Ascending

by James Alan Gardner

  “And yet,” I said, “Starbiter flew into the sun. She was reluctant to do so, but she obeyed me.”

  The fog above Immu’s head flared brightly and made a harsh fizzing sound. I do not think the noise was intended to be speech—it sounded as if Immu was transmitting such angry thoughts to the cloud, the translation nanites had caught fire. In a moment, however, the fizzing spittered into silence and the cloud muttered, “We never should have given the Divians living starships.”

  “It was part of their culture,” Esticus said softly. “It was what they were used to. They would have been most suspicious of ships made from inorganic parts.”

  “I know,” Immu snapped, her cloud threatening to fizz again. “We still shouldn’t have taken the risk.” She turned back to Festina and me. “The moment we gave the first Zaretts to the Divians, we surrendered control. You don’t build Zaretts, you breed them; and in the breeding process, random factors inevitably creep in. The first Zaretts we made would never go close to a sun; we designed them to have an absolute phobia against it. But in every subsequent generation, a few individuals weren’t quite as afraid as their parents. Inhibitions just don’t breed true, especially when they’re groundless. By now, half the Zaretts alive can be bullied into entering a star if you scream at them loud enough. Fortunately for us, no one ever tried it persistently.”

  “Until I came along,” I said proudly.

  Immu did not answer…but her translation mist gave another angry fizz.

  “Why did you do it?” Festina asked the Shaddill. “Why create this elaborate lie about the limitations of FTL fields?”

  “To slow you down,” Esticus said. “To disrupt your species’ development. And to make sure our own vessel was always much faster than the craft of lesser races.”

  “Surely you’ve realized by now,” Immu said, “everything we do is aimed at weakening you. We approach cultures as they start into space; we offer them technology and flawed but plausible scientific models that completely bypass certain discoveries those races would otherwise make on their own.” The cloud above Immu’s head split into two hemispheres with a slight gap between left and right. “We create a discontinuity in a species’ scientific progress,” she said. “We give them devices they don’t understand and won’t understand, because they’ve been deflected from developing the necessary scientific background.”

  “And of course,” Festina said, “you place robot agents in positions of authority to make sure the background science is never filled in.”

  “Exactly,” Immu agreed, her cloud fusing together again. “Our robot replacements control the purse-strings for almost all research in your sector. If someone begins to investigate topics we dislike, that person is diverted to a different project.” A part of her cloud spun off on its own. “When that doesn’t work—and scientists often prove difficult to sidetrack—we take steps to remove the irritant.” A strand of fog lashed out from the main ball of mist, struck the little separate piece, and pulled it back into the whole again…like a frog swallowing a fly. “The annoyingly keen scientist simply disappears, and ends up in a comfortable holding facility on this very ship: a facility you’ll soon see for yourself.”

  Festina lifted the muzzle of her stun-pistol. “Think again.”

  Immu made the raspy throat-noise. This time it definitely sounded like laughter. “You obtained that gun from our robots. Do you believe we would arm them with weapons that would affect us?”

  “You might,” Festina replied. “For all your fancy technology, you don’t seem very smart.”

  “We aren’t,” Esticus whispered. Immu gave him another hip-bump, this time making no effort to conceal it. She also made a hissing sound and clacked her mandibles in a gesture that was clearly a Shaddill short-hand for, “Shut up, you fool!”

  “Here’s what I think,” Festina said. “I think five thousand years ago, your people were science whizzes who built this ship and a lot of other fancy stuff. Somewhere along the line, you developed a way to evolve to a higher state of being—to make yourselves smart as all hell, even if you ended up looking like blobs of purple jelly.” She glanced at the liquid spurting out of the fountain. “What’s this stuff called?”

  There was a pause. The clouds over both Shaddill heads dimmed, as if they were trying to deal with some difficult concept and had to use all their power for the translation process. Finally, the mist above Esticus spoke softly: “Blood Honey,” it said.

  Immediately, both speaker clouds brightened to their usual golden luster…or perhaps a bit shinier than before, greatly pleased with themselves for devising an elegant translation of the actual Shaddill name.

  “Blood Honey,” Festina repeated. “Cute. Anyway, your people built Blood Honey fountains so you could all advance together. You carefully cleaned up the worlds where you lived, then you prepared to jelly out. The only problem was, some of you didn’t like the idea of turning into purple goop. I think it scared you shitless. So when everybody else went to bathe in the fountains, a bunch of you just turned tail. You buggered off on this ship, and you’ve been running ever since.”

  “You mean,” I said, “these Shaddill ones are cowards? All others of their kind pursued Celestial Transcendence, while these turned away in fear?” I glared at the two furry beetles with contempt. Suddenly, I understood why Esticus had called himself Tahpo: the dregs.

  “So how many of you are left?” Festina asked the beetles. “Hundreds? Thousands? Millions? Or could it be you two are the only ones who didn’t have the guts to change?”

  Immu didn’t answer—just turned her head away and lowered her gaze to the floor. Her mandibles fell still, as if she were paralyzed with shame. Finally, it was Esticus who spoke, his fog-cloud dim and drooping.

  “There were others once,” he said. “Many others. It isn’t an easy thing to contemplate changing to the Soft Form—even when you’ve been assured it will…expand your horizons.”

  He closed his eyes: great brown eyelids rolled down from his forehead. “Once upon a time, this vessel was full of Tahpo. We spoke as if we were on a grand adventure—the last of our race, a single brave ship against a hostile galaxy. A grand, most noble adventure…and we formed a plan we all agreed was necessary for our survival. We would undermine lesser races before they could become our equals. There weren’t enough of us to compete any other way; our only defense was sabotage. So we all agreed. We all…”

  Esticus’s mandibles suddenly clenched tight against each other. They squeezed for a long shuddering moment; then they fell limp and motionless. “We all agreed. But over the years—the long, long years—the others left, one by one. They found the courage to change…or perhaps it wasn’t courage but despair. Despair at what our lives had become.”

  Esticus sighed. “In a way, we’d become as lifeless and tired as the alien species we subverted. We all knew it. As the centuries passed, our comrades listened to the voices of…of those who had changed in the fountains.” He paused. “The Soft Ones speak to us now and then. Or at least they used to. I haven’t heard them in years; perhaps they’ve given up on Immu and me. But when there were more of us, the Soft Ones whispered how profound their lives had become since the transformation…and slowly the other Tahpo surrendered. We’d discover that one of our number had vanished; we’d come to this room, and the fountain would be bubbling smugly.”

  He opened his eyes and looked over at his mate. “Immu always turned off the Blood Honey and let the fountain drain…but eventually, the basin would be full again and another of us would be gone. Until…”

  Esticus’s voice trailed off.

  “You are the only two left,” Festina said. “Aren’t you?”

  “Yes,” Esticus whispered. “We are the greatest cowards of our race.”

  He closed his eyes again. The two Shaddill stood there, huddled against each other in silence.

  The Effects Of Blood Honey

  They did not hold the pose long. Immu suddenly lifted her head and glar
ed at us, her mandibles once more working furiously. “So!” she said. “Now you know how pathetic my mate and I are. No doubt you’ll have a good laugh about it…once you’re locked in our jail.”

  “I would not enjoy imprisonment,” I told her. “That would be unfair treatment…and I am fed up with cruelty at your hands. You gave me a Tired Brain! You made all my people that way! And since you first appeared above Melaquin, you have hounded me unmercifully for no good reason.”

  “There was a reason,” Esticus said. “I don’t know whether you’d consider it good…”

  He turned toward Immu with what I suspect was a pleading expression. Immu made an unpleasant grunting noise, as if she really did not wish to explain; but gazing on Esticus’s face, she relented. “When we picked up the Rhee and Macleod robots from New Earth,” Immu said, “they told us a woman had died on Melaquin four years ago.” The fog cloud above Immu’s head reshaped into an arrow pointing in my direction. “Few among your people ever die…and we thought we could use your corpse.”

  “What for?” I demanded.

  “For an experiment. To see…” Immu glanced at the fountain, its basin now nearly full. “It’s been centuries since that was last turned on. Not since our final companion changed to the Soft Form. We don’t know if the Blood Honey is still potent.”

  “Of course it is potent,” I chided. “You could discover that with a simple test.” I waved toward the basin. “I placed a mini-chili in the bowl…and behold, it has turned to jelly.”

  “Jelly is only the first part of the transformation,” Immu replied. “The easy part—breaking down a cell’s exterior to expose the DNA inside. After that, there’s a second process to convert the DNA into…something else. Something that can hold a vastly expanded consciousness.”

  “The process is complicated,” Esticus put in. “It has to maintain existing neural connections in the brain to preserve the original psyche, while adjusting selected portions of the genome in a particular sequence…” His voice cloud began to reshape itself into some sort of twisty ladder, then collapsed back into a ball. Esticus must have decided this particular visual effect was too much bother. He said with weak sheepishness, “It’s very complex.”

  “How does Oar fit into this?” Festina asked.

  “We wanted to put her body into the fountain,” Immu answered. “Using a living person would be too much of a risk; it’s been so long since the Blood Honey was tested, the League of Peoples might condemn us for endangering another sentient being. But there’d be no problem with a corpse. We’d put Oar in the fountain, then examine her afterward to see if her cells had undergone the desired transformation.” The alien glanced toward her husband. “Merely out of curiosity,” she said. “To see if the Blood Honey still worked.”

  “Yes, just to see,” Esticus agreed, gazing back at her. “A way to pass the time.”

  “But what good would Oar be?” Festina asked. “It sounds like the transformation is specific to your species. Any other species will just get broken down into purple goo, without being put back together the right way.”

  “Of course,” Immu said, as if that should be obvious to anyone. “But Oar is our species. Haven’t you figured that out by now?”

  The Stupidest Creatures In The Universe

  “I am not a villainous Shaddill!” I replied hotly. “Not even a little bit.”

  “You are,” Esticus said, his voice cloud sliding a short distance toward me. “Your genome is 99.999 percent the same as ours.”

  “The differences between you and us,” Immu said, “are no greater than the differences between your Freep and Tye-Tye companions out in the corridor. Or between female Zaretts, who are large and spherical, versus males, who are small and cloudy. External looks are insignificant compared to what’s in your chromosomes and cytoplasm. We made your race to be just like us.”

  “But I am beautiful glass! Not fur at all. And I have five fingers, without claws…and no tail or mouth attachments…”

  “All trivialities,” Immu said. Her translation mist shaped itself briefly into an approximation of me, pleasantly tall and humanoid—then the image shifted into something more squat and beetle-ish. “Inside,” she said, “you have the same organs that let you go without food for long periods of time, the same cellular structures that prevent you from aging, the same defensive systems that make you practically impossible to kill. We’ve lived more than five thousand of your years. Your people have the potential to live that long too.”

  “But it is five thousand years with Tired Brains!” I snapped. “That is another difference between you and me.”

  “It was necessary,” Esticus said. “To make sure you didn’t get too…” His golden cloud broke into a large number of thready wisps surrounding two little lumps—perhaps suggesting a horde of my people vastly outnumbering the two Shaddill.

  “We wanted children,” Esticus continued, “but the Soft Ones changed us somehow so we couldn’t…it didn’t happen naturally. They wanted to be sure we were Tahpo: the last of our kind. Lucky for us, this was originally a colony-building ship; it still had full terraforming capabilities and a supply of frozen fertilized ova. We altered the DNA in the ova just a bit to create a human-shaped race and…well. You really are like us, Oar, even if there isn’t much external resemblance.”

  I still did not think it could possibly be true; but Festina was nodding to herself. In a quiet voice, she said, “If we get out of this, Oar, I’ll show you pictures of a Chihuahua and an Irish Wolfhound—unquestionably the same species, but different as night and day. External appearance just isn’t a reliable guide to cellular composition.” She turned back to the Shaddill. “So you wanted Oar’s corpse to test the Blood Honey. Just out of curiosity. You had absolutely no thought you might take the big step.”

  Esticus turned his eyes toward Immu; she looked back at him. For a moment, they did not speak…and although they were horrid fur-beetles, the image arose in my mind of lovers from some tale of romantic misapprehension: the kind of lovers who fervently want the same thing but believe the other does not want such a thing, so they say, “No, no, I do not want that either.”

  Fools! I thought. They both wish to transform, but they fear to admit it. I could see it in their eyes—as if some deep-down Shaddillish part of me knew instinctively how to read such googly insect expressions. Perhaps Immu and Esticus had once feared the honey fountain, but now they longed for it. Even if it meant death, they wanted release…but each was holding back for the sake of the other.

  “You are both quite absurd,” I told them. “Are you not secretly eager to jellify yourselves? I believe you have been so for years. Yet you each think the other person is afraid, so you say nothing—never mentioning what you feel, for fear of upsetting your mate. Is that not the case? You have been shielding one another needlessly for five thousand years, because you are the stupidest creatures in the universe.” I pointed to the Blood Honey filling the fountain. “Please jump in now, and get out of our lives.”

  The Tahpo/Shaddill/Fuentes stared at me pop-eyed for a good five seconds; then they looked back toward each other, their mandibles moving with great slowness. Esticus whispered something—a real whisper coming out of his mouth, not the cloud above his head. Immu whispered back. In a moment, they were nose to nose, whispering, whispering…and holding each other’s hands as their great shovel-tails slid forward to entwine.

  Festina leaned toward me. “If they’ve just been holding off for the sake of each other…that’s so fucking soppy, I may puke.”

  “It is not soppy, it is merely ridiculous,” I told her. “Many creatures in the universe are ridiculous. Besides,” I continued, “these two claim to be the same species as I…and I am such a one as may soon succumb to a Tired Brain. Perhaps Shaddill brains get Tired as well, especially after five thousand years. The Shaddill may not fall dormant, but perhaps there comes a point when they do very little actual thinking.”

  “Perhaps,” Festina agreed, wat
ching Immu and Esticus whisper. “I’ll be ecstatic if they decide to go for a Blood Honey skinny-dip. Once they’re in ‘Soft Form,’ I don’t think they’ll see us as threats—the jelly-guys aren’t afraid of humans or any other species at our development level. With a bit of luck, we’ll be free to go; for that matter, they might give us this ship. Once they jelly out, they won’t need it anymore.”

  “You mean they will say, ‘Now we see the light,’ and all will be well? We will not get to punch anyone?”

  Festina tapped my jacket with one finger. “You’re an Explorer now, Oar. The ideal outcome of any Explorer mission is to walk away safely—not to kick butt, not to make your opponents cry uncle. I don’t know if there’s ever been a mission where Explorers faced alien enemies and the enemies said, ‘So sorry, we won’t bother you anymore…and by the way, take the keys to our spaceship.’ But by God, every Explorer prays for something that works out so tamely. Tameness is good. Tameness means you live another day.”

  “But they are horrendous villains!” I whispered. “They may seem like foolish beetles, but they and their kind have wreaked havoc throughout the galaxy. On my people. On your people. On the Divians and the Cashlings and all those other species the Shaddill uplifted. Long ago, Cashlings were a sensible species, but now they are vain and obnoxious: is that not a result of the Shaddill’s deeds? And Immu said they did it deliberately! They intended to make the entire Cashling race silly and ineffectual; in a spirit of utter selfishness, these harmless-looking beetles have degraded billions of creatures into jokes.”

  “You think I don’t know that?” Festina replied. “You think I don’t know how humans and everybody else have been screwed around? Hell, Oar, Homo sapiens is a travesty of what it once was; the whole damned Technocracy is lazy, stupid, and corrupt, all thanks to a bunch of fur-balls who didn’t give a fuck how much trouble they caused, so long as it let them avoid a scary decision. That infuriates me, Oar—the whole damned thing makes me livid. I want to snap the mandibles off these shitheads and stuff ’em down their rotten little throats. But I’m not in the business of vengeance; as always, I’m just trying to make the best of a crappy situation. So we grit our teeth, forget that the Tahpo have fucked over more sentient creatures than anyone else in history, and just cross our fingers the last two will remove themselves from the playing field. Once they’re gone, once everybody on our side is safe, then we’ll see if we can fix the damage these bastards have caused.”