Heaven's River

by Dennis E. Taylor

  One by one the others joined the game until the water was frothing with Quinlan bodies, dodging, breaching, and chasing each other. The game lasted almost 10 minutes, until my heads-up display informed me that a proper Quinlan would be exhausted and would need to spend some quality time floating. I could've ignored it - the android body never got tired - but Bridget would have something to say in that case.

  I rose to the surface and turned onto my back. The motion seemed natural, and I'd seen images from the spy drones of Quinlans floating in this pose. “Otters,” I muttered, as the others popped up one by one. We linked up, grabbing with forepaws or hind paws to form a raft of Quinlans, slowly rotating as we floated downstream.

  “Okay, that was insane,” Bill exclaimed. “Bridget you might want to let Howard know about this - he’ll probably be able to figure out a way to turn it into a business.”

  “Heaven’s River Tours?” Bridget waggled her ears at him, a sign of amused agreement to a Quinlan. “I think they'd be popular.”

  “And not just with the Bobs. Maybe even some of the second wave replicants. It might jarr them out of their VR only existence.”

  “Heads up people, you're coming up on the village.”

  At Will’s announcement, we all turned to look downstream. Sure enough, we were around the last bend and would soon be floating through the small burg. We unlinked and torpedoed to the nearest pedestrian dock. Sure, infrastructure was one of the many differences between Quinlan culture and anything else we were used to. They used waterways the way humans would use sidewalks and roads, which meant that there were pedestrian docs and boat docks where the waterway was wide enough.

  The latter were little different from what you'd find on earth, or for that matter on Pav or New Pav. Quinlans used mostly sailboats of a generally catamaran-like design, although I’d seen images of a couple of more barge-like variants that used the local beasts of burden to turn a paddlewheel.

  Interestingly, this town did not have canals, so roads were the only method of moving around. I frowned for a moment, then realized that the actual soil wouldn't be all that deep. If the Quinlans tried to dig canals they'd likely run into shell material before they get deep enough to matter. All-terrain contouring would have to be baked into the shape of the shell during construction.

  The pedestrian docks were essentially a set of half-submerged ramps that allowed the Quinlans to swim up then walk out. They could shoot out of the water like a penguin and land on their feet, but it was considered impolite in crowded situations, since she could easily find yourself in a pileup for the same patch of dock. The Quinlans had a word for the move: poot - which the Skippy's had translated as up-diving.

  We walked up the ramp and moved out of the way quickly. The ramps were busy, and Quinlans seemed to have a low tolerance for queuing up. Most simply dove off the nearest edge, and at any moment a few more impatient souls took to up-diving, braving the black looks of their peers.

  As I watched, one miscreant hopped out of the water only to be straight armed right back in by someone occupying that particular patch of space-time. As we headed for solid ground, I could hear voices raised in anger behind me.

  “Wanna stay and watch the fights?” Garfield muttered with a smirk.

  “Better not,” Will interjected. “Hugh commented that Quinlans are inclined to mob. A simple fight between two people can escalate quickly for no good reason.”

  “More so than humans?” Garfield asked.

  “Maybe. How about that? Humanity dethroned is most likely to be stupid in large groups.”

  I grinned, but didn't bother to respond. Will had ended up with a particularly negative view of the human species, after his adventures in getting the last of them off the dying Earth. Other than our relatives, whom he continued to dote on, he had very little time for the general run of humanity.

  “Heads up,” Bridget interjected. “Cops.”

  We all prairie dogged.

  “Brilliant move, way to play it cool, guys.”

  As a heavyset Quinlan sporting an ornate sash swaggered up to us, I struggled to keep my face and ears impassive a waddling swagger was a truly impressive sight. He took a moment to look us over, his gaze lingering on Bridget. She stared back at him impassively, neither challenging nor acquiescing. I had to admit, it was a nice balancing act. But if he talked down to her, we might be leaving town in a hurry. Or on a rail.

  “You folks just passing through?”

  I stepped forward. By prior agreement, I would be the spokes-critter for the group. “We are, good sir. We are on a sabbatical, making our way slowly downriver.”

  “Where from?”

  “Handavar,” I replied. “I doubt you've heard of it, our last few stops hadn't.”

  “I was taking a chance, but maybe not a large one. Quinlans were far more mobile than Anglo-Saxon peasants, for instance, but mass transportation was still unknown, as far as we could tell. And the high-speed transport built into Heaven’s River was inaccessible to the residents in every segment we'd investigated.

  “More sabbatarians.” The cop screwed up his face and apparent distaste. “If you plan on staying for more than a couple of days, you’ll have to register with the magistrate. Otherwise, stick to the transient hotels and eateries along the docks. And don't cause trouble, or you’ll be leaving earlier than planned.”

  He gave us a final once over, nodded again, and swaggered away.

  “Did you notice the weapon?” Bridget asked.

  We muttered acknowledgments.

  “Couldn't tell exactly what particular style of sword,” I said, “but the scabbard had a certain short sword look to it.”

  “That means they do some metalwork, which means they have metal. Other than the money, I mean.”

  Garfield cocked his head quizzically. “Uh, maybe I should have read the prelims more thoroughly. This is a surprise, why?”

  “What are they gonna do, mine it?” I glared at him. It's like Ring World, right? No mineral wealth, no oil deposits, unless they actually scavenge from the structure, they’re limited to recycling what they already have, and there's very little actual metal in the structure, even if they were that stupid. Which means metal is going to be very valuable.”

  “The megastructure administration could be supplying metal in small quantities,” Will said. “Maybe pushing out nuggets at stream heads for instance. Although that would produce messy industries engaged in harvesting it.”

  Bridget nodded. “In any case, dedicating all that metal to a sword tells me that the sword is really really necessary, either as a symbol, or a threat, or a weapon.”

  We’d been walking through the village as we talked looking for a motel or local equivalent. Without warning, a Quinlan quartet spilled out of what might've been a bar. The ball-o-Quinlans was rolling around like a bunch of angry cats, kicking and biting and scratching. And swearing. Quinlan cursing was both inventive and energetic. The Quinlan language allowed some forms of declension that went well with cursing, including a noun form that indicated it was the subject of an action.

  One of the Quinlans was ejected from the mass, mostly by accident, and leapt to his feet. He glared around teeth bared, and spotted Bridget who had the bad luck to be within arm’s reach. He snarled at her and cocked his arm for a full claw rake.

  Without so much as a lead up, Bridget popped him straight in the snout. He went over backward with a shriek of dismay, and the other Quinlans stopped in mid action.

  Bridget showed her teeth to the group. “Anyone else?”

  The group untangled and helped their fourth, who was holding his snout to his feet.

  “What was that?” one of them said.

  “My business card,” Bridget replied. “I have more than enough for everyone.”

  She paused, and when no response was forthcoming, she stalked off without waiting for us. We made to follow, and I shrugged to one of the combatants as I walked past.

  He muttered to me, “When mating sea
son comes, friend, choose carefully.”

  I wasn't quite sure what to make of that, so I didn't respond. Garfield, meanwhile, had moved ahead, and turned into an establishment with a carving of a bed over the door. By the time I caught up, he was engaged in earnest conversation with what must be the proprietor. We waited, and moments later he rejoined us.

  “We’re in luck. This establishment has private rooms large enough for our group. Highly sought-after, according to our host, which is why he wanted a ruinously high nightly rate. We compromised on an only mildly scandalous weekly rate.”

  He held up a key. “Only one key though so… I am the key master.”

  Bill chuckled and Bridget, as usual, rolled her eyes.

  I had to wonder what life was like for her, with Howard. Even for a Bob clone, he had an unusually high dose of reference-it is. I hoped the eye rolls were pro forma.

  On the other hand, she was getting the references.

  The room was… cozy. That being the generally accepted euphemism for ‘smaller than a closet’. It consisted of a door at one end, a window at the other, and four bunk beds, two on each wall between the door and window. And not generous bunk beds, either - a tall Quinlan wouldn't be able to stretch out. Fortunately, we’d all gone for average dimensions, so it wasn’t an issue.

  There was enough room between the beds for two people to stand at the same time, but we wouldn't be having town hall meetings in that space. Bathroom facilities were shared by the entire floor, and weren’t what I'd call luxurious either. Fortunately, the Quinlans seem to have the concept of flush toilets, so we wouldn't have to adjust our olfactory senses. Unfortunately, the Quinlan language didn't have a concept of bath separate from swim, so there was a certain species level bouquet shall we say?

  Will uploaded a patch of everyone's request which tuned the odor out of conscious awareness. A short walk to our room had been interesting and instructive. This hotel seemed to cater to sabbatarians. All the rooms that we’d gotten a look at were laid out the same as ours, and most seem to be occupied by foursomes. I wondered aloud if four was a magic Quinlan family number of some kind, and received a “No” from Bridget and a lecture.

  “The Quinlans have a complicated system that I'd characterize as a networked endogamy. People belong to a marriage group with potentially multiple male and female partners, but they could belong to more than one group. There are rules about your status and financial obligations within the group based upon whether you lived with that group or with another one.”

  “So what's with the foursomes then?”

  “It may be a cultural norm, or instinctive, or a little of both.” Bridget shrugged. “It might simply be the practical minimum number necessary to raise a family.”

  I raised an eyebrow. “It seems like an odd requirement. Why?

  Bridget made a face before explaining. “Quinlan children are raised in a creche until they’re about five, because they aren't sentiment until then.”

  “Neither are human children,” I said.

  Bridget laughed. “A lot of people would agree with you, but of course that isn't true. Human children start trying to talk in their first year. Look, humans solved the brain-size problem by being born physically underdeveloped - intelligent but helpless - requiring a lot of parental support in the early years. Quinlans solved it by being born animalistic but pretty much fully mobile almost right away, with brains that mature late. By the time they start to learn to think and talk, they can already take care themselves.”

  “Wow, I can see some problems with that.”

  “Yes Bill. And you’ve almost certainly gotten it right. The children who are called juniors have to be kept penned or they basically just run rampant. And someone has to care for them, so Quinlan families have to be big to muster the resources.

  “And make sure no one decides to eat their young,” Garfield said, sotto voce.

  “Not wrong,” Bill muttered back.

  Bridget smiled at them. “I have a theory that their belligerence and hair-trigger tempers as adults are related to the early development process. Humans learn cultural norms early while they're still helpless and dependent. Quinlans, not so much.”

  “Huh. Food for thought,” I said. “Let’s get back to civilization before we continue, okay? My cultural norms include coffee.”

  The others laughed and we started to settle in. We did rock paper scissors lizard Spock for bunks, and I got one of the uppers. No biggie, right? Well unfortunately, with the Quinlan bodies short stride, ladders were an adventure. I almost fell off the first time I tried to climb up, and Bill had to brace me. I glared at Garfield who was already comfortable in the other upper and bared my teeth. He laughed.

  “It's late enough,” Bridget said. “Let's get some sleep.”

  Sleep was code for leaving the Mannies in standby mode while we returned to VR. Each Manny had a basic AMI it would alert us if something required our attention. Otherwise the Mannies would sleep like… well, like the dead.

  We all doffed our Mannies and gathered in my VR, Will grabbing the beanbag chair as usual. Jeeves showed up with everyone's favorite refreshments and we all spend a few moments enjoying the return to civilization.

  “It's going to be slow,” Bridget said. “But the first thing we have to do is find a library or Hall of Records or something similar. Let's see what they have in written form. The Skippies were doing a general once-over and may have missed something that didn't have A History of Quinn in the title. And of course, they have to be careful - a group of Quinlans grabbing books won’t set off the kind of gossip that a bunch of floating balls and mechanical spiders would.”

  “Assuming they have something like spiders,” Will said.

  “They do. More crab-shaped, though.”

  “Whatever. Anyway, we ransack their written records and try to get enough info to be able to interrogate locals without sounding like aliens.”

  “Which we are.”

  “Not the point,” I said. “We have to get a bead on management without revealing ourselves. It might be that we end up contacting them. It might also turn out that we have to spy on them too, but we can't do anything until we have at least the basics.”

  “I'm just as happy if we end up actually doing what we told the cop: heading downstream.”

  “I understand, Bridget. But the point for me is to find Bender. Or find out what happened to him. Let's not lose track of that.”

  “Are you sure we can’t just scan for him?”

  Garfield answered. “We did a simulation. The problem is that the megastructure uses optoelectronics very similar to our technology. So every mile of topopolis will take us about 12 hours to scan. And then it's another six hours to examine the scans in detail. That's over a million years, worst case, just for the scanning.

  “Can’t we just build a whole bunch of scanners?”

  “Yes, but we also have to build a whole bunch of us to process the scans. Even using the most efficient bootstrapping methods and ignoring questions of material availability, we’re still looking at more than 150 years if we bring that level of resources to bear on the problem. And anyway, we don't have a much raw material in the system, so we be bringing in units from out of system, so add some more time for that.”

  Bill nodded and took up the story. “On the other hand, an investigative strategy might net is good results in less than a decade, at least according to Hugh.”

  “Based on what?” Bridget frowned at Bill. “You can't possibly have any statistics to work from.”

  “He kind of does. Population of Heaven’s River. Number of people we can contact per year. Number of people who will hear about us per year. It's a networking-theory thing. Eventually there is more than a 50-50 chance that we will either contact someone or be contacted by someone. Hugh says less than a decade.”

  “Hmph.” Bridget shook her head. “Okay, fine. I'm not thrilled with the alternative timeline anyway.”

  “And hey, if anyone wants a brea
k, I’m available,” Will said grinning. “That downstream thing looked like just too much fun.”

  I stood, signaling the end of the meeting. “We have six hours until we’re scheduled to wake our Mannies. Take care of whatever you need to.”

  18. Not Part of the Plan

  Will

  June 2334

  Quinn

  I pulled myself off the rack, staggering slightly. The proportions of the Quinlan Manny would take some getting used to. I was examining the not-insubstantial claws on my hand, when the other Manny opened its eyes.

  “Hey Howard.” I held up a hand. “Check out these crazy nails.”

  He gave me a frown. “You gone hippie on me, Riker?”

  I grinned at him, and he smiled back. “Thanks for inviting me, Will. I admit I'm curious about Bridget's project, and her description of the swimming was more enthusiastic than she generally gets about things.”

  I signaled the drone to open the cargo door. “No prob, I’m curious too. Although I also have a responsibility to practice, in case I’m called up. That's my story anyway.” I gestured to the door and we walked out together.

  I'd parked the drone in a different city, somewhat larger than the one Bob and Bridget had visited. And a good deal more messed up. We’d have to avoid areas with too much radiation - even the Mannies were immune to the damaging effects, but just about anything else could be ignored.

  I wanted to get a cross-section of the types of warfare that the Quinlans had waged on each other. This city had been pounded by explosives, maybe missiles, maybe dropped bombs. Not kinetic, though - those wouldn't have left much to examine.

  The city had likely been a capital, or at least a major hub of some kind. It had that all-roads-lead-to-Rome feel about it, at least from the air. The Quinlans had used rail for overland transport, and there were a lot of rail lines leading here. The city also larger blocks, with more widely-spaced waterways. I wondered if that was an efficiency thing, or if they just needed the bigger blocks for some other reason. According to Bob and Bill, the Quinlan psychology seem to be very human-like, but I was reluctant to over-extrapolate.