Heirs of Earth by Sean Williams, Shane Dix Read Free Book Online Page B

wasn’t one of them.
    He didn’t know how to feel about that. Once, life had been simple. As one of a helot pair, his tasks had been simple, purely functional, and he had needed to think no more than was required to ensure those tasks were carried out effectively.
    But then the bodiless humans had come along, and everything had changed. His helot pairing, Asi/Holina, had been taken hostage by the many-bodied human Frank/Axford, while he, Ueh, had accompanied Peter/Alander on his journey to the Mantissa to see the Praxis. What had become of Asi/Holina was unknown, but it was assumed that he had died in Axford’s care. Whatever the case, without Asi/Holina, Ueh’s position among his people had become redundant. He was effectively caught between two colliding cultures, an orphan among orphans.
    He couldn’t blame Peter/Alander for breaking up his pairing, though. The human wasn’t to know the necessities of life where his culture was concerned. Alander and his kind expressed puzzlement over many things and were clearly unprepared for their first contact with an alien race. The Ambivalence had rattled them, and they were blundering now when they should have been treading lightly.
    Alander had delivered Ueh/Ellil to the Praxis little knowing the fate that awaited either of them. Physically ingested— eaten—by the giant creature, they had lost everything. The Praxis had absorbed them, body and mind. For an unknown length of time neither had existed. Their regurgitation had not been guaranteed, and it came at a price. Their bodies and minds had been tinkered with, in accordance with the Praxis’ s inscrutable will. They had been changed to better fulfill the tasks required of them, fashioned as tools and sent back out into the universe with little knowledge of how exactly they had been altered.
    The Yuhl were a species not unaccustomed to radical change. Their minds, encouraged by advanced medical science, had retained a measure of plasticity from their evolutionary past and were able to literally grow new sections to accommodate new skills. But even with such a background, Ueh/Ellil had been given cause to wonder. As he progressed with startling rapidity from helot to envoy/catechist and finally to conjugator, he had to ask where it might end.
    “ Who am I the same person I was before?”
    Even asking that question exposed him as the freak he was. Yuhl rarely thought of themselves as individuals in isolation. Until the change, his individuality had been defined in terms of the Yuhl/Goel race. He was not an island; his life was not a single thread, drifting alone through space. He was a just one more strand in a much larger tapestry.
    Or had been, anyway. Now that he was back among his own people, he was struck by how out of place he felt. He didn’t feel like he was one of them anymore, didn’t feel like he belonged. He was something else entirely.
    “They call us the Pax Praxis,” said a voice that sounded as though it could fill the universe. Ueh was standing on an observation deck, watching the Mantissa break in two. To the Yuhl, that meant being tightly enveloped by a glistening intestine that drooped down from the ceiling. Nanometer-thin tendrils spread through his skin to nerve endings, resulting in complex illusions of the world outside.
    “The humans have much to learn,” he replied.
    “We all do, I suspect.” Deep rumblings echoed around him, as though a meal of stones was grinding in the belly of a giant. “There’s something I need you to do for me, Ueh.”
    “You need only to instruct me, and it will be done.” He found it strange that the Praxis should word it in such a way as to make it sound like a request. Ueh’s promotion to conjugator meant that he now served the Praxis exclusively, and whatever was required of him would be done without question. He was no longer bound to the Fit like others of his race.
    “No, Ueh, this is different,” said the Praxis. “I can’t command you to do this