Déo felt his stomach tighten. His fingers were cold. A wash of goosebumps spilled down his spine. The hairs at the nape of his neck stood on end. He remained calm, despite the flood of adrenaline and epinephrine washing through his synaptic gaps, and he was certain that the worm was responsible for at least the outward manifestation of his maintained demeanor. Thank you! he said, wordlessly. =This is a difficult thing for you. Eolaat is aware of that. “Remain calm,” Eolaat told him. “This is no different than your training at the river. No different than any cognitive projection you've already practiced.” He'd arrived on-station yesterday, along with Chelas and other Librarian-aspirants due to complete their training. They'd been housed in a secluded section of the station, away from the bustle of ship-crews on liberty and tourists laughing their ways through whatever diversions claimed their time. Kethrin Station was a different place now. He didn't fit in the same way, and the unmodified Humans—who swarmed the corridors and restaurants and gymnasea—were a chilling presence. They smelled wrong. They spoke too loudly, in grating, twangy voices that played the nerves like an ill-tuned harp. They were wormless (and spotless) in all of the wrong ways. But it was the smell that raised Déo's hackles, and threw him (twice) into a dream-shattering wash of cold sweat last night. He'd cried out, once. . .summoning Chelas to the threshold of his room with words of concern. Neither of them slept following that. They sat in the common room between their small chambers, drinking tea and speculating about what lay ahead of them. “You've been away from unmodified humans for a long time,” Eolaat explained, seeming to profoundly sense Déo's unrest. “You will re-acclimate.” “I'm afraid of them,” Chelas had said, not long after their arrival. “I never thought I'd say that. . .but it's true. They frighten me.” He'd said the same thing during tea, during pilfered rolls of tobacco, the smoke blown assiduously toward the ventilation intakes. In light of Chelas' other admissions, it wasn't so difficult for Déo to understand his unrest; but the startling truth in Chelas' words was the simple, wordless fact that Déo shared this wordless unease. Unmodified Humans centered his focus now, as he stared (with closed eyes) past the transparent viewing wall and at the star-splattered depths of space. He watched as ships slid into dock, or drifted out, flashing their orientation thrusters as they slid into optimum departure envelopes. It had been one thing to watch the history of a river in cognitive trance. It was something else to see Humans in the same, disconnected focus. “Our relationship, Human and Avaat, is distinct. . . .” Eolaat said. “As a Librarian in our service, you must learn the value of this distinction. It is why you are here. It is what will continue to shape you as you carry out your duties. You will be a keeper of histories, and as such, you will serve no masters but history itself. This can be a terrifying thing, a dark thing, and it is here that you will learn to face that darkness.” “It happens tomorrow,” Déo said, quietly. “Yes,” Eolaat said. “Tomorrow.” And now, Déo drifted—in disembodied awareness—beyond the confines of Kethrin Station, viewing all of local space, as a god might, if gods were a universal reality beyond the various myths spawned by violent creatures. The long/slow histories of distant stars flashed—like errant thoughts—through his synapses. He saw (and felt) the slow condensation of nebular gases and the space-warping blasts of novae. He felt super massive giants, born and then collapsed into sullen, lightless singularities. But those were peripheral to his focus, an irritation that his worm filtered from the forefront of his thoughts through whatever biochemical magics were the common work of the species. “Focus on the relationship between our species,” Eolaat had advised. And the task was harder, as Déo had nothing to ground his focus. Oh, there were star ships in the distance, and in closer ranges: Human ships and massive, sprawling Avaat structures reflecting starlight from strange and complicated surfaces. The Human ships were loud, and though he didn't hear them, Déo could sense their constant out-spill of transmissions: comm-chatter and transponder ID tags, Hydrogen flares, spewed from sublight drive ports, audible in the 1420 MHz range for anyone with the radio equipment and inclination to listen. But after long, long moments, he saw. . . Human ships and Avaat ships, racing outward along the Orion arm of the galaxy. There were ships he could not identify: space-faring technology of species not yet encountered, though perhaps, in some strange way, the Avaat already knew of them. “You must see with every sense that you possess,” Aoset'aa had told him, on the banks of the muddy, eddy-touched river that he'd come to know as a daily companion. And now, he reached out with every sense he could name (and a few he couldn't) to caress the time line that had unspooled in the brain-crammed space between his ears. And then— —It happened. Something grabbed him: a sense he could not name. It was a visceral thing, strangely alive, though he knew that it was not a living thing he'd ever encounter outside of projective cognition. It played along his nerves and threw jarring layers of noise along his auditory pathways. It buffeted his skin with raking claws of ice and fire and singed his olfactory nerves with brimstone and soot. He watched as Human ships turned against one another, breaking EM shields with focused bolts of strange and virulent energy. He heard screams and comm-chatter in a range of voices rendered strangely metallic. Human voices, but unlike any he'd known before. War! he thought. And behind that realization, Aiden's dire, apocalyptic prediction. ”They don't need to conquer us. They don't need to wage war. They know that—in time—our own lust for power, our own lust for convenience will wipe us out, and the worlds and resources that we've claimed will fall right into their two-thumbed hands.” But he saw something other than greed here. There was an impulse, he realized, buried deep within the hind-brain of the Human species, a thought-virus-bomb, patiently ticking far down in the depths of Human instinct. He felt it in himself, a wordless, dumb-animal greed. In its way, it was alive as he, and it lay coiled in his spine like a crazed species of Kundalini potential. ”They know us better than we know ourselves,” Aiden said. And in this moment, Aiden's words held more truth than Aiden would ever suspect. War, Déo realized loomed just above Humanity's head: suspended in place by the thinnest strands of spider's silk. War—the most potent disease nestled in Human blood—lay poised to boil. And the Avaat—through their language, and the strangest of their perceptions, saw it. Déo pulled back, shrunk away from the spark of strange fires. He shied away from the gouts of plasma and virulent EM emissions that sublimated skin and rendered ash from bone. He raced backwards, (down-time, as he sensed it) back to this moment, and with a gasp, he opened his eyes and tasted the blood-salt of a scream in his throat. He hadn't screamed; at least the room didn't echo with the sound of it, and Eolaat stood closely, but without any sign that he'd heard so wrenching a sound. “You have seen it?” Eolaat asked. “I saw.” Déo shivered, hugged himself against the slap of an imagined chill, and faced Eolaat squarely. “I can't understand it. . .there was. . .too much.” “It was the end of your species. . .the one potential that outweighs all others.” “But it's the future, no? It isn't set. . .it can be changed.” Eolaat waggled his head and clapped his facial plates. “It can be avoided, but only Historians such as you will become will ever have a chance of averting it.” “Historians?” “It is the darkness of your task. You, and others in your profession are the only tool the Avaat will ever use in manipulating your people. As a Librarian, you will be Silent among your species. You will guide them, according to the lines you perceive. You will help them avoid the ultimate destruction that comes from within.” Silent. The word rang strangely in Deo's ears. He'd heard Avaat use the term, and always, in hearing it, the strange singular designation rankled the ear. Silent. “It is another name for those in the Librarian's profession. The Silent. It is a difficult task to shoulder. Silence among speakers is always a difficult thing.” Aoset'aa had muttered those words to more senior trainees, and Déo overheard them, not recalling them until now. “Do you accept the responsibility that comes with this knowledge?” Eolaat asked. “There is a way to avoid what's coming?” Eolaat spread his hands, palm up, in a strangely Human gesture. “You said yourself that this future cannot possibly be set and immutable. There is a way to avoid it, but pure Humans on their own cannot do so.” “And so, you need us to help?” “The worms you carry temper your instincts, making you more familiar with collectivity than is your natural inclinations allow. You will,in turn—and in time—manipulate others of your species. You will teach them. Manipulate them if you must.” “And if I refuse?” =You will not refuse, Déo. . .you cannot refuse.= There was implacable certainty in the worm's non-vocal statement. “The choice belongs to you alone,” Eolaat said. I can refuse, Déo said, voicelessly to the worm. =No,= the worm announced with deadpan certainty. =You will not allow this. Because in your Silent role, you will have access to all of history, past, present, and future. You will not turn your back on this.= What makes you so certain? =Séandra. In time, you will learn whether or not she chose to wear your ring. You told me this, yourself, Déo, and I have been a part of you long enough to know that you plan to keep your word.= * * * * . . .to be continued. . . * * * * Okay, this came a bit later than anticipated, but as always, thank you for reading and commenting, and hopefully this belated chapter was worth the extra days' wait.