it off.
"I know enough that I'll be spending all my time guessing. Men, they make sense of the universe. They make stories about it and then see if they are right. It's what we do. Like I thought there was something interesting about that mountain, and I was fucking right, wasn't I? So if you tell me, I can stop wondering. If you don't, it's all I'll do."
Maneck's quills fluttered in a pattern that Ramon recognized as akin to resignation.
"They came to us, to the planet that spawned the first of us. For many generations, they appeared to be siyanae; their proper function appeared to flow in channels compatible with our own. We were not aware of the divergence until ..."
"Until they started killing you," Ramon said.
"Their tatecreude expressed in crushing the hatchlings. Of the ten billion of our kii, fewer than a hundred thousand survived. The eaters-of-the-young would enact rituals with the bodies. It seemed to offer them pleasure. We saw no function in it. It is necessary to our function that we exist, and so those that remained followed the channels which did not include the eaters-of-the-young. Of the six hundred ships, we are aware of three hundred and sixty-two that failed to isolate themselves from the flow of the enemy. Four came here and engaged in stillness. The others we cannot speak to. Their function has entered a place of nietudoi. If it is part of their tatecreude, it will be made clear once we have achieved conjugation. If it is not, then the illusion of their existence will not be acknowledged."
Ramon sat on the ground at Maneck's feet. Tiny leaves tickled the palms of his hands as he leaned back. The soup of alien thought and terminology had been less disturbing when he had been able to comprehend none of it. Now, with every idea half making sense, every untranslatable word on the verge of familiarity, it was worse than a headache.
"They'll kill you if they find you," Ramon said. "The Enye. They'll kill you."
"It would be consistent," Maneck said.
"You know they're coming. The galley ships. They're coming here ahead of schedule."
"This is known. They have no need for stillness. Their flow is ... compelling."
"So that's why you have to stop the man. Ramon. The other Ramon. If he goes to Fiddler's Jump, he tells everyone where you are, and the Enye ... fuck! Those pendejos will come down and eat you!"
"It would be consistent," Maneck said again.
A thousand questions swarmed in Ramon's mind. Were the human colonies sponsored by the Enye all secretly hunting missions designed to flush out hives like Maneck's? Were the Silver Enye going to turn on humanity one day, as they had with these poor alien sons of bitches? If the hive were discovered, would the S?o Paulo colony have accomplished its mission - fulfilled its function - and if it had, would the Enye suffer it to continue? And what had the sahael done to him that these things were even thinkable, these feelings possible? Where did Maneck end and he, Ramon, begin? In his turmoil, he grabbed at a single question, clinging to it as if everything hinged on its answer.
"Why did they do it?" he asked. "Why did they turn on you?"
"The nature of their function is complex. Their flow has properties unknown to us. They were like us until they were not. It had been our hope that you would reveal this to us."
"Me?" Ramon coughed. "I didn't know it had happened until just now. How would I be able to tell you what those mad pendejos were thinking?"
"The man is of them," Maneck said. "He participates in their function. You possess an understanding of killing and of purpose. You kill as they kill. Understanding what drives your killing would explicate the drive of theirs. The freedom of hard drink."
"We aren't like that. I'm not part of their fucking holocaust! I'm a prospector. I look for minerals."
"But you kill," Maneck insisted.
"I do, but - "
"You kill your own kind. You kill those who are most like you in function."
"That's different," Ramon said.
"In what manner does the difference come?"
"It wasn't about being drunk. That lets it get out of hand, maybe. It was something between the other guy and me. But I didn't eat his fucking kids ."
"If we were to understand the nature of the eaters-of-the-young and the expression of their tatecreude, we might channel their flow back to its previous path," Maneck said, and Ramon heard