Blade of p’Na

by L. Neil Smith

  Lornis was a member of another hominid species, who were what H. denisova eventually turned into in a parallel reality where H. sapiens had gotten themselves caught in a bottleneck of natural selection somewhere and hadn’t happened along to upset their rivals’ evolutionary applecart. They’d had another thousand centuries to develop. What they’d brought forth, in the end, were creatures like Lornis.

  All the trouble was well worth it, in this canine’s opinion. Their brains were organized differently, and they looked at the world from a different angle, which could be very useful and refreshing. (At this point, Eichra Oren was in no position to appreciate that, and probably thinking that he’d run aground on the rocks in her head.) But you could tell the difference easiest when they were in motion. Their knees and elbows were a tiny bit higher—no more than five inches—but it affected their gait and what they could do with their arms. It wasn’t ugly, it was just subtly different, but the difference was there.

  To me, the most intriguing aspect of Lornis’ case had been that H. gracilus males were normally extremely gentle, almost passive sperm donors, most of the time. The theory was the women did the hunting and the men did the gathering and watched the kids after they were through nursing. So this gink that she’d been married to had to have been really crazy. The trouble was, normal H. gracilus females weren’t even a little passive, and Lornis had apparently seen his killing as foreplay.

  “Technicalities, technicalities,” she told my boss, fluttering her long, beautiful eyelashes at him, a tactic mostly lost in what had suddenly become a torrential downpour. I could feel it soak through to my skin. “We’re both hominids, aren’t we, Eichra Oren? And we’re both Genus Homo. Please don’t tell me that you’re one of those speciesist bigots.”

  Hominid, hominidae, hominin, hominini, whatever. My boss, in fact, could be highly enthusiastic about the females of several humanoid species—on rare occasions when he had time for them. The stories I could tell. But he protested, “We’re not even physically compatible, Lornis.”

  I didn’t even want to guess at what that meant. The rain was now falling in sheets, and lightning suddenly struck a palm tree down the highway, blasting hot, steaming fragments of bark in every possible direction, startling us all, and very nearly deafening us, as well. On the other forelimb, Lornis’ fragile little boy’s tunic was soaked now, perfectly transparent, and she was reacting visibly to the sudden chill.

  Perhaps there is a god.

  “Nobody’s perfect, Eichra Oren.” This time her pout was the genuine article—but then she brightened: “We can work something out.”

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Across the Forge

  I HAD NO IDEA AT ALL WHAT THE PHYSICAL INCOMPATIBILITY might be between Lornis and my boss. I suppose I could have looked it up, but I didn’t really want to know. The lady was a peach, as far as I was concerned. She spoke to me with the respect due to one sapient being from another. She smelled good—different from human women; maybe that was her problem with Eichra Oren: she gave off all the wrong pheromones—she had a nice voice, and she was extremely easy on the eyes.

  Lornis’ species matured a good deal faster than Eichra Oren’s, and it used to be the case that they aged and died a good deal faster, as well. But given all of the benefits of nautiloid medical science, that was no longer anything to worry about. At the age of thirteen she had found herself married off to an influential member of her own species by her father, a very rich and powerful—if somewhat shady—businessman. She was nineteen now, and would have long since been considered an old maid by her people had she never married. However as a young widow, she had considerably more status among them than a spinster.

  She just had this one thing, this one little crazy thing.

  For Eichra Oren.

  I’m still not entirely certain how the boss finally managed to disentangle himself from the highly decorative if overly-amorous widow Adubudu. He does know a lot of martial arts. The storm was raging, the wind was howling, and the rain was blasting in everybody’s eyes and ears. Overhead, the leaden sky flared periodically with lightning, and, with apparently no interval between, peals of thunder seemed to shake the very ground beneath our feet. Lornis gave a little shriek when it happened, and Eichra Oren had to disentangle himself all over again.

  Down the road, despite the torrent, that palm tree was still burning.

  Me, I was too busy running to the veek, telling it to start its antigravs and be ready with the canopy. For once it didn’t argue with me. (We have a long uncordial history between us—it thinks it’s too good to be told what to do by a mere symbiote.) It arose from the pavement and stood there at the curb, not quite quivering to be off. I’d say I hate uppity machinery but I might just be criticizing myself.

  By that time, the boss was beside me, the veek was hot, and we were a quarter of a mile down the road from Eneri Relda’s house—and Lornis’ passionate embraces—before the canopy had closed again. The burning palm tree whipped by us. Steam was still rising from the sun-warmed cobblestones in their polymerized matrix before us. The veek, sensing that its occupants and interior were soaked, began drying us off—mostly, the veek managed to spread the smell of wet dog around efficiently—and offering us hot drinks, along with a weather report (it was raining), the latest local jai alai scores, and recent game highlights.

  We passed a party of large, flightless birds, soaked to the skin, complaining bitterly to their teacher—a large, sapient feline with a leaky implant—surviving their annual field trip by imagining them, one by one, roasting in a pan for twelve hours at 325. I’ve found it’s usually better not to know what’s going on in somebody’s mind.

  The game itself had first been brought from the Lost Continent some fifteen millennia ago, and had many fans, followers, and—most ferocious of all—wagerers, among the Appropriated Persons, both human and otherwise. The only thing even comparable is what cetaceans call polo. It’s an extremely dangerous pastime, in which players are commonly injured and sometimes killed. Although all the game’s technical terms and commentary are couched in the Original Language, it’s fair to say that Lornis’ people, with their long limbs and impressive strength, were the best at it. Still, there were human players and a couple of insect species capable of giving them a challenge.

  Eichra Oren played occasionally and had the scars to prove it. I’d play, too, but they won’t let me. Anyway, no xistera will fit my paw.

  “Where to, Boss?” We both realized at the same moment that I was driving. I had absolutely no idea where we were going, but we were making great time. By now, my fur was starting to dry; it was terrible. As bad as I smelled to other people, I smelled worse to myself. I had begun to resemble an extremely large dandelion, gone to seed and ready to blow away. I lapped at my hot tomato soup, flavored with garlic and just a drop of fermented fish sauce, and Eichra Oren finally got his cup of coffee.

  He was examining his sword, withdrawing it inch by inch from its unembellished leather scabbard. It can’t rust, and I don’t know of anything that will ding its single-molecule-thick edge, but he tries to keep it clean and dry in any case, just as if it were merely tool steel. In my time, he’d needlessly worn out at least a dozen stone sharpeners.

  At last Eichra Oren made considering noises he probably wasn’t aware of: “Sam, what do you say we try the Otherworld Museum, now, and Lyn Chow?”

  Visit with another pretty girl? Why did he even have to ask?

  Leaving the coastal highway a mile or two east of Eneri Relda’s seaside villa, and heading north, inland, the veek climbed into the hills along a sinuous road, paved in plastic, until we came to a remarkable construction perched on the precipice of an intimidating bluff.

  It was a vast, transparent spheroid, at least two hundred feet in diameter, composed of six-foot flat hexagons, invisibly fused together at the edges. As we approached around a bend, the structure glittered at us, the afternoon sunlight reflecting from different facets with each yard we moved aroun
d and toward it. Inside, we could make out the ghostly skeletal structure of what could have been a multistory office complex.

  The parking area was practically empty, probably only employees left, so we could leave our veek practically at the door, which was located in a sort of transparent collar that the great transparent sphere sat on. The door wouldn’t open for us, but insisted, by means of a signboard with moving letters, that no one without a cortical implant would have been able to see, that the place was closed for the day.

  “Eichra Oren to see Lyn Chow,” the boss broadcasted via implant.

  “How nice to hear from you!” came a lilting voice. “Eichra Oren, Sam, do please come in!” We heard a dull thump! and the doors slid open.

  We stepped into the cylindrical “lobby”.

  “Eichra Oren!” came the voice from somewhere above us. I looked up. The lady rode a rotating circular staircase down to greet us. I knew the thing continued into a basement where it folded up internally somehow and fed itself back up to the top. A mechanical engineer I am not. “And Sam! How very fortunate your timing. I only just arrived, back from the Asteroid Belt where I had a firsthand look—my first—at the facilities that provide us with a peek at an infinity of other worlds.”

  She had reached our level and stepped off the contraption, which stopped the instant her tiny, delicate feet left it. As I’ve said already, Lyn Chow is an exceptionally beautiful female (Eichra Oren’s life seems to be filled with them) of decidedly non-Antarctican origin. The history of her people remains a great mystery in the Elders’ world.

  “Won’t you please come up to my office? I’ll make some tea.” I don’t know how the twirling staircase knew—a signal from her implant, maybe—but when she stepped back on, it started turning the other way, carrying her, and both of us behind her, up into the museum.

  “How was the trip itself?” Eichra Oren asked as soon as we sat, me on a little caterpillar rug, him on a sofa made of some kind of brown leather and polished metal tubing. Lyn Chow pulled a matching chair around from beside her desk to face us, ordering some machinery somewhere to make us tea. The boss has always been curious about space travel.

  This entire building was transparent. I doubt whether there was a single opaque wall in the place, although I hadn’t looked for the bathrooms. The ceiling of Lyn Chow’s office gave her a great view of the sky. Outside, across an aisle, there was a display of sea scorpionoids locked in combat with whatbappeared to be a gigantic shrimp. At least the museum floors weren’t all transparent, which would have embarrassed Eichra Oren in his tunic, had there been anyone else in the building. Lyn Chow was wearing trousers. I just didn’t give a damn.

  “Abominable, basically,” she grimaced. “As you know, there are only two spaceports on this planet, owing to the Elders’ distaste for interplanetary activity. Only that seems to be changing now, in some way. The spaceport I used, Turtle Station, is built on platforms bridging a series of islands at the western edge of the more southern of the two western continents. It’s in a virtual explosion of fresh construction, being carried out by humanoid workers under nautiloid supervision.”

  So, a long flight from here to Turtle Station, and then another, considerably longer one to the largest hunk of rock in the Asteroids. The Elders didn’t know anything about building spaceships, but they’d Appropriated someone—likely with eight legs and eight eyes—who did.

  “The ship—Strand of Silk—was extremely crowded, mostly with more construction materials.” I knew that ship, having watched videos about her. She was enormous. Crowding her would have been difficult.

  “So you’ve answered the first question I’d planned to ask you already. There’s unusual activity going on with respect to the Asteroids.”

  She pretended to pout. Why do women all do that around Eichra Oren? “So this isn’t a social visit, after all. What a pity. I was planning to take a couple of days off, to recover from my arduous journey. The sea was unusually choppy—does that mean anything?—when we came in and it was an exceptionally rough ride back to Turtle Station.”

  “What did you see while you were out in the Belt?”

  “You mean aside from cramped quarters shared with a mammalian but nonhuman organism in a big underground metal building without windows? You mean meals consisting of nutrient cubes you pick up and eat that taste like sawdust, washed down with liquid that looks and tastes like dishwater?

  “I saw a gigantic room with descending levels, like a theater. I saw perhaps a thousand glowing monitors on those levels, watched intently by beings of every known air-breathing species. Why they couldn’t use their implants, I never found out. From time to time for some reason, whatever one of them was watching would get thrown up on a big screen stretching from the lowest level, up to the ceiling high overhead.”

  She caught her breath. “What I saw on some of those monitors, and up on that screen, almost defies description. Sapient species that I know well, living in their natural environment. That was amazing enough: did you know that one feline species has developed space elevators?

  “But then there were sapients I never heard of—or even dreamed of—something that looks like a millipede six feet long. They’ve dammed the straits at the entrance of the Inland Sea and drained it, to provide vast tracts of agricultural land, where for some reason they raise artichokes. And there are man-sized giant flatworms that live under tremendous pressure in the dark, in a great three-mile deep at the bottom of an undrained Inland Sea. I saw sapient elephantoids who use enormous vehicles and have constructed great cities for themselves.”

  Lyn Chow had grown quite flushed in the excitement of telling us all about her great adventure in space. It was a very pretty thing to see.

  “PreCambrian?” Eichra Oren asked.

  “What? Oh, the flatworms. Yes, that’s what they looked like to me.” As far as I know—as far as anybody else knows, for that matter—there had never been a species of sapients descended directly from creatures of the soft-body age. It would cause a sensation in some circles.

  We left not too long after that, reluctantly on my part, promising to come back to hear more about Lyn Chow’s journey. Her story seemed to have piqued some interest with Eichra Oren, but it was slipping into the afternoon, and there was still something stupid he wanted to do.

  Take another step across the Forge of Adversity?

  Why the Hammer not?

  CHAPTER NINE

  The Center of the Web

  TAKE ANOTHER STEP ACROSS THE FORGE OF ADVERSITY? I’d thought to myself.

  Why the Hammer not?

  But what I thought in the next moment was, we had no client paying us to ferret out any “spider at the center of the web”. The Alteen Zirnaath, on the other seven legs, were nothing short of loaded. So when were we planning to start looking for poor Shaalara’s missing fiancé?

  Speaking of spiders, that is.

  As we climbed back into the veek, I voiced my concerns to Eichra Oren, attempting to remind him that a debt assessor (not to mention his loyal canine companion) does not live by p’Na alone. Truth is, I had discovered long ago that principles themselves have surprisingly little nutritional value. That’s one reason they’re so damned hard to maintain.

  He gave me a Number Four standard-issue sigh. “Very well, then, Sam. Let’s sketch out a tentative line of inquiry. You realize, of course, what the odds are saying to us—that our missing subject, this poor Meerltchirt fellow, is simply hiding out among his more sympathetic relatives. A majority of the Fronzeln Zirnaath almost certainly perceive their Alteen Zirnaath cousins as vile cannibalistic barbarians.”

  Vile cannibalistic barbarians. I’d have to remember that. I liked it.

  I said, “They could be the very epitome of suave urbanity, Boss. They could support the symphony, the ballet, the demolition derby, and the Nautiloid Scouts. (There are Nautiloid Scouts, aren’t there? There ought to be.) And still be cannibals,” I was thinking about headlines I’d seen from other bits of a
lternity. “The significant word in any case is ‘cannibal’. People who say ‘dog-eat-dog’ oughta visit with spiders.”

  He laughed. “Consider your point taken, Sam. What we need now is information. Go ahead and make appointments to interview as many of the Fronzeln Zirnaath as you can, preferably in person, and anybody else they may point to.” He popped the veek into manual, put his head down, and floored it. “If somebody’s concealing our reluctant groom, that somebody—or somebody else—is bound to slip up, sooner or later.”

  That was a lot of somebodies. Nevertheless, time passed quickly for me as we raced back up the coastal highway under ugly skies. Some of the spider-folk disconnected the instant I told them who I was and what I was calling about. I figured them as the most likely culprits and made notes. Later on others—warned no doubt by the first group about who was calling—never even bothered to answer in the first place.

  Some Fronzeln appeared more than happy to speak with me, if only for the opportunity to misdirect us; they wanted to talk, as much as possible, and getting rid of them was often more than difficult. The one thing that kept me going was the prospect of a hot, steaming bowl of Renner’s bolhabaissa at the end of a long, cold, wet, unfriendly day.

  Spiders are a strange and interesting lot. I rather like them as a people and count quite a few among their number as my friends. It was spiders who designed and fabricated the devices on my cerebral cortex that make me…me. They’re tough, self-sufficient, productive, and smart. I don’t think I’ve ever heard one complain. They make wonderful engineers and technicians—and truly spectacular architects and artists. The only thing I don’t care for about them is the way they eat.