Read Online Donald Moffitt - Genesis 02 by Second Genesis - Free Book Online Page A
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the Ascendist messiah for whom Kerthin and her friends had been waiting.
His name was Penser, and what he preached was a mindless violence that he described as a “cleansing.” The universe belonged to man by right, he told his disciples, and could not be shared with the Nar. He dismissed Nar largess. “To share is weakness,” he said. “To accept is weakness.” He advocated taking by force what the Nar were giving voluntarily. On Juxt One he had stirred his followers to acts of sabotage in which Nar had been killed. The abortive revolution had been hushed up by the horrified human settlers, and had not been recognized for what it was by the peaceable and unsuspecting Nar. Penser had fled under a false identity stolen from one of his disciples.
Now Penser proposed to hijack one of the great living starships and, with a few hundred followers, use it to take over a thinly inhabited moon of Jumb, the gas giant orbiting the Lesser Sun. The small Nar population there would be deported—killed if they resisted; the human colonists, Penser believed, would have no option but to go along with his plans once the deed was done.
The takeover would be accomplished before the Nar on nearby Ilf, the Lesser Sun’s principal inhabited planet, realized what was happening. After that, according to Penser, the Nar commonwealth would accept the situation to prevent useless further violence.
“They’ll let the humans have their one little world,” Kerthin assured Bram, mouthing Penser’s words.
The seized moon was to be the focal point from which humans would crowd the Nar out of the cosmos. Penser intended to step up the human breeding rate without bothering about gene editing. Humans could easily outbreed the Nar. “Do you realize that the human population of the universe could be doubled every twenty years?” Kerthin had said, her eyes shining.
Other worldlets would be taken over, one at a time—each as an accomplished fact to be presented to the Nar, with the dust allowed to settle between conquests and the Nar encouraged to believe that this time was the last. Penser had studied the ancient history of Original Man. Hitler, Napoleon, and Alexander had failed because they had bitten off more than they could chew. By the time the Nar woke up, Penser said, the human race would be ready to swallow Ilf—even scour the Father World itself!
But the starship hijacking went horribly wrong. The Nar, with a casual swipe of their great powers, put a stop to the mutiny and took all the humans aboard into custody—Penser’s followers and innocent passengers alike, making no distinction between them. Bram was one of the innocent bystanders caught up in the net.
It was very bad. Penser was dead—a suicide. But there were dead Nar, as well. Among them was Bram’s old tutor, Voth-shr-voth.
Voth’s death was a particular atrocity to the Nar. He had died under torture when Penser’s henchmen had attempted to force him—as the space tree’s acting biologist—to override the tree’s tropisms and make it spread the leaves of its lightsail on a course to the target moon.
Worse than that, Voth’s death had interrupted the final flowering of his life—his terminal change from male to female. All of Voth’s budding children had died with him when he had failed to reach a breeding pool in time.
The Nar had not understood until this time that their pets could bite. Their civilization ground briefly to a halt while they met in one of their grand touch conclaves to decide what to do about the human species.
Tentacle pressed to tentacle, radio sleeves linking the parallel meetings on all the nearby worlds, the entire Nar race became a single immense organism whose process of deliberation passed human understanding. The humans at the center of the vast tribunal—a sea of living Nar that stretched mile upon mile—waited and shuddered.
It was the Day of Wrath.
The humans were heard. When it was Bram’s turn to speak, he told them
His name was Penser, and what he preached was a mindless violence that he described as a “cleansing.” The universe belonged to man by right, he told his disciples, and could not be shared with the Nar. He dismissed Nar largess. “To share is weakness,” he said. “To accept is weakness.” He advocated taking by force what the Nar were giving voluntarily. On Juxt One he had stirred his followers to acts of sabotage in which Nar had been killed. The abortive revolution had been hushed up by the horrified human settlers, and had not been recognized for what it was by the peaceable and unsuspecting Nar. Penser had fled under a false identity stolen from one of his disciples.
Now Penser proposed to hijack one of the great living starships and, with a few hundred followers, use it to take over a thinly inhabited moon of Jumb, the gas giant orbiting the Lesser Sun. The small Nar population there would be deported—killed if they resisted; the human colonists, Penser believed, would have no option but to go along with his plans once the deed was done.
The takeover would be accomplished before the Nar on nearby Ilf, the Lesser Sun’s principal inhabited planet, realized what was happening. After that, according to Penser, the Nar commonwealth would accept the situation to prevent useless further violence.
“They’ll let the humans have their one little world,” Kerthin assured Bram, mouthing Penser’s words.
The seized moon was to be the focal point from which humans would crowd the Nar out of the cosmos. Penser intended to step up the human breeding rate without bothering about gene editing. Humans could easily outbreed the Nar. “Do you realize that the human population of the universe could be doubled every twenty years?” Kerthin had said, her eyes shining.
Other worldlets would be taken over, one at a time—each as an accomplished fact to be presented to the Nar, with the dust allowed to settle between conquests and the Nar encouraged to believe that this time was the last. Penser had studied the ancient history of Original Man. Hitler, Napoleon, and Alexander had failed because they had bitten off more than they could chew. By the time the Nar woke up, Penser said, the human race would be ready to swallow Ilf—even scour the Father World itself!
But the starship hijacking went horribly wrong. The Nar, with a casual swipe of their great powers, put a stop to the mutiny and took all the humans aboard into custody—Penser’s followers and innocent passengers alike, making no distinction between them. Bram was one of the innocent bystanders caught up in the net.
It was very bad. Penser was dead—a suicide. But there were dead Nar, as well. Among them was Bram’s old tutor, Voth-shr-voth.
Voth’s death was a particular atrocity to the Nar. He had died under torture when Penser’s henchmen had attempted to force him—as the space tree’s acting biologist—to override the tree’s tropisms and make it spread the leaves of its lightsail on a course to the target moon.
Worse than that, Voth’s death had interrupted the final flowering of his life—his terminal change from male to female. All of Voth’s budding children had died with him when he had failed to reach a breeding pool in time.
The Nar had not understood until this time that their pets could bite. Their civilization ground briefly to a halt while they met in one of their grand touch conclaves to decide what to do about the human species.
Tentacle pressed to tentacle, radio sleeves linking the parallel meetings on all the nearby worlds, the entire Nar race became a single immense organism whose process of deliberation passed human understanding. The humans at the center of the vast tribunal—a sea of living Nar that stretched mile upon mile—waited and shuddered.
It was the Day of Wrath.
The humans were heard. When it was Bram’s turn to speak, he told them
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