Gaspard had made many vicariously proud noises about the extraordinary underdog outcome of the engagement beside the river, pointing to the scant losses among the humans and the Slaasriithi. But Caine’s memories kept showing him very different pictures: Unsymaajh toppling from his downward swoop, Qwara pitching backward with only a fragment of her head remaining, Xue’s limp collapse, or the imagined bird’s-eye view of Trent falling, falling, falling. And unbidden, Keith Macmillan’s tortured face rose up as well.
Gaspard eventually noticed that his references to the “wondrous deliverance” Riordan had effected for the legation did not seem to cheer the recipient of those panegyrics. But when the ambassador inquired if something was amiss, Caine deflected the inquiry, citing exhaustion. During his command of insurgents in Indonesia, Riordan had learned not to share regrets and remorse except with select persons, in private places, and after some time had passed. And Etienne Gaspard was never going to be such a person, despite how well he had ultimately risen to the challenges of their disastrous journey.
Riordan’s reveries ended abruptly when Yiithrii’ah’aash shifted in his framed stool. “You are uncharacteristically silent, Caine Riordan. Do your require more rest? Should I return later?”
“No, no. I was just…thinking. I had not been informed that you were coming today, although Ambassador Gaspard informed me that you shifted in-system three days after our engagement with the — with our enemies.”
“With the Ktor,” Yiithrii’ah’aash corrected.
Caine was silent, considered: Yiithrii’ah’aash’s identification of the Ktor as their attackers — and as humans — was not a probe, not a conjecture to elicit either confirmation or denial. It was uttered as a statement of fact. So it didn’t seem as though that extremely classified piece of information was so classified anymore. Indeed, maybe it never had been for the Slaasriithi. “How long have you known? About the Ktor, I mean.”
“‘Know’ is too strong a word. We suspected, some of us strongly. We Slaasriithi were not alone in this. We intuit that similar suspicions reside in the Dornaani Collective, particularly amongst the Custodians.”
“Then why has the issue not been raised?”
“The Accord is an organization that rightly connects the assurance of privacy to the assurance of peace. Races that presume no rights to impede upon each other tend to be able to coexist.”
“But if it turns out that one of them is a liar, that same coexistence can splinter in a second. With grave consequences.”
Yiithrii’ah’aash’s sensor cluster inclined slightly. “This is also true. As some of us have pointed out. However, over time, many Slaasriithi who suspected the true identity of the Ktor became hopeful that they had been mistaken, or that the Ktor had changed. It is difficult to imagine how so warlike and aggressive a subspecies could endure for so long without evolving into a less self-destructive social organism. But perhaps the more powerful inclination against seeking direct evidence of their biology arose from our own societies’ desire for tranquility. The question of Ktoran identity was a very unnerving topic, and full of dire consequences if it was revealed that they had misrepresented their nature, as has now occurred, here on Disparity. However, we did not foresee that the confirmation would take such a brutal shape, or how quickly it would follow the conclusion of the recent war. Yet perhaps this has been, as your idiom has it, a blessing in disguise.”
Riordan nodded. “But your suspicions of the true identity of the Ktor were hardly something you could ever fully forget.”
“Why do you say so, Caine Riordan?”
“Because, during the journey with W’th’vaathi, we had a conversation which indicated that your defense spores were tailor-made to work upon human biochemistry. That, in turn, suggests that we were among your most dangerous enemies in the distant past.
“But Earth wasn’t launching attacks against other species twenty millennia ago; it was still busy inventing fire. So the human threat which prompted you to devise these spores must have come from elsewhere. And then, when you joined the Dornaani in their Accord, there was already one other member race. A race that was both reclusive and secretive, but also aggressive, and for which no prior record existed: the Ktor. So you had to wonder: ‘is the Ktor claim that they are ammonia-based worms inside big metal tanks just a masquerade?’”
Yiithrii’ah’aash’s tone puzzled Riordan; the Slaasriithi inflections did not resemble those of humans, and this was one he had not heard before. “This is indeed what some of us wondered.”
Riordan sighed. “And now two humans have continued that fine tradition of treachery and aggression. Danysh sabotaged your ship and almost killed you along with us. Macmillan enabled a raid against the surface of a world that is, in interstellar terms, right next door to your home system. I’m half expecting you to tell me that our visit to Beta Aquilae, and this whole diplomatic envoy, has been called off after what my species has done to yours. Again.”
Yiithrii’ah’aash raised a tendril. “You misperceive. Our only concern is with your compromised subspecies, the Ktor.”
Caine frowned. “Compromised?”
Yiithrii’ah’aash’s tendrils waved, one following the other slowly. “The Ktor are not natural, not entirely.”
“In what way? And how can you tell?”
“Many of our biota can ‘taste’ other genecodes, particularly the difference between those which arise from mechanistic genetic alteration, and those which arise from natural evolution or inducement. The latter leaves no genetic detritus, to put the matter crudely. However, the former process — mechanistic alteration — restructures genes through externally forced or crudely imposed addition, removal, or modification of target codes.” Yiithrii’ah’aash may have read Riordan’s frown as incomprehension. “Let us put it this way: natural processes change genetics the way a hand smooths a clay pot on a turning wheel. Mechanistic processes are the blows of hammers, the cuts of knives, the gnawings of nanites. Many of our biota can, for lack of a better description, smell or taste the ragged code left by these artificial processes.”
Riordan suppressed a host of questions that this revelation stimulated about the Ktor, as well as about the genetic research opportunities that might arise through a partnership with the Slaasriithi. “I’m glad that you distinguish between us and the Ktor, Yiithrii’ah’aash, but the fact remains that two of my people brought war and death to Disparity. And the Ktor were using our clones and our equipment.”
Yiithrii’ah’aash oscillated his neck lazily: the equivalent of a shrug. “These statements are true, but they are also unimportant.” Perhaps perceiving the surprised expression on Riordan’s face, Yiithrii’ah’aash held up several didactic tendrils. “If I were to take a dead branch from the forest, and slay my clutch-sibling with it, may I then blame the forest for committing the murder? The forest only provided the object I used. The hand and the will that wielded it show us the culprit. The same holds true of what transpired on Disparity: it was not your doing. The Ktor were the hand and the will behind the treachery and the murder. They simply found the weak and the vulnerable among you and corrupted them to use as their tools.”
“Then isn’t human corruptibility at least partly to blame?”