Dark Mind. Ian Douglas

done it, by means of the TRGA cylinders. What terrifies the decision makers of the Collective is the possibility that someone … you, the Glothr … the Rosette Aliens will come back to this time or before and wipe out all that they have built here.”

      “Why? What are they building that is so damned important?” He meant the words lightly, a kind of joke.

      The Agletsch liaison answered him, though. “They seek to undo the Technological Singularity, which destroyed their former totsch.”

      The Agletsch word was not easily translated. According to Konstantin-2’s database, though, it carried elements of the words “glory,” “reputation,” and “effectiveness.” Gray decided that a good fit might be the Asian concept of face.

      Could that be the answer? The Sh’daar had set out on their anti-singularity jihad because they were embarrassed? Because they felt they’d lost face?

      It didn’t seem reasonable. And yet, knowing the human causes for so much of their own history, maybe that shouldn’t be surprising.

      “The war itself may be an emergent phenomenon,” Konstantin-2 whispered in Gray’s thoughts, almost as though reading them.

      “What do you mean?”

      “The Collective consists of several diverse species, each with its own agenda … and with numerous individual members of each species with their own goals and desires, all interacting with one another in essentially unpredictable ways. The pro-singularity Sh’daar who attacked us upon our arrival are a case in point.”

      “So?”

      “Emergent behavior is defined as a larger pattern or behavior arising from interactions among smaller or simpler entities which may not, themselves, display that behavior. Mind arising from trillions of neural synaptic connections would be one such. Life itself, emerging from the associated cells of an organism, is another.”

      “Okay, okay. I get it. But war?”

      “It seems evident that no one of the Sh’daar species rules or dominates the others. All do fear a repeat of their singularity event, however, and seek to prevent this. Their interaction with one another, however, might have led to a social acceptance of warfare as a means to an end, and the attitudes of other species would reinforce the emerging group ethic.”

      “Like a lynch mob,” Gray said slowly.

      “Precisely. One human alone might be unwilling to execute another human, but a large group, with the members exciting one another, would not hesitate. Humans have demonstrated this principle time and time again, in Nazi Germany, in Soviet Russia, in the Chinese Hegemony …”

      “So what do we do about it?”

      “Unknown. Improved lines of communication will help.”

      “Of course it would. The problem is we can’t even understand them now.”

      The ephemerals try to deceive us …

      The ephemerals are of no consequence …

      We should investigate the Rosette intelligence …

      Who’d said that? Gray checked the datastream, and had Konstantin-2 tease out the tagline on the statement. It was the Sjhlurrr.

      The Sjhlurrr posed an interesting problem for those studying the Sh’daar Collective of species, Gray thought. According to the data acquired twenty years ago, the red-golden slugs appeared to be less psychologically attached to a particular body image than were humans. Evidently, they’d used advanced genetic techniques to alter their ponderous and often inconvenient forms, transferring their considerable intellects into other, smaller and more mobile organic bodies in myriad shapes and sizes.

      “I wonder,” McKennon said, “if that’s the Sjhlurrr’s real shape.”

      She seemed to be reading his thoughts. “I thought the Refusers rejected the idea of genetic manipulation.”

      “Some did. But just as not all of the ur-Sh’daar went along with the technologies that kicked off their singularity, not all members of a species buy into a single ideology or meme. Think of how diverse human beliefs are.”

      “I guess so. It’s easy to see all aliens as alike …”

      “There are some. One F’heen is pretty much identical to every other F’heen in its swarm, both genetically and in its worldview. They form telepathic group minds, so they kind of have to all look at the world the same way, not only within their home swarm, but among all swarms. But for most other species? No, they’re as much individuals within their own groups as are humans.”

      Gray thought about that statement for a moment. While he agreed in principle, he was not completely convinced. For a long time, humans had assumed that the near-mythic Sh’daar were a single alien species, the monolithic power behind an alliance of galactic species within the T_prime epoch that they’d set to attacking humans. When the America battlegroup had first traveled back in time to the N’gai Cluster, Humankind had discovered that the Sh’daar were, in fact, an assembly of several dozen star-faring species working together … an empire of sorts, spanning both space and time, united in the need to stop other species from entering their own technological singularities.

      And something about that idea simply did not make sense. Gray felt like he was tantalizingly close to seeing a larger picture, a motive behind Sh’daar decisions and actions, something that humans had not yet grasped. It had to do with what McKennon had just said about diversity within the separate species … but he couldn’t quite grasp it.

      With a mental shrug, he decided to look at it later. Maybe Konstantin-2 would be able to help pin down what was bothering him.