“Even the Branch Library on Earth has no reference,” he said as he brushed a hand along one of the jagged monoliths. “We’ve submitted a low-priority inquiry to the district branch at Tanith. Maybe in a century or so the Library Institute’s computers will dig up a report from some long-extinct race that once lived here, and then we’ll know the answer.”
“Yet you hope they do not,” she suggested.
Robert shrugged. “I guess I’d rather it were left a mystery. Maybe we could be the first to figure it out.” He looked pensively at the stones.
A lot of Tymbrimi felt the same way, preferring a good puzzle to any written fact. Not Athaclena, however. This attitude — this resentment of the Great Library — was something she found absurd.
Without the Library and the other Galactic Institutes, oxygen-breathing culture, dominant in the Five Galaxies, would long ago have fallen into total disarray — probably ending in savage, total war.
True, most starfaring clans relied far too much on the Library. And the Institutes only moderated the bickering of the most petty and vituperative senior patron lines. The present crisis was only the latest in a series that stretched back long before any now living race had come into existence.
Still, this planet was an example of what could happen when the restraint of Tradition broke down. Athaclena listened to the sounds of the forest. Shading her eyes, she watched a swarm of small, furry creatures glide from branch to branch in the direction of the afternoon sun.
“Superficially, one might not even know this was a holocaust world,” she said softly.
Robert had set their packs in the shade of a towering spine-stone and began cutting slices of soyastick salami and bread for their luncheon. “It’s been fifty thousand years since the Bururalli made a mess of Garth, Athaclena. That’s enough time for lots of surviving animal species to radiate and fill some of the emptied niches. Right now I guess you’d probably have to be a zoologist to notice the sparse species list.”
Athaclena’s corona was at full extension, kenning faint traceries of emotion from the surrounding forest. “I notice, Robert,” she said. “I can feel it. This watershed lives, but it is lonely. It has none of the life-complexity a wildwood should know. And there is no trace of Potential at all.”
Robert nodded seriously. But she sensed his distance from it all. The Bururalli Holocaust happened a long time ago, from an Earthling’s point of view.
The Bururalli had also been new, back then, just released from indenture to the Nahalli, the patron race that uplifted them to sentience. It was a special time for the Bururalli, for only when its knot of obligations was loosened at last could a client species establish unsupervised colonies of its own. When their time came the Galactic Institute of Migration had just declared the fallow world Garth ready again for limited occupation. As always, the Institute expected that local lifeforms — especially those which might some day develop Uplift Potential — would be protected at all cost by the new tenants.
The Nahalli boasted-that they had found the Bururalli a quarrelsome clan of pre-sentient carnivores and uplifted them to become perfect Galactic citizens, responsible and reliable, worthy of such a trust.
The Nahalli were proven horribly wrong.
“Well, what do you expect when an entire race goes completely crazy and starts annihilating everything in sight?” Robert asked. “Something went wrong and suddenly the Bururalli turned into berserkers, tearing apart a world they were supposed to take care of.
“It’s no wonder you don’t detect any Potential in a Garth forest, Clennie. Only those tiny creatures who could burrow and hide escaped the Bururalli’s madness. The bigger, brighter animals are all one with yesterday’s snows.”
Athaclena blinked. Just when she thought she had a grasp of Anglic Robert did this to her again, using that strange human penchant for metaphors. Unlike similes, which compared two objects, metaphors seemed to declare, against all logic, that unlike things were the same! No Galactic language allowed such nonsense.
Generally she was able to handle those odd linguistic juxtapositions, but this one had her baffled. Above her waving corona the small-glyph teev’nus formed briefly — standing for the elusiveness of perfect communication.
“I have only heard brief accounts of that era. What happened to the murderous Bururalli themselves?”
Robert shrugged. “Oh, officials from the Institutes of Uplift and Migration finally dropped by, about a century or so after the holocaust began. The inspectors were horrified, of course.
“They found the Bururalli warped almost beyond recognition, roaming the planet, hunting to death anything they could catch. By then they’d abandoned the horrible technological weapons they’d started with and nearly reverted to tooth and claw. I suppose that’s why some small animals did survive.
“Ecological disasters aren’t as uncommon as the Institutes would have it seem, but this one was a major scandal. There was galaxy-wide revulsion. Battle fleets were sent by many of the major clans and put under unified, command. Soon the Bururalli were no more.”
Athaclena nodded. “I assume their patrons, the Nahalli, were punished as well.”
“Right. They lost status and are somebody’s clients now, the price of negligence. We’re taught the story in school. Several times.”
When Robert offered the salami again, Athaclena shook her head. Her appetite had vanished. “So you humans inherited another reclamation world.”
Robert put away their lunch. “Yeah. Since we’re two-client patrons, we had to be allowed colonies, but the Institutes have mostly handed us the leavings of other peoples’ disasters. We have to work hard helping this world’s ecosystem straighten itself out, but actually, Garth is really nice compared with some of the others. You ought to see Deemi and Horst, out in the Canaan Cluster.”
“I have heard of them.” Athaclena shuddered. “I do not think I ever want to see—”
She stopped mid-sentence. “I do not …” Her eyelids fluttered as she looked around, suddenly confused. “Thu’un dun!” Her ruff puffed outward. Athaclena stood quickly and walked — half in a trance — to where the towering spine-stones overlooked the misty tops of the cloud forest.
Robert approached from behind. “What is it?”
She spoke softly. “I sense something.”
“Hmmph. That doesn’t surprise me, with that Tymbrimi nervous system of yours, especially the way you’ve been altering your body form just to please me. It’s no wonder you’re picking up static.”
Athaclena shook her head impatiently. “I have not been doing it just to please you, you arrogant human male! And I’ve asked you before kindly to be more careful with your horrible metaphors. A Tymbrimi corona is not a radio!” She gestured with her hand. “Now please be quiet for a moment.”
Robert fell silent. Athaclena concentrated, trying to kenn again…
A corona might not pick up static like a radio, but it could suffer interference. She sought after the faint aura she had felt so very briefly, but it was impossible. Robert’s clumsy, eager empathy flux crowded it out completely.
“What was it, Clennie?” he asked softly.
“I do not know. Something not very far away, off toward the southeast. It felt like people — men and neo-chimpanzees mostly — but there was something else as well.”
Robert frowned. “Well, I guess it might have been one of the ecological management stations. Also, there are isolated freeholds all through this area, mostly higher up, where the seisin grows.”
She turned swiftly. “Robert, I felt Potential! For the briefest moment of clarity, I touched the emotions of a pre-sentient being!”