Absurd legs of mutton in hand, Cuby and I walked up the dusty road toward Mount Mirrak, the sun high enough in the sky now that even the steep slopes around us weren’t enough to keep us in shade.
And as we walked, she explained.
“The hierarchy has two courts,” said Cuby. “The Court of the Council and the Court of the Crown. The Council has more power in the long term, the Crown more power in the short term—and that’s a simplification, but that’s basically how it works. There’s also a group called the executors, but they’re not important right now. The point is, I was an administrative phrenodine who worked as a left hand in shadow to a taxin el named Ortica. I helped her rise from the position of assistant executor to councilor’s aide and then, eventually, councilor.”
She smiled and seemed to look wistfully into the distance. “I wish you knew a little more, but Ortica’s election was something of an upset—it shifted the power balance between the Council and the Crown and helped her faction get something they’d been fighting toward for a very long time.”
“And that was?” I asked, talking around a mouthful of mutton.
“Translight conduit construction!” she said proudly. “We shifted it to first priority for the executors, where it will stay for a term of twenty-six years, barring temporary emergency measures from the Crown. And I know this might sound inconceivably arrogant for a phrenodine, but I’m not sure Ortica could have done it without me.”
“Prideful, maybe,” I said. “But ‘arrogant for a phrenodine?’ You were one of her most vital staff, weren’t you? If she could have done it without you, then you were probably being underutilized.”
Cuby laughed. “Thanks, Alatar. But don’t let anybody else know that I ever said my work had an effect on the actual running of the Hierarchy.”
“All right.”
“Everything we do is built off those translight conduits,” Cuby said, continuing. “Everything. It’s always seemed so bizarre to me that a species who spends so much time walking around on two feet cares less about transportation than phrenodine, who are immobile.” She shrugged. “Anyway, my job was to administer Ortica’s will in all those parts of the contest that take place in shadow—the spying, the blackmail, the libel, the killing. Those sorts of things.”
“I see,” I said, trying to take this in as I looked over at my cheery companion. I hesitated, then said: “Where I’m from, it’s… very much frowned upon to do any of those things if you’re a political leader.”
“Oh, very much so!” Cuby said emphatically. “It’s no different in the Hierarchy. Hence why you need a very competent person to do them.”
“And so you killed people to get counselor Ortica in power.”
“I know, I know—you value life. And it’s true that now that I have… more human feelings, I can feel the biological impulse that might make you question my deeds.” Cuby shook her head. “And let me tell you, it isn’t pleasant. The last killing that I did before I uploaded here was an engineering squad—two telorians and about a dozen lamue—that we’d sent to a planet to sabotage its atmosphere scrubbers.”
“To help Ortica win the election.”
“Mhmm!” said Cuby. “It’s sort of complicated, but you’ve got the gist. Anyway, I spaced them on the return trip—the usual sort of thing.”
The usual sort of thing. My mouth had gotten very dry. I put away the meat I’d been snacking on up to that point.
“But now that I’m part-human in my senses,” Cuby said, carrying on in a conversational tone. “It’s like I think differently about the whole thing. Pointless, too—it doesn’t change anything, but now I start to imagine the whole affair through their eyes.” She lifted her hands and made two fists. Opened them. “Their… bodies. I imagine walking on to the ship with my comrades—physically, as if I’m there. And I imagine looking forward to the arrival at my home. And then… I imagine the doors opening. And I hate it.”
She’d gotten very quiet as she spoke, her words coming more slowly. But a moment later, she seemed to simply banish the emotion, turning to me with a smile on her face. “It’s very strange, these negative emotions. It helps me understand the taxin el even better—and I thought I already understood them quite well, you know?”
“But… you didn’t….” I reached out and made a vague gesture, struggling to find the words. Cuby had been a professional mass murderer. It was exactly what I had worried about, only worse—and somehow, there was something even more bothersome about her sudden turn toward remorse, something utterly horrifying in the idea that the taxin el had used her to do this because she simply couldn’t understand what she was doing.
“It bothers you,” she stated simply, looking ahead.
“Yes!” I said suddenly. “Of course it bothers me, Cuby—it should bother me.”
“Phrenodine are good at surpassing even their moral impulses, let alone ignoring those that govern other species. Its what makes us so good at being left hands in shadow.”
I sighed. Clutched my head. “So you just… didn’t care? Total apathy?”
She shrugged. “I cared about the translight conduits. I cared about what we were building, and the fact that their lives couldn’t continue if what we wanted was to come to pass.” She peered at me. “It’s strange—you are so like a taxin el sometimes, but then sometimes… it’s like you’re nothing like them.”
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I had no idea what to say, so I was silent. Cuby walked beside me, seemingly thinking for a few moments. Then she spoke again:
“Look,” she said. “It’s not that I’m unfeeling and have no morality at all. It’s rude to simplify down to biology instead of social norms… but you don’t know our social norms. So I’m just going to really oversimplify and say that I considered them wasteful and parasitic.”
“Parasitic,” I echoed, my mind picturing a dozen people suffocating and freezing in space.
“Phrenodine… we have a relationship with selfishness that’s hard to understand for anyone who doesn’t want to. It’s not that being selfish is bad, you’re supposed to be selfish—but it has to be a healthy selfish. Taxin el are especially good at the good kind of selfishness—they have all these little micro-hierarchies that they’re scrambling over each other for all the time. Even when they cheat, they show aptitude. So they’re selfish, but as a way of organizing, of deciding who’s the best.”
“Okay,” I said.
“The lamue were being an unhealthy kind of selfish when they wanted to live,” Cuby said matter-of-factly. “Of course it’s understandable that they wanted to live—it would be another kind of unhealthy if they hadn’t.”
“I see.”
“But their desire to live was against the health of the system that even they rely on and exist within. The fact that lamue of all species would need a phrenodine to see that and fix it isn’t at all unusual, either.”
“Okay,” I said, reaching up to rub my temples. “Okay.”
“Look,” said Cuby. “I know this might sound… morally insane to you? I’m trying to help you figure out how you would frame it if you were the one who were killing those lamue.”
“I don’t know, Cuby. I just don’t think I would do that.”
“There has to be something that would compel you to, though,” said Cuby. “I mean, humans evolved, right?”
“Maybe,” I said softly, realizing with horror that I didn’t even know this much—not if there were ancient, super-advanced humans somewhere else in the galaxy.
“Maybe?” Cuby asked. “What does that mean?”
“I need to know what year it is,” I muttered. “Look: it’s not important. Really, Cuby, I don’t know if anything could make me kill a bunch of innocent people.”
Cuby sighed. Then she glanced over at me, seeming nervous. “Okay, Alatar—I want to try something, but will you promise not to get angry with me for trying it? If you don’t like what I say next, I’ll apologize and I won’t bring it up again, all right? But I think it might help.”
“Um, okay,” I said, uneasy with where this was going.
“Imagine you had a baby—a real genetic baby. Actually,” she said, her face brightening as if a great idea had come to her. “Imagine the baby is your clone. It has all your genetics, not just half. And unless you kill—Alatar, why are you laughing?”
But I couldn’t help myself. As awful as the whole conversation had been thus far, Cuby’s understanding of human morality was, bluntly put, hilarious.
“Please,” I said, almost doubled over. “Please just keep going.”
“Alatar, this is deeply taboo!” she said, crossing her arms before looking down at them like they’d behaved unexpectedly. “Trying to manipulate a taxin el by using their moral predilection for protecting their offspring is not something that one does, no matter how subtle.”
But I was still laughing. “Okay,” I said. “Look, Cuby: humans don’t like our children just because they have our genetics.”
“But—”
“Wait,” I said, raising a hand and silencing her. “We protect our children because our senses tell us to—when we see a child hurt, we care more than if we see any other person hurt, that sort of thing. And parents grow attached to their kids in a very special way, but that can happen even with adopted kids. Now, the reason we feel the way we feel is because it generally helps our genes survive—or at least, I think that’s true. I’m not a biologist. But we don’t consciously associate any of this with our genetics.”
But Cuby’s eyes had gone wide with shock somewhere in the time I’d been speaking, and her expression was still one of awe when I finished. “You…” she whispered. “You actually called them… kids.”
“Okay, that’s taboo?”
“I don’t know what you’re saying in your language, Alatar,” said Cuby. “But you basically just called human children by a word you’d use for… animal cubs.”
“Yeah,” I said. “Kids are baby goats, too.”
“Sariv idal,” she whispered, turning to face forward, her face frozen in shock.
“Haroshi said that back in Oromar’s Bastion,” I said, remembering. “After we killed his companion. What does it mean?”
Cuby blinked, then looked over at me, still seeming shaken. “It’s from an old language spoken by the taxin el,” she said. “It’s curious that it doesn’t translate. It means impossible or unbelievable, but bad.”
I nodded. “You said something like it back when we were in Aranar,” I said. “What was it?”
Cuby sighed. “Sariv akata. Impossible or unbelievable, but good—so good that one feels awe, unworthiness. Can we not talk for a while? I need to think.”
“Uh… okay, Cuby,” I said, worried that I had pushed her too far, somehow. I couldn’t imagine what it was like for her to be dealing with me—a human who defied so many of her impossibly steep expectations—and her own sudden turn toward another race’s biological morality.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “It’s just… I’m worried that if we go any longer I’ll lose my self-mastery again. And I’ll need it later.”
“You don’t need to apologize, Cuby,” I told her.
But I could tell from the look she gave me that she’d rather I’d just accepted it. I sighed, then turned my gaze ahead of us—at the road, and Mount Mirrak looming up ahead of us before being swallowed by an immense gray cloud.
Silence, I thought, would be good for me.
I needed to do some thinking myself.