Bowl of Heaven

by Gregory Benford; Larry Niven

  Moving the invaders was going to be tricky. She needed ideas there, yes. Memor wondered how long they could go without food. They couldn’t eat anything through those pressure shells, could they? Better to get them out of the vacuum.

  And now the Serf-Ones were docking the Maintenance Craft. Carefully they worked, with much worried chatter, afraid of giving the slightest offense to their superiors. As was proper.

  The invaders offered no resistance. There would have been no point, and this behavior showed some modicum of intelligence, plus that rarer quality, judgment. Compared to those who escaped, these might be a superior type of primate. If there were such among such a ragged, hairy species lacking any of the lushness that came from alluring feather discourse.

  Three huge Astronomers surrounded them and urged them forward with stamping feet. That signal transcended language. The invaders moved, half carrying, half towing the injured one of their kind. They huddled close together, puny things overawed by the size of the Astronomers. Their anxious primate gestures gave them away.

  Seven much smaller Serf-Ones went ahead of them through the air lock, carrying gear.

  The invaders stopped moving on the other side, eyes agog—an expression of wonder common among many species. Perhaps they were startled by the contrast: grass and huge trees and vast flocks of wide-winged birds, all in microgravity. Memor saw that teams of Serf-Ones had set up a force-fence. Excellent. The invaders were properly imprisoned.

  Now Memor sent an Astronomer off with a flock of Serf-Ones to fetch food. She instructed the crewperson carefully: They must find something of every kind. Skreekors, hairies, bugs, fruit, bark, grasses. No telling what these things might eat, though their amino acid composition was common in Bowl experience. Memor was aware that most life-forms were restricted in their diet, their environment, cycles of sleep and mating and feeding, heat and cold … a thousand things, but particularly diet. These creatures might starve to death no matter what she could do.

  So Memor was eager to feed them, but also to teach them. She let her Undermind purr forward on ideas of how to do so. These poor creatures must learn something of her, and she of them, before they died in microgravity.

  * * *

  “Mayra,” Fred said, “did you get pictures of that chain of bubbles?”

  Mayra looked at him. She said, “Buildings. Domes, but not just half spheres. We build that way too in lunar gravity. I snapped some pictures on my phone, but I thought you might have seen something.…”

  Fred said, “I was too sick, and hungry. Didn’t notice.”

  “Well, we followed a ridge after we passed the bubbles. You saw the ridge? It ran right here.”

  Beth said, “It’s not going to matter. We’re fenced in. Do you suppose they’ll let us starve?”

  “We’re in a garden. There must be something to eat. Rabbits?”

  FOURTEEN

  When Cliff awoke, Irma was sitting next to him, hat tilted, standing watch with concentration. She winked and said nothing.

  It still felt funny waking up in this perpetual daylight. Humans had evolved in a daily rhythm, and the strangest thing about this place was its constancy. No sway of day and night, no dance of the hours. The sun stood still, a permanent glare in the sky. He could read nothing from the slant of sunshine, since it never varied, and he missed the sunsets of the California coast. Living in perpetual day was the ultimate jet lag; it never went away. He knew from Earthside experiments, done in preparation for starship building, that people in constant illumination tended to develop longer sleep cycles.

  Above, the scratch across the sky that was the jet bristled with festering luminosities. He could see tiny hairlike threads slowly flex and turn amid the tossing motes that burned with furious energy. Was this what a galactic jet looked like up close? It was brightest near the star, cooling as it coasted outward toward the Knothole. The nearer jet reddened so it sent diffuse, pink shadows rippling among the leaves. Nothing as spectacular as a sunset, but intriguing and unsettling.

  The badger had wandered off, Irma told him. They gave it an hour, though, in case it was lying in wait.

  They set off again, more cranky than before, from the odd sleep they had managed to get. Like a clotted rain forest, the dense copse of slender trees enveloped them in moments, fronds and puffball clumps blotting out the sky. The soil was a soft loam, with little bushy understory. This reminded him of dry eucalyptus groves in California, still and aromatic and whispery. The smells were tangy, odd, not at all like the medicinal eucalypt aroma. Game paths laced through it, hard packed dirt with some brown droppings. He sniffed some; turds appeared to have a universal pungency. The same basic chemistry, he surmised.

  And more than game could use these bare throughways. Or stalk parallel to them. He waved to the others and they angled away from the easy game paths, not without some grousing.

  “Carnivores lie in wait along these,” he explained in a whisper. “We might look like tempting game.”

  “We’re primates,” Howard shot back.

  “And nothing ate monkeys in Africa?” he retorted.

  When he started his fieldwork in grad school, he could barely tell raccoon tracks from bobcat. Now he knew earthly tracks and scat and had been automatically cataloging what he saw underfoot here. Alien tracks fell into the same general categories, hooved and padded and birdlike, but some had spindly hexagonals, which he could not fathom. Scat looked pretty much the same.

  They saw some game, too. These were flickers of tawny flanks among the trees, glimpses of hides with natural camouflage that faded away into the hushed silence. Howard whispered that maybe they should shoot one.

  “And carry it along?” Cliff answered. “We can hunt when we set up camp.”

  “Near water,” Irma said. Cliff nodded.

  They passed under a chattering locus in the high branches and stopped to gaze upward through binocs. “Monkeys,” Howard said. “Swinging around, with big tails.”

  “Really?” Cliff recalled the barking bands at the San Diego Zoo and used his binocs to bring one of the quick shapes into focus. A rude purple throat display, huge yellowed teeth, darting small red eyes, but—“Yeah, kinda like monkeys, anyway. But not mammals, I’d say. No obvious genitalia. Can’t see teats, either.”

  “So primates evolved here, too?” Howard let it trail off into a question.

  “Maybe they’re just getting started,” Cliff said softly. He wondered if, given a few millions of years, these protomonkeys could overcome the aliens they had seen. Not likely. As soon as the primates became noticeable as competition, the smart aliens would prevail. Established forms usually had the advantage, and there was nothing automatically better about primates.

  “Look down there,” Aybe whispered, pointing. A creek glinted green among the shade trees below.

  They approached too fast, in Cliff’s opinion—he called out to them to hold back. Predators liked watering sites. This wasn’t Earth, where dawn and dusk were the natural hunting times, as herbivores came for a drink. Carnivores could be hunting any time at all.

  But there was nothing waiting near the creek, so they all had a good long drink. It tasted cool and fine, and on impulse Cliff plunged his whole head in, glad to be free of the grit and sweat of the last few—days? There were no days here, he reminded himself. He would have to think of a new word.

  He recalled a calculation Wickramsingh had done back on Seeker. Take the Earth and spread it into a bowl the size of this Cupworld and it would be maybe a centimeter thick. Here in the stream-cut hills, he could see cross sections of the land. The soil was a conglomerate, like coffee grounds peppered with chunky gray rock. No strata, of course. There had been no real geology here.

  To get hills hundreds of meters tall, the Builders (he thought of them as deserving the capital) must have chewed up Jovian-size masses. They had transformed a whole solar system. That explained the absence of asteroids and other debris around the star. They’d had to be removed; otherwise they co
uld’ve smacked into Cupworld later, punching an unfixable hole, draining the atmosphere. He had to stop thinking of their surroundings as being just a planet. It was … well, a vast contrivance. With all kinds of weirdness living in it. On it.

  After resting above the creek, they followed it downhill. The creek bank revealed more conglomerate rocks, round yellowish balls fixed in grainy sand. Cliff wondered how the designers of this place had laid soil and water down on a huge, spinning carousel.

  Plainly they had to put down some mass, a meter or two of rock or water, to keep out cosmic rays. But the scale … again and again he came back to the vastness of this place. The whole idea seemed both gargantuan and surrealistic—mute testimony to the deeply alien nature of its builders. Who—what—would do such a thing? Those birds? Somehow, he couldn’t see it. They didn’t seem that smart.

  In a while they came to a dense spread of trees and within it found a lake. Flies buzzed around a thick margin of reeds, and they found no easy way to get to the water. Cliff wondered if he could take a swim in it. His skin itched. Maybe later.

  A thing buzzed by his head. It had six wings, about the size of a sparrow. Maybe it played the role of dragonflies in freshwater wetlands, he guessed. Convergent adaptation. Willowlike trees hugged the shore, but taller and with twisted, helical trunks. Convergent evolution seemed to have led to pollinator plants, too—bigger stamens and longer, twisted pistils, but the same strategy. Shrubs somewhat like laurel sumac mingled with tall trees vaguely like closed cone pines. Still, some of the plants were bizarre, with canopies permanently pitched toward the star, and bunched leaves like parabolas. There were mosses, too, bryophytes, ferns.

  Howard was whispering into his phone. He was loving this.

  * * *

  They camped, but still Cliff thought it a bad idea to light a fire. They slept again, badly, with Howard and Irma taking watch. Voices called in the woods—chirps, snorts, ominous grunts, buzzes and bellows, oddly pleasant trilling songs. Alien melodies.

  They circled around the lake, keeping to bristly brush and trees. They were getting better at keeping a clear field of fire; the badger had taught them well. Three people covered while two moved, then the reverse. This meant eyes caught any reaction among the nearby foliage. They startled game but did not fire.

  Sharp odors welled up from everywhere and peculiar fowl flitted noisily. They honked and sang and sometimes sounded like fire alarms. Cliff noted that there seemed to be plenty of small birds darting in and out of the bush branches, slipping their pointed snouts into the many long-tubed, sweet flowering plants. Never was there a species he could recognize, yet the patterns were recognizable. Sunbirds, hummingbirds, same strategy. When threatened, some fluffed up their feathers to make themselves look larger and barked odd calls—territorial defense as in most nectar-eaters, like orioles. Others had the sharp beaks of those who preyed on insects, like wrens or the short, triangular beaks of seed eaters like finches and sparrows. Evolution here had produced skills similar to those on Earth; he found this reassuring. In the lesser gravity, birds had apparently beaten out many land animals. They were bigger, too—fat and confident. Apparently a 10 percent or so difference in local g made a big change in the balance of living types.

  He’d have to talk this through with Howard when they had the chance.

  He had seen flying frogs leap from stream levels to high branches, flapping short distances on webbed legs. The predators of the high sky hovered long before they dived, able to sustain their altitude with big, slow-flapping wings. The insects here were bigger, too, for some reason, though with the same many-legged gaits as on Earth. This was indeed a different place—and how different, how truly alien, they could not fully know yet.

  Plus, the smart bird aliens. Was he being narrow-minded at first, thinking smart birds unlikely? But of course, these were huge birdlike ones … and he had not seen any fly. Maybe they resembled ostriches who gave up flying and gained technology.

  Howard held up a hand, pointed, hunkered down—they were getting better at hand signals.

  Along a narrow stony beach lay some long reddish brown things like bulging crocodiles, lounging in the perpetual noon. They grunted as they moved. Their bodies were long and scaly, with a short, blunt snout. A lazy yawn showed many serrated yellow teeth.

  “Those are for tearing chunks out of big prey,” Cliff whispered. “Our crocs dine on small fish, chickens, small pigs. These eat bigger things.”

  “Let’s give them plenty room,” Irma said.

  Aybe pointed. “But what’s—?”

  It rose out of the deeper dark water. A long neck uncurled upward with strands of weeds dripping from its flat, rubbery mouth. The brown eyes gleamed with wet curiosity as it looked at them, mildly interested but taking its slow time.

  “An herbivore,” Cliff said, awed. “Like a…”

  “Dinosaur,” Howard supplied. “What the hell kind of place is this?”

  “Convergent evolution?” But that seemed unlikely, and he stepped back as the thing rose like a slippery mountain—dark with a white belly, legs like pillars, long slick neck and tiny head. “It is. It’s a … dinosaur,” Cliff said, a chill running through him. “From Earth. Has to be.”

  Irma said, “The aliens, they stopped at Earth?”

  “Must’ve sent ships, anyway. They must’ve picked up some of our—Earth’s—ecology,” Howard said as if entranced, eyes rapt, prophesying. “Like we were doing, bringing species alone in sleepstate—only more so.”

  “It’s interested in us,” Aybe said, taking a step backwards.

  “How do we know it’s not a meat eater?” Irma said.

  “We don’t.” Terry turned to leave.

  “Their native ecology here must been overrun with alien species. So … Cliff? It’s too good, this place, too like Earth. That’s why. They imported Earth life.”

  “Maybe. Maybe,” Cliff said, grimacing. “Reassuring, isn’t it? If that’s the explanation.”

  Irma backed away, too. “Let’s go.”

  Cliff smiled. “Don’t miss the lesson. We can eat some things here, and it can eat us.”

  “Y’know,” Irma said, “they could’ve just hauled some dinosaur eggs and other life here on ships, passing by our solar system, a long time ago.”

  Cliff nodded, eyeing the massive, slow shape with fascination. It grunted. “So the Earth forms could’ve taken over parts of the Cupworld, and lasted this long.”

  The huge thing sluggishly waded toward them, pausing to rip reeds and lily pads from the water and gulp them down. A muddy reek came from it on the soft wind. It was slow but steady, and Cliff motioned them to back away. “It’s a herbivore, I’d say, but interested in us.”

  “Not for eating, though,” Howard said, “so why—?”

  “If it steps on you, what’s the difference?” Aybe was moving faster, towing a grunting Howard by his belt.

  They got away from there. Irma led the way, in case some predator moved to block their exit. None did. They faded back into the forest.

  Cliff now felt apprehensive. He realized that they had been taking this place as a pseudo-Earth, and indeed in many ways it was—but that also meant it held forms that summoned up in them ancient fears. None of them had seen dinosaurs except in movies, but the sight of one tapped also into a deep reservoir of primate vigilance.

  Aybe said, “Now we know the trajectory of the Cupworld better. We extrapolated a naïve straight-line trajectory and folded in star motion, too. It may have been near Earth over sixty million years ago.”

  “What’s ‘near’ mean?” Irma asked.

  Aybe rolled his eyes as he calculated, adjusted his hat, shrugged. “Say, five light-years. How old was that dino back there, Cliff?”

  “Maybe a hundred million years ago. I don’t recall the classification or the dates real well. I’m a field biologist.” Abruptly he laughed. “Didn’t think at the time I’d have any use for those paleontology classes.”

  In a
clearing, Irma automatically moved to their right flank and said, “Y’know, Earth wasn’t in the same place in the galaxy hundred million years ago. So Cupworld might’ve been following some different trajectory, not just some straight line from Earth to here.”

  Howard said, “Right. Stars move a lot in that time.”

  Irma kept a wary eye out, whispering, “Face it, we don’t have a clue what these aliens—the smart ones, I mean—are doing. Touring the galaxy on a slow boat? What kind of mind does that?”

  “A slow mind,” Terry said. Cliff had noted that the man didn’t say much. When he did, it was well thought out. “Maybe an immortal one?”

  “As a biologist,” Cliff said, “I kinda doubt that anything lives forever. Once you stop reproducing, the force of natural selection stops working. Traits that gave you short-term benefits come back to haunt you.”

  Irma said, “But if you have biotech galore—?”

  “All bets are off,” Cliff admitted. “Maybe the Builders—that’s what I call them, the ones who made all this—lived pretty damn near forever. But Cupworld has been on its way for at least millions of years. Maybe even sixty million—that’s when the dinosaurs died.”

  This sobered them all as they made their way upslope, keeping their eyes on the surrounding forest. Cliff recalled a training hike into the Ecuadorian rain forests he had taken while he worked on his doctorate. The instructor had told them that the three weeks they spent upriver of the Amazon would be “meet-yourself experiences,” and that seemed to capture a deep truth. Exploring made you know yourself better, like it or not. Self-knowledge is usually bad news.…

  Without warning, a leathery thing the size of a greyhound came at the point man, Aybe. It ran quick and sure, as if it had preyed on something that looked like them before. Aybe shot it at a one-meter range, blowing a laser hole in its forehead. The big yellow eyes of the thing fluttered and it fell, kicking, rasping out a last breath. It looked like a reptilian dog, scaly and tough, with thick haunches and a powerful set of clamping jaws.