“Mean-hearted of you,” Toby said. His voice was thin with the same exhaustion Killeen recognized in himself. The worst kind, a bone-deep mental weariness.
It would be a variation on an earlier experiment. Do not think that the concept of compassion is a possession of your species. But surely you must acknowledge that it has bounds among species, Phyla, and certainly between Kingdoms. The Exalteds are a higher Kingdom, indeed, the highest. You cannot expect your notions to extend to your betters.
Killeen snorted derision. “They—and you—left us to die when you broke open the esty.”
I had to return the sample of Toby’s genetic record. It was nearly enough.
“I thought you needed three generations, plus the data buried in the Legacies.” Killeen addressed the empty air. He felt the Mantis only as fitful, patchy blanknesses in his sensorium.
There is a small code which releases the pleasures we seek. It is said to be carried socially.
Toby asked, “You mean memorized?”
As nearly as we can surmise, it was given as a precaution when the Trigger Codes were implanted in the genetic helices. I wish you to deliver it up.
Killeen laughed. “Don’t know it.”
Attempts to shield it will merely mean that I will ransack each of you in turn. There is little time and my methods will be destructive. Your selves will not survive my search.
As if for an example, Killeen felt something spike into his mind, forking up memories from his past—agonies and ecstasies, sharp, eye-blink-quick. Painful and barbed in a way he had never felt. He staggered. The flooding jab of the past was a blow, stopping his lungs, tightening his throat around a hoarse cry.
His wife, Veronica, rocking Toby in buttery candlelight.
Ruddy-faced Fanny calling orders on a scarred plain.
Abraham grimly grinning on a parapet above the Citadel.
All compacted slices, instants sprayed against the walls of his mind.
He recalled events in the pace of his own thinking; the Mantis “harvested” them with an instantaneous readout.
“How’d we supposedly get this code?”
It must be passed down acoustically.
“We get told it?” Toby asked.
Cermo shook his head. “Nobody told me anything like that.”
Then you are lying. There is no other possibility. It is a species-specific instruction. The Exalteds have read in your own helices that it exists.
Killeen shook his head. “Well, we lost it, then.”
That cannot be. Human continuity is unusual among the lower orders. Great traditions pass on. This is deeply entwined with your individual senses of self-worth—a common “natural” social tool.
Toby said, “Maybe you should try some other Families.”
No! The Rooks, Knights, and others do not have it. There is a clear genetic difference.
Maybe they didn’t have what they called emotions, but this Mantis manifestation betrayed more than it knew. It longed for the lost trigger, he saw suddenly. Maybe even the Exalteds craved the exotic pleasures that mere mammals were heir to.
Killeen said cautiously, “How come Bishops got it?”
You have undergone less genetic drift than the others. Such is the luck of the draw.
Killeen could see no way out of this. They weren’t lying; matters were far past that now. They just didn’t know. But the Mantis would rip open their minds, just to be sure. All he could think to do was the oldest maneuver: stall. “So we’re nothing special, yeasay?”
There are several theories about why the humans spontaneously sent colonies out from their “Chandeliers.” None seemed specially favored, and indeed the Bishops were one of the smaller Families.
“Tougher, though,” Toby said. “Right?” From his tone Killeen saw that he was trying to get the Mantis into its lecture mode, delay it by tempting the scholar facet of the many-sided intelligence.
You are now, perhaps, but your history is not particularly distinguished. Even on Snowglade, Rooks and Pawns were more troublesome to the enterprises we conducted.
“But we have a warrior name. Bishops swoop down and strike, moving fast.” Toby was intent now, not just passing time. “We, we—” sputtering, Toby launched into warbling voice—
We cut across Rooks,
angle in on Knights,
put the fatto Kings to check—
You quote from an olden Bishop chant, I see. A “cheerlead” I once witnessed in your Citadel. Admirable, I suppose, how you pit one tribe against another. A wasteful way of selecting those which deserve to propagate.
We’re better’n they are. Our name—
Was chosen from a board game. Just as the Sox and Dodgers in an adjacent Lane gained theirs from a lost art performed with the body. The Aces and Eights and Jacks of the planet you once visited—Trump, I believe you named it—came from a pastime involving pasteboards. Similar cultural detritus accounts for the tribal divisions—all quite artificial, believe me. And you can believe such as me; I have seen more human history worked out here at the Center than you can remember.
