by Ian Stewart
The quantum computers of the overcommand adjusted the magnetotori’s propulsive forces so that no attacking vessel would fire on another. Simultaneously, every beam weapon under Oot’PurBimlin’s command discharged, at maximum power.
The trading ship disappeared. Where it had been an instant before, the mission fleet’s matter detectors showed nothing material. Only a faint smudge of radio noise, a harmless patch of nonlethal radiation, marked the Neanderthal vessel’s location.
Still converging at top speed, Cosmic Unity’s fleet plunged into the faint miasma that was all that remained of the enemy, as the overcommand plotted courses that would terminate the engagement.
The battle, if it could be called that, was over. The Neanderthals were dead. The forces of Cosmic Unity were once again triumphant, as they always were.
“Why are we still alive?” asked Second-Best Sailor. “And where’s the universe gone?” He had been told this would happen, in the brief moments when they had planned their strategy, but that wasn’t the same as believing it when you saw it.
“A talent I had no reason to reveal until now,” said Ship. “We are no longer part of the normal universe. It lies a very short distance away, in a direction that only I can perceive. The ethical threshold on board is now so high that if your lives are threatened, I am empowered to displace myself into a dimension known only to my Precursor builders. They discovered that the normal universe is merely a four-dimensional membrane floating in a surrounding twenty-dimensional space.”
“Come again?”
“Normal space is like an oil slick floating on an ocean. I am designed to exist in the oil slick, but I can access the ocean beneath, when ethical considerations permit. We have now sunk an insignificant but nonzero distance below the ocean’s surface. We are alone in a separate universe, immune from attack.”
“I’m still not quite clear on how this helps us attack the mission fleet,” said Sam.
“That is the second part of Fat Apprentice’s plan,” said Ship. Talitha could not use conventional weapons to attack the mission fleet without returning to the normal universe. Anticipating this strategic difficulty, Ship had left behind an unconventional weapon.
Oot’PurBimlin relaxed as the fleet unraveled its tight bundle of spacetime trajectories, dissolving the globe formation prior to regrouping in No-Moon orbit. The threat—if so strong a word could describe the pathetic force represented by the Neanderthal captain and his solitary ship—had been eliminated. Now, with no further distractions, the massed forces of Cosmic Unity could concentrate on the conversion of No-Moon, bringing it the virtues of tolerance and cosmic love—assuming that the planet survived the last-ditch defense action being mounted by its inhabitants, and Cosmic Unity’s own response.
For the fifth such occasion in his distinguished career, he wondered why so many otherwise sane entities insisted on being stubborn and stupid when faced with the weight of Cosmic Unity’s Memeplex. The benefits of peaceful universal coexistence were undeniable. Why, then, did they try to resist the inevitability of history?
No matter. History also taught that resistance was futile. Now all that remained was an orthodox mopping-up exerc—
Alarm signals interrupted his thoughts.
The fleet’s tame magnetotorus steeds were not responding to the reins. Their normal, sedate gait had become a galloping stampede. But—had they not been guaranteed tame by the torus tamers?
He dismissed the thought. Blame could be attached later. A more urgent question was, where were the magnetotori heading?
The archstrategist’s displays told him, and he chirped in disbelief.
Into the star?
Wild magnetotori. Grazing the star. The mating urge, triggered by a trick so underhanded that he almost had to admire . . .
He fought down rising panic, made a rapid assessment of their chances, and instructed the overcommand to release the reins.
Too late.
Deprived not only of propulsion but of power, there was only one way for the disabled mission fleet to go.
Down.
It is often said that in space there is no up or down, but this truism is false in the presence of a gravitational field. Up means contrary to the field; down means . . . down. In that fatal instant before Oot’PurBimlin had cut the reins, the fleet’s magnetotoral steeds had been stampeding straight down the local gravity gradient, into the heart of the No-Moon system’s star. The ships were doomed to follow. They had no way to kill their momentum—their power source had vanished along with their magnetic steeds.
The commanders would not even have the option of sacrificing their underlings and having themselves transibled to safety. Transibles needed gigantic quantities of power. There were auxiliary supplies, of course, to keep the overcommand and essential life support running in the event of a major power failure, but auxiliary power would be far too feeble to run a transible.
Talitha had reemerged from its refuge among the hidden dimensions, having judged it safe to do so, and the huge window of its gallery showed the damage that its weapon had inflicted.
“They’re fallin’ into the flouncin’ sun!” said Second-Best Sailor in awe. “Fat Apprentice—your plan worked!” He spoke as one whose plans never functioned entirely as intended, which was one of several reasons why he was named Second-Best Sailor.
“What else did you expect?” asked Will. “At the moment of our disappearance from the normal universe, Ship released the mating pheromone. We all knew what would happen after that.”
“We knew what we all thought should happen,” May contradicted. “Fortunately, Fat Apprentice was right.” The pheromone had been a standing pattern of radio waves, the one that magnetotori used to attract mates. Magnetotori reproduced by fusion—physical, not nuclear—which rendered them unstable, so that they split into many smaller tori, which subsequently grew to adult size. Cosmic Unity’s quasi-living engines had been primed for mating by the radio-pheromone, and they had bolted, attracted by the herds of nomadic magnetotori grazing in the sun. “The pheromone convinced the tame magnetotori that the wild herd was sexually receptive,” May concluded.
“If it wasn’t,” said Will, “the herders will have cause for complaint. Let us hope that the herd was—”
“In heat,” said Second-Best Sailor, and failed to conceal his amusement.
They stared at Talitha’s gallery window, through which a disorganized rabble of once-tame magnetotori hightailed it for the grainy photosphere of the nearby star. There was none of the calm and majesty of the nomadic magnetotorus herds. This was a sex-crazed mob.
“How long?” asked Second-Best Sailor.
“The tori or the ships?”
“Both.”
Will asked Ship to estimate trajectories. “About fifty-two hours for the tori, seventeen days for the ships. But the ships will burn up long before that—in about eleven days’ time, Ship informs me.”
There was silence as the horrible fate that waited Cosmic Unity’s Mission Fleet sank in.
“Serves the zygoblasts right,” said Second-Best Sailor. “I’ll squirt no glands for ’em after what they did to Short Apprentice and all the other guys.”
“Revenge is a dangerous motive,” said May as her sense of empathy tugged her in two contradictory directions. “But in this case, there is a greater danger: the evil of Cosmic Unity itself. A rogue religion, a perversion of its own fundamental beliefs. Vengeance or not, their deaths are fully justified.”
“No,” said Sam.
“You cannot be serious,” Will asserted for the dozenth time. They had gathered on the beach, and Second-Best Sailor was trailing a tentacle in the pond so that it could follow the discussion. But Will’s attention was on Sam, and the big Neanderthal was furious. “Cosmic Unity’s invasion fleet has devastated large tracts of No-Moon and killed polypoids in their millions! Half the landmass is aflame, the seas are toxic, and the reefwives are close to death! The very ocean floor has been ripped asunder, becoming a wast
eland of seething volcanic vents and fissures!
“No-Moon is dying, Fourteen Samuel! And it is but one of thousands, tens of thousands, of worlds that have been unfortunate enough to attract the attentions of Cosmic Unity.” Will’s fists clenched as he fought to restrain himself from physical violence. “Unless this madness is stopped, there will be thousands more.”
“Will is right, Sam,” said Stun, feeling how close Talitha’s captain was to berserk rage. “Their Church has condemned billions of sentient beings to the living hell that they call Heaven. Their religious perversion has caused incalculable harm. Incalculable.” Her blue eyes flashed, daring anyone to contradict her.
“So, after all that, you want to save them?” Will snarled in disgust. “You’re mad, Sam. Stark, staring mad.”
If only it were that easy, Sam thought. It would be simpler if I were mad. “They will be told to destroy their weapons and abandon their ships. I am sure that Ship can monitor the entire process to make sure there are no tricks. They can be brought on board and confined in one of the holds. Then Ship can tow the empty vessels to a safe orbit,” he said tiredly. “They will pose no further threat.”
“I am not disputing that it can be done,” said Will. “I am disputing whether it is wise.”
“I am not sure whether it is wise,” Sam replied. “But I know that it must be done.”
ASK HIM WHY, the pond told Second-Best Sailor. NO ONE HAS YET THOUGHT TO ASK HIS REASON. THEY ARE TOO ANGRY.
The polypoid complied. “Sam, it’s an evil religion what turns people wicked. Why d’ya want to save ’em?”
“Because it’s an evil religion that turns people wicked,” said Sam. “To combat it, we must be different from them. We must show them mercy. Tolerance. Love. All the things that Cosmic Unity preached but never did. We must restore our lifesouls to the path of peace. Not Cosmic Unity’s peace of universal enslavement to the trap of uniformity—true peace.”
“But . . .”
“‘We should not reject the good because it has been attempted badly,’” Sam quoted from the Conversations with Huff Elder. “I have been contemplating the Memeplex, which previously I denounced as evil, and I’m now convinced that I misunderstood. There’s nothing wrong with its intentions. What’s wrong is how they have been manifested.”
“You are still infected by Church ‘logic,’” protested Stun. “You are just saying that because of your training as a lifesoul-healer. You yourself called Cosmic Unity evil. You vowed to destroy it; I heard you!”
“What better way to destroy the perversion that calls itself Cosmic Unity,” said Sam, “than to heal its defective Memeplex? I said there is nothing wrong with the intentions of the Memeplex, not that there is nothing wrong with the Memeplex itself.”
“Fire,” said May. “Frying pan.” Wondering what the archaic words meant. But they all knew what the proverb meant.
“No,” Sam insisted. “We must make the attempt. Do you not agree that ‘All sentient creatures should live together in harmony,’ as it is recorded in the Archives of Moish? Ignore the source. Do you not agree? The alternative is interstellar war.”
“Which is what we have just fought,” said Will. “And won. Now you want us to volunteer to become the losers, just to make the real losers feel better.”
“There are no winners in war,” said Sam. “Remember, I have trained as a lifesoul-healer. I know.”
“You also trained as a torturer, Fourteen Samuel,” Second-Best Sailor pointed out.
Sam nodded. A tear trickled down his cheek, and he wiped it away. “I did,” he admitted. “And I now see my error. Not in the central content of the Memeplex, but in the methods used to propagate it. Tolerance is not something that can be enforced. And love should not be imposed, or limited, according to quotas.”
Will’s fists clenched. “So we demonstrate our universal love by pulling Cosmic Unity’s irons out of the fire? And then you think that they will be so grateful that they will change their wicked ways?”
“Cosmic Unity is already changing from within,” said Sam. “All over this spiral arm of the Galaxy, Heavens are being depopulated as fast as the servomechs can run their incorporators and find suitable habitats for the newly incorporated. Without Heavens to hide people away and distract them, the Church will naturally become sociologically unstable and come to pieces. The ecclesiarchs will lose their power. The Memeplex is already redefining itself.”
THE GALACTIC MIND IS THINKING A NEW THOUGHT.
Yes, thought Second-Best Sailor. But they ain’t ready to believe that, matey. Let’s keep it to ourselves, huh?
“You do realize,” said Sam, his voice quiet but determined, “that this is a pivotal moment in Galactic history? If you choose the path of empathy, you could start a whole new religion.”
Will rolled the idea around in his mind. “Yes,” he said sourly. “Despite which, I reluctantly concede that we should rescue our enemies. Before they come to any further harm.”
Consensus.
16
AT HOME IN THE GALAXY
Every opening is an ending
Every ending is a beginning
Every beginning is a closure
Every closure is an opening
Koans of the Cuckoo
Second-Best Sailor was still getting used to his new boat.
Ship. I am a ship.
He apologized mentally to the vessel now under his command.
In place of a keel, the ship had extradimensional displacement. In place of a sail, it had a string of tame magnetotori.
It had hydrive, too, but that was boring. Even the ultrafast kind.
The mariner’s new ship was mostly filled with water from No-Moon’s ocean, detoxified and restocked with No-Moonian flora and fauna from the seawater that Talitha had used to transport him and his companions to Aquifer. Short Apprentice swam in that water. It had been taken from the eastern equatorial ocean; he could still taste the runoff from the Dune Continent, the spicy tang of chlorocarbonates and bacterial peptides . . .
Checking the time, Second-Best Sailor told the ship to head back to Aquifer. He had an important appointment to keep.
His friend the pond was on board, in its own compartment. Without a pond, the hydrive would have been as limited as Talitha’s had been when he’d first sailed in it. But the pond wanted to be on board, anyway. It wanted to see the Galaxy.
All of it.
Close up.
The ship had a place for the mariner to keep his wifepiece, of course. Not the one that the Neanderthals had returned to him; she was needed elsewhere. No, Second-Best Sailor now had the pleasure of a new piece of a new wife, salvaged from the death throes of the reefmind. She was sterile, but no matter.
The boat—
Ship.
The ship had formerly been a Cosmic Unity monk carrier, a peripheral part of the No-Moon mission fleet, saved like the rest from a fiery death in the nuclear inferno of Lambda Coelacanthi. After Cosmic Unity’s fleet had surrendered, leaving its ships empty, and Talitha had towed them into a safe orbit, Second-Best Sailor had cannily claimed salvage rights on one of them. Talitha had cross- infected it with her own brand of advanced Precursor technology. Sam’s decision to save the Church fleet had been so ethical that some of the credit had rubbed off on the polypoid—enough to equip him with one of the most impressive ships in existence. Now Second-Best Sailor sailed the Galaxy’s spiral arms instead of No-Moon’s seas. He still traded simulations, but he’d cut out the Neanderthal middlemen.
The Neanderthals didn’t mind. They now had a new role, one to which their empathic sense was ideally suited. Sam had started a new religion. He hadn’t intended to, but it had happened anyway. It called itself Universal Harmony, which to his mind was much too close to Cosmic Unity. He had no choice there, either. His followers had invented the name, not he.
The Neanderthals’ role was to stop the new religion from getting out of hand. Whenever a large group of sentients became too harmonious
, and community was in danger of sliding into enforced conformity, the Neanderthal “priesthood” was there to sow the seeds of discord. It amused them that their total absence of any sense of the spiritual uniquely qualified them to be priests. A thought like that could almost make you religious.
It was all a case of checks and balances. Yang and Yin. Giver and Stealer. As the pond repeatedly told anyone who would dip in a translator attached to the newly developed chemolingual: A HEALTHY GALAXY IS FOREVER POISED ON THE EDGE OF CHAOS, TRANSFIXED BETWEEN THE STERILE WASTELAND OF ORDER AND THE MAD WILDERNESS OF RAMPANT ENTROPY. LIFE IS NOT SOLELY A GALACTIC DISEASE. IT CAN BE PARASITIC OR SYMBIOTIC. WE MUST SEEK A SYMBIOSIS WITH OUR GALAXY. FOLLOW ME AND I WILL SHOW YOU THE WAY. It talked like that a lot and had gained a growing reputation as an eccentric philosopoet. In its way of carving up reality, this Galaxy was returning rapidly to health, as the revisionist, Samuellian heresy (now orthodoxy) of genuine tolerance spread its new memeplex like contagion.
Which it was.
A COSMIC IMMUNE SYSTEM IS HEALING THE GALAXY, the pond insisted. YOU ARE WITNESSING THE MECHANISM OF ITS THOUGHTS.
The others weren’t so certain. The pond was prejudiced. It and the Galaxy were ecologies, not organisms.
Yet, every organism was an ecology. Every cell of Sam’s body, for example, had evolved from an ancient symbiosis of bacteria, archaea, and other microorganisms, which had grown so interdependent that they had united into a new kind of autocatalytic system, the eukaryote cell.
And every ecology was an organism . . . the old Lovelockian image of Gaia the earth goddess. So there was much room for argument, which made the Neanderthal priests’ task far easier and more enjoyable.