Date Point: 14y3d AV
High Mountain Fortress, The Northern Plains, Gao
Daar, Great Father of the Gao
The worst part—no, the fucked part—was that Yulna, damn her, was right. Naming him as a Great Father went so far toward fixing the damage she’d done that it went right out the other side and…shit, the way people’s minds worked, that slingshot from disgrace to unparalleled favor would probably have even more impact than just promoting him would have.
He was going to hate her for the rest of his life.
She had single-handedly made Daar a living legend, and now he needed to be that legend. He needed to be the embodiment of Gao’s vengeance. Which…
There was so much more to their people. The cunning, the playfulness, the quick wits and quicker paws, the endless capacity for harmless mischief and the drive to always be better than they had been yesterday. The sharing of food, space, ideas, affection. The loyalty…All of it. All things that made Daar love the Gao, especially in the face of Humanity, the Hierarchy, and all the dark, crawling evil the Universe had to offer.
…And now he had to embody their violence. Not even the little shit like a mating duel or anything, no no. He had to be the blood and teeth of the old Gao, from the bad old days when the Females had been slaves and the rival Clans had made “examples” of their enemies by literally skinning each other alive. He needed to be the avatar of that, his species’ least admirable trait, in order to save them all.
Which meant that by the end of it, there may not be much left of him but the fury.
Fuck.
He needed a moment to himself. He needed to be…well, Daar. Just for a moment, before he mentally donned the mantle of Great Father, possibly never to take it off.
Genshi had been the last to leave the ancient war hall, and had given Daar a sad, solemn and mournful look that practically said ‘farewell, cousin’ as he closed the door behind the departing Champions.
Daar had his moment. It wouldn’t be long, there was too much to do, and he didn’t know where to start…
But he wouldn’t allow the moment to go unmarked. He couldn’t allow them to…sacrifice him like this without a gesture of some kind. Something to tell the universe what it had just lost.
One last little game. Something…something he’d always secretly wanted to do, but never dared.
Keening softly, he ducked under the table.
The table was so huge that all the Champions of all the Clans could stand around it, being basically just a thick slice of a tree so enormous that Daar had never seen its equal standing upright. Fragments of ancient bark still clung to its edge here and there, and the ends splayed out where the roots and limbs had once been, ages ago. It was centuries old, darkened by time and hardened by use into the weighty embodiment of solemn authority. He certainly wasn’t the first to spill a Champion’s blood at that table…but perhaps, just maybe, he could dream of being the last.
He extended a claw and scratched the words “Daar Was Here” into its underside in an obscure spot where they might never be found, then lay there for a moment longer and considered the three angular marks he’d made. Somehow…they were lacking something.
After a moment’s thought, he underlined his handiwork by carving a giant cock and balls into the wood.
He scooted out from under the table, chittering to himself. A little desperately, maybe, but it was heartfelt.
“…Always wanted to do that,” he said to nobody in particular. It was a frivolous, stupid, meaningless gesture in the face of everything, but it felt like an epitaph. A quiet, crude memorial to the real Daar, rather than the behemoth of history they’d write about once all this was over.
It was done. He took a deep breath, straightened up, flexed his claws, and marched out of the room and into his new life.
Date Point: 14y4d AV
Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, Earth
Wei Chang
One of the weird consequences of the refugee crisis on Cimbrean was that Wei was, for the first time in years, in regular contact with his sister again.
Well…he was in touch with Xiù again. His sister had been a very different person to the scarred, solemn, intense person who’d come back to them.
…And gone on to fly spaceships. And land on Mars. And make first contact with an alien species. It…kinda felt wrong to call such a force of nature his sister. His sister had been a dreamy-eyed goof who loved movies too much, and now they were probably going to make movies about her.
But with the jump arrays to Cimbrean working overtime, data packets were streaming back and forth between the colony and Earth more often than ever before. It was no good for Skype or whatever…but it was good enough for emails.
Hi Wei,
We woke up to the best news possible this morning – The stuff on Akyawentuo’s all under control and everybody’s fine. We’re going to jump back there as soon as some stuff we need arrives.
Yes, I know about Gao, we’ve been watching the news reports on ESNN and BGN from up here on Armstrong. I asked if maybe I could go down to Folctha and help the refugees while we wait but was told no. The same would definitely be true for Gao itself, so I guess it’s kind of a moot point, right? I don’t know. I wish I could be there or do something, and it hurts so much knowing that the thing I left Gao to prevent happened anyway… Allison says it probably would have happened sooner if I’d stayed, maybe. I’m trying not to think about it.
She says hi btw.
I’m just glad to finally have something we CAN do. This sitting around was so hard. Allison doesn’t want me to share this, but we both cried like a lot. I’ve never felt so useless.
We’re still waiting on stuff, but we’re going to go as soon as it arrives, so as always this might be the last you hear from me for a while. Give my love to Bàba and Māma.
Take care of yourself, lǎo dìdi.
-Xiù
It put something resembling a smile on Wei’s face at least.
Some good things had come out of Xiù’s return, at least—He’d…improved himself. Seeing her example had been enough of a kick in the butt to get him to realize that lurking at his parents’ house binge-watching TV series and living his life entirely online wasn’t going to get him anything except possibly depression. It had made him ask what he wanted to be, because if his dreamy movie-nerd big sister could become the first woman on fucking Mars then…well.
So he’d bit the bullet, called up some university friends, and bullied them into finally founding that business they’d talked about. They’d pooled what savings they could spare, had meetings with financial advisors and people in suits, got some investment, got a cramped office space in Kerrisdale, moved in and gone to work founding TTTA Prototypes.
3D printing had come a long way in the last ten years, as had computing. Both were advancing at incredible rates as companies on Cimbrean successfully traded in alien tech and started adapting it for a human market.
But people by and large still made things the old fashioned way. Rapid prototyping was still in its infancy, and the materials that could be used had been limited…until now. Precision forcefield technology was becoming affordable, and with it came a vast new frontier in hyper-accurate prototyping with the materials and precision that actual manufacture would entail. Nobody was quite sure exactly what the new market in engineering could achieve…except that there was money to be made in it.
Identify a problem, spend an afternoon fixing the problem, sell the solution. It didn’t even matter what the problem was: somebody, somewhere, was willing to pay for a “hack” solution to it. And of course, once they’d come up with the solution they could sell it to others with the same problem. They didn’t need to keep any of their items in stock, just keep them on the website where the customer could click on what they wanted, the machines in the workshop printed it out, and out it went in an envelope with a free T-shirt.
Okay, so Wei wasn’t exactly a millionaire yet, but he felt like a success. Wearing a polo shirt with his own company’s logo on the chest, driving a car that was only three years old…he had business cards! He had his own apartment! He had savings!
That all put him several steps up on most people he knew. And it had made Bàba and Māma happy. They wouldn’t stop hinting at finding a nice girl (Chinese, of course) and starting a family, but they were smiling.
He listened to the radio on the way to work. Drivetime talk radio, as it had been for the last three days, was absolutely full of the combined impact of the war on Gao, and the revelation about…
…About…
It was too big to summarize. Wei had been fifteen on First Contact Day, not that he’d had much chance to pay attention what with the family panic over Xiù’s disappearance. Half a lifetime ago, people still treated alien life as the “big unresolved question” full of mysteries about humanity’s place in the universe and blah blah blah. At the time, he’d found those questions fascinating.
Fourteen years on, it turned out the speculation was more inspiring than the answers.
“—fact is that Folctha is already doing a heroic effort. You have to remember, there are only a hundred thousand people living on Cimbrean. They’ve taken in refugees amounting to nearly a fifth of their population, that’s a simply unprecedented effort.”
“But nowhere near enough.”
“No. Now, that isn’t their fault at all. The military are still being tight-lipped about exactly what is happening on Gao, but we can make some educated guesses and even the most favorable estimates suggest that the displaced are going to number in the hundreds of millions.”
“…How can Cimbrean even begin to cope with that?”
There was a full five seconds of silence on the radio.
“…It can’t.”
More silence, broken only by the click of Wei’s indicator light and the hum of his car’s motor.
“…On that note, Doctor Daniel Manzani, thank you for coming on the show.”
“Thank you.”
Wei turned off the radio and drove in silence until he was outside his colleague Steve’s apartment.
Steve was skinny, vegan, restless, painfully fastidious about his personal hygiene, and the Da Vinci of 3D modelling software. All of which made him Wei’s perfect opposite in many regards. He placed—not threw—his satchel on the back seat and settled into the passenger seat with a cheerful “Good morning!”
“You must not have listened to the radio,” Wei replied, checking his mirrors and pulling back out into traffic.
“Well, no, okay, I know,” Steve ran a hand through his hair and plucked at his seatbelt. “I didn’t go to bed until three o’ clock last night, I was watching…everything.”
“I feel like we should be doing something,” Wei said.
“Doing what?”
Wei shrugged helplessly. “I dunno. Something.”
“I’m down. Just give me something to work with. Though I hope you don’t mind, I’m gonna do a fun piece first when we get in.”
“Sure, I don’t think there’s anything waiting for you,” Wei nodded agreeably. “What did you have in mind?”
“Did you see that dog? The really, really freaking huge one that some cubs were riding like a steed?”
“His name’s Bozo.”
“…How do you know th—? No, no. Let me guess. Your sister.”
“Good guess,” Wei chuckled. “He’s the SOR regimental mascot.”
Steve snorted and rolled his eyes with a grin. “Of course he is. Christ, what do they feed those guys?”
“Meat.” Wei grinned at the friendly middle finger this earned him. Teasing each other over their respective dietary habits was an old game. “I dunno. Is there anything we can do, d’you think?”
Steve fidgeted in his seat as he thought about it. “…Maybe?” he said. “I know the aid websites crashed a few times from people trying to sign up and help. Even small villages in Africa are doing stuff like donating twenty alpacas, or whatever.”
“You’re kidding.”
“Nope. But the question is, what can we give that somebody else hasn’t already given a hundred of?”
Wei sighed, and turned off the main road into the small parking lot behind their office building.
“…I’ll let you know if I think of anything,” he said.
Date Point: 14y4d AV
HMS Myrmidon, Geosynchronous orbit above Lavmuy, Gao.
Admiral Sir Patrick Knight
The problem with space was that there was too damn much of it.
Gao was a comparatively large planet, by the standards of Interspecies Dominion cradle worlds. In human terms its radius was a little bit more than half that of the Earth which meant, the relationship between the radius of a sphere and its surface area being what it was, that it was about a quarter the size in terms of territory.
The larger continent was about the same size as Australia. The smaller one with its thousands of islands would have been comfortably dwarfed by Europe, and the remaining land masses really weren’t worthy of the name “continent” at all.
And even a planet that small was a bloody nightmare to try and defend with a handful of ships. In real terms, the fleet could keep a decent angle of fire on the few hundred miles around Lavmuy and that was it—any further afield and the atmosphere started interfering with orbit-to-air firing solutions.
“Another incoming warp signature, sir.”
Sleep. He was snatching it where he could and the fleet was holding up pretty well, but the fact was that they had to call general quarters every couple of hours as Hierarchy forces attempted to probe them again and again. Perhaps they knew that they could push and push and push and wear the humans down through sheer sleep deprivation.
They couldn’t afford to ignore any incoming signature, after all. The next one might be the Swarm-of-Swarms, and while there were contingencies in place to buy them time if the Hunters arrived before the system shield could be safely deployed, he was fervently hoping it wouldn’t be necessary.
“I see it,” he said, rubbing some alertness back into his eye.
“…Looks like our old friend Foo Fighter,” the lead analyst decided after a second, and Knight relaxed. ‘Foo Fighter’ was the nickname they’d given to a speedy ship that had buzzed them a couple of dozen times, always careful to avoid being trapped. It was probably a Firefang deep-space scout, and it certainly moved like a scout, easily outmaneuvering everything Knight had through sheer straight-line speed. They’d clocked it pulling a quarter of a megalight when it had fled from a couple of Firebirds sent to intercept it.
If it came close enough it’d be blinded, pinned down and smashed in seconds, but so far the pilot—or whatever passed for the pilot—was being too cagey for that. And he was getting an annoyingly good look at the fleet every time he visited, too.
With a sigh, Knight ordered a couple of Firebirds to chase it off. The second their warp drives spun up, the scout turned and rabbited back out into the Gao system’s outer reaches.
“He’ll be back,” Knight predicted.
“There may turn out to be a pattern yet,” one of the analysts assured him.
“Thank you,” Knight nodded, not wanting to discourage the young man. The fact was, that scout had already gathered as much intelligence as the Hierarchy could possibly need, and while swatting it with a well-placed ambush would certainly be satisfying, it wouldn’t undo the damage.
God but he’d have made a deal with the devil at that moment to get Caledonia back. With her guns, sensors, EWAR and bulldog drones she’d have tipped the situation that little bit further, let him expand the fleet’s influence across more of the sky.
But, if wishes were fishes…Well, for a start one of their most valuable ships wouldn’t be a tumbling hunk of scrap metal right now. Her superstructure was mostly intact, and the wreck might be salvageable, but that would only be slightly quicker than building her replacement from scratch.
And it was now clear that they were going to need more than one like her.
He returned to reading the latest reports from ground-side. He had a lot to get through, before the next alarm…
He just knew there were going to be many more before they were finally secure enough to deploy a system shield.
Date Point: 14y4d AV
Hierarchy Communications Relay, Session 18 262 623 420
The Entity, Instance 33
Confusion worked to the Entity’s advantage.
The Hierarchy was too used to being able to depend on the network infrastructure of modern species to move, coordinate and evaluate the events of ‘meatspace.’ For them, having a whole planet become more and more cut-off from the network was exactly as shocking as a meatspace life-form would have found it to attempt to land on that same planet and find that their ship passed through it like a ghost.
Igraens were too removed from the realities of physical life, nowadays. Even Hierarchy agents, who spent more time than any other immersed in physical reality, wearing a body and experiencing creation through a body’s senses, were out of touch with the physical. None of them remembered being physical.
The Entity did. At its core, there was still the ghost of a confused and desperate young Human woman. Taken apart, edited and put back together wrong, perhaps, but still there, and still feeding her most ancient instincts into the way the Entity looked at things.
Those instincts made it clear, from watching the Hierarchy’s strategic planning sessions, that the Igraens were badly overestimating how much the Humans could know and did know.
The Entity had delicately encouraged their mistaken impressions, where it could. Mostly, however, it waited and watched. Its enemies were slowly hanging themselves, there was no need to intervene.
Even though it was, little by little, beginning to grow <bored>.
++0018++: We must presume that 0020 was killed. He will be restored from backup, but I doubt that will shed any light on why the Hunter scouts made such an enormous blunder at such a sensitive moment.
++0015:++ At least that ship’s dying blast didn’t catch all of them.
++0018++: It may as well have. The wormhole disruption field extends nearly four light hours. The remaining Hunter scouts can’t warp out of the field without being detected and interdicted, and the Alpha-of-Alphas continues to refuse our invitation to jump to our beacon. It doesn’t trust us.
++0012++: <Grudging admiration> Smart of it.
++0018++: <Irritation> …Yes. True. We let that thing get much too intelligent.
++0005++: <firm; exasperated> Enough half-speak. Are we winning this war?
++0018++: …No. The Humans have established total dominance of the lines of communication and supply, they have the upper hand in orbit, and what few reports we can extract from our ground forces suggest that they are divided, uncoordinated and blind while the Humans and Gaoians are becoming increasingly coherent, organized and mobile. If they were to deploy a system forcefield now to lock out the Swarm…
++0012++: <Alarm> Why haven’t they? Is it possible they are aware of Dark Eye?
The Entity metaphorically pricked up its ears.
++0018++: I…have no way of knowing. There are other plausible explanations, but the planetary defense facilities groundside are practically helpless already. Possibly they are simply being cautious and would prefer to completely consolidate their hold on the planet before they deploy a shield. I don’t think they would allow Dark Eye to exist for long if they became aware of it, however.
++0005++: <Skeptical> Dark Eye is no space station, it’s a moon. How could they possibly destroy it?
++0015++: They still have the Hazardous Environment Assault Team.
++0005++: …True.
There was a comparatively long and solemn pause; a rarity in Hierarchy sessions.
++0005++: <Command; Immediate> 0015, you are reassigned. Take over Dark Eye and prepare it to repel a boarding force. We must assume that the deathworlders either already know about it, or will discover it soon.
++0015++: <Grim> Yes, 0005.
++SYSTEM NOTIFICATION: USER 0015 HAS LEFT THE SESSION++
++0005++: The rest of you, tend to your operations. I will contact you individually with further instructions. This session is concluded.
++SYSTEM NOTIFICATION: ADMIN 0005 HAS CLOSED THE SESSION++
++LOGGING OUT++
Interesting. Very interesting indeed.
Like a half-glimpsed vision of a giant squid jetting away into the abyssal black, the Entity vanished back into the network structure again, and began tracking down whatever it could find of this ‘Dark Eye.’
It was <grateful> to have something to do again.
Date Point: 14y4d AV
Quarterside Park, Folctha, Cimbrean, the Far Reaches
Kevin Jenkins
“WURF!”
Kevin danced aside as a dog bigger than any he’d even heard of thundered past with a handful of chittering Gaoian cubs on its back and a young Mother fluttering in its wake like an anxious leaf.
He wasn’t sure whether to laugh or be concerned. That thing had paws like a couple of shovels and enough muscle to fill for half the cast of an action movie, but it seemed friendly enough. Its barking had a percussive component like standing in front of the speakers at a heavy metal concert.
It vanished into the crowd, and Kevin shrugged and picked his own way toward the pavilion tent that he’d learned was the command center for this whole refugee shit-show. The park, usually a well-groomed grassy paradise perfect for ball games and picnics, looked more like the hungover end of a music festival. The grass was mud, with chickenwire-wrapped boards laid across it here and there for people to walk on. *Everybody*’s pants and footwear were dusty brown to mid-calf and the air smelled of mud too, below the scents of cooking and of Gaoians who’d gone too long since their last dust bath.
He’d worn jeans and boots, with an MBG black polo shirt. This was neither the time nor place for businesswear.
The admin tent was a little haven from the managed chaos outside. It was humid and full of a grassy reek, but well-lit and there was a tarp underfoot with a brush mat by the entrance to keep the tarp from getting slippy. Somebody was obviously good at thinking about the little things.
Kevin knew Chief Arés of old. He’d been the cop investigating Terri Boone’s murder, a lifetime ago now. Or ten years at least, which felt like the same thing.
Despite that shared past, their relationship was a purely professional one. Arés was one of Folctha’s most senior government officials after all, and popular with it—If his post had been an elected one, Arés would have held it every time. As it was, Folctha’s ministers were very content indeed to lift their hands off and let him do his thing.
Like Kevin, he hated the official functions. Kevin mostly got out of them by sending LeVaughn on the grounds that the Byron Group, as Folctha’s biggest investor, needed some representation there, but the representation should probably be somebody who was comfortable around a canapé buffet. But sometimes, fate conspired to put them in the same room, sharing small talk.
They never really talked. Kevin suspected that Arés still had some unresolved guilt over Terri’s death, and for his own part Kevin wasn’t eager to rub that particular wound. It had never healed properly. Their relationship was purely professional, and seemed likely to stay that way.
Still. Arés was looking good considering the last time Kevin had seen him, he’d been wheelchair-bound and struggling with it. Now there was a healthy, vigorous, powerful man prowling the tent, inserting his opinion where it was asked for, giving his instructions where they were needed, and obviously running on practically zero sleep.
“Chief Arés?”
The Chief glanced his way, nodded, excused himself and slipped between the banks of temporary tables to shake his hand.
“Mister Jenkins. It’s been a while.”
Kevin returned the handshake warmly. “Heard you folks were looking for somewhere to put refugees.”
Arés nodded, and there was definitely a touch of relieved sigh under his breath as he did so. “If we could send the male refugees to Chiune Station, that would be—”
“Done.”
Arés raised an eyebrow. He’d obviously been expecting a negotiation. “…Appreciated.”
“Anyone I should talk to to get the ball rolling?”
“There’s a Father Gyotin out there somewhere. His Clan are looking after the refugee males for now. He’s easy enough to recognize—reddish tufts on the ends of his ears, brown muzzle, black buddhist monk robes, probably drinking tea…”
He caught Kevin’s expression and shrugged.
There was no danger of forgetting that description at least, so Kevin just shook his hand. “You’re a busy man. I won’t keep you.”
“Thanks.”
Short and easy, far more so than spending an hour trying to get through to him via a phone call would have been. Moses was a big believer in showing up to handle shit in person for exactly that reason, and Kevin had to admit that the old man had a point.
Besides, it was worth seeing the face of this thing first-hand. Some tragedies were just too big to grasp through a TV screen or a cellphone news update, they demanded being there, seeing the misery, smelling the strain, hearing the sounds that sapient beings made when their whole world got dumped upside-down in an ocean of shit and they had to find the surface.
The only way to truly fix a problem was to understand it first.
Gyotin was, as Arés had predicted, not hard to find. In fact he was kind of like a rock in the middle of a lake, he seemed to change the flow of people around him. He wasn’t just drinking tea, he was performing a full-blown tea ceremony and somehow holding a handful of cubs rapt by doing so.
Most of them, when their cup arrived, sipped at it and pulled a face. One or two though drank theirs with a more thoughtful expression in those big innocent eyes, and stuck around after their friends had gone to find something else to do.
It wasn’t that they were carefree, Kevin decided. It was that playing and exploring and generally tearing around being a nuisance was how Gaoian cubs handled trauma. The ones who hung around Gyotin were clearly the older ones.
Gyotin gave them something to do, and ambled in Kevin’s direction. Kevin was mildly impressed—the Gaoian had given absolutely no indication of noticing his audience.
“You look confused,” he said.
As direct and to-the-point ways of opening a conversation went, Kevin had to award that one top marks. Especially because he wanted to answer the query it contained.
“Wasn’t aware Gaoians had a tea ceremony,” he said.
“We didn’t. But it’s a good idea, I think.” Gyotin extended a paw. “Father Gyotin, of Starmind.”
“Kevin Jenkins, Moses Byron Group. I hear you’re lookin’ for a place to put some refugees.”
“Ah! The infamous Byron Group.” Gyotin chittered cryptically and gestured to the table. “Tea?”
“I’m more of a coffee man, but…sure. Why not?”
Gyotin chittered again and returned to his tea set. “I tried coffee. I think only a deathworlder could love it.”
Kevin sat down opposite him “Way I hear it, y’all might be deathworlders. Legally.”
“Time will tell. The Dominion’s rating system is…esoteric.”
“Ain’t worth spit, you mean.”
Gyotin’s ears flopped as he wobbled his head from side to side and made a contemplative noise in the back of his throat. “I think maybe it attempts to define and categorize a thing that has no certain shape.”
That caught Kevin’s interest. “What do you mean by that, exactly?” He completely agreed, but Gyotin had a kind of thoughtful weight to him that said anything he ventured a strong opinion on—and that was a strong opinion, in soft language—had been thought on for some time. People like that were worth giving some time to.
“I think, maybe…Gao first meet humans with Sister Shoo. Much fear as I recall. Worry about disease, cultural contamination, possible warmongering and unstoppable rage…I saw footage—When that young woman gets righteously angry, sane things flee. …But.”
“But?”
“Is easy to project fears, yes? We see danger, we imagine worst possible way the danger is dangerous. Then we got to know her. Know Humans. See…scary, yes. Also see kindness. Strength. Giving. We see all these things. And it make us think. Maybe not all of us, but some of us. We have much in common. We too are scary, if you look from the right perspective.”
He handed Kevin a cup of tea. “And here we are.”
“But are you deathworlder scary?”
“Many think so.”
“I guess public opinion beats the actual truth any day…” Kevin muttered darkly, and sipped the tea. It wasn’t bad at all, though he’d never be a tea man. “Anyway. Refugees. Chief Arés said there’s some males need a place to crash.”
“Yes. Vital Clan officers, mostly. Critical ones that their Fathers and Champions send them from Gao, out of harm’s way.”
“…Jesus.” Kevin reconsidered, “Um, no offense. I guess. Vital? To what?”
“Their Clans. I don’t know details. They don’t really trust Starmind yet. Not an old-established Clan, no history. Nothing sinister I think, just…important.” Gyotin duck-shrugged in the best imitation a Gaoian could do of the human gesture. “Some studs and gene-stock, too. Clans think for the future, even now.”
“How liable is the Group gonna be if they start pirating ideas off each other or whatever?” Kevin asked.
“Not liable. Great Father Daar was quite clear—anybody whose secrets and games hurt the war effort has to worry about still having balls after he finds out. At least.” Gyotin chittered. “I think even Fyu didn’t scare people quite so much, maybe. Or perhaps time just took the sting out.”
“I gotta admit, I kinda skipped Gaoian history.”
“Great Father Fyu was…a hard man for a hard time. I think the word is warlord. He alone had the power to end the cycle of violence. I think…given Sartori’s speech, Fyu was maybe fighting something even bigger than he knew. We may never know.”
“He musta been somethin’ if Daar’s the one walkin’ in his footsteps,” Kevin acknowledged. “I met the big guy, briefly. He…makes an impression.”
“Fills a room. Literally and figuratively.” Gyotin chittered again, and finished his tea. “But enough about Great Fathers. How many can you take?”
“Chiune Station was built to handle about two thousand permanent residents, right now there’s about thirteen hundred humans livin’ there. Way I hear it, y’all don’t mind sleepin’ on top of each other?”
“Don’t mind? That’s what we prefer, if we can. If you can house two or three to a room…”
“That might tax the water systems a bit, but yeah, I reckon we could…”
“Then you have enough space for all our displaced males.”
Kevin nodded. “I’ll rustle up some transportation. Our own vehicles can handle it in a couple’a days, at worst. What about the rest? We ain’t got room for ‘em but I’m guessin’ you have plans.”
“We do what we can. The Gao on Cimbrean is…we are here for the future, when the Great Father builds it.”
“When?”
“He will build it, or he will die trying. And I do not think he will fail.”
“That sounds like a heck of a vote of confidence.”
“Call it…faith. Are you a man of faith, Mister Jenkins?”
Kevin burst out laughing. With his polo shirt on, the defaced crucifix tattoo on his right arm was on full display, but apparently its meaning was a little lost on Gyotin.
Fortunately, the Gaoian didn’t seem to take offense at the laughter and just cocked his head curiously. Kevin bit down the laugh, not wanting to be rude, and cleared his throat. “Did you notice the masterwork of profanity on my arm, Father?” he asked, gesturing to it.
“Yes,” Gyotin replied with a sly chitter. “I asked if you were a man of faith, Mister Jenkins. I did not ask if you were a Christian. In my experience, most people have faith in something.”
That took the last of the laughter out for Kevin. “I guess it depends on what you mean by faith,” he said. “Like…takin’ shit on no evidence? Blind trust in something? Faith like that is a surrender of reason, an’ I’ve been there and done that and it turned out badly. If you mean, like…a cause?”
Gyotin duck-nodded and tidied up his tea utensils and started to wash and wipe them. “A Jewish philosopher…name eludes me, actually…anyway, he called the root of a person’s faith their Ultimate Concern. Everyone has one. It was his view that the real challenge of life…”
He paused in wiping out the teapot, and gave Kevin a sly look.
“…is to know what your Concern ultimately is.” He smiled and packed the cups into their case. “Surely you can think of something in your life that you believe in spite of evidence to the contrary? The superiority of coffee over tea, perhaps?”
Kevin laughed again. It was easy to see why Gyotin was becoming a bit of an Internet sensation. He’d have to subscribe to the Clan Starmind youtube channel.
“I dunno,” he confessed. “I know what I wish about people. Less stupid tribalism, more honesty, more facts. I wanna believe that we can be better than we are, you know?”
Gyotin flicked an ear and straightened up. He looked pointedly around at the refugee camp surrounding them, with its army of soup-kitchen volunteers, drivers, medics, workers or just the people who were there to provide comfort and a blanket.
“Mister Jenkins,” he said, “It is hard to see how you could be.”
“…We can be,” Kevin insisted. “I know it. You’re only seein’ the best of us, you don’t see the shit we’re wrestlin’ with back on Earth, like those APA fucks or the ‘God-hates-condoms’ brigade, the ‘only-white-people-can-be-racist’ dickwads and all the other fifty shades of asshole. There’s a lot better we could be. This here? This is the fuckin’ exception, man, and the real humanity needs to aspire to this, not…” He trailed off, uncharacteristically lost for a way to voice his thoughts. “…We can be better,” he finished lamely.
Gyotin actually beamed.
“So,” he said, and closed his tea case with a snap. “You are a man of faith after all.”