Bowl of Heaven

by Gregory Benford; Larry Niven

  They stared at it. “Good shot,” Terry said.

  Irma said brightly, “Let’s make a fire, roast up big chunks of meat.”

  Cliff worried about detection, but didn’t stop them from gathering wood. Their amino acid scans had shown the basic same as Earth, and DNA had the same structure too. Maybe they were universal? An old folk song about moonshine cooking rang in his mind. Don’t use green or rotten wood, they’ll get you by the smoke.… “Don’t use fresh fallen branches,” he called out. “Look for dried-out ones.” Terry looked scornful at this, but others nodded. They had uneven woodland skills. Cliff still had to remind them often not to talk so much, a rule every field biologist knows.

  Around the campfire—carefully set under dense leafy boughs, to capture and spread the billowing gray stink, which was nearly transparent—they set into the fresh roasted haunch meat with gusto. Terry wished for a good red wine to go with it, got some laughs.

  They ate but were not sleepy. So they pushed on, looking for a safe water source, a spot with clear fields of fire. Nobody wanted to spend a sleep time in trees. But what was the alternative? Cliff was still wrestling with the problem of what to do, but he had to shush them after the meal, and that made him worry more. Leadership was a bitch, he decided. More like being a schoolmarm …

  “Look, we’ve got to remember one big fact: These creatures don’t have any natural caution about us,” Cliff said as they made their way up a steep slope under spreading canopy trees of fat emerald fronds.

  Aybe said, “Doesn’t that mean they’ll be easy to hunt?”

  Cliff gave him a wry look. “Sure. But it also means the predators have no reason to fear us. Remember that.”

  FIFTEEN

  Memor decided to isolate her prisoners from the vast species richness of the World. Her Undermind provided the idea, and she instantly knew it was correct. She had watched the logics working in their moist, blue green connections, and understood the entire thought-chain.

  The World’s wealth would stun them, surely. The blue green abundance would prove shameful to such primitives. They might even commit group suicide, humiliated beyond tolerance. Their cages she ordered made hospitable, but nothing more.

  Further, her underlings saw that these small creatures found every avenue of escape blocked. Isolation was best, both for them and for scientific study. It was simple to devise transport to put them tens of millions of miles from natural air, water, vegetation, the ripe bounty of the World. Ancient records said something of the sort had worked well against the last invaders, rendering them compliant. Then again, she had to feed them.

  She had found a good solution. The greenhouse was a series of verdant ledges set near the World’s axis of rotation and thrust. The Jet burned a searing injunction in its sky, pointing back at the Star. Sunny and mild, this was a unique preserve, a rightful richness that fed the Astronomers and gave them restful grounds for strolling and contemplation.

  Surely, as the species that tended the course and the health of the World, and so provided for their servant species, Astronomers deserved such cloistered wealth. Since time immemorial, the plants that grew there, the animals and birds that lived on the plants and each other, had all been deftly altered to match microgravity. Such was the wisdom of the Ancients.

  In this lush paradise, Memor allowed the Invaders some small latitude. She had not stripped the Invaders of their equipment, because she didn’t know what would kill them. No doubt some of their implements, so odd and crude, were sacred to them, or used for amusement. Very well; Memor was generous.

  She and the other, lesser species watched to see if the Invaders would divest themselves of their pressure suits. They did strip the wounded one, but failed to learn from the experience. For some no doubt primitive reason, the rest remained dressed for vacuum when they went to sleep.

  They slept twice as long as an Astronomer would have, and all woke more or less at once. Perhaps this was a species defense mechanism?

  They stripped down then to a lower layer of cloth. So scrawny! Memor doubted they were hiding anything from her. More likely they kept themselves covered as a birth control measure, taming their primordial impulses. Or perhaps they used outer coverings to control temperature in an altogether wilder environment than the World’s. Lesser species of the World had similar mechanisms, and could even use simple tools.

  Memor watched carefully as they designated a toilet area, and used it in turn. No sharing. Perhaps a status ritual? They tried various bits of what Memor had set for them as food, an elaborate crescent array that would serve as a biology lecture, too. They did not eat grass or bark or water weeds, but they did eat an amazing variety of higher protein content foods. Omnivores! Memor had once wondered if they could feed themselves at all. In the World there were species that could not; they needed servants who could process and serve food. Biology had many strange flowstreams.

  Some of what they had were tiny cameras. Memor watched them making records of what they saw. They spent much of their effort recording the arrays of possible food sources. When she knew they used meat, and knives, she supplied whole carcasses; they photographed these and the dressed and cooked meat, too. Plants raw and peeled. Servitors and Memor herself.

  Her lessers had returned with reports on the cell cultures harvested from the Late Invaders. The Late Invaders had similar methods of genomic patterning methods. Was DNA a universal, then? Memor knew that it was not. But they could come from one of the Seed Worlds the Ancients reportedly tried to fertilize.

  Memor wondered if these Late Invaders could genetically engineer tools and machines not to degrade in a biosphere. The Ancients had bequeathed enzymes to synthesize devices, so the World grew apparatus needed by the Folk.

  Turning sunlight and water into machines was the Higher Way, and these Late Invaders did not seem to have mastered that pathway to greatness. They might be able to edit genes, or transplant them to another crop; such was simple. But their devices did not have the elegant cast of grown apparatuses. So they quite probably ate simple foods, too, and lived lives of primitive needs. Yet built ramscoops.

  Memor pondered this and decided to try fish. She ordered admitted to their ample cage some varieties with appropriate chemistries. No need to not be generous, after all. They should be made comfortable in their final days.

  SIXTEEN

  Coarse, smelly, wet soil stretched away, embedded in a gray metal mesh. You couldn’t call it the ground, Beth thought, not in almost zero gravity, not with a straight face. More like a sheet of stucco with plants growing in it. The stuff ran away from them in muddy sheets for what looked like thousands of kilometers.

  She had climbed into one of the spindly, triangular trees and surveyed the landscape. The soaring fence was far off, tens of kilometers. Beth judged that it ran up as far as the plastic sky. “It’s as if they’ve imprisoned us in a dull, wet, brown Australia,” Mayra said. “Lots of room. Lots of space to hide.”

  Abduss grumbled, “We’re about to starve to death, too.”

  “Working on it,” his wife said, grinning.

  Lau Pin said, “Let’s at least get out of these damn suits. We can do a better splint job on Tananareve.”

  In the early, fractured talk the big one in charge identified itself as Astronomer—a rank, apparently. She—definitely a She, a slit wreathed by crimson feathers—used star charts and pictures to make the point, assisted by slowly pronounced words in their language of grunts, call, piping songs. The Fourth Variety of locals Beth called Porters. Like other varieties, they were feathered like flightless birds, but built more like lizards. Their limbs and toes were long and limber. In the near free fall here, they were still flightless, but they could leap long distances. The Astronomer, whose “close-name” was Memor, had shown them this right away. Beth thought this might have been some kind of display to instill submission; certainly the long, hooting calls Memor gave sounded joyous and dominant. Most of the other Astronomers wore harnesses, and used them fo
r carrying.

  The big Third Variety who led them was a hunter. Was the alien a he—or she? Where were the genitalia? Anus under the tail, just like Earth’s birds. Call it he, then—he carried a long-tubed gun and gleaming, curved knives. He looked like an efficient killer.

  They never went past the fence. The Porters did the carrying. In short order they came straggling back with small corpses and bigger slabs of meat—and roots and fruit and grain and twigs, all gathered at the Astronaut’s direction.

  The Astronomer had big, nimble four-fingered hands, though she wasn’t doing much with them. Porters did most of the work, and their long hands were dextrous too. They laid their loot in a pattern, a long arc, plants to the left, meat to the right. Swallowing saliva, stomach rumbling, Beth waited for them to finish.

  The Porters backed away. The Astronomer came ambling forward, and she was huge. It amazed Beth that she could pick up such little things with her long, jerky arms: bunches of grain, a ravaged muskratlike corpse, a small globe that looked like a striped melon. The moving mountain picked up something and grunted or trilled, raised it toward her huge, thick-lipped mouth and made a warbling, keening sound—the same sound each time for that gesture.

  “Eat?” Beth wondered aloud. The Astronomer made a deep bass sound. Gestured with an arm.

  They were being taught.

  Until Lau Pin snarled a curse, stalked forward under the Astronomer, and reached up.

  People froze. Beth waited for him to die.

  The Astronomer dropped the little melon.

  Lau Pin caught the melon. He held it up and brandished a knife big enough for killing. “Melon. Knife.” He cut the melon, “Cut,” and bit into the slice. “Good,” he called back. Buried his face in the orange flesh. “Eat.” Lau Pin jogged back, turning his back on the Astronomer, and cut a slice for Tananareve. “Give. Eat,” he said, and she did.

  They all did. Eagerly.

  Each time Lau Pin spoke, the huge feathered Astronomer replied with a bellow and a gesture, his long fingers tracing curves in the air. Those might be easier to repeat than the sounds, Beth thought. She noticed that Tananareve was awake and paying rigid attention. Her hands moved in response to the Astronomer’s Sign language.

  * * *

  The Astronomers also included some called Astronauts, who seemed to be those who could patrol the vicinity of this place. They were big, lumbering sorts who barely noticed the humans. They hooted at one another in long, rolling calls.

  But more important, the principal Astronomer had buckled her knees in what seemed to be good-bye, and gestured: She had left them their tools.

  That seemed amazing to Beth. Lau Pin had used a knife and he still had it. That was reassuring. Beth tried something else.

  She chose a slab of red meat—“Steak,” she pronounced it, optimistically—and set it on a rock. “Beamer,” she said, and held up a microwave projector. They’d tried to use it to cut through the wall of the aliens’ air lock. She plugged it into her backpack power. Turned low, it cooked the meat in a few seconds. They set the beamer aside, cut up the meat, and ate. Beth carefully plugged the beamer into its solar panel charger. The meat tasted wonderful and in her hunger she forgot about the alien.

  Mayra and Fred, of course, were photographing everything with their cell phones, and now so was Lau Pin. Good. The power wouldn’t run out for months.

  When they were finished, they still had the beamer. And several knives, Abduss’s gun, and the pressure suit helmets. We must look pretty harmless, Beth thought wonderingly. A matter of size?

  Abduss stretched, yawned, and said, “I’m wiped.”

  With her belly full, Beth suddenly felt the wave of exhaustion. She thought, Don’t be silly, it’s only … well, duh. The sun was at sunset, vertical to the glassy wall and horizontal to wet soil embedded in a coarse mesh, and it wasn’t going to set. Ever.

  She called to the Astronaut, “Sleep,” and to her companions, “Sleep.”

  Memor spoke a word. She watched, and when she saw her captives turn unresponsive, she turned toward the air lock. Beth tried to watch her, but her legs dragged. She felt soooo very tired.…

  So did the others, she could see. It was logical. They were trapped, depressed, so took refuge in sleep. It made sense. Let their unconscious selves sort out all the new, strange, and alarming. No reason to fight it.

  SEVENTEEN

  They had a long slog through the rumpled hills. That took days. Without more understanding, they had no plan, no destination. They needed to learn. But without a goal, Cliff knew, morale would evaporate. Even fear, which was driving them now, would ebb.

  When they got tired, Cliff called a rest. Nobody argued. They soaked their hats with water and put them over their faces, falling asleep instantly. Gratefully.

  * * *

  They stirred themselves nine hours later, but without breakfast. Food was short.

  Cliff led by example, roving through the nearby copse of trees and bushes in search of edibles. There were plenty of berries and some fat leaves, but testing by taste was dangerous even on Earth.

  But what choice did he have? He smelled them for sourness, tried a tongue touch, and if all seemed unthreatening, would bite in. Sometimes this worked with berries and the fat-leaved plants and he got a sweet burst of juice. Other candidates stung like mad and he quickly washed them away with water. He did this several times, returning with a hatful of berries or flavorful leaves. He made them memorize the plant features before eating. The others welcomed fresh food and some caught on, following him in his prowling. Irma was best at this.

  The guys seemed to think that they were cut out for hunting. Howard and Terry said they had some experience. Cliff half listened to their bragging amid a discussion of guns. He had glimpsed something large in the bushes—a quick flash of brown hide, then a soft flurry that sounded like hooves, fading. If this had been Earth, he would have guessed it was a deer.

  Howard and Terry went out together, making a show of it. Surprisingly, within an hour, they brought back something that looked like a large rabbity grazer, furry and with ears that pitched upward from the flat, level skull. Cliff looked at the odd ears that cupped skyward, and realized that they must be for hearing birds—diving predators, probably. He had never seen such an adaptation on Earth. It was testimony to how important flying was here.

  Skinned, the critters had interesting skeletal structure and internal organs. Cliff sectioned them out and tried to understand how they worked. Odd fans of bones, lumpy organs with no apparent function. Some made sense, most not. He needed a real lab.…

  They cooked the pseudo-rabbits over a small fire, taking care to keep it hot and show no smoke. Under some spreading canopy trees, the little smoke that did rise got trapped and spread, so they hoped nobody could see it at a distance. Cliff thought they needed their spirits lifted a bit, and warm food again did the job. The meat was tasty, dark and gamy, and very welcome. “See anything that looked like a deer?” he asked them.

  Terry nodded. “How’d you know? Four-footed, at least, and meaty—but it had teeth.”

  Howard added, “And antlers. Looked pretty weird. Kept sniffing the wind, like a predator. Looked like more trouble than it was worth.”

  Aybe said, “We should save our lasers for defense, anyway. I thought we should have tracked and cooked that badger thing we shot before.”

  “It looked hard to kill,” Cliff said. “And we were in a hurry.”

  Aybe shot back, “And now we’re not.”

  Cliff took a long breath of musky air. Might as well bring up the tough issues while they were all relaxed, bellies full. “Look, we’re wandering. We need an agenda.”

  That brought on plenty of discussion but few ideas. He had expected that—they needed to vent. Anxiety came out as talk, rambling and vexed. Danger and hardship made for bad reasoning, but if he could defuse their frustrations, they could all then work better together. So they talked for a while, mostly hashing over we-shouldas an
d we-couldas, and finally Cliff said, “The past is prologue. What do we do next?”

  “Find the others,” Howard shot back.

  “How?” Cliff asked.

  “Maybe make a link to SunSeeker.” Howard paused, obviously not having thought very far ahead. “They can maybe link to Beth.”

  Cliff did not want to step all over anyone’s ideas; give and take was how you worked forward. He said carefully, “We don’t have anything that can reach SunSeeker.”

  “How about our lasers?” Irma said. “If we could send a simple Morse message…” Her voice trailed off, seeing the difficulty of even locating the ship in a sky that never darkened.

  Aybe saw how this was going, his eyes moving swiftly around their little circle, and said briskly, “First, figure out how this crazy place works. That will tell us how to get on top of our situation.”

  Cliff agreed, but it was best to let the ideas come from others. As they tossed thoughts around, he wondered at his own developing social skills. His career had focused on technical abilities—mostly useless here—not management ones. Here he would have to get this little band through unknowable threats—much harder than just keeping employees happy, a task that had always bored him. But this was lots more interesting, and nobody else seemed to want to lead. None of the expedition’s actual, official leaders were here. Though as someone had remarked in Leadership Training, the important skills can’t be taught.

  They kicked this around for a while and finally agreed to what Cliff thought was obvious, without his having to say a word. Good—but talk took time, and he doubted they had a lot of time to spare.