“You mean, how did I let them escape?”
“No, I mean they have a crafty nature we could use.”
Memor was sure Your great turbine of a mind was an ironic salute, but best not to draw Unajiuhanah’s attention to it. “If we can Adopt them, perhaps—”
“I think not. Too unstable, as species go. They can be better used to carry out our larger cruising agenda.”
This was new, beyond the time-honored precepts of the Astronomers, and indeed, of all other castes. Larger cruising agenda? Memor should be shocked, she knew, but had no time for that now. “I acted to constrain their actions, under Asenath’s direction.”
Bemor waved this aside with a cluster-flourish in green and sea blue. “Those orders now vanish. There is new wisdom, falling upon us from the stars.”
Memor contented herself with a fan-feather gesture and let Asenath carry the conversation. She was still staggering mentally from the sudden meeting of her near-self: the path not taken, if somehow she could have stayed a male. Bemor had a quick, brusque way of saying things that swept away the niceties of diplomacy and polite evasion. Quite male. Best to change direction.
“I was discussing how I was forced to carry forward the reconnaissance of the Sil, who had sheltered the primates. They proved better at bringing down our skyfish with their simple chemical cannon, admittedly. I—”
“Fled, as you should.” Bemore spoke kindly, shuffling his large feet in a faint echo-dance of welcome—to soften what was to come? “The primate ingenuity combined nonlinearly with that of the Sil, who were always an irksome and crafty kind.”
“Destabilizing,” Asenath added, “still.” But then she backed away, as if to let the twins negotiate their own newfound equilibrium. So did Unajiuhanah, with a muted bow. Memor saw this meeting was arranged to divulge information, in a way slanted to make best use of the perpetual jockeying for position in the Astronomer hierarchy—and of course, in the status of the Vaulted, who tended the most ancient records, integrating them with the emerging new.
So, take the momentum away from them. “What new wisdom intrudes?” Memor chose to use an ancient saying, said to come from the Builders, though across the sum of Bowl eras, no one truly knew.
“We fathom more of the gravitational waves, and their true origin,” Bemor said.
“As I recall, they come from Glory, or from some source well beyond,” Memor said, for this had been the received wisdom from before she was born.
“Not so,” Bemor said. “Not beyond. The source is in the immediate Glorian system.”
“There is no plausibility, as some argued, that the gravitational waves came from a chance coincidence in the sky? From some cosmological source far away?”
“Not even close. I see your early education has been a waste of time.”
Memor knew this gibe, a lancing shot at her earlier ranking in the rigorous status queue of the elect, pre-Astronomer examinations. Quadlineal calculus had always eluded her somehow, and Bemor had never let her forget it.… She now had to get back some position in this conversation playing out before their elders.
“But surely there cannot be heavy masses moving near a planetary system. That would render unstable the orbits of any planet nearby—”
“No, that must now be considered untrue. Facts say otherwise. We have heard from our Web trading partners.”
“What can they—?”
Bemor beamed, yet kept to his clear, factual mask. “You may recall some long Annuals ago we asked them to erect gravitational wave antennas to concentrate upon Glory. They have so done, and with felicitous trading strategies, we have secured their data.”
Very well, play for time. And think. “I did not know that. Expensive, I suppose?”
Bemor was enough similar that Memor could easily read the quick, darting expressions in feather-flutter—quill rattle, spines flexing so hues slid from steel blue to indigo sheen—that bespoke anticipation of an opportunity to make a veiled boast.
Asenath raised some pink neck-rustle as a deft, ironic signal. Memor realized this was what some intimates of the court termed Status Opera, the only true game when the social structure must remain static, for the sake of Bowl stability. Maneuver for position, yes, but carefully, deftly, for the system must always endure, above all.
Bemor was in his element, and so took his fulsome time. “I engaged three other Galactic Web partners, one of whom knew nothing of gravitational waves whatever, and how to detect them. As expected, those who did know had technologies smaller and less sensitive than ours.”
Bemor delivered this in a flat, factual way, almost offhand, and with a subtle wing-shrug—a good precursor to a revelation. Memor appreciated the method, as it was hers as well. They were twins, after all.… Though Bemor seemed to do it with more verve, as if knowing their audience would approve verve.
“I had to trade valuable arts and science to induce their cooperation,” Bemor said. “We barter and gain, delayed for many Annuals, of course. I employed a rich trading language to describe our wants, and used the artificial, intelligent agents we had installed in those societies long in the past.”
Memor was at a disadvantage here, since she had learned little of such distant diplomacies. She did know that the Ancients had seen value in establishing agents, transferred as sealed minds in code, to distant worlds. Interstellar commerce over huge distances made sense only if exchange of knowledge—arts, science, engineering, the equivalent of patents—could be traded for some return value. Such a market occurred, mediated among artificial intelligences run solely inside mutually agreed upon containment: the Mind Province established among alien societies. Elaborate protocols ensured that no artificial intelligences could run outside the Mind Province. They were safe there, too, to run their code without corruption. This protected Bowl secrets from the alien locals, and in turn, the local infosphere from the agent.
“I chose truly distant worlds for two reasons,” Bemor said. “They had to be displaced from our trajectory, so that we could gain triangulation on Glory. I then—”
“You transmitted double-encrypted?” Asenath demanded. “You are sure the gravitational wave signatures were unwrapped in secrecy by our sequestered agent?”
“I received the coded instant return notice, yes. I got it back many Annuals before the official trading partner even acknowledged receipt.”
“Meaning? That they pondered it long before even notifying us?”
Bemor was not disturbed by these thrusts; he seemed bemused. “Caution is admirable, do you not think so? The first reply came from an insectoid civilization, apparently hungry for further astronomical knowledge. They trade such wares eagerly and built the needed detectors with speed.”
“How distant are they?”
“Over a twelve-squared light-Annuals, at a high angle with respect to our trajectory. The second reply came from a similar distance and a different, large angle. We paid them with techno-lore, methods our prior history implied would interest them. These were duly lodged in the host species’ banking system. Credits not spent locally may be transmitted, securely encrypted, between solar systems, of course. Then came a third reply, also willing.”
Bemor made to condense around them a shimmering shell display of the realm around the Bowl. The three agreeable trader stars shone bright yellow, all at considerable angles away. One lay very nearly parallel to the Bowl, along the trajectory axis they followed, ending in Glory. The simulation showed message flags denoting ongoing info-commerce transporting among all three, as well as their links to the Bowl.
“So they set to work, these trade partners—”
“Ran their gravitational wave detectors. Learned our skills. And nailed firm the site of the waves. It is in our destination system—Glory.”
Memor said slowly, “Agents do amass more and more knowledge about their host species. They report back. Do these worlds have any opinion about the cause of the waves?”
Bemor looked pleased, with a body-flutter
of magenta flush. To Memor this was a giveaway: a salute, really, as if to say, I recognize!—you can leap ahead, see what’s coming. “They could not resist diagnosing the long wavelengths and their resonances. And … there are messages within.”
Asenath gasped and could not resist: “Saying what?”
Bemor’s elation collapsed, his neck wattles compressing to thin red layers. “We do not know. These, too, are apparently deeply encrypted.”
Memor felt a tremor of awe, that emotion mingling fear and wonder, so seldom sensed in a calm, regular life. It swept her like a tidal slap. “Sending coded messages, by oscillating huge masses to make waves of gravity itself?—in organized ways? That is…” She was about to say, impossible—but caution ruled. “… improbable, in the extreme.”
Asenath added wryly, “We are approaching something strange and perhaps quite dangerous. Glory seems innocuous, but they send gravitational messages—somehow. The escaped primates are headed that way, too—or were, until they decided to land upon the Bowl of Heaven. They seem—” She preened with an oddly insulting fan-gesture, ominous and foreboding. “—ambitious.”
Memor decided not to rise to the bait. “They are able and may be of use.”
Unajiuhanah came in then with a gentle, sad wing-shrug. “I enjoy your sparring, but there are larger issues, you twins.” A nod to Asenath, to proceed. “Our larger cruising agenda, recall?”
Asenath said, “The Glorians, as we term them, have sent an electromagnetic signal.”
“Directed at us?” Unajiuhanah prompted.
“I … suppose.” Asenath looked puzzled.
“There is no distinction in spatial coordinates between the Bowl and the primate star rammer,” Bemor said. “That may explain the content.”
“Which is?” Memor asked, impatient with this parrying.
“Cartoons,” Unajiuhanah said. “Such as primitive cultures employ. They might as well be painted on cave walls, but for the fact that they move. Showing violence, often physically improbable.”
Silence. “I would truly like to know some way to discover if these abject signals are insulting, from a culture that has devolved so deeply that it thinks these are useful, or even amusing.”
Bemor said, “Beings who can hurl huge masses to make messages would not be so. All our knowledge of cultural evolution, gathered in your archives, Unajiuhanah, says so.”
“I would so believe,” Unajiuhanah said simply.
“Or else…” Memor hesitated. “We are mistaken in our assumptions.”
“Whatever can you mean?” Asenath said with a nasty rebuke-rustle.
“Suppose they are not sent to intersect us, or the star rammer.” Memor envisioned the line of sight—Glory, the Bowl, and upon it the alien ship, orbiting above … and beyond, at an unknown distance, farther from Glory … “The Glorians may be transmitting to hail and instruct, and so to warn … the primate home world.”
“But then—” Bemor hesitated. Fevered rattles came from his wing, a note of harried distress at what he glimpsed.
Imagination helps, Memor realized. The insight had come from her Undermind, direct and unsaid until now.… She felt a rumble of discontent from deep within her—of knowledge pent up, unexpressed, and so vagrant and wild. Fear surged in her, but she suppressed it, focused on the moment. She had been in a duel with Bemor here, and now there was a sally she could use, at last, an advantage coming from within, uninspected, yet sure, she felt, sure.
Memor said, not without some pleasure, “They are afraid not of us, but of the humans.”
PART IV
SENDING SUPERMAN
Nothing fails like success, because we do not learn anything from it. The only thing we ever learn from is failure. Success only confirms our superstitions.
—KENNETH BOULDING
FIFTEEN
It was possible to exercise at Earth gravity on SunSeeker, just by jogging six-minute kilometers in the direction the deck was rotating. Beth sweated but didn’t make that speed, running on the spongy turf and sucking down the chilly ship air that always seemed to taste faintly of oil. An hour into her slogging, choppy run she felt better in the odd way that returning to good gravs did—a sensation of solidity, of the body’s chugging machinery settling back into its groove. If she ran fast in the same direction the deck rotated, she increased her speed of rotation, and so increased her weight. She reversed for her hard-pounding finish. Going fast against the rotation, she nearly floated like some sticky angel on air, her bare feet barely skimming the soft fabric. She sped around the outer habitat circumference in her shorts and sopping T-shirt and lurched into the showers, gasping and happy.
The shower next to her went on. She leaned around the corner and saw a finger snake wriggling in the spray.
“Phoshtha?”
“Hello, Beth. This device is delight.” The thin, sliding voice somehow fit the dancing eyes.
“Yes, but do not use it too often. We can’t recycle the water very fast.” Beth stepped back in and turned the shower on, a giggle tickling her lips. The finger snakes had no sense of privacy.
She got herself in order, feeling much better. Exercise calmed, made her world brighter. Ready for Redwing. Maybe.
Ten minutes later she rapped on his door. He was wedged behind his desk, leaving her more room in the narrow captain’s cabin. His wall display showed the slowly passing infinities of Bowl landscapes—at the moment, low mountain ranges in a low-grav region, with cottony cloud masses stacked above them. She had seen such clouds from below while swinging through the spindly trees on vines of thin, flexing strength. The clouds were nearly as tall as Earth’s entire atmosphere, and from the ground looked like an ivory cliff that tapered away to a speck.
“Hope you’re feeling better,” Redwing, rising—unusual for him, indeed—to shake her hand. “Admirable performance down there. I’d like to get some background from you, away from the others.”
“I think if we met as a group and—”
“A unit commander always reports first.” Redwing’s crusty face wrinkled into a grin, but she knew beneath the wry, leathery look he was absolutely serious.
“Oh.” Back in the navy we are, yessiree.
“Before we get to specifics, bring you up to speed, I want to know what it was like down there.”
She was prepared for this, because the shipboard crew all asked the same thing. They had spent months eating canned food and breathing desiccated air, gazing down at a whole vast thing gliding by, like having a terrific top view and no way out of your cramped apartment.
Still, she struggled to put the experience into words. Wonder, terror, hunger, spurts of fear, aching weariness fringed with a lacing anxiety that every time you closed your sticky eyes and fell into sweaty sleep, you could wake to find yourself about to die … “A tailored wilderness. For days you forget you’re not on an alien planet but on the skin of a furiously rotating machine. The star is always there and after a while, even after you’ve learned to sleep in shade and heat, you hate it. Darkness—I can’t tell you what a luxury it is to turn out the light. There’s weather, for sure, lightning that seems to be sheeting yellow all around you, and the jet—like a golden snake twisting across the sky. Always on the run, looking to see if something’s coming up on your tail to eat you, going for days without a bath, running without water even, feeling your steps get lighter because you’ve lost weight without even noticing it, hunger being sometimes the only thing you can think about—”
She made herself stop. With the crew she had been able to hold back but here, with Redwing, she couldn’t … and realized that something in the smile, his head nodding as she spoke on and on, the eyes dancing with interest, had made it happen. How did he do that? Maybe it was something you had to learn, from commanding ships all over the solar system.
“I know some of that,” he said, face now open and eyes far away. “You don’t get to pick the nightmare that wakes you up at four A.M.—it comes looking for you, again and again
.”
This was a startling moment, taking her unaware. He was a man in a hard place to be, and she read in his gentle downturned smile a rueful regret that he could not possibly, as captain, go down there.
She made herself sit up straight, regain some composure. Keep your smile in the upright and locked position. “My mom used to say, a truly happy person is one who can enjoy the scenery on a detour.”
He laughed, a hearty, full-throated roar in the metal echo chamber of his cabin. “Good one! Damn true, this whole thing is a detour.”
This last sentence came out of nowhere, with baritone notes of regret. He sat back and took a moment to see the mountain range far below slide away on the wall, a huge glimmering eggshell blue sea lapping against the mountains’ slate gray slopes along a narrow beach.
He knows how to pace this conversation, let it breathe.
He swiveled back to gaze at her with deep blue, penetrating eyes. “Tell me about … the food.”
She held her breath for a long moment, comparing the bland, warm forgettable dishes she had wolfed down in ship’s mess, realizing that while she ate eagerly it left no trace of memory. “I … there was something we could shoot out of the trees, when we were desperate. A fat primate thing, in the low-grav region. Stringy meat, yellow fat, looked like a big roasted monkey, but when you’d gone two days without anything but a kind of thick-leaved grass, it was … heavenly.”
“Taste human?”
“How the hell would I know?” Then she saw he was grinning, and laughed. “Not that I would’ve cared.”
“You could digest it?”
“Surprisingly, yes. Of course, we had all the biotech compatibility injections and a handful of pills. I had all of us start taking them as soon as the aliens—they call themselves the Folk, just like primitives on Earth—gave us food. We held out on our own rations for a while, then I had us cook the live game they gave us—”
“Live?”
“Yes. They were smart enough to let us prepare it our way, which they watched closely. We dispatched them with our lasers. Simmered some, with some herbs tossed in, it stayed down pretty well. But once, when we were hiding near somebody—something—searching for us in the tall tree region, we ate fish, raw. In fact, I had to be still and not give us away, afraid to get out my knife or laser, so I ate it while it was … alive.”
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