Donald Moffitt - Genesis 01

soy-crisps, provided a crunch. “It’s hard to believe that Original Man actually ate little creatures that looked like this.”
    “I’ve heard that there’s a genetic template for this type of food creature in the Nar archives, but that it’s being suppressed,” Kerthin said. “That’s part of the Ascendist program—to demand that it be released. After all, eating animal life is part of the human heritage.”
    The idea made Bram lose his appetite. He pushed the soyatash around with the bowl of his tongs. “I’m sure there’s nothing to the story,” he said mildly. “I work at the biocenter. I’d know.”
    “Oh, Bram, you’re so naive. What about the egg creature? That’s being suppressed.”
    “There’s no secret about it. It’s not Nar policy to reproduce it, that’s all. Anyway, what do we need it for? We’ve got eggs.”
    “You let them lead you around by the nose,” she said, more sorrowfully than accusingly.
    Bram did not reply. If Kerthin was working up to one of her dudgeons, he wasn’t going to help her. He looked around at the crowd in the big limed and timbered room. They all seemed to be enjoying themselves, laughing and talking while they stuffed themselves with the exotic food.
    He said as much to Kerthin in an effort to steer the subject to neutral ground. “I’m surprised they can attract a crowd as large as this, when you think of the size of the allowance transfer it takes to eat here,” he said. Then, suddenly realizing that Kerthin might think he was complaining about the price, he tried to turn it into a general observation: “When you think about this place and some of the other businesses in the Quarter, it sometimes seems as if half the human species exists by selling things to the other half.”
    But once again he’d said the wrong thing. “And the other half,” Kerthin said bitingly, “lives on the bounty of their masters. The human species will never get anywhere until it controls its own capital.”
    He finally lost his patience. “Kerthin, we’re supposed to be having a good time. What’s got into you lately? Is politics all you think about?”
    “One of us had better think about it,” she blazed.
    “There are more important things in life.”
    “There’s nothing more important. All life is politics, whether you realize it or not.”
    “A lot of people in this world seem to get along nicely without it.”
    “Like your old artsy-crafty friends, like that little girl from the music department? People who call themselves human Resurgists but who are content to stick their heads in holes in the ground and let themselves be manipulated by external forces! I’ll tell you this—an absence of politics is politics. Noncommitment is a conscious choice.
    It says that you’ve given up on the idea of being in control of your own destiny.”
    “Calm down, Kerth.”.
    She realized she’d been raising her voice and glanced around at the other diners to see if she’d attracted attention. “Listen, Bram, my innocent swain,” she said, leaning forward. “Like it or not, politics rules your life. And it’s going to become even more important in the times ahead. There are changes coming. And it’s going to be important to be on the right side.”
    “Your friends’ side?”
    “When it comes to that, yes. But more important than that, to be on your own side—to realize where your own interests lie. Not with a species that’s so different from us that they don’t even have a centralized brain! On the side of the human race!”
    “We don’t have to pick sides. We’re all life forms together.”
    “More of that soft-headed assimilationist nonsense,” she said scornfully. “We’ll get rid of them when the time comes. Open your eyes, my dreamy pet. The Nar work in their own interest, not ours. They’d be stupid if they didn’t, and they’re not stupid. They have to be worried about what would happen if our numbers got out of hand, for example. We’re controllable now. We have no ecological niche. We’re nothing but potted plants. And they’ll do whatever they have to do to keep us in the pot.”
    “The Nar don’t think that way, Kerth,” Bram protested.
    She paid no attention. “So it’s perfectly natural for them to want to control information. Information is power. But the great message of Original Man is our property, not theirs. It belongs to humanity, to use as we see fit.”
    “Kerthin, you keep seeing plots where there aren’t