Disrespect of temporal order; this was the sum of it. Anything might alter in them, past, present, future. They forgot, and wrote things on paper to remember them; but they might not always write the truth; and the possibility that they might accurately imagine the truth… Suth backed his mind from the precipice, refusing the leap.
Humans had not experienced disorientation in the killing of a regul reverend with the accumulated experience of nearly three hundred years. It was as if they could forget all this information, not valuing it perhaps because they could change whatever they pleased, or imagine backward as well as forward. And it evidently did not matter to them whether they remembered accurately; it did not disorganize the species, who were accustomed to divergency in future-memory, and therefore perhaps cared nothing for divergence in past-memory.
How did they view the present? Did it likewise shift about?
Could they likewise forget the killing of a human elder, if it was not useful to remember it?
If he could reach a correct conclusion, it would be of great value in determining policy.
He sat now, in his sled, which supported his increasing bulk and provided him on rails and wheels, swift transport about the spiraling corridors of Shirug, if he needed it. In fact there was little need for him to stir from his office, and he did so seldom. Every control on the ship was accessible directly or indirectly from his sled console. Only actual flight operations demanded more meticulous attention to incoming data than he could conveniently handle, and a nervous clutch of Alagn younglings attended the controls constantly. He had killed several for inattention… and also because they were older Alagn younglings, and there was the remote chance of one of them sexing male, once the immediate hysteria of Change had eased on the ship, and while the fact of his command was still new to the crew.
The younglings who survived his tempers had improved markedly in efficiency, working feverishly whether or not his eye was immediately on them; this was to the good of the ship. They learned; he would Impress them, so that even years hence he would have no rivals.
Therefore he was prepared to deal with humans. He had absolute power on his own ship, and he was calmer about entering the maze of regul-human relations than he might have been.
Therefore he allowed himself to contemplate confrontation.
He keyed the position of Santiago to the screen on the panel of his sled, and widened the schematic to include the latest plotting of the position of Saber, over the horizon. Flower was a third dot, below, on Kutath's surface. There were four other points, two human shuttles aloft, two regul shuttles left on Kutath; younglings, expendables.
He stared in prolonged speculation at the screen, his nostrils flaring and shutting in dislike as he sorted all past action to determine present ones, combining and recombining pieces like a stoneworker, seeking those which made coherent structure.
A light flashed on his board, signaling someone wishing his personal attention. He cleared the screen and received a notation from Nagn; Urgent. Direct-contact, favor.
He flashed back his permission. "Door," he shouted at the youngling who kept the anteroom, and it stirred out in haste; Ragh, its name was, clever and zealous and mightily fearful.
The other doorway opened. Not one but three sleds arrived, Nagn and Tiag and Morkhug, with attendants and commotion. Ragh showed them through, directed the other attendants, stumped this way and that offering drink, murmuring anxious courtesies.
"Outr Suth snapped; Ragh daringly slipped a cup into his hand and fled with all possible speed, herding the other younglings into the anteroom. "Report," Suth asked of his mates. "What is the urgency?”
"Important news," Nagn said. "Favor, reverence bai; analysis of the new tapes indicates a resurgence of power in the sites.”
Suth hissed softly, delayed for a drink to stablize the out-of-phase beating of his hearts. "Details.”
"Scant, reverence. The readings are faint. More might be done… but the likelihood of triggering fire with Shirug in range.…”
The hearts tended apart, and then toward unity. "Mri with weapons. This can be demonstrated in plain data. Mri with weapons.”
"Every site," Nagn said in a low voice. She keyed a graphic to their screens, the world rotating, sites lighting, all edging on the great chasms. "Concentrated life signs indicate moisture in the depths of the basins; what is there, is patently available for use at such sites. Life requirements are available to a technology advanced sufficiently to draw the water up. The area out of which the youngling Duncan appeared…" The graphic reversed its revolution and narrowed in field. ". . . possesses more than one such site.”
"Old," Suth murmured, staring at the distance between the diminished water sources and the city sites. It was shattering constantly to realize how old. Data available in home space had indicated the mri to be a young species, and regul oldest of all regul, who had risen on the cycles of famines and the dread of famines, to seek resources outward, warless, with errorless passing of knowledge from one generation to the next. But not the oldest. Far from oldest. Millions of years lay even in the decay of Kutath.
Of mri who, like humans… forgot.
Data existed in such cities, recorded as forgetting species must record such things; a treasury of eons, knowledge of all these regions of space, records of the dead worlds which the mri had killed, of all this aged, alien species had done and known and been. To destroy this knowledge.…
The very thought sent a wave of revulsion through him, almost unbearable in intensity. It was the death of elders. It was murder. He sucked air, his hearts paining him. Sharn had committed such destruction, without understanding what she did. He was cursed to know. But what was down there was knowledge inaccessible to regul, in language mri had never given regul to learn, of experiences which had to make sense only to mri or to those who could speak the language, who could become mri.
A human could. Duncan spoke the mri tongue, and assumed the robes and the manners and the thoughts of mri. A human forgot his own way, and crossed that boundary which regul in two thousand years had not crossed nor wished to.
Humans would gain access to such knowledge with the fall of the mri world, or with the peaceful accommodation they sought with it They would possess the experience of millions of years which would be recorded down there. Would become…
. . . mri. Imitating, as Duncan so facilely imitated. The model was before them, in the youngling Duncan.
To let this happen ... to allow to exist information which regul could not use, and allow it into the hands of a species which could forget its own nature and assume that of another ... or which already shared tendencies which mri had
"Eldest?" Nagn murmured. "Eldest?”
"We have a difficulty, bai Nagn. One which affects policy. Heed; I shall tell you a thing. Once ... in the memory of doch Horag, a dispute of Horag elders was to be resolved by the combat of mri kel'ein. And one kel'en said that he sought this particular combat gladly, because he understood that the other Horag elder had abused her mri mercenary. Yet the first mri killed the second.”
"That is mad," said Tiag.
"Not so. The regul who lost the challenge, lost territory and younglings and influence. Thus the dead mri was avenged powerfully, and his killer was indeed his avenger as he had purposed to be. Mri are fully capable of understanding revenge. And they do not value survival above status as humans do.”
"Their lives are short by nature," Morkhug said with contempt. "And they forget what they are told.”
"Do not reckon that they lack wit, mate-of-mine. Errors have been made on this account, serious errors.”
"There is a human with them, reverence. He is the dangerous one. He has made them dangerous, as they were not before his coming among them. Humans are capable of some memory functions, if only on paper and tape. Remove this one human and the mri are disorganized.”
"No," Suth said flatly. "No. Sharn and doch Alagn erred, because Alagn never employed mri directly and did not understand them. Alagn came from homespace ... as you do. But Horag doch has employed mri in the colonies, for two thousand years. I remember.”