//------------------------------// // Scintillation // Story: Speak Not Of The End Of The World // by Shaslan //------------------------------// Laotyn was hungry. There was a gnawing hollowness inside him that never quite seemed to go away. It irritated him; like an itch he couldn’t quite scratch. He had visited the algae-pool four days ago, touching down just long enough to consume the maximum allowance for a single day. And yet his body was already demanding more. He pulsed a dull ocher, but tried to push the frustration down. His body would just have to make do with what it had. There were more important things to pay attention to. Eagerly, he formed his sixteen tendrils and reached for the controls. He had timed it perfectly, but the same doubt as always lingered. Would she be there? It had taken him some time to grasp that the creatures on the world below were at their brightest to him when they were in their rest phase. Their thoughts when waking were too quiet for him to make out, and it was only during the night phase of the planet’s cycle that their minds unfolded and expanded enough for him to make them out. One by one, they dropped into sleep, and with each departure, the planet below brightened. The fixed locations they lived in — cities, they were called — flared up one by one. So strange, to root yourself to one location, rather than drifting as people had done on Home. Laotyn dwelt in a single resting chamber by necessity rather than by choice. But these creatures — ponies, the image-word recurred again and again in their dreams, and he was beginning to grasp the language, crude as it was — these ponies were fixed in body and fixed in place, no flexibility in either. Perhaps the two aspects were related. Laotyn focused on one little white pinprick. The minds there were disordered as all the pony minds were, and flashing images inundated him, each there only for a moment before the thought pattern changed and it was gone. A pony with its young, alive at the same time as it, despite its parenthood. A pony galloping through fields of waving green plants. A pony spreading its wings and performing the limited lower-atmosphere movements that this species perceived as flight. Scores of them, all at the same time, a relentless current of them. And if Laotyn’s concentration wavered even for a moment, then the rest of the planet would flood in on him as well. He had spent the first night paralysed by that, lost in the rush of it all. But tonight he was ready; he was focused. He kept all his senses trained on that one small city — and there was only one whose thoughts were deliberately pointed in his direction. She was thinking, or dreaming, as she called it, of the sky. She always was. It was what had drawn him to her in the first place. She was floating alone in a vast empty sky, not a cloud in sight. A sphere was suspended above her — huge and translucent, shining with a soft green glow. The image had jumped out to Laotyn the first time he saw it. It resembled, very vaguely, one of his own people — and it was such a standout in the mass of pony thoughts that he had zeroed in on it immediately. But the balloon, as she called it, was not the sentient creature here. There was a basket below it, and in the basket, a pony. She was pink, making her look permanently embarrassed — though her yellow mane gave her a slightly more hopeful air. And just as she had the first time, she tilted up the stubbiest of her tendrils, the one with all the holes on it, and opened one of those holes in a curving shape with a rush of thoughts that, had she been a person, would have made her a warm and welcoming yellow. <> he greeted her, the image of those two bizarre plants still alien to his mind’s eye. His people named themselves in musical, lyrical patterns of colour and sound — but hers sought comfort in the familiar, and named themselves after objects and plants from the world around them. Laotyn, she replied, her conception of him a hazy image, a undulating mass of rainbow cloud. He smiled as he saw it. Crude, but effective. <> He still struggled to grasp the difference between the two. His own people never turned off their minds in the way that ponies’ perception of sleep implied. You rested and meditated alone, and that was all. There was none of this dramatic change in thought patterns, no flights of fantasy through composite landscapes made of memory blended with imagination. She squeezed air out through one of her holes. Laughing, she had said on their last meeting, when he asked. My day was great, thanks. I went on a date. <> But even as he asked, she was already supplying the images. Another pony, bright yellow this time, with an angry-red mane. Almost the reverse of Cherry Berry’s colours. It had the two extra tendrils that some ponies possessed. It’s holes were open wide, just as Cherry Berry’s were, showing the white solids inside, and the memory was tinted with happiness. It’s spending time with someone, Cherry Berry said, and the scene in which she stood abruptly shifted. The sky and the balloon melted away, and now they were in a dark space lit by dimly flickering flames. Though he had no tangible form here in the dream, though they could not hurt him, Laotyn shied away. Fire was something that had never been seen on the Taelo, but the sight of it awoke long-dormant instincts. On Home fire had been the one great natural danger to the people. When a spark ignited in that hydrogen-rich atmosphere, the results were…horrific. But here, on Issia’s planet — Equus, Cherry Berry had corrected him once — here on Equus the fire was pleasant. The ponies were giving off feelings of contentment, of pleasure, and reflections of the flame danced in the large wet circles through which they perceived the world. <> She did the air-squeeze laugh again. Why do you sound so confused about it? Don’t sky-jellyfish date? <> he replied. <> And selection of those partners was not so much the choice of a life-mate as it was the choice of the other constituent parts of your future offspring. Friendships were important — Laotyn had had many, before he finally earned his entrance into the observation pods — but they were nothing to do with Merging. The stuff you come out with is so trippy, Cherry Berry said, waves of umber amusement radiating off her almost as clearly as from a person. How does my subconscious come up with this stuff? <> It was not strictly ethical, to let her believe that he was merely a figment of her own imagination — but Laotyn was in totally uncharted waters now, trying to establish relations with the first sentient species ever discovered, and when she had made the assumption he had not corrected her. She launched then into the tale of her date, and the ponies stationed in the dark, enclosed space lit by fire began to move and act as the story played out. Laotyn listened to her words, but he was more focused on her colours, her emotions. She was so real. So vital. If he wasn’t looking directly at her, if he couldn’t see her horrible mass of liquids and solids and squishy meat wrapping it all together, he would have believed she was a person. She was a person, that much was obvious. In all the ways that counted, apart from external appearance, Cherry Berry and all her kind were people. But Laotyn’s people had come all this way. Thousands of years. Generation upon generation, circling the tight confinement of the Taelo, dreaming that some day their descendants would see the open sky again. That a new Home could be made. How could they recreate what they had lost on Issia’s planet, when to do so would destroy the life that was already there? <> he said, cutting into her monologue, <> She did not hesitate. Sure, I can try. <> Cherry Berry released air noisily through one of the holes in her highest tendril — usually a way to facilitate movement, but she remained stationary. Laotyn was unsure if the intention behind the movement was the same, or if it was another obscure emotional indicator. Sounds like one of the puzzles they hand out down at Princess Twilight’s friendship school. Not understanding what she meant, Laotyn remained silent, trying to draw more information out of her. They’re real good at interspecies friendships down there, Cherry Berry said at last. I’ve never studied there, but the kids are out and about in town enough that almost everyone’s gotten roped into one of their silly friendship lessons. They’d probably tell you that there’s always a way to balance everycreature’s needs. <> She would not be able to see him, but in his pod, Laotyn contracted with disappointment, shrinking in on himself as his colour bled away. His understanding of the terraforming modules was rudimentary, but so far as he knew, there was no option to change half of an atmosphere. <> Princess Twilight would say, and here Cherry Berry adopted a tone obviously intended to be mocking, You just need to try harder. <> he warned her, despair tinting his words and his body alike a dark, terrible blue. <> The scene shifted again — they were back with the balloon, but now the yellow six-limbed pony was present in the balloon beside Cherry Berry. Buddy, I don’t understand what even half of that means, but I think I’m more interested in dreaming about her than about you and your freaky sky-jellyfish friends. <> said Laotyn, utterly defeated. <> Unless the Council of Elders reassigned him, of course. Laotyn left his shift a smaller person than when he had entered it. He needed to visit the gas-wells and drink, but no matter how much methane he had inside him, he didn’t think it would make him feel any more buoyant. Cherry Berry was his friend, his first new friend in years. In ever, if you took into account the friendships he remembered his parents having with the parents of other people. Cherry Berry was the first truly original person he had ever known. But he knew what the Council of Elders would choose, if he revealed the truth to them. And how could he do that to his friend? When he had dreamed of reaching the pods, he had anticipated the pleasure of seeing the new world first, before anyone. This was not what he had wanted.