Multiverse: Exploring the Worlds of Poul Anderson

by Greg Bear

  Clunks, rattles, and thunks told her their package was taking on more masses of water, to later burn in the reaction engines. She could see the feeder lines snaking into their carbon-black package, delivering water fresh-harvested from the comet nucleus she had seen only a few hours ago, looking up from the launch point. All the while the Flinger was pumping water into their fusion fuel tanks. They would shove steam out to decelerate at their destination.

  Their speed was so high now as to be incomprehensible, the view a blur. All she could think of was the unending pressure forcing them onward. She had extra oxy just to stay conscious; Loonies had it hard. The Flinger orbited far above the Lunavator in centrifugal haste, rotating so fast that within another hour it let them go at a speed above two hundred kilometers a second. The solar system was big, and it was best not to think about hitting a wandering rock at such speeds. Their forward-looking radar linked to laser cannon could do that, thank you.

  They popped free on course. It was like turning into an angel after a week in hell. Light, airy, she was a free bird.

  She unstrapped in the zero gravs and tried a tumble-thrust to get her popping joints aligned. She had done zero grav before but now her flying experience paid off in easy, unconscious grace.

  The Prefect was asleep, or maybe unconscious, his face lined. She headed for the hibernation capsule ahead of the staff, got her injections from the nurse, and snuggled into the smart comfy clasp of the hiber tech cocoon. She didn’t want to hear the Prefect’s ideas, or the staff’s. And she didn’t want to be bored with a month of speculation. Sleep, bliss, yes.

  She wanted to see the Ark, a month’s ride away.

  The Ark sail was folded up into a tight scroll, which explained why humans hadn’t found it. The sail had been kilometers across, and now was just a white rod bound with straps. Its cargo, the ship that had sailed the eons, basked in the ruddy glow of a red giant, then coasted for centuries across to the nearby Earth—well, it looked ordinary. A dull composite cylinder, streaked and pitted and worn, hardly a hundred meters long and seventy meters across. But the door was open, a yawning circle. Pretty obvious: Come on in, whoever you are. You’re why we came.

  Except the Ark arrived before humanity had swung down from the trees. It had to be designed to welcome whatever sprang from ancient forests, glimpsed in pixels by a species long extinct.

  Staff up and coffee-strong, they prepared a team to haul alongside the Ark and board. Then the Prefect suddenly cried, “The Ythris are already there!”

  Ruth glanced out a port while she slipped on her skin suit. Floating across the space between them and the Ark, lit only by starlight, were . . . bubbles. With her helmet on she close upped those motes and saw that Ythri space suits were the opposite of theirs: expanded, transparent oblate spheroids with appliances socketed into the walls. A Ythri swam in the bubble, breathing air and propelling itself with tiny jets. The suit bubbles had grappling arms and the team of six Ythri were forming a ring around the Ark cylinder. Each carried a teardrop thing of tan ceramic alongside. “They’re not going for the front door,” she sent before sealing her suit.

  By the time she got out their air lock the Ythri had the tan ceramics attached to the Ark hull, encircling it. “What’s up?” she sent on private com to the Prefect—who, she saw, hadn’t bothered to get into his skin suit. Maybe he didn’t bother to have one, either; he was standing at the big port in the ship’s bridge.

  She glided past him on a tether, skating cross the Venture’s hull in the inky dark. “We anticipated this,” he said blandly and she could see his lips move.

  “What’re they—”

  “Probably mounting those simple fusor packs they’re carrying. They want to get the full implosion impact, tear the Ark down to atoms.”

  “Why?”

  “Some ancient grudge, I surmise. I had their ship sounded from outside, when it first came into Lunar orbit. The fusor warheads showed up clearly.” He stood with hands behind his back, a traditional Prefect stance of measured patience.

  Ruth wasn’t feeling patient and would probably never be a Prefect. “You knew all this—”

  “And did not tell you, yes. I could not predict how well the Ythri could read your unconscious signals.”

  “What do you—”

  “A moment.” The Prefect nodded to the Venture Captain. From the forward hull a concealed projector suddenly jutted forth. Its snout turned, focused, and Ruth heard a braaaack in her microwave inputs. Nothing happened that she could see but the Prefect nodded and allowed himself a small smile. “Their simple warheads are now dead. Go tell them.”

  So she was message girl now. Still, Ruth was glad to be free of Venture and jetting toward the floating Ythri bubbles. As she approached they seemed disturbed, working furiously at their socketed tools. The tan ceramic warheads were just lumps on the Ark cinder-dark skin.

  “Your explosives will not work,” she sent Fraq on a narrow squirt beam.

  “I have scented this,” he said tightly, gliding over the Ark’s horizon.

  “Can I trust you to go inside with me?”

  This he pondered, hanging beside the circular lock entrance. “I carry no further weaponry,” he said at last.

  By that time Ruth was there. Instead of slowing, she glided directly into the lock. Fraq barked some surprised epithet and hastily followed her.

  Intuitively she sensed it was better to confront him inside, isolated; make it personal. She passed through an iris that opened at her approach. No air, but she was in a large space that slowly . . . awakened.

  Phosphorescent glows stretched across long walls. Transparent cases lit, showing strange bodies suspended in clear liquid. Intricate tiny slabs showed pale colors, light fluttering as if from a slumber. DNA inventories? She prowled the space, surrounded by an enormous bio data base. Slowly, it came to life.

  Suddenly zero-grav flowers floated by, big blooms growing from spheres of water. She recalled as a girl watching the joy of soap bubbles shimmering in sunlight. These somehow sprang to life in vacuum.

  Behind thin windows, gnarled trees like bonsai curled out from moistening soil. Odd angular plants burgeoned before her eyes.

  In all directions of the cylindrical space, plants grew, looking to her like lavender brushstrokes in the air. In a spinning liquid vessel, orange snakes with butterfly wings danced in bubbling air. Displays.

  She heard her own gasps echoed, turned. Fraq hung nearby, eyes wide. “Is a display,” he said. “A welcome, it could be.”

  “Welcome, yes. It’s a bio inventory,” she said. “Displayed as an explanation. As advertising.”

  In his own suit bubble he waved a wing at images playing along the walls. Purple-skinned animals loping on octopuslike tendrils across a sandy plain. Flying carpets with big yellow eyes, massive ruddy creatures moving like mountains on tracks of slime, trees that walked, fish in stony undersea palaces. A library of alien life.

  She turned full on to him, pressed against his bubble, glowered. “What was that you said? The Ark was a ‘Prime Need for life itself’ eh?”

  “We came for ancient vengeance,” Fraq said stonily over comm, tan feathers ruffling with unease.

  “For what? They sent you an Ark? But—”

  “And we brought their life from the Ark in orbit, down to our world.” His eyes flared. “We could not control it. Did not know. Their strange creatures festered, escaped from us, attacked our life at every level. Diseases, blight, desolation, death. They nearly killed and colonized our biosphere.”

  Sudden deep anger boiled in his tight voice. She sighed. “You . . . you just did it wrong.”

  “They sent it as a weapon, our history says. Our foremothers laid down for all generations, as bloodpride, the call—to destroy all Arks.”

  “It was too late to kill the Furians?”

  “Alas, yes. Their star had eaten them.”

  Suddenly, from the troubled shifting of his eyes, she saw why Fraq had insisted that she fly with
them. First, to test whether humans could be better than the mere dirt-huggers of their world. Second, to show that Ythrian hunting carnivore life was hard, aloof, clannish. That was all their way of telling me about themselves. And now I sense them. Intuit them. I know them beyond language.

  The Ythris learned through experience, not from libraries. They had now to think of this Ark as repository of lost history, not as enemy.

  She peered through the glassy bubble suit, reading his shifting feather patterns. “I’m sorry, but you should know more biology. Try experiments! Don’t bring in invasive forms until you understand them. Look—” she gestured wide at the bounty surrounding them. “They’re offering, not invading.”

  Fraq’s stiff face slowly eased. Feathers rustled. “I was charged with bringing destruction. My kind regrets that you knew more, and deadened our explosives.”

  “We know more about war, unfortunately. Look, that’s over. Question is, what next?”

  “You must destroy this.”

  “Hey, I’m a librarian! Don’t destroy, study! Learn!”

  “It is a danger too vast to say.” He frowned darkly. “This is a matter of bloodpride.”

  “We’ll learn from your mistake. No Furian life gets into Earth’s biosphere. Or those of Mars and Luna.”

  “I will consider it.” More feather riffles, hard to read.

  “You’ve already seen how we’ll do it,” Ruth said suddenly, the idea fresh born and irresistible. “This ship is live now. Let’s redirect it. Send it to Luna, use the bolo to bring some of it down. Carefully take bits of the Furian life into a huge new void, specially dug. Create an alien biosphere isolated by a hundred kilometers of rock.”

  Fraq blinked. She could see his Ythrian male rigidity ease a bit, muscles soften, breathing slow. She had been studying his body language and now somehow knew how to work with it.

  She could do this. No Prefect need get in the way, either. Just her and this beautiful alien.

  She smiled. Wordless, the two of them hung in the luminous center of ancient legacy, a Library of Life for an entire world now gone forever. They could do it.

  Her heart beat faster. She watched his strong wings flex with new energy as the idea took hold. Y’know, he does look like a great guy . . .

  AFTERWORD:

  In January 1999 Poul Anderson sent me a letter enclosing his essay on his invented aliens, the Ythrians, which he had used in his novel, The People of the Wind. I had liked the novel and had asked him as part of a proposed anthology for details on the planet and its aliens. My notion was a collection of stories that dealt with aliens in scrupulous detail, attention paid to how they evolved, how that affected their worldview, and how humans might react to them. Maybe there would be humans in the stories, maybe not.

  The anthology idea didn’t fly, alas. Poul was a meticulous writer, working out an integrated vision for a novel, though few of these manuscripts apparently saw print. He was ready to write another story in one of his worlds, and it was a singular treat seeing how he had designed it.

  Approached to contribute to this volume, I fetched out his thirteen page Ythri description, with solar system and planetary parameters in detail. His essay also included several of his sketches of these aliens and their anatomy, even diagrams of their wing bones and skull. He named the planet Ythri, which I’ve used for its natives. It’s a world with 0.75 Earth’s g and a denser atmosphere, both explaining how smart-flying aliens could evolve. His body plans and physiology proceed from solid constraints, including their body mass (30 kg) and molecular chemistry. There are words for local plants and crops and domesticated

  animals. I’ve kept his details and terms, with some small alterations to fit my story.

  From his parallel short story, “Wings of Victory,” I’ve taken some Ythri culture, speech, and attitudes, and even phrases Poul made up in their language. Poul worked out and wrote up in great detail far more than he used, a signature of the Hal Clement school of planet-building, as admirably shown in Clement’s founding novel of the school, Heavy Planet. I altered the Ythri history somewhat to fit, but kept their nature the same.

  Further, I wrote from the viewpoint of a character and situation I’ve been developing in a story series about what a SETI Library might look like when we have a host of messages to work through. While coded signals would be fascinating, it’s always more fun to have a live alien in the foreground, too.

  Poul was a major player of the game among hard SF writers: judge if these ideas pass muster, and see what I’ve done with them. I knew Poul since 1963 and treasured the many times we met, dined and drank together. I miss him greatly, and it’s been a pleasure to play in one of his imagined worlds.

  —Gregory Benford

  THREE LILIES AND THREE LEOPARDS

  (And A Participation Ribbon In Science)

  by Tad Williams

  Tad Williams became an international bestseller with his very first novel, Tailchaser’s Song, and the high quality of his output and the devotion of his readers has kept him on the top of the charts ever since as a New York Times and London Sunday Times bestseller. His other novels include The Dragonbone Chair, The Stone of Farewell, To Green Angel Tower, Siege, Storm, City of Golden Shadow, Otherland, River of Blue Fire, Mountain of Black Glass, Sea of Silver Light, Caliban’s Hour, Child of an Ancient City (with Nina Kiriki Hoffman), Tad Williams’ Mirror World: An Illustrated Novel, The War of the Flowers, Shadowmarch, a collection, Rite: Short Work, and a collection of two novellas, one by Williams and one by Raymond E. Feist, The Wood Boy/The Burning Man. As editor, he has produced the big retrospective anthology, A Treasury of Fantasy. His most recent books are two novels in his Bobby Dollar series; The Dirty Streets of Heaven and Happy Hour in Hell. In addition to his novels, Williams writes comic books, and film and television scripts, and is co-founder of an interactive television company.

  Here, due to a cosmic screwup, Fate sends the wrong person from our world into the world of Poul Anderson’s Three Hearts and Three Lions, with disastrous, and very funny, results.

  “Don’t freak out, Fernando,” Pogo told his assistant manager. “I’m just going to the food court. You’ll be fine.”

  Little Fernando tried to smile but it was the sickly grimace of an infantryman ordered to charge a machine gun nest. He pointed with a shaking finger at the crowd of bargain-hunters that had turned Saturday afternoon at Kirby Shoes into a battle zone. “But it’s the Summer Madness Event . . . !”

  Perry Como Cashman, who had been named after the singer by a soon-to-be-absent father and had been called “Pogo” by his friends since junior high school, sighed. “I know, dude. But I haven’t been out of the store since I opened at seven this morning and I haven’t eaten anything and I’m starving. Little Ed’s back from his break and Big Ed’s here and whatsisname—you know, Stockroom Dude—can help out if you really need another body. I’ll be back in, like, twenty minutes max, so just hold your water.” Pogo patted Fernando on the shoulder. “I’ll bring you back something if you want.”

  Fernando’s eyes were showing whites around the edges. “A gun or a knife, please. That lady threw a hiking boot at me!”

  “Emergency!” shouted Little Ed from the other side of the store. “There’s a woman climbing the display wall, trying to get the last set of kids’ Adidas! Oh, man, she just clubbed somebody with a Brannock device . . . !”

  Pogo was whistling as he made his way across Victory Plaza Mall. It had been a serious pleasure to leave Fernando and the others to deal with this latest crisis. For at least the next few minutes, the only thing he had to decide was whether he wanted cashew chicken, egg rolls, or both.

  As he circled an ornamental fountain full of splashing toddlers, he thought he heard someone calling his name. He did his best to ignore it, but a few moments later he heard it again—felt it might be more accurate, since it was so faint, so distant. He turned with a grunt of irritation, expecting to see Fernando or one of his salesmen chasing after him, but saw
only the usual afternoon shoppers, bored young mothers and seniors avoiding the San Fernando Valley heat in the air-conditioned mall.

  Pogo . . . ! Pogo Cashman . . . !

  He turned in a full circle, but nobody was even looking at him, let alone calling him. Hunger hallucinations, he thought. Better get some pot stickers, too . . .

  Pogo . . . !

  This time the voice sounded so close he whirled, expecting to find some practical joker standing right behind him, but he was alone in the center of the shopping center concourse. An instant later, he fell through the floor, tumbling through the very fabric of reality and into a darkness that throbbed with honks and squeals like a prog rock band tuning up.

  He fell for a long time. Long enough to get bored.

  I really wanted some egg rolls . . . ! was his last thought before he abruptly fell back into the world. The problem was, it was not the world that Pogo Cashman had fallen out of in the first place.

  “Did ye do yersel’ a hurt, m’lord?” Small, rough hands pulled at him, trying to help him sit up. “Are ye wounded?”

  Pogo was wondering about that himself, because everything sure smelled, sounded, and looked strange. Some shit had definitely gone wrong, either with the Victory Plaza Mall or Pogo Cashman himself. All the walls seemed to have fallen down and he was surrounded by trees instead of retail stores. Also, why was Fernando talking funny? And why was there a big, black horse standing just a few feet away?

  “M’lord? What befell ye?”

  “Fernando, you were supposed to . . . ” But then he realized it wasn’t his diminutive assistant manager standing over him but someone quite different—in fact, the stranger made little Fernando look like Kareem Abdul-Jabbar. He was a dwarf, with a nose like a brown avocado, a bushy, dirty beard, and large bare feet.