Heaven

by Ian Stewart

  As far as the reefwives were concerned, their own survival was an absolute, and they would take whatever steps were necessary to ensure it. On the other hand, they would never even think about inflicting their own way of thinking on any other species. As long as others left them alone, they were benign.

  So, even though their ways were utterly peaceful, they envisioned the appalling effects of their plague on the unwanted interlopers with unalloyed pleasure. Unfortunately, their current timechunk also showed the invaders analyzing the virus and quickly coming up with their own vaccine. So the plague would only slow them down and reduce their numbers. The pleasure, then, would be transient.

  As the defeat of the virus moved to center stage in the unfolding timechunk, the reefwives would have to fall back on alternative strategies. Simple deceptions involving Neanderthal allies. Mass attacks by hyped-up husbands. The war would escalate, with no predictable limits to its ferocity. Eventually, they were confident, they would win—but at what cost to the planet? Their collective memories proved that so far, they had never failed—but on one occasion they had been forced to evacuate their homeworld, because Three-Moons’ ecology had been unable to recover.

  And nothing would guarantee that they would win. Their confidence was high, but it might also be misplaced. Perhaps there would come a time when the enemy was too cunning. Or too lucky.

  It pained them that their males would have to bear the brunt of the fighting. The sad fate of Second-Best Sailor and his compatriots was never far from their thoughts, and they continued to make strenuous efforts to find out who had been responsible. An increasing proportion of timechunks pointed squarely to Cosmic Unity, but timechunks were subject to revision, however convincing they might seem.

  The reefwives had no doubts, however, that their forthcoming defiance of Cosmic Unity’s invading force would condemn thousands more mariners, perhaps millions, to equally nasty deaths—along with the other sentient aliens who made their home on No-Moon. When it came to war, individual organisms with individual minds were at a serious disadvantage. They were easily identified; they looked like intelligent entities.

  The reefwives looked like a coral reef. They could wage guerilla warfare, and the enemy would have no idea where it originated. Who would see a reef as a threat?

  So far, no invader had ever recognized the reefwives’ collective intelligence, and so had never tried to attack the reefwives themselves. Nonetheless, they had a strong suspicion that this time around, their own continued existence might well be on the line.

  That offered one advantage, and as far as they were aware, only one. It was amazingly good motivation.

  The Aquiferian sandskater was thirsty. Ordinarily, it could get enough moisture from the shrubs upon which it browsed, but growing an egg required more. Its flukes would have to survive for eleven years in their hideaway beneath a flat rock, and to do that they would need to be kept wet. They would float in mineral-laden water inside the egg, like miniature goldfish in a tiny glass bowl, until the egg’s internal clock decided that it was time for them to find a host. Then the rubbery shell would soften and dissolve, releasing them into the sand. The patch of dampness would attract bush scarabs, which would suck up the flukes along with the wet sand. As the scarab’s digestive system filtered out the sand for excretion, the flukes would burrow into its intestinal linings.

  At first they would steal some of the scarab’s intake of food. But as they grew, their needs would become greater, and they would begin to consume the body of their host, starting with its thick deposits of stored polysaccharides, accumulated to carry it through the colder seasons. The flukes would move on to more critical organs, until soon the scarab lay paralyzed on the desert floor and baked in the hot sun. The heat would trigger a metamorphosis in the flukes, and they would emerge from the scarab’s dried-out exoskeleton as a thousand pinprick-sized sandskaters, perfect miniatures of the adult.

  This sandskater’s midbody was about the size of a cat and covered in ugly lumps: the creature’s sensory organs, feeding parts, and reproductive attachments. It was held away from the hot desert sand by dozens of spindly legs, with tufts at their numerous joints. The creature was close to term: Its bulbous midbody was taut and bulging, inflated by the egg within. But the egg was still too dry.

  The sandskater had stolen water from Aquifer’s ponds before. One final foray, and its egg would be wet enough for burial. The animal had already selected a suitable rock, half concealed by the leeward slope of a dune. It had dug a spiraling entrance tunnel and constructed a suitable birthing chamber. All was ready. A little more water—that was all it now needed.

  The sandskater was scared. It could sense water, but it could also sense danger. The pond shimmered seductively as the wind rippled its surface, but the desert surrounding the pond was barren, apparently devoid of all life. The sandskater had already advanced several yards into this no-man’s-land, leaving behind it the relative safety of the scrub. As always, the evolutionary imperatives of reproduction were overriding those of self-preservation. Who dares, wins.

  Or loses.

  Now, frozen by fear, it had stopped. Nothing is worse than hesitation. Out here, on the bare shore, the sandskater was exposed. It might be taken by a duneglider, an awk, or any of a dozen species of aerial predators. Instinct honed by evolutionary eons compelled the sandskater to take a decision. Fast.

  It scuttled toward the pond’s edge, halting as far away as it could while still obtaining water. Anxious senses searched for danger. Nothing disturbed the crystal waters of the pond, or its mats of floating algae, but beneath its surface numerous creatures swam and played. The pond looked tranquil, harmless. The sandskater extended a long feeding tube and began to drink.

  Immediately, an amphibian’s stubby head broke the surface of the pond right where the sandskater was drinking. Without warning, it spat a thick gobbet of mucus, which hit the sandskater’s midbody full on and clung in a sticky mess. The neurotoxins in the mucus would have felled a top-of-the-food-chain predator, and had done so on many occasions; the sandskater never stood a chance. Its legs splayed, and it collapsed. Its skin split open to reveal the rounded contours of its egg.

  The carcass rested inertly at the edge of the pond, the tip of its feeding tube dangling in the water. A shoal of shrimps converged on the feeding tube and began to gnaw at it.

  Now the sand beneath the carcass began to change. It turned into a thick, runny fluid, like quicksand. Strange waves in the fluid began to nudge the sandskater’s dead body closer to the pond. It would have taken a microscope to work out what was happening. Branching fronds of algae were growing into the shore beneath the creature, pumping water into the sand. Other microorganisms were changing the viscosity of the wetted sand in a cycle, from thick to thin and back again. These changes caused the sand to form mobile ridges, pushing the carcass toward the water.

  The dead sandskater slid smoothly into the pond, with hardly a ripple. The dense shell of its water-filled egg dragged it beneath the surface.

  A million tiny threadworms began to eat their way in, through any region of soft tissue, quickly turning the animal’s interior into mush. Then the exoskeleton began to fall apart as its supporting muscles turned to shreds.

  The threadworms’ feeding frenzy was halted only when the amphibians moved in to eat the softened carcass.

  Soon all was still again. Only the egg remained, lodged in mud at the bottom of the pond. The cool ripples were ready to lure their next victim.

  While the mission fleet prepared to enforce tolerance and love on the citizens of No-Moon whether they wanted them or not, other representatives of Cosmic Unity were trying to work out the implications of an invasion in the other direction—the invasion of Aquifer by a small contingent of aliens.

  Hhoortl555mup had studied Ykzykk-Knazd’s report with unusual care. The incursion had indeed been an extreme measures circumstance, and a commendation for the patrol captain’s rapid and correct decision had been ente
red into Church archives. Privately the hierocrat disagreed with the ecclesiastical decree about extreme measures. She would have preferred a more cautious approach initially, with force held in reserve. But if she had allowed the intruders to establish a secure base, and they had then used their ansible to invite others to join them, she would have regretted her disobedience. Oh, yes.

  Extreme measures were only the first step. Now she must find out more about the intruders, decide what to do next. What had the creatures been up to? Why had they installed a forcewall across an obscure bay? To find out, she had dispatched a carload of technicians to the bay, to turn up whatever information they could while disposing of any remaining evidence of the attack. Now the car had returned, and a certain amount of light was beginning to dawn.

  “The incursion was small and localized,” said the head technician, a Baatu’unji that was far enough past its breeding peak to engage its mind on impersonal investigations.

  “This one was,” said the hierocrat sourly. “The next could be bigger. Maybe this was a trial run.” She had stationed herself in front of her Ankh of Authority, a potent symbol, and she was disappointed that the technician seemed unaffected. It was next to the console that she used to access the archives. Her fashionable fringe of lopworms writhed prettily in response to her concealed anger. They responded to temperature shifts caused by emotional stress.

  “For what, Hierocrat?” asked the Baatu’unji technician, unwisely.

  “That, you fool, is what I sent you to discover!”

  The technician blinked. “We were able to discover facts, Hierocrat. Motives are seldom preserved in physical form. On this occasion—”

  “Your expedition failed!”

  “. . . we were unable to establish any motive. But we can now identify the type of alien involved in the invasion.”

  This was news to the hierocrat. “Well, out with it.”

  From the agitated state of the hierocrat’s lopworm headpiece, the Baatu’unji could see she was in a very foul mood, and the technician shuddered inwardly. “There were nearly fifty of them, Your Eminence. All from the same species, all male. Some young; most coming to the end of their active phase, though not yet senile.”

  “Yes, yes . . . Tell me something I can use.”

  “We examined the corpses carefully. We took tissue samples and made extensive tests. The physiological damage done to them by our weaponry was extensive, but we can say with certainty that they are marine creatures, Hierocrat.”

  “I know that! They were in the sea!”

  “They could have been land animals with a degree of aquatic tolerance, Your Eminence.”

  Hierocrat Hhoortl555mup had long ago become resigned to Baatu’unji logic-chopping. “Very well, so they are marine by nature, not by inclination. What does that tell us?”

  “To be more specific, they are polypoids. Male corals. Such creatures have evolved on several hundred worlds, and it will take time to pinpoint exactly which of these worlds was the source of this . . . infestation. Assuming it was a single source, of course. But”—the technician hastened to move on to the good news—“we now know where to concentrate our efforts in identifying the aliens.”

  The hierocrat was slightly mollified. These things took time, she knew. “I trust those efforts are already being concentrated?”

  “Oh, yes. And we also . . . we know that we were not the target of the invasion. The invaders had no idea we were present on this planet. They were merely seeking a suitable aquatic environment to found a colony.”

  The hierocrat was impressed. “You managed to deduce that from dead bodies?”

  The Baatu’unji blinked again. “Oh, no. Not at all.”

  The hierocrat rippled with frustration at the obtuseness common to this species. “Then how . . .”

  “. . . do we know? Simple, Your Eminence. Two of the invaders survived the attack and were captured. One is still very weak. We have interrogated the other one, and he has told us that—”

  The technician wilted before the verbal onslaught, outright terror visible in its features. The hierocrat had not been aware that there had been any survivors. What annoyed her most was that the Baatu’unji was unable to comprehend her outrage at being told about it now.

  The polypoid needed no extra life support. It was wearing its own suit. The hierocrat recognized the make: Its golden color showed it to be a duplied copy of a Precursor original. The suit, no doubt, was what had allowed the creature to survive the onslaught; it must have fled the boiling sea and taken cover on land. Even so, it was a miracle that the creature had escaped.

  “What is its designation?” she asked the Fyx interrogator, who had replaced the Baatu’unji technician.

  “Pardon?”

  “Its name.”

  “Ah. It translates as something along the lines of ‘Inferior Aquanaut,’ Your Eminence.”

  “Eel crap!” the polypoid protested. It reconfigured its suit to lift itself upright and defend its dignity.

  “Your name is Eel Crap?”

  “No!” it said with scorn. “I’m Second-Best Sailor! I’m a mariner an’ proud of it! An’ my suit’s translator’s better’n yours, too, matey.”

  “Inferior Aquanaut? That’s what I just said,” the Fyx responded, getting the same mistranslation as before from his own unit and failing to appreciate what was happening. The hierocrat decided not to enlighten him. There was more urgent business. “As senior representative of the Church of Cosmic Unity, I will interrogate him. After that . . . I will decide when the time comes. It will depend on what is best for the Church.”

  Hhoortl555mup had been expecting resistance, but Second-Best Sailor answered all her questions without any need for persuasion. In fact, the biggest problem was to stop him talking, given that much of what he said conveyed no information whatsoever. The polypoid was a coward, she decided. Item by item, the hierocrat extracted nuggets of fact from a torrent of braggadocio.

  “Home world? We call it No-Moon, Yer Innocence, on account of ’ow it ain’t got no moon. Good name, right? Flouncin’ brilliant, it is, unlike its moon, on account of ’ow it ain’t got none, ya appreciate.”

  The hierocrat called up a planetary catalog. “There are forty-six worlds of a similar name within the civilized Galaxy,” she said. “All but two of them have no moon. Be more specific.”

  “I ain’t no spacer,” said Second-Best Sailor. “Fat Apprentice, now, ’e was interested in that kind of thing. But ’e’s dead; you zygoblasts boiled ’im when you attacked us.”

  “An error on our part. We might have learned something useful. Do you know how far away your homeworld is from here? In which direction?”

  “Nah. Like I said, I ain’t no spacer.”

  The hierocrat gestured at the technician. “This one is useless. Dispose of him as you—”

  “Now wait a minute! Give me time to think! Umm . . . the cap’n did say something about that, though. Let me put me mind to it. . . . Yes, ’e said it was years. That was it.”

  “Years are a measure of time. Do you mean light-years?”

  “Light, heavy—I dunno. ‘Light’ sounds familiar.”

  “How many light-years?”

  “’Ow many? It’s supposed to ’ave a number? Well, spike me a marlon and prick me with a jelloid! No one mentioned no number.”

  “A pity. It will take time to determine which of the forty-four moonless No-Moons you originated from. You will find it more comfortable if you can assist us in shortening that period. What kind of star did your planet orbit?”

  “Star?”

  “Sun. Your world must have had a sun.”

  “Oh, yes.”

  “What kind?”

  “Round, bright . . . I never looked at it much, bein’ underwater mostly. . . . Well, it was white, an’ it came up in the day and disappeared at night.”

  “Was there just one sun? Or more?”

  “More’n one sun? You people do live fascinatin’ lives, an’ no mistake. N
o, there was just one of it. And no moon, did I mention that?”

  The hierocrat decided to try another tack. “Why did you come here?”

  “The ’Thals brought us.”

  “Neanderthals?” That was news. A trading ship, no doubt. Was it still orbiting nearby? Such a big ship would appear in the night sky like a bright, fast-moving star. The patrol had seen nothing—ah, but the night had been cloudy. The follow-up car had not reported a ship, but in daylight, with the naked eye, that was understandable. So the ship could still be there, below the horizon, invisible to her telescopes.

  She made a mental note to order a portable telescope to be sent to lower latitudes, to see if her guess could be confirmed. If the ship was still in orbit around Aquifer, it was probably already too late. Destroying the ship was not an option—the monastery did have one spacecraft, but it was small, intended only for the emergency transportation of key personnel. It could not attack one of the giant trading ships. And the Neanderthals could slip away long before larger vessels arrived.

  She already knew what the ecclesiarchs would order her to do if there was any chance that Neanderthals had detected a presence on Aquifer. Safety would be paramount, expense irrelevant. Nevertheless, she had to find out as much as she could, and quickly. She returned her attention to the interrogation. “Why did the Neanderthals bring you here?”

  “To start a new colony,” Second-Best Sailor affirmed haughtily. “There was some kind o’ trouble on No-Moon, an’ we ’ad to evacuate. I loaned the ’Thals a bit o’ my wife,” he confided. “To keep her safe. ’Course, I kept another bit for my own use.”

  That was more like it. They could correlate this with Galactic news and information sources and narrow down the search. “What kind of trouble?”

  Second-Best Sailor’s skin went the blotchy green of futility. “I dunno much, Your Impudence. We was only told that we ’ad to get off the planet fast. Before it was overrun by some bunch arrivin’ in a fleet of spaceships . . . Religious nuts, the ’Thals said they were. Comic Nullity—something like that.”