Gallen considered. The Qualeewoohs had not been territorial, but by assuring that any two Qualeewoohs of the same sex who saw each other would immediately flee, you created a tremendous buffer zone between territories. Yet something more happened. You dismantled society. The Qualeewoohs who had developed the technology he’d seen here had been flock animals, nesting together. Social, communicative. But they’d doomed their descendants to become solitary hunters, living in exile.
To Gallen the implications seemed horrifying.
Felph looked up at him, a gleam in his dark blue eyes, and stroked his beard. “Mankind chose to tolerate violence, to seek eternal expansion in the hopes of outrunning his own overpopulation. But the Qualeewoohs, in spite of the fact that they are raptors, could not live with such a choice. For them, the only purpose civilization ever served was to find the root of their own violent nature, then destroy it. Better to end civilization, they decided, than to live with the madness.”
Tallea said, “How sad. Think of all they lost!”
But Orick simply shook his head. “How noble. Think of all they gained!”
“Indeed!” Felph said. “You see it. The Qualeewoohs are utterly unlike us in so many ways. With mankind, our whole system of values is incongruous, illogical. But the Qualeewoohs’ society works for them-in many ways far better than ours ever worked for us.
“That is why I’ve stayed here for so long. I’ve studied their social relations, considered the implications in our own society, weighing them against the dronon threat.”
Gallen found Felph’s tone very disturbing, incongruous. Half an hour ago, he’d talked casually about how humans slaughtered modern Qualeewoohs. Now he spoke reverently of their respect for life. Gallen recognized that Felph’s respect for the Qualeewoohs was directed toward “the ancestors,” the Qualeewooh gods, as he’d called them earlier.
Modern Qualeewoohs, in spite of the fact that they were kindly philosophers, in spite of the fact that they glued spirit masks to their faces in order always to be guided by their ancestors, were somehow not worthy of Felph’s respect. He saw them as creatures, not creators.
His position annoyed Gallen. Felph seemed to have an almost schizophrenic attitude about the creatures.
“What conclusions have you reached?” Maggie asked, and there was an edge to her voice, a threat. She, too, was perturbed by Felph’s attitudes.
Gallen recognized the source of Maggie’s concern. Felph’s genetic experiments, the way he treated the people above, the way he enslaved his own children-all suggested Felph was involved in something sinister. Could he be an aberlain, Gallen wondered-altering the human genome to fit his own whims, seeking to modify his own children as the Qualeewoohs had done? Gallen glanced at Felph’s beautiful, silent children. His slaves.
“Conclusions? None, for certain,” Felph said. “I suspect the Qualeewoohs’ solution was at once noble and desperate beyond anything I could condone. They doomed their descendants to lives of isolation. They doomed their species to eventual extinction. And they lost too much in their quest for peace-the opportunity for social discourse that we as humans take for granted.
“Still, I could almost congratulate them for the devil’s bargain they made, if not for the dronon. In time, the Qualeewoohs’ shortsightedness will condemn this world. The Qualeewoohs never anticipated alien invaders, either human or dronon. This world, with its dull red sun, is a perfect habitat for the dronon. When the Lords of the Swarms discover this place, as they surely will, the Qualeewoohs won’t be able to defend themselves.”
“Perhaps that won’t happen for a long time,” Gallen said.
“One could only hope,” Felph replied. “Unfortunately, what seems long to us is actually a short time on a cosmic scale. Five hundred years, a thousand? The Qualeewoohs don’t have that long.”
Gallen said, “Don’t you think mankind can find an answer to the problem?”
“No,” Felph answered. “What answer could we come up with? The dronon have had plenty of time to duplicate most of our higher technology in the past eighty years. A full-fledged war is almost too horrific for either species to consider, not when entire worlds would burn to ash.
“Mankind, I think, would gladly strike up negotiations for treaties with the dronon, but the dronon psyche does not allow for such things. They seek dominion above all, while mankind putters about, trying to find peaceful solutions to the problem.
“I hear-I hear,” Felph continued, “that some humans back in the Milky Way have finally won the title Lords of the Sixth Swarm. But what will they do with it?”
“I couldn’t say,” Gallen answered, stifling the urge to laugh at the irony. What would Felph think if he knew that at this very moment he was entertaining the Lords of the Sixth Swarm?
“I’ll tell you what they should do,” Felph said emphatically. “They should go to each dronon queen in each hive of the Sixth Swarm and sterilize them. Then let it be known to the lords of the other swarms that if they challenge mankind again, and mankind wins, this will happen to their swarms. That’s what we should do! With the extinction of their swarms as a threat, the dronon would never dare challenge us again.”
Maggie said, “But, if you destroyed the Sixth Swarm, you would be committing genocide against dronon on hundreds of worlds.”
“Not genocide-” Felph argued, “sterilization. Those living on such worlds could continue to live out their natural life spans.”
Orick shook his head. “I don’t think that will happen. I don’t see how we could do it.”
“Certainly the Tharrin will never do it,” Felph said. “But I suspect that many of our human leaders throughout history might have done it. Unfortunately, we’ve given over our free agency to a pack of sniveling aliens who haven’t got the fortitude to do what needs to be done.”
“The Tharrin aren’t aliens,” Orick said.
“Of course they are-aliens of our own creation.” Felph considered for a moment. “What we need is a new kind of civilization, with leaders strong enough to meet the challenge imposed by nonhuman sentiments.”
This is what Gallen had been waiting for. Felph hadn’t admitted to being an aberlain. On most worlds throughout the universe, the work of aberlains was strictly illegal. Only on Tremorithin did mankind work assiduously to create new subspecies of humans to populate new worlds.
Maggie said, “And is this the work you’ve chosen for yourself, to create this new society?”
“Of course,” Felph said. “Someone must rise to the challenge.”
“Isn’t it illegal to engage in genetic manipulations on humans?”
“Ruin doesn’t belong to the Unity of Planets, so of course none of their laws apply. We’re sovereign here.”
“What of your local laws?” Gallen asked.
Felph seemed astonished by the question. “I really haven’t made up any, yet.” He studied their faces, saw their surprise. “You see, Ruin’s constitution was written several hundred years ago by me and two colleagues. As a jest; we decided to form a monarchy. With only three of us on the planet at the time, it seemed a simple solution to any political problems. We drew straws, and I won. As an independent world recognized by the Unity, anyone who wants to settle here must swear to obey the laws of our constitution-and accept me as sovereign. As a result, I’ve retained my title of `Lord Felph.’ “
“What of the people who live on your world? Don’t any of them object?” Gallen asked in astonishment.
“Object? Why would they object?” Felph asked. “People only object to government when it makes demands of them. I make no laws, levy no taxes. With the excess supplies I generate, I feed and clothe anyone who wants. No, no one objects to my reign. How could they?”