A moment of silence, respect for the long-dead crew of the Morning Herald, descended upon the class. Jinanga broke it by speaking again.

“From then on, the die was cast,” he told them. “Pushed, we pushed back. Attacked, we responded in like kind. But the outcome was never in doubt. Within a few short weeks their proudest cities were razed to the ground, millions, perhaps billions of humans killed. Death, disease and starvation was their lot, until finally in desperation they unleashed what they believed to be their most potent weapon upon us.”

He sighed. “The poor fools. It seems they knew they were doomed, but in typical human fashion, wished to take us down with them. They thought nuclear weapons would hurt us. We, whose ancestors bathed in the radioactive glow of our home planet for millennia, to whom the choking nuclear winter is like their brightest summer, who luxuriate in what they call acid rain, who revel in darkness and aridity.”

Jinanga paused, shaking his head, recognising the fundamental miscalculation the humans had made, and how it had proven to be their undoing. He went on. “They knew nothing of our repulse shields, which surrounded each of our capital ships, and which, when their missiles struck them, merely caused them to bounce off and return to their point of origin. In the end,” he remarked heavily, and not without appreciating the irony, “they were the architects of their own destruction. We could now live on their planet, they could not. We conquered them easily, rounded up what few survivors there were, and chose a part of the world least affected by their own last fatal blow against their homeworld, there to house them. And there they remain, even to this day.”

It was Ubemesk again, his claw in the air. “Why didn’t we just exter - extrem - extim -,” his face knotted up in consternation and frustration and he settled for “wipe them out, Professor? We didn’t need them, and they had tried to kill us. Why let them live?”

The Professor’s reply was simple. He smiled kindly and said, “Because, podling, we are not humans.”



Seated in the back seat of the aircar, Trangor looked up from his plasma and said “Did you know, father, that there’s evidence that humans can write? Or, at least, that they could, once?”

His father, without turning (he was piloting the vehicle after all, and needed to keep his eyes on the road ahead) somehow contrived to convey a sense of disapproval. “Trangor, I’ve told you not to be looking at those conspiracy websites,” he told his son reprovingly. The boy sniffed.

“Oh, I don’t scan those anymore,” he said, with the air of someone who has given up playing with stuffed animals, and is aghast at the idea anyone should think he still engaged in such behaviour. “No, this is a proper government site, and they have pictures and everything. Look!”

But his father, of course, did not: even with the sharp compound eyes his people were blessed with, one needs to keep one’s attention on their driving. How many other careless users of the magna-road had perished, or caused accidents by having their attention even momentarily diverted? Yet he did wonder.

“A government site? Who told you about those?”

Trangor thought about this for a moment. Professor Jinanga had made it quite clear that, though he taught the curriculum that he was supposed to, there were views he held that the faculty would frown upon, and that, were they to become common knowledge, might spell trouble for the old man. He remembered how the professor had asked him to remain behind after class, and Trangor, with a mixture of trepidation that he had done something wrong and impatience to be out of the class, especially on this, his Spawning Day, had acquiesced with something of bad grace.

But it had been worth it. Jinanga had shown him things he had never dreamed were possible, even thought of, and yet, as he read the pages, he realised he had had these ideas himself. He knew how dangerous it was, though, to espouse such beliefs, and he decided that, while he had been always taught that it was preferable to be honest, perhaps this was one of the few times when it was best not to tell the truth.

“One of the guys in class,” he lied, paging through what had turned out to be a fascinating read. He had decided to be as vague as possible; he didn’t particularly want to get anyone into trouble in place of the professor, even that shishbinat Ubemesk, and if he didn’t name names then nobody could be blamed. His father let out a bubbling snort of disapproval. He must remember to talk to Professor Jinanga tomorrow; he didn’t want anyone filling his son’s head with that human rights nonsense.

“Father?” the voice came from the backseat.

“Yes, Trangor, what is it?”

“What does -” the boy paused, obviously reading off the screen a large word - cons-tee-chew-shun mean?”

“I have no idea,” his father shrugged. “Why?”

“It’s here on the site,” the boy told him. “One of the few remaining examples of human literature (he was obviously reading out again) confirmed by DNA analysis as being almost certainly of human origin. It reads: Con-stee-chew-shun of the Yoo-Nye-ted Staytes of …” He stopped. Intrigued, despite himself, Trangor’s father almost - almost - turned around.

“Of what?” he asked. He knew enough about writing to know that a sentence usually didn’t end in a preposition, and though these sites had obviously been translated into their own language from what was believed to be the human tongue (the very idea! Humans talking! Whatever next?) the same basic rules should apply. Though he couldn’t see him, he felt Trangor shrug.

“Don’t know,” he admitted. “That’s all there is. Looks like,” he added thoughtfully, “it got torn at the end. It’s just a raggedy scrap of - what I think they call - paper?”

There was silence for a few moments, and Trangor’s father tensed, knowing that the usual debate was about to kick off. “Father? Have you thought any more about getting me what I asked for for my Spawning Day? A human of my own? I’d look after it real well, take it for walks and everything. You wouldn’t have to do anything, I promise.”

His father sighed. “Son, you know that’s not allowed,” he explained. It was not the first time he had had this conversation with Trangor, and it would not be the last. Kids… “Humans are a protected species now. There are only - I don’t know how many …” But his son was already consulting his plasma, and had the answer for him.

“One point seven million, at last count.”

“Yes. One point seven million,” echoed the father. “They’re dangerous, son. They’re not to be trusted. They’re wild, and savage, and they’d kill you as soon as look at you. They don’t make good pets.” He frowned to himself. A human in his house! The very idea made him shudder. “Before we arrived there were over three hundred billion on this planet. Most were wiped out by their own nuclear weapons and many more died in the long aftermath of that strike. They are not suited for this environment, and every year more die, and fewer are born. It’s only in specially-created habitats like the compounds that they can survive at all.”

“In class today,” interrupted the boy, “we saw a holo of one - well, two - who escaped from the compound.”

“That was very reckless and stupid of them,” remarked his father. “But it just proves how low their intelligence is. They’re just animals.”

Trangor did not dispute this. “One got killed and ate by hunters,” he told his father, “but the other was clever and hid till the rangers came and blew the hunters to bits, letting it escape.”

Trangor’s father shook his head. Traffic was very heavy today. He had the hatch open, and the acid rain felt cool on his scales, but this journey was taking longer every day. He found himself wondering if the school allowed such graphic material to be shown to its students, whether he should consider moving his son to another one. It worried him: who knew what ideas got formed watching such things? “Well I guess it was lucky then that the rangers were able to save it,” he said somewhat distractedly. "They do a very important job, protecting the last indigenous wildlife on this planet."

“But don’t you think,” insisted the boy, “that the very fact that it hid proves the human had more than animal intelligence?”

“Trangor! I’m trying to concentrate on the road!” snapped his father, and immediately regretted his outburst when the boy fell silent. Placatingly, he answered the question as best he could. He didn’t know much about humans. He didn’t really care about them, though his son was certainly showing a marked interest in them. Perhaps he might one day want to be a ranger. And if so, then really, he as his father should encourage that ambition all he could.
But no point lying to the boy.

“It’s a simple survival instinct,” he told Trangor, as another driver tried to cut across him. He resisted the urge to curse: he had his boy in the vehicle, but inwardly he wished the carapace would melt off that lane jumper. “Nothing more. All animals have them.” Again, he resisted the urge to turn around and talk to his son face to face, feeling the wave of disappointment emanating from the boy’s antennae. “Look at it this way,” he said as kindly as he could. “Humans used to eat meat. Think about that for a moment. They actually killed other species and consumed them. It’s enough to make you ill, isn’t it?”

For a race who ingested all their nutrients directly from specially-prepared chemical compounds, the idea was as anathema as slaying one of their own kind, another thing humans excelled at, and a practice the cramaxians abhorred. Pressing his perceived advantage, he went on.