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Kane forced a cold grin to his face, baring his teeth. "This is the casement
where none of your machinations and dirty deals worked, right, Thrush?
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JAMES AXLER
Outer Darkness
287
Your conspiracy was defeated by another conspiracy."
Jozure stared at him as if he had gone completely mad. "What are you jabbering
about?"
Kane ignored Mm, addressing the arrayed bodies on his right. He raised his
voice. "What was it you said to us at our first meeting, something about
conspiracies only succeeding because humans overlook the obvious?"
Gesturing to the trapezohedron, he continued, "You were right on that score,
Thrush. I've overlooked the obvious answer that lies in this stone. It's what
gives you an imitation of life, but you share it with the mind patterns of the
race we called Archons. Is that all that is left of them on this casement?"
Thrush's voice whispered to them, sounding as if it issued from a multitude of
lips. "On all casements, save for incarnations of the entity you know as
Balam. The so-called Archons were weary. They had drained all their resources
to stave off extinction. They failed. All that remained of their knowledge was
embedded in the trapezohedron."
Somehow that flat tone conveyed a sense of hopelessness and resignation.
"So they poured their hopes into humankind, with their essence blended with
yours. The Archons were confident your race would conquer all obstacles in
your development. In this, they were naive. Your kind is still driven by
savage impulses. The vitality the Archons coveted from you sprang from that
savagery. They hoped it could be channeled in constructive rather than
destructive directions. Therefore, they determined you must be controlled for
a period of time."
i
"A period of time," Grant repeated bitterly. "How long was that? A thousand
years? Two? Ten?"
"It depended on the casement in question, of course," returned Thrush's bland
voice. "Actions undertaken on one casement to save humanity from perils of its
own devising may not have saved it on another. Different realities required
different solutions. I was charged with the task of applying them."
"Solutions?" Kane half snarled. "Conspiracies, deception, assassinations,
wars? Those were the solutions?"
"In many ways they were. The Archons never did anything to help or hinder your
development directly.
At best, they merely put certain aids in your path, such as the Totality
Concept technology. If you could make use of it, so much to the good. If you
could not, or misused it, then you suffered."
Brigid made a wordless sound of angry frustration. "Why go to all this trouble
over such a long period of
time? Why didn't they just contact humankind directly and ask for our help?"
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"The Archons didn't want your help," Thrush's voice retorted. "Yes, they made
things particularly difficult for humanity. But it was their way of testing
your worth, a test of survival of the fittest. They hoped you were the larval
stage of an organism that would eventually transcend the limitations of both
races."
"And the Archons allowed you to decide the tests?" Kane asked.
"Who better? For example, on your home casement, your people had despaired of
ever attaining anything beyond physical, immediate comforts. They
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JAMES AXLER
had lost the urge to transcend the material, to create, to question. And in
doing so, they lost pride.
"They conceded all rights to their lives and spirits. They were free for the
taking. They lost status as intelligent, thinking creatures and chose to
become tools."
Kane felt his face flush hot with anger, but it prickled with shame too when
he remembered Balam's words of a few months ago: "Your race was dying of
despair. Your race had lost its passion to live and to create."
He realized now Balam had not been mocking them; he had chastised them,
expressed his disappointment over the fact humanity had so quickly accepted
defeat and effortlessly returned to the condition of animals, first as
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