"Why?" she asked simply, not weeping.
"It was not my decision," he said. "You must believe that."
"Please," she said. "I want to be with my people, if you don’t mind."
"No," he said gently.
She looked into his eyes.
"You may take anything you like, things of a personal nature." Rei said. "We will be together."
"And my people?" she asked.
"You told me once, Miaree, of the extermination of the animals of The World."
"We are not animals," she said calmly.
"No, of course you are not. But there was a choice. It was a terrible choice. The decision of our leaders was dictated by the death of twenty-four billion Delanians."
"But there is time. The new ships—"
"I asked them to give you just one ship," he said. "I begged them. I begged for just one ship to allow the race to live."
"We can find planets. We can shuttle people. There is time."
He shook his head sadly. "Our people are filled with fear. The Fires can be seen, as they were seen on the home worlds. We began the loading on Five to prevent the outbreak of a popular uprising."
"In the name of God," she said, "there is room in the universe for all."
"Once we had gods. There was a god for every purpose. The gods lived up there, in the Fires. When we were a young race and saw the Fires moving gradually, slowly, crawling toward us, our cultists rejoiced and said that the gods were favoring us, moving their dwelling to be nearer our planet. When we went into space on primitive rockets, it was to search for the gods, and we found only cold death and terrible vacuum. By then we understood that there were no gods living in the Fires unless they ate ionized electrons and thrived on hard radiation and swam on the seas of a burning star. There is no God, Miaree, only radiation and cold and fire and death and the accident of life, which is precious only to those who are strong enough to fight for it. We have fought and we have lost. We have paid a terrible price in dead, and we have learned that the universe is basically inhospitable to life and only the strongest will survive.
"The decision to abandon the Artonuee was not coldly selfish. There is real doubt that your race would survive transplanting. Your life chain is fragile, depending on an exact set of conditions, soil, air, sun, which may not be matchable anywhere in the universe. The percentage of rare earths in the soil of The World is a unique situation. Have you never wondered why the juplee forests were confined to The World, why it was necessary to lavish constant care on the trees which were taken, for example, to Outworld, for decorative and spiritual purposes? No. It was decided, by those in command, that moving the Artonuee was a gamble. And we would have been gambling with over a billion more Delanian lives. It is regrettable and tragic, but there is no escape from the basic fact that we Delanians are more suited for the rigors of space and planet change."
She had ceased to listen. She had pulled away, looking at him in horror. Behind her, Bertt was weeping silently. She turned to him, took his arm.
"I will come for you," Rei said. "And for the worthy Bertt, who will rest here with you until it is time."
She escorted the old male to her chambers, seated him comfortably.
His eyes were wet with his weeping. "It was I," he said. "I made it possible. First I gave them the union of convertor and fusion, then I gave them the power of unopposed electrons. It was I who gave, My Lady."
"Yes, yes, you meant well, Bertt. You are not to be blamed."
He dried his eyes, his cheeks. A strength seemed to flow into his old body. There was a look of pride and decision on his face. "I gave," he said, "but I saw the contempt on their faces. Once, while I was Overlord of the Fleet, I heard workers talking. ’All of the bugs,’ they said; they called us bugs, a Delanian word full of derision. ’All of the bugs are going,’ they said. And I recognized then the basis of our relationship, but I would not admit it. I worked with Untell. I shared my bed with Untell and it was good. And I would not open my eyes to see that they were using us, that they were taking the last resources of our worlds, using our worlds as a base for a further leap away from the Fires. There were jokes, even then, about loving the Artonuee out of existence. But I told myself that a great race, a race which could reach the stars, could not commit such a vast conspiracy."
"Have you thought, dear Bertt, that our priests have been proven right?" She was numb. Her heart beat, but she was dead. "Nothing has changed, really. Before they came we were to face the Fires. Now we still face the Fires. It is even ironically fitting that we face them on the old world, the home planet."
Bertt seemed not to hear. He sat straight, eyes hard, glittering. "I would not believe until, finished with the installation of my gift on all the star ships, I saw with my own eyes the loading of Delanians on Five. And then I praised that male jealousy which had forced me to do it."
"What did you do?"
"Do you think we males have enjoyed seeing you, our Mother, seeing our females going to the Delanian men with such joy? Oh, we took the lesser prize, the Delanian women, and we told ourselves that we were enjoying the best of two worlds, for the women were ever ready for pleasure and the eternal stink of pleele, the stifling smell of our females’ constant readiness-yes, I say stink. Once it was a pleasure, but in massive amounts as it radiated out from all females, it became a stink in our nostrils and it insured our own constant readiness, which we burned on the bodies of the fleshy women. And we knew in our hearts that the pleasures of flesh were not God’s will, not the destiny of the Artonuee, and we grieved privately. And I thought of this as I designed the fleet. Thank God, I thought of it."
"I don’t understand," Miaree said.
"You will, my daughter. They need me, for I alone know the secrets of the altered expanders. So I will be carried along, a prize, a slave, a worker to teach their technicians the secrets of my inventions. You will go—"
"No," she said.
"Yes, you must. I am too old. I might fail, there in the depths of space. I might seek my iffling and find no iffling to accept the life force which cries out to be exchanged. And then you will have to complete the job."
"What job?" She stood before him. "Are these just the ramblings of an old male? Explain to me, Bertt. Tell me."
"When the time is right," Bertt said, and would speak no more.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Poised in deep space off the orbit of Five, the fleet stretched into the distance, its numbers, rank on rank, assembled in order, under the direct control of the flagship on the center point. Behind it, four worlds were empty. A fifth, The World, swarmed with the total population of the Artonuee. There, hunger stalked, for a gutted world, its surface scarred by strip mining, its resources melted now into the metal hides of the fleet, could not support the race. The mutilated juplee forests were but a fraction of their former glory. Artonuee died and their loves were dead with them, their life force wasted, fading into empty air in the absence of ifflings; for in the end, the loaded iffling ships had belched their sacred cargo out into a spiral orbit leading to eventual disintegration in the sun. A forest of juplee, emptied into cold space, made but a minor ripple on the surface of the Artonuee star. Ifflings, long dead in the vacuum, were mere motes as they were drawn into the furnace.
Her cubicle was small. She was allowed freedom, but she was among aliens who looked at her and resented her presence. There were others of her kind, the mistresses of the high officials, but when she passed them she lowered her eyes, shamed to be one of them. Bertt was there, treated with a certain condescending honor. Once she heard Argun speak to the old male.