Donald Moffitt - Genesis 01

string quartet had been called. He could see Kesper, the violist, some distance away, gesticulating earnestly. The Nar immediately opposite seemed to be quite interested in what he was saying. Bram had no clue as to what it was all about; the soundpost nearest Kesper doubtless was giving an approximate version.
    More names were called. The pace seemed to be speeding up. Every human being in the enclosure was known personally to at least several Nar out there, and the aggregate of those crosslinked nervous systems was able to shuffle names better than any computer for whatever purpose it chose.
    Bram tried to find a pattern in the types of people being summoned to the fence, but gave it up. They seemed to represent a cross section of human society—from colonists still clinging to the tattered remains of cloaks and tabards made from the leaves of their tree to once-fashionable Resurgists from the Compound, wearing the bedraggled finery of Earth’s presumed past.
    “What’s happening?” Ang asked.
    “I don’t know. There’s some kind of change going on out there.”
    “Wh-what kind of change?”
    “Don’t you see how the color’s deepening? There’s more purple in it. That’s caused by tentacles flattening out more—showing more of the underside along the edge.”
    “But what does it mean?”
    “In this case,” he said slowly, “I think it signifies empathy.”
    “I—I don’t understand.”
    “Haven’t you ever noticed that when two people want to open out to one another, they tend to show it by the way they hold their bodies. It’s the same with the Nar. Unconsciously they’re saying, see, I’m offering you a greater communicating surface.”
    He grinned at her suddenly. “I think the Nar have decided they want to get to know human beings better.”
     
    The declarations went on through the long day and into the time of double shadows. They seemed to feed on each other as more and more people, not waiting to be summoned, were moved to explain themselves.
    The encircling tide of life bulged at a dozen places to hear them. A number of times Bram saw decapods from the outer layers pick their way through the interlocking pattern of tentacles and take their places in the front row of examiners. What this special interest signified, he did not know.
    Twice, Nar bailiffs brought pails of food and ladled it out to the humans where they sat. The benches stayed crowded; people were unwilling to leave to be fed at the kitchen tents.
    Bram sipped from his bowl, hardly tasting the thin puree. He turned to Ang and said, “It’s going well, I think.”
    She, too, could sense the changed mood of the Nar. “You don’t think we’ll be punished?”
    “There was never a question of that. The Nar don’t like to cause pain. They imagine it too well.”
    No, he thought, whatever has to be done, they will do it painlessly.
    But now, he dared to hope, perhaps a limited number of babies would be allowed—to maintain the Compound and its microcosm of human culture at a reduced population level. More supervision and more privileges.
    Orris leaned over the back of his seat and said anxiously, “You really think it’s going well?”
    “Don’t get your hopes up, but yes, I do.”
    “Marg wants to testify.”
    “Is she up to it?”
    “You know Marg when she’s made up her mind to do something. Nothing can stop her. She’s been awfully depressed, but now she says she thinks someone ought to let the Nar know about how humans feel about parenthood—about raising our own children, not just being part of a pool for genetic constructs.”
    Orris was still pursuing his fantasy of unlimited reproduction. Bram did not want to dash his hopes. “Well, it can’t do any harm,” he said.
    “I’d better get back to her. I don’t like to leave her alone too long.”
    With a nervous backward glance at the penitents lined up along the fence, Orris hopped away toward the rows of privacy booths in the interior of the enclosure. Bram watched him lift up a flap and duck inside.
    For the last hour, the Nar had been summoning Penserites. A few of Penser’s lieutenants clung dully to their revolutionary slogans, though disavowing violence, but most were appalled by the enormity of what they had done, and their shamefaced contrition showed.
    Fraz, when he had seen how things were going, had not waited to hear his name called. He had risen painfully from his invalid’s litter with the help of a couple of colonists and