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until at last he found himself going off-planet to distant temples where the rule of silence and solitude could not be broken by convenient technologies.
place of two deserts, some said, for sea and land were bleak together—one boundless, one narrow, and both thirsty.
The acolytes would also take away his handheld and safely transmit its contents to his workplace. But his handheld was still there.
His handheld was gone, and a double ration of food sat in its place.
retreat will teach you again and again that you are neither indispensable nor self-sufficient.”
Put bluntly, learn to stop meddling. Commitment is important, detachment equally so.
was not long after that, not very long at all, that the day became horribly disordered.
A man walked out of the ocean, his head darkly bright with seawater and sunlight. He wore a pilot’s suit—iridescent, sleek, and permeable—that would dry as swiftly as bare skin in the hot breeze,
Recognition came to Dllenahkh gradually.
it was Naraldi, a man well known to him but not so well known as to excuse the early breaking of a retreat.
“Something terrible has happened,” Dllenahkh said simply.
Our home is no more. Our world is—”
remember when the Sadiri came.
The Sadiri consider themselves to be the pinnacle of human civilization. Imagine them settling on Cygnus Beta, a galactic hinterland for pioneers and refugees!
Everyone felt sorry for the Sadiri in those early days, and maybe we were all a little bit overproud of ourselves for hosting them.
Cygnus Beta isn’t a rich colony by any means, but we understand fleeing disaster and war and disease and struggling to find a place where you’re wanted. A lot of people act like misfortune is contagious. They don’t want to be exposed to it for too long.
There isn’t a group on Cygnus Beta who can’t trace their family back to some world-shattering event. Landless, kinless, unwanted—theoretically, the Sadiri would fit right in.
barely even noticed when my friend Gilda said to me, “But where are the women?” I should have paid attention.
Many times people send the strongest and most intrepid to establish a level of comfort on the homesteads before sending for the rest of the family,
and
for some cultures that translates...
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I’m second assistant to the Chief Biotechnician of Tlaxce Province, which means that I get to travel a lot because it’s the biggest province, and it’s also the province with the largest number of new homesteads.
I’m kind of a language nut.
When you’ve been almost exterminated, language is the first thing you cling to, one of the main roots of identity.
Delarua,
on Cygnus Beta.
He used Standard for that last, there being no precise equivalent in Sadiri that could convey the frivolous intent behind such a word.
Cygnus Beta is reputed to have some of the most complex and vibrant cultures in the galaxy. It would be appropriate to study them.”
I’d been around the Sadiri
long enough to learn that whenever they start claiming something is appropriate, there’s something they’re not telling you or somethin...
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But people, this is Cygnus Beta.
there are few professional artists and actors, few galactic-standard museums and theaters.
I should point out that amateur or semiprofessional doesn’t mean low quality. It means variable quality.
I’ve mentioned my friend Gilda before. I love her dearly, but I swear she’s a bad influence on just about everyone. I suspect that three out of her six children aren’t her husband’s and that he knows it but doesn’t care. He’s so under her thumb, she must have had more than one Zhinuvian ancestor.
but this was Gilda, and something told me to inquire more deeply.
“Grease: The Space Musical, Titus Andronicus, and that new monologue by Li Chen where he first spends ten minutes crisscrossing the stage in silence, then sits in a Bagua-inspired design in the center and periodically plays the Uilleann pipes.”
Judging other humans and finding them wanting is what the Sadiri do.”
The Sadiri and their fleet of mindships had been the backbone of galactic law, diplomacy, and scientific discovery for centuries.
their home planet was poisoned by their own close cousins, the Ainya,
“There is a visiting emissary from the Government of New Sadira.
“Do you know why we came to Cygnus Beta?”
“We came to find the taSadiri.”
“Sadiri who do not practice the mental disciplines,” I replied immediately. “They left Sadira and founded Ain, and a few settled elsewhere in the galaxy. But they did not found Cygnus Beta. It was already here.”
“I have heard of the beings you call the Caretakers.”
“Yes,” I said firmly, “they are the true founders of Cygnus Beta, but we acknowledge other early settlers—mostly Terrans, it’s true, but also Ntshune, Zhinuvians, and taSadiri.”
“There are strong psionic and proto-psionic strains in your ancestry,” he noted. “That was another one of the reasons we chose to come here.”
“There is a lack of consensus concerning our path. Securing the future of our people is, of course, the primary concern, but the way this can best be achieved is in dispute.
“A third way has been proposed: colonies of hybrids selected for Sadiri physical traits and mental abilities and raised according to Sadiri values and traditions.”
Terrans: the chicken stock of every human genetic soup in the galaxy. Terra was the newest of the crafted worlds and Terrans the youngest breed of humans in the galaxy, but what they lacked in technology and mental development, they made up for in sheer evolutionary potential. Other humans patronized them and overlooked them, but just mention hybrid vigor and suddenly Terrans became very popular. Of course, since Terra itself was still under embargo, that meant Cygnus Beta got all the attention.
“As many of our off-planet occupations are filled by men, more Sadiri males survived the disaster than females. This has created some … disruption to our usual bonding customs.
