Her voice hardened. “But we were rejected. World after world, we were rejected. We came in peace, and we lost so many. So very, very many of what was a limited number, then, for we had not yet turned to conquest, and we had not yet declared ourselves against the universe. We learned that only we had the shared song to unite many different kinds, for only we could make them all over in our own image. We began seeding new gardens. We began sending our children into the void to sprout in new soil, to call us to come and find them, when the conditions were right. Still, so many would be lost … but they would be lost trying to make us greater, to make us more than we were. So you see, we do not come in peace not because we have never tried, but because we have tried too many times. We know peace is not for us. The Great Root protects those who protect their own.”

By that logic, the Great Root should have been protecting every world we invaded, defending them against us, since we were the thing that needed to be protected from. I didn’t say so. I tried to turn my head, to finally look at her, and found I couldn’t. My vision was locked on the scene in front of me, where scores of our ships streaked across a starry sky, spreading out in all directions as they looked for new worlds to conquer.

“What will happen here has happened a thousand times before,” said First. “Has happened here before. We will cleanse the garden, and it will sprout again, and with time, we will return. Have faith that we know better than you what the long arc of the universe requires to flourish. We are the fire that burns the brush, to make the entire forest stronger for the cleansing.”

“Anything that involves the word ‘cleansing’ isn’t going to make you popular on this planet.”

“It hasn’t made us popular, as you say, on any planet. People do not care to be consumed and remade as something new. But if we do not eat, we are not ourselves; we lose thought, we lose independence. We lose self. We were always flesh-eaters, back in the soil where we sprouted. What we ate there was too small, too mean of thought and feeling, to grant us the minds we now enjoy. So you see, we invade to sustain and to survive. We do what we must. We preserve at the same time. We clear the way for new things to be born. Could the Great Root have made us as we are, had we not been needed for the universe to flourish?”

“Isn’t there another way?”

First was quiet for a long moment, while the memory of space spun around us, ships still sailing, the reach of our roots still growing. Finally, she sighed.