The Mercy of Gods

“It was built to learn, built for plasticity. Its design is like water, flowing through whatever channels the universe provides it. It understands now that water also carries what it passes through. It has already traded purity for experience, and there is no path back.”

The swarm appears in sudden shifts in perspective, marked by italics and present-tense narration. Each passage from the swarm’s point of view provides clues to its identity and purpose. Here, it becomes clear that the swarm is an artificially created being meant to be a tool and spy, which has been altered by its interactions with its hosts.

“[H]e’d had an epiphany about the vastness and strangeness of the universe and his place in it. The insignificance of one boy on a strange planet in the vastness of galaxies. For a moment, his mind had reached out to the farthest ends of the universe, and he’d felt the weight of his life, his ego, his struggles as less than a feather.”

Jessyn recalls a priest she knew who explained that his epiphany helped him handle his mental health struggles. She feels a similar sensation when she learns from Jellit that scientists have detected an alien object in their solar system. This moment highlights one reaction to the revelation of life beyond one’s experience, which later contrasts with Rickar’s later reaction of terror.

“It’s the thing people do when they’re working on instinct. When they’re stressed and overwhelmed, there’s something they go to by reflex. Tonner focuses down on something small enough to control. Campar makes jokes. Jessyn withdraws. Everyone has something.”

Dafyd’s discussion of each team member’s pathological move highlights his ability to observe and analyze behavior, which becomes increasingly valuable during his interactions with the Carryx, when his effort to understand is a necessary survival skill. In addition, it establishes context for his later discussion with Else about his own pathological move.

“There was only one planet of interest, and only one—or at most two—species on the planet that held both enough abstract complexity and severability to be of use in expanding the canopy of the Sovran’s will or serving in the war. In one way, it wasn’t a particularly interesting find.

But in another, it promised to be one of the more fruitful discoveries since the great conflict began.”

This is the first time the novel shifts to the Carryx’s perspective. The passage provides several important clues about the Carryx philosophy that usefulness determines survival and foreshadows some point in the future when the seemingly uneventful discovery of humans proves crucial to the Carryx’s war and ultimate demise.

“Most were the pale centipede-like things that called themselves Rak-hund with footsteps that clicked like hail falling on slate tiles. A few were Soft Lothark: squat-bodied things with their unnaturally long limbs. Twice, he’d seen the massive creatures that seemed to be in control of everything. Dafyd’s mind tried to make them into giant shrimp or unthinkably vast cockroaches that bent up at a right angle in the middle, and then gave up trying to find an analogy.”

Dafyd demonstrates his skills of observation as he catalogs each alien species he sees during the invasion. In addition, this passage neatly summarizes various descriptions of the aliens thus far, making it easier for readers to keep track of the different species.

“It passes its hours of repose cataloging all the secrets it has already learned. It has seen a living Carryx and heard its untranslated voice. It has cataloged some of the enemy’s servant species. It is traveling within one of the ships that have only been the subject of after-battle autopsies.”

Until this point, the swarm’s precise purpose and motive has been unclear. Now it becomes clear that the swarm views the Carryx as enemies, raising new questions about the swarm’s purpose and whom the Carryx are at war with.

“I think, What would I do if I were them? Or If I was doing what they did, why would I be doing it? It works more often than it doesn’t. I thought there would be punishment because I thought they were like us. But there wasn’t any, and I don’t know why.”

Referencing a previous conversation, Dafyd explains his own pathological move, which is to understand other people’s motives by putting himself in their shoes. This impulse contributes to the theme of The Human Drive to Understand and underscores the limits of that understanding. Dafyd admits that his attempts to understand the Carryx have failed so far because he anthropomorphizes them.

“Past the edge, huge ebony ziggurats rose, one after another after another. Any of them was large as a mountain, with long bars of light that gleamed from their summits down to the clouds that hid their bases. Where the pale clouds grew thin, Dafyd caught glimpses of smaller structures—forests or buildings or both—that glimmered with red and golden light. A world-city.”

The novel describes the humans’ first steps on an alien world in expansive detail to highlight its vast size, unknowable origins, and cultural differences from the humans’ world. Space opera often focuses on images of strange alien architecture and immense scale to evoke feelings of wonder and disorientation in both the characters and the readers.

“Over and over again, we found it in our subject species, this faith that a state of peace was not only possible but desirable. That if only someone were clever enough or wise enough, a way could be found for everyone to be in comfort and satiety.

This delusion has never been the error of the Carryx. We knew from the moment we knew anything what can be subjugated, must be.”

Ekur explains that the Carryx are the only species that understand the true nature of the universe. It argues that peace is impossible because competition and conquest are part of the natural order, which helps rationalize the Carryx’s treatment of other species and contributes to the theme of Colonization and Dehumanization.

“Half of their animals of violence died, and a third of the Carryx. Ekur-Tkalal rechecked the information, but the half-mind–passionless and incapable of meaningful surprise–remained adamant. One of the largest groups of conquering Carryx forces had just suffered massive casualties. […] It would have been unthinkable, except that it was happening.”

Likewise contributing to the theme of Colonization and Dehumanization, this passage from Ekur’s perspective depicts how the Carryx reduce other species to lesser beings and animals to rationalize their conquest. The Carryx are so sure of their superiority that successful resistance strikes them as unbelievable.

“When he showed his mother his great triumph over fear, she’d laughed and said most people who were scared of spiders don’t force themselves to get over it, they just leave them alone. My little Dafyd just hates anything telling him what to do.

She’d been right. All his life Dafyd had felt an irrational need to pull left when everything was telling him to pull right. It was petulant and petty, a childish need to not be controlled, even by himself.”

Dafyd reflects on his efforts to conquer his fears, which are fueled by his stubbornness and unwillingness to be controlled by even his own phobias. This is a crucial aspect of his character, underscoring the anti-authoritarian streak that often drives him to resist Tonner’s authority.

“Else Annalise Yannin is dead. The swarm finds that it had expected them to be like echoes that fade to silence. It was wrong. They are the foundation on which everything that comes after must be built. These dead people shape who the swarm is and who it is becoming.”

Until this moment, which team member the swarm has taken over as host was uncertain. The swarm’s decision to take over Else is vital to the plot, allowing the swarm to influence Dafyd’s behavior. This passage also reveals how the swarm’s interaction with its hosts transforms it, making it something unexpected even to itself.

“Life went on. That was the terrible thing. They were ripped out of their world, their lives, their sense of who and what they were. Their history. They were killed, or made to watch the people they loved die. And then, at some point, they were hungry. Thirsty. […] The slow, low pulse of being alive kept making its demands, no matter what. However bad it was, however mind-breaking and strange and painful, the mundane insisted on its cut.”

After Irinna’s death, Rickar reflects on the strange way that humans can continue with the normal, mundane aspects of life despite suffering and trauma. This is an important aspect of their resistance to dehumanization while in captivity: They stubbornly cling to trivial things that make them human.

“All the hatred she carried for herself seemed to slide away. Irinna’s presence in her memory still whipped her, but now it was whipping her toward something. Not just a punishment, but an instruction. The spiritual knives she’d carved herself with for as long as she could remember became a weapon looking for someone else’s blood.”

Jessyn experiences an enormous character transformation after Irinna’s death. In the wake of prolonged degradation, she’s reshaped by anger and hatred into a weapon, turning the violence she once directed at herself outward to the Night Drinkers. This is both her reaction to dehumanization and her answer to the question of survival.

“The enemy had come, bent on murder. They’d broken into their home, assaulted them, and the first impulse of the team was to see what they could learn from it.

If they survived this alien hellscape, it would be because of this. Because in the face of trauma and violence, what they wanted first was to know, to understand.”

Tonner ignores the ethics of their compliance with the Carryx’s test and the berries experiment by centering all his energy and focus on scientific possibility. As he argues here, he believes that humans’ need for knowledge about the new and unknown will save them, thematically underscoring The Human Drive to Understand. This proves true at the novel’s conclusion.

“They could pretend that they were excited by the increase in knowledge, that they were scholars before anything else. […] But just then, with the smell of victory still in her nose, she knew better. They were excited because they’d won. They were alive, and many of the enemy weren’t. For the first time since before the humiliation of Anjiin, they had faced a threat and unequivocally come through as powerful, dominant, safe.”

After the victory over the Night Drinkers, Jessyn dismisses Tonner’s excitement for learning as self-deception, which represents the flip side of the argument inherent in the theme of The Ethics of Survival. She now believes that violence and power are necessary for their survival, not only physically but emotionally. She believes that her feeling of victory, dominance, and safety are necessary to keep them motivated and retain their pride as a species.

“We love them, and we live. We eat their leavings and we smile and they give us our draft of pleasure. I would not say this if I were not valued, but you are young. Do as we have done. It is the best life that remains to you.”

Dafyd and Else use the black box translator they acquired to question the various aliens in the ziggurat. They discover that every captive species has accepted their servile place out of fear or resignation, as evident in advice that the Phylarchs (bone horses) give them. These aliens chose the path of compliance and complicity to survive.

“I have worked my whole career at the intersection of humanity and violence. The Carryx are trying to figure out whether we’re domesticable, but I already know the answer to that. We aren’t. We never have been.”

Dafyd and Urrys agree that the Carryx’s test is meant to determine whether humans are domesticable. Urrys concludes that humans can’t and never will be domesticable. They’ll always fight back, no matter the odds, which means that they’ll eventually die. For Urrys, this is sufficient reason to fight now.

“The plan where I just sit here like a good pet and try to make them happy? I’d rather die. I’d rather have Jessyn die. I’d rather have all of us die than live on our bellies, licking Carryx shit.”

Like Urrys, Jellit decides that he prefers to fight and die now rather than live for some unspecified time, willingly enslaved to the Carryx. This is the central thematic argument of The Ethics of Survival. Dafyd argues the opposing side: that they should comply and bide their time until they know they can win.

“The consequences of what he’d just done—what they’d both just done—were out of their hands now. The bullet fired, and nothing would call it back into the gun.”

Having betrayed the human resistance, Dafyd must await the consequences of his actions, knowing that once something has happened it can’t be reversed. His guilt follows him to the end of the novel. This may be the first incident that earns him the title of “the betrayer” as Ekur’s epigraphs describe him.

“‘We did what we had to do, that’s all,’ Jellit said. ‘You were very brave. I know how hard this was for you, but it was the right thing. In the years that come after this, you’re going to wonder if it was. When you do, remember this moment. Right here. Remember me telling you it was the right thing to do.’”

Dafyd takes comfort in the fact that he and Else successfully convinced Jellit to switch sides and that Jellit now believes that Dafyd did the right thing (despite Jellit’s earlier vehemence), implying that compliance is the correct choice. However, unbeknownst to Dafyd, the swarm has taken over Jellit’s body to convince Dafyd of the plan, calling this conclusion into question.

“[E]ssential nature and place in society. An animal doesn’t choose that. And neither did the Carryx. Carryx changed with their social status. Their place in society literally determined the form of their bodies.

The ones who were victorious were better suited. The ones that failed were inferior because they had failed. Possibility was an illusion. That was what the librarian had said, but what it meant was choice. What happened, happened. What didn’t, didn’t. A species was useful to the Carryx, or it was not. They ruled their universe because they did.”

Dafyd suddenly understands the Carryx’s philosophical views about the nature of the universe as based in biological determinism and the illusion of choice. This allows them to rationalize every action and outcome, including their violent conquest of the universe. They believe that if something wasn’t meant to happen, it simply wouldn’t happen.

“The Carryx had made him their high priest, the only voice between them and a vicious, capricious god. So, he needed a prophecy, then.

‘I don’t know what’s going to happen to us all,’ Dafyd said. ‘But I just want to say while we’re still in the same place, while we’re here together, that I’m going to find a way to kill them. […] I’m going to learn everything about them. I’m going to figure out how to get into their heads. And I’m going to kill them all and burn their fucking towers to the ground. It’s my war now.’”

Ekur names Dafyd the voice and advocate for the human moiety, which Rickar sarcastically calls “the high priest of the human race” (417). Dafyd takes this new role seriously. Presumably, this is the role that eventually allows him to destroy the Carryx. This is his official declaration of war. The epigraphs have already foreshadowed his success.