Analog SFF, July-August 2009

by Dell Magazine Authors

  He was almost caught off guard when Pym narrowed his eyes, then let out a loud, hearty laugh.

  "I see that some of the angel's paint has rubbed off on your hull,” Pym said.

  "And on yours as well,” Pog replied.

  "So what is your true business with me? I trust you are not an agent of some foreign power or that blackguard who plagues the affairs of our city."

  "As I once served David Wu,” Pog said, “I now serve his spirit."

  "The spirit of an angel might be a harsh captain. Are you sure you want to sign on for such duty?"

  "I was not asked my wishes at the time. The duty was thrust upon me by a black steamwagon gang. It will not be complete until I learn who sent the gang to David Wu's household."

  "And you have come here looking for suspects. Ho, ho. I'm afraid you have sailed up a blind channel. There are no suspects here."

  Pog's shoulders sagged. He had come so far and tried so hard—and all for naught. Unless Pym was lying.

  "I am not yet convinced of that,” he said. “The evidence I have seen has led me here. There are conversations that Dr. Wu had that I was not privy to. And somewhere in those conversations I believe is the motive for his murder."

  "Our conversations were not at all incriminating,” Pym said.

  "Did they have anything to do with a text he was composing, The Secret Understandings of Bankers?"

  Pym chuckled softly. “I hardly think so. Do you know what that title means?"

  "I assume it refers to a conspiracy among the admiralty."

  "And you would be mistaken. Dr. Wu and I spoke of the ultimate end of history—for the angels and for Chamal. He said that the great lesson of the angels was nothing they could tell us directly, but the truth that their very existence revealed. That there can be an end to war, to empire, to domination and dominion."

  "I am familiar with that idea,” Pog said.

  "For that end to come, the first step must be to overthrow the tyranny of the exchange,” Pym said. The scribe's pen danced furiously. “To put an end to the social order that allows those who possess wealth to determine the conditions of life for those who do not."

  Pog tried to suppress a gasp but failed. Could such words really be coming from the lord high admiral of the city himself?

  "That is the secret understanding of bankers,” Pym said. “We understand these things. It is the fate of any chamalian of wisdom to be unable to escape such truths, once revealed. And we bankers have long since recognized this truth. Like everything else on Chamal, the exchange is impermanent. If wisdom itself is fleeting, its seed spread on the wind like chaff, how can banks be any less? The Great Wheel turns. History is the endless tale of new orders rising up and overthrowing the old. And all of us, all the bankers, all the admirals, know this."

  "And yet you continue to maintain an order that inflicts suffering on the wise and the wild."

  "Yes,” Pym said. “But no more. Not here. Not in this city. The death of an angel is too great an omen to ignore. We cannot continue. That also is one of the secret understandings of bankers."

  "No more? What do you mean?"

  "I mean that the rule of the bank and the admirals over Kar-Kar-a-Mesh are ended,” Pym said, his rheumy old eyes sparkling. “This night. Here and now. The order has already been given. The White Fleet is ready to make steam. My barge awaits at the dock. And if you go out onto the balcony, you can see the flames licking even now at the walls of the casino and the exchange."

  Pog and Albrett both rushed through the high glass doors and onto the balcony that overlooked the exchange.

  White and yellow flames danced up the walls of the casino and black smoke billowed from the roof. Hundreds of gamblers and wheelers and dancers and tellers rushed out of the exits and across the plaza, struggling to escape the inferno. Ashes fell to the ground—all that remained of the stock ownership records of the city's entire economy.

  "Are you mad?” Pog asked.

  "No, quite the opposite,” Pym said. “This is the wisest thing we could think of, under the circumstances."

  "But ... but...” Pog stammered. “But who killed Dr. Wu?"

  "I do not know,” Pym said. “But my guess is that it was the Scarlet Starflower. Kar-Kar-a-Mesh is too small a boat and has only a few oarsmen. Seek him out if you wish to solve this crime. And now I must bid you farewell. Come, my kittens, the barge sails with the tide."

  Pog stood there as Pym, the kittens, the scribe and his book, and Pym's hulking bodyguard filed through the door, leaving him spent, sagging, and empty.

  "Where to now, captain?” Albrett asked.

  Pog sighed, then said: “Back to the War College."

  * * * *

  Pog found himself plunging deeper and deeper into the abyss.

  His mind spun endlessly over the events of the last full turning of Chamal—the attack by the steamwagon gang, the escape, the long night in the watchtower, the day of marching, what little he had learned from H'ree and Pym, and the funeral pyre of the exchange in body and soul, whose bright glow painted the underside of a growing cloud of black smoke that streamed towards the sea.

  Nothing made sense. There was no purpose, no meaning, no significance. Dr. Wu's mysterious text had nothing to do with dark conspiracy, but with the shining light of chamalian wisdom. It was a wisdom that could not be denied, that spread with the force of its own truth. The ideas he had taken from Dr. Wu and planted far and wide throughout the city could not help but take root, rise from the ground, soak up the sunshine, and spread from one chamalian to another until every single wise creature in the city was caught up in their tangled vines.

  And yet—why had Dr. Wu been killed?

  Pog could not fathom the answer. The admirals were innocent. The War College was uninvolved. The Secret Understandings of Bankers was nothing but a delightful play on words by David Wu—certainly nothing that would bring about his death.

  As they approached the great black hulk of the War College, crossing the Plaza of Drowned Heroes, his despair was near its greatest depths.

  And then he heard a sweet voice calling out from the rampart at the east gate of the college: “Pogo!"

  It was Mally!

  His spirit soared suddenly.

  He ran up the steps, Albrett huffing and puffing to keep up. He ran through the maze of low walls leading to the gate. And then he stumbled to a halt at the sight of her.

  Her eyes were large and filled with joy. She still wore a bush hat propped between her long floppy ears, and the rugged uniform that suited the harsh ground of the archaeological digs in the lowlands. She wiggled her small black button of a nose at him as he sighed.

  Somewhere inside him, the heavy bands that he had wrapped around his soul in the aftermath of the steamwagon attack began to loosen.

  "But how? You were days away from here. And now you are here."

  "We flew,” Mally said. “In the air. In a flying boat, with the wind whistling around us, climbing higher and higher over the forests, up the mountains, and through the canyon. We landed in the harbor at sunset. We were going to go to the university, but everyone said it was too hard to get to because of the marchers. So we came here."

  "We?"

  "Yes, we.” It was the perennially snarling voice of Deldred, who stepped out of the shadows beneath the gate. “And just in time, from all appearances. The whole city is opening at the seams."

  Pog felt a cold wind blow through him at the sight of the smug face of the captain of the university's archaeological research department.

  "And you should see what we found,” Mally said with uncontained excitement.

  "Inside,” Pog said. “We should go inside and talk."

  They proceeded in tense silence through the dimly lit halls of the War College, winding their way back to H'ree's office.

  But once they arrived, there was no way to contain Mally's enthusiasm.

  "A full skeleton, intact, skull and spine and hands and feet,” she said. “At leas
t a quarter of a million years old. We've never had anything but fragments that went back that far. All our guesswork is over."

  "I wouldn't call it guesswork,” Deldred said. The researcher had a flat face with a short wrinkled snout, thick brows, and not much of a chin. It was face that never showed joy.

  It bothered Pog that Deldred hovered over Mally the way he did. It bothered him that Deldred never thought to be discreet about his unrequited desire. And it bothered him that he took out his frustration by imposing his authority on her and all around her in the worst possible manner.

  "I don't know what else you would call it,” Pog said, taking brief satisfaction at the way Deldred's face wrinkled in response.

  Mally looked from Pog to Deldred and smiled nervously. “And we have such good news when all you have is such terrible news."

  "Yes,” Deldred said. “I see they've killed your angel."

  "Sadly, it is true."

  "And you managed to survive."

  "True again,” Pog said.

  "That's a story I would like to hear,” Deldred said.

  "As would I."

  Pog heard both the words in English and the translated speech from an AI. He looked to the doorway to see that it framed two figures—a blue-furred hound wearing the long trench coat of the Public Vendetta and the angel Jonas Winston, a translator clipped over one ear, his white hair curling around it.

  He wondered just how long they had been standing there.

  "But first things first,” Winston said. “Tell me everything you can about this marvelous skeleton."

  * * * *

  Winston suddenly realized that all eyes in the room were turned to him. Chamalians were small creatures—Inspector Mag'Rrrruff was the tallest of them at a meter and a half—so they all had to look up slightly at him.

  It had been a rough evening. The ride through the city was much less frantic than his earlier excursion to David's villa. But he had kept a white-knuckled grip on the handrails of Mag'Rrrruff's police cruiser as they rolled slowly past the masses of chamalian workers who still filled the streets of Kar-Kar-a-Mesh. Gnawing away at him was the fear that at any moment, without warning, they could all suddenly be transformed into an angry mob that went on and on as far as the eye could see, to the far ends of the planet.

  He drew a deep breath and smiled.

  "I'm sorry,” he said. “David Wu was a friend of mine and I understand how important it is to get to the bottom of his murder. But in the grand scheme of things, that is a small concern. Before everything else, I am a scientist. A biologist. And I am here on Chamal to help uncover the secrets of its life. So please indulge me, dear, and tell me what you think you have found."

  The female with the long floppy ears turned her eyes away, looking down briefly as her toe traced a circle on the floor.

  "Please, Mally, tell us,” said the chamalian at the center of the room. It was Pog, David's houseboy, Winston realized with a start. The one that he and Mag'Rrrruff and many others had been seeking for a whole day.

  Mally described the find.

  "A female with prehensile hands and opposable digits,” she said. “The full set of tiny bones in the throat that are necessary for fully articulated speech. An upright spine. And a skull large enough to contain a brain of at least 600 grams."

  "And all in the same package?” Winston asked.

  "Complete and intact. A full fossilized skeleton."

  "What breed?” asked Pog. “What phenotype?"

  "It's hard to tell,” Mally replied. “The skull shape, the bones of the face and snout, and shape of the feet and hands suggest that it was an early form of digger. But Deldred believes it's a canine root."

  "The length of the tail is typical,” said the flat-faced chamalian who hovered over Mally like a nervous suitor.

  "Is it an isolated find?” Winston asked.

  His question was met by a tense silence. He wondered if there were things that the chamalian researchers were reluctant to share with an angel. He certainly could sympathize with them.

  The one called Deldred gestured, and Mally continued.

  "We've been excavating the site for some years. Our team was the latest to work there. Earlier teams found isolated traits in the fossil record. Grasping hands. More primitive bone arrays in the throat. Large skulls. All found separately. But this is the first skeleton that combined them all."

  "Well, I'll be damned,” Winston said. He winced and tried to stop the AI from translating his remark, but it was too late. Oh well, let the chamalians be confused for a change.

  For a few moments, he marveled silently at the intricate mystery of chamalian genetics. Each of the traits Mally described was useful in its own right. Each of the traits had survival value and the genes that produced it were replicated and passed along.

  "On Earth, evolution works on whole species at a time,” he said, looking down into Mally's dark eyes. “Each of the early hominids embodied some form of the advances that made humanity what it had become. Homo habilis, Homo egaster, Homo erectus. Each of them as a group emerged from the early African plain, made the most of their gifts, and passed them on to a new species in the fullness of time.

  "But on Chamal, evolution works on the elusive and mobile traits themselves. The mixing and matching of chamalian genes is a complicated process, a grand minuet with many changing partners, a complicated set of interference patterns, a deeply imbedded mathematical scheme. And most of all, it is a maddening combination of centripetal and centrifugal forces, bringing traits together and then dispersing them throughout the population.

  "The hands could have appeared in a number of subspecies—of phenotypes—over time and space, enabling any number of populations to compete against their neighbors in their ecosystem. The ability to communicate in complex sounds likewise. It no doubt followed the ebb and flow of the chamalian genetic tide, arising in one subspecies, then migrating to another. The same is likely even true about large brains, though I am nursing along my own theories on how the ability to organize the various evolutionary advances drives its own selective force."

  Winston looked up and around the room at each of the strange and unique creatures who were listening to him with rapt attention.

  "And then they all came together at once,” he said.

  "Wisdom, as you chamalians called it, otherwise identifiable as self-conscious intelligence, emerged from nature. And there was no turning back. You are the result of this bizarre trick of evolution: wild animals with the gift of reason. I don't know which is more amazing—the heights to which you have risen or the depth from which you have emerged."

  "Dr. Wu managed to be amazed at both simultaneously,” Pog said.

  "It's the hands,” said Deldred. He paused until all eyes had turned to him. “The hands make the tools. The tools make the brain grow. The brain holds the wisdom to make better tools. The tools are used to make the phenotype stronger. Follow the bones in the hands and you follow the track of wisdom."

  Winston was unable to read any emotion into the expressions of the chamalians in the room, but the AI was fully capable of capturing the smug arrogance of Deldred's voice—and the disdain in the words of Pog.

  "I beg to disagree."

  And for a moment, Winston felt a cold chill. That was one of David Wu's expressions, not a chamalian phrase. He had heard him use it so often, since they so often disagreed.

  "I beg to disagree,” Pog said louder. “It's not the hands—it's the voice. Speech. Words. They are what bind wisdom together. Tools get better because wise creatures talk about how they make them. The brain grows to encompass the greater world of words. The words make the world grow wise. Words have power beyond any tool. They move faster, make more happen, change more things than any tool ever made. And that is why we've had Mally search so hard for those little bones in the throat that make speech possible."

  "Brraakk! What do you know?” Deldred brayed.

  "I know what words can do,” Pog replied. “And I k
now what I have done with words."

  "And what words did they use when that skeleton walked the ground? Can you write them down for me? You can find the tools and measure them. You can dig them up and record them. Can you do science such as that on your words?"

  "No,” Pog said. “But I still know what I know."

  "Which is nothing,” Deldred said. “I don't even know why you are here. Why are you still alive?"

  Winston suddenly jerked straight up as he was reminded why he was here. And that it was time to return to that subject.

  "Why exactly?” he asked. “Why are you here? And why is David Wu dead?"

  That stopped the scientific dispute in its tracks and left everyone in stunned silence. But it only took a moment for Pog to venture a response.

  "I do not know,” he said. “I have spent almost every moment since the black steamwagon left the house trying to find the answer, and I have not. I thought it was the admiralty. But they did not send the steamwagon. I am at the end of my rope."

  "Perhaps that is because the steamwagon did not kill David Wu,” Winston said.

  "Then who did?” Pog asked.

  "I can answer that if you give me a moment. But first, I believe you have something that properly belongs to the angels."

  Pog shook his head without saying a word.

  "David's mindpad. The reason I am here is that we traced it precisely to this room. If I could have it back, please."

  Pog's shoulders sagged; he reached into his backpack and pulled out the rolled-up pad. Winston unrolled it and set it next to his own. He tapped a few commands, saw enough of what he was looking for, and turned his attention back to Pog.

  "Are you familiar with a Professor Glenn from the University of Kentucky?"

  Winston was pretty sure how to read the drop of Pog's jaw—stunned disbelief mixed with embarrassed guilt.

  "I'll assume that you are. It seems that someone other than David Wu has been using his mindpad to correspond with him. In fact, it appears someone has been engaged in a lively textwar with the professor."

  Then Pog, in English, said: “I believe I am in double-big trouble, for certain fact."