genius (when compared with other humans) was not in what she added to the blueprint, but in what she left out. Rather than merely focussing on what could move you forwards, she spent just as much time on identifying what already held you back.
Desire. Fear. Greed. Anger. She muted it all, and in doing so created a far more peaceful space in which to think. The erta do not get distracted so easily. They do not think about themselves over others. They can see how things fit together without thinking about how they would prefer them to fit together. They do not fear the unknown, they do not want what they do not have. They do not fight to be heard above the next, because we recognise, implicitly, the value in a different perspective. Logic rules our thought, purely because there is nothing else to take its place.
You can understand now why that council meeting was so perplexing.
Of course, an erta’s mental capacity is also far superior to that of a human. We can remember every event as clearly as when we first experienced it, think in parallel, many times over, and at thousands of times the speed. We can analyse our sensory data in greater resolution and with far greater accuracy but in the fraction of the time. All these things we do without effort. The hard work goes on deep within our minds.
Which explains the final similarity between erta and humans: sleep. Erta require regular, consistent sleep, probably to a greater degree than humans and, possibly than almost any other form of life upon the planet. It is when our minds perform their deepest levels of processing, and if it is lacking, then so are we.
The erta need their sleep.
I need my sleep.
You, it seems, do not.
YOU WAKE UP at night, many times over. There is no pattern. Or if there is, then I cannot find it.
Prior to the day you vomited, you had been sleeping soundly through the night, as every other diurnal life form upon this planet, including me, should and does. But that night you woke before midnight, bringing me with you, unwillingly, into consciousness. I rose and sat upon the bed. My house was illuminated only by weak starlight, the moon a waning crescent obscured by the southern cliffs. The tide was high, and I heard the waves washing the beach. It was a peaceful sound, whereas your cry, as ever, was not.
I applied the feeding routine, attaching you to my breast as I had done during the day and dribbling milk from a cloth down my flesh. You took it hungrily for six minutes, then removed yourself, gurgled and immediately slept. My own passage back into unconsciousness was not so swift; I had rarely in my life woken before my body and mind had enjoyed sufficient sleep, and it was strange to be awake during the night. I lay there listening to the shuffling of the palms against my roof, and the quick, light steps of rodents over the porch. A night owl screeched. It was nine minutes before I fell asleep, and two hours, thirty nine minutes and fifty seven seconds before I was awake again.
My brain usually assembles sensory data so expeditiously that I can, for example, know everything about a forest clearing the moment I step into it—the species of grub crawling through tree bark, the network of roots beneath the ground, the ambient temperature, humidity, the frequencies of bird call above and so forth. But this time my brain did something which it rarely does. It faltered, and for a brief moment I found myself lacking data. I did not know why I was awake, or where I was, or—I was somewhat chilled to note—who.
It is extremely unnerving to lose an identity which has stood firm for five centuries.
But this was a momentary glitch, and I sat up and repeated the same procedure, as before.
You woke twice more that night.
The next day was not a good day.
— NINE —
MY MOOD WAS already troubled by your four night-time disturbances, and from the fact that, after the last, you did not return to sleep. You had decided that the day began before dawn, which it clearly does not. There are a variety of matutinal animals, a clique of beasts such as birds and certain species of flying insect which raise themselves before the sun, but erta do not belong to them, and neither do sapiens. I am certain, in fact, that