by David Brin
“Separate,” Suessi agreed. “But still ready to meddle in the affairs of younger races.”
Sara watched Gillian shrug, appearing to say — Why worry about things we can never change?
“So this is transcendence. Each uplifted species that survives starfaring adolescence eventually winds up in such a place. Both oxies and hydros. From across the linked galaxies, they converge at white dwarf stars in order to achieve … what? Niss, do you know?”
The spinning lines whirled, a maze of shifting patterns.
“Your question is the same one that obsesses theologians, back in the ‘adolescent’ culture we call home.
“Some believe transcendent beings find renewed youth in the Embrace of Tides.
“Others say the elders pass through a mystic portal, following the blessed Progenitors to a better realm. As you well know, minor differences over such details can rouse strong tempers among hot-blooded clans, such as the Soro, or Tandu—”
“Tell me about it!” Hannes muttered sourly. “Ifnicursed fanatics.”
“So it seems to you — and my Tymbrimi makers, and other moderate clans who feel the affairs of the Transcendent Order are rightfully none of our business. We will find out the truth, when our own turn comes.
“But need I remind you those fanatics’ you mention are powerful among the races who swarm flat spacetime in myriad starships? They wield great influence, and act more swiftly than the moderates. Their fleets presently lay siege to Terra, and have hounded this crew ever since we escaped the Shallow Cluster.”
Sara watched Gillian lean forward, her cheekbones stark in light from the whirling hologram. “You’re building up to some point. Get on with it.”
“My point is that this ship, Streaker, has suffered terrible persecution because it represents a danger and an affront to reverent tradition all across the Five Galaxies.
“The relics and data you carry appear to threaten deeply held creeds.”
“We already knew that much,” Gillian replied. “Can I assume you’ve finally figured out why?”
The Niss broadened its spiral of lines, spreading and almost brushing the blond human’s face.
“Indeed, I think that I have.
“It seems your discovery resurrects an ancient heresy that had been considered dead for millions of years.
“A heresy claiming that everything our civilization believes is wrong.”
Lark
DEEP WITHIN THE JOPHUR BATTLESHIP, THINGS had changed yet again.
The last time Lark visited the Polkjhy’s Life Core, the place resembled a dense but orderly forest grove — a farm in three dimensions — featuring lush green rows and columns of vegetation neatly organized on metal scaffolding to purify the great vessel’s air and water, serving the Jophur crew efficiently, like any other machine.
Now it was a tangle of riotous growth, a jungle where plants and autotrophs from myriad worlds had broken out of their assigned places, curling round the disappearing latticework, intermingling in a bedlam of anarchic biogenesis.
Amid the profuse growth, he glimpsed skittering little things — animals of varied types that surely had not been here before. Did they escape from some onboard lab-menagerie, amid the crash and confusion of battle? Or did caretaker computers deliberately thaw and release them from storage, in some vain effort to regain control over a miniature ecosystem that grew more complex and wild with each passing midura? Moving deeper, he even spied little scavenger organisms that looked like individual Jophur rings, writhing and twisting as they made their way along branches, seeking rotten matter to consume. Their pale colors expressed innocence and simplicity of purpose. None appeared eager to seek sophistication, or to gather sapiency by combining into stacks.
Lark found the Life Core’s new look an improvement. He came from a world where nature was allowed to find its own equilibrium — a complex balance, invariably messy, that worked better than any plan. Even when many participants of a planetary biosphere were foes, preying on each other with tooth and claw, the overall result wound up looking like cooperation, giving each individual and species a role to play, helping the whole system thrive.
Kind of like our own little group of strange allies, he thought, pondering the curious expedition that had made its way to the heart of the Jophur warship. We may not trust each other, but lacking any other choice, we work together.
Pushing through the rank overgrowth, he paused near a vine that hung heavy with ripe clamber-peaches, popular on more oxy-worlds than anyone could count. Lark plucked one and brought it to his mouth, but then had to wait for rippling layers of membrane to creep out of the way, until there was room enough to take a good bite out of the fruit. Red juice sprayed around his tongue and between several teeth, dribbling down his chin, assailing taste buds with pleasure. Greedily, he consumed several more. It was Lark’s first decent meal in days.
The passenger — a modified Zang globule that spread its bulk across his body like a cumbersome second skin — seemed to catch some of Lark’s complaint. A tendril presented itself before his left eye, and a vacuole opened inside that gelatinous mass. Tiny subdeputy blobs popped forth, performing a microscopic drama, communicating in the Zang manner, by simulation.
Lark shook his head.
“No, I’m not ungrateful. I realize you’ve been feeding me from your own body mass, so we could get this far. But forgive me if I prefer something that doesn’t stink of rotten eggs, for a change!”
He was fairly sure that his actual words — sonic vibrations in the air — had no meaning to the alien. That type of language, abstract and structured, was as foreign to such bubble-beings as the notion of walking around on stilt-limbs, stiffened by rigid bones. Lark’s best guess was that the creature/entity tracked his eye movements instead, somehow gleaning import from which little speck or simulated blob he chose unconsciously to look at, in which order. The result was a crude form of telepathy, unlike any he had ever heard or read about.
Subdeputies whirled some more, inside their vacuole-theater.
“Yeah, okay,” he answered. “I know. Gotta keep moving. There isn’t much time.”
A rustling commotion disturbed the dense foliage just ahead. Lark reached warily for his best weapon, the purple ring which sprayed message chemicals on command, sometimes overcoming Jophur guards or battle-drones. Although its effectiveness had declined, the tricky little torus still reduced the number of times they had to fight, making possible this journey deep behind enemy lines.
A bulky form pushed through the jungle. Wide at the bottom and tapered on top, it had the ominous shape of a Jophur.
Or a traeki, Lark reminded himself, crouching amid shadows. Even when the figure drew near enough to identify by its stained contours, he still wasn’t sure which word should apply. The composite being had once been Asx, a beloved traeki sage, then became haughty Ewasx of the Jophur. Now it would answer to neither name. Ripples coursed up and down its waxy pyramid of greasy donuts, while segments vied and debated among themselves. Inside that fatty tower, new arrangements were being worked out, with the Master Ring no longer in complete control.
Quite possibly — at any moment — the issue might be decided in favor of resuming loyalty to Polkjhy’s captain-leader, or reporting Lark’s presence to the embattled crew. But not yet. Meanwhile, there continued a strange, tentative partnership of Zang, human, and ring stack. A loose coalition of collective beings. Lark decided to call the confused creature “X”—at least till it made up its minds.
Waves of shadow and color flashed briefly, while the stack whistled breathy Galactic Six from its oration peak.
“I/we/I managed to accomplish the intended feat — accessing a terminal at the agronomist’s workstation. (The agronomist erself was elsewhere, having been reassigned to combat roles during the emergency.) My/our appointed task of discovering news — this proved possible to achieve.”
“Yes?” Lark took a step forward. “Did you learn where they took Ling?”
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br /> He had hoped to find her in the Life Core, near the nest where they had been happy — all too briefly.
The composite creature twitched and shuddered. Across its corrugated, waxy flesh there crawled dozens of small rings, crimson in color, feeding on its secretions. To the Polkjhy crew, those innocuous-looking toroids were carriers of a plague, more horrid than the Zang infestation.
“Of the remaining humans — Ling and Rann — there are no recent reports. As to their last known position, I/we narrowed it down to a quadrant of the ship … one that became cut off twenty miduras ago, when fresh incursions of Zang-like entities apparently penetrated the hull.”
News of hydrogen-breathing reinforcements did not affect Lark’s passenger as expected. The globule-entity quivered, indicating a strong desire to avoid contact with the newcomers until they could be viewed from a safe distance.
So, Lark thought. There are factions, nations, races … or whatever … among hydros, too. Like us, they fear their own relatives more than the truly alien. I guess that shouldn’t surprise me.
During their long, circuitous journey from the nursery chamber, all three odd allies had stopped to watch images on terminal screens, broadcast by the Jophur crew to keep their soldiers informed of what was going on outside. While X tried to describe a white dwarf star and explain what was known about transcendent life, the Zang seemed upset. What disturbed it was mounting evidence that hydro-and oxy-orders eventually merged, blending together in a steep mixing bowl of gravitational tides. Apparently, Lark’s passenger found the news unnerving.
You are in way over your depth, just like me, aren’t you? he asked the Zang at one point. It took several tries to get the question across — he was still learning this quirky mode of conversation. But eventually, after trembling violently for a while, it calmed down and meekly indicated assent.
Even hydro-entities must have trouble dealing with their gods. It seemed to be a law of nature.
“But you have Ling’s last coordinates?” he asked X.
“Indeed. It should be possible to approach that sector … if we dare.”
Lark nodded. Somehow he must persuade his companions that the risk was worthwhile. “And the other matter you were going to look into?”
The pile of greasy toroids flashed a series of shadows — flickering patterns-of-regret that seemed so deeply Jijoan that the creature felt more like Asx than ever. In speaking, it switched to GalSeven.
“Alas, the news is dire from your perspective … and perhaps ours/mine. During this ship’s long journey, from the ill-fated retirement habitat to this indrawing of transcendent races, there were several moments when the Polkjhy got a fix on local star groups, ascertained its position, and managed to fire off message capsules. Of these attempts, at least three show high likelihood of escaping the convoy-swarm and making their way to chosen sites in the Civilization of Five Galaxies.
“In other words, the Jophur have succeeded in reporting to their home clan all about Jijo.
“All about the forlorn g’Kek.
“About traeki refugees who for so long escaped dominance by master rings.
“And about humans and other races, ripe for secret experimentation/manipulation, out of sight from law or any other restraint.”
Lark’s shoulders slumped. His heart felt so heavy that flashes of concerned inquiry came from the Zang passenger, worried about his metabolic state.
Jijo is lost, he realized.
Of course that had always been in the cards, one way or another. But Polkjhy’s troubles had made it seem possible — just barely — that the great battleship might meet a gruesome end before reporting what it had discovered in Galaxy Four. For this reason, he and Ling had abandoned the safety of their little nest, hoping to sow confusion in the enemy HQ.
I guess we should have just stayed here, making love and eating fruit till they found us, or till the universe came to an end.
Now he had nothing left, except a desire to free Ling for as long as they might have left together.… And to hurt the enemy, if possible.
Fortunately, a weapon lay at hand. A gift from the crafty old traeki sage, Asx.
The red ring. The one Ling hid in the nursery, before she was captured. It must have been programmed by Asx as a predator, spreading and reproducing through the incubators, filling a wide range of niches. When combat with Zang invaders brought Jophur soldiers to the infirmary, seeking spare parts, they were given descendants of that original ring.
A mutated form of Master-type torus, with differences that only a wise old pharmacist-sage could have come up with, applying lessons learned by the traekis during two thousand years of exile. Tricks that Jophur sophisticates would never have encountered on the space lanes.
Soon, the fortunes of war shifted once again. Instead of beating back the hydros, Jophur forces resumed losing ground. A strange epidemic seemed to afflict many of the troops. Fits of self-doubt, or traeki-style multiple thinking, beset those who had formerly been egotistically self-centered and assured. Some suffered stack dissolution — breakdown into individual components that then crawled off, each seeking its own way. Others grew contemplative, or went catatonic, or began ranting and reeking madly.
A few started entertaining new and unusual notions.
If only we had first spread the disease close to the command center, before they could react.
But the Jophur were quick, clever, and resilient. Retreating and establishing lines of quarantine, they managed to retain control over vital ship functions.
But just barely. For most of Polkjhy, the overall result was chaos. A traveler could not know in advance what the next deck or corridor would be like. Weakened by struggle, no party to the conflict seemed able to do more than hold its home enclaves while anarchy spread everywhere else.
“One additional point merits discussion,” continued X. “I/we picked up information by eavesdropping on the command channel. Reports indicate deep concern on the part of the bridge crew. The captain-leader and priest-stack have been debating the significance of a message, recently received.”
“A message?”
“A warning, recently beamed across the Five Galaxies. If true, this alert bodes ill for a great many races and clans, but especially for this ship and all its varied occupants.”
“Who sent this warning?” Lark asked.
“The homeworld of your own race, Lark Koolhan. Beleaguered Earth, surrounded and threatened by annihilation.
“Apparently, feeling that they have little to lose, the Terragens Council recently broadcast an iconoclastic theory to explain recent disruptions racking the Five Galaxies. A hypothesis derived by some of their sages, after secretly combining wolfling mathematical incantations with Galactic science. So provocative is this concept — so disturbing and frightening its implied accusations — that the Great Institutes have been moved to issue frantic denials. So frantic, in fact, that Earthlings have attained fresh credibility in many quarters!
“Indeed, the reaction has been profound enough that some clans now send armadas to help lift the siege, while others converge bent on wrathful genocide! The fleet battles near Terra have intensified tenfold.”
Lark listened, at first unable to react except by blinking — at least a dozen times — in numb surprise.
“But … what …”
He shook his head, provoking a squishy, nervous response from his blobby passenger.
“But what was the warning?”
The creature he called X puffed colored steam, expressing nervous awe in the manner of a Jijoan traeki.
“They claim that the Great Institutes have been concealing a terrible danger. That most of the links uniting our Five Galaxies may soon dissolve, unleashing turmoil and desolation on the unprepared. In the ensuing violent backlash, many great and noble things may be lost.
“Moreover, if the Earthlings are right — (and not perpetrating a desperate hoax) — we aboard the Polkjhy are in the greatest danger of all. Here, at this sacred loc
ale, where transcendent beings seek enlightenment within the Embrace of Tides.”
Dwer
AT FIRST, HE EXPECTED THE HUNT FOR RETY TO be easy.
How could a human hide in Kazzkark? Everywhere Dwer went, people turned and stared with a variety of sensory organs. Diverse limbs and tendrils pointed, while susurrant comments in a dozen Galactic dialects followed him down every lane. Apparently, Earthlings were infamous.
Even if no one in Kazzkark had any idea what kind of smelly biped Rety was, the girl would draw attention to herself, as surely as stars were fire. In all the time he’d known the young sooner, that trait had never failed.
Dwer’s instincts were more reticent. He preferred slinking quietly through this bizarre noisy place — spacious as a canyon, yet claustrophobic as a boo forest, with a slim roof to keep the precious air from blowing into space. The environment would be unnerving enough without throngs of aliens loudly arguing or gesticulating, then lapsing to hushed murmurs as he passed.
I always hated crowds. But according to Harry Harms, this is just a tiny outpost! I can’t imagine a real city.
Dwer tried not to stare, partly because it was impertinent, and to keep from looking like a total rube. Among the bedtime stories his mother used to read aloud, a standard plot told of some rustic innocent coming to a metropolis, only to be fleeced by urban predators.
Fortunately, I don’t have much to covet or steal, he thought, counting blessings.
At a busy intersection, Dwer paused to consider.
If I were Rety, where would I dash off to?
None of this would have happened if he’d been vigilant. While waiting for Harry at Navigation Institute HQ, Dwer had left Rety to visit the toilet. It took some time, as he studied the strange array of mechanisms designed to remove waste products from many species. Emerging — mussed and damp from several near accidents — he cursed to find Rety gone and the front door gaping to a busy street.