Glorious--A Science Fiction Novel

by Gregory Benford

  Hums, pops, skeeeees … They all braced and the pod tugged at them. Landscape swelled far below. They shot through yet another layer. She had gotten used to them fluttering past at high speed. This one lingered as they slowed. Broad, filmed with cloud. And—yes, she could see the curvature of a world, the skin of air glowing like a garment. They had sped a greater distance than that around the Earth, while making small talk with a meandering, multiarmed alien.

  Around their pod cylinder express, the sky was as gray as pewter, lands below as promising as unpolished silver. Rain turned the sky quicksilver; eels of sparkling water wriggled through an inconstant sky. Lightning flares sharpened weather’s argument.

  And here they came down—

  An inglorious thump. Not like catching the pod as it waltzed by this time. Touchdown on Honor.

  Out they went.

  SEVENTEEN

  HONOR

  Through boring corridors, down ramps—some facets of travel never changed. At least no steps, but the grav was welcome. Cliff checked, announced to their group as they marched behind Twisty, “Looks to be 0.82 grav. No more easy flying, folks.”

  Relief came: a transparent wall. Rain veiled everything. Beth gazed eagerly out at some vast white cubist structures lying like bleached, scattered bones. Reflecting, rain-pocked pools glared like highly polished mirrors. Skinny saplings stood sunk in solemn green water, like ornaments. The effect was oppressively dazzling.

  Then more corridors. Beth found her gear tugging at her. Bemor Prime’s carriers were not fond of returning to serious grav. The spidow stirred, eyes jerking—and, ah yes, his carrier had sprouted its own wheels. Three men tended to the smart beast. Beth looked away; she still didn’t like its spidery horror.

  “You tired must be from journeys,” Twisty said. “Take rest refuge here.” A sweeping hand gesture sent them to a corridor shaped from what seemed a pale rock. But as a door slid away, she blinked.

  She shook her head. “This is your … art?”

  Twisty waved many hands, as if in explanation. “We thought we could create calm yet intelligent art of your sort. Our many minds agreed, this is very human.”

  “Makes me dizzy,” she said.

  “Perhaps too challenging, then.” With a whisking motion, Twisty made the art vanish from the walls.

  It paused, plainly consulting some conversation going on in its mind—probably an electromagnetic connection to an integrated machine mind? She realized that despite the exchanges of information between Glorians and SunSeeker, they knew little about the biology and machine/mind culture of Twisty—if it was a representative Glorian at all. Twisty nodded as if to itself and then said slowly, “This perhaps better?”

  “Gah, no!” Somehow the level corridor looked like a stairwell in a blaze of eye-knocking color. “Makes me more dizzy.”

  “But you evolved from primates who used trees to advantage. This reconfigurement gives you lively patterned stairs to practice your—”

  “Look, we are big primates who dislike falling. Old species habit. Get rid of this!” Her diplomatic veneer had shed.

  She was still processing what they had just seen. The stairway looked not just garish, but real. She took a small tool and tossed it forward. It clattered and banged down the steps. It was real. The Glorians had some building tech that could reshape a flat floor into a stairwell.

  Twisty said, “Done.” In a second or two, masses shifted, colors arrayed on walls—as if a deep computational ability lay behind these apparently simple buildings. An offhand display of vast powers …

  Twisty made more waves and the color riot dissolved.

  “This then should suit. A touch of color, my advisors advise, will enliven the perspective with a sense of—”

  “Leave it,” Cliff said from behind her. “Good enough. This I won’t fall down in, at least. Looks like some damn student dorm gone crazy.”

  She shrugged at Twisty. “Lead on, O Glorian.”

  She stepped forward as cautiously as a cat on a wet floor. It held. A few more paces. There lay her tool.

  They moved forward and found a long line of dull but practical cells. Each had a broad bed with sheets, even. Beth got the team in order with short commands, since they were now teetering from fatigue. Watch schedule assigned. Comm protocols set. SunSeeker was reachable on their gear, but the connection had fraying static and patch voices. She longed for a good report/chat with Redwing. But her body had its own wisdom, and the means to enforce it.

  There was even a decent shower, warm and slick and soothing. So they did know something about humans, after all. Towels, even. She was halfway through a long warm spray when Cliff came in, too. Fun with liquids! But they tired of that soon enough, enjoyed toweling each other off, and fell with slow-motion grandeur into the springy bed. Done and done.

  EIGHTEEN

  CARNIROOS

  When she woke up, her first thought was, Twisty has a sense of humor.

  Subtle, the bastard.

  “Those crazy corridors were its way of saying, pay attention to what we show you.”

  Cliff rubbed his eyes. “Instead of what Twisty says?”

  “Um … maybe both…”

  “All that stuff about how we evolved, yesterday,” Cliff said. “What was its point?”

  “I think Twisty was indirectly pointing to how much older their civilization is. Maybe.”

  “Building this Cobweb would take—well, then the grav wave radiator…”

  She stretched, yawned. Breakfast bloomed as a savory idea. “Right. Thousands of years, as a guess.”

  “But they somehow met the Bowl before, too.”

  “So, okay, tens of thousands? Hundreds?”

  Cliff shook his head. “I fast-checked all the Glorian signals. Plenty of pointless artistic stuff—you’d be amazed what they think is beautiful—but damn little long history. They’re not giving much away.”

  Beth nodded. “Because they like indirection. Hints.”

  “Or else they’re covering up an awful lot.”

  * * *

  The team woke quickly. The team inboard systems were cohered, so Beth could summon them easily. Some groaned and snuffled, but they got out of their rooms within minutes. Cliff was last, hair spiking out as if he had been electrocuted.

  Twisty had prepared a breakfast of exotic treats: meats tasting like sweet-fried almonds; porridge like fruit; crisp, sharp breads that raked the palate with savory aftertastes. They dug in.

  “We want to go outside, get a sense of your world,” she said to Twisty. The alien turned with a many-armed flourish, and the far wall slid open on … sunlight, pure and golden, resting on a mountainous land, like a lordly hand.

  Out, onto a broad balcony. She let herself just plain revel. In the sensation of sun on skin, wind rustling her hair, crisp sweet scent on the breeze. Each moment seemed precious, diamond sharp. She had been tense, focused when they landed. Then the backfire dragons, death … But now she was literally a world away from that. On a soothing planet.

  Natural life, after years in rattling metal boxes, taking her somewhere. To here. Where I’ll live out my life and die. And maybe leave children behind to live lives of gusto. Away from rockets and routines.

  Nearby buildings seemed made of polymer spun with pale rock dust. But how had they warped so quickly into the colorful halls and stairs last night? No way to tell.

  They were perched above a sharp-edged valley. This is what the mass-thrifty Cobweb could not afford: mass. Slate gray mountains steep as the Alps, where weightless clouds and airy rain drifted over distant peaks. Rough dark stone sheets ran down the mountain flanks. White waterfalls falling from high into frowsy foaming feet.

  Earthside, the green Alpine valleys came from centuries of herders—huge lawns, cleared of forest and rock, for the benefit of cows and goats. When she had seen them, traveling with Cliff, the Alps felt strange—both safe and dangerous, domestic and wild—a pretty park that in half an hour could turn nasty and kill yo
u. John Muir’s famous description of the Sierra Nevada as gentle wilderness came to mind. This was more like a savage civilization.

  In the ice ages, the Alps had much thicker and longer-lasting glaciers than the North American Sierra Nevada, so its valleys were much steeper and deeper. The Sierra’s high, lake-filled basins were extremely rare in the Alps. Time ground them away, leaving knife-edge ridges, steep green walls, and immense gulfs of air. Aircraft buzzed through the huge spaces she could see. She turned to Twisty. “How did these mountains form?”

  “We made them,” it said. “During the Making.”

  “When you built the Cobweb? Locking your moon to the same rotation as—”

  “Not our moon. We brought it here.”

  The magnitude of this left her mouth hanging open. “From?”

  “Was closer to our star. Took a while.”

  “I would … think so,” was all she could manage.

  Cliff pointed. “See that scree, talus, boulders, bedrock? I’d like to climb that, get up into the god zone, see it all.”

  She nodded, feeling the same. Twisty said, “We have things to show you. Climbing, later.”

  There was a nearby long lake of brilliant turquoise. The sky here was eggshell blue, and in the distance the lake took on the opaque virulent blue of radiator antifreeze. This was so Earthlike, she ventured, “Twisty, did you bring us here so it would be most familiar?”

  “Yes, indeed. You primates prefer the known. It makes you less ill at ease.”

  Cliff stood before Twisty, his stance confronting. “You seem to know a lot about our evolution. What about yours?”

  Twisty seemed unfazed. “The original Glory citizens resembled brainy centipedes. Now that design is much more elaborate, much more varied.”

  “Such as you?” Cliff persisted.

  “Such as I are a recent invention.”

  “There are different kinds of smart Glorians?”

  “Of course. I gather your species has not yet proliferated?”

  Cliff shrugged. “Uh, no. We have smart other species, like whales and dolphins. Close relatives, chimpanzees.”

  “We emerged as you did, long ago.” Twisty stretched four arms out, articulating them with faint popping sounds. “Very long. Like you, we lacked any goal external to our biological nature. No gods in the sky, not anymore. We do have a narrative, though it is difficult to convey to such as you.”

  Was that a veiled insult? Hard to tell. “Narrative?”

  “A reason for our being. Somewhat like you, I suppose. We have gathered much from your arts, as sent so kindly from your ship. Human beings must have an epic, a sublime account of how the world was created and how humanity became part of it.”

  Twisty paced along the length of the deck as it spoke, concentrating—or else, it was copying a human mannerism to convey its own internal state. There was plenty of room for her team to stand, taking in the view, relaxed and chatting. On her orders, they didn’t clump around the alien, so left the talking to Beth. Besides, they were enjoying this immersion in a place so like Earth. Beth wondered idly if the Glorians in these mountains made cheese.…

  “We must have an epic?” Cliff asked. He was wearing his skeptical smile.

  “Your religious epics specifically satisfy another primal need. They confirm you are part of something greater than yourselves. We went through such a stage. It cost many lives.”

  This blithe mention somehow shocked Beth. “So you’ve gone beyond that, uh, epic story? About gods?”

  “Indeed.” Twisty gazed into the distance. “We did great damage to ourselves. Also, to our larger world you call Glory. We very nearly destroyed it, before we rewrote our epic.”

  “Destroyed?”

  “I gather from side references in your art that your world is only now recovering from vast damage done. We were similar, long ago. Though ours went further.”

  “Glory was damaged?”

  “And remains so, though somewhat mended. Also, we changed the nature of it. You will learn that in time.”

  “I’d like to visit Glory,” Beth said.

  “That may come later. We have a method of attending to visiting strangers. Please follow it.”

  Cliff again edged closer, as if he could fathom this by proximity. Twisty backed away, a clear sign of an invaded personal space. Beth stepped in, too, waving Cliff away. “Look, let’s get back to your points.”

  Twisty ceased its pacing and spread its arms in an odd way—two up, two down—that might mean indecision. “The way we achieved our epic, that tale we call”—a long, slurping sound—“unites our sense of spirituality. We invented it—there is no better word, for our epic or yours—to unite our spiritual sense and our rational minds.”

  “How?” Cliff looked bewildered.

  “Instead of cleaving off our early nature, which wanted a reason for us, we gathered together.”

  Beth was rather confused, too, but she nodded to encourage the alien. “Gathered…?”

  “We composed it from the best empirical knowledge that our science and history could provide—I would say, the Epic of our Evolution.”

  Beth moved her hands in a gesture she had noted Twisty used, palms up, fingers out, then curling back, as if urging toward her. “So…?”

  Twisty’s arms relaxed to its side. “For both of our species, culture and rituals are products, not parts, of nature. They come from social evolution. So, too, came belief in God and rituals of religion—products of social selection. They were good ideas to have.”

  Ashley Trust came over and whispered, “We want to take a hike down into the valley.”

  Beth waved him away but whispered, “Okay, have Viviane lead. Not too far. Be careful.”

  Twisty nodded, obviously of good hearing. Ashley whispered, “Thanks, we’re getting itchy, want to move.”

  “Go,” Beth said, as Twisty remarked, “You see yourselves as organisms that are survival machines, or vehicles for the genes that ride inside you. This is an overly simple view.”

  “But true, right?” Cliff asked.

  “A limited truth. Your evolved and inherited tendencies were responsible for hierarchical social organization among humans. The genetic leash dictated social truths, not mere genetic ones.”

  “You were similar?” Beth asked.

  “Oh yes. Your and our origins are as with all social intelligences we know—a narrow gateway. It begins when small groups build a nest, from which they forage for food. The nest holds their young, cared for by some staying there, while others hunt or gather.”

  Beth saw its point. “That’s true of Earth. Insects, mole rats, lower primates—”

  “So here, as well. Yet the end state yields constant tensions. Each social intelligence bears this burden. Within a group, selfish behavior does better than altruistic. But when groups compete, altruists beat bands of the selfish. Much of your history—and to tell true, of our species—shows this.”

  Cliff said, “Earthside, selfish species are loners. Who don’t get far up the ladder, to true civilization.”

  Beth frowned. “Look, if group selection worked, we’d be angelic robots.”

  “Your insects are such. Automata. We, not. Some hold the view that we are spiritual beings having physical experiences, rather than the other way around. This distinction does not matter.” Twisty gave a dismissive jerk of its triangular head, looking somewhat like a praying mantis to Beth’s eye.

  It went on, “So both your and our perpetual stresses come from the only path leading to high civilization. Group-self tensions. That is our destiny—inborn turmoil.”

  Beth grimaced. “Sad, if true.”

  “Not sad! It also gives us our creativity.” Twisty hoisted all its arms to the sky, as if in joy. Its voice rose to a higher note, too. “But enough! We should admire the moment.” It turned to the view, arms taking it all in. “From your art, I believe you admire such natural chiaroscuro as this.”

  Beth’s thin link to her inboards suppli
ed the word she didn’t know: AN EFFECT OF CONTRASTED LIGHT AND SHADOW CREATED BY LIGHT FALLING UNEVENLY OR FROM A PARTICULAR DIRECTION ON SOMETHING. “Uh, indeed.”

  They could see her team had made good time and were nearly into the green valley below. Beth and Cliff walked beside Twisty, who also made good time on its springy legs. The sky was lovely, with big cottony clouds skinning down the slopes of the nearest ridge.

  Twisty said, “I know you are thoroughly linked to smart machines, as am I. I prefer to work without them, in truth. Take this spectacle—” It waved at the fuming clouds. A beautiful, graceful mist escorted by sullen purple puffs. “The machines with their endless zeros and and ones stand in awe of these things nature does automatically—and for free, costing us nothing. They are missing the point. The universe does not compute, it is.”

  Beth vaguely recalled seeing computer runs that showed wonderful emergent computations. Often they ended up with self-similar fractal forms in which the details resemble the whole. It seemed an odd way to view the world, beyond the simple human habit of seeing all sorts of shapes in clouds—a habit of extracting meaning, wherever it might be. Especially around a distant star …

  Her comm buzzed and she saw it was Redwing. They had spoken only a few times since landfall. Redwing barked a bit, delivering questions with a palpable aura of nervous energy. She started answering, being precise, when she heard a hollow screech. Then a quick darting motion caught her eye.

  Up ahead on the right, a swarm of gray animals were bounding across the greenery. They made two lines, encircling the humans. They were fast, hardly seeming to touch the ground. She knew the motion and saw suddenly that these were like huge, gray kangaroos, tails bouncing as they stored energy for the next bound forward. In seconds, they had wrapped around her team.

  One of the big gray things, skimming the ground in one more bound, landed by a woman. It smoothly lunged forward, tail high. It hit her hard, tumbling her back. Long arms wrapped around her, claws dug in. The woman screamed, head back. It lifted her and bounded away.