Read Online The Fenris Device by Brian Stableford - Free Book Online Page A

story. Defensive weaponry tends to be even more effective when used offensively, You can’t imagine the interstellar chaos that resulted from the Gallacellan space wars. I wasn’t in them. This is still history. Maybe I can’t imagine. But my host could.
    At the time I was a Gallacellan, they were making a lot of fast headway toward picking up the pieces. There was nobody around to watch them—they had their area of the galaxy to themselves, except for a couple of promising races who got steamrollered in the wars. The Khor-monsa and the humans were yet to arrive on the interstellar scene so far as the Gallacellans were concerned.
    Something has happened between then and now, I said, reflecting on the utterly non-warlike Gallacellan civilization.
    Yes, it has, and I’m pretty sure I can tell you what. Unlike humans, the Gallacellans have an inordinately ordered culture. They have a strong sense of community. The sense of disaster which prevailed after the wars was far more acute than anything a human is capable of feeling—so it seems to me. The Gallacellans decided to give it up. Now, I know that to a human the idea of giving up war and weaponry seems utterly ludicrous. But the Gallacellans were never quite as underhanded or as predisposed to cheating as humans. I’m not saying that to knock humanity—not in the least. It’s the way humans are and I accept that. I’m not sneering. I’m just pointing out that because humans evolved from a scavenger species they have certain characteristics which the Gallacellans—who evolved from a herbivore species—have not. The Gallacellans had the sense of community and the social order to do what the humans cannot. They gave it all up. They became, once again, a peaceful species. I think they retain a strong sense of shame—and this I can only analogize to the way the Khor-monsa felt about Myastrid. As you know, the Gallacellans are proud. I think the Gallacellans still remember their history—although I’d be willing to bet they specifically exclude the go-between caste from that knowledge—but they want to keep it to themselves. If you like, from a human standpoint, the Gallacellans are a race with a guilt complex. But you know that the alien standpoint can never be reckoned from the human way of thinking.
    I know, I said. I was beginning to understand. I was probably the only individual in the whole galaxy who was privileged to know about the skeletons in both the Khormon cupboard and the Gallacellan cupboard. Lucky me. Was there a skeleton in the human cupboard as well? Of course not. We don’t hide our skeletons—we display them prominently to scare away the neighbors.
    And the Varsovien ? I asked.
    Your guess is as good as mine, he said. You know what I know. You suspect what I suspect.
    I did indeed. The Gallacellans had abandoned their weaponry. But they’d been just that little bit careful. They’d left some of it where—if anyone wanted it enough—they might just be able to get it back again. They couldn’t build more—not with the whole race carrying around a sense of shame. Not yet, anyhow. Not for another thousand years, maybe, when the memories had worn a bit thinner. But suppose there was one tiny section—one caste, say—which was just shameless enough to guard the secret of where a few of the warships had been left. Places where no one would ever find them, but places from which a really determined—almost suicidal—man might be able to bring them back. Just suppose.
    All that remained was just two good questions. One: How did Maslax know that the Varsovien was armed? And two: Why did the Gallacellans want their weapons back?
    The second question was a very worrying one indeed.
    I was worrying about it quite fiercely when I felt something cold at the back of my neck, in between the two sets of electrodes which connected my nervous system to the nerve net of