The Long Game (The Far Reaches, #4)

by Ann Leckie

I’m bigger than anybody else I’ve ever met. Well, except the humans, but, I mean, humans. They’re not exactly people, right? I don’t know what they are.

And after that you’d still need someone to be in charge. Someone to tell some people to keep the babies from getting underfoot, and someone to drag old sick people away from the colony before they cause trouble or die somewhere inconvenient. And I’m the biggest. It should be me.

We have people who watch out for the babies so they don’t get eaten as much.

It’s the only thing I don’t like about humans, the way they’re so much bigger than I am.

I was disappointed not to be the first, the only. But I had still done more than anyone, ever!

“It looks like you’ve thought of nearly everything. Tell me, Narr, what are your plans for making sure this continues after you’re gone?”

“It won’t change anything,” said Leeyay. “Believe me. Your species is just very short lived. But you should be proud of what you’ve accomplished. And you should think about how to make sure that accomplishment doesn’t disappear after you’re gone.”

“The stars are tiny, and there are swarms of them all over the sky. The sun is big and alone and warms the earth. The human is lying. Or crazy. It’s old, you said, and old people are crazy.”

“Nk is sick. But they can’t be sick! They can’t be dying! They’re big, almost as big as me, and they’re stronger than I am. How can a person be so big and strong and just suddenly . . . just suddenly die? They can’t die. They won’t die. They can’t.”

I mean, once you decide to find out why people die and how to stop it—really truly seriously decide—you can’t let little things like some pain stop you. Otherwise you might just as well have stayed home and died.

“We got here, found you. And we found, not just life, but intelligent life. Not that the company cared about that—or even the government. But word got back to earth that not only was there intelligent life here, but it was squishy knee-high creatures in pretty colors that ate plants, and so it became a question of publicity.”

The company might know how to make you all live longer. It probably does. But it won’t do anything to help you make that happen unless it gets something out of it. And there’s nothing the company would get out of it that it isn’t already getting from you.”

“Why do people do what you tell them?” That was a ridiculous question. “Because I’m bigger. Because I have other big people to help me make them do what I tell them.”

“But they could all just leave. I’m sure some people do. Or if enough people got together and decided they didn’t like you bossing them around, they could stop you. They may not like being told what to do, but they’re getting a steady supply of food and a safe place for the infants. In the end, they’re doing what you tell them because they think they’re getting something they want out of it.”

“Well, of course they are,” I retorted. “Why do you think I bother to begin with? I make things better for everyone in the colony.” “Well, not everyone,” Nish said. “Not for the people who won’t do what you tell them. Not for the people who have a different idea of what’s good. And certainly not for the people who you decide have to work harder or go hungry or even die just to make things”—Nish waved a tentacle sarcastically—“better for everyone.

“When you’re small,” said Nish, after a moment’s silence, “you survive by being patient, and clever. You can’t make big things happen all at once, so you do what little things you can. It’s not unlike seeing you want a pond and thinking of all the little steps you need to build that pond, and then taking those steps, one by one. Of course, the more steps, the harder it is to accomplish big things like this, when you don’t live long.”

“The humans have a thing they call the long game. Most humans, just like people, are usually just thinking of today. What can they eat today? How can they stay safe today? But then sometimes they’re thinking way ahead, thinking of things too big for them to do here and now. It’s how they’ve done things like go into the sky or read the instructions of life.”

“Yes,” said Leeyay sadly. I didn’t tell them about the school I was planning. I would make sure the infants learned tally marks, and we would begin to make more complicated marks, like the humans used, but ours. And I would begin to teach the infants about the instructions we all grew by. As long as I will live—maybe forty years!—I will never see the outcome of this plan. Maybe it won’t happen exactly the way I want it to. But I can start it now, and the people who come after me can build more.

Someone has to make the plans. Someone has to tell people what to do. Why shouldn’t that be me?