And, unreal as it may seem, here she is. At the high table, all eyes upon her. The real story at last. The great revelation, after nearly four years. Did she dare? How would they respond? For a moment she was unable to find her voice. They were waiting. She felt their impatience, their hostility. To most of them she was nothing but a freak. Would they laugh? Would they jeer? She was the chieftain’s daughter. That would restrain them, she hoped. But it was so very hard to begin. Turn and run? No. No. Speak to them. Get the show started, Nialli.
And at last she did, speaking quietly, so quietly that she wondered if she could be heard even in the front row.
“I thank you all for this privilege. I stand before you now because there are things you must know, which I alone can tell you, before you decide how to respond to the message of the Queen.”
Her heart was racing. Her tongue was thick with fright. She forced herself to be calm.
“Unlike any of you,” she went on, “I have actually lived among the hjjks. As you are aware. You haven’t forgotten that I was a captive. Certainly I can never forget it. I know them at first hand — these vermin of which you speak, these hideous bugs, whom you think are fit only for extermination. And I tell you this: that they are nothing at all like the mindless hateful monsters you make them out to be.”
“They came to kill us when we founded Yissou,” Thu-Kimnibol burst in. “There were only eleven of us, and a few children. A scruffy little village, hundreds of leagues from their territory. Not exactly a serious threat. But they came by the thousands to destroy us. And would have wiped us out if we hadn’t—”
Calmly Nialli Apuilana overrode his full resonant voice. “No. They hadn’t come to kill you.”
“It certainly looked that way to us, an army like that, screeching, waving their spears around. Well, anyone can make a mistake, I suppose. It was just a little social visit.”
The great room echoed with laughter.
Nialli Apuilana gripped the edge of the podium. In a crackling voice she said, “Yes, kinsman, it was a mistake. But how could you have known what they were doing there? Do you have the slightest understanding of why they do the things they do? Do you have the least bit of insight into their minds?”
“Their minds?” said Puit Kjai, with heavy scorn.
“Their minds, yes. Their thoughts. Their wisdom. No, let me finish! Let me finish!” All fear was gone from her. Nialli Apuilana was defiant now. There was passion burning in her. “You know me, I think. You think of me as a rebel, a godless one, a wild child. Maybe you’re right. Certainly I’ve been unconventional. I won’t deny that I have no feeling for the Five Heavenly Ones, or for Nakhaba, or for the Five and the One, or any other combination of those gods you might want to name. To me they are nothing at all, they are only—”
“Blasphemy! Blasphemy!”
She scowled, smacked the podium, shot fierce glances here and there. This was her moment: she wouldn’t let them deprive her of it. This must be what Taniane feels like when she’s being grand and chieftainly, Nialli Apuilana thought.
Grandly and buoyantly she said, “Spare me these outcries, if you please. I am speaking now. The Five Names are just that to me: names. Our own inventions, to comfort us in our difficult times. Forgive me, father, mother, all of you. This is what I believe. Once I believed other things, the same as you. But when I went among the hjjks — when they took me — I shared their lives, I shared their thoughts. And I came to understand, as I could never have understood when I lived here, the true meaning of the Divine.”
“Do we need to listen to your daughter’s nonsense much longer, Taniane?” someone called from the rear. “Are you going let her mock the gods right to our faces?”
But the masked chieftain made no reply.
Inexorably Nialli Apuilana said, “This Queen, whom Thu-Kimnibol wants to chop in pieces — you know nothing of Her greatness and wisdom, none of you. You have no inkling of it. The Nest-thinkers — have you ever even heard the term?” She was hitting her stride, and loving it. “What can you tell me of the philosophies of the Nest? What can you say of Queen-love, of Nest-bond? You know nothing! Nothing! And I tell you that these vermin of yours, these bugs, are far from deserving of your contempt. They are not vermin at all, not monsters, not hateful, not repellent, none of those things. What they are, in fact, is a great civilization of human beings!”
“What? What? The hjjks human? She’s lost her mind!”
Into the incredulous outcry that came from all sides Nialli Apuilana retorted, shouting now, almost bellowing, “Yes, human! Human!”
“What is she saying?” old Staip asked muddledly. “The hjjks are insects, not humans! The Dream-Dreamers were the humans. The hairless pink ones, with no sensing-organs.”
“The Dream-Dreamers were one kind of human, yes! But not the only kind. Listen to me! Listen!” She gripped the podium and sent her words surging out to them with the force of second sight. The full spate now, the whole pent-up surge coming out all at once. “The truth is,” she declared in a high, ringing tone, “that all the Six Peoples of the Great World must be considered humans, whatever shape their bodies might have had. The Dream-Dreamers, and the sapphire-eyes, and the vegetals, and the mechanicals, and the sealords. And the hjjks! Yes, the hjjks! They were all human: six civilized peoples, able to live together in peace, and learn, and grow, and build. That is what it means to be human. My father taught me that when I was a child, and he should have taught you that too. And I learned it again in the Nest.”
“What about us?” someone called. “You say the hjjks are human. Do you think we are? Is everything that lives and thinks human?”
“We weren’t human in the time of the Great World, no. We were only animals then. But now we’re beginning finally to become human ourselves, now that we’ve left the cocoon. The hjjks, though — they crossed the threshold of humanity a million years ago. Or more. How can we think of making war on them? They aren’t our enemies! The only enemies we have are ourselves!”
“The girl’s insane,” she heard Thu-Kimnibol murmur, and saw him sadly shake his head.
“If you don’t like the treaty,” Nialli Apuilana cried, “then reject the treaty! Reject it! But reject war, too. The Queen is sincere. She offers us love and peace. Her embrace is our greatest hope. She will wait for us all to grow up — to attain full humanity, to become worthy of Her people — and then we will be free to join with them in a new companionship, the way the Six Peoples of the Great World once were joined, before the death-stars fell! And then — and then—”
She was gasping and sobbing, suddenly. All strength left her in a moment. She had expended herself beyond her endurance. Her eyes were frantic, her body was racked by tremors.
“Get her down from there,” said someone — Staip? Boldirinthe? — sitting behind Husathirn Mueri.
Everyone was shouting and calling out. Nialli Apuilana clung to the podium, shivering, trembling violently. She thought she might be at the edge of some sort of convulsion. She knew she had gone too far, much too far. She had said the unsayable, the thing she had held back from them all these years. They all thought she was mad, now. Perhaps she was.
The room swayed about her. Below her, Thu-Kimnibol’s bright red mourning mantle seemed to be pulsing and throbbing like a sun gone berserk. At the high table Hresh appeared frozen, dazed. She looked toward Taniane, but the chieftain was unreadable behind her mask, standing motionless in the midst of the chaos that swept the room.
Nialli Apuilana felt herself beginning to topple.
A terrible scene, Husathirn Mueri thought. Shocking, frightening, pitiful.
He had listened to her with growing amazement and dismay. Her appearance here, young, mysterious, heartachingly beautiful, had had a tremendous impact on him. He had never imagined that Nialli Apuilana would address the Presidium. Certainly he hadn’t expected her to say any of the things she had, or to say them so boldly. To hear her speak in such a fierce and powerful way had made her all the more desirable to him: had made her irresistible, in fact.