Shipstar

by Benford, Gregory

  “That is why we need several pathways. The connection may be too much for them, and we will need replacements.”

  Memor said softly, feeling a tremor from her Undermind, “What crisis?”

  “It goes badly in the jet.”

  PART XII

  THE WORD OF CAMBRONNE

  It was at Waterloo that General Cambronne, when called on to surrender, was supposed to have said, “The Old Guard dies but never surrenders!” What Cambronne actually said was, “Merde!” which the French, when they do not wish to pronounce it, still refer to as, “the word of Cambronne.” It corresponds to our four-letter word for manure. All the difference between the noble and the earthy accounts of war is contained in the variance between these two quotations.

  —ERNEST HEMINGWAY, MEN AT WAR

  THIRTY-SIX

  The first sight of the Folk commanding the big skyfish was daunting. Cliff had seen these Folk aliens when his team came through the lock, in what seemed a very long time ago. Later he had heard fragments about the Folk from the scattered SunSeeker transmissions.

  But now these before him seemed different—larger, with big heads on a leathery stalk neck. Their feathers made the body shape hard to make out. The Folk back at the air lock had feathers, but not nearly so large, colorful, and vibrant. As Cliff’s team and Quert’s Sil entered, the three big Folk rattled their displays, forking out neck arrays that flashed quick variations in magenta, rose, and ivory. Their lower bodies flourished downy wreaths of brown and contrasting violet.

  “They’re … giant peacocks,” Irma whispered.

  Cliff nodded. Back Earthside, peacocks used their outrageously large feathers to woo females. But these rustling, constantly shifting feather-shows had far more signaling capacity. Beneath the layers, he could glimpse ropy pelvic muscles. Loose-jointed shoulders gave intricate control to the feathers. “More like, those flaunt unspoken messages, I’d guess.”

  Quert gestured and said, “Quill feather gives mood. Tail fan on neck cups sound to ears. Fan-signals are many. Rattle and flap for more signal. Color choice gives messages, too.”

  Aybe said, “Structural coloration, I’d say. Microfibers, fine enough to interfere with the incoming light, reflect back the color the creature wants.”

  Cliff watched the beautiful iridescent blue green or green-colored plumage shimmer and change with viewing angle. “Reflections from fibers, could be.”

  They all stood bunched together, humans and Sil, as the Folk came slowly into the big room, passing nearby with a gliding walk before settling on a place. The big things loomed over them and rattled out a long, ordered set of clattering sounds. “What’s that sound say?” Terry whispered.

  “Greet to visitor. But visitors inferior and should say so.”

  “Say so?” Irma whispered. “How?”

  Quert gave the other Sil quick sliding words, a question. They all responded with a few other short, soft words. Quert’s face took on a wrinkled, wry cast. “Sil not say, you not either.”

  “Good,” Aybe said, and the others nodded. No tribute, no submission.

  Cliff regarded the Folk’s unmistakable piercing eyes, big though now slitted and slanted beneath heavy, crusted eyelids. Their pupils were big and black, set in bright yellow irises. There was something going on behind those eyes. Cliff had an impression of a brooding intelligence measuring the small band of humans and Sil. The tall, feathered Folk held the gaze of humans and Sil as they settled back on their huge legs and tails and gestured, murmuring to each other while still peering down at the humans. Cliff felt a prickly, primitive sensation, an awareness of a special danger. His nostrils flared and he automatically spread his stance, fists on his hips, facing the three aliens fore square.

  The three Folk settled into the high room bounded by pink, fleshy walls. Attendants flanked the three, and others scurried off to unknown tasks. There were small forms with six legs and plumed heads, carrying burdens and arranging the flesh-pink walls with quick energy. Constant motion surrounded the Folk, who went slowly, almost gliding. It was like watching an eerie parade with three big, frightening floats.

  “Irma! Cliff!” Suddenly Tananareve Bailey appeared from behind one of the Folk. She ran toward them.

  Meeting any friend in this bizarre place was wonderful. They all embraced Tananareve as she rushed into their arms. To Cliff, she was as lean and steely as a piece of gym equipment; you saw the skull beneath the skin. Irma said, laughing, “At last! Some woman company.” And they all laughed long and hard. Giddy jokes, ample smiles.

  A long loud sentence from the largest of the Folk broke them out of their happy chatter. They looked up into big yellow eyes.

  “They said they needed you,” Tananareve translated, “but I never know if they’re telling me true.”

  “This skyfish just swallowed our tadfish,” Irma said. “I thought we were goners.”

  “Better than a fight,” Terry said. “But … we’re captured.”

  The enormity of this last hurried and harried hour came to Cliff. He had kept his team free for so long now, barely escaping in one scrape after another … only to fail so quickly, swallowed, a slap in the face with cold water. He opened his mouth but could think of nothing to say. The others were still happy just to have Tananareve, but the implications were stunning.

  “Maybe they want to negotiate,” Cliff said, not really believing it.

  Tananareve said, “They got orders from someone to grab you, pronto. They’ve been tracking you ever since you saw something called the Ice Minds. It took this long to catch up with you. They’re big and can’t crawl through the Bowl understructure. They kept complaining about having to take the other transports that can handle their size.”

  “What’s up?” Aybe asked.

  “They’re under pressure. I don’t know why.” Tananareve stood near the Folk and introduced Asenath, Memor, and Bemor. It took a while to explain that Memor and Bemor had nearly the same genetics, were something like fraternal twins of different sexes, but that Bemor was somehow enhanced and held a higher-status position. “He can speak to the Ice Minds. Whereas Asenath”—a nod to the tall, densely feathered creature, sharp-eyed and rustling with impatience—“is a Wisdom Chief.” A shrug. “As near as I can tell, that’s kind of like an operations officer.”

  There followed some back and forth translating as Memor insisted on a full introduction using her complete title, Attendant Astute Astronomer. Bemor then managed to get his “Contriver and Intimate Emissary to the Ice Minds” into the discussion. Tananareve whispered, “Slip those titles into your remarks now and then; they like that.”

  Cliff watched the huge aliens as the light of the jet and star, at these higher altitudes, poured down on the fleshy floor like glistening yellow-white oil. Asenath thundered, “We have you indeed, at last. The first issue is our need of you, to prepare a message for those whom you term the ‘Glorians’—to continue the artifice.”

  The others looked to Cliff. He faced the big skull Asenath lowered, as if to listen more closely. Cliff suspected this was just intimidation—and decided to ignore it, the only strategy that might work. “Artifice?”

  “Glorians believe you primates are the rulers and pilots of our Bowl,” Asenath thundered. “They confuse our mutual trajectories as meaning that the Bowl comes from your world.”

  “Weird. So?” It seemed to Cliff better to play dumb for a while. There was too much going on to make sense of this. He needed time to talk to Tananareve and get his bearings. These Folk had talked to Redwing, using Tananareve, but what were the nuances of that?

  Asenath gave a purple and rose display and her head descended still closer. Her Anglish was clipped and brusque, perhaps because she had only recently imbibed the language, or because she meant it that way. “Of course we converge on Glory. Over time scales of many thousands of orbitals, similar goals emerge. The only puzzle to us is why you, with your simple though ingenious and craftily made ship, desire to attain the status the Glo
rian technologies imply.”

  Cliff shrugged, glanced at Tananareve—who shrugged. “Imply?”

  “The gravitational signals. Surely this lures you.”

  “Not really. We’re bound for Glory because it’s a biosphere a lot like our own. The right oxygen levels, water vapor, a hydrogen cycle with oceans. Plus no signs of technology. No signatures of odd elements in its air. No electromagnetic emissions. No signals at all. Kind of like our world thousands of years—I guess you call them orbitals—ago.” Cliff spread his hands, hoping this was a signal of admitting the obvious.

  Asenath gave a rustling flurry of feather displays, crimson and violet. “Your ship has received the Glorian signals, yet you do not know?”

  “Know what?”

  “The Glorians, as you term them, are of the August.”

  “Meaning…?”

  “They do not deign, over many megaorbitals, to answer our electromagnetic signals. No matter of what frequencies. The Aloof and August.”

  “The same might be said of any rock.”

  “The advanced societies of this galaxy deliver their August messages only by means that young societies, such as yours, cannot detect.” Asenath gave a rattling side-display in eggshell blue. “Most important, signals of great information density, to which young worlds cannot reply.”

  “We picked up the gravity waves, around the time our ship left Earthside,” Cliff said. “There didn’t seem to be a signal, just noise.”

  “So young societies would think,” Bemor said from beside Asenath. “We do—”

  Suddenly something made the three Folk pause, Bemor with his mouth partly open. Silence. Their yellow eyes were distant.

  Quert appeared at Cliff’s side and whispered, “They hear other voices.”

  “They’ve done this before, getting signals somehow,” Tananareve said. “Let’s use the time. What’s our strategy here?”

  “These Folk have something in mind, using us somehow, I’ll bet,” Aybe said. “Wish I knew what they’re hearing right now.”

  Quert said, “They now listen to what we Sil brought forth. Told to. We showed old truth.”

  “How?” Tananareve asked.

  “Folk control electromagnetic pathways in Bowl. So Sil make signs buildings.” The swift slippery slide of Quert’s words belied the content.

  Cliff said, “Those deforming houses we saw you building?” He recalled how the Sil had deftly rebuilt their ruined city. He had seen a growing arch inching out into a parabolic curve, the scaffolding of tan walls rising from what seemed to be a sticky, plastic dirt. Wrinkled bulks had surged up as oblong windows popped into shape from a crude substrate, all driven by electrical panels. The Sil were working their entire city into fresh structures like spun glass, growing them into artful loops and bridges and elegant spires.

  “You make signals with your cities?” Irma asked. “How?”

  “City, all can see all across Bowl. Others know to look to us. To get message.” Quert had now a calm the feline alien wore like a cloak.

  “What was the message?”

  Quert looked at them all slowly, as if unburdening at last. He wagged his head and said, “Bowl pass by your sun. Go too close. Shower down mass. Damage world biosphere.”

  Irma said, “What? When?”

  “Long ago. Folk call it Great Shame.”

  Terry said, “You got this how?”

  Quert looked puzzled, as it always did by the human habit of conveying a question by a rising note at the end of a sentence. “Your ship told you. You told us.”

  “What?” Terry turned to Cliff. “You got this from Redwing?”

  “Yup. I tried it out on Quert. I didn’t believe it, really.”

  “You didn’t tell us!” Aybe said.

  “Saw no need to.” Cliff’s face stiffened. “I still don’t know if it’s true.”

  “We got more from … others,” Quert said. “Come.”

  Quert led them to a small room that puckered into the ribbed, pink slabs that formed the great hall. Cliff looked back. The Folk were still rigid, eyes focused on infinity, taking in some transmission from … where? Their bodies were clenched, feet grasping at the floor. He turned and went into a narrow chamber where a bright screen fluoresced into pale blue light. “We have map sent. History.”

  It was a 3-D starscape. Across it scratched a ruby line. “Bowl went there. Time go backward.”

  A dot started at the Bowl, shown as a small cup embracing a red star. The ruby line stretched as it moved backwards, away, into the reaches of stars. Cliff and the others muttered to each other, watching the constellations slip by as time ran in reverse, accelerating. The line looped near many dots that were stars—yellow, red, some bright blue—and went on, faster, until the perspective became confusing. It wound along the Orion arm of the slowly churning galaxy. They could see the stars moving now in their gyres. The ruby line ventured out toward the Perseus arm, which was festering with light, then looped near some to pick off glimmering sites apparently of interest. The Bowl’s method, Cliff could see, was to dive into the distant, shallow slope of the grav well of a star, slowing somehow, and skate by. A close-up view near a yellow dot showed bright sparks departing the Bowl, to descend deeper into the gravity potential well of the destination star. These soon returned, apparently bearing whatever they found on the circling worlds down in the grav well. This happened several times as they watched.

  Then the Bowl cruised through what Cliff recognized as the Local Fluff inside the Local Bubble, terms he recalled from some distant lecture for the spaces around Sol. Then the Bowl surged a bit, building speed, bound for the next target brimming ahead.

  Cliff and the Sil had to interpret in this way the backward-running line, for what they saw was the reverse. Then the Bowl-star pair descended on a yellow star.

  They watched the entire encounter and talked about it, piecing the story together in backward fashion. After the encounter, the Bowl came soaring out of a system racked and ruined. Comets flared in the yellow star glow, and it was clear why. The Bowl had swept through the prickly small motes of light that swarmed far from the star. It had left a roiling path through those tiny lights, giving them small nudges, and so some had plunged inward. Only one was needed.

  One. It slid down the slow slope of gravity and arced on its long hyperbola toward a pale blue dot. And hit.

  “They brushed along in our Oort cloud,” Aybe said. “That’s it. They, they tipped that rock into—”

  “An accident. Killed the dinosaurs,” Terry said, “who were descendants of their own kind. Can’t check the time axis on this thing—what the hell would the units be anyway?—but there’s a reason it shows this way. Somebody’s making a point. The Bird Folk were clumsy, careless.”

  “Yeah…” Irma stared at the screen. “Who?”

  Cliff said nothing, just tried to take it all in. He felt Quert’s presence strongly as a kind of intense energy, as though this were the crucial moment in some plan the alien had. Yet there was no overt sign of it he could detect.

  He said, “Terry, I think the Glorians’ point is, ‘See, we know all about you.’”

  Quert seemed unperturbed, his face calm. The other Sil had not come into this room, but they clustered at the entrance, watching silently. “Folk go to other stars after yours. But yours special for other reason.”

  “Why’s that?” Irma asked.

  “They come from your sun.”

  “Who?” Irma’s mouth gave a skeptical twist. “The Folk?”

  “See.” Quert moved his hand near the screen and the ruby line seemed to accelerate, slipping smoothly from star to star in the Orion Arm. The speed now barely showed a slowing as the Bowl dived near a star, sent expeditions down, then moved on. Cliff lost count of how many the Bowl visited. Then the trajectory took a long swooping arc, still sampling stars and worlds. The curve turned back along the sprinkle of slowly moving stars.

  “These are the even earlier eras for the Bowl?” Irma sai
d. “Must be a really long time ago.”

  “Notice how the Bowl is going now from one star to the next, pausing near each one,” Aybe said. “That fits—they were exploring for the first time. Sizing up what solar systems around other stars are like.”

  “Then we’re headed back to—look, there’s the Local Bubble,” Terry said. In an overlay, a thin ivory blob approached probably an image of the low-density shell that surrounded Sol. “But … Sol’s not there.”

  “Stars move,” Irma said. “See, the Bowl is moving on past that, not stopping.”

  Aybe said, “It’s slowing down a lot, seems to be approaching this yellow star—hey, is that us?”

  They watched, stunned, as the Bowl and its reddish star slowed more and more, edging up to the yellow star.

  “Can’t be, see?” Terry pointed. “The Bowl’s going into orbit, making—”

  The image froze.

  Irma whispered, “The Bowl came from … a binary.”

  “They built it around a binary star,” Cliff said, “and one of those stars was Sol.”

  “Didn’t we hear a little from Redwing about Beth’s team, pretty far back?” Terry said. “They went to some kind of museum and saw a show about how the Bowl got built.”

  Aybe said, “After all, they had to start with a smaller star than Sol. They grabbed big masses from the swarm around that star, and—who knows?—maybe some of Sol’s Oort cloud.”

  Irma snorted. “Are you saying they came from Earth?”

  Aybe shrugged. “Looks like it. I mean, Mars had an early warm era, so maybe—”

  “That was in the first billion years or so after Sol formed,” Terry said. “The end of this Bowl voyage show we just saw, it can’t be that far back. Makes no sense! You’d have to get an intelligent species up to full industrial ability in just a billion years.”

  “Okay, then whoever built the Bowl had to come from Earth,” Irma said, hands on hips. “I’m discounting smart creatures from the Jovian moons or Venus or someplace.”

  “Fair enough,” Aybe said. “So, Earth. These Folk out there, you’re saying they had to come from some time—”