Of more immediate, and perhaps helpful, value was the refugee Hive ship which the Rowan-Thian-Fhvia merge had purloined. It would soon be back at the main Earth Naval Base, totally free of the gases that had destroyed all organisms.
Human and Mrdini naval specialists were impatient to examine an undamaged queens’ quarters which contained the control systems for the ship. The most important discovery would be navigational records or star charts that might identify which worlds were Hiver-occupied.
Ever since the Rowan mind-merge had subdued the Many Mind on the Leviathan Hive ship attacking Deneb, it had been assumed that the queens managed all aspects of control on the ship, formulating tactics and forwarding orders to their specialized minions. Whether the duties were equally distributed among them or whether each of the ten to twelve queens on board a colony ship had different responsibilities had yet to be discovered: hopefully from the type of controls in each queen’s quarters. Engineers, astronauts and technicians, human and Mrdini, were eagerly awaiting clearance to board this entire ship and begin their investigations.
These positive activities of the Alliance had been somewhat eclipsed by the Prtglm episode: as had the tapes Rojer had taken, unique in establishing the culture, or rather agriculture, of the Hive species.
Destroying Xh-33 `s imminent colonization project was the least controversial solution of the several that had been available. Most `Dinis would have preferred to see the planet devastated in retribution for those innocent worlds which had been fumigated by Hivers.
Human opinion was virtually solid that destroying the Hive ability to go off that planet was a legitimate and the most acceptable deterrent. There would have been a massive human outcry had the affair been carried further.
To reassure both apprehensive humans and the aggressively vindictive Mrdini majority, Captain Quacho of the Arapahoc had remained behind on sentinel duty until a discreet space facility could be `ported to the nearest of Xh-33’s moons. Any activity in Xh-33 space could be recorded. Should any occur, unlikely though that seemed, the Alliance could then vote on more lasting punitive action.
Meanwhile there were other enigmas to interpret: if there was no communication between Hive worlds or ship-to-surface contact, how could the Alliance hope to establish any interface with the Hivers? If no communication was possible, there was no hope of arriving at any mutually satisfactory, non-aggressive cohabitation of a galaxy which had sufficient M-type systems to accommodate all – with some control on overexpanding populations.
Afra sighed. Being of a methody upbringing as well as Talented, he eschewed violence: didn’t really know if he would even defend himself. He would, he thought, defend his children, but probably not himself Except that that would leave Damia unsupported. So he might even defend himself much as he would abhor the necessity. Humans had grown beyond that exigency.
Association with the `Dini had, unfortunately in Afra’s estimation, revived `war’. If only there were some avenue of interface available Every attempt to get the captured queen to communicate – or notice that other intelligent beings were in her presence – had so far failed. How his daughter Zara had known that the queen was suffering from hypothermia, on the verge of extinction, was a matter no-one had been able to establish – especially Zara. She had also had no further empathetical contact with the queen. No-one had. The queen had ignored any visitor, even a Mrdini: even the very large Mrdini which towered above her not inconsiderable form.
That she could see and hear had been established by adroit remote testing. Various frequencies and combinations had elicited no more response from her than a twitch of discomfort. Those settings were kept on record.
It must be an amazing mind-set, Afra thought, to consider one’s self the only being of worth in the galaxy.
There had been humans who had had such delusions.
They had generally died because of them and remained as small paragraphs in the greater history of humankind.
In an oblique fashion, it followed that, in the Hiver extermination of all lifeforms on any planet they had chosen to colonize, they were totally unaware that they were eradicating entities which might feel they had the inalienable right to live.