In the Black, стр. 35
“And our husks?”
“We don’t have time to fly them back into their nests. Mark them and put them in hibernation. We’ll recover them later.”
Kivits looked around the mind cavern. “Well? Your derstu has sung. Execute his instructions.” The attendants turned back to their alcoves and busied themselves with the work.
Kivits leaned close and whispered at Thuk’s sound bristles. “Derstu, I would sing with you. In a duet.”
“Before the seedpod is sewn?”
Kivits glanced around the chamber and tapped his abdomen plates with the claws on his midhands. “I think our brave attendants can handle a withdrawal. Harmonize?”
“As you say.”
Kivits left the cavern, expecting Thuk to trail behind him, which he did, eventually. In his own flow. Long enough that he had to ask the ship for the dulac’s present location.
“The dulac is in the clutching chamber.”
“Alone?”
“Yes, Derstu.”
“Thank you.”
By long tradition, every Xre ship had a clutching chamber, because every Xre ship might be called upon someday to participate in a migration to a new colony many stars away. And new colonies would need new builders when they arrived. Ships of conquest like the Chusexx were not intended to be colony ships, but they needed to be equipped to fill the role if the need was desperate enough. A species that had lost its original homeworld never forgot the lesson.
And although it was prohibited, it wasn’t completely unknown for select members of a harmony on a long-duration campaign such as this to, inadvertently, clutch a brood during the dull periods. Those responsible would be dismissed from the Dark Ocean Chorus at the end of the campaign, of course, but their children should hardly be punished for the sins of their parents. That tradition had died with the queens. Or, more accurately, been killed along with them.
So Chusexx had in its belly a small, rudimentary, completely unadorned clutching chamber which, naturally, was most often used for secret rendezvous among the adventurously amorous.
This would not be such a meeting.
“You walk the path slowly,” Kivits said as Thuk entered.
“Forgive the delay, Dulac. I wanted to see my instructions carried out.”
“Your instructions.” The words dribbled past Kivit’s mandibles as if he’d expelled them for tasting sour. “You’re fresh out of a molt, and yet your head has already grown too big for its new skullplates.” Kivits picked at an excess bit of sealant that had been pressed out from between a joint during the chamber’s construction. “I’ve served over other derstus, you know. You are my fifth, my third who was on their first assignment to the honor.”
Thuk sniffed at his choice of words. Of all the words used to describe a selection as derstu, “honor” was seldom near the top of the list.
Kivits continued. “It’s not unusual for a first-time selection to forget their purpose and develop quite an ego in a short amount of time. But your transformation has been especially rapid. Which is why I must remind you, Thuk, that you have been picked to facilitate and implement the decisions of this harmony, our chorus, and ultimately the Symphony itself in the most expedient way. Your judgment is only valued for doing that job quickly and efficiently. You’re not here to lead us. You’re not here to lecture us. The time of tyrants died with the queens in their mounds on the Old World. You’re not going to be the one to resurrect it, no matter how many scrolls you’ve read about the humans or the last war.
“I’ve come to you because other members of the harmony have begun humming their discontent, and I wanted you to hear it from me privately while there was still time to adjust your path. No one needs to know what we’ve discussed here. A dulac may give any sort of console. Just … just return to your duty, humbled, and maybe you won’t be selected derstu for the next half dozen assignments, or expelled from the Chorus entirely. Do you understand?”
Thuk understood, all right. He’d pushed Kivits too hard in front of the mind cavern attendants and embarrassed him. In a moment of frustration, he’d forgotten Kivits was labor caste, and held all the old prejudices that came with that heritage. His ancestors had been the ones to unify across the mounds and finally break the back of the queens’ rule as their original homeworld died around them. They were the hands and claws that built the first colony ships, under the guidance of the scholar and administrative sects. Their descendants, like Kivits, carried that history with no small amount of pride.
It was possible, even probable, that the only member of the harmony who’d objected to Thuk’s … guidance, was Kivits himself. But, that didn’t mean that he was wrong, necessarily. Or that Thuk wouldn’t benefit from an adjustment in his approach.
“I’ve disrespected you,” Thuk said remorsefully. “You’ve done nothing but try to steer me down the path laid out for me, and I’ve resisted. Out of pride, or arrogance. It’s too easy for us four-hands to fall into the old patterns that … well, you know better than most.” Thuk hinted with a midhand at Kivits’s quadfeet. It was a small gesture. Pointing with midhands instead of primehands was a submissive gesture, because the midhands sheathed no blood-claws.
But it was enough.
“It’s in your line’s nature to yearn to govern, Derstu,” Kivits said. “The very best of you recognize it and work to suppress it. I’m encouraged to see you accessible to reason.”
“I walk the path.”
“Indeed.” Kivits took a lap around the clutching chamber, letting the fall of each of his four feet echo around the space. “What do we do about the human cruiser?”
“It would be easier to answer that question if I knew what the Symphony really hoped to achieve with our assignment here.”
“I’ve read the same dispatches you have.”
“That’s what worries me, Kivits. They’re instructions, but