Authors: James Gunn
So events have gone, these long-cycles past. Gradually, through faith and perseverance, the Xifora have become one of the co-equal members of the galactic ruling council, recognized for Xifora determination to succeed over obstacles, Xifora willingness to sacrifice for Xifora beliefs, Xifora inventiveness in solving great problems, and Xifora—but Xifora must not be boastful. It suits Xifora temperament best to suffer in silence and revenge at length.
All this account is one reason for Xifora sympathy for humans, who emerged into the galaxy to find it already populated and settled and governed by others, just as Xifora discovered, in long-cycles past. But Xifora find impatience and complaint offensive, and for these barbarisms Xifora do not like humans.
* * *
All this is prologue to this person’s story. Xifora are hatchlings, and like all hatchlings, dangerous companions. Xifora know that in the mountains Xifora live or die alone. So life was for this person. This person was the smallest of a brood of a dozen hatchlings, of which five died and were eaten in the nest. This person would have been eaten as well had not this person’s cleverness and will led to survival in this person’s first days out of the shell. This is the way of the nest: hatchlings eat or are eaten. Those that the stronger hatchlings could not fall upon and eat they delighted in tormenting, depriving them of food, tearing away limbs in sport, or so the stronger hatchlings call it. Those persons called it part of the Xifor way, to make sure the fittest survive, but the game was actually survival itself. The fewer that survived the more food and more status for those who lived.
This person survived the loss of numerous limbs, usually one and never more than two at a time. Others, in this nest and neighboring nests, were less fortunate: if three limbs were lost, the game is lost. The fourth limb would be doomed, and the hatchling consumed before the limbs could grow back. This person understood that consequence early, concealed food in a corner of the home nest where a rock could be rolled into place, and retreated there furtively and in haste as soon as a limb was lost. Many periods were spent growing new limbs.
The only safe time was during school hours when hatchlings were taught the history of oppression and the language and tools of justice. Science explained the unloved place of Xifora in the universe, and technology provided the means by which Xifora could liberate Xifora from the cruel Xifor environment. School was good, not least because it provided a period when survival was not at stake and wits could be turned to the larger issues that lay ahead. And the best part was that the worst hatchling tormentors were the poorest students; those persons who depend upon size and power discovered that strength alone was not enough, that the mind had powers beside which the greatest physical endowments dwindled to insignificance.
Where were these persons’ parents while these cruel games continued, the listener to this story may ask. Such a question would never have occurred before Xifora encountered the Galactic Federation, where mercy is considered a virtue. Xifora parents were like Xifor itself: hard, demanding, unsentimental. Like Xifor, parents bred offspring hardy and self-reliant. Those persons survived who should survive because those persons were strong of body or will; the weak failed and were eaten; and thus Xifora grew stronger and more capable with each generation.
Before this person left the nest, this person found a piece of unusually hard wood that this person sharpened to a point by rubbing it hour after hour against a rock, and this stick became a defense against this person’s nestlings. After a few accidents to other hatchlings, this person lost no limbs from personal teasing. Instead this person took vengeance against this person’s chief tormentor, Vi, the largest and most promising of the nestlings. When attacked once more, rather than losing a limb this person raised his pointed stick and Vi ran upon it, in that person’s vulnerable eating sack. After the accident, this person stood aside while the tormentor was consumed by the other nestlings. Vi was gone and would torment no more; this person did not need to consume any of the remains to be strong.
As soon as the feast was over, this person left the nest and began existence in the mountains of northern Xifor. The nights were cold and the days only slightly warmer, but this person soon trapped a furry creature and fashioned warm garments from its hide. This person stole fire, cooked meat, and fashioned weapons, first a sling for propelling rocks, then a mechanism for projecting small, pointed spears, and finally, when a dump of discarded materials was stumbled upon, weapons shaped from metal scraps, and then tools that this person used to build smelters for ore, and finally to construct machines.
When this person was nearly adult, this person encountered this person’s parents once more. This person recognized them by their resemblance to Vi and by their family pheromones, and for a moment ancient fears and hatreds flared. The natural attempt to kill this person was anticipated and foiled, with only the loss of a single limb by the female parent. Then this person convinced the parents that this person was indeed a member of the parents’ brood, that the killing of the largest and most promising of the brood was justified, and that this person’s survival should be celebrated and not condemned. This person demonstrated the machines this person had built. Suitably impressed, the parents accepted this person as a member of their family and enrolled this person in a scientific academy situated near the equator.
There, not far from the valleys where the Xifora had developed from clumsy beasts crawling out of the sea onto the land, this person learned Xifor history, art, science, and technology. This person also learned that the machines in which this person had placed so much pride had been invented before, and better. The discovery was a lesson in humility that this person carries to this moment. With that insight, this person’s career as an inventor and a scientist came to an abrupt end. Instead, this person became a philosopher and a politician. On Xifor the callings are almost identical.
Then, fatefully, this person was discovered. Not by the most able leader of Xifora history, Xidan, but by that person’s chief assistant, Xibil, who had been the philosopher behind Xidan’s resplendent political career. In this person Xibil saw a promise that no other person had observed: the ability to produce new solutions to old problems. This person’s real life began.
* * *
Xidan had not been responsible for the invention and production of spaceships that occupied the satellites of the gas giants, nor the interstellar flight that made contact with the Galactic Federation, nor, indeed, with the negotiations that resulted in the acceptance of Xifor as a junior member of the federation. All these events happened many long-cycles earlier. Xidan’s great accomplishment was to bring all the colonies of Xifor under the absolute control of the native world and with the loss of only a few million Xifora lives and only a single satellite. Under Xidan, Xifor finally gained full membership on the Galactic Council.
All was good; Xifor was beginning to reap the benefits of galactic goodwill and the full range of galactic science and invention. Xifora basked in the illusion that the universe had changed and the stare of hatred had become the smile of love. And then humans emerged into the galaxy. Unlike the Xifora, humans were unwilling to accept a proper role as apprentice galactics. Humans insisted on full membership immediately. Old allegiances were threatened. Ancient agreements were broken. War happened.
War, Xifora understand, was the natural condition of the universe. Xifora were born with this knowledge. Xifora must kill or be killed, eat or be eaten. But, as Xibil has eloquently explained, sublimation of this instinct to survive by all and any means, and the sublimation of the instinct to defend these persons’ territory and these persons’ honor to the death, was the price of civilization. To honor that hard-won principle Xifor produced warships for the federation and manned them and thrust them into battle. No longer were hatchlings killed, but instead sent forth in geometric numbers to Xifora the battleships. Xifora pride themselves that Xifora numbers and Xifora production were a major component of galactic strategy.
Humans would have been defeated within hours and forced back into the nothingness from which they came if other galactics, less committed than Xifora to the consensus principles of the federation or sensing an opportunity for political advantage, had not protected the humans from the righteous rebuke of the Galactic Federation.
This person volunteered to be among the warriors, but Xibul insisted that this person’s best place was in Xifor councils, to help plan the tactics of battle and the strategies of the peace that, sooner or later, would follow. The end of war, Xibul counseled, was the time when scales were rebalanced and adjustments were made, when the ready had the chance to seize power and to hold it, just as the Xifora nobility had seized the valleys long-cycles before. Xifor could become one of the major powers, perhaps the major power, in the council rather than a junior member, seldom heard and often ignored. Xifora were small but Xifora would not be overlooked.
One of the tactics this person proposed, which became standard battle procedure, was the sacrifice of a part—a ship, a fleet, or a world—to gain an overall advantage. The peculiar advantage of this tactic is that it is rooted in Xifora physiology and evolution: in personal strife, clever Xifora emerged victorious by offering an arm while the other appendage wielded a deadly weapon.
Envious rivals spread the rumor that the tactic originated with a subordinate and not with this person. Every administration was ripe with such knife wielders; the secret to survival was not to offer a back to colleagues. Such an accusation was easy to dismiss: Xifor tradition and law prescribed that all products of labor or thought were the rightful property of the superior; the unfortunate subordinate died by accident before the subordinate could confirm this person’s primacy, but after that no question was raised.
Before the subordinate’s body was cold, the tactic was directly communicated to Xidan. Xibil was involved in discussions concerning the next envoy to the Galactic Council, the previous envoy having been killed when the envoy’s ship was attacked by a human vessel.
Only after the war did this person discover that the tactic of sacrifice had been discovered independently by humans. Even though humans were too soft to accept sacrifice willingly, humans had a strange custom in which those persons modeled human behavior in something called “games,” which those persons then applied to everyday behavior, including war. Thus the tactic was not as successful as this person or Xidan had hoped, nor Xibil had feared.
Xibil, to be sure, had accepted this person’s strategy as proper Xifora behavior, recognizing the fate of ingenious subordinates. Then as quickly as the war had begun the war ended in a truce. Xifor opposed the end of hostilities, but the envoy’s death left it with little influence, and even the passionate words of the assistant envoy, who fortunately had survived the attack that killed the envoy, went unheeded. Less hardened galactics had tired of sacrifice and traded honor for peace.
Now was the time for Xifor to act. While other galactics were fatigued by war and eager for peace at any price, Xifor determination and willingness to sacrifice would give Xifor the opportunity to seize the Galactic Council and shape the federation’s future. Xidan turned to Xibil and asked Xibil to accept the position of envoy to the council. Xibil accepted on the condition that Xifor sacrifice its ambitions on behalf of federation harmony and civilization.
Then Xibil met with an unfortunate accident.
* * *
In the tradition of Xifor, Xidan turned to Xibil’s assistant, and this person was named envoy but without the unnatural conditions for sublimating Xifora behavior that Xibil had urged. Many time periods elapsed before this person joined the council and came to an understanding of the council’s operation and secret levers of power. The council was a large and deliberative body that, like a glacier, moved slowly but inexorably downhill, seeking consensus. The council was hard to stop and impossible to steer; the council could only be shattered into maneuverable segments.
The council was a devastating disappointment. This person had expected opposition but found turgid indifference. Other council members were older and, let this be admitted in all humility, wiser. This person tried to move the inertia of the council into action, with Xifor at its head. This person was listened to and agreed with but nothing happened. No opposition could be identified; no other person stood in the way; an accident to any person or group of persons would change nothing.
This person learned patience.
Patience brought with it an acceptance of the way things are, and a hope that change would emerge through a slow accumulation of minor alterations. That was not the Xifor way; it was the Galactic Federation’s way. The galaxy turned slowly, and the spiral arms were distant. The federation was old, and it had gotten old by minimizing change and its accompanying potential for conflict. The emergence of humans had disturbed the galactic balance; change had occurred, and the federation didn’t like change. Now, with the Great Truce established, the federation was ready to return to the ancient ways that had worked so well for so many eons, keeping aliens from the breathing tubes of other aliens.
And then word came of a new Prophet emerging. Without a name, without an origin or place, without a species identification or description, a creature was rumored to have announced the possibility of transcendence—not the long Xifora way of deprivation and inner strength but an instantaneous mechanical ascension. This person cannot describe the state of chaos in the Federation Council that followed this unsubstantiated rumor. The old and wise councilors became frantic and frightened. Evolution was understood by all, but evolution was slow and the massive federation could adjust. Physical transcendence could happen instantly. A person or a species could, it was feared, gain superiority. The current balance—some have called the condition “stasis”—was threatened. All sentient life might be terminated.