The Hard SF Renaissance

by David G. Hartwell

  Leon was surprised. With Hunker maybe he could hold the line against Biggest. He was not fool enough to think that this one standoff would put Biggest to rest. There would be other challenges and he would have to fight them. Hunker would be a useful ally.

  He realized that he was thinking in the slow, muted logic of Ipan himself. He assumed that the pursuit of chimp status-markers was a given, the great goal of his life.

  This revelation startled him. He had known that he was diffusing into Ipan’s mind, taking control of some functions from the bottom up, seeping through the deeply buried, walnut-sized gyrus. It had not occurred to him that the chimp would diffuse into him. Were they now married to each other in an interlocked web that dispersed mind and self?

  Hunker stood beside him, eyes glaring at the other chimps, chest heaving. Ipan felt the same way, madly pinned to the moment. Leon realized that he would have to do something, break this cycle of dominance and submission which ruled Ipan at the deep, neurological level.

  He turned to Sheelah. Get out? he signed.

  No. No. Her chimp face wrinkled with anxiety.

  Leave. He waved toward the trees, pointed to her, then him.

  She spread her hands in a gesture of helplessness.

  It was infuriating. He had so much to say to her and he had to funnel it through a few hundred signs. He chippered in a high-pitched voice, trying vainly to force the chimp lips and palate to do the work of shaping words.

  It was no use. He had tried before, idly, but now he wanted to badly and none of the equipment worked. It couldn’t. Evolution had shaped brain and vocal chords in parallel. Chimps groomed, people talked.

  He turned back and realized that he had forgotten entirely about the status-setting. Biggest was glowering at him. Hunker stood guard, confused at his new leader’s sudden loss of interest in the confrontation—and to gesture at a mere fern too.

  Leon reared up as tall as he could and waved the stone. This produced the desired effect. Biggest inched back a bit and the rest of the troop edged closer. Leon made Ipan stalk forward boldly. By this time it did not take much effort, for Ipan was enjoying this enormously.

  Biggest retreated. Fems inched around Biggest and approached Ipan.

  If only I could leave him to the fems’ delights, Leon thought.

  He tried to bail out again. Nothing. The mechanism wasn’t working back at the Excursion Station. And something told him that it wasn’t going to get fixed.

  He gave the edged stone to Hunker. The chimp seemed surprised but took it. Leon hoped the symbolism of the gesture would penetrate in some fashion because he had no time left to spend on chimp politics. Hunker hefted the rock and looked at Ipan. Then he cried in a rolling, powerful voice, tones rich in joy and triumph.

  Leon was quite happy to let Hunker distract the troop. He took Sheelah by the arm and led her into the trees. No one followed.

  He was relieved. If another chimp had tagged along, it would have confirmed his suspicions. Ruben might be keeping track.

  Still, he reminded himself, absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.

  The humans came swiftly, with clatter and booms.

  He and Sheelah had been in the trees a while. At Leon’s urging they had worked their way a few klicks away from the troop. Ipan and Sheelah showed rising anxiety at being separated from their troop. His teeth chattered and eyes jerked anxiously at every suspicious movement. This was natural, for isolated chimps were far more vulnerable.

  The humans landing did not help.

  Danger, Leon signed, cupping an ear to indicate the noise of fliers landing nearby.

  Sheelah signed, Where go?

  Away.

  She shook her head vehemently. Stay here. They get us.

  They would indeed, but not in the sense she meant. Leon cut her off curtly, shaking his head. Danger. They had never intended to convey complicated ideas with their signs and now he felt bottled up, unable to tell her his suspicions.

  Leon made a knife-across-throat gesture. Sheelah frowned.

  He bent down and made Ipan take a stick. In soft loam he wrote:

  IMPERIAL INDUSTRIE AGENTS. WANT US DEAD.

  Sheelah looked dumbfounded. Kelly had probably been operating under the assumption that the failure to bail out was a temporary error. It had lasted too long for that. The landing of people in noisy, intrusive fashion confirmed his hunch. No ordinary team would disturb the animals so much. And nobody would come after them directly. They would fix the immersion apparatus, where the real problem was.

  THEY KEEP US HERE, KILL US, BLAME ON ANIMALS.

  He had better arguments to back up his case, the slow accumulation of small details in Ruben’s behavior. That, and the guess that letting them die in an “accident” while immersed in a chimp was plausible enough to escape an investigation.

  The humans went about their noisy business. They were enough, though, to make his case. Sheelah’s eyes narrowed, the big brow scowled. Where? she signed.

  He had no sign for so abstract an idea, so he scribbled with the stick, AWAY. Indeed, he had no plan.

  I’LL CHECK, she wrote in the dirt. She set off toward the noise of humans deploying on the valley floor below. To a chimp the din was a dreadful clanking irritation. Leon was not going to let her out of his sight. He followed her. She waved him back but he shook his head and stuck behind her. She gave up and let him follow.

  They stayed in bushes until they could get a view of the landing party below. A skirmish line was forming up a few hundred meters away. They were encircling the area where the troop had been. Leon squinted. Chimp eyesight was not good for distance. Humans had been hunters once, and one could tell by the eyes alone.

  He thought abstractly about the fact that nearly everybody needed eye aids by the age of forty. Either civilization was hard on eyes, or maybe humans in prehistory had not lived long enough for eye trouble to rob them of game. Either conclusion was sobering.

  The two chimps watched the humans calling to one another and in the middle of them Leon saw Ruben. That confirmed it. That, and that each man and woman carried a weapon.

  Beneath his fear he felt something strong, dark.

  Ipan trembled, watching humans, a strange awe swelling in his mind. Humans seemed impossibly tall in the shimmering distance, moving with stately, swaying elegance.

  Leon floated above the surge of emotion, fending off its powerful effects. The reverence for those distant, tall figures came out of the chimp’s dim past.

  That surprised him until he thought it over. After all, animals were reared and taught by adults much smarter and stronger. Most species were like chimps, spring-loaded by evolution to work in a dominance hierarchy. Awe was adaptive.

  When they met lofty humans with overwhelming power, able to mete out punishment and rewards—literally life and death—something like religious fervor arose in them. Dim, fuzzy, but strong.

  Atop that warm, tropical emotion floated a sense of satisfaction at simply being. His chimp was happy to be a chimp, even when seeing a being of clearly superior power and thought.

  Ironic, Leon thought. His chimp had just disproved another supposedly human earmark: their self-congratulatory distinction of being the only animal that congratulated itself.

  He jerked himself out of his abstractions. How human, to ruminate even when in mortal danger.

  CAN’T FIND US ELECTRONICALLY, he scratched in the sand.

  MAYBE RANGE IS SHORT, she wrote.

  RUBEN SABOTAGED LINK, he printed. She bit her lip, nodded.

  Go. We go, he signed.

  Sheelah nodded and they crept quickly away. Ipan was reluctant to leave the presence of the revered humans, his steps dragging.

  They used chimp modes of patrolling. He and Kelly let their chimps take over, experts at silent movement, careful of every twig. Once they had left the humans behind the chimps grew even more cautious. Chimps had few enemies but the faint scent of a single predator could change the feel of every mome
nt in the wild.

  Ipan climbed tall trees and sat for hours surveying open land ahead before venturing forth. He weighed the evidence of pungent droppings, faint prints, bent branches.

  They angled down the long slope of the valley and kept in the forest. Leon had only glanced at the big color-coded map of the area all guests received and had trouble recalling much of it. Once he recognized one of the distant, beak-shaped peaks he got his bearings. Kelly spotted a stream snaking down into the main river and that gave them further help, but still they did not know which way lay the Excursion Station. Or how far.

  That way? Leon signed, pointing over the distant ridge.

  No. That, Kelly insisted.

  Far, not.

  Why?

  The worst part of it all was that they could not talk. He could not say clearly that the technology of immersion worked best at reasonably short range, less than a hundred klicks, say. And it made sense to keep the subject chimps within easy flier distance. Certainly Ruben and the others had gotten to the troop quickly.

  Is. He persisted.

  Not. She pointed down the valley. Maybe there.

  He could only hope Kelly got the general idea. Their signs were scanty and he began to feel a broad, rising irritation. Chimps felt and sensed strongly, but they were so limited.

  Ipan expressed this by tossing limbs and stones, banging on tree trunks. It didn’t help much. The need to speak was like a pressure he could not relieve and Kelly felt it too. Sheelah chippered and grunted in frustration.

  Beneath his mind he felt the smoldering presence of Ipan. They had never been together this long before and urgency welled up between the two canted systems of mind. Their uneasy marriage was showing greater strains.

  Sit. Quiet. She did. He cupped a hand to his ear.

  Bad come?

  No. Listen—In frustration Leon pointed to Sheelah herself. Blank incomprehension in the chimp’s face. He scribbled in the dust, LEARN FROM CHIMPS. Sheelah’s mouth opened and she nodded.

  They squatted in the shelter of prickly bushes and listened to the sounds of the forest. Scurrying and murmurs came through strongly as Leon relaxed his grip on the chimp. Dust hung in slanted cathedral light, pouring down from the forest canopy in rich yellow shafts. Scents purled up from the forest floor, chemical messengers telling Ipan of potential foods, soft loam for resting, bark to be chewed. Leon gently lifted Ipan’s head to gaze across the valley at the peaks … musing … and felt a faint tremor of resonance.

  To Ipan the valley came weighted with significance beyond words. His troop had imbued it with blunt emotions, attached to clefts where a friend fell and died, where the troop found a hoard of fruits, where they met and fought two big cats. It was an intricate landscape suffused with feeling, the chimp mechanism of memory.

  Leon faintly urged Ipan to think beyond the ridgeline and felt in response a diffuse anxiety. He bore in on that kernel—and an image burst into Ipan’s mind, fringed in fear. A rectangular bulk framed against a cool sky. The Excursion Station.

  There. He pointed for Kelly.

  Ipan had simple, strong, apprehensive memories of the place. His troop had been taken there, outfitted with the implants which allowed them to be ridden, then deposited back in their territory.

  Far, Kelly signed.

  We go?

  Hard. Slow.

  No stay here. They catch.

  Kelly looked as skeptical as a chimp could look. Fight?

  Did she mean fight Ruben here? Or fight once they reached the Excursion Station? No here. There.

  Kelly frowned but accepted this. He had no real plan, only the idea that Ruben was ready for chimps out here, and might not be so prepared for them at the Station. There he and Kelly might gain the element of surprise. How, he had no idea.

  They studied each other, each trying to catch a glimmer of the other in an alien face. She stroked his earlobe, Kelly’s fond calming gesture. Sure enough, it made him tingle. But he could say so little … . The moment crystallized for him the hopelessness of their situation.

  Ruben plainly was trying to kill Leon and Kelly through Ipan and Sheelah. What would become of their own bodies? The shock of experiencing death through immersion was known to prove fatal. Their bodies would fail from neurological shock, without ever regaining consciousness.

  He saw a tear run down Sheelah’s cheek. She knew how hopeless matters were too. He swept her up in his arms and, looking at the distant mountains, was surprised to find tears in his own eyes as well.

  He had not counted on the river. Men, animals—these problems he had considered. They ventured down to the surging waters where the forest gave the nearest protection and the stream broadened, making the best place to ford.

  But the hearty river that chuckled and frothed down the valley was impossible to swim.

  Or rather, for Ipan to swim. Leon had been coaxing his chimp onward, carefully pausing when his muscles shook or when he wet himself from anxiety. Kelly was having similar trouble and it slowed them. A night spent up in high branches soothed both chimps, but now at midmorning all the stressful symptoms returned, as Ipan put one foot into the river. Cool, swift currents.

  Ipan danced back onto the narrow beach, yelping in dread.

  Go? Kelly/Sheelah signed.

  Leon calmed his chimp and they tried to get it to attempt swimming. Sheelah displayed only minor anxiety. Leon plumbed the swampy depths of Ipan’s memory and found a cluster of distress, centered around a dim remembrance of nearly drowning when a child. When Sheelah helped him he fidgeted, then bolted from the water again.

  Go! Sheelah waved long arms upstream and downstream and shook her head angrily.

  Leon guessed that she had reasonably clear chimp-memories of the river, which had no easier crossings than this. He shrugged, lifted his hands palm up.

  A big herd of gigantelope grazed nearby and some were crossing the river for better grass beyond. They tossed their great heads, as if mocking the chimps. The river was not deep, but to Ipan it was a wall. Leon, trapped by Ipan’s solid fear, seethed and could do nothing.

  Sheelah paced the shore. She huffed in frustration and looked at the sky, squinting. Her head snapped around in surprise. Leon followed her gaze. A flier was swooping down the valley, coming this way.

  Ipan beat Sheelah to the shelter of trees, but not by much. Luckily the gigantelope herd provided a distraction for the flyer. They cowered in bushes as the machine hummed overhead in a circular search pattern. Leon had to quell Ipan’s mounting apprehension by envisioning scenes of quiet and peace and food while he and Sheelah groomed each other.

  The flier finally went away. They would have to minimize their exposure on open grasslands now.

  They foraged for fruit. His mind revolved uselessly and a sour depression settled over him. He was quite neatly caught in a trap, a pawn in politics. Worse, Kelly was in it too. He was no man of action. Nor a chimp of action, either, he thought dourly.

  As he brought a few overripe bunches of fruit back to their bushes overlooking the river, he heard cracking noises. He crouched down and worked his way uphill and around the splintering sounds. Sheelah was stripping branches from the trees. When he approached she waved him on impatiently, a common chimp gesture remarkably like a human one.

  She had a dozen thick branches lined up on the ground. She went to a nearby spindly tree and peeled bark from it in long strips. The noise made Ipan uneasy. Predators would be curious at this unusual sound. He scanned the forest for danger.

  Sheelah came over to him, slapped him in the face. She wrote with a stick on the ground, RAFT.

  Leon felt particularly stupid as he pitched in. Of course. Had his chimp immersion made him more stupid? Did the effect worsen with time? Even if he got out of this, would he be the same? Many questions, no answers. He forgot about them and worked.

  They lashed branches together with bark, crude but serviceable. They found two small fallen trees and used them to anchor the edge of the raft. I, Sh
eelah pointed, and demonstrated pulling the raft.

  First, a warm-up. Ipan liked sitting on the raft in the bushes. Apparently the chimp could not see the purpose of the raft yet. Ipan stretched out on the deck of saplings and gazed up into the trees as they swished in the warm winds.

  They carried the awkward plane of branches down to the river after another mutual grooming session. The sky was filled with birds but he could see no fliers.

  They hurried. Ipan was skeptical about stepping onto the raft when it was halfway into the water, but Leon called up memories filled with warm feeling, and this calmed the quick-tripping heart he could feel knocking in the chimp veins.

  Ipan sat gingerly on the branches. Sheelah cast off.

  She pushed hard but the river swept them quickly downstream. Alarm spurted in Ipan.

  Leon made Ipan close his eyes. That slowed the breathing, but anxiety skittered across the chimp mind like heat lightning forking before a storm. The raft’s rocking motion actually helped, making Ipan concentrate on his queasy stomach. Once his eyes flew open when a floating log smacked into the raft, but the dizzying sight of water all around made him squeeze them tight immediately.

  Leon wanted to help her, but he knew from the trip-hammer beating of Ipan’s heart that panic hovered near. He could not even see how she was doing. He had to sit blind and feel her shoving the raft along.

  She panted noisily, struggling to keep it pointed against the river’s tug. Spray splashed onto him. Ipan jerked, yelped, pawed anxiously with his feet, as if to run.

  A sudden lurch. Sheelah’s grunt cut off with a gurgle and he felt the raft spin away on rising currents. A sickening spin …

  Ipan jerked clumsily to his feet. Eyes jumped open.

  Swirling water, the raft unsteady. He looked down and the branches were coming apart. Panic consumed him. Leon tried to promote soothing images but they blew away before winds of fright.

  Sheelah came paddling after the raft but it was picking up speed. Leon made Ipan gaze at the far shore but that was all he could do before the chimp started yelping and scampering on the raft, trying to find a steady place.