//||  //^^\\  ||   ||   .|.   COHERENT COMICS UNINCORPORATED PRESENTS
   // ||  \\      ||   ||  --X---------------------------------------------
  //======================= '|`      ACADEMY OF SUPER-HEROES SPECIAL
 //   ||      \\  ||   ||                 "From Dust To Stars"
//    ||  \\__//  ||   ||          Copyright 2003 by Dave Van Domelen
___________________________________________________________________________

     [cover shows a Pranir with unusually plain feather dye patterns
      surrounded by what can only be a horde of Pranir children.  With
      on hand, he gestures at the ground.  With another, he points up
      at the sky.  With the other two, he cradles a model of a sailing
      craft of clearly alien design.  For those who don't know what a
      Pranir looks like, it has a serpentine body with four arms,
      two on each side of the spine.  Each arm has a single elbow and 
      terminates in a hand with four mutually-opposed fingers.  The
      head has large binocular eyes much like those of an owl, and the
      snout is tipped with a strong beak.  However, it has a jawed
      mouth filled with omnivore-style teeth, the beak functions like a
      horn.  Normally, a pair of feathery crests run along the head
      like parallel mohawk haircuts.  The natural color of the feathers
      covering a Pranir's body is a light brown.]

     The younger nestlings of the cohort looked around the room in confusion,
although they already knew enough not to ask their older fellows for the
answer to questions that would be answered soon enough by the adults.  
     Guest lectures were rare enough, given the automated nature of
information-based education among Pranir.  And most schooling was of a
practical, hands-on nature anyway.  But they'd had a few lectures already,
and had even been on a "field trip" such as this one before, so they thought
they knew what to expect.
     Mainly, they were wondering where the pedestal was.
     Young as they were, they'd already figured out that you only listen to
important people, and important people speak from pedestals or other raised
positions, so that every one of their gestures and movements can be seen.
Talking with just one's mouth was something only children did, after all.
Even two-arms didn't just use their mouths, although they thought they did.
     Hence the confusion.  Was the speaker unimportant?  Was it a two-arm who
could stand high enough above the crowd without a pedestal?  And what was the
point of listening to either sort of person?  There was much nervous clicking
and thrashing of tails.
     Finally, the far door irised open and a positively ancient Pranir
slithered slowly down one of the bowl-shaped room's ramps towards the center,
where there was still no pedestal.
     "Greetings, nestlings," he said in a clear and powerful voice that
seemed totally at odds with his advanced age.  Even the subtlest of movements
in his body language were performed smoothly and without the palsy that made
ancients so hard to understand.  He radiated good cheer the likes of which
few of the students had ever seen, especially not from a male.  Still, it was
immediately clear why he didn't have a pedestal...he didn't need one.
     "My name is..." he spoke the untranslatable syllables, "but you may
refer to me by my Starname, Tells-Tales-Patiently."
     One of the more arrogant students, his feathers already dyed in the
pattern of the House he claimed would accept him, shook with derision.  "Who
are you to have a Starname, Houseless old man?"
     Tells-Tales-Patiently's posture shifted to one of bemusement, indicating
he was not at all offended, and that the child would have to try a LOT harder
if offense was intended.  "Not all who earn Starnames must travel to the
stars with one of the great Houses, child.  For some of us, the stars come
calling."  He turned around and slowly took in the entire cohort as he
continued.  "I am a loremaster of the people.  I have spent my life studying
our past...the ancient myths, the histories of the pre-stellar age, the
computerized records of the modern age.  Those with wisdom and a desire to
see far into the future have learned to consult the lessons of the past, even
two-arms from other worlds...even the six-arms have come to see me.  Since
they must call me something that their poor mouths can handle, I have a
Starname."
     There was a sussuration of motion and rustling feathers through the
class, body language expressing undisguised awe in many, confusion in others.
The six-arms, the T!rir, were a race ancient beyond telling.  They had
provided the means for the two-arms of the Santari to command the stars, and
they were only rarely seen by *anyone* anymore.  That they would come all the
way to the Pranir homeworld to see someone...well, the someone had to be VERY
important.
     The loremaster continued, amused in his posture by what was apparently a
very familiar reaction from his audience.  "I am here to tell you some of our
race's stories.  They are all true, even the ones that are not factual.  You
may think ancient history is worthless to a daring trader or brilliant
scientist, but the best of both sorts are careful to know where we came from,
in order to more clearly see where we must go.  I will plant the seeds of
knowledge and curiosity today, in the hopes that they will blossom later,
when you seek out knowledge on your own."
     He settled down into a coiled position that cut off much of his body
language, emphasizing the words he would now say.
     "In the beginning, the mountain and the sea were mated.  Great was their
love, as the waves crashed against the rock, wearing channels into the
mountain in their passion.  But this love did not last, and soon the mountain
and the sea hated each other as much as they had once loved.  They beseeched
the sand to be their intermediary, so they would no longer have to touch each
other.  But their love had borne fruit, and the mountain gave birth to the
Pranir, who crawled through the cracks and crevasses of the mountain, living
off her meager bounty.
     "Each day, they would look to the sea and wonder at its power and
mystery.  But the sand was inhospitable, and the mountain told them not to go
to the sea, for it was fickle and dangerous.  But what child always listens
to their mother?  The Pranir heard the whispering of the waves, the promise
of freedom and power, and they built mighty craft from the trees of the
mountain, then dragged them painfully across the sand and into the sea.  And
they died, smashed by the sea's power and sunk to the sandy bottom.
     "But they would not be deterred, and more boats were built, and more
Pranir died.  But the sand finally had pity upon the Pranir, children of the
mountain and the sea.  It told them the secrets of the wind, which every day
moved between the mountain and the sea.  It had once carried their whispers
of love, and it longed to serve once more.  So the Pranir were served by the
wind, which carried them across the waters to other mountains...for the sea
had many lovers.  And soon the sea accepted his children, who grew strong on
his waters."
     The child who had spoken earlier scoffed, clearly not having learned
that he didn't have what it took to ruffle the loremaster's feathers.  "That
is not truth.  We are not silicon-based life, born from some mountain!"
     "Scientific truth, no.  But our ancestors were not trying to craft that
sort of truth," the loremaster smiled.  "Consider your life so far, you who
tries so hard to impress his father.  You were born of a clutch of several,
raised by your mother.  Your mother, dependable and solid, unchanging like
the mountain.  But you see your father, or men who might be your father, out
in the world.  They are bold, they are traders or scientists or even
administrators.  But in order to win their approval, to enter their House,
you must cross the burning sands of adolescence and impress them with your
skills and dedication.  So it has been for longer than we have stories, and
even all our new technology and our exposure to alien cultures has only made
small alterations to that basic truth of society.  Maybe you will live to see
the day that men nuture their infant nestlings or women strike out to the
stars, without it being seen as strange or uncommon.  But do not be surprised
if, when your feathers rattle as dryly as mine do, you still see the story of
the mountain and the sea as true."
     Tells-Tales-Patiently waited a moment while his audience made small
motions of assent and comprehension.  He knew few of them would actually
understand at this point, but he was satisfied to have gotten them thinking
non-literally.  Now it was time to get back into their comfort zone.
     "Of course, science tells us how we actually came to be, a process of
descent with modification from simpler and simpler life forms stretching back
to single-cell organisms in the sea...in a way, the sea WAS our father.  And
our oldest language-using cultures seem to have lived primarily in the wooded
mountains.  But even before the invention of written language, we became a
seafaring race, exploring and trading and even warring amongst ourselves.
     "It should be noted that we were not *predestined* to be traders,
however."
     There were murmurs of disquiet.
     "Our current place in the stars can be explained by the Santari, the
powerful two-arms who found us centuries ago.  Had we been left alone to
reach the stars on our own...who knows what we would be reknowned as?  Mighty
warriors?  Clever diplomats?  Intrepid explorers?  Or perhaps...not at all.
We might have never made that first step towards the stars on our own.  But
the Santari found us when our mercantile culture was in full bloom, and that
has helped define what we became to the rest of the universe."
     He paused to rearrange his coils, work a little warmth into old bones.
     "This is also a true story, but even though it happened when we had a
written language and a tradition of careful recordkeeping, it is only as true
as the story of mountain and sea.  For all history passes down through the
eyes and hands of those who live it, and it bears their own personal myths
about how the world works...or how it *should* work.  
     "The Santari were chosen a long time ago by the T!rir to be their hands,
to be their agents in places where the long-lived but slow-breeding elder
race could not go in large numbers.  They were given the secrets of space
flight, and soon spread to the stars.  Those who went to the stars in those
early days became immensely wealthy, for they tapped markets and resources
that none of their own kind had ever encountered.  And life was good, and it
was profitable.
     "But it was also frustrating at times.  You see, the Santari believed
that a man of wealth should have servants to deal with the mundane matters of
life.  But how could you attract a man to be your servant out in the new
worlds when that same man could simply carve out his own fortune?  Oh,
mechanical men did exist, but it was not enough.  Having servants that could
think and breathe and LIVE was a matter of STATUS to the Santari.  Having as
many ducats as there are stars in the sky meant little if your brother back
home had a great house with a dozen servants while you lived alone in your
ship.  And the laws that protected citizens also meant that anyone who did
follow you to the stars would have a very good chance of striking out on
their own, so they would have to be paid exorbitant amounts and still might
leave at the end of the year's contract!"
     Eyes were round and large as the nestlings contemplated a world in which
money flowed like water.  Time to bring them down a bit.
     "And then the Santari found us.  We were, to them, very primitive.  We
had harnessed the wind and the water, but our machines were simple by their
standards, and our weapons insignificant.  Here, they thought, was a perfect
source of servants.  We were intelligent enough to learn to operate their
simpler devices and to speak their language...although they never did learn
to speak ours properly...and best of all, we already had a system of
indentured servitude.  Thinking themselves canny bargainers, they bought
servants from us at long-term rates and then made even more money for
themselves selling the contracts to their fellow starfaring rich.  But they
were explorers, warriors and scientists.  They were NOT traders, whatever
they may have thought of themselves."
     A ripple of laughter swept the room.  "You trade like a two-arm!" was a
common insult.
     "The heads of the Great Houses quickly realized what the Santari
represented, and moved to secure long-term investments in intellectual
capital.  In other words, they gathered their greatest thinkers and inventors
and sold them off to the Santari on seven-year contracts.  These Pranir,
eager to go along with the Elders' plan, worked as simple menials and
secretaries, never revealing their true aims...to learn as much as they could
about the technology of the Santari.  Oh, the first generation or so gained
little of real use.  It took time to even grasp the fundamental principles,
much less the applications.  And so a century or two passed...on the outside,
the Pranir remained a source of cheap labor, our culture only slightly
affected by the limited contact the Santari bosses had with us.  When we
introduced some breakthrough of technology or social engineering, they just
patted us on the head and praised us for being such clever servants.
     "Of course, the sea of money eventually ran dry.  Everything within a
practical distance of the Santari homeworld was eventually explored and
settled, and the economy was shifting from an expansionist to a
developmentalist one.  Not everyone who went into space was going to get
rich, a city on one Santari world was growing to be much like a city on any
other Santari world.  The wealthy could once again afford to hire servants of
their own race, and Pranir servants started to fall out of fashion.
     "The Elders had, of course, foreseen this a hundred years before it
happened.  In addition to technology transfer, they had also started putting
accountants and business planners into important 'servant' positions, and
while their data on the interstellar economy was often out of date, it was
very accurate.  They had a better long-term idea of where the Santari economy
was going than the Santari did.
     "So...weren't the Santari shocked when their remaining explorers started
running into Pranir trading outposts on outlying worlds?  Outposts
established with the use of Santari ships that had been bought through shell
companies and crewed with Pranir who trained on simulators purchased by third
parties?  They no longer needed us...but we no longer needed them, either.  A
century is long enough for even a servant race to learn the technology of the
master, as the Santari should have known from their own history with the
T!rir."
     "Were they really that stupid?  Even for two-arms?" one student asked.
     "Not stupid...they simply never looked in the right places.  Oh, they
were concerned about technology transfer, but they thought in terms of guns
and bombs and warships, because that is what they had wanted from the T!rir.
So we were very careful to not develop those things.  We kept to what we did
best at that time, commerce.  A single Tsaran pistol would have shown up on
their occasional sweeps and brought them down on our labs.  But they never
looked for translation software, or navigational devices, or training
simulators designed for commercial pilots rather than military ones.  None of
our projects were 'dangerous' to them, so they never found out.  Nor did they
have the minds of smugglers...as much as they watched for illicit trade off-
world, a newborn Pranir knows more ways to smuggle things and people than a
Santari Galactic Warrior of a decade's experience.
     "In a way, they forced us to remain what we were, traders.  We could not
become warriors without bringing down retribution.  We could not become
diplomats without revealing that we could leave our world without their
official help.  But we could trade.  And we could profit.  If we could not
seize the stars...we could certainly buy them."

=============================================================================

Author's Notes:

     The basic history of the Pranir has been kicking around in my head for
some time, and I'm pretty sure I even typed it up at one point, but I can no
longer find that file.
     My basic premise for the Pranir racial outlook was that they're
essentially 16th-17th Century Dutch traders in space.  Not as shifty as
Ferengi, but you should still always read the fine print.  They don't try to
cheat you as a race, since that's bad for repeat business, but there's always
bad'uns.  Not to mention, since they often trade in technology that they
don't fully understand (Tells-Tales-Patiently thinks a bit too highly of his
race's scientific achievements), they might sell you something that won't
work on your planet without knowing about that little problem.  
     Of course, like the Dutch, trading is a big part of their society, but
it's not the be-all and end-all.  They have their Huygens and Leewenhoeks and
so forth as well.
     Finally, a note on some of the terms used.  Pranir do not have the
facial structure to smile (well, they can TRY, but it's not pretty).  Their
planet does not have trees like ours.  And so forth.  But they have their
equivalents, so I decided not to go overboard in playing with terminology.
They can express pleasure facially: smiling.  They have plants on their world
that can be cut up and used to make boats: trees.  Et cetera.