by Ian Stewart
None of the other interlopers had left the sea. He didn’t think they could—as far as he could tell, none of them was wearing life-support equipment. That made things a little trickier, because the water offered a certain amount of protection. But orders were orders, and his had been made crystal clear on many occasions. What the hierocrat wanted, the hierocrat got, and what the hierocrat wanted in these circumstances was total annihilation.
There were standard tactics for dealing with an underwater threat. He quickly assessed his firepower: six floaters, each carrying a dozen heavy laser cannons. The swimmers were confined to the bay by their own forcewall; the bay was shallow . . . He would have power to spare.
He ordered the floaters to deploy around the margin of the bay, three on each side at the top of the cliffs.
This would not take long.
The morning sun had dispersed the nighttime clouds, and the beachhead at No Bar Bay was clearly visible from Talitha’s gallery. It seemed tranquil and undisturbed, so Sharp Wit Will Cut was not particularly worried when no one answered his ansible call. No doubt the mariners were racing their boats again. But a closer look at the bay showed no boats out in the deeper waters. In fact—and now he did begin to worry—it showed no boats at all.
Then he looked really closely, saw what had happened to the boats, and really began to worry.
He was the first to drop down from the transpod into the trampled chalk sand, and when he did so, he was looking over his shoulder as often as forward, watching out for any threat that might emerge from the landward swamp or the rocks beneath the cliffs. The ansible shelter had been annihilated, and it wasn’t alone. He saw at once that the tunnel to the power source had collapsed; rubble of a kind he had never before encountered lay strewn at the foot of the cliff where the tunnel had once been. It was as if the chalk had melted and flowed like syrup before freezing solid and cracking into dangerous needle-sharp spikes and razor edges.
The boats were little more than scattered fragments, charred debris floating among the waves, strewn along the tide line.
A dozen steps, and he saw the first body. At first he failed to recognize it, so blistered and mutilated was the viscous, rubbery flesh. But then he saw the stumps of tentacles and realized that he was looking at what had once been a mariner.
A search turned up more bodies. Most were scattered about the shore; a few were floating in the sea. All bore appalling injuries.
One of Talitha’s Tweel engineers bent over one of the corpses and shuddered. “What calamity caused this?” he asked, not to anyone in particular but to the universe in general. He straightened and looked nervously around. Whatever had done this might still be nearby, hidden in dense vegetation, concealed by rocks.
Will had a sudden suspicion. He put his hand in the water. The sea was warm. Too warm. Definitely too warm, given that the forcewall had been turned off and colder water had been diffusing into the bay from the ocean, and running into it from the streams.
“What calamity?” he said, turning to the engineer. “A military calamity, my friend. An energy weapon. The mariners and their wifepieces have been boiled alive.” Now that he had some idea what had happened, the evidence around him slotted neatly into place. His theory was supported by the state of the bodies—more accurately, from the fragments of cooked meat that were all that remained of their polypoid friends. Some pieces were streaked with the telltale burns of laser fire. Others were just sickening parboiled chunks.
In his mind he could not avoid reconstructing the scene in all its horror. The attackers must have trained powerful lasers into the bay, either from levitating cars or from the cliff tops. As the water heated up, the mariners would have been caught in a terrible dilemma: Stay in the sea and boil, or emerge onto the sand and suffocate for lack of oxygenated water. Even with a sailor suit, the land was no real option, for anyone exposed on the shore could be roasted with lasers or blown apart by explosives.
It would only have taken a few hours. At night the Neanderthals suspended direct surveillance of the bay because in normal circumstances there was nothing to be seen, even if clouds failed to form. As it happened, last night had been cloudy, but Talitha’s records might still show some signs of the attack. It would be easy to check.
There was no point in hanging around on the beach, and the attacking force might come back at any time. He and his companions ran back toward the transpod. Later they would return, if their instruments showed that it was safe, and count the bodies. Right now it looked as if all the mariners had perished.
Once off the ground, Will summarized the disaster for those still on board the huge, ancient vessel. Even now he could not assume the transpod was safe from attack, so Talitha had to be told what it was up against, straightaway. Right now there was very little to go on.
A patchwork of bright curves, surging and reforming moment by moment, rippled across the pale sand of Crooked Atoll, playing on the grotesque outlines of coral and weed and scattering shoals of light-sensitive crustaceans, who fled beneath the shadows of the rocks until the brightest concentrations of wave-focused light had swept past their refuge.
Beneath the sand, neural connections switched on, and the reefmind awoke. The husbands in Atollside Port had passed on an ansibled report from Talitha. On this occasion the reefwives elected to divide their collective intelligence into three autonomous, intercommunicating parts. The tactic increased the mental power of each participant, but the small number of components reduced the quality of the debate and the diversity of opinion.
The mood was somber.
Sinker: It is as we feared, my sisters.
Line: No, it is worse. Look at the edge of our perception, where it trails off into mist and chaos. You see the pattern?
Hook: Compared to the bright, central clarity of the disaster on Aquifer, this ‘pattern’ of which you speak is flimsy and impossible to discern. I say there is no pattern.
Line: Then your perceptions are inadequate, sister. The pattern exists. I/we recognize it from long, long ago. Cosmic Unity is a new instance of an ancient evil, awoken again. It is a benevolent memeplex at the apex of its trajectory, rigidified by its own memetic feedback, locked in the straitjacket of its single-valued logic. It is powerful and malignant, a cosmic cancer.
Hook: We have no proof that the slaughter of our husbands on Aquifer was carried out by Cosmic Unity.
Sinker: The threat to No-Moon is the same, whoever is responsible. Share my/our vision, and you will understand.
Hook: (Reluctantly) You are perhaps right. I do see something, indistinct but full of menace. Now I feel uneasy.
Line: Affirmed.
Sinker: Emphasized.
Line: How should we respond?
Hook: Whoever killed our husbands, Cosmic Unity’s benevolent memeplex threatens our very existence. That must be our main concern. We must seek an alternative refuge, offworld. Refuges. Many. A nine, a ninesquare. Send nine ninesquares of males to each planet, not nines!
Line: Having changed your opinion, you now overreact. The more ships we dispatch, the more attention we will attract to ourselves.
Sinker: In any case, our stock of trade information is limited. We cannot afford to pay for mass evacuations of our world.
Hook: And we ourselves cannot yet leave this world, sisters, if ever. For the moment we can only send husbands and wives to rebuild our species, slowly, on another world. While we grow to maturity in a new home, our males will lack guidance and advice. And you know what they are like when we are not taking care of their best interests.
Line: Useless layabouts.
Sinker: Utterly worthless.
Hook: Alga-craving sex maniacs.
Together: Males!
Sinker: Much as we love our mates for all their adorable faults, we are becoming distracted from the main threat. The awakened evil approaches even as we debate. Its arrival cannot long be delayed. In some of my perceptions it is already here.
Line: You are too fearful, sis
ter. I/we have survived worse.
Sinker: Yes, but at what price?
Line: Whatever price it is necessary to pay. There are strategies, tactics, devices we can employ. They have succeeded before, and they will succeed again. Look, even now our vision includes their first use.
Sinker: Yes. And it seems to me that they are failing.
Line: That must be a temporary problem, I am sure. Always they have succeeded. Always.
Sinker: Except when our foremother had us conveyed to this world.
Line: That strategy succeeded. We are here.
Sinker: And our foremother died, along with Three-Moons.
Line: It was still a success. Our species survived.
Hook: Past successes do not guarantee present ones. Circumstances can change.
Line: We have no option, for only those strategies are known to us.
Sinker: Nonsense! We must invent a new strategy.
Line: Against an ancient evil? There is no philosophical match there. How can the new defeat the old?
Hook: What else can defeat the old, when the old fails?
The reefmind grew quiet as it struggled without an answer.
Servant-of-Unity XIV Samuel Godwin’sson Travers immersed himself in his work, depressed by his failure with his first client. He missed his daily sessions with Fall, even though they had driven him close to despair, and at the back of his mind he was worried about her. She was so relentlessly logical in her delusions that he could see no possible way to break down her mental barriers. But since there was nothing he could do, he busied himself with the familiar and comforting rituals of duplication and gave thanks that, for a time, his mind need not be occupied by anything more challenging.
Lists of items for duplication arrived, and he performed the necessary gestures at the machine’s metaphace. Empty boxes arrived, and full ones were taken away. His days passed without distinction; his nights were troubled only by evanescent dreams. He no longer felt stressed by the need to adapt to new tasks and to learn new skills.
And yet . . .
Now duplication was becoming boring. Was it his destiny to be bored by everything? He missed the intellectual stimulus of learning to deal with new things. He was disappointed not to meet with Fall. His ambition had grown along with his confidence; now he hoped his separation from lifesoul-healing would not last too long. He was certain that given enough time, he could have found a way to heal Fall. Already strategies were forming in his mind. It was frustrating.
Time dragged by.
One evening his instructor left word for Sam to attend him immediately in his quarters. Sam hurried through the frigid corridors of the monastery, hewn from the solid ice and mostly left unclad, so that the walls sucked the warmth out of anything that came near them. Here and there the corridors were damp, where the air temperature was high enough for the ice to melt, but such places were rare, and the dampness just made him feel even colder. He shivered, and not just with the cold. What did the querist want with him?
He would soon find out. He knocked and was bidden to enter.
“Ah, Servant Fourteen Samuel. I trust your sojourn in the duplicating chamber has improved your mental health? Yes, as I expected. You had become too emotionally involved with your young client to serve the Lifesoul-Cherisher well, Samuel.” The Veenseffer-co-Fropt waved his olfactory organ airily, as if brushing away an errant parasite, to show that the matter was of little importance. “That is only to be expected in a novice. Your persistence was admirable, even if it did border on stubbornness and obstinacy. You may yet attain the glory of Heaven, if any of us live long enough to experience that joyous transformation.
“And you are wondering why I have summoned you here. Come with me, and you will see the reason. And be pleased.”
A section of furnishings slid aside, and wall became doorway. Beyond was a well-lit corridor, and Sam followed the querist along the passageway. He had never passed this way before and didn’t know that such concealed tunnels existed—though he was unsurprised to find that they did, for there was much about the monastery of equals that he did not know. And there had to be ways for his superiors to come and go, on the business of the Community of the United Cosmos, without their inferiors observing them.
The passage widened into a ramp, which led downward in a tight spiral, coiling into the bowels of the ice dome. Pass lights glowed pinkly to illuminate the way, so that the light seemed to move with them as they descended. They passed side branches and closed doors. There were strange smells and odd little sounds as metal scraped against metal and the ice itself creaked and groaned.
They came at last to a door that differed in no obvious way from a hundred others. The instructor produced a qubit-coded crystal key; the door recognized the sequence of encoded quantum spin states, unlocked, and swung open into a darkened room, which curved in a semicircle. One wall was a transparent membrane. Cupped in the arc of the semicircle was a lighted chamber carpeted with a soft, deep pile, its walls hung with devotional weavings and decorated with scenes of the Prime Mission—a star with emergent magnetotorus herds, a dirigible satellite, a gas giant wrapped in bright stripes of cloud.
Seated cross-legged in a worship ring in the center of the chamber was Dry Leaves Fall Slowly.
Sam caught his breath. She was praying.
“How . . . ? It is a miracle . . .”
“You can speak naturally,” the instructor said. “She cannot hear us even if we shout. The membrane has been tuned to be impermeable to any sound made on this side, but to allow sound from the other side to reach us.
“Are you not proud of your client, Fourteen Samuel?”
Sam nodded, close to tears. He suddenly felt foolish that he had worried about her safety, about what might happen to her. And he realized that he still had an awful lot to learn about the healing of lifesouls.
He could not see her face, for her back was toward him. She seemed utterly calm, utterly relaxed. She was chanting a children’s prayer to the Lifesoul-Cherisher—one of his favorites—in a slightly lilting voice. There was no hesitation; she sounded word-perfect.
The prayer ended, and she began another.
“You may observe your client from any angle,” said the querist. “From the end of this room you will be able to see her face. Observe how serene she is.”
Sam followed the curve of the membrane so that the familiar features seemed to turn until they faced him. Serenity, yes, that was the word. Not a flicker of emotion passed over the Neanderthal child’s face. Beatific? Yes, there was such a word. Saintlike.
Her hair was thick and freshly washed, her skin glowed with health and vitality. She kept her head bowed and began once more to recite a prayer, the same one he had heard her saying when he first entered the room. It seemed that her repertoire was limited, but there was no questioning her devotion and her concentration.
“It’s . . . amazing,” he said, his voice trailing off as the immensity of it all hit him. “You—you succeeded.”
The querist nodded. “It was the work of many dedicated healers. With enough love, anything can be accomplished. Even the most stubborn and misguided of lifesouls can be started on the road to healing.” The instructor’s innate sense of emotions guided his words as Sam absorbed the awesome nature of the triumph. “Dry Leaves Fall Slowly was a challenge. She was far too difficult a case for a novice; we should have recognized that right at the start. We tried many techniques, some arcane, before we gained entry to the source of her delusions.”
Suddenly, without any change in her expression, Fall stopped praying and rose to her feet. Her hair swung away from her neck, and for an instant Sam saw—or thought he saw—a triangular mark on her skin. Then the hair swung back, and the mark, if there had been one, was hidden once more.
A door opened to reveal a menial; it beckoned silently, and Fall walked meekly out of the room and disappeared from view.
“Her progress is encouraging,” the querist said. “Her new, acceptable att
itudes still need regular reinforcement, but she has come to embrace the Unity of the Cosmos and the fundamental Oneness of all beings. No longer does she set herself apart from the world. And her delusions about her family no longer trouble her young mind.”
“Her pet? The grenvil? She thought it had been killed. Horribly.”
“There was no grenvil. It was a dream, an invention. It has been banished from her thoughts. Now she knows that her place is in the Community of the United Cosmos, where she will be loved as a person and cherished as a lifesoul.” The querist spread his tufts in the equivalent of a human smile—something Sam had never previously witnessed. It looked as if the serpentine alien was out of practice. Probably he was. But he seemed happy, and his translated voice held a tinge of pride.
Rightly so. Sam was overawed by the display of expertise. He would never be able to match it, he was sure. Never in a thousand years.
“You have seen her; she is well. And soon her mind will complete its healing, and her lifesoul will be whole again. But we waste precious time now she has gone. You have much duplication to perform before your training recommences.”
“Can I not restart my training now?” Sam inquired in disappointment. “With respect, master, I feel ready to return to healing. More ready than I have ever felt before.”
The instructor “smiled” again. “A worthy feeling, Samuel. But your immediate task must be the duplicator. An unexpected emergency demands that we all employ all of our skills where they can count for most.”
May had been reunited with her shipboard menagerie, and several of her pets were refusing to leave her side. We missed you. We want company. They followed her about the ship and got underfoot.
She played with a hornsnake that was curled round her wrist. It liked the warmth. There had been two, but one had disappeared into Ship’s superstructure. If it could find enough food to survive, it would give some unsuspecting sentient a surprise one day. Half a dozen furry ant-moles gamboled at her feet, chasing one another’s long, trailing hind antennae. The snake ignored them—it ate only worms.