Bowl of Heaven

by Gregory Benford; Larry Niven

  An image from their Underminds, more likely, Memor thought. An ancient archetype running free, from the times when the Adopted were on their own. She huffed, worried, but gave no other sign of her true reaction. She had read and seen images of alien invasions, far back—many twelve-cubed Eras ago. No Astronomers now living were alive then. Though Astronomers were the longest-lived of all the Folk, even they faced a hard fact: The Bowl swam by life-rich worlds seldom. Still rarer were those planets inhabited by sentients—those who could perceive and know—which were of use to the Folk. Still more rare were aliens of sapience—entities who could act with appropriate judgment. The universe gave forth life reluctantly, and wisdom, far more so.

  These alien primates, alas, had both—in quantities they surely did not deserve, given their primitive levels of development. Plainly some harsh world had shaped them, and cast them out into the vacuum, untutored.

  But she was forgetting her role here. She snorted out anger, spat rebuke, and gave a reproaching feather display of brown and amber. “Admirable!”

  “I regret to deliver such news.”

  “I had no such reports before.”

  “This was a regional problem, noble Astronomer.”

  “It is now a global one. These are dangerous aliens, afoot in our lands.”

  Murmurs of agreement erupted. But Memor did not want agreement; she wanted action. “We do not know what they want. We cannot allow them to remain loose.”

  The Savant caught her tone and lifted her head. “We shall redouble our efforts.”

  Memor supposed that was the best she could expect of these rural provinces. They slumbered, while mastering the Bowl fell to their betters. She sniffed, gave a flutter display, and was turning away when the Savant asked quietly, “We hear tales of the alien’s excursions.…”

  Obviously a leading question. How much did this minor Savant know? “You refer to—?”

  “One of the alien bands, these tales say, discovered a Field of History.”

  “I believe the primary group stumbled upon one, yes. So?”

  “Then they know our past. And can use it against us.”

  “I scarcely think they are so intelligent.”

  “They have eluded us.” Short, to the point. This Savant was brighter than she looked.

  “You worry that they will know we once passed by their world? These primates were not even evolved when we were nearby.”

  “We gather from the History that these invaders came from a world whose ancestors we once extracted.”

  Memor trembled but did not show it. These unsuspecting types were lurching toward a truth they should never glimpse. She stretched elaborately, looking a bit bored, and said carefully, “Yes. I researched that. They were without speech, had minimal culture, few tool-using skills. Scavengers, mostly, though they could hunt smaller animals in groups, and defend against other scavengers. Those primates, once Adopted, further evolved into game animals. Not particularly good ones, either.”

  This at least provoked a rippling laughter. Beneath it ran skittering anxiety in high notes. The Savant persisted, “They do not seem easy to Adopt. They may be angered to see what has become of their ancestors.”

  Memor did not let her feathers betray her true reaction. The Savant was right, but for reasons Savants were not privileged to know. Rely on cliché, then. No one remembered them even a moment later. “The essence of Adoption is self-knowledge.”

  The Savant nodded slightly, letting the matter pass when an Astronomer so indicated. Clichés, Memor reflected, were the most useful lubricant in conversation. Thus she missed the Savant’s next statement, which was a question—and so soon had to give a summary of what she knew of the aliens. How this could help, she had no idea, but it deflected attention from the real, alarming issue.

  She began, “These spacefaring primates have a linear view of life that extends forward and backwards in time. I discovered this while examining their minds while they functioned, and realize that some of what I say may seem implausible. It is not.”

  This provoked some tittering in the crowd, but Memor plowed on.

  “They are very interested in the beginning of the universe, despite the general uselessness of this information now. Even more oddly, they fix upon the long-term fate of the universe, and have strong views on these matters. Some are even religious! To Astronomers, these are matters subject to many unknowns, too many to lend a sense of urgency to the issue. Yet the Late Invaders feel urgently concerned.”

  A Savant asked, “How can that matter?”

  “It has sent them out in their tiny, dangerous ship, yes?”

  “To answer such vague questions?”

  “Not entirely. Their deep drive, which they seldom know consciously, is to expand their horizons.”

  “Why? What use can that be?”

  “An anxiety fills them, drives them out. I could see it simmering in their Underminds.”

  “I doubt such creatures could be Adopted,” the Savant persisted.

  “It is our task to enlighten them.” Memor retreated into cliché again. “To erase this hunger for horizons, which evolution dealt them.”

  “Do we know their origins?”

  Memor disguised her lie with a ruffle-display of purple guilt. “I fear we cannot say yet.” It was truthful, in a way; she could not say.

  “I meant, not what planet they are from, but why they have this anxiety?”

  Memor had not considered that, and in a moment of guilty truth-telling, said so. Discussion wafted through the audience. She could see the teams who searched for the primates wondering why the discussion was so theoretical, but that was not crucial. The tone of this meeting was, though.

  She took command again with, “We suspect they had to flee a hostile territory, and that crisis forced their evolution. Perhaps their numbers became too great for their environment, and the ambitious moved on to fruitful lands. This forced evolution of better tool-making and general, social intelligence.”

  Now that she said it, the idea had some appeal. How did the primates get the urge to voyage forth in such frail ships? Because they were born on the move.

  A Savant said, “They would flood our lands!”

  Memor quieted their murmuring. “We can certainly contain that. We outnumber them by twenty orders of twelve-magnitude.”

  Until this moment she had not fully appreciated how strange the aliens were, even though she had seen into their minds. This was the nub of it: They loved novelty, excitement, and motion—even though it might mean death.

  Whereas the Folk wisely lived in the perfect conditions for them, precisely to give life a constancy, a gliding sense of time that belied the issues of beginnings and endings. The reward was a place beyond the natural places, a machine for living that spun, as did worlds, and yet did so to maintain the constancy that was the point of the Folk. They froze time for the span of their species and perhaps beyond. Evolution of the Folk of course occurred. But the aim of artifice was to constrain this, maintaining a close watch, so that the Folk could be in their exalted state. Thus they had thrived now through immense long tides of time, a fact well understood by each succeeding generation. The highest function of a species was surely to suspend the rude, blunt blow of happenstance, and control their own destiny. The Astronomers governed not just the relations between the Bowl and the heavens, but the Bowl Lifeshaping as well.

  She thought on this, all the while letting the comments and open disputes work themselves through the assembly. When it had played out, she said with due gravity, “The primates may know some of our history—but it is so vast! They cannot comprehend it.”

  This brought applause. The Adopted held as a matter of faith and history that the Bowl’s serene constancy was the goal of all wise life. So did all the intellectual classes—Savants, Profounds, and Keepers. So what if primates knew a tiny fraction of the Saga?

  Of course, her true mission here was to damp their fears. She reminded the audience of their resourc
es, and let members of the search teams tell of their glancing contacts with the primates. None from the party who had lost their magcar, because the primates had killed them all. She mentioned this, to set the stage.

  Now they would rehearse the enveloping movement planned to ensnare the roving primate band, the one that had found what they called the Field of History, which Astronomers termed the Past Worlds. A distant team would carry forward that hunt.

  Memor asked, “So much for abstractions. I am here to direct your hunt for those who have already killed some of the Folk. I gather you recorded their entry at a Conveyance Station?”

  Some of the Adopted nodded eagerly. “Yes, Astronomer! We have the sky creatures ready to depart.”

  “Most excellent. A long while has lapsed since I experienced the thrill of running down dangerous prey. Let us take to the air, then.”

  Nothing would get in their way now, since they had the primates located to a region. When captured, she forbade any questioning of them. A few chance remarks could wreck entire established structures of Bowl society. She could take no chance that anyone should come to know of the Great Shame.

  FORTY-FIVE

  The alien regarded them with its large eyes and made a curious squatting motion, its sinewy arms held out to the sides. With the large pancake hands and thick fingers, it formed a twisting architecture in the air. Its name was Quert, its Folk the Sil. Its graceful form moved restlessly, pacing among the odd chairs where the humans sat and ate. The train was moving fast now, and the staccato snick-snick-snick of the electromagnetic handoffs propelling it forward rang constantly in the background.

  Quite deliberately it said, “Bon voyage. Buon viaggio. Gute Reise. Buen viaje. Viagem boa. Goede reis. Ha en bra resa. God tur. Bonum iter. ”

  Silence. They all looked at one another.

  Irma said brightly, “Those are words for parting. We are joining.”

  “Misalignment?” the alien said. “Then—” And silky words came from it, good-bye in several human languages.

  Irma said slowly, carefully, “We are happy you have learned our languages. Very good. We all speak Anglish.”

  “I have compressor knowledge. Now can adjust.”

  Cliff said, “Where did you get such data on our languages?”

  “Astronomers. They sent all to hunters.”

  “You are a hunter?”

  “We Sils, true. Also others.”

  “What kind of others?”

  “Others of Adopted.”

  “Who are—?”

  “Those brought here. Not species made in Bowl.”

  “From other planets?”

  “True.” The big yellow eyes studied them all in turn. “Like you.”

  “We haven’t been—”

  “Now to be Adopted. That is goal Astronomers.”

  Irma asked, “Adopted … how?”

  “Genes. Social rules. Status adjustment.” This came out as hard, firm statements from the narrow mouth. Cliff wondered about inferring emotions from facial signatures in aliens, but this case at least seemed clear. The constricted face oozed resentment.

  “What next?” Terry asked, puzzled.

  “Large sharing comes soon,” the catlike alien said. “Onto here I-we came to speak and share help. Have time now little.”

  “Why?” Aybe asked. They were having trouble understanding the slippery slide of Quert’s words and the odd context.

  “Stop soon, will. Others come.”

  “So we—?”

  “Leave next stop. Must.”

  Quert flexed its hands. They had six fingers ending in sharp nails. The palm was broad and covered by fine hairs. Now that Cliff studied the creature, he saw it was clothed in a subtle woven fabric that mimicked the tan-colored fine hairs. Perhaps that helped camouflage it?

  “How long do we have until the next stop?” Aybe asked, looking edgy.

  “Short.” Then Quert stopped prowling and looked at each of them in turn. “The Sky Rule will come.”

  “Those who are after us?” Aybe asked.

  “I have fellows there. We may share violence.”

  “We all?” Irma asked.

  “Must quick,” Quert said with slippery vowels, and fished from its clothes an oddly sloped cylinder with a transparent lens at one end. “You carry force?”

  “You mean weapons?” Terry asked.

  “Wea—yes. My vocabulary adjusting. Do I need of your tongues other?”

  “Those languages?” Irma thought. “No. But—the Astronomers gave you all those?”

  “They had from other primates, or so said.”

  “You can un-learn a language?”

  Quert’s eyes then did something startling. They elongated up and down, an expression with no human parallel. Cliff realized it must mean surprise or puzzlement. Quert said, “Must do. Am crowded and slow now.”

  Then the graceful creature sat at last and closed its eyes. Its eyelids vibrated as if shaken from behind and it did not move. Cliff noted the slowing of the snick-snick-snicks.

  The electromagnetic handoffs now turned to braking. “Should we hide?” Howard asked. “If we’re to get out—”

  Quert abruptly sat up, shook its head. “Gone. Better.” It looked around at them quizzically, as if coming out of a deep sleep. “Yes. Get down so they not see. Then leave we.”

  They went back into rooms and crouched below windows. A pale light rose in the walls outside, and they all brought out their lasers. These were nearly fully charged, since they had followed strict recharging rules in the magcar.

  Quert crouched as the train slowed. Cliff sprang up as it stopped with a solid jolt and there were robots everywhere outside.

  “Go time,” Quert said, and they went.

  Out onto the platform, identical to the one at which they’d boarded. Robots of gray and green worked steadily on the freight cars and ignored them as they passed. They ran.

  After some dim corridors they came out into a broad high-arched plaza under the relentless sunlight. Cliff slowed, stunned.

  Hundreds of howling creatures like Quert sent up a warbling, sonorous call. They carried tubes and packs and looked well organized, formed up into ranks. They greeted Quert with high-pitched shouts and words that came over more as shrieks to Cliff. In the eyes of these aliens he saw jittery vigor, anxious turns of heads, a fearful energy. They seemed oddly human, but made small dances that broke out among them, knots of spinning joy within rectangular ranks. This stirred and confused him. The smell was like a crisp, fragrant corral. The humans ran through a corridor of celebration.

  They nearly made it. Outside in the raw sunlight, the surging bodies made an impressive display, but halfway across a big canyon floor some zipping pulses came down abruptly from the ramparts above.

  Screams, loud hollow thumps, panic. Cliff stuck close to Quert and ran for the canyon walls.

  They got into a cleft in an orange conglomerate rock and were working back through it, led by Quert, when a heavy rolling blast caught them and slammed them to the ground.

  Quert got up unsteadily. “Come … they.”

  Strange whistling sounds came from the plain outside. Cliff glanced back as they jogged down the cleft. He could see a lancing green light surge down, a hard fizzing spark like a lightning flash you could see in full daylight. Answering deep explosions rocked the air. Pebbles and sand streaked by them with a whoosh. They ran harder.

  They came out into a side canyon where more of Quert’s kind clustered. They grouped around black angular snouts that thrust up into the air. Guns, Cliff thought. No matter how alien this place was, form followed function. They stopped and Quert said, “We show now.”

  The guns erupted in short, spatting flashes. Cliff ducked at the noise and tried to see what they were firing at. The narrow barrels recoiled like howitzers, but no spent shells ejected from their base. The barrels tracked slowly and the alien teams cheered.

  “Get we over!” Quert yelled in a high, rasping voice.
<
br />   “Where?” Irma shouted over the banging salvos.

  Quert gestured to a rock bluff hundreds of meters away. There were at least a dozen of the long-barreled guns firing and aliens ran everywhere, shouting orders. We’re in a war, Cliff thought. And I thought we were getting away from trouble on the nice train.…

  “Better do what they say!” Aybe yelled. “We dunno what’s up.”

  Understatement, Cliff thought, and nodded. They started running, weaving away from the gun crews.

  They got about halfway across, led by the swift Quert, when suddenly horrible screeches rose from all sides. Quert barked out a congested howl and fell to the ground. But Cliff felt nothing.

  The guns stopped. Screams of agony came from all around.

  “It’s some kind of pain gun!” Aybe yelled. “Gets them, not us.”

  They hesitated. He had once been the kid who stood at the top of the waterslide, overthinking it. Finally he had learned to do, not think, and navigate the chute as it came at you. A big moment, back when he was six years old. Now here it was again. Same answer: down the chute.

  “Go!” He picked up Quert—surprisingly light, as if it had no bones—and sprinted forward. Where? With no guide, he just ran across the canyon. There was a tunnel in the canyon wall and the humans fled to it. Shrieks of terrifying pain came all around them. It was a long run through chaos, three hundred meters as fast as they could go. They made it, to the tunnel, leaping over writhing alien bodies, driven to hammer forward by barely controlled panic. He put the alien down.

  Panting in the shadows, Irma gasped, “I couldn’t see who was shooting.”

  “Up in the sky,” Aybe said in a hoarse voice, winded. “A smaller version. Of that living blimp. We saw before.”

  Cliff looked down at Quert, who was sprawling, dazed. He edged out and looked up. A scaly brown football with fins was waltzing lazily across the sky. Big flat antennas hung down from it, probably the source of the pain ray. It moved like a fat, preying insect. The green beams cast down their burning lances.

  He remembered feeling a pain flash once. His flesh had cried out, I’m on fire! He had looked down at his arm where the invisible beam was landing, and tried to say, This is just my nerves getting jangled, I can take this, but that didn’t work. The body ignored his mind, which knew the 95-gigahertz radiation was stimulating the nerves in his skin. His skin just kept screaming, I’m on fire!