by Ian Stewart
hole. It had a row of what looked like lights at one end, of several different sizes and shapes, and two short stumpy tailpipes at the other. The corroded parts were off-white and looked crumbly. Here and there flecks of metallic silver reflected the afternoon sunlight.
Moses looked disappointed. Prudence suddenly twigged. "No, Moses, it's not a present. Here's your present." She rummaged in the bag and handed over something soft in bright wrappings. Charity dispatched the boy to a corner of the room while he struggled with the garish paper. Then she picked up the strange object.
"Careful!" said Prudence sharply She forced herself to relax. "Sorry, Charity, but I get nervous when anyone touches it. It's very old, and I'd be hard-pressed to put an upper limit on its value, so don't damage it."
Charity turned it over in her hands. The underneath bore a faint pattern, like the tread of a tire. "What is it?"
Prudence took a deep breath. "An artifact."
"I can see that. A pretty badly preserved one, too." The corrosion wasn't crumbly—it just looked that way It was rock-hard.
"Archaeological," said Prudence.
Charity touched a wheel, but it didn't turn. Axles rusted solid, no doubt. "How old?"
Prudence shrugged. "Haven't had it dated accurately yet, but we did a particle impact estimate which should be right to within a few percent." Moses had succeeded in opening the package, to find a shapeless furry lump.
"Pru, you shouldn't have. Memimals cost a fortune."
"Present?" asked Moses plaintively He was obviously unimpressed.
Charity remembered her question. "Like I asked, how old?"
"Before I answer that, maybe I'd better ..." Prudence reached over, took the artifact from her sister's grasp and cradled it in her hand. "Safer that way, Chatty, sorry. Roughly . . . roughly a hundred thousand years."
Charity was having none of it. "Nonsense. They didn't have wheeled toys a hundred thousand years ago. Uh—Mo, its a memimal, you squeeze it, okay? And then say 'doggie.'"
"They? Who's 'they'? Somebody did."
"Doggie!" shouted Moses. The lump pulsated, then sprouted protuberances here, shrank there. It wagged its tiny tail and barked. Moses giggled.
"Memofoam," said Prudence. "This one has a database of over a hundred animals. Moses, say 'piggy.'" The memofoam reshaped itself and oinked soulfully.
"Archaeology? And here's me thinking you've been in deep space these last ten years," Charity mused. "Out near Jupiter, grubbing around on its moons, looking for exotic extraterrestrial mineral specimens to sell to the highest bidder."
Prudence's face was unreadable. "I have," she said. "And that's where I found this."
3
The Oort Cloud. 997.642 bc
The Oort cloud danced a stately saraband, dripping the occasional comet sunward in a timeless cosmic drizzle.
The human mind is a metaphor machine, but its metaphors are those of a creature that evolved on the savanna and the seashore, not in the unimaginably vast realms of space. The "asteroid belt," for instance, is not a belt. When the first space probe made the daunting journey to Jupiter, passing through the Belt along the way, many of the mission's managers were seriously worried that it would collide with an asteroid—unaware that an encounter between two bacteria released at random into the Pacific Ocean would be far more probable. If you count rocks, then indeed you find unusually high numbers of them in between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter, and if you draw pictures of their orbits, you see a broad belt of ink. If you draw dots to represent their positions, you see a fuzzy ring in the same position. But those dots, proportionately, are larger than planets—larger even than awe-inspiring Jupiter. If you drew them to scale, no printer in existence could lay down such a minuscule speck of ink.
So if you go to the Belt and stare hopefully out of your spaceship expecting to see a floating sea of rock, you will actually see . . . nothing. Unless, like the neo-Zen monks, you go in for some careful, deliberate, and very well-equipped rock hunting.
Yes, there are lots of rocks out there. But there is also an incredible amount of space out there to put them in.
In the same metaphorical manner, the Oort cloud is not a cloud. It is a huge region of space, a hollow sphere whose inner surface lies about a thousand astronomical units from the sun— twenty-five times as far away as the orbit of Pluto—and whose outermost reaches are at least thirty times as distant. Possibly even a hundred times—nearly one-third of the way to the nearest star. Within that hollow sphere are a hundred million big lumps of ice and snow—made from hydrogen, methane, ammonia, and water intermingled with dust particles, pebbles, irregular lumps of more solid matter—the debris of alien solar systems overwhelmed when their suns exploded—or, more prosaically, leftover lumps of matter that accreted too far from a major center to form bodies of any size.
These dirty snowballs are comets-in-waiting, and it would be as futile to try to count them as it would be to enumerate the grains of sand in all the Earth's deserts.
Despite their numbers, the space that surrounds them is even emptier than the asteroid belt. The nested surfaces of the Oort's thick but tenuous rind exist only in astronomers' imaginations: there is no cloud of proto-comets, no fuzzy blizzard of interstellar snowflakes. There is only emptiness piled upon emptiness, just marginally less empty than hard vacuum.
Most of the lumps of ice in the Oort noncloud pursue roughly circular orbits under the influence of the near-invisible Sun, tugged tentatively this way and that by Jupiter and Saturn, brushed by the faint gravitational feathers of Uranus and Neptune, all but oblivious to the feeble attraction of the remaining planets, responding about as much as a human ear to a whispered word on the far side of the globe.
Occasionally, however, the random dynamic of chaos places two pro to-come ts in closer proximity than usual. They seldom collide, but for a fleeting moment they may become locked in a mutual gravitational embrace. Like dancing lovers they whirl each other around, swaying in time to the harmonies of the cosmos . . . then they part, their union unconsummated, retaining only memories of what might have been . . .
The Oort noncloud trembles. Imperceptible density waves ripple through its filmy medium.
Sometimes the star-crossed lovers pass so close that they fling each other away in radically new directions. Even more rarely, one may experience a series of brief encounters, so that the disturbances reinforce each other. And sometimes the result is to redirect a proto-comet's orbit sunward, changing it from a fat circle to a thin ellipse, initiating a million-year plunge from the cold of the Oort noncloud to the inferno of the sun's photosphere.
Now, at last, it has become a true comet. It will fall faster and faster, slicing across the sedate orbits of the major worlds like a fox darting across a desert highway ... It will see the sun grow larger, brighter, warmer ... As the comet approaches the orbit of Mars, its lighter gases will melt, then boil. Nearing the orbit of the Earth, its water-ice will start to liquefy, then turn to steam ... An outpouring of vaporized molecules will trail behind it in a splayed arc as its icy heart melts in the heat of the ever-looming Sun: the dust tail. Often a second trail of ionized particles will stream away from it in the solar wind, straight as a die: the ion tail.
Now the excitement will reach its climax. Speeding close to the sun's seething photosphere, boiling and exploding in a percussion of superheated steam, spitting droplets of molten rock, the comet will turn in the parent star's fierce gravity like a motorcyclist on a wall of death. Rounding the tip of its elliptical path at breakneck speed, the comet will begin its long plunge back toward the far void, slowing imperceptibly with every passing second. Its rocks will cool, its boiling waters will once more freeze . . .
No longer in a hurry, the comet will continue its languid journey back toward the Oort noncloud, the first of many such cycles of interminable slumber and violent awakening, until so much of its material has boiled away that it breaks up into a loose cluster of snow and gravel. Parts of it may then
go out in a blaze of glory as brilliant meteor showers in the Earths atmosphere. Some fragments may be captured by the asteroid belt. Most will merely join the unnamed ranks of orbital junk that smear themselves thinly over the entire Solar System.
While Prudence ate breakfast and Moses fed the jerboas, Charity Odingo browsed the eXtraNet, and a short filler item caught her eye. The caption shouted: BOLIVIAN BAKER BAGS BARMY BUD-DHIST BELTER BOOTY.
"Pru, have you ever been involved with Belters?"
Prudence swallowed a mouthful of cereal. "Ran into a few, yeah." Why is little sister raising that issue now.?
"Why do they keep giving away fortunes to random people?"
Oh. Prudences brow furrowed. "That's a long story. Chatty Belters are generally a tight-fisted bunch, but sometimes they can be very generous. That's how I got the title to Tiglath-Pileser, as a matter of fact—though technically that was for services rendered."
Charity pounced. "I always wondered how you came by that ship! What services?"
Prudence was dismissive. "Oh, I translated an old tablet for some Belters . . . Anyway, the Belt's a great place for peaceful meditation, but it's an even greater place for making money, and they make so much that sometimes they give it away. Why do you ask?"
"The Xnet says that a baker in Cochabamba woke up this morning to find a yard cube of tungsten on his doorstep."
"Yes, they do that kind of thing. All the time. Usually tungsten, but it could be almost any metal. I heard tell that some Paraguayan farmer woke up to find a cube of osmium in his pigpen."
"Just think what a grapefruit-sized lump of osmium would do for the facility," Charity said. "Let alone a yard cube. Who are these mysterious benefactors?"
"Weird neo-Zen sect, calls itself the Way of the Wholesome."
Charity spoke to her 'node and for once it obeyed her: the dim holoscreen blossomed into a commentary box. She peered at it in the bright light. "Right, here it is. The Tibetan word bde-ha, often rendered as 'good' but more accurately as 'wholesome' in the sense of 'bringing merit.' As such it possesses an overtone of action as opposed to merely passive—who writes this stuff?"
"If you access an obscure etymological commentary. Chatty, you shouldn't expect great literature." Prudence poured some more cereal. "God, you can't imagine what it's like to taste fresh food."
"Help yourself. Fatten yourself up a bit."
"Don't have the metabolism, Chatty. To prove it: I'm thin. Spacers who can gel fat, do get fat. Very fat. I prefer less metabolic perversions to keep myself marginally sane. But I'll have another slice of mango, since you're offering. Spacers call it the Cuckoo's Nest."
"What? Mango?"
"Mmmmph, no, the Way of the Wholesome Orbital Monastery. An inhabited asteroid in the Hilda Group. I'm surprised you haven't heard of them, they're notorious—I guess Moses and the animals keep you pretty busy, though. They struck it rich early last century with a series of heavy-metal asteroid claims; now they own most of the Belt. They can afford to spread their wealth around, and they do. Totally at random."
Charity's eyes returned to the main item. "Says here there was a poem engraved on the metal cube."
"Yup, they do that, too." Another tap, another commentary:
One must he aware that hoarded wealth must he dissipated. One must he aware that gifts now given are stored up for the future. One must he aware that a state of unhappiness is the harvest of evil deeds. One must he aware that all happiness is the harvest of good deeds.
Prudence nodded. "Right, the King of the Vultures. That's why we call it the Cuckoo's Nest."
Charity put down her fork with a clatter, and stared at her sister. "Prudence, I haven't the faintest idea what you're talking about. You call it the Cuckoo's Nest because of something to do with vultures?"
"Oh, no, sorry. That bit of the poem is said by the King of the—no, I'd better start over. Let me show you." Prudence got up, walked around the table, and studied the Xnet screen layout. "I wish you'd invest in a flatfilm screen. Chatty—they're dirt cheap. Um—yup, here." She jabbed with a finger, and the head and shoulders of a man appeared: an Oriental, with the traditional triple pigtail and pale blue robes of a neo-Zen monk. Behind him was an enlarged projection of an ancient manuscript.
Another touch called up a caption, the buddha's law among THE BIRDS. The face became mobile, the lips moving in speech. "This curious but charming old book bears marked traces of the Bka'-hrgyud-pa sect, and is believed to have been written by an anonymous lama some time in the seventeenth century. It was published in Tibetan in 1904 under the title By a chos rinchen 'phren-ha, which means The Dharma Among the Birds: A Precious Garland."
"I see," said Charity. She obviously didn't.
Prudence pulled up a commentary box. "Dharma: the righteousness that underlies the law of the Buddha. Freely paraphrased: the Buddhist worldview."
The monk continued. "The book is a highly simplified exposition of the basic tenets of Buddhism, cast in the form of a debate between different birds: the parrot, the vulture, the white grouse, the pigeon . . . The debate is led by the King of the Birds, the cuckoo."
"Oh!" cried Charity.
"Shhh, little sister. Let the monk speak."
"On the border between India and Tibet, so the By a chos tells us, there lay a wooded mountain named Pleasant Jewel, where dwelt the great magician Saraha and numerous other saints. And on this mountain lived innumerable birds and animals. It was a paradise on Earth. Lord Avalokita, an Indian prince, son of the King of Varanasi, was accidentally transformed into a cuckoo; and he became the spokesman for the council of the birds, and taught them the Dharma."
Charity froze the vidiclip.
"The Way of the Wholesome," she said, "like all orbital monasteries, was set up in order to mine the asteroid belt. It's a harsh environment out there, and quite unsuited to the kind of gold-rush mentality that historically opened up the great mining areas on Earth. Aggressive personalities would just get themselves killed. So, as you know, nearly all of the mining is performed by monks. Originally many different religions owned orbital mining monasteries, but only the neo-Zen Buddhists could hack it commercially. They soon had the Belt pretty much seun up.
"The Way of the Wholesome was founded by a sect that takes its teachings from the By a chos, or The Dharma Among the Birds. Its chief functionaries are all named after the various birds, according to their status in the book—so that in place of what in a Christian monastery would be the abbot, they have the Cuckoo."
"Which is why you call it the Cuckoo's Nest," said Charity.
"That's one reason. They're a very strange sect. Apparently Lord Avalokita, in his avian incarnation, preached the wholesomeness of giving wealth to the poor. The Cuckoo's Nest has the best record ever of multiple hits on payrock: it's rich beyond belief. It invests most of its profits in Belter technology It built the New Tibet Habitat, which manfactures the biggest and most powerful mass-drivers in the Solar System. It's the major distributor of asteroidal minerals, and it handles the products of most of the smaller monasteries.
"But of course it consists of humble, peaceable monks, so it generally maintains a very low profile. Except for its habit of dumping big chunks of valuable metal in the backyards of the terrestrial poor, which it considers to be in the best tradition of its spiritual founder.
"So the second reason we call it the Cuckoo's Nest is, the neo-Zen monks are crazy."
Nagarjuna, a Thrush—very junior monk—in the Celestial Lamasery of the Way of the Wholesome, reflected on the advice that the Council of Birds had to offer and found it wanting.
Not to say contradictory.
One must know that laziness and sloth hinder the performance of good, the Great Crane had said. He had no quarrels with that— after all, laziness and sloth hinder the doing of anything much. Except sleeping. But what was one to make of the words of the King Vulture, only a page earlier: One must observe the folly of this ceaseless husyness.
And to cap it all, it was
an uposatha day.
Probably.
The Buddhist calendar is a lunar one. Indeed, the Buddha was born into the Gotama clan on the full-moon day of the month of Vesakha, exactly ten lunar months after his mother Mahamaya dreamed that she was visited by a silvery white elephant of extraordinary beauty which entered her womb by passing through the side of her body—a portent that was interpreted either as the coming birth of a world king or, as it turned out, a Buddha. Even on Earth, the combination of a calendar system based on the Moon with seasons that follow the Sun had caused no end of historical headaches, and the rotation of the Earth, incommensurate with both lunar month and solar year, piled complication on complication. When the religious home of ones sect was an asteroid in the Hilda Group, spinning on an oblique axis every three hours twenty-nine minutes and some irrational number of seconds, the calendric complexities became ridiculous.
The brand of Celestial Zen Buddhism practiced by the monks of the Way of the Wholesome was a syncretic one, taking its teachings from many sources. Along with all the Theravada followers—those that trace their lineage back to the Pali Elders of the first Buddhist sangha, the assembly of monks that studies and preserves the teachings of the Buddha—the orbital monastery observed four holy days every lunar month. These were the full moon, the new moon, and the eighth day following each of those. And it was there that the confusion of celestial periodicities intruded into the inconsistent precedents of holy law, and Nagarjuna's headaches began.
Unfortunately, the ancient writings had failed to specify clearly whether the phase of the Moon should be observed from the Earth or from ones lamasery. The fact that Nagarjuna was currently at neither, but sitting on about seventy thousand tons of rock liberally veined with the oxides of rare-earth metals, was irrelevant. Various passages in the sacred writings, in particular the Bhikkhu-pdtimokkha, suggested either one location or the other, and at least one source, the Patisamhhdd-magga, was absolutely clear that it was both. In the days when monasteries were immobile, the distinction of course had no force, but as soon as the Solar System began to be developed, and it became clear that the monastic lifestyle was particularly suitable for those whose work required them to live offplanet for years at a stretch . . . Well, it was a mess.