Awakeners by Sheri S Tepper

“No. It has not lagged. The suspicions of Mitiar and Bqssit were planned for. The only thing we had not foreseen was this untimely suspicion on the part of the fliers. Now there must be some kind of diversion, something to draw them away. At the moment, they are too much focused upon the Chancery.”

“What are you planning?”

“I’ve sent an actor friend to the tents of the Noor, to visit Queen Fibji.”

“Oh, Tharius, haven’t those poor devils suffered enough?” Her own pain was forgotten for the moment in the pain she felt for the Noor, constant victims of the Jondarites. “Can’t we leave them out of it?”

He shook his head sadly. “It will mean nothing worse for them than they already suffer, Kessie. I’ve sent someone to talk of South shore, that’s all. I’ve had him say nothing which wasn’t in the palace library. There’s every possibility South shore really exists, just as I’ve had it described to her. If I know Queen Fibji, she’ll send an expedition within the year. General Jondrigar would try to stop them, of course, if he heard of it. He would not let all those possible slaves go. He enjoys his expeditions among the Noor too much to let them escape. We must make sure he does not hear of it. The fliers will be much confused if they hear of it. So, we must make sure they do.”

“And it will turn eyes away from us. When do you think, Tharius? Soon?”

“I think soon. If nothing else happens to upset our plans. If no other junior Awakener goes off with a pitful of workers. If no eager Riverman starts the uprising ahead of time. If there is no spontaneous religious uprising of one kind or another.” He brooded over this while Kessie moved restlessly in his arms.

So much to keep track of; so much to control. Many years ago there had been two factions within their movement. One for immediate war; one for the hope of peace.

The war faction had plotted to kill the fliers, all of them. They had planned to pick a time when the Talkers would be out of the Talons and simply murder them all.

Tharius had been a leader of the peace party. He recalled impassioned speeches he had made, phrases he had used. “We would be forever guilty of the murder of an intelligent species.” He believed it. Much though he detested the fliers, including the Talkers, still he believed it. Moral men did not do such things. Not to another species with intelligence, with speech, with a culture of its own.

Some years of covert exploration into the actual attitudes of Talkers had followed. He laughed bitterly sometimes when he recalled that time. His thesis had been so simple. What the fliers were doing was immoral, unethical. They were eating intelligent beings. They were raising the dead, who were possibly aware of that fact. If they ate fish, they could continue to live, but in a moral way. Wouldn’t that be preferable? Wouldn’t it be a better arrangement? He had asked this of Talker after Talker during convocations. “Wouldn’t it be better?”

To which they had cawed hideous laughter or turned to deposit blobs of shit at his toes, showing what they thought of the idea. Eventually he had been forced to understand. Morality was not an absolute. Theirs was not his. His was not shared even by all humans, much less by this nonhuman species.

He had quit trying to sell the idea after a time. He had been warned it wouldn’t work, and it was becoming difficult to disguise his stubborn efforts as anything but what they were. He had called it research, but research was not Tharius’s affair, after all. Council member Koma Nepor was Chief of Research. Questioning the fliers was not Tharius’s responsibility, either. Ezasper Jorn was Ambassador to the Thraish. When it became evident Tharius’s efforts were drawing unpleasant attention from both the Talons and the Chancery, what had been confidential attempts at negotiation became deeply covert. There were to be no more attempts at persuasive conversion of fliers. Which left, he was convinced at last, only conversion by necessity. If there were no bodies to eat, then the fliers would eat fish or nothing.