The following day, the little ship poked around in a huge concrete building that the team agreed was a power generating station. The Ti’ia mathematician and chemist peered intently at the display screen, and got opinions from the other Nebador citizens who could see. Timorafilia listened to the others describe language glyphs, then did her best to translate. K’storpo and M’palta asked questions, and the entire team, plus Ilika, discussed possible answers.
The five crew members from a medieval world felt completely lost.
A huge machine, sporting countless pipes and wires that snaked away in all directions, towered over them as they talked about its purpose. Soon a tense silence came over the entire mission team.
Timoradalia broke the spell by saying, “Uh . . . oh.”
“What?” Kibi questioned from her station.
Several others looked up from the bridge.
“Too soon to tell for sure,” K’storpo replied before anyone else could speak.
Hours later, after exploring the interior of another power generating plant, those who could see stared with wide eyes at a huge shaft that went straight down into the planet. It would have been big enough for the Manessa Kwi, if it wasn’t for the many ice-covered pipes that plunged into the shaft’s darkness.
Kibi immediately noticed the same tension that had come over the mission
NEBADOR Book Seven: The Local Universe 56
team at the last power plant.
“Bad news,” Timoradalia whispered.
Kibi looked at all her passengers, but could see that they weren’t yet ready to talk about it.
“We need to get into a city and look at some cultural expressions,”
K’storpo declared. “Tamia, you up for an excursion or two?”
“Sure!” the little artist replied. “I can almost see how I’m going to color them, but not quite.”
The city was a massive hive. Although it was constructed of concrete, steel, and glass, it was nonetheless completely hive-like in its look, feel, and layout. The little ship slowly explored large, round corridors, from which smaller tunnels branched, each lined with many round holes that led to individual rooms.
Dried, frozen husks littered the floor, all that remained of the winged creatures who did not leave in the three colony ships. M’palta asked a few questions about the scene, then fell silent.
Timorafilia translated language glyphs as others described them. After a while, K’storpo interrupted and reminded everyone that they were looking for graphic cultural expressions. They were looking for art.
The Manessa Kwi moved on, and soon found the art they were seeking in many places, from dining halls to toilet rooms.
Most of the paint was faded, usually just yellows and oranges, but the themes were clear. Scenes of battle and war showed the many other creatures who had once shared the planet, only to be proudly and methodically hunted to extinction. The death and destruction was usually carried out with high-technology weapons from aircraft, but occasionally the murals actually showed the winged insects stinging their prey to death.
From his station, Rini looked at the faces of the mission specialists, trying to judge their reaction. They didn’t seem too surprised, and even talked about similar times in the histories of their own peoples.
But then another mural was discovered, in a large assembly hall with places for thousands of insects to perch on metal rails. It was much more recent, judging by the brighter colors. A swarm of the insects, here painted
NEBADOR Book Seven: The Local Universe 57
unnaturally large and powerful, were stinging their planet to death. In the background, they could be seen moving on to other planets, treating them the same way, then heading off toward the stars.
A deathly quiet came over the entire mission team.
Mati noticed and whispered to Timorazonia, “Landing struts. I think we might be here awhile.”
Timoratamia the artist was in and out of the ship many times as the same theme was found in the newest art works all over the hive city, then in five other cities, scattered around the planet, that Rini picked at random.
At K’storpo’s request, the Manessa Kwi explored three more massive power plants, all with a shaft that plunged deep into the planet. After studying their tell-tale shape and entering a new search query, Rini announced that there were hundreds more like them.
Ilika, Sata, and Timoradalia crept about in another fuel conversion plant, again right next to a power plant, and the chemist verified that the former residents were indeed making huge amounts of crude space thruster fuel.
K’storpo remained silent as they found a level place to land and quietly shared a solemn meal. To everyone’s surprise, Arantiloria appeared, took on her purple-haired human form, and appeared to sit on the galley counter.
Kibi grinned at the mysterious seventh member of the crew, but a brief moment of eye contact nearly made the steward’s head spin, and she was forced to close her eyes and grab the sides of her seat, as if she had just looked into something deeper and more mysterious than she could imagine.
Sensing a presence, the mission leader turned his head in that direction for a moment, then twitched his mandibles to collect his thoughts. “I think I begin to see why Melorania was not in any hurry for this mission to take place
. . .”
“As a point of training,” Arantiloria interrupted, “I think we should let the new monkey mammal crew evaluate the situation.”
Mati and Sata looked at each other with wide eyes. Timorazonia, perched on the back of Mati’s seat, snickered.
Boro swallowed. “Are they . . . maybe . . . too bad to be rescued?”
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Timoradalia flopped back in her seat and rolled her many eyes.
Tizoromulia chittered at her with a scolding tone.
Boro smiled at the bickering pair of Ti’ias.
Sata took a deep breath. “Isn’t . . . every kind of people . . . bad . . . in some ways? My people would kill all the wolves and mountain lions . . . you know, canines and felines . . . if they could. They just haven’t figured out how yet.”
“Canines and felines on our planet eat people’s farm animals,” Mati explained to everyone. “I think you’re right, Sata. Every kind of people has to fight other creatures for food. If they didn’t, they would have . . . um . . . died out a long time ago.”
Rini could see M’palta nodding slightly.
Kibi dared to glance at Arantiloria again, but didn’t try to make eye contact. At the same time, a memory came to her, and she let her mind drift back to the medieval capital city, to Rumble Town, to the house of Doti the healer. “Ilika taught us something about this once . . . about the difference between . . .”
Sata’s hand shot up. “The difference between bad and . . .” Suddenly she stopped and scrunched her face as she searched for a word, but only found it in her native language. “Evil.”
Kibi translated the word for the mission team.
K’storpo’s mandibles twitched with large open movements that meant, they all knew, he was laughing.
Arantiloria
smiled.
After a break for dessert, one kind for insects and another for humans, Ilika could sense Arantiloria looking at him. He stood and organized his thoughts.
“A few worlds have open contact with Nebador, but most do not. A few individuals qualify for the Nebador Services, but most do not. We have seen, on this mission, a good example of one of the things that separates the two.
As you guessed, all of our peoples could be called bad in some ways . . . maybe many ways . . .”
Boro suddenly thrust his arm into the air. “But the question is, what do they do when they discover they’re powerful enough to do evil? ”
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Ilika nodded. “And I think Kibi has remembered the difference . . .”
She grinned. “Evil is when you know it’s bad.”
Timoradalia was jumping up and down, ready to explode. Her mate, from behind, slipped his arms around her, and she relaxed.
Mati glanced at the Ti’ias, smiled, and spoke. “So . . .” she began, looking at Rini for inspiration, “something about trying to kill your planet is way, way worse than just killing other creatures. Right?”
Ilika knew who could best put the answer into words, so he looked at her, even though he knew it might make his head spin.
Arantiloria accepted the challenge. “The universe is so arranged that the power to destroy the climate and/or ecosystem of your home planet only comes when you also have the intelligence to know that doing so is a fatal error. Therefore, any species that does that is, by its nature, suicidal, and will probably not qualify for any kind of help, from the powers of the universe, with fixing that mistake.”