Donald Moffitt - Genesis 01

his attention to another developing bulge in the batter of golden flesh. Spak, the bumpy-skulled thug, edged reluctantly forward to face it. They had called him by name. To Bram’s astonishment, Spak broke down and wept. “I’m sorry,” he kept repeating. “I’m sorry.”
    A woman with gray-streaked hair shook off the hand of the man beside her and took Spak’s place, her face red with embarrassment. “You can’t blame them too much,” she said. “Some of the things Penser said sounded good, even to the rest of us. Like taking pride in being human. Like having a place in the cosmos we could call our own. Maybe some of them didn’t realize where all those fine words would lead or how far Penser was prepared to go. I’ve been an Ascendist all my life, and while I don’t hold with Penser’s methods, I share some of his ideals.”
    A gasp came from Ang. Bram got up and sat beside her. “It’s all right,” he said. “Maybe they ought to hear it.”
    A ripple of interest went through the packed tribunal, visible as a froth of lavender across the amber surface. A single Nar heaved its central cup above the mass, its five arms stretched to maintain contact. Bram had the impression that it had been deputized by the entire assembly—that it was not just questioning the gray-haired lady on its own.
    “We know of your brothers,” it said in excellent Inglex. “They are something like an extended touch group, are they not? But do you say that their views differ?”
    Haltingly, the woman tried to explain about political factions and got tangled up in a complicated exposition of the differences between Ascendists and Resurgists, Partnerites and Integrationists and Schismatists. The man she had been sitting with got up and came to her aid. The soundposts were generating a fantastic, garbled version of what they were saying.
    Around the enclosure a half-dozen other people of various political persuasions gathered their courage and approached the barrier to add their own explanations, making matters worse.
    “It’s awful!” Ang whispered to Bram. “They’re quarreling about a lot of hairline distinctions that don’t mean anything. What are the Nar going to think of us?”
    “Maybe it’s all for the best,” Bram said.
    “How can you say that?”
    “It’ll give the Folk some inkling of the extent of the yearning of human beings for a place of our own in the universe, make them see that it didn’t have to express itself Penser’s way.”
    The loudspeaker on the post nearest them sighed on in the soft suspirations of the Small Language. “… they differ in their apartness. The one wishes to share in the great concordance though he is mute, the other to withdraw from the sight of the Folk, the next to seize like an impatient fingerling a greater share of goods and habitat …”
    “I’ve got to try to make them understand,” Ang said faintly. She stood up, her rosy cheeks gone pale, and made her way to the fence.
    “I—I’m a maker of music,” she began in a small clear voice. “I never thought very much about all these things you’ve been hearing. I never wanted to take things or smash things or demand things. All I ever wanted to do was to make the beautiful sounds that Original Man left for us in his Message. I don’t know if you understand what music means to most of us, but we’re all born with it inside us. It’s like—like a language. We were learning more about it all the time. We carved the old instruments out of Earth’s wood. I wanted to go to Juxt One because I wanted to give those sounds to people there who had never heard them firsthand.”
    They questioned her gently with a small part of their joint consciousness, while along the perimeter of the pen other outcroppings of decapods continued examining other humans.
    “But could you not be happy here? There are more humans here with whom to share your art.”
    “It’s a newer human society on Juxt, away from the old constraints. There’s more room for people, and I thought that might change the people themselves. That humans might feel freer to be humans—that the music might be freer, too.”
    “But the practice of the human arts is encouraged by us here on the Father World.”
    “I know. It’s just that—oh, I don’t know what I mean!” Ang was close to tears. She excused herself with the remnants of her Nar-instilled courtesy and sat down.
    Bram became aware that while Ang had been talking, other members of the