Should any naoli feel guilt over this extinction of the human race?
"Guilt has no role in it. One cannot feel guilt over something on so cosmic a scale. Nature ordained the meeting of our races. Since we have met with the other eleven races without trouble, it must have been intended as a test to match us against the humans. We did not wish to war. It was a natural necessity. I feel no guilt."
There was a pause in the Phasersystem's interrogation. A moment later, the voice continued, but on a slightly different tonal level. Hulann knew that he had been taken off the general program of questions and was receiving individual attention from a more refined portion of the computer's "brain."
You have registered eighteen points on a scale of one hundred in relation to your sense of guilt.
Hulann was surprised.
Is this a conscious guilt? the computer asked. Please be truthful. You will be under observation of a multi-systems polygraph.
"It is not a conscious guilt," Hulann's overmind replied.
There was another pause as the Phasersystem considered the sincerity of his answer. You are honest, it said at last. But if this guilt index should rise-even if it remains subconscious, you understand-beyond thirty points on a scale of one hundred, you will have to be replaced in your position with the occupation forces and returned to the home system for recuperation and therapy.
"Of course," his overmind replied, though he felt depressed with such a prospect He liked his work and considered it valuable. He was trying to save the fragments of a race none of them would see again.
The Phasersystem continued to probe his psyche, looking for faults that could open and swallow him.
Somewhere, Hulann, a group of these humans is still holding out. Now and then, a representative of them is reported to have contacted members of the other eleven races in search of support for a counter-attack. We have thus far been unable to find the place they hide, the place they call the Haven. What do you feel when you consider the existence of this small but alien group?
"Fear," he said. And he was telling the truth.
If you discovered the whereabouts of these last creatures, would you report it to the central committee?
"Yes," Hulann said.
And if you were chosen to be in the expedition charged with the destruction of these last humans, could you kill them?
"Yes."
The Phasersystem. was silent.
Then: Consciously, you are telling the truth. But your guilt index jumped to twenty-three on both questions. You will request an appointment with the traumatist at his earliest convenience.
Then the colors came in, orange at first, then fading through various shades of yellow. Lighter and lighter until there were no colors and the Phasersystem had released control of him.
Hulann remained in the force webbing that held him suspended four feet above the blue floor. It seemed as if he floated above the sky, a bird or a cloud, not an earthbound creature. He probed his own mind, looking for the guilt the computer told him was present. He could see nothing. Yet the computer could not err. When he thought of the Haven, his scalp tightened and hurt. He was afraid. Afraid not only for himself, but for his race and history.
For a short moment, he had a vision of dark, fog-eyed things hiding behind a shield of trees, watching.
He snorted, opening his second set of nostrils now that he would need a full air supply for movement. When his lungs swelled and adjusted to the new air flow, he got out of bed.
For some reason, he was sore this morning, as if he had done a great deal of work the day before (when, in fact, he had not)-or as if he had tossed and turned in his sleep. Which was impossible for a naoli who slept the graveyard slumber. He very much wanted to cleanse himself, but he would soon have to be at the diggings to direct the day's operation.
He dialed breakfast, devoured it within minutes (a delicious paste of fish eggs and larva, something a remote force of naoli would surely have had to do without even a mere fifty years ago. Progress was truly wonderful.) and looked at the clock. If he left now, he would arrive at the diggings before the others. He did not want to do that.
Well, after all, he was the director of the team. If he were late, that was merely his prerogative.
He went into the cleansing room and cycled the watertight door behind. He set the dials where he liked them, and the thick, creamy fluid began to bubble up. ward through the holes in the floor.
He scrunched his toes in it, feeling good.
When it was up to his knees, he bent and splashed it over himself. It was warm and viscuous. He felt it sluicing at his thousands of overlapping scales, drawing out the dust that had accumulated between them.
When it was four feet deep in the cubicle, he stretched in it like a swimmer, letting the stuff buoy him. He was tempted to return to the dials and set the room for longer cycles, but he wasn't that irresponsible. Soon, the mud-cream began to grow less heavy, thinning, thinning, until it seemed only as thick as water (though it still buoyed him with the same efficiency of the mud-cream). This new form washed off the cleansing cream, dissipated it. Then the clear fluid began draining out of holes in the floor.
He stood, waited until it was gone. His scales were already dry. He opened the door and went into the living room, gathered up his note tapes and stuffed them into the recorder case. He slung the recorder over one arm, the camera over the other, and set out for the diggings.
The others were busy with their individual projects. They toiled through the half-demolished structures, prying with their tools, x-raying partitions and mounds of fallen stones and steel. They had been assigned the ruined sections of the city which the humans had destroyed with their own weapons trying to fend off the naoli forces. Hulann did not care that their site was a difficult one. If he had been assigned to the group tilling the un-destroyed sectors of the city, he would have been bored to tears. Naoli could cry. There was no adventure in gathering things that were sitting in the open. The pleasure came from unearthing a treasure, from the painstaking work of separating a find from the rubble around it.
Hulann nodded to the others, stepped by Fiala, then turned to look at her collection of statsheets which she had uncovered only yesterday. They had been waterlogged but readable. She was translating.
"Any luck?" he asked.
"Nothing much that's new."
She licked her lips with her tongue, then stuck more of it out and flicked at her chin. She was pretty. He did not understand how he had almost walked by without stopping.
"Can't expect a treasure every day," he said.
"But they have a mania for repetition. I've found that."
"How so?"
"Day after day, the same stories appear in the stat sheets. Oh, new ones come along. But once they printed a story, they didn't let up on it. Here. Look. For seven days in succession, this stat sheet gave frontpage coverage to the destruction of their Saturn moon bases and the pulling back of their defense ring."
"It was a major story."
"No story is that major. After two or three days, they were only repeating themselves."
"Research it," he said. "It may prove interesting."
She went back to her papers, forgetting his intrusion.
He watched her a moment longer, reluctant to leave. More than any other female he had seen in the last two hundred years, she made him want to make a verbal commitment. It would be a delight to go away with her, into the warren of his own house back on the home world, and fuse for sixteen days, living off the fat of their bodies and the ceremonial waters they would take with them.
He could envision her in ecstasy.
And when she came out of the warren, she would have the gaunt, fleshless look of a desirable woman who has mated for a standard fusing period.