Donald Moffitt - Genesis 02

its energy being transformed into the radio waves of the human Message and traveling across the void between galaxies. The Nar themselves couldn’t do anything like that, and would not be able to match such power for tens of thousand of years, if ever.
    And now there was another uniquely human glory— music. The scene shifted to the concert hall that the Nar had grown for their wards in the human Compound. The camera panned across the rapt faces of the audience as they listened to a scrap of their heritage—a grand songfest called “The Messiah,” which had been lovingly reconstructed from the computer readouts of the Message. A mighty chorus of human voices rang out, singing “Wonderful! Marvelous!” in recognizable Inglex, while tears rolled down the faces of the listeners.
    Bram was fighting his own tears. He put his palms flat against the screen, trying to absorb the experience directly.
    Nothing! There never was! Only the hard smooth surface of the screen with the miniature people in it, and the massed voices coming from the speaker. It could not compare with the touch symphonies that so entranced Tha-tha and kept him stretched out on the star-shaped body reader for hours—and that he had tried without success to explain to Bram.
    Bram gave a choked sob and felt the hot tears come.
    What good was it? What good was it to be a human and talk with your voice, when the Nar could talk with their whole bodies? It was only sounds … or symbols which, when you came down to it, could always be transcribed into sounds.
    He began beating on the machine with his small fists, screaming and kicking at it while his touch brothers stopped what they were doing and stared at him in horrified silence.
    Tha-tha warbled tentatively, “Bram-bram.”
    “Go away!” Bram screamed. “Go away, all of you! I hate you!”
    He was still having his tantrum when Voth came in. The old teacher stood in the tall doorway regarding the scene, his cluster of upper limbs writhing thoughtfully. Tha-tha ran in a five-legged scramble over to him and whispered something with one outstretched tentacle, Voth dipping an upper limb to listen.
    “All right, Tha-tha, you can take your brothers to the beach now,” Voth said aloud in his deep tones. “I’m putting you in charge. Tell the door proctor I said it was all right.”
    As the little decapods swarmed confusedly around Tha-tha and flowed in an intertangled mass out the door, Voth went over to Bram and swept him up in his tentacles.
    Bram made a great gulping sound. “Oh, Voth!” he sobbed.
    “Hush, little one. It’s all right.”
    He let the little boy cry himself out in his warm clasp, then set him down and lowered himself to eye level. “How would you like to go to the observatory with me and see our friend Jun Davd?” he said. “We can take a ride in the bubble car and buy some polysugar candy, and Jun Davd will let you look through his telescope.”
    Bram rubbed his eyes with both fists. A small coil of rebellion still burned within him. “I want to go by myself,” he said.
    Voth acted not at all surprised. “You’ve never traveled alone before,” he said. “It’s a very long way to go. You’d have to ask directions in the Small Language, make yourself understood. And—” He paused delicately. “Since you can’t imprint your Word directly, you’d have to use a credit transfer device, and use it correctly.”
    Bram said stubbornly, “Jun Davd is my human friend, and I want to go see him by myself.”
    Voth thought it over. “All right. I guess you’re old enough. But promise me to be careful.”
    Bram hugged Voth around the middle where the skirt of walking members flared outward; the waxy integument was smooth and unyielding, not at all like the warm fluffy lining of the petallike arms. “I promise,” he said.
    “There are no human conveniences after the departure terminal,” Voth said, becoming brisk. “Jun Davd will see that you’re fed. Remember not to eat anything till you get there—not even polysugar. Not even if some well-meaning person offers you something. Many of the Folk do not realize that human and Nar chemistry are different.”
    “I know, Voth.”
    “Here’s a touch token for when you get on the bubble car. Do you know how to make it say what you want?”
    Voth handed him a small flat wedge with one ciliated surface, the kind Nar used in special circumstances when credit delegation was more convenient.
    “Yes,” Bram said. He