Politicians and Fools

Excerpted from The Star Dancers by Jeffrey Caminsky, available directly from the Publisher, or from Amazon, or at a bookstore near you.

from Chapter 10

The morning sun was warm and soothing as it poured through the windows in the propylaeum. Outside, gardens teased the mind with color while the odors of summer filled the hall. The large, wooden doors at the entrance to the Chambers remained tightly closed. Waiting for the Crier to come, inviting him to address the Council, Zatar paced the halls, alone with his thoughts.

Unlike most of his colleagues, his heart held much sympathy for the Terrans, and his kindly feelings had grown even as memories of the harsh Terran landscape had faded from his mind. They were not the simple savages dismissed by Civilization’s pundits and intellectuals. Across the vast gulf of alien cultures, he had seen acts of kindness and generosity, enough to convince him that Terran society was ready to flower. As a people, the quaint and guileless simians had a passion for life and zest for discovery that promised to reinvigorate the stodginess of the Grand Alliance. Though burdened with the limited vision of a primitive culture, they were reaching outward, beyond themselves, toward something dimly sensed as their destiny, just as each civilized race had done before them. Once the trauma of cosmic awareness had passed, they would need only firm, gentle guidance to assume their proper place among the older races that comprised the galactic culture.

But where others saw them as uncivilized children, Zatar saw unrestrained power rising in the west. Children did not build the Terrans’ powerful spaceships, he often reminded others, though usually his words met only deafness. Fear drove Terran culture: fear of the unknown, fear of the future, fear of themselves. Now the Alliance gave them something new to fear, something more terrifying than any of the nightmares that haunted their history books. And beneath it all were the same primordial urges that lay dormant in the soul of every race that called itself human.

Zatar gazed out the window at the fragile beauty outside. We have forgotten our own past, he mused sadly—forgotten the anguish and torment that grip each adolescent culture as it unlocks the powers of the universe and gropes for answers to the riddles of existence. The Alliance was looking at the Terrans through the eyes of maturity, with perceptions just as parochial as Terra’s, but without the excuse of ignorance. Like dogmatists of old, most can little imagine something of value coming from anything beyond their own experience, and refuse to acknowledge that new events might require new ways of thinking. But most dangerous of all was the refusal to see that the same Terran science that trailed the rest of the galaxy by millennia in almost every respect had a single, seminal accomplishment: spaceships.

Warships, thought Zatar, shuddering as if from the cold. What black secrets must Terran history hold, he asked himself. What ingrained terror must Terrans endure each day to bind their science to a treadmill of ever-better machines of destruction? He knew he could never fully comprehend the mystery. His own people’s early history of war and conquest was mired in antiquity, almost as alien to him as the past of the odd-looking Terrans. He hoped, one day, to understand. In the meantime, the Grand Alliance had to unite; they had to agree upon a single course, to ease Terra into their fold. There was simply no other alternative.

“Ambassador?”

Zatar turned to see the High Council’s First Crier, zhLunta, the Fidrei.

“The Council is ready, Ambassador.”

Zatar stretched his back to its full height, then straightened his robe. For this address he was wearing white, as the Council had designated him as a relator, rather than a proponent or apologist. He was, after all, advancing no cause but that of the common good.

Proudly, his head high and his eyes brimming with confidence, he strode confidently into the Council Chambers, to address the High Solonic Council of the Grand Alliance.

* * *

“But why bring the whole Alliance into such a dispute,” Xiazia asked pointedly. “Is it not properly a matter for the disputants to resolve?” The Landoran’s coppery puff sacks undulated as he spoke, as happened whenever a Landoran’s talk became animated. Landora was officially uncommitted, but Xiazia was known to favor the claim of the Glinci and Atkvalo to a share of the Crutchtan Cloud. Through a stern visage, Zatar himself laughed at the cruel irony: each sought his own gain, and was willing to join with his enemy if need be, to prevent all efforts by the Council to seek justice.

“I must agree with my Landoran brother,” said Dra’Lani, the senior Crutchtan. Zatar almost choked; Xiazia and Dra’Lani had hated each other for as long as he could remember. “What basis for action do we see? What legal grounds has the Council to intervene? For even if we grant your premise, Zatar, are not we of the g’Khruushtani free under the Charter to pursue our own folly?”

“A Writ of Pre-emption is discretionary with the Council,” answered Zatar, “requiring only a finding that the needs of all are paramount. It supplies its own legal basis.”

“But has not g’Khruuste the right to order affairs with her own neighbors?” snapped Ma’Lunari, another Crutchtan. Most of the Council was silent, content to watch and listen. Only those with an interest were participating, Zatar noticed, and all with a purpose of foreclosing any action by the Alliance.

“Has Crutchta the right to endanger the Peace of Ages?” countered Zatar. “I think not: ‘The interests of no Member shall prevail against the Needs of the Many—’ ”

“— ‘nor shall the interests of the many overcome the Needs of the Few,’” continued Zatsami, reciting the balance of Article I, Section 6 of the Charter. “But we have not invoked Pre-emption in more than two millennia, Ambassador Zatar.”

“And in that case, as here, it involved a newcomer—our good brothers the Glinci,” said Zatar, bowing in the direction of Drubid, the non-voting Glincian solon.

“But the Glinci had long since asked to join us,” noted the chairman, fiKunta of the Fidrei.

“My Lord Chairman,” Zatar bowed slowly, a sign that he acknowledged the point but would not concede the issue. “I submit to this Council, and its fraternity of Wisdom, that it is the height of provincialism to permit Terran ignorance of our ways to blind us to what looms in the darkness. As are we all, they are a proud race, not easily given to admitting their shortcomings. Denigrating their achievements because of a transient backwardness merely masks the danger they present. And the Ages may well take note—we underestimate Terra at our peril.”

“Underestimate a race with one foot in the jungle and another in the cave?” hissed Dra’Lani.

Zatar’s eyes flamed with anger, but his words carried the serenity of reason. “It is easier,” he replied, “to build machines than civilizations.”

Proud and unyielding—for such was the posture all procurators took when debating anything, even in the privacy of home—Zatar stood at the podium, awaiting the Council’s pleasure. But silence greeted the end of his remarks. Silence and the solons’ skeptical faces.

© 2009 by Jeffrey Caminsky