion of your ideals... when have you been stronger? You rule the world! And my plan can only make that rule more glorious. I will admit that times have changed-but this is not the planet of your origin. You have adapted, and you'll continue to adapt, to Earth. This is fully in accord with Tana's will.

KUHAL: We are grateful to the Lord Coercer for explaining our religion to us.

GOMNOL: Your suspicions of my plan are groundless. It poses no threat whatsoever to your dynasty. Would the Thagdal approve it if it did? Do you question the vision of your own King?

EADONE: The plan involving Elizabeth is exciting. I am fascinated

by the prospect of speeding our race's mental development from latency to operancy-by incorporating her heritage within our own. To be free of the artificial action of the torcs! To see our offspring grow up to be true metapsychics! To see them possessed of godlike powers, perhaps even greater than those of the Milieu metapractitioners! There would be no more black-torc tragedies, no more burnt-out young Tanu brains unable to withstand the torc's amplification. With Elizabeth's genes, we could take an evolutionary shortcut, a leap across the aeons. Instead of waiting thousands or even millions of years to achieve operancy, we could see it within our own lifetimes...

ALUTEYN: I admit: a magnificent dream.

GOMNOL: No dream! A reality-if you don't turn your backs on my plan because of superstitious fear or racial chauvinism or petty politics. The anthropologist will prove to you that the coming of humanity to the Many-Colored Land has done you far more good than harm. I'll stake my life on it.

IMIDOL: You may, at that.

NONTUSVEL: Now ... we must keep our tempers.

GOMNOL: You Host talk of racial purity. A thoroughly unscientific notion! Any biologist of the Milieu would tell you that. Just take an objective look at your allegedly pure Tanu heritage-! Firvulag recessives popping up like mad in every third birth.

KUHAL: Take care, Lord Coercer! Our Mother's strain is untainted.

Never once has she given birth to one of the Foe.

GOMNOL: If that's true, you're very likely throwing out the very alleles you want to fix! And you want to use the Host as prime brood stock! Damn it, the Firvulag strain is the operant one! Ask the Lady Sciencemaster. Greggy and I have given up trying to sell you on mating with the Foe. But Elizabeth represents a unique genetic opportunity! A human operant has genes that not only enhance general survival, as the latents have done, but also give you the grand evolutionary leap that Lady Eadone spoke of. My plan leads to the fulfillment of Tanu destiny!

KUHAL: Again you presume to interpret Tana's will.

NONTUSVEL: It would be more fitting for the Goddess to work through our own Tanu line. We're afraid that Elizabeth's genes will turn us into humans, you see. Or at least into a race that is quite non-Tanu.

KUHAL + IMIDOL + RIGANONE + CULLUKET + ANEAR: We do not need humanity! Better that we fulfill our destiny without humans!

GOMNOL: Then why has Nodonn himself taken to wife a woman of my race?

(Confusion.)

GOMNOL: Perhaps you'd better read your Crown Prince a refresher course in Tana's holy will.

NONTUSVEL: Do not descend to blasphemy, Lord Coercer. We have made it clear that we acknowledge the benefits that human genes have vouchsafed: the more powerful bodies, the increased fertility, the enhancement of coercive and creative metafunctions. And in the case of the precious Rosmar, we have embraced a rare and wondrous refinement of the creative power never seen among our Tanu adepts. She is the unique one! The value of her genes is self-evident. We welcome her as a fit consort for our future King. Dear Nodonn has had many wives-and as he is scarcely eight hundred years old, he may have many more if it pleases him. But let us not wander from the original matter at hand. Your plan, Adopted Son, proposes to go far beyond the mating customs that already obtain between the two races. The woman Elizabeth is not a talented latent such as yourself or Rosmar. She is a masterclass operant whose genes must be formidable indeed. Lord Greg-Donnet postulates that it is likely that all of her offspring would be operant-although perhaps not so powerful as their mother. He has also urged that, for the speediest achievement of race operancy, we should implant her ova in surrogates. But not ramapithecines! Human and Tanu women are to bear these wonder children! Who can assure us that this large new generation of torcless hybrids would be loyal to Tanu ideals? They will be a new race. It is logical that they would owe first loyalty to their own kind.

EADONE: There is a danger.

ALUTEYN: That possibility hadn't occurred to me. And I know Greggy never talked up artificial implanting to the King. That's not the Thagdal's idea of fun.

GOMNOL: This is ridiculous! Elizabeth's children would be as much Tanu as any hybrids. Education would see to it.

KUHAL + IMIDOL + RIGANONE + CULLUKET + ANEAR: The Host does not concur. There is only one way to secure the safety of the Tanu heritage. The operant woman must die.

GOMNOL: You must not destroy her genes! Do you want to wait millions of years to achieve operancy? Future generations might call you worse than shortsighted! And if you come to your senses later on, it will be too late. There may never be another like Elizabeth to come through the gate!

NONTUSVEL: Alas. If only she hadn't come.

GOMNOL: She's here. I say it's Tana's will that she not be wasted... And don't you start twitting me about religion again, Kuhal! Not until the Goddess gives you her blueprint stamped APPROVED! My plan is as likely to coincide with divine will as your own.

ALUTEYN: Damn all this talk of becoming operant in millions of years! We know what's going to happen here on Earth in millions of years. The ramas will have evolved into humans. And we'll be extinct! There's Tana's will for you! Maybe the Thagdal is right about Gomnol's plan. At least it would give our people a good long run at playing metapsychic before the last snuff. Jack up our brainpower to operant status and we'll likely figure a way to get off this flatulent orifice of a planet!

NONTUSVEL: Aluteyn, dear. Control yourself.

ALUTEYN: If only we could be sure. These damn precious genes of Elizabeth's. If only they weren't so... human.

GOMNOL: How many times must I prove my motives to you? I have only the Tanu best interests at heart. I have had, from the beginning!

NONTUSVEL: There's still the vexing question of possible overdependence upon humanity by our race. I confess that I await the results of Bryan's survey with some trepidation.

KATLINEL: And what happens if the survey does show that the culture impact was largely unfavorable? Will you of the Host demand the death of all humans? Will you kill hybrids like me as well? Is this the secret solution that you've had in mind all along?

NONTUSVEL: Oh, Katy. How can you think it?

KATLINEL: The rest of them do, Queen-Mother.

IMIDOL: Nonsense.

CULLUKET: You are overwrought, Creative Sister. Let me administer a calmative.

KATLINEL: No, thank you, Redactive Brother. No, thank you!

EADONE: When the Thagdal returns at the time of Truce, we must have this out. Surely there can be a compromise.

KUHAL + IMIDOL + RIGANONE + CULLUKET + ANEAR: Never on Elizabeth!

ALUTEYN: There's another factor nobody's even mentioned. As long as we're discussing genetic menaces, what about the other one? How would he fit into Gomnol's scheme? Or has Aiken Drum slipped the Lord Coercer's mind?

GOMNOL: I've assured King Thagdal and I assure you, too, that the boy is nothing but a mental nova. His mind will burn out as quickly as it flared up. He'll be a puling idiot inside of another month.

IMIDOL: You've tested him with your psychometric gadgets and proved this, Coercive Brother?

GOMNOL: You know very well that the Lady Mayvar wouldn't consent to my meddling with her great and good protege, Coercive Brother.

IMIDOL: So much for guarantees. Tell us, Venerable Sister: On your honor as Kingmaker-is the youth Aiken Drum a mental nova?

MAYVAR: No. But he is no menace to our race, either.

GOMNOL: Even if he doesn't burn out, he's only a harmless nuisance-a practical joker with a certain crowd-pleasing charm. You people just haven't seen this type of human being before.

ANEAR: I should hope not.

RIGANONE: Nodonn doesn't take Aiken Drum lightly. Why else would he have insisted on sharing the Delbaeth Quest with him?

EADONE: That is not the important question. What we really must know is why this charming, harmless prankster has been taken to kin by Mayvar Kingmaker. Let us be blunt. Will Aiken Drum challenge in the Grand Combat?