Bowl of Heaven

by Gregory Benford; Larry Niven

  “But that is inefficient!” the senior Savant insisted.

  “Apparently not, on whatever strange world these tree-swingers came from in their crude ship. Evolution must have preferred to keep their minds divided between the conscious self and the silent.”

  The Savant looked incredulous—eyes upcast, neck-fan puckered red, snout cocked at an angle. “Surely such disabled creatures, even if they have technologies, are no threat to us.”

  The Profound flicked a command, and the dome above them popped with an image—the alien primates gathered around a campfire. The audience rustled. “These look quite helpless,” the Savant said.

  “They are not,” the Profound said, and cut to an image of three Folk sprawled, their bodies stripped of gear. Burns at their necks and heads had singed away many feathers. Brown blood stained the sand around them, and surprise lingered in their staring eyes.

  “And now we turn to the cause of these events,” the Profound said quietly.

  Memor recognized the images she had sent in reports. Of course, the Profound had put his own interpretation on her brainscan data, slanting it to his pointed ends. Memor stood. “I am not the cause, my Profound. I am the discoverer.”

  “Of what?”

  “The sobering implication that these primates undermine our understanding of our own minds.”

  “That is nonsense.”

  “You are a male, my dear Profound, and so should be more open to ideas, since you are young as well. These events imply a painfully fresh insight. These creatures somehow avoid the risks of an unfettered intelligence. The implications—”

  “Are many, but the threat is clear,” the Profound snapped. “You let them escape. The only concrete knowledge we have comes from the single corpse they left behind—being primitives, I would have expected them to at least try to bury it. Studying that body explains their archaic origins. They have organs that barely function, some clearly vestigial, particularly in their digestive tracts. Natural selection has not had time to edit out these simple flaws. And, tellingly, there is no sign of artificial selection.”

  Clucks of doubt greeted this news. An elder asked, “How could they become starfarers without tailoring their bodies?”

  “They were in a hurry,” Memor said dryly.

  The Profound’s eyes narrowed. “They must come from quite nearby, to reach us in such simple craft. Yet I checked with the Astronomers, and there are no habitable planets within several light-years.”

  Memor saw this digression was to mollify the crowd, by seeming reasonable. She said, “They caught up to us and slowed to board. They obviously do not come with an attitude of awe, as with prior aliens. Customarily we pass by a star, and any intelligent, technological life-form comes to us with great respect for the Bowl, its majesty. I doubt these, who apparently found us by accident, will join the Adopted without great trouble.”

  The Profound’s eyes glistened as he saw an opportunity. “Then you agree they should be killed?”

  “Of course. But the implications they bring—”

  “Will not matter when they are dead, yes?”

  “You speak of that as an easy thing. My point is that it will not be simple. They have resources I cannot fathom.”

  “But that is subject to demonstration, yes?” The Profound yawned elaborately, amused.

  “If we muster—”

  “I assure you we are receiving reports from varying Folk communities. I have not gotten reports from the party you let escape, alas.” With this, he gave a derisive feather-flicker. “But other Folk do glimpse the primates who stole an aircar. They’ve been sighted as they pass in the distance.”

  “Then you— Wait, why do the Folk not attack them?”

  “They proceed through a zone of low habitation. None who sighted them had weapons of such range, for obvious reasons.”

  The Folk communities had only low-power armaments. Large explosives could breach the shell and open the Bowl to vacuum. If such were used by the infrequent Adopted rebellions, disaster would follow.

  Memor could sense the shift in the audience. A senior Savant said, “If you are correct, our Profound, we must use those who know these strange primates.”

  The Profound turned, puzzled. “I have made a case for extermination—”

  “But only Memor knows how they think, yes?”

  Memor said, “I cannot pretend to know, but I can at least sense how they respond.”

  The senior was puzzled and asked for explanation with a classic ruffle and coo.

  “I can predict many actions of these primates, yet without understanding their motives.”

  The Profound sent his crown feathers into a circling pattern of blue and gold. “I think Memor has proved she does not know how—”

  “She is what we have,” the Packmistress said suddenly. “She studied these aliens.”

  “But the risk!” the Profound said, turning to make the strut-challenge to the entire room. “We know from prior eras that aliens drawn to us from planets arrive with a planetary view of life. This cripples them. Of course, once having seen and lived upon the Bowl of Heaven, they saw their errors and found a quiet equilibrium. The Adopted have been quite useful to us and, once rendered docile, improve the lives of us all. Yet inevitably such aliens suffer for reasons built deeply into their genes—a nostalgia for planets that necessarily suffer the pains of days and nights, of axial seasons, of uncontrolled, hammering weather. So the Adopted are susceptible to incitement. These Late Invaders could excite such nostalgia into rage, vast violence, and then—”

  The Packmistress held up her arms, and the room fell silent. She did not react visibly, but turned to Memor and gazed steadily. “You will find a way to draw them out.”

  Memor hesitated. “But … how can I…”

  “You know them. You have seen their ways of bonding, of talking with those curious faces of theirs. The idea of an intelligence that does not fully control expression, showing all to any who see—and so lets others know what emotions pass within! Use that! You have two bands of aliens moving across the majesty of the Bowl. They are communal animals, yes?”

  “True, they daily meet and speak and—”

  “Good. Use that.”

  “Lure them?”

  “If you can devise a way, surely.”

  “May I have use of the Sky Command? I can cover territory quickly with the fliers. And especially the airfish.”

  “I suppose.” A sniff.

  Memor hesitated, then bowed. Her caution warned her not to go further, but—“What of their ship?”

  “Eh?” A Packmistress is not used to being questioned.

  “Their starship orbits about our star. Suppose it has some powers we do not know?”

  “That is for the Astronomers, surely.” The Packmistress stirred, as if she had not considered the issue. “I heard at Council that our mirror complexes probably cannot adjust quickly enough to focus on their ship. It has capacity to maneuver, and could evade a beam.”

  A senior Savant added, “No small ship could damage the Bowl, in any case.”

  “Ah, that is consoling,” Memor said with a bow and a humble submission-flurry of crest feathers. Then, as she rose, she had an idea.

  THIRTY-EIGHT

  When they stopped for a rest after a long journey in the magcar, Cliff searched for food. It felt good to get out of the car and into the “sorta-natural,” as Irma called it.

  There was little of animal prints or scat here, he noticed automatically. He found ripe berries, spotting them from experience. Some large trees had fruit growing off their trunks, an oddity that he used. With Howard he shot several of them off the bark by laser. He had developed a small poison detector, using the gear he had brought. That time of their landing—going through the air lock and then on the run—seemed far in the past. He had expected a few days on the Bowl, mostly doing bio tests, then back to SunSeeker.

  The fruit was a succulent purple and tested okay.

  But the
purple sap drew tiny flies that went for the fruit and then tried to suck the moisture off his eyeballs. They darted into his ears and dwelled there, prying deep inside. Dozens of them danced in the air, looking for suitable targets. Only running left them behind, and not for long.

  This just led the flies to the others, who batted at the buzzing irritants. It got bad and they decided to fire up the magcar and flee. Aybe was irritable; they had stung him on the neck repeatedly. He took out his ire by “trying out the dynamics.” This meant more acrobatics. Howard had measured the magnetic fields around the magcar and found it was an asymmetric dipole, with field squeezed tight under the car. With all aboard, the car sped faster by hugging the ground, so they skimmed along at only a meter in altitude. The more weight, the faster they could go. “Counterintuitive,” Howard said. “Must be the fields grip the metal belowground better.”

  Aybe nodded. “I figure the Bowl underpinning is metal with magnetic fields already embedded.”

  Irma said, “Maybe those big grid lines we saw on the outer skin? Could be enormous superconductor lines. Howard, what’s the magnetic field intensity at ground level?”

  “Strong—so much, I can’t measure it with my simple gear. At least a hundred times Earth’s, maybe a lot more.”

  Soon a ridge of mountain loomed before them. Aybe took them straight at it and Irma said, “That’s not far from the gridding I found. Maybe it’s a city?”

  “Then let’s not go there,” Howard said.

  But under binocs, the rising ridge looked like bare rock and there were no signs of locals. Aybe worked them around the narrow canyons that led to the base.

  “No signs of life,” Aybe said. “Maybe it has some structural role?”

  “We can get some perspective from up there,” Cliff said mildly. He had wanted to see further around this immense place but until now could not think of a way to do it, short of capturing an aircraft. Yet they had seen few of those in the skies.

  They started up the slope of the spire. It was mostly bare rock, but here and there they could see in the gullies some metal, as if the frame were showing through. The magcar handled well.

  Howard said, “I think the magnetics are getting stronger.”

  Aybe nodded. “I’m feeling more grip now. We can go uphill pretty fast.” He brought the magcar down even lower to the rock face and they lifted steadily.

  Cliff watched the terrain fall away. Forest, grasslands, rumpled hills. The spire steepened steadily but somehow the magcar held on, groaning, and propelled them up its flanks. He wondered what drove it—a compact fusion scheme? The oscillating rumble under his feet suggested that, but alien tech could—no, would—be alien.

  As they rose he saw immense decks of clouds rising like mountains in the distance. The atmosphere was so deep, such stacks could form and drift like skyscrapers of cotton. The Bowl rotated around in about ten days, and this drove waves and eddies in the huge atmosphere. The clouds followed this rhythm in stately cadence. He had seen the effects on the thin film that capped the atmosphere, and in the deep air below—ripples that shaped the winds, tornados here and there spinning like vast purple storms, resembling a top on a distant table. How could anyone predict temperature and rainfall in something this big?

  Aybe had taken them far up the spire now. It felt like climbing a building with no safety net. They were above the layer of air where small clouds hung, and now the view reached farther. Opposite the clouds was a clear zone. He was looking away from the rim of the Bowl, toward the Knothole. The Jet slowly wrapped and writhed, a slender red and orange snake. He followed its dim glow toward the Knothole but could not see past the foggy blur there. But nearer, beyond the vast mottled lands, lay a strange, huge curved zone—the mirrors.

  He was about to turn away when he saw something new.

  Glinting pixels struck his eye. The whole zone seemed to teem with activity—winks and stutters of light. Were the mirrors adjusting to tune the Jet, to stop the snarling waves that rode out on it?

  “Let’s go there.” Cliff pointed. “That’s got to be where whoever runs this place lives.”

  “Up to high latitudes?” Howard said. “We haven’t any idea what’s there!”

  “We haven’t got any ideas!” Irma burst out.

  “Then we need some,” Aybe said.

  * * *

  They kept moving up the rocky flanks of the immense tower, then had another sleep stop. At their rest site were some of the helically coiled, willowy paper bark trees they had found before. These they used for toilet paper, but they also cooked fish wrapped in it. Terry discovered a local herb that, roasted inside the fish, gave a pleasant taste to the big slabs of white meat. Cliff gutted the fish they caught in the surprisingly rich streams and ponds, and kept notes on his slate about their guts. There were oddities to the usual tubular design, such as one that excreted to the sides, not at the tail, and another with a circular comb around its flanks. Disguise? Defense? Hard to know.

  They all enjoyed the view. To one side, a gunmetal blue sheen of sea yawned in the distance. The seemingly flat horizon to either side disappeared into a haze; the water gave no impression of being concave, only vast. Here, Cliff mused, masts would not be the first sign of an approaching ship.

  There were a few Earthly analogues to this place, he reflected. Earthside, deep sea creatures lived in constant darkness, the opposite of this steady daylight. Here the sun stayed put in the sky, so animals could navigate by it. They all hid away to sleep, except for some lizard carnivores he saw dozing in the eternal sun. Beyond those bare facts, Cliff could not see how to generalize.

  Terry came and sat beside him to admire the views. They walked around a bluff to see the other side, silent. They had exhausted their small talk long ago. The unending days were wearing on them all. Their clothes, though of Enduro cloth, showed popped linings and ragged cuffs. They stopped whenever they found a stream or lake but often smelled rank. The men had ragged beards, and Irma’s hair kept getting in her way. They didn’t cut hair, though, because it kept their UV exposure down. Though everyone with a SunSeeker berth was exceptionally strong and tough, living in the open wore them down. Worst of all was the strong expectation that none of this was going to change soon.

  “That way,” Terry said, pointing, “that’s up-Bowl, right?”

  “You mean to higher latitudes?” Cliff tossed a rock onto the steep slate gray rock below them and watched it bounce and scatter until he lost track of it in mist below.

  “Yeah, past the mirrors. Must be a hundred million klicks away from here.”

  “Pretty far, right,” Cliff said, distracted by something he had glimpsed. He brought up his binocs and close-upped the mirror zone. It was flashing rainbow colors, tiny pixels of blue and white and pink rippling. He had seen that before, but this time whole regions of mirrors were forming the same color, making—an image.

  He stared at it, mouth open.

  “Look up close,” he whispered to Terry. “What do you see?”

  “Okay, I—good grief. It’s … a face.”

  “Not just a face. A person—human.”

  “What?” Terry grew silent. “You’re right! A woman.”

  “Moving, too—it’s … it’s Beth.”

  “My God … yes. It’s her.”

  “And her lips are moving.”

  “Yeah. I used to lip-read, let me … She’s saying ‘come,’ I think.”

  Cliff found he had been holding his breath. “Right.”

  “Come … to … me. Repeats. That’s it.”

  The face on the mirrors repeated the words over and over. Her face rippled and snarled in spots where wave coherence failed.

  Terry said, “Does that mean they have her?”

  “These are aliens. Maybe their contexts are different. It could mean they want her to go to them. Or it’s directed to us, and me, and says, go to Beth.”

  “Damn,” Terry said.

  Cliff stared at the repeating pattern and frowned. H
e seemed to float on the shock of it, suspended, seeing a face he had longed for. He had dreamed of her so much through these desperate days, imagining her dead or in some alien hellhole.…

  “Unless … it could be Beth sending the message.”

  THIRTY-NINE

  For Cliff, dreams made it all worse. The next “day,” he awoke with the scent of roast turkey in his mind. When he was a boy, his idea of heaven was Thanksgiving leftovers. He had loved chopping onions beside his mother, stuffing the bird with green cork tamales instead of regular stuffing, as Grandmother Martínez did. The other side of the family did ground lamb, rice, and pinyon nuts. Drifting up from sleep, he tasted the Arabic stuffing flavored with prickly spices and a little cinnamon. He blinked into the constant dappled sunlight, not wanting to leave the dream. His stomach growled in sympathy.

  Food dreams … He had them every sleep now. They ate simply here, but his unconscious didn’t have to like it.

  He got up, yawning and reaching for some fragrant fruit they had found the day before. They managed to get enough small game, shooting from the magcar, and they all gathered berries and herbs to avoid hunger here—but his sleep turned to fragrant feasts nearly every “night.” He suspected food stood in his dreams for some deeper yearning, but could not figure out what it might be.

  He mentioned this to Irma as the “day” was drawing to a close, and she said immediately, looking him in the eye, “Beth. Obviously.”

  This made him blink because it was obvious and he had not seen it. “I … suppose so.”

  “Just as I miss and want Herb.” Still the direct stare.

  “Of course.” That was his filler phrase while he tried to think, but Irma wasn’t having any.

  She shot back, “You don’t remember Herb, do you?”

  “Uh, engineer, right?”

  “No, he’s a systems man.”

  “Well, that sort of engin—”

  “Redwing was going to revive him to work on the drive problem, but we got too busy.”

  “And you miss him.…” Cliff resorted to a leading phrase to get away from the Beth issue, but it didn’t work.