Glorious--A Science Fiction Novel

by Gregory Benford

  “Your shape, style, method—coming down from trees and into grasslands seems crucial here. The aliens we term Rapids did such, too, and look much like you. This cannot be coincidence. The galaxy has many intelligences, but not like you.”

  “So?” It seemed the best way to egg them on. Viviane whispered to him, “You carry on this conversation. I’m watching for anything approaching us. Don’t trust this setup at all.”

  Twisto said, “There is a species in the Grav Wave Club that now endangers the entire universe. We need your help to stop them.”

  “Uh, how?”

  “By telling us what they will do next. And how to stop it.”

  “Because they’re ambitious?”

  “Because like you, they are a fast, furious species.”

  “What can we do? We’re just a small party of explorers—”

  “You are similar enough to meet with one such. They are, essentially, primates. They evolved quickly to high intelligence, as did you. Intensely social animals, of course—else, why talk to others among the stars at all? They have strikingly similar genetic bricolage to yours.”

  “But … meet?”

  Viviane nudged him. “Somebody coming.” He turned.

  She was immense. And naked. Clearly a she, as the big breasts rested upon a bulging belly, stretched tight and looking hard, like a sumo wrestler’s. Tall with a slight arch to her back. Wrists and forearms thick as cordwood. At the end were huge hands with digits that looked more like the tines of a fork. She smiled with teeth that were two long white chunks in her gums. Only two teeth. Her head was swollen like a tense balloon. She was leaning back on her haunches and seemed stretched out like an accordion with ruffles down her back.

  “How…?” Viviane said.

  Humanoid, with neck fur instead of hair. Bright yellow eyes that blinked sideways, above a nose that was just two crimson holes. Mouth a fixed, grinning U. The lower jaw gaped open and shut, exposing more teeth that glistened with saliva. The teeth rose to a ridge with a wedge jutting out behind. Hideous, overall.

  Twisto said, “We have received from this species enough genetics to build one. But its mind is simple. It knows only what we and its original species have told it. They sent such cultural knowledge, along with their genetics. We have surveyed this lore. Still, it may speak more intimately with you than with us. Further, we have equipped its mind to speak your tongue with some fluency.”

  “Built?” Viviane gaped at the huge thing. Which nodded in reply.

  “We have capabilities you do not know,” Twisto said blithely.

  Redwing fought down a rising tide of disgust at this hideous woman. He found her dreadful in ways beyond his understanding. Ugly did not begin to describe the acid nausea that rushed into his throat as he looked at her. This was a brand of alien that summoned up in him an automatic revulsion. Trembling, he said, “Why us? What issue?”

  To his shock, the immense woman said in a flat voice free of tone, “My forebears pursue a Final Theory of the universe. This demands certain experiments.”

  Redwing was too stunned to reply.

  The woman said, “In your species’s theory, the Higgs field is actually metastable—not actually stable, just pretending to be.”

  “Ah…” Redwing summoned up a distant memory. His inboards provided a two-sentence squirt on it, to help. “Quantum stuff, right. Higgs … gives particles their mass?”

  The woman hung in the enameled light and nodded, giving them the horrible U smile. “That is known to you as a false vacuum. The Higgs field is perhaps not stable, we believe.”

  Viviane asked, “So?”

  The woman said in her toneless voice, which Redwing noted had a whispery lisp, “Plumbing the universal origin depends upon knowing more about this state. My species is probing this issue with some advanced experiments. Accelerating particles to stunningly high energies. At high densities. With quantum tickling and entangling methods. Intricate. Very carefully.”

  Twisto said, apparently still speaking for the Fungoid, “In such experiments, if the Higgs field moved into the lower energy state, it would release so much potential energy that it would actually push open the quantum space around it. That would cross all barriers. In turn, as it radiated at the speed of light, releasing even more potential energy. It would move in all directions, like an expanding shell of death for the universe.”

  The woman said, “My species is certain that it can avoid that. We wish to know the origins of our universe thoroughly. These experiments are now several thousand years”—a nod at the humans—“in duration. They go forward steadily.”

  Twisto’s arms flailed in the air. “We have no idea what would be left behind. Some new reshuffling of everything! Life, stars, would not exist.”

  The woman said with a visible show of patience on her swollen face, “We believe it is possible that might be true. It may have already happened elsewhere, far away. In which case, we still do not have to worry. The universe is expanding, faster as we view it, the farther away. Any state-change is running on a sort of cosmic treadmill, fighting the expansion of space-time. It can be moving but never getting closer to us.”

  Redwing said, “That’s no consolation!” He was getting angry. This was about erasing the universe, treated as an interesting experiment!

  Viviane said, “Why risk it?”

  The woman said slowly, “I am re-created. I know this. A copy. Still, I feel a loyalty to my kind. You are another sort of primate, that I know. So perhaps you and we can understand each other better than these”—a dismissive wave of her hand—“strange minds.”

  Redwing moved slowly, hands snaking into his side pouch. He found the small handgun he had brought. It molded to his grip, licking his thumb for DNA confirmation like a friendly cat. He was so glad to find it intact he damn near licked it back. Just a quick jerk out of his side pouch, and he could nail this loathsome thing.

  Twisto said, “Your species might find the spark that will swallow up the whole universe! A destructive event, decay of the very vacuum state!”

  The woman said blandly, though she flexed her thick arms as if in warning, “My kind do not feel so.”

  “It is too large a risk!”

  “We are a young species. We have not worn down, as you far older types have.”

  “We learned caution!” Twisto shouted.

  “We feel you have failed to understand our universe at the most fundamental level. Much like those many forms aboard that huge voyaging thing, what you call the Bowl.”

  Viviane said, “What the hell do we have to do with this? We’re not scientists, we’re explorers.”

  The woman turned to her and reached out to clutch Viviane’s hands. She cradled these, looking like mere toys, in hers. “You are so similar to our form. These aliens who have created me from our basic genetics have kindly shared your history and biology with me. A furious download, it was. Our genetics are quite different, but you were shaped by your descent from trees onto plains, just as we. You faced great selective pressures, as did we. You had several less clever forms, like us. You had most recently better cognitive and social abilities than your Neanderthal cousins, and a greater capacity for long-term memory and language processing.”

  “So…?” Viviane’s forehead wrinkled in puzzlement.

  “We are as kin. Different origins in ways, yet converging on our unique hominid insights into the world. I learn from these aliens that other sorts of primate societies have arisen in the galaxy’s history, but soon die out. Many.”

  She sighed and a heavy sadness worked across her face. “Yours and mine have not died. We are strong. We have a different slant on the universe. Yet a primate slant. Not like these of many arms and tentacles and four-legged and other, even stranger forms. My species has now poked a stick into the old species anthill.” A shrug. “So they get angry.”

  What to say to this? A silence passed.

  The alien apelike woman said, “You seem … skimpy.”

&
nbsp; “So we are, thin and light,” Viviane said. “What’s the surface gravity of the world where you evolved?”

  “Let me see.…” The enormous woman paused, obviously consulting the database of intelligences available to her, no doubt on some electromagnetic link. “It is half again greater than of your world.”

  “That explains a lot.” Viviane hung in the filament-threaded air before the Fungoid Sphere. Redwing saw what she was doing: befriending a fellow apelike alien. Interstellar diplomacy through casual small talk. “Giants like you aren’t proportionally taller than us, just squatter.”

  True, Redwing thought. Elephants didn’t look like scaled-up horses. But tigers did look a lot like scaled-up house cats and moved that way.

  He found the huge woman ugly and repulsive. Somehow that called up deep hostile currents. But Viviane had sensed that, and rather than obviously warning him off, she chose this path. Have a chat. Between gals.

  The woman said in her odd voice, “Recall that I am a reconstruction from detailed genetic data, plus a sort of personality transmit.”

  Redwing said, “From your society, yes. Sent over many years. We heard. What do you call yourselves?

  She made a rictus grin that unsettled him. “Why, the People, of course. I am told that all species do so. You call yourselves humans, I believe.”

  “We’re from a line of descent we call apes, on a star many light-years from here.” Viviane nodded, a gesture the huge woman seemed to know, for she echoed it.

  “Ah, nearby in galactic terms. We are from several hundreds of your light-years distant from here. We evolved quite recently, as did you—compared to this—” A grand wave at the surrounding vault, inside a living spaceship. “So we have different, anxious energies.”

  Redwing said, “You’re far ahead of it, if you can send grav wave messages.”

  “Oh, we did that over a hundred thousand years ago. A mere three hundred thousand—in your years, understand—after we defeated and ended competing apelike forms. They were somewhat like us, though insufficiently so.”

  “So you know a lot about the galaxy,” Viviane said.

  Redwing was enjoying their talk as he slowly, casually, let go of his handgun. It was still tucked into his side pouch, and its butt shaped itself to his hand, making it comfortable and secure. The pistol almost seemed reluctant to feel him go. But he shoved it deeper into the side pouch and now slowly extracted his empty hand. No one would be the wiser about his sudden revulsion at this woman, who had reached far back into some species memory, and nearly died of it.

  “Each lifeless planet is different from another in its own way,” the woman said. “Yet all planets with our sort of smart life on them will be fundamentally the same. Our form seems uncommon. Those like us—primate, your term, yes?—develop quickly to high intelligence. This makes us perhaps a bit uncautious. Or so other forms believe.”

  There came from Twisto, who had been silently watching this cusp moment, a tart snort. “Our host”—a darting two-armed gesture toward the Fungoid Sphere—“wishes to move on. Such talk is fine, but not focused. Not directly germane for our eventual goal, the proper regulation of fundamental, dangerous experiments within the grav wave societies. Still, our host wishes haste. The Bowl must be addressed.”

  Neanderthal. That was it. His throat tightened, and the acid taste rushed into his mouth. It stung his nostrils. His hands clutched. He was feeling some embedded horror that lurked far back in his mind. In the minds of anyone who had evolved beyond the ugly thing before him, he supposed. But strong and true.

  Redwing put his hand back in his side pouch and tightened his grip on the gun again. He had to decide whether to use it. And he wanted to, so much. The urge simmered white-hot in him.

  THIRTY-EIGHT

  THE ROLLING ZOO

  A blind man is not afraid of the dark.

  —Proverb

  There is hopeful symbolism in the fact that flags do not wave in a vacuum.

  —ARTHUR C. CLARKE

  A terabyte-per-second flood, Ashley Trust thought. Easy to drown in it.

  He was busily amassing the latest data deluge from the Artilects who surveyed the entire large-scale Cobweb and its planets. Their drone network and self-running telescopes had been designed long ago to survey a mere planet, back when Earthside’s scopes thought Glory was a single world. Centuries back, that was the best they could do. Two planets orbiting close, with the Cobweb bridge to further confuse the algorithms of those old scopes, had not tipped off the antique authorities who planned this mission. So now Ashley was witnessing a tera-torrent. The Cobweb alone had many planet-areas stacked along its axis. How to process it all?

  “Figure this out,” he concluded his conference with the Astro Artilect. “I can’t. I’m not qualified.”

  The Astro Artilect pleaded a bit more for his oversight, but he just broke the connection. Not his problem. Not even remotely his area. He had gotten into this expedition to elude prosecution for some hinky exploits, and his doctored documents said he was a stellar sci/tech guy. But that lay far behind him now. Done.

  A call came in and he was about to kill that, too—just too damn much going on!—when he saw it was from that weird new Twisty creature. Its digital sig said the thing was trying to make contact. Curious, he quick-checked Redwing’s codes. Here it was, from some poetry volume the cap’n had read. He spoke aloud the appropriate quote from “Tomlinson” by Kipling: “‘Ye are neither spirit nor spirk,’ he said; ‘ye are neither book nor brute—/ ‘Go, get ye back to the flesh again for the sake of Man’s repute.’”

  A sharp ping set up the call.

  A crisp voice said, “I gather you are acting onboard staff head?”

  Visual arrived. The creature looked different somehow. “Wait. Are you Twisty?”

  “I am the new Twisty, if you like. The previous Twisty has been dispersed, penalty for crimes against your Away Team.”

  “Huh? What crimes?”

  “That version allowed your Away Team to enter into far too dangerous a confrontation. The Methaners had set up a trap under the guise of a mere observation of the Away Team as a candidate external species.”

  Ashley thumbed in his incoming—swamped with Artilect alerts, as usual—and saw a call from Cliff. “I’m getting the Away Team messages now. They’re clear. Any casualties?”

  “One, and some physiologicals. They avoided the amateurish ambush. The Methaners have long been a sheltered class. Thus they have lost their elemental skills, I judge.”

  Ashley felt behind the curve on all this. Too much going on! But he kept his voice flat when he said, “I don’t know what you imply.”

  “You are classed as intensively social mammals, the most likely to seek interstellar communication or even travel. Worse, you are a particularly fast-developing form, primates. You enter the world with unfinished nervous systems, and those require play—lots of it—to finish the job of your upbringing. The young human brain expects the child to engage in thousands of hours of play, including thousands of falls, scrapes, conflicts, insults, alliances, betrayals, status competitions, and even within limits acts of social exclusion. This develops your full capacities. The Methaners have few of these skills.”

  “So they’re lousy fighters, too?”

  “Though smart in their technical areas, yes. Very useful to us.”

  “Who’s ‘us’ here?”

  “Considering your name for our central origin world is Glory, you might well term us the Glorious.”

  “Glorians?”

  “Please allow us this small jest.”

  Twisty’s voice was better modulated now, though its expression on the low-resolution screen gave no facial signatures. The tone shifted to include a note of sadness. “You perhaps do not know that we Glorious lost thousands of native species. It’s the reason we can forgive you humans for doing the same to your own world. An elementary error, common among those adolescent intelligences who overrun their worlds. Some do this so badly t
hey go extinct.”

  This Twisty sounds far more friendly than the last, Ashley thought. Somebody’s tinkered with the specs. He was still trying to stitch a vast history together. He carefully said, “I’m not up on all this, but was this about your first contact with the Bowl?”

  “But that era followed, after we imported species from the Bowl. As it passed us, we exchanged ecologies.”

  On his screen flashed views of landscapes rolled into cylinders. They transferred across space in atmospheric envelopes. It looked magical.

  “The Folk who appear to be managers, though not rulers of the Bowl, have resumed communication with us. Just now, I hear.”

  “You slung a black hole at them. Some might take that personally.”

  “They turned it into an advantage. They know they have what we have lost—many of our ancient species. We have been able to communicate—”

  “Already? They’ve just got the black hole, a few hours ago.”

  “—and we have negotiated an exchange. Did you wonder how we talked? Electromagnetically, after they sent us a simple message via gravity waves. It is a delightful, old-fashioned way to speak. So easy!”

  “Twisty, I think we can move on to other issues. How’s that sound?”

  “Ah, perhaps.” Twisty sounded unsure.

  “Look, you’re going to need intermediaries with them, after this Battle of the Bowl, right?”

  “Perhaps…”

  “We can do that. For example, you want some of your ancient species back. Maybe some new ones, too?”

  “We would have to study—”

  “We’ve got plenty data from the Bowl. We spent years there! Stopped by, on the way getting here.”

  “I do not quite understand what you mean—”

  “We’ve done your reconnaissance for you already! We have data galore from teams on the ground there. Inventories of animals, plants, plenty of videos and all. You can pick and choose what you want!”

  “I suppose so.…”

  “And when you bring ’em back? You’ll need zookeepers, right? We humans already have experience with these Bowl creatures. We know ’em firsthand.”