Chapter 26 Dream On
“You have chosen a dangerous path Altaira.” The Krell with the gray frock seldom spoke but had seized control of the dream this time. He was the Philosopher and disclosed he was a blood relative to the female Krell identified as the Historian. “We were correct to fear the Garon and you are proving those fears justified.”
Alta was fully aware she was dreaming, but she was also deeply interested in what her four Krell visitors had to say, dreaming or not. “What path is that,” she asked “and what have I done for anyone to fear? I am human, or Garon if you prefer and I can't change that. It was never a problem until now. Why?”
“With one exception your anatomy and physiology are all Garon but that part of your brain that was modified is Krell and it has a voice in your conscious and subconscious. It is now in a struggle with your Garon mind. Which voice you listen too is your choice and you have chosen to elevate the Garon and suppress the Krell.” said the Teacher. Of the four Krell dream visitors, the Teacher had the most contact with Altaira in the past 17 years. She was not merely a language instructor but also her greatest source of comfort when she was troubled. Something was changing in their relationship and there was no comfort in what Alta was being told now.
The Krell Scientist of the group rarely spoke but this dream was an exception. “The head surrogate of this outpost is aware of you giving aid to the Garon. That endangers this outpost. Together with the other surrogates, they will decide how to handle this threat and breach of Krell law.”
“What I don't understand,” Alta pleaded “is how the Garon, inferior in so many ways to the Krell, could be a threat.
You must explain that or nothing you say makes sense. Why can't my Krell and human conscious and subconscious coexist?”
Alta was turning in her sleep now, waking Adams, breaking his hug from behind her and giving him an elbow in the face as she turned. He remained motionless as Alta spoke to the Krell in her sleep in their language. He knew about her dreams and decided not to wake her but to let the dream finish of its own accord. “Stop stalling and tell me.” she asked.
“When we first met the Garon,” the Historian Krell began, “we believed they could learn from us, not only the sciences, but our behavioral discipline and ethics as well. We believed they would learn to be peaceful, cooperative and ordered.”
The Historian had struck a nerve and Alta could not contain her response. “Don't you mean docile, obedient and unquestioning? Isn't that what you expected from the Garon?”
“Be still and learn.” came the reaction from the Historian and for the first time ever revealing a hint of impatience. “We assisted the Garon with migration to other worlds long before they achieved faster than light travel. We gave them the keys to paradise and they abused it. They fought with each other, they killed and they destroyed despite our best efforts. They reduced their civilizations to ashes and crept to the edge of extinction, only to recover, rebuild and repeat the cycle again and again and again. We decided isolation was preferable to contact. We decided we would not engage the Garon until they achieved faster than light travel. We believed that milestone would coincide with a higher ethical standard, but it has not.”
Alta had listened but her own experience was limited to what she had read in the historical records of Earth. The cyclical pattern the Krell described was not unusual, so what was the point of the observation? “You are evading my question.” Alta said with the deliberate tone of a challenge, “What did you fear from the Garon?”
“Contamination and corruption child!” The Philosopher said it loudly and boldly. “They caused some of our kind to question our perfect civilization and to doubt the control we had over ourselves. We, the Krell, had eliminated crime, mental illness, injustice and destructive behavior and now the Garon introduced a deadly vice. Those Garon that held the greatest promise to emulate our standards of ethical behavior were the most infected and infectious, spreading what they called humility to the scientists who studied them.”
“Humility a vice?” Alta questioned.
“Yes,” the Historian continued, “the Garon dared question our perfection and the benefits it would bestow on them. We offered them paradise and they rejected it! Their doubts infected some of our scientists and then spread to the general population. The leadership had to take extraordinary measures to stop the contamination and corruption from spreading.”
“Humility a vice?” Alta asked again. “I don't understand.” Alta went on to explain. “To the Garon, from what I have read and learned, humility is a virtue, the opposite of pride, which is a vice. My experience living with the Garon is limited but verifies that what I read is true.”
The Philosopher jumped in immediately. “We Krell eliminated the vice of humility as an obstacle to achieving greatness. We would not allow our genius to be restrained by an artificial barrier erected by an undisciplined mind. We had undertaken a divine and glorious project. We would not let that be sabotaged by the corruption of an inferior