Differences alone are never enough to cause problems. Syl Anagist’s assimilation of the world had been over for a century before I was ever made; all cities were Syl Anagist. All languages had become Sylanagistine. But there are none so frightened, or so strange in their fear, as conquerors. They conjure phantoms endlessly, terrified that their victims will someday do back what was done to them—even if, in truth, their victims couldn’t care less about such pettiness and have moved on. Conquerors live in dread of the day when they are shown to be, not superior, but simply lucky.
So when Niess magic proved more efficient than Sylanagistine, even though the Niess did not use it as a weapon …
This is what Kelenli told us. Perhaps it began with whispers that white Niess irises gave them poor eyesight and perverse inclinations, and that split Niess tongues could not speak truth. That sort of sneering happens, cultural bullying, but things got worse. It became easy for scholars to build reputations and careers around the notion that Niess sessapinae were fundamentally different, somehow—more sensitive, more active, less controlled, less civilized—and that this was the source of their magical peculiarity. This was what made them not the same kind of human as everyone else. Eventually: not as human as everyone else. Finally: not human at all.
Once the Niess were gone, of course, it became clear that the fabled Niess sessapinae did not exist. Sylanagistine scholars and biomagestres had plenty of prisoners to study, but try as they might, no discernible variance from ordinary people could be found. This was intolerable; more than intolerable. After all, if the Niess were just ordinary human beings, then on what basis had military appropriations, pedagogical reinterpretation, and entire disciplines of study been formed? Even the grand dream itself, Geoarcanity, had grown out of the notion that Sylanagistine magestric theory—including its scornful dismissal of Niess efficiency as a fluke of physiology—was superior and infallible.
If the Niess were merely human, the world built on their inhumanity would fall apart.
So … they made us.
We, the carefully engineered and denatured remnants of the Niess, have sessapinae far more complex than those of ordinary people. Kelenli was made first, but she wasn’t different enough. Remember, we must be not just tools, but myths. Thus we later creations have been given exaggerated Niess features—broad faces, small mouths, skin nearly devoid of color, hair that laughs at fine combs, and we’re all so short. They’ve stripped our limbic systems of neurochemicals and our lives of experience and language and knowledge. And only now, when we have been made over in the image of their own fear, are they satisfied. They tell themselves that in us, they’ve captured the quintessence and power of who the Niess really were, and they congratulate themselves on having made their old enemies useful at last.
But we are not the Niess. We aren’t even the glorious symbols of intellectual achievement that I believed we were. Syl Anagist is built on delusions, and we are the product of lies. They have no idea what we really are.
It’s up to us, then, to determine our own fate and future.
When Kelenli’s lesson is done, a few hours have passed. We sit at her feet, stunned, changed and changing by her words.
It’s getting late. She gets up. “I’m going to get us some food and blankets,” she says. “You’ll stay here tonight. We’ll visit the third and final component of your tuning mission tomorrow.”
We have never slept anywhere but our cells. It’s exciting. Gaewha sends little pulses of delight through the ambient, while Remwha is a steady buzz of pleasure. Dushwha and Bimniwha spike now and again with anxiety; will we be all right, doing this thing that human beings have done throughout history—sleeping in a different place? The two of them curl together for security, though this actually increases their anxiety for a time. We are not often allowed to touch. They stroke one another, though, and this gradually calms them both.
Kelenli is amused by their fear. “You’ll be all right, though I suppose you’ll figure that out for yourselves in the morning,” she says. Then she heads for the door to go. I am standing at the door, looking through its window at the newly risen Moon. She touches me because I’m in her way. I don’t move at once, though. Because of the direction that the window in my cell faces, I don’t get to see the Moon often. I want to