Far Thoughts and Pale Gods

by Greg Bear

He raised his hands. “In the name of the great ground of all existence, that which is called Continuum, which breathes with the life of all potential, which creates all and sees all, in the name of the human Kammer who has survived the bonding of human and Chujoan, in the name of the Irdizu Christ called Dsimista, who tells us that all worlds shall be one, I consecrate this temple, which is well-built and square and essential. May no one who does not believe in the Ground, in Kammer, and in Dsimista enter into this place.”

  Tsmishfak found this eminently satisfactory, particularly as she only understood about a third of what Carnot had said. She echoed, in pidgin, his last commandment, stalked around the walls, then clacked her jaws to summon workers. The workers cleaned up the mud and the in spatch smelled of Irdizu, a not unpleasant smell to Carnot, though pungent.

  “Ny mer dert,” Tsmishfak promised him as they returned to the exterior. The clayed rain had let up; now there was only drizzle. Like living at the bottom of a fishbowl.

  “No more dirt, that’s fine,” Carnot said. “You’ve din guud, akkxsha hikfarinkx.”

  Tsmishfak accepted this with a slight swagger.

  Good, good, all is well.

  “Must move on now,” he said in plain English, walking to the edge of the plateau and trying to find his wife and the ship’s second officer in the crowded beach area below. “Ah. There are my people.” He nodded cordially to the solicitious Tsmishfak. “Must go.”

  “Dthang u,” Tsmishfak said. “Dum Argado.”

  She was using both English and the Japanese she had acquired.

  “You’re most welcome,” Carnot said. He felt he would die if he could not soon rest his leaden arms and relieve the weight on his back.

  Tsmishfak bounced off on spring-steel legs to her workers near the temple, swagger lessened but tentacle arms curling enthusiastically. Big lumbering thing. Something out of Bosch; fish with legs, but eyes above and below the jawline … anatomically improbable. Not easy to love them, but I do, Jesus, I do.

  Carnot found his wife by the ichthyoid pens, standing with the second officer on a wicker frame, nodding to some point of technicality being explained by a small male Irdizu. Not much call for the kind of work she was skilled in, helping poor natives feed themselves. The Irdizu did well enough at that. But scratch beneath their quiet strength and you found a well of anguish; paradise lost and set high in the sky. Connections broken with their distant relations, the Chujoans, millennia past …

  Desire to rise to heaven and be one with another race. Another species. What if his theories were correct? The rationalists would never accept that intelligent cultures—technological cultures—could rise and fall like fields of wheat coming in and out of season. Perhaps that was why they were looking for him, why he was finding it necessary—through the inner suspicion of aching instinct—to hide …

  Madeline saw his wave and gently broke off her conversation with the pen manager. It seemed eternities as they made their way back to the ship along the beach. The transport’s struts were awash with thick swells of water—no spray under these conditions, only a fine mist like smoke around the sharp rocks. They waded through the swell, more eternities, then the second officer lifted the transport from the beach, its name becoming visible as it rose to a level with him: 2T Benevolent. Second transport of the starship Benevolent.

  They touched down again near the lip of the plateau overlooking the beach, and he climbed through the door, wheezing into his respirator. “Enough,” he said. “They’ll do fine without us. Let’s move on.”

  Madeline touched him solicitously. “You’re hurting, poor dear.”

  “I’m fine,” he said, but her touch and sympathy helped. Madeline, thin small strong Madeline, so perfectly adapted to life aboard the Benevolent, could crawl into cubbies where large, lumbering Carnot could not hope to find comfort. Cramped starship, crowded with pilgrims. Madeline who had married him en route and did not share in the sexual-spiritual profligacy, even when her new husband did. Madeline of the bright intense gaze and extraordinary sympathetic intelligence; his main crutch, his main critic. He smiled upon her and she smiled back like a tough-minded little girl.

  “I’d enjoy studying their fish farming methods,” she said. “We might be able to give them benefit of our own experiences on Earth.”

  The second officer, thin black African Asian, Lin-Fa Chee by name, did not share Madeline’s interest. “They don’t farm fish, madame,” he observed. “And these people have farmed the ichthyoids for who knows how many thousands of years.”

  “Millions, perhaps,” Carnot said. “Lin-Fa is right, Madeline.”

  “Still, they need us in many ways,” Madeline said, staring through the window as the transport lifted and flew out across the oily rain-dappled sea. “They need you, Robert.” She smiled at him and he could read the unfinished message: “Why shouldn’t they need me, as well?”

  “Look,” Chee said, pointing from his pilot’s seat. “Carpet whales.”

  Carnot looked down upon the huge multi-colored leviathans with little interest. Great flat brutes. Not even Madeline would wish to help them.

  Suzy Tatsumi watched the distance lessen between the orbital shuttle and Genji. Chujo grew small as a basketball held at arm’s length, visible through the shuttle’s starboard windows. She pushed her covered plate of food—sticky rice and bonito flakes topped with thick algal paste—down the aisle between the twenty seats and sat beside Thompson, who had already eaten from a refillable paste tube.

  “Fruit yogurt,” he said, lifting the empty tube disconsolately. “Supplemented. All we brought with us.”

  “I would gladly share …” Tatsumi said, but that was forbidden. They were still not sure of all the vectors a new wineskin plague might follow, so intimate contact between those who had lived long on Chujo, partaking of its few edibles—or the transfer of food possibly grown on Chujo—was against the rules.

  The known forms of the plague had been conquered, but once Chujo’s micro-organisms had discovered how to take advantage of the ecological niche offered by humans, they had proven to be remarkably inventive. More mutations might yet occur. Casual contact had not yet shown itself to be dangerous among those protected against the plague, but even so …

  “I know how your people conquered the plague,” Philby said to her. “A remarkable piece of work. But how did Carnot and the last of his people survive?”

  Tatsumi shook her head. “We doubt they had any native ability to resist. We still do not know … They were already cured by the time our doctors went among them. But they had suffered terrible losses, on the planet and on their ship … there are only twenty of the original two hundred left alive.”

  “Could they have found the same substances you did?” Thompson asked.

  “They did not have our expertise. Nor did they equip themselves with the sophisticated biological equipment we carried … the food synthesizers, large molecule analyzers, and the computer programs to run such devices. They arrived here in a weakened state, their ship crippled. We do not know how they survived.”

  “They get along with the Irdizu,” Philby mused. “Maybe the Irdizu helped them.”

  “The Irdizu have not the biological mastery of the Chujoans,” Tatsumi said.

  “Still, there might have been a folk remedy, something serendipitous.”

  Tatsumi was not familiar with that word. Her translator quickly explained it to her: fortunate, unexpected. “Perhaps,” she said. “It was serendipitous that we found our own remedy in Chujo’s deep lake muds. An antibiotic grown by anaerobic microbes, used to defend their territories against other microbes, and not poisonous to human tissues … Most fortunate. Most unexpected. We all thought we would die.”

  Philby smiled. “Luck favors those who are prepared … Which is why all of Carnot’s people should have died. They’re as innocent as children.”

  Tatsumi raised her eyebrows. “You admire strength and their luck?”

  “What I admire has nothi
ng to do with what damage they can do here.”

  “No, indeed,” Tatsumi said, feeling dreadfully aware that she had irritated this strange man yet again. She had met Carnot only once, when the Benevolent first arrived in orbit around Genji, but she thought these two were well-matched as opponents. Determined, opinionated, they might be brothers in some strange Western tale of Cain and Abel, or East of Eden, which she had read as a girl back on Earth.

  “Do you believe Genji and Chujo are so closely connected, biologically?” Thompson asked.

  “They must be,” quiet Sheldrake said from behind them all. He had finished his yogurt without complaint or comment.

  “What mechanism would bring organisms from Chujo to Genji?” Philby challenged with professorial glee. Tatsumi had noted that these people enjoyed debating, and seemed not to understand boundaries of politeness in such discussions. She had heard them argue violently among themselves without anyone losing face or apologizing.

  “Besides the rocket balloons from Chujo …” Thompson said.

  “I don’t yet accept those as fact,” Philby said. He glanced at Tatsumi. “Your people didn’t actually see rockets … just balloons.”

  “It seems pretty certain the elder Chujo civilizations were capable of rockets,” Sheldrake said. Tatsumi was attracted by the young tenor’s calm, confident reserve. A child quickly, artificially raised to manhood in space … What strange wisdoms might he have acquired in those years? “But I was thinking of cometary activity—”

  “Rare in the Murasaki system,” Thompson noted.

  “Or even extreme volcanic events. Chujo’s ejecta might have carried spores into the upper atmosphere … and beyond.”

  “Not likely,” Philby snorted. “There’s no easy mechanism, none that doesn’t stretch credibility.”

  “Nevertheless,” Tatsumi said, enjoying the spirit of this debate, “the genetic material is very closely related in many primitive organisms on Chujo and Genji.”

  “There’s no denying that,” Philby said. “I wish your people had solved this riddle before we arrived … there’s too many other problems to take care of.”

  “You did not come here to find and solve such problems?”

  “I did,” Sheldrake said. “I’m not sure Edward did …”

  “Essence of crap profane,” Philby said, not unpleasantly.

  “What’s that?” Thompson asked. Philby was not usually so expressive.

  “Something Kammer said. He said his mouth tasted like essence of crap profane. After he expectorated red and green saliva.”

  Tatsumi wrinkled her nose despite herself. “Our biologists would love to be allowed to study him,” she said. “We might have saved lives, had we been allowed to …”

  “Nobody’s going to study him without killing a lot of Chujoans,” Philby said. “And that we will not allow.”

  A planetary consciousness … Something that united both worlds, something only vaguely felt by either the Irdizu or the Chujoans. If he could prove its existence, as one might prove the psychic link between two twins, then all of his beliefs would fall into place …

  Carnot tossed in his cylindrical bed, drifting slowly between the limits of the elastic net. He did not sleep well in microgravity, but it was important that he maintain contact with the ship’s captain, who had suffered horribly from the plague, and might even now be insane.

  When Carnot thought of what they had lost, of the price paid by two hundred and forty-five of the Benevolent’s crew, he felt a sick darkness curl inside him. Not all the faith, not all the conviction of forty years’ service to Jesus the Ground of All Being could erase his sense of loss. From here on in, his life would be a scarred, dedicated emptiness; he knew he would be little more than an efficient shell; the old Carnot had been burned out, leaving fire-hardened wood.

  He could not even find the fierce love he had once felt for his wife. He needed her; he paid her the minimum due of affection, all she seemed to require now. She, too, had been burned hollow. Sex between them was at an end. Sex had always been a kind of play, and this close to the truth, this close to the death and disfigurement of their people, no play could be allowed.

  And now to be hunted …

  He closed his eyes tighter, hoping to squeeze a tear or some other sign of his humanity between the lids, but he could not. He thought of the Earth and his young adulthood and the simple miseries that had filled him then. Had his people suffered any more than others had suffered for their faiths? Was he being pressed any harder than any other leader of peoples who believed in pattern and justice and order? These events had been enough to drain him of the pleasures of simply existing; was that the sure sign of his ultimate weakness, that he could no longer take satisfaction in serving Jesus? That he could no longer take satisfaction in having a wife, in breathing in and out, in not being hungry or in having survived that which had turned so many of his people into pain-wracked monsters?

  Now he found his one tear, and he let it roll from his left eye, a true luxury. Deep inside, a younger voice said, You’re goddamned right you’ve had it hard. Space was supposed to be clean and clear-cut, with sharp dividing lines between life and death. It wasn’t supposed to be this way, tending this ship like a leaky tub across five years, and then arriving on the inconceivably far shore and finding disease and hideous death. Not supposed to be that way at all. You’ve been pushed. Don’t expect joy when you’ve been pushed this hard; do not be so demanding as to expect joy after what you’ve experienced.

  Carnot opened his eyes and saw Captain Plaissix floating in the shadow of the hatch to his cabin. Beyond Plaissix, through the transparent blister of the central alley’s cap, Carnot saw Genji’s blue-gray surface fall perpetually beneath them. “The Japanese have sent a message,” Plaissix said. “They wish to speak directly with you.”

  Half of the Captain’s face had crumpled inward. The wineskin plague had been made up of Chujoan bacterioids particularly well-adapted to living on minerals; they had devoured much of the calcium in his bones, and in his nerves, as well.

  “All right,” Carnot said, giving up yet another attempt at sleep. He slid from the net and floated past Plaissix, who tracked him with off-center haunted eyes.

  The ship’s communications center was in a constant state of repair. George Cluny, the last remaining engineer, moved to one side to give Carnot room. The image of a young Japanese woman floated a few hands away from its normal position; Cluny shrugged in apology, best he could do with what they had. Her voice was distant but clear.

  “Carnot here.”

  “My name is Suzy Tatsumi,” the woman said. “I’ve just traveled to Chujo and back with Edward Philby. We would like to arrange a meeting between your group and his … To settle your disputes.”

  Carnot smiled. “I don’t believe we’ve met, Tatsumi-san. I’ve been working with Hiroki-san of Station Hokkaido on Genji.”

  “He has transferred his responsibilities to me.”

  Apparently the conflict between Carnot’s expedition and the rationalists was beginning to worry the Japanese. Until now, they had been content to let the two stand separate and not intervene in any disputes. Had this Tatsumi woman already been poisoned by Philby and his representatives?

  “I have no time to meet with the rationalists,” Carnot said. “They are physically stronger than we are. They would have attacked us by now, if it weren’t for their lack of offensive weapons … They cannot harm our ship in orbit.” Actually, he was not sure of that.

  “I think it would be good for you to begin speaking to each other,” Tatsumi said.

  “You have remained neutral until now,” Carnot said through tight lips. “I can only trust you will not join up with them, against us.”

  “There are many problems we can solve, Mr. Carnot. We are very far from home, and it is ridiculous to fight among ourselves, when we have faced so many common dangers.”

  “Tatsumi-san, you underestimate the depth of divisions between our kind. I have a
lready had my dialogues with Edward Philby. We know where we stand. If you will not take sides—” and damn you if you stay neutral! “—then please leave us to our histories,” he fumbled for what he wanted to say, “our destinies. For what lies ahead.”

  Tatsumi regarded his image with sad, serious eyes. “Mr. Carnot, Edward Philby has spoken with Kammer. He says that Kammer tried to kill you. If the man you consider so vital a link, if he himself believes you are wrong …”

  “Please do not argue my faith with me, Tatsumi-san. He struck me with his stick. He did not kill me.”

  Tatsumi said nothing, puzzled into silence, trying to riddle this human mystery.

  “His stick, Tatsumi-san,” Carnot said sharply, surprised they had not guessed by now. “He blessed me with his greatest gift. Because of that blow, some of my people are alive now.” He was too weary to waste his time with her any longer. “Good-bye, Tatsumi-san. If you wish to offer us help, we are not too proud to accept.”

  He ordered Cluny to cut the transmission. The engineer did so and stared at him as if awaiting more instructions. Captain Plaissix had come into the communications room and simply floated there, his deformity an accusation.

  Carnot had applied the crushed and writhing balm of a patch of Kammer’s symbiotic snug, embedded by the stick in his own skin, first upon his wife, and then upon the others. By circumstance Plaissix had been last. Surely by circumstance and not by Carnot’s own subconscious planning. Plaissix had been the most doubtful of Carnot’s revelation regarding Kammer. The one most likely to frustrate their designs, after they had come so far …

  Casual contact with the avatar was death; the Japanese had learned that much. But to arouse the avatar’s passion, and be struck by him, was to live.

  “Who is the fanatic, then?” Eiji Yoshimura asked. “And who is the aggressor?” The director of Hokkaido station rose from his stone desk, cut from Genji’s endless supply of slate, and stood by a rack of laboratory equipment. By trade Yoshimura was an agricultural biologist; he had never wished to be a politician, but deaths at the station during the plague had forced this circumstance upon him.