That, of course, was quite the opposite of the tale Alea had learned in her childhood, in which Alberich had been a twisted, power-hungry little villain who had stolen the Rhinegold and forged from it the Ring that had given him power over all other dwarves. Then Wotan and Loki had braved the dangers of Nibelheim, and the risk of a battle against thousands of dwarves, to rescue the Lorelei’s treasure. Alberich had been justly punished for his greed and his crime.
She was so unnerved that when Saret pressed her for a story, all she could say was, “I don’t know any you haven’t heard,” which was true in its way, though the dwarves certainly would have found the Midgarder versions of the stories to be strange—and also insulting. “Ask Gar.”
“Yes, Gar!” Bekko turned to the big wanderer. “Tell us a new tale, as you told the giants!”
“Well, there’s no point in telling you one the giants have already broadcast to you.”
“Broadcast, like sowing seed?” Retsa grinned. “A good metaphor! But surely you know others.”
Gar did. He made them laugh with the tale of Chang-tzu’s dream that he was a butterfly, and how he wondered ever after if he was really a butterfly who was now dreaming that he was Chang-tzu. Then he held them spellbound with the story of the magical King of the Monkeys, sworn to protect a monk on pilgrimage to the holy land of India, and how he fought three other monsters, brought them to repentance, and made them the monk’s servants.
Alea listened as spellbound as the rest, and wondered if she should have him tell her a new story every night.
But Retsa saw through his ruse, and leaned forward, smiling. “So no matter how foreign or threatening a person may seem, he can repent his evil ways and become a friend?”
Gar gained a faraway look, gazing off over their heads, and nodded. “You could interpret the story that way, yes.” Alea was suddenly completely sure he had meant them to interpret it just that way.
So was Retsa. “Even if that person is a Midgarder or a bandit?”
“It’s possible,” Gar agreed. “In fact, if a robber band’s women and children came to ask you for protection from their men, I’d say it would show that they were on their way toward learning to respect dwarves and giants, and that their children would grow up thinking you should all be friends.”
Retsa laughed, and all the dwarves joined her. “Well, we won’t give up on them, friend Gar,” she said, “but for now, we should dance.”
Dance they did—it seemed they had only been telling stories to let their dinner settle. Some of the taller men pressed Alea to dance, and Saret taught her the steps. She gave frequent glances to make sure she was never out of Retsa’s sight, but with the assurance of the presence of the older dwarf woman, she was actually able to relax a bit and let herself enjoy the dance. She enjoyed it all the more because it had been so many years since a man had been willing to dance with her.
In fact, she was enjoying herself so much that she almost missed seeing Gar go off into the underground chambers with Bekko. She made a mental note to ask him in the morning, and felt sure he would tell her everything he learned from this computer, whatever it was.
Then she put it out of her mind, and enjoyed the dance.
Gar was already awake and sitting by the door, watching the sunrise, when she staggered out to join him, a mug of hot drink in her hand—Retsa had assured her that it would make her head feel better. She sat down beside Gar, took a slurping sip, then glanced up at him, and saw by the glow in his face that his night’s adventure had been as rewarding, in its way, as her own. She tried to summon interest and asked, “What did you learn?”
“The history of your world,” Gar told her. “It’s pretty much as I guessed, only worse.”
That brought Alea awake. “Worse? How? Our ancestors came from the stars and started to build a city, but everything fell apart. The people gathered into villages and managed to scratch out a living farming. Then the giants and dwarves started being born.”
“That happens when there aren’t enough people,” Gar told her, “so that, after two or three generations, no matter whom you marry, he’s a first cousin one way or another.”
Alea stared, appalled. “That happened here?”
“It did,” Gar confirmed. “Your ancestors left Old Earth with half a million people—but it would have taken far too big a ship to carry food and drink for so many, so all but the ship’s crew traveled asleep, frozen stiff.”
“Frozen?” Alea stared, shocked.
“Yes, but it was perfectly safe—they knew how to freeze people and thaw them out safely. There were always a few who died, but only a few, and everyone understood they chance they were taking.”
“The Frost Giants,” Alea whispered.
Gar nodded. “Perhaps that’s where the story started, though these people were all the size of ordinary Midgarders. Apparently one of the crew loved the story of the Ring of the Niebelungs and played it whenever the rest of the crew would let him. Perhaps the sound filtered through the walls to the sleeping people and filled their dreams—who knows?”
“That’s not enough to make things fall apart,” Alea told him.
“No, it wasn’t. But as they neared this planet, a small rock, no bigger than your fist, struck the ship and punched a hole clear through it. The crew patched the hole quickly enough, and didn’t think anything more about it—until they started to thaw out the passengers. Then they found out, too late, that the stone had damaged the defrosting computer—the machine that controlled the thawing. They didn’t have any choice, they had to go ahead and try to thaw everybody out anyway, but a hundred thousand people died without waking.”
Alea gasped. “How horrible!”
“Yes, it was,” Gar said somberly, “but the stone had done even more damage than that. It had broken a corner of the ship’s furnace, not the part that made it go but the one that made heat and light for the crew, and no one had noticed. The furnace spilled an invisible poison into the stocks of unborn cattle and and pigs and sheep—ova and sperm banks, they were called.”
“So their livestock was born dead?” Alea asked, wide-eyed. “No, but it might have been better if it had. The animals were born, all right, but something went wrong inside of a great number of them, and their meat gave the people who ate it a sickness that killed them in a few days. Half the colonists died before anyone found out why and killed all the infected livestock.”
“So there were only two hundred thousand of them left,” Alea said, watching his face.
Gar’s mouth worked,, but his eyes were cold and grim. “Yes, but there weren’t enough animals left to feed them all.”
“So they fought over the cattle,” Alea whispered.
Gar nodded. “When it was all over, only a hundred fifty thousand people still lived, and they all hated one another because of the fighting. They split into rival bands, and after fifty years or so, each of those bands thought if itself as a separate kingdom.”
“And they only married people within their own kingdom?” Alea asked.
Gar turned to her in surprise. “You see the answers so quickly! Yes, you’re right—it took a hundred years before they started marrying people from other kingdoms, and by that time, the giants and dwarves had begun to be born.”
“But why did the Midgarders think they were evil?” Alea pressed.
“Mostly because of a man named Tick, who wanted to rule everybody,” Gar told her. “He found the story of the Ring of the Niebelungs that the crew member had made sure everyone knew. He told that story from one end of the land to the other, haranguing the Midgarders and telling them that dwarves and giants were evil, and that they must cast diem out and band together, or the giants would pound them flat and the dwarves would undermine their towns. Besides, he pointed out that the giants would eat all the food, and that if the Midgarders exiled them and the dwarves, there would be that much more food for everyone else.”