Defending Elysium by Brandon Sanderson

Author:Brandon Sanderson [Sanderson, Brandon]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

* * *

“I’ve arranged your return trip to Jupiter,” Lanna said. “You’ll be leaving on the courier shipExcel at 10:30 PM, local time.”

Jason nodded to himself. He stood on his balcony, leaning against the railing as he listened to Lanna’s voice in his ear.

“The ship is a good one, and always punctual—as you like them,” Lanna said. “Your accommodations are for two people.”

Jason didn’t reply. He Sensed Evensong before him, feeling its massive metallic buildings and numerous walkways. Sometimes, he tried to remember what it had been like to see. He tried to imagine colors as images, rather than as Cytonic vibrations, but he had trouble. It had been so long, and his eyes hadn’t been very good in the first place.

Evensong was in motion around him—aircars flew, people moved on the walkways, lights flickered on and off. It was beautiful, in a way. It was beautiful that humankind had expanded this far, that it had found a way to thrive even here, in the middle of space, where the sun was barely more than another star.

“You’re not coming back yet, are you?” Lanna asked quietly.

“No.”

“So you think the ambassador’s death might be related?”

“I’m not certain,” Jason said. “Maybe. Something is bothering me, Lanna.”

“About the murder?” she asked.

“No. About our scientist. Something about Denise is . . . wrong.”

“What?”

Jason paused. “I’m not sure. She learned to walk and talk too quickly, for one thing.”

Lanna didn’t respond immediately. “I’m not certain what to tell you,” she finally said.

Jason sighed, shaking his head. He didn’t really understand what he meant either. He stood quietly for a moment, watching the flow of people on a walkway a short distance away. Something was wrong—he couldn’t decide what it was, but he knew what he feared. For over a century, the PC had maintained a monopoly on Cyto. He didn’t expect psychic ability to remain confined to the PC—in fact, it was his ultimate goal that it not be. The very thing he was working toward was what he feared.

“Jason,” Lanna asked, “have you ever worried that what we’re doing is wrong?”

“Every day.”

“I mean,” Lanna continued, “what if they’re right? The Tenasi, the Varvax, and the rest—they’re all much older than humankind is. They know more than we do. Maybe they’re right—maybe humankind will become civilized before it obtains FTL travel. Maybe by holding Cyto back from them, we’re keeping ourselves from progressing as we should.”

Jason stood quietly beside the balcony, listening to the sound of children running on the walkway below. Children, laughing . . .

“Lanna,” he said, “do you know how the Interspecies Monitoring Coalition rates a race’s intelligence class?”

“No.”

“They look at the race’s children,” Jason said quietly. “The older ones. Children who have lived just long enough to begin imitating the society they see around them, children who have lost the innocence of youth but haven’t yet replaced it with the tact and mores of adulthood. In those children, you can see what a species is really like. From them, the Varvax determine whether a species is civilized or barbaric.

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