"They aren’t war machines," I objected. "Troyen stayed at peace two hundred years before Sam got everybody riled up."
"Two hundred sterile years," Dad replied, "unnaturally imposed when Queen Wisdom sucked up to the League of Peoples. She was the one who forced warriors and gentles and workers to live together, poisoning each other with their own pheromones, diluting what they should be…"
"And what they should be is separate from each other?" I asked. "The way your recruiters ripped apart families into single-caste slave camps and brainwashed them—"
"Like hell I brainwashed them!" Dad interrupted. "They were brainwashed before. I returned them to their true strength. You think it’s an accident that when they’re segregated, the gentles become brilliant tacticians, the warriors become unstoppable soldiers, and the workers become uncomplaining servants? Open your eyes, boy — it’s not an accident, it’s what nature intended. Evolution made Mandasars into perfect infantry, perfect strategists, perfect civilian support… with an iron-willed queen at the top to dictate what everyone else should be doing. That’s the natural state of the Mandasar world, Jetsam: a crystal-clear division of duty."
"No," Festina said quietly, "that’s only one natural state of the Mandasar world. Evolution also provided the other paradigm: castes mingling with each other, their pheromones balancing each other’s personalities. Less aggressive warriors, less slavish workers, less tunnel-visioned gentles. Not as ruthlessly efficient, but a way of life where everyone has more breathing space."
"A way of life where everyone is weak," my father sneered. "Easy prey the moment some other Mandasar tribe goes onto a segregated military footing."
Festina said, "Really? If turning militaristic was always stronger, wouldn’t evolution get rid of the other possibility after a while? But Mandasar pheromones are tuned to make both ways of life possible: segregated and unified. Historically, I’m sure Mandasars sometimes needed to abandon everything else and gear up for war… but they also had to be prepared for peace. Otherwise, what would they do when they’d defeated all their available enemies?"
"There are always more enemies," my father replied dismissively.
"Maybe," Festina admitted, "if you go out and look for them. But to do that, you have to invent the peaceful art of boat-building. And navigation. And cartography. And systems of government that hold your empire together when your queen is too far away to make every decision for you." She shook her head. "Success in war always leads to the demands of peace, Admiral. Suppose tens of thousands of years ago, the Mandasars did have a subspecies one hundred percent devoted to fighting; that breed didn’t survive, did it? Either they killed each other in some prehistoric Armageddon, or they starved to death because the workers became too bored and stupid to plant crops properly. Modern Mandasars — Mandasar sapiens — came out on top because they weren’t one-trick ponies."
She peered up intently at the glass-chested man on the battlements. "Glorify war if you want, Admiral York. A lot of people do, especially since the League has made armed conflict so rare. When no one’s seen combat for a long time, some folks get the idea they’re missing a primal source of energy. But fighting is only part of the story for any species, and the other parts are just as important."
"Other parts only become important after the fighting stops," my father retorted. "Kill or be killed, Ramos; that’s the fundamental issue, and everything else comes after, if you can spare the time. Don’t go writing poetry until you’re sitting on your enemies’ bones."
He waved his hand out beyond us, toward the approaching Black Army. They’d reached the last canal now, the one surrounding the palace like a moat. Soon they’d be driving their way across, breaching the palisade and storming onto the palace grounds. My father smiled. "This is what it always comes down to, Ramos. Naked aggression: might against might. You can rhapsodize about art and science and anything else you think is a great accomplishment, but nature doesn’t respect that superficial crap. Death is the one reality our universe truly acknowledges. That’s why Sam and I chose to start a war; I’ve devoted myself to life’s one overwhelming imperative."
"Killing those who threaten you?" Festina asked. "Yes."
"Eliminating those who are dangerous to you?"
"Right."
"The strong subjugate the weak?"
"Correct." He lifted his foot, then set it down on Plebon’s face again. "You have ten seconds to surrender or I’ll show you how ugly war can be."
"I may have ten seconds," Festina answered coldly, "but you don’t. You’re a dangerous non-sentient, threatening to kill a sentient being… and any nearby sentients have an absolute duty to stop you. You’re also a pompous jerk-off, Admiral, extolling the joys of conquest but failing to grasp the most important law of alclass="underline" no matter how tough you are, there’s always someone who can beat the living shit out of you." She clapped her hands once, sharp and loud. "Balrog!"
Like fire belching from a furnace, plumes of glowing red erupted from the stairwell. Crimson smoke, thick as a wall, exploded outward to sweep over my father and Dade, so fast the two men were coated with spores before they could react.
Dade shrieked and dropped his stunner, throwing his hands to his helmet. For ten long seconds, he tried to scrape his visor clear with his fingers, scrabbling at the dusty layer of moss that continued to thicken around him. Then some particularly hungry mass of spores managed to corrode through his tightsuit, down near his stomach where the front had been cut to expose the power circuits. Air puffed out from the suit’s belly, swirling the spores around like steam on a breeze. As the suit began to deflate, Dade howled and doubled over, like something was clawing at his gut. A moment later, he dropped out of sight behind the parapet wall, and his howling cut off dead.
As for my father — my son, my twin brother — he didn’t even have a tightsuit to protect him. In a single heartbeat, his head was enveloped by a spongy clot of moss: red wads of fuzz coating his hair, covering his eyes, clogging up his nose and mouth. I think he tried to scream, but the noise was muffled to an almost inaudible whine. He took two blind steps but couldn’t manage a third… more moss congealed around him every second, weighing down his legs, freezing him in place. His arms waved feebly till they became too heavy to move; already his body looked twice its original size, with still more spores accumulating all over, packing outward until the human shape was lost. Soon there was only a fuzzy red ball, man height and glowing as bright as a bonfire.
Twenty seconds of hold-your-breath silence. Then the top of that red-shining ball began to flatten in. Moment by moment, more of the ball sank away, spores sloughing off onto the stone parapet; and there was nothing underneath. No man. No bones. Nothing but solid moss. I could smell an overpowering buttered-toast odor on the wind that blew through the hole in our glass cube… and it made me think of a smugly satisfied predator that’s just eaten a nice meal.
As the ball of moss continued to dissolve, I could see that the glass chest plate hadn’t been consumed — it must have been indigestible. Also untouched was the tiny glass container that had once nestled in the man’s intestines. The container floated atop the mass of moss, like a bottle bobbing on a calm lake, while spores kept falling away. Within a minute, the ball that had once been my father shrank to nothing but a flat sheen of red on the parapet’s stone. For a moment more, the glass container remained motionless on that mossy bed… and I could just make out the tiny dot of scarlet inside, the Balrog spore my father had imprisoned.