Ashley said to himself, “Kinda full of himself, isn’t he?” He laughed. “Big bad bird. Nothing left to do but wait.”
* * *
Twisto gestured with all hands in a grand, sweeping way and said in a wintry tone, “Welcome to our elfin grot, m’lady.”
Viviane had noticed that the spindly alien could delve into the English language and fetch forth archaic expressions with startling ease. This latest copy of the Twist variety had done its homework. Twisto was smart but not that smart. No doubt the ever-attentive, self-learning electromagnetic web throbbed everywhere in these living spaceships. It had processed the vast library of Earthly culture, learned languages, history, and much else, and now had it at its alien fingertips. But the huge, moist, and mossy ball he introduced was another sort of smart.
A dispersed intelligence, Twisto had said. It had evolved from a slime mold that captured forests and swamps. Stresses in environment and competition with animal species had forced evolution to make it smarter. It now commanded enormous volumes of living spaceships. And thought about long, slow problems. Issues of physics and philosophy, of biospheres and weathers and worlds.
“How do we talk to it?” Redwing hung in the zero-grav air and studied the giant ball that oozed a sort of amber sap.
“It will speak through me.” Twisto shook himself, spine straightening. He shifted to a more brassy, sharp tone as he said, “Welcome. I have studied your species from my mesh throughout what you term the Cobweb. I prefer to dwell here, naturally. My threads do not like to bear weight.”
Viviane said, “You can’t move either.”
“We do not attempt the acoustic or acrobatic. We are a unity of countless strands extending over many light-seconds.”
Maybe try a compliment, she thought. “You speak well through your agent Twisto here.”
“True. Or so we hope. But even that is difficult in your primitive tongue.”
“What’s Twisto’s?”
From Twisto came a string of sounds like an echoing metalworking shop.
Redwing nodded. “Okay, a bunch of scrambled jumble.”
Twisto said slowly, metallically, “Consider yours. ‘Through the rough cough and hiccough, plough them through.’ I quote from one of your instruction texts. All those sounds are spelled the same, so that ugh is an omni-term. This is a primitive error.”
“Yeah, ugh indeed. Look, skip the linguistics. So the fungoid sphere doesn’t like acoustics. Let’s move on.”
She looked carefully at the goops, gunks, slimes, and secretions that trickled over the enormous fungal sphere. No sign of how this thing worked and lived. Maybe it just hung in the air and thought, no awareness of body, all mind?
Twisto showed no expression, just a blank stare as flat, tenor words came out of its mouth. “Your ancient Montaigne once said congenially, ‘The most fruitful and natural play of the mind is conversation,’ so I attempt that.”
“Good, yes,” Redwing said warily.
“Though perhaps instead of my physical self, a mere center of focus for me, you would prefer that ‘I should have been a pair of ragged claws / scuttling across the floors of silent seas’?”
She knew this was some reference and the Fungoid Sphere, as she thought to name it, was playing language games to show off. To distract them?
Yes—the fine translucent tendrils drifting through the spongy wet air had a coherent destination—them.
“I wish you’d stop that,” she said sharp and fast.
The slim, nearly transparent threads stopped, hanging in the fragrant air like a spherical halo meters away from them.
Twisto said, “It wishes to inspect you better.”
“I call a timeout here. No more with those little filaments closing in, see? We two want to talk.”
Twisto’s face worked into shapes no human’s would. Then he nodded and turned toward the enormous glistening sphere, as if to commune with it. Maybe he was.
Viviane whispered to Redwing, “Look, a fungus resembles a computer net. I learned that from shiplore, back aboard. We’re talking to the whole system, not just this slimy ball.”
Redwing fanned the now musky air with his arms, getting nearer and whispering, too. “You knew to look that up?”
“Twisto was using terms like that early on. So I just did background search on his words, using the Omnilect.”
“It—this thing—wanted us to come close for some reason.”
“Sure. Works better at short range, maybe. A fungal system, it’s organic. Comes through enzymes, nutrients, chem neuro. Different method, so different mind, I guess.”
“Seems that Earthside, fungal nets have data filters and decision trees. Doesn’t have to be self-aware. Intelligence comes not from logic diagrams or such. Continuous chemical give-and-take does the thinking job. So in a smart forest, every element adds in, something like thinking.”
Redwing grimaced. “Hard to believe even this Cobweb could cook up an organic … well, computer.”
“More like a spread-out mind,” Viviane said. “I learned way back in college that the largest living thing on Earth isn’t the California redwood or blue whales. It’s the fungus that underlies millions of acres of the Amazon rain forest. A big plant you never see. It’s a network of mycelia wedding tendrils and mold, expressed in fruiting bodies humans like—mushrooms.”
“So they’re food, so what?”
“Lots more than that. I had the Omnilect dig into the biology. Earthside, gigantic networks of nodes and shoots covering many acres formed the info-stream that infiltrated trees and shrubs. The network manages whole ecosystems, all the better for the livelihood of the fungal habitat.”
Redwing eyed the enormous ball now turning a bit greenish like a tumor growing from the living wall. “So they could…”
“Control animals, too? Sure.” Viviane smiled, knowing the next bit would gross him out. “There was a fungus that took control of the brains of ants. It forced them up onto leaves, where they bit in and couldn’t let go. The fungus then used their bodies as fuel, so it burst spores out of the ant heads, into the air. But it kept the ants alive during it all, while the spores grew.”
Redwing grimaced.
Twisto came forward, his voice now more rasping, a sign of … trying to control tone? “Worry not. We will not invade you now. We will throughout this negotiation respect your autonomy. For species such as you, we acknowledge that this is of primary importance.”
“Good,” Viviane said. Despite the radiance drenching this huge volume, and the many beasts coasting blithely through, she felt something brooding, surreal, and creepy about all this. “It is a bit odd, speaking to a plant system,” she said with strained humor.
Twisto said, “No, we are another phylum within another kingdom, as your biology has it—neither plant nor animal. Intelligence can arise in many guises.”
“We humans have already met quite a few,” Redwing said in a clipped tone.
“We fathom such. Like many here, you are animals, designed by natural selection for reproducing, not for understanding black holes or protein-folding.”
“Implying what?” Viviane shot back.
“That other forms of intelligence have different … styles.”
“I don’t understand,” Redwing said slowly, “how you, spread among many distant living places, maybe the whole Cobweb—how do you retain an intact consciousness?”
Twisto said with a flat tone this time, “We have a different mode of attentions.”
“But you’re conscious. Is that a useful illusion, a kind of theater of mind?”
Twisto actually laughed, more like a dog barking, head tipped back. “If the conscious self is an illusion—who is it that’s being fooled? To repeat our lesson.”
Viviane chuckled. Somehow humor worked well amid this vast succulent cornucopia of life.
Twisto added, “Animals such as you, with styles of embodiment that use minds divided as conscious and not, can live like a happy, singing blind man
dancing on a roof.”
Redwing said, “Look, I admit—humans aren’t naturally peaceful. We’re biologically hierarchical and territorial. Only abundance, a monoculture, and intense indoctrination have kept us so peaceful for so long.”
Twisto shrugged. “Your wars are your own problems, small on the scale of a biosphere. The mass extinctions you carried out—over the last few of your centuries, driven by what you term your Age of Appetite—that is the sin we least forgive your species for. Such erasure is forever.”
Viviane said in as soft a tone as she could manage, “We’re doing better. We’re curious, the chimp that got out of Africa.”
Twisto raised his eyebrows, making something like arches, managing to look skeptical. Plainly he was awkwardly trying out facial expressions. “Humanity learned to cooperate, and came to overpower your luscious globe, through the invention of three great fictions: religion, nations, and money.”
“Religion is a fiction?”
“We do what your gods would do, if such gods had a backbone.”
Redwing laughed at this. “Touché!”
“I see. That is from another of your confusing tongues.”
Viviane was distracted. Nearby, leathery wings unfurled in whirring sheets. A flock hummed with tenor intensity as sleek bodies like dolphins sped by, barking out conversations. Yet these fishy shapes had arms, too, ending in wide-spreading fingers. Some ended in sharp claws.
This is quite a show, she thought. While Twisto bats around philosophy and gibes. Ummm …
She saw an approaching transparent ellipsoidal vault. It coasted lazily on the persistent moist breeze, angling along the axis of the great volume. Inside it an army of clacking spiders were working on oval objects with mechanical fervor—all motion and method, intent. The air inside the large ellipsoid streamed with vapor-rich fog and rippling small clouds. She saw coasting over the workers some gorgeous winged spiders, colored like parrots with feathers, flexing a leg span of meters. Supervisors? They looked deadly. Some laborers turned to stare at the humans, evidently interested, then went back to work. The big blue and gold spiders watched her carefully as the vault drifted by. She felt a chill of fear but kept it out of her face.
She had missed some of the talk as the Fungoid Sphere spoke through Twisto, who said, “The animal mind never forgets a hurt; and humans are fretful, thoughtful animals.”
Redwing said back, “We’re not just animals. We have computer intelligences—the Artilects, we call them.”
Twisto paused, as if consulting with the Fungoid. “We employ such servants and savants, true. But we do not construct them to have the full range of our many minds. We know something you do not—that minds are like species, tailored by both time and experience, through selection. So we do not fit such minds to be like ours. This is as do you, I believe.”
“Minds like species?” Viviane shook her head.
Twisto turned to her in the moist, fragrant air. “It is a metaphor. You primates think with them. What gave you Homo sapiens”—Twisto raised an eyebrow; he was learning about irony’s lesser side, sarcasm—“quite an edge over all other animals. What turned you into the masters of your planetary system around one star was not your individual rationality, but your unparalleled ability to think together in large groups. Then you made groups of similar minds, though lesser ones. Your own crew member, Beth, has so remarked. You are seekers of company.”
“An odd way of looking at us,” Viviane said. “Social animals seek close contact.”
“But of course! You can perhaps understand that we now seek to speak with groups of similar minds, though greater ones. We aspire to not mere companionship, but ascension to greater realms of mind.”
Redwing said, “How?”
“Our gravitational wave transmitter asks questions of minds that do not prefer the electromagnetic spectrum.”
“You spend a lot of effort just building that black hole system we went by,” Viviane said.
“We seek selective conversations.”
“With who?”
“More likely, with what. Those societies that can confront the deeper issues and threats in our universe.”
“Such as?” Viviane asked.
“Experiments that can undermine space-time itself, for example. Anything you don’t understand is dangerous until you do understand it.”
“Look,” Viviane said, “I admit, it’s in human nature to constantly cast every aspect of the universe into terms that make sense as interactions among humans. You do that, too! But you have more experience, so you can think at other levels?”
“We work in what we term areas of Absolute Eternal Interest.”
“And you dislike our trying to horn in on your talking circle?”
Twisto waved all his hands in an agitated flurry. “We did indeed fire a burst of gravitation wave turbulence as your tiny ship ventured into our transmitter at close range.”
“That injured one of ours,” Redwing said.
“A warning shot.”
Viviane recalled that Cliff had been hurt badly. That was before she was up from cryosleep, but he had barely come through, thanks to some quick medical work of Beth’s. “We were just exploring. Sniffing around. We primates are like that.”
“I fathom that. Our fear is that this may disrupt our currently running fast conversation on the instability of our universe itself.”
“What does that mean?”
“Within our shared galaxy, experiments are in progress. To stress space-time and determine its quantum levels.”
Redwing looked alarmed. Viviane had no idea what Twisto meant, and Redwing was saying something but she ignored that. Her alarm bells were ringing.
Why? In the dizzying activity, she could barely keep up with it all. Larger animals shot by her, some big enough to swat her with a single flipper or snap her in two with a beak, moving in a blur, cawing and singing and barking—but all ignored her. A fever pitch resounded through the noisy mob. So much life. So huge.
Hovering nearby was a mist of mycelia, transparent fibers dancing in the glowing lights. She tracked them, hard to see, but drawing nearer. They shimmered in quicksilver veils against proliferating vine-tangles. Behind them were floating pods so good at sucking up photons that even under this light, streaming from distant walls and designed to mimic a sun, they presented nothing but black silhouettes.
And here they came. She tried to bat them away, but they were cloying. And everywhere. She felt a numbing of her inboard electrical suit systems, as if they had gone mute.
“What’s going on?” Redwing demanded.
“We wish to momentarily know you better.”
“But this—”
“Before further discussions can proceed in full.”
“I—”
The shimmer closed in on her. The Fungoid Sphere would have her, yes.
THIRTY-THREE
METHANERS
I’ve handcuffed lightning, thrown thunder in jail!
—CASSIUS CLAY
Beth eyed this strange slice of a shadowy spherical shell. She realized it had secrets in its rolling hills and slab walls. Her team had traveled with the odd, lumbering Triangler, ushered along by their Twister companion and Anarok, until a sheer cliff wall rose to their left and flickered with glowing lights. The team stood and watched a huge realm beyond a stony shelf that flickered and went transparent.
“We felt this was the best way to reveal who truly lives below,” Twister said with arm waves that conveyed solemn importance. They approached a huge wall that suddenly went opaque, then clear again. Beyond was a cloudy place. Twister said, “This is the realm of the methane breathers. They are our ancient allies.”
In this big dark space, constellations of lights scattered in smears across the volume. Strange lumpy things moved within it.
Beth peered with the rest of them, trying to take in the meaning. She recalled an exercise in perceptions she had once endured.
Suppose you have an artifici
ally intelligent infrared camera. One night it issues an alert: Something’s going on in the bushes of your garden. The AI tells you the best fit to the observation is a three-hundred-pound hamster, the second-best fit is a pair of humans in what seems a peculiar kind of close combat. They were lunging at each other in a way the AI had not seen in its training videos. So, the exercise asked … Which option do you think is more likely? She had decided to go out on a limb and guess the second. And why was that? Because you probably know that three-hundred-pound hamsters are somewhat of a rare occurrence, whereas pairs of humans are not. In other words, you have a different prior than your camera.
Here she had no priors.
Bemor came forward and boomed, “We of the Bowl had heard of such history. These Methaners are a truly ancient life-form. We heard fragments of stories, all from far ago.”
Beth said, “Breathing a reducing atmosphere? Seems pretty damn inefficient.”
Twister said, “Evolution does not present each species with a broad menu. Life-forms are a kludge.”
“A patched-up solution?” Cliff asked.
Twister said, “So, indeed! These methane breathers arrived in a ragtag fleet, fleeing from something that they feared. We still do not know what they feared. They had an advanced organic technology—superb! Materials that impressed our oxygen breathers, our holy exalted Originals. Such miracles we used to build the Cobweb and unite our two worlds. We gained much! The Methaners wanted a place to hide, a place that their pursuers would not think to look.”
“Under your world? This one? That we call Glory?”
“Such was the bargain. Their organic machines bored into the soil. They lofted soil to the sky and built this ominous—I admit it—underground shell. Built their farms, as it were. Then the living shell begin to release methane—warm and under high pressure.” Twister turned and gestured into the slumbering dark. “There are forty or fifty times your accustomed pressure in there.”
“That many atmospheres?” Cliff frowned. “Why?”
Twisto shrugged. “To support the living surface above, our great park.”
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