Heaven's River

by Dennis E. Taylor

  To his credit, he was probably used to this kind of chase. Or maybe he just guessed right. But there he was, right in the middle of my escape route. He grinned an evil grin as he opened his arms wide to keep me from going around him. Instead, I went straight at him. Before he even had time to register shock, I straight-armed him, ran right up his chest as he went over backward, and launched off his forehead as he hit the ground. That wasn't going to make me any friends, but then I wasn't planning on hanging around. I had a clear shot at the river now. A short gallop to the docks, a quick leap down to the wooden deck, ending with a long dive into the drink.

  I heard splashes behind me as others gave chase, but I was out of direct sight now, and I could pour on the horses. Flat-out, I had about twice the speed of a biological Quinlan and I didn't have to come up for air. In seconds, I was far out of their reach. They would hopefully conclude that I'd simply doubled back or otherwise lost them.

  “Clear of the town, waiting downstream,” I announced to the team.

  “Hey, I have a great idea. Let's put Bob in charge.” Bridget glared at me, but I could see her trying not to smile.

  “Yeah, yeah, bring it on,” I replied. “I got your delinquent right here.”

  We all shared a chuckle, and Bill said, “So it went from you looking in a wagon, all the way to a riot?”

  “In seconds,” I replied. “Literally, seconds.”

  “I saw the fracas as I headed for the water,” Garfield added. “There were a couple dozen people involved, all yelling. I think some of them had started a fight each other.”

  We lapsed into silence. We were all floating downstream on the river, linked hands and feet in the usual Quinlan way. The current was slow, no more than a few miles per hour. Walking speed, maybe slightly more. I tilted my head and closed my eyes, to absorb a little heat from the sun. It was midafternoon now, and we were far enough from Garrick to finally be able to relax.

  In the distance, boats moved up and down river. The Quinlans had sailboats with proper triangular sail designs, which I could see tacking back and forth as they crossed the river northward, or in beam reach as they headed up or down river. I noticed though that there was a lot more down river traffic. I wondered if they tended to go back up river by circling around on one of the other main rivers. That would certainly be easier, if a little more roundabout. There were also boats the used one or more hounds on a treadmill as a source of motive power. That didn't strike me as terribly efficient, but efficiency was more of an industrial era concern. Very probably was more than fast enough for a pre-steam society.

  “You know, Bob, you may have been right,” Bridget said, interrupting my reverie.

  “About?”

  “When you said to have anger management issues. We saw several fights during the brief time we were in town, and no one seemed surprised. Quinlans are just naturally belligerent. Moreso even than humans.”

  “I don’t know about belligerent,” Will replied. “They seem… well, polite is too strong a word. Agreeable, maybe?”

  “Okay, how about short-tempered?”

  “Yeah, hair-trigger temper sounds about right.”

  “So, any luck on finding out anything new?” I asked.

  “I found a bookstore. I was perusing when I suddenly had to leave town.” Garfield glared at me.

  “Cool. What kind of titles?”

  “Mostly fiction. Some philosophy and soft sciences, how-to’s, stuff like that.” Garfield shifted his grip from a forepaw to a hindpaw, and put his hands behind his head. “It's a little jarring, because this is an actually in 18th century society. The people, at least some of them, are aware of higher tech. They just don't have access to it. But it's like no one wants to bring it up.”

  “Some kind of threat from management?”

  “That's all I can think of. But that implies that management is watching.”

  “Which brings up the question of how.”

  “Huh.”

  I took a moment to dunk my head and cool off. The Manny could handle far more temperature variation than an actual Quinlan, but we were wired up to experience reality in as Quinlan-like a manner as possible. The sun felt good, but so did a nice soaking.

  “I wish we had SUDDAR scanning capability built into the Mannies. We could just scan everything and look for hidden cameras.”

  “Or mobile cameras,” Garfield said. “Artificial birds and such.”

  “That seems like a stretch,” Bill said. “On the other hand, roamers…”

  “Hmm. Yeah. So, we have to avoid looking suspicious, while looking suspiciously at everything.”

  I looked around and made a gesture encompassing the group.

  “Also, no more English conversations out loud. Any discussions like we’re having right now should be held on intercom.”

  “Starting now,” Bridget added. “I don't think anyone will be suspicious of a group of Quinlans quietly floating downstream.”

  The water was calm and undisturbed, the pace slow. I had a mental image of Huck Finn and Tom Sawyer floating down the Mississippi. For all the potential issues, life as a Quinlan was probably idyllic. As a natural predator, Quinlans could feed themselves as they traveled. We didn’t know how deep the Heaven’s River ecosystem was, compared to the original Quinn biosphere, but it was a safe bet that it was self-sustaining. That meant at least some predator prey action. And with no social media or devices, there would be no notion of being constantly online. You could literally float down the river every day looking for the next town. Or even sleep midstream, if you preferred. It was like Eden, in many ways. A slower, more relaxed pace.

  I idly watched the shoreline as we floated. Details changed, but the broad strokes didn't. Occasional farms were visible, but agriculture didn't form anything like as large a part of the Quinlan lifestyle and diet as with humans. I spotted small homesteads, a slight curl of smoke giving them away as often as any visible structures. Use of fire would be an unfortunate side effect of a pre-industrial civilization, but presumably there was some kind of filtering for the air. We’d floated past a couple of splits and merges in the river system, plus the occasional feeder. I couldn't help being impressed. The amount of detail work that had been put into this place was truly amazing. A Quinlan could spend their whole life exploring, and still not know every bend and turn, never mind a billion miles worth of different towns and villages on four different rivers. As prisons went, if it was indeed a prison, it could be a lot worse.

  The sun moved in the sky, gaining on us in its own downstream journey. A 21-hour day meant we'd have slightly less time than we would expect to find a place to land and seek lodging. There was no inter-town communication system that we knew of, and anyway, once we left the Garrick gendarmes, probably wouldn't give a hoot.

  We hadn't come up on another town by nightfall, so we pulled ourselves out of the water and formed a small nest from the local underbrush. According to Bridget, the Heaven’s River ecology was complete enough to include large herbivores and their predators, which included a couple of animals that might be inclined to see Quinlans as a food group. Our Mannies were completely believable, right down to smelling like Quinlans, but that could be turned off. We left the Mannies on standby and returned to virt.

  “So, kiddies, what have we learned today?” I asked.

  “Quinlans are short tempered, and cops even more so,” Bill replied.

  “Useful information, but not particularly getting us closer to finding Bender,” Garfield added.

  “I did a search through the Skippies’ online databases for uses of the word ‘Scatter’ and all variations and declensions,” Will said. “Filtering out all the mundane usages, we have quite a few references. No good definitions, because everyone seems to know what everyone means when the word is used, but from context, it's not a good thing. And seems to happen to anywhere from one person up to large groups.”

  “Interesting. Not sure if it relates to our situation necessarily, but anything might
be useful at this point.” I looked around at my friends. “Intercom the rest of us if you think of something else. Otherwise, see you all in six hours.”

  20. Just in Case

  Marcus

  July 2334

  Poseidon

  Melleb blew out a loud breath and put the tablet down on his already crowded desk.

  “Interesting times, but are you sure you aren't being a little bit paranoid?”

  Melleb was the son of Kyle and Gina, two of my closest friends from the early days of Poseidon. He took his sheer size from his father, and his Polynesian complexion from his mother. I no longer had an urge to tear up when I saw him, but it had been a problem for a while. His parents a long since passed away and now Melleb was getting on in years, with hair more gray than black.

  “Ephemerals…”

  It was the dirty word of the Bobiverse, but I desperately missed my friends and I’d made very few new one since.

  “Probably,” I replied. “All I really have is what Howard told me and he hadn't been at the moot, so he’d got the lowdown from Will. At this remove I should consider myself lucky I've gotten names right.”

  Melleb chortled and picked up the tablet again. “So, these Starfleet wannabes might follow through with their threats, and if they do, it might affect us. So what you want from me?”

  “I don't have anything specific, Melleb, but if I were still in charge of equipment, I be doing software audits and changing passwords, and maybe increasing physical security. Maybe only to the extent of moving things without announcing it. As it is, well…” I motioned to him.

  “Yeah, it's my job, I get that part. Look Marcus, I'm not like a feudal lord. I can’t just arbitrarily issue orders to change autofactory schedules. These days, they are an integral part of the economy, and heavily regulated.”

  “And I get that, but you do have some flexibility in some areas. I just want to put the bug in your ear. Think about it, and if you can do anything in the normal course of your job that might have a secondary goal that’s useful to us, well, it might turn out to be valuable.”

  Melleb turned his head slightly and squinted at me. “You're very carefully not saying something. Is there a potential danger to the citizens of Poseidon?”

  “Not physical danger. I don't think,” I said shaking my head to emphasize the point. “Economically? Maybe. Look, there's not much they can do to us in virt, so if something goes down, it'll be in physical space, which means you’ll get at least some fallout.”

  “He stared at the ceiling for a few seconds and began nodding slowly. “I have a little more leeway were actual threats are concerned. I’ll still have to tread carefully, but I can at least get a few projects bumped up in priority.”

  “That's all I ask.”

  One down many to go. I wondered how the other Bobs were doing with their contacts.

  The common area outside Melleb's office door was dominated by floor-to-ceiling windows that gave a clear view through New Thark’s fiberex dome. I paused to take in the view, and a few staff members glanced up. It was interesting how society kept evolving. The work-anywhere telecommuting style that had developed in the days after the Mat War had gradually given way to a returning preference for an actual workplace. Seemed people liked being in physical contact with their coworkers, and felt alienated when they were constantly on their own. Of course, rush hour was no longer even a concept for most humans, so the economic and social cost of going to work was nearly nonexistent.

  I shook my head to clear the wool gathering, and turned my attention back to the view. A mat floated in the calm, impossibly blue ocean at middle distance with the city hovering just a one side. I could've looked up the name, but didn't bother. These days, mats were strictly industrial or agricultural locations, usually owned and controlled by specific cities. No one lived on the mats except the occasional self-exiled hermit. The technological defenses kept the ocean predators so completely at bay that a new ecosystem was evolving on the mats, based on the lack of predation. Howard's wife Bridget had visited us several times to do studies.

  I turned and headed for the transit station. Melleb's reassurances notwithstanding the Bobs still had a significant industrial presence in the Poseidon system. We kept it low-key and out of the official economic calculation engines, but it would still need the same review for possible vulnerability. I sent a message to Guppy, asking for a summary of the audit so far. I’d have to get personally involved soon, but for now, the sun felt good, and the grassy ring around the edge of New Thark called out from my butt to be planted thereupon.

  21. Getting Involved

  Bob

  July 2334

  Arcadia River System

  I sat up, water running off my fur and puddling around my butt. It was raining. I had a momentary surge of irritation, the kind of thing you get when you been caught outside without an umbrella. This was followed by irritation that the AMI hadn't alerted me to the issue. It had been raining for some time, judging from the level of wetness of… well, everything. But the irritation was swept away as I remembered my current form. There was no chill, no feeling of shivering dampness. The Quinlan for with its waterproofing kept me nice and toasty.

  I gazed up at the sky. The rain clouds resembled rain clouds everywhere – grey, ugly, and wet. The striations might've been a little weird because of the megastructure's rotation, but then again, maybe not - I wasn’t a weather expert, and my interest in cloud formations have always been limited to staying out from under the wet ones.

  I examined the horizon in several directions. I thought it might be lighter to the west, but generally speaking we were socked in in all directions, so large weather systems, check. I frowned. I could've done without this particular reproduction of a planetary environment.

  “Look at this,” Bridget said.

  I turned. I hadn’t realized she'd activated yet. She was pointing at some underbrush that had been crushed flat. “I think we were visited overnight. Something big. Maybe a laroche.”

  “Uh…” I searched my memory. A laroche was kinda a big wolf but with claws like a grizzly bear. It grasped its prey and held it while it tore off chunks. Not a fun date, for sure.

  “Why didn't our AMIs alert us?”

  “I don't think it displayed any interest, Bob. The track doesn't actually come into our nest. I think lack of odor and body heat threw it off. A night hunter isn't going to be depending on sight, so the fact that we only look like a meal probably wasn't enough.”

  I grimaced, glad that we had Bridget along to pay attention to this kind of thing. On Eden my introduction to the local ecosystem had been gradual, and mostly from the safety of orbit. Now I was in the middle of it, and I hadn't yet internalized the studies.

  Bill and Garfield sat up at that moment. Garfield looked at my face, and Bridget's face, and said “What I miss?”

  Bridget laughed. “Let’s see about breakfast.”

  “Fish on the hoof? No thanks. I’ll eat in town. Maybe a good Denver omelette with some hot sauce.”

  “Sure, we’ll get right on that.” Bridget prairie-dogged and scanned the river. “Do we want to just float today, or should we put some hustle on?”

  “As much as this feels like a vacation,” I replied. “It isn't. Let’s get ourselves to a town.”

  It took most of the day to find the next town, even with the group actively swimming downstream. With no witnesses to worry about, we were able to pile on the speed and ignore fatigue warnings, and in the water, there was no danger of overheating the Mannies. Bill spotted of the town first.

  “Coming up on the left, guys. Slow to flank speed.”

  “Uh…”

  “Don't get pedantic, Gar. Slow to whatever is normal for a Quinlan, hmmkay?”

  I smiled to myself. Bill and Garfield sniped at each other constantly, but it was never heated. Marvin and I have the same kind of interaction. I realized it a long time since I visited him. I didn't even know if he was still working his way thr
ough all the fictional environments we'd read about. Maybe it was time to get over myself and rejoin Bobiverse society. While there still was one.

  We swam up to the docks and climbed up the ramp in the acceptable manner - best not attract attention. The plaque at the head of the doc said Galentown and included some helpful arrows to useful locations. We noted an arrow that said ‘market’ and headed in that direction. We still haven't worked out any kind of concrete plan, since we didn't even have enough information to form one. The Skippies were still listening and with the spy drones, but they haven't come up with anything new. It wasn't surprising, when you look at the big picture. We still haven't come close to scanning the entire structure in detail, and even with the surprisingly large Quinlan population numbers, they were spread quite thin. Every single town couldn't possibly have a significant presence, and we still needed to figure out what that might be.

  “Let's try not to screw it up this time,” I said. “Let's…”

  “Excuse me?” Bill exclaimed. “Who was it that started a riot last time? Anyone? Anyone?”

  “Picky, picky. Seriously, maybe we can make some headway today. You guys wanna split up?”

  “I think we have to, Bob, we’ll cover more territory.”

  I nodded, gave a small wave Quinlan-style, and headed in a random direction. The point was to eavesdrop on conversations, and maybe try to start one and probe subtly for information. I had my concerns about that ‘subtly’ part - I was far more familiar with the Art of War than the Art of Conversation.