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Authors: Eric S. Brown, Tony Faville
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provide the adequate recompense for the Darian’s troubles as apparently physical objects were of great value.
Xarn could still remember the exact words the Senior Fellow had used next. “The one who called himself Kiptin Firalk told us he would give us a great many base minerals if we did not reduce him to his constituents. So apparently you still possess a crude economy.”
That statement had led to over thirty Darian years of all-out war between the Gener and the Darian. At the end the Darian’s had learned that the Geners possessed technology far superior to their own and the Gener’s learned, to their delight, more about the battle practices and rituals of a primitive species when faced with a struggle for their existence.
By the time it came for peace treaties, the Dariens had started to take the advantage in the conflict for while the Gener’s technology was superior. They just didn’t have the numbers or the ferocity, if they possessed any, to ultimately win. Xarn remembered that the Geners had offered many, many base minerals and other resources to compensate the Darians for their losses and to buy peace.
That war had taken place over three hundred cycles ago. No one Xarn knew had fought in it so why did he hate them so much he mused as Senior Fellow Milar walked unhurriedly through the door click clacking away at a data device as always.
“Perhaps it was because they see themselves as the next evolution of life and not just Darian life but all sentient life,” mused Xarn silently as he politely inclined his long triangular ears in a gesture of respectful greeting. The gesture went unnoticed by the preoccupied Milar, but Xarn was certain it had been picked up by the Gener’s environmental and observational recording devices and would be reviewed and analyzed by the Senior Fellow’s staff late into the night. At that thought, Xarn allowed himself an inaudible purr of satisfaction.
Like the Xa-Tid Battle Lord seated across from him, Milar wasn’t technically an ambassador either. His title of Senior Fellow meant that he led and organized a large contingent of Gener scientists. Apparently, the entire species were scientists given over to nothing but scientific analysis of their reality and they did see reality as belonging to them.
All the other races were simply to be studied and learned from for any beneficial characteristics. Xarn momentarily regretted that they had not left self preservation as a species off their list of things to study as Milar chose to stand in the best place to record and analyze this meeting which was near the plastisteel windows of the conference room.
Xarn had never seen Milar sit and sometimes wondered if he could. His apparel was also unusual in that the only exposed surface of his body was his neck and head. The rest was covered in a bluish pliant material with all manner of apparatus that Xarn could not begin to guess the function. Then again, that’s why he had his own team of analysts that would be up late into the night studying every ounce of information from this encounter of the races. The Darians had learned the value of knowledge the hard way.
As Xarn stared past Milar through the large round plastisteel windows of the conference room, he detected a faint haze on the atmosphere. The haze was obviously not water vapor but rather caused by industrial processes.
Xarn made a mental note that this brownish gas meant that the war did not bode well for the Earth Republic as they tried to maintain their home planet as a paradisiacal garden, well, a human’s version of paradise anyway. So if they were not scrubbing this pollutant from their atmosphere, it must mean that the resources to do so were needed elsewhere.
Xarn slowly extended and retracted the claws on his hands. It was one of the early meditation practices of Ka. The first one he had learned in fact. He found it calmed him when he was in danger of becoming irritated as he was now.
The source was not
Xarn could still remember the exact words the Senior Fellow had used next. “The one who called himself Kiptin Firalk told us he would give us a great many base minerals if we did not reduce him to his constituents. So apparently you still possess a crude economy.”
That statement had led to over thirty Darian years of all-out war between the Gener and the Darian. At the end the Darian’s had learned that the Geners possessed technology far superior to their own and the Gener’s learned, to their delight, more about the battle practices and rituals of a primitive species when faced with a struggle for their existence.
By the time it came for peace treaties, the Dariens had started to take the advantage in the conflict for while the Gener’s technology was superior. They just didn’t have the numbers or the ferocity, if they possessed any, to ultimately win. Xarn remembered that the Geners had offered many, many base minerals and other resources to compensate the Darians for their losses and to buy peace.
That war had taken place over three hundred cycles ago. No one Xarn knew had fought in it so why did he hate them so much he mused as Senior Fellow Milar walked unhurriedly through the door click clacking away at a data device as always.
“Perhaps it was because they see themselves as the next evolution of life and not just Darian life but all sentient life,” mused Xarn silently as he politely inclined his long triangular ears in a gesture of respectful greeting. The gesture went unnoticed by the preoccupied Milar, but Xarn was certain it had been picked up by the Gener’s environmental and observational recording devices and would be reviewed and analyzed by the Senior Fellow’s staff late into the night. At that thought, Xarn allowed himself an inaudible purr of satisfaction.
Like the Xa-Tid Battle Lord seated across from him, Milar wasn’t technically an ambassador either. His title of Senior Fellow meant that he led and organized a large contingent of Gener scientists. Apparently, the entire species were scientists given over to nothing but scientific analysis of their reality and they did see reality as belonging to them.
All the other races were simply to be studied and learned from for any beneficial characteristics. Xarn momentarily regretted that they had not left self preservation as a species off their list of things to study as Milar chose to stand in the best place to record and analyze this meeting which was near the plastisteel windows of the conference room.
Xarn had never seen Milar sit and sometimes wondered if he could. His apparel was also unusual in that the only exposed surface of his body was his neck and head. The rest was covered in a bluish pliant material with all manner of apparatus that Xarn could not begin to guess the function. Then again, that’s why he had his own team of analysts that would be up late into the night studying every ounce of information from this encounter of the races. The Darians had learned the value of knowledge the hard way.
As Xarn stared past Milar through the large round plastisteel windows of the conference room, he detected a faint haze on the atmosphere. The haze was obviously not water vapor but rather caused by industrial processes.
Xarn made a mental note that this brownish gas meant that the war did not bode well for the Earth Republic as they tried to maintain their home planet as a paradisiacal garden, well, a human’s version of paradise anyway. So if they were not scrubbing this pollutant from their atmosphere, it must mean that the resources to do so were needed elsewhere.
Xarn slowly extended and retracted the claws on his hands. It was one of the early meditation practices of Ka. The first one he had learned in fact. He found it calmed him when he was in danger of becoming irritated as he was now.
The source was not
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