Heaven
Page 7
There followed a complicated series of instructions, but their general gist was simple. “We suspect Cosmic Unity to be a malignant benevolent memeplex. We are making contingency plans in case we are right. Select a few nines of fellow mariners, and persuade the ’Thals to convey them offplanet immediately and evacuate them to a suitable safe home for an indefinite period. Reveal our existence to them. Repeat: Tell them that the reefmind exists. The ingrained social prohibition is lifted, but only as far as this group of Neanderthals is concerned. The danger is great, and concealment would now be counterproductive. Send an encryption disk to our males at Atollside Port that will link them—and, at one remove, us—to the ’Thal ship’s ansible. We will then handle the task of convincing the ’Thals that a coral reef can house a conscious mind. That will be easy, for our intelligence cannot possibly be attributed to you males. Tell the ’Thals to confirm their choice for the evacuation world with us. As payment, offer them free simulations for life; do not delay action by attempting to bargain.”
The prohibition on bargaining went even more against the grain than the instruction to reveal the secret of the reefmind to offworlders, but Second-Best Sailor had long ago learned the hard way that the wishes of the reefwives were not to be denied. He wondered what could possibly have caused such a panic. The sun about to go nova? A comet strike? With a heartfelt flush of his siphons, he headed for his cabin, to put the suit back on.
It was a lot to ask. He hoped the Neanderthals would agree. But he never doubted for an instant that the reefmind would persuade the ’Thals of its own existence. Second-Best Sailor knew from personal experience exactly what his mother was capable of.
The Neanderthal ship didn’t really have a commanding officer—it pretty much took the decisions itself. As far as the crew were concerned, Sharp Wit Will Cut behaved as a leader, but the ship took its own counsel and seemed generally to respond to the overall consensus. In fact, experience with Precursor starships showed that the more diverse a population the crew members were, the better the ship seemed to function, and the easier it was to control.
This particular vessel had been part of a fleet found drifting in the vicinity of Iota Ursae Majoris by a band of magnetotorus herders, and it had taken part in the original Neanderthal evacuation from Earth, forty thousand years ago. Its official name was Talitha, the name that ancient Arabic astronomers had given to the star where it was found, but the Neanderthals called it “Ship.” Talitha was a generation ship: Its crew lived the main part of their lives on board, and their families traveled with them. And most of the time it traveled at just below the speed of light. However, unlike a true generation ship, it also possessed a Precursor faster-than-light hydrive. But the hydrive consumed large amounts of energy and so could be used only when it was really necessary.
Despite its gigantic size, the ship was a village, not a city, housing some six hundred crew, along with their families—maybe fifteen hundred altogether. Of the half dozen or so species on board, the majority were Neanderthals, Tweel engineers, and Cyldarian ecologists. A lot of the space on the ship was taken up by life-support systems for their varied environments—oxygen, nitrous oxide, chlorine, and so on. Cargo holds occupied much of the rest. Even so, the ship could have housed a city, had that been necessary.
Like all Precursor ships that had ever been found, Talitha had no weapons. But its size alone was intimidating.
Ancestral Neanderthals had inherited the ship forty thousand years back, along with several others, from their rescuers, and had been using it ever since to travel the length and breadth of the Galaxy. Because of relativistic time-dilation, the crew had lived through a mere three thousand years of subjective time since the evacuation.
They generally traveled for subjectively short periods—a few shipboard years, long enough to reach the nearest worthwhile star, maybe fifty light-years away—and then based themselves in that region of the Galaxy for a generation or so, trading goods and facilitating the exchange of valuable information. They were in no great hurry to go anywhere in particular or achieve anything special, but they were wanderers at heart and seldom stayed anywhere for more than twenty years, fifty at the outside.
Like most of the Galaxy’s nomads, they mainly followed the spiral arms that wound outward from the Galactic Hub. In the arms, stars were more densely distributed, so travel times to the next habitable system were less. A few adventurers had struck out across the interarm voids, with mixed success. Most had never returned.
Along the way, the Neanderthals had made contact with many civilizations, and occasionally representatives of some of these had been added to the crew. Now Will was faced with a problem. The reefmind had convinced him that she existed, and his ansible had a new encryption disk to prove it, a direct link to Atollside Port. This was a big secret, and he would probably be able to exploit it to advantage at some future date. In the meantime, May and Stun had negotiated a potential deal with that strange little polypoid Second-Best Sailor. It was a very favorable deal from the Neanderthals’ point of view. But the rest of the crew weren’t convinced that they wanted to move again yet, and Ship was sensing that majority opinion and refusing to budge.
There was no point in arguing with Ship. Instead, over the years, Will had developed several effective techniques for persuading the crew to go along with his wishes. If he could develop a consensus, Ship would go along with the decision, he was sure. So he bustled about the mile-long vessel, arguing and persuading, cutting side deals if necessary, wheedling and disputing, reminding his crew again and again of the astonishing revelations about the reefwives’ collective mentality. And the innate empathic sense that all Neanderthals possessed gave him such an edge that soon Ship was positively enthusiastic about the whole idea and was offering unsolicited advice and assistance.
May and Stun, waiting patiently, got word that the deal was on.
“How many transpods?” May asked Will, almost shouting into her ansible.
“Ship says it is sending three. Plus a small one to communicate directly with the reefmind.”
“We were only expecting one.”
“I know. But you know what Ship is like when it senses a really strong consensus. I guess I must have oversold the evacuation analogy. Everyone seems to think that it would be a great idea to make a symbolic gesture and repay the universe for arranging our rescue. The Tweel in particular like the sense of closure in that, and they seem to have inspired the others with a sudden sense of cosmic brotherhood and historical fitness.”
“That sounds dangerously like Cosmic Unity.”
“No, just a harmless, spontaneous upwelling of goodwill. It will not last. Anyway, you had better tell Second-Best Sailor to round up another forty of his friends. And get busy duplicating sailor suits.”
“We will not be using a transible, then.”
“No, the power drain would not be justified, and the recycle time is too long for us to transport enough mariners by that means,” said Will, confirming May’s own unexpressed judgment.
“Transpods will be more effective,” she replied, speaking her thoughts out loud.
“Correct. Ship is creating a suitable environment on board, where space is all but limitless, but the transpods cannot carry enough seawater.” Which reminded him. “Tell Stun to get the analysis of dissolved minerals in No-Moon’s oceans sent up to Ship as quickly as possible. And pay careful attention to the isotope proportions. The reefwives say that their husbands are very sensitive to deuterium imbalances.”
May hung the ansible back on her invisible belt and set off in search of the polypoid captain. The strange sense of apprehension that had dogged her these past few days was much sharper now that she could put a name to it. But were the approaching strangers truly a menace, as the reefwives feared? Even they were unsure.
The uncertainty worried her. Cosmic Unity’s declarations of universal love worried her more. It all added up to impending trouble. But what kind of trouble? She hadn’t a clue.
It wasn’t only Will who needed to be very persuasive.
While she was doing that, Will was delving through Ship’s records, trying to find the best choice of a destination. It shouldn’t be too close—there was no point in evacuating the mariners to a world that would shortly suffer the same fate as their own. But it shouldn’t be too far, either.
He had called up a three-dimensional star map of the local zone, a cube of space some five thousand light-years wide. The worlds currently embracing Cosmic Unity glowed lime green, and the frontiers of that religion’s expansion were highlighted in yellow. A long streak of yellow, running along the spine of the Trailing Spiral Arm, was pointing straight at No-Moon. They were coming, and they were coming fast. This memeplex was a powerful one, and no mistake. He began to appreciate why the reefwives wanted a random selection of their husbands evacuated from their homeworld before Cosmic Unity’s peace mission arrived in planetary orbit.
The star map would help him to decide on a good choice of world to receive the evacuated mariners. The Tweel engineers had well-defined priorities, but these contradicted the advice of the Cyldarian ecologists. It was hard to gain consensus. The Cyldarians didn’t help. One of them was adamant that what mattered most was climate and atmosphere; another flatly contradicted this, insisting that what really mattered was the existence of at least one large sea, preferably an ocean. With an acceptable chemical composition, of course—that was one thing they both agreed on.
The only thing, it seemed.
Will valued diversity of opinion, because constructive dissent generally led to more effective decisions and kept everything functioning effectively. Nothing made Ship more sluggish than mere conformity. But dissent cannot continue indefinitely, and eventually he was forced to offer one of the Cyldarians a small inducement to shut up. The bribe worked like a charm, and within ten minutes, Ship had marked out six likely candidates in blue. Another ten minutes’ work by the Cyldarians and Tweel reduced that number to just one.
Hoping that further study would not reduce it to zero, Will called up the data for this sole remaining candidate. It was a fairly ordinary world. Its main planetological features were two large polar icecaps. At their fringes they produced copious quantities of meltwater that fed a network of underground aquifers. Much of the land above was tundra, scrub, and desert. The aquifers fed into a single ocean, covering about a quarter of the surface, which was bordered by thick, impenetrable swamps. Water evaporating from the ocean fell as snow at the poles, and this kept the circulation going and topped up the aquifers.
There were no sentients. Nothing even came close. Plants, yes . . . insectoids in abundance, various flying things. Lots of strange beasties in the ocean. Almost anything in the swamps. And funny walking things that lived in ponds and made long treks across the desert.
The climate ranged from freezing cold at the poles to uncomfortably hot at the equator. But it wasn’t hot as in molten rock—there were places on No-Moon that were just as warm. On neither world would such places be a problem, because the mariners normally stayed in the sea, and if they had to go onto the land, they wore suits.
The atmosphere had a bit more nitrogen and argon than No-Moon’s, along with some irritating sulfides. There was a slight methane deficiency. The oxygen level was a bit too low for Neanderthals to avoid wearing breathing apparatus, but there was enough oxygen dissolved in the ocean for the polypoids to feel perfectly at home. The deuterium levels were comfortably within tolerance.
They would need to seed the ocean with the polypoids’ food organisms, because the native ones were unlikely to be compatible with mariner metabolism. There could well be dangerous predators in the ocean, so the mariners would have to restrain their natural urge to travel until the Neanderthals had time to carry out a survey of the marine ecosystem. Their records were inadequate on this point, as on many others. Nobody had ever done a full planetological study of the planet. That was a nuisance, but it added to the planet’s attraction—unwanted visitors would be unlikely.
All this meant that initially they would have to find a suitable body of water, like a landlocked bay, and seal off its connection to the main ocean. It would have to be swept for dangerous life forms and, if necessary, sterilized. The polypoids would have to remain confined within its boundaries until the wider situation could be assessed. However, all this was relatively simple with Precursor gadgetry.
If it all worked out, then eventually they would be able to transplant reefs to the planet, too. Apparently, that was how the reefwives and their males had originally come to No-Moon. At first they had created protected environments to live in, much as they were doing now, but within a million years of their arrival they had transformed the planet to suit themselves. Now it was as if they had always been there—had evolved there. When it was safe, and necessary, to move the reefs, they would. Until then, the reefwives were confident that whatever effect Cosmic Unity might have on their husbands, it would do their wives little harm. Cosmic Unity didn’t even know the reef was sentient. So the wives could wait.
In the longer term, their new home’s ocean might be permanently nomoonformed, but there was no need even to think about that step right now.
May was on the ansible again. “Have you come to a decision?” The Neanderthals’ empathic sense did not function at a distance. If she’d been with Will on board Ship, she would have known that he had.
Will could hear that she sounded agitated—probably because of the sudden change in plans. Trading one day, in charge of an evacuation the next. “Yes, I have narrowed the options down to just one,” he reassured her. His crevit, now curled in his lap, buzzed in blissful contentment. Will tugged its ears affectionately. The contact helped to relax them both. “And it is suitable. Far enough away to be well out of range of the probable future expansion of Cosmic Unity, but close enough for hydrive access without us going bankrupt. It will need some work, and the polypoids will have to exercise restraint for a time.”
May chuckled. “There is little prospect of that, Will. Even now, the natives are getting restless.”
“It is for their own safety.”
“That might possibly get them to behave themselves. At any rate, some specific news will help to calm them down.”
Will transmitted the details to her.
“Restless” was an understatement. Second-Best Sailor’s trawl of the bars had netted another thirty-one mariners who were willing to abandon their wives and atolls, not to mention their boats, to travel to another star. Most were in late stages of algal inebriation, which was very likely why they had agreed to this crazy plan. Fitting them out with suits was proving to be a complicated business. The suits were ancient and inexplicable technology that carried them in an upright position, doused with recycled water through a kind of showerhead, which kept their siphons oxygenated and their skins damp. The suit’s recycling microfilters osmotically removed excreted chemicals from the water, keeping it fresh-tasting and removing any risk of toxic shock. Although the suits were “one size fits all,” that is, they adjusted themselves to the form of their wearer, there were some initialization procedures that had to be carried out before the golden sailor suits were fully operational.
This shakedown was not going according to plan, because the mariners kept interfering with it or forgetting what stage they’d reached. Second-Best Sailor had his work cut out calming them down and preventing fights from breaking out, while May and Stun checked off the suits’ functions and ran a few precautionary tests. It would not do to get the evacuees to their new home and then find that they dried out because of a suit fault.
Eventually, the forty-nine mari
ners were ready to be loaded on board the transpods, and with a certain amount of grumbling and horseplay and many good-natured obscenities, they trooped through the wall-irises into the stark loading bays.
The last on board was Second-Best Sailor, preceded by his two apprentices. As they passed Stun and May, Fat Apprentice finally got around to asking a question that he felt he really should have asked sooner.
“Where are we goin’, miz?”
May gave him a smile. The fat little polypoid was terrified out of his wits but doing his best to conceal it.
“It is a very suitable world. You will like it.”
“What’s its name?”
“Uh . . .” May wasn’t sure it had an official one, but it would be simplest to invent one rather than explaining about official nomenclature. Recalling the planet’s specifications, she was about to tell him it was Sand when something told her that would not be sufficiently reassuring.
“Aquifer,” she told him. “The planet you are going to is called Aquifer.”
4
SPITTLE NEST CLIFF
Praise not the Lifesoul-Giver,
Grim Sower of transient Life,
With its joys, miseries, uncertainty.
Give thanks to the Lifesoul-Cherisher,
Kindly Reaper of the dysfunctional vortex,
Enforcer of the peaceful certainty
Of entropy everlasting.
The Book of Plasms
The cliff was six miles, from its abrupt top edge to the enormous scree slope of dislodged rubble at its base, and the canyon descended a further two miles before it reached the ammonia torrents that had carved it from thick deposits of frozen sulfide, remnants of a long-forgotten period of planetwide volcanism.
All along the canyon walls, on the side facing the setting star, the ledges were piled several stories high with the round-mouthed spittle nests of the Huphun. Adults lined up on the nest forecourts to spread their wings, displaying the varicolored homing symbols that identified each parent to its parthenogenetic young. And as the Huphun watched the star set, they sang to their neighbors about the beauty of their world and the consonance of the city, attributing both to the Wings of the World, which were invisible but must exist in order to carry their planet around its star in what every child knew was a slightly eccentric ellipse. Its resemblance to a breeding-dance flight path was presumably coincidental—the topic had been the subject of continuing speculation for a myriad myriads of starsets.