Bowl of Heaven

by Gregory Benford

  He had seen that this Bowl, like a real planet, still had tropical wetlands, bleak deserts, thick green forests, and mellow, beautiful valleys. No mountain ranges worthy of the name, apparently because the mass loading would have thrown something out of kilter. But terrain and oceans galore, yes, of sizes no human had ever seen. But some minds had imagined, far back in ageless time.

  The truly shocking aspect of Karl was not his idea, but the eager way he described ripping open the atmosphere cap. That would kill uncountable beings and might even destroy the Bowl itself. Redwing watched the Coriolis forces do their work. He tried to see how the global hydrologic cycle here could work — and then realized that this wasn’t a globe, but a big dish, and all his education told him nearly nothing he could use.

  Still, there were beings down there of unimaginable abilities. How could they survive a storm that lasted for weeks or months? That was the crucial difference here — scale. Everything was bigger and lasted longer. How long had the Bowl itself lasted? Somehow it had the look of antiquity about it.

  And the creatures who made and ran it — they had both great experience and long history to guide them. Surely they would know what had just occurred to Karl.

  Just as surely, they would have defenses against visitors such as Karl.

  FORTY-THREE

  The e-train zoomed on, at speeds Cliff estimated to be at least ten kilometers per second. Astronomical velocities, indeed. Maybe Aybe was right, arguing that to get around the Bowl in reasonable times demanded speeds of 100 km/s. The blur beyond their windows showed only the fast flickering of phosphor rings as they shot through them, until even those blended together to become a dim flickering glow.

  They broke up to explore the long passenger car. There were roomy compartments with simple platforms for sitting and sleeping, and rough bedding supplied in slide shelving. Howard discovered the switches after the first hour aboard, while searching for more food. Cliff heard his shouts and came running.

  “Look!” Howard said proudly when all five were there. He slid to the side a hinge switch near a compartment door. He slid a switch on the wall, and the compartment ceiling phosphors dimmed to utter dark.

  They hooted, clapped, and Irma did a dance with Aybe. It was as though they had gained their freedom — freedom from sunlight.

  Irma favored exploring the rest of the car, and they did. Compartments varied in size and style, mostly in the arrangement of platforms. Irma remarked, “These can accommodate passengers of varying sizes and needs. Fit to species, I guess.”

  Cliff nodded. “The Bird Folk are big, sure, but some of the forms we saw from a distance were smaller. Interesting, to have intelligence in a range of body types.”

  “But why is nobody here?” Terry insisted.

  Aybe added, “And nobody at the station, ’cept robots.”

  “Maybe they don’t travel much?” Irma wondered.

  No answers, plenty of questions. The passenger car was over a hundred meters long and ended with a pressure door, where the car narrowed down. “Let’s not go further,” Irma said. “Great find, Howard, that light switch. Let’s use them, huh?”

  Aybe found something that sounded like a grinder in the tiled floor of an otherwise bare room. “That’s gotta be the head,” Terry said. Starships used nautical terms, and soon they were calling the train’s nose the bow.

  They ate before sleeping. All along, mealtimes had been important, just as they had been in their interplanetary training missions. On the Mars Cycler, Cliff had learned ship protocols and how to deal with short-arm centrifugal gravity (which made his head lurch the first week when he walked), but the most important lesson was the social congruence. Eating together promoted solidarity, teamwork, the crucial judgments of strengths and flaws they all needed to know. In a crisis, that knowledge let them respond intuitively. Here, where danger was never far away, those unspoken skills had quickly become crucial.

  “What do we do when we pull into the next station?” Terry asked, munching one of the odd foods that he had squeezed out of a tube — which then evaporated into the air with a hiss, once emptied. How it knew to do this was a topic of puzzled discussion. Cliff watched them as they all pretty obviously — judging from expressions as they ate, each reflecting inwardly after the excitement of pursuit — wondered what they had gotten themselves into.

  Too late, Cliff thought but did not say. He recalled another favorite phrase of his father’s: Life is just one damn thing after another.

  The train ran on in its silky way, electromagnetics handing off without a whisper of trouble. Cliff lay back and relaxed into the moody afterglow of eating more than one needed. The low hum of the train lulled him but he summoned up resolve to say, “We need to stand watches, same as before. Terry, you’re up first.”

  Groans, rolled eyes, then the slow acceptance he had come to expect. Cliff made the most of it, standing up and trying to look severe. “We don’t know anything here. We’re not camping out anymore. This is a train, and it stops somewhere. When it does, we’ve got to be able to hide or run.”

  They nodded, logy with the meal, as he had planned.

  Howard said, “We should break up, too. Don’t clump up, so they can bag us all at once.”

  Cliff didn’t like the pessimism behind that, but he said, “Good idea. But not alone.”

  Long silence. Terry glanced at Aybe, and Cliff suddenly remembered that one of them was gay. Which one? For the life of him, he could not remember. Damn! All this time —

  Too late. Didn’t matter anyway: Howard, Terry, and Aybe would be sharing. Nobody alone. Cliff and Irma —

  Terry and Aybe looked at him, long steady gazes, and he realized that they knew. He would be with Irma and the compartments sealed off very nicely, thank you. Never mind who was gay, the big issue here was about him and Irma. He had been ignoring it. So consumed with his own emotions, he had not thought through what happened to a small band with cross-currents working below the surface. Now that they were inside again, back in a moving machine, somehow everything suppressed in the pseudo-wilderness of the Bowl melted away. It was about the old elementals — survival, sex, the splendor of the deep sensual accents. Life.

  Realizing that left him speechless, which he also saw was a good idea. Life is just one damn thing after another.

  “So what happens,” Terry said evenly, “when we stop at a station?”

  Irma said quickly, anxiously, “We need an exit.”

  All agreed. They trooped to the back end, aft on the starboard side, to consider the pressure door. “We’ve got to try it,” Terry said.

  The door opened with a shove. It led to a short lock chamber, and in the wall was a simple pressure gauge — long-lasting analog, of course — with release valves. Simple stuff, artifacts so clear they could serve generations without an instruction manual.

  They factored through into a dark room that lit up slowly when they entered, phosphors brimming with sleepy glows.

  “Freight,” Terry said.

  Dark lumps of webbed coverings secured units the size of Earthside freight cars at multiple points. It all looked mechanically secure and professional, robot work of a high order by Earthside standards.

  Aybe said, “We fall back to here?”

  “We don’t have much choice,” Terry said.

  “If we start to slow down, send an all-alert,” Irma said.

  “Who’s up on watch?” Terry asked innocently.

  “You,” Cliff said. He hadn’t much hope the thin, angular man would stay awake more than five minutes beyond the rest. But it was good to set some standard, even if it was obviously not going to work. In their tired eyes he saw that they knew this, too.

  So they went back, chose compartments, and cut the phosphors. For the first time in their new, strange lives here, blessed night descended.

  * * *

  Cliff sat up. A subtle long slow bass rumbling came through the floor. He blinked, thinking fuzzily that maybe he was under a tree, m
aybe some animal was nearby — and suddenly knew that this was real, solid darkness. Not shade. It wasn’t going away.

  He found the wall switch and powered up the phosphors. Irma jerked, shook her head, shot a palm up to block the light. “Uhh! Noooo…”

  “Got to. We’re slowing down.”

  Cliff clicked on his phone, sent an all-alert. Until this moment he hadn’t thought if the walls of this train would block the signal. Well, too late —

  “I’m up,” Irma said unconvincingly. She got unsteadily to her feet, pulling on her gray underpants.

  Cliff couldn’t help himself. He started laughing, quick bursts of it. He bent over, tried to stop, couldn’t. The laughs slowed, developed a hacking sound.

  “What?” Irma said, struggling into her cargo pants.

  He made himself stop. “I — I was thinking about … sex.”

  Skeptical frown. “Uh, yeah?”

  “No, not now. I mean — just that — I worried about us and them, Terry and Howard and Aybe. Last night. Never realized that sleep was the big thing we all wanted.”

  She grimaced, yawned, stretched. “Well, yeah. This is a sleep high — feels so good.”

  “Wow, yes. I musta slept — ” He glanced at his phone. “ — oog … fourteen hours.”

  “And you thought about sex?” She tried to smile, failed, rubbed her eyes.

  “Not really. Just thinking about the team, y’know — oh, hell. I’m not up to speed.”

  “Speaking of — ”

  Yes. The train was slowing. They had been so joyful, they’d ignored it. He hastened into his own pants, boots, backpack, field gear. All he had, now. Into battle, maybe.

  He went out into the corridor, pulling up his backpack harness. He had run away from enough threats to know that you never can count on going back for your gear. Terry and Aybe were already there, standing warily as they looked out the windows at the dark sliding by.

  “Y’know,” Irma said, “we should’ve looked for underground places to sleep.”

  “We did. We ran into nothing like this train station, but yeah, we shoulda looked harder.”

  The phosphors were pulsing as the train passed by, their gray hoops fluttering so slow now, he could see the flicker. “I see a platform up ahead,” Aybe said.

  Cliff went forward. Harder glows showed the prospect ahead. He close-upped it with his binocs. There were teams of robots, standing in gray files. Beyond them … figures on the platform.

  “Back into our rooms,” Cliff said. Irma came up, still a little bleary eyed. “Seal the doors, too.”

  “What if some Bird Folk are assigned to our room?” Terry asked.

  “Then we deal with it as it comes,” Irma said, rolling her eyes.

  The small surges of deceleration came slower now. Each segment of the rail line handed off to the next smoothly. Cliff went into the same compartment as Irma and they fell silent. This one had a window and they crouched down to be invisible from outside. The train slowed without any braking sound. Cliff felt hungry and fished out some of the salty food stock he had gotten from the machines. With plenty of water, it was bearable. They were long past the point of testing everything before eating now.

  The train stopped. They waited. Distant clanks and rumbles. Irma and Cliff finally cast darting glances out the window. This went on and on. Robots trundled by, some as large as a car, their forward opticals never wavering. Irma put her hands on the floor, to feel any vibration from doors in their car.

  “How do you feel?” she asked.

  “Like a snowball in hell.”

  Footsteps outside, faint and hesitant. Stop, pause, then going on. Again. And again, closer.

  The footsteps stopped outside. Cliff took out his laser and held his breath. The door had a mechanical lock that, despite their supposedly having secured it, now rotated. Cliff stepped forward and jerked it open.

  A sleek, tawny creature held up its large, flat hands and said in slurred Anglish, “I share no harm.”

  Cliff glanced along the corridor, saw no one, gestured inward, and stepped back. The alien moved with grace, shifting its body to wedge into a corner, leaving the most space for the humans.

  Irma said, “You speak … our language.”

  “Astronomers shared language with lessers, to make hunt easier. I loaded into my inwards. Please forgive my talk error. We were to seduce you into friendship giving out.”

  Cliff said, “Is anyone else coming on this train?”

  The slim alien paused and consulted some internal link, Cliff judged, by the way it cast its gaze to the side. Cliff realized by standing they were visible to the platform and quickly squatted down. The alien mimicked this, bending as though it had no joints, only supple muscle.

  “No. Distribute was to be, but I erased the possibility.”

  Its skull was highly domed, with high arches and a crest running along the top. Those and its short muzzle would give it strong jaw muscles, a classic predator feature. Yet it had no retractable claws, or maybe they were just relaxed. As he watched, the thick fingers extended sharp fingernails. Ah! Cliff thought. Binocular vision, too, with eyes that flicked restlessly from Irma to him.

  “Erased?” Irma said cautiously.

  It spoke with a low, silky growl that carefully enunciated vowels, as though they were strange. “Intersected controls so alone could greet you. And in keeping-with, deflected the pursuit team to the train orthogonal to this line.”

  “So we are safe here?” Irma persisted, focused intently on the alien.

  “For short times.”

  “Why are you here?”

  “To achieve consensus with you. We must bond to our joint cause.”

  “Which is?” Cliff said, bouncing quickly up from his squat to see the platform. Robots moving, no life-forms.

  The alien made a short, soft, snorting sound. “Return to full sharing life.”

  To Irma’s puzzled look — had it learned how to read human faces? — it said, “For all the Adopted.”

  “Which are — ?” she asked.

  “Many species, low and high. We are bonded here. We seek-wish to return-voyage our home worlds.”

  “You are from — ?”

  It made a sound like a soft shriek. In its large round eyes Cliff saw a kinship, an instant rapport that he did not need to think about. For one who dwelled in his head so much, this was a welcome rub of reality. The sensation of connection unsettled him. Why did he feel this way?

  Then he had it — this was a smart cat.

  “We will help you, if we can,” Irma said. He saw at a glance that she felt the same as he.

  “But we are only a few,” Cliff hedged.

  “You share-voyage with many in a ship that can damage-share the Astronomers.” This came out as a fast, hissing statement, eyes widened.

  A forward lurch came then, rocking them all on their haunches. Cliff stood up with some relief. Nobody on the platform. The train surged into its heavy acceleration again, pressing at them.

  “Oops! Let’s get into some chairs,” Irma said. “And tell Howard and Aybe and Terry. Breakfast!” She broke into a broad grin that cheered him up, out of his confusion.

  FORTY-FOUR

  Memor was glad she had not brought her friend, Sarko, for this was a rude and joyless place.

  From their vantage here, she could see the long flanks of composite rock, carved by ancient rivers. This was bare country, left behind when topsoil had fled downhill in the far past. Now its canyons had a certain majestic uselessness for habitation, which made it perfect for an assembly of search parties. They could survey the low gravity forests that began at the canyon mouths below — a blue green ocean. Long, undulant waves marched across that plain of treetops, stretching into the distant dim oblivion. Those lofty reaches ranked among her favorite natural wonders, the gift of low gravity. There, one could “swim” in the trees, buoyed up by their fragrant multitude. The vast trees stood impossibly tall, swaying in the warm breezes that prevaile
d here at high latitudes. And the aliens lurked among them, surely.

  “Do you have any amenities?” Memor asked the attendant, one of the lesser forms known as the Qualk, who sported an absurd headdress. Perhaps it was meant to impress her? That seemed unlikely, but one never knew.

  The Qualk fluttered in tribute for the attention paid to him and gestured with an obliging neck-twirl toward the refreshments. Memor moved forward with grave energy, aware that all those in this field station watched her.

  A Savant approached. “Astronomer, we have heard stories, ones we cannot believe — ”

  “Inability to believe is no insurance,” Memor said, but laconic irony was lost on this small, squirming one with anxious eyes.

  They were assembled for her. More fretful eyes, from a variety of the Bird Folk and some minor members of the Adopted. Memor allowed suspense to build as she quaffed a tangy drink and munched a crunchy thing.

  “You are all here, leading your teams, to find the escaped aliens. How is that proceeding?”

  Some restless shuffling, sidewise glances. The governing Savant moved to the fore. “The Packmistress sent us — ”

  “Never mind your prior instructions. What did you encounter?”

  The Savant flicked looks around but could not avoid Memor’s gaze. “Of course, we have not found the aliens. By the time we hear of them, they are gone. We could follow — after all, we have mobile troops, total air cover, local sensors — but they elude us.”

  “Why?”

  “They seem able to move across terrain without regard for borders or the ancient constraints we all feel. They came over our regional boundaries, moving in natural terrain with concealment. We backtracked them and saw that they skirted our settlements and found ways around our checkpoints.”

  “You are not alone. There are two of their parties, far across our lands, and they both seem better at this than we.”

  The Savant nodded, said nothing.