Glorious--A Science Fiction Novel

by Gregory Benford

  Slick-tongued Ashley Trust had used his negotiating craft to offer their Away Team as zookeepers. The Bowl agreed, so the Methaners got from the Bowl an ultimatum: Let my people go. Now here came the countless species that would enrich the planet Glory with life-forms it had lost millennia ago.

  Plus, the human keepers of this zoo would get some medical lore and technologies for the new human colony. For Beth this was a fruition. The humans left behind on the Bowl, while SunSeeker streaked ahead to the Glory system, had interlaced with the Bowl’s own sophisticated biotech minds. They had invented methods that could extend human lifetimes beyond all reckoning.

  “I can’t hear it,” she said.

  Cliff nodded. “Sound hasn’t reached us yet.”

  “Whatever magnetics or supertech the Bowl knows how to use, it’s got to make noise,” Beth said.

  “It will. I wonder how the Glorians cleared so much space for this Bowl gift.”

  “They have tech we haven’t seen yet. Methods older than humanity, it seems. We’re just the latest addition to a biosphere that’s seen plenty harder problems than this.” Beth took some comfort in that blunt fact.

  “I did a rough calculation about the Cobweb,” Cliff said. “Added up the plates they’ve got stacked along it, between Glory and Honor. It’s huge, the living areas.”

  “Can you compare with the Bowl?” Their child nuzzled against her, and she gave it a squeeze and a warm kiss. The scent of your very own is heavenly.…

  Cliff gazed into the distance for a moment. “Ha! They’re comparable areas.”

  “And both very, very old.”

  “I guess that’s the point. Long-lived civilizations need lots of room.”

  “For different societies? Spaced far apart.”

  “So you get new social experiments. Plus new languages, no doubt.” Cliff nodded to himself.

  “Religions. Philosophies. Genes.”

  “Haven’t we done something like that?” Beth mused. “Spread out through the solar system. Making Mars a place to walk around and play soccer in the open air, in a few more centuries—or so Earthside says.”

  “All the hollowed-out asteroids and domes on moons can’t compare with the Bowl or Cobweb, though.” Cliff pointed to the descending zoo. “Hey, look, it’s throwing up big clouds.”

  “It’ll take a while to smooth stuff out.” Beth paused. “Y’know, I was wondering. We called this system Glory, a destination worth coming all this way for. All without knowing it was two worlds, much less about the Cobweb.”

  “Yeah.” Cliff hugged her. “Got lucky, we did.”

  “So what shall we call it all now? Or better, call us?”

  “I dunno.”

  “How about, we’re the Glorious?”

  Cliff chuckled.

  The huge dark thing was coming down toward a hit point a thousand kilometers away. They could see one side of it now, as the cylinder touched down and began to unwrap. More orange glows and—yes, here came the booms.

  The hollow rumble grew to a rolling roar. A sharp crash slapped them hard. They cheered.

  * * *

  Ashley Trust arose gingerly. In his mind ran a thought: “His mouth had been used as a latrine by some small creature of the night, and then as its mausoleum.” Oh yes—a classical line from ancient fiction he had been forced to read. Centuries ago, of course. The writer no doubt forgotten, except maybe for that line. Still, that did describe his lonely hangover. So … back to work.

  He realized then that the role of boredom in human history worked in him, too.

  He sat up and his view of the Cobweb overwhelmed him. One whole wall had a steep perspective so he could see all of it. He had come out of cold sleep the same crafty sort who had gone in, but … now he was changed. He saw what majesty the expedition had delivered him into.

  The idea floated up, a conclusion from somewhere deep within him. Here’s my chance to be a better man. A better primate, that strange alien construction would say.

  The swollen woman Redwing had met, and Ashley had seen on camera, stirred in him an ancient longing. Humans had spent much time tracing out their origins, back hundreds of thousands of years before. This woman stirred primordial emotions because, he now saw, humans had been looking for some other intelligence to … talk to. To embrace as different, and yet kin.

  The vast legions of the Cobweb and its attendant planar slab-worlds lived in the long moment that was always now. Lives were good or bad in the sliced seconds. Some starved and some died, some froze while others warmed, creatures trembled as others rejoiced, and then those moments were gone. They blinked, shook themselves, then moved on into a newer now, each in its turn. Their sun strolled across the varying, turning sky, and the new constantly merged with the familiar.

  What a strange paradise.

  All along it, every creature—beings vaguely like mice, cats, cattle, chickadees, owls, earthworms, fireflies, spiders, goldfish, but also aliens of flesh and plasma, of ice and stone—participates in the return to the elements, the ash, bone, rain, rock, mist, earth, and sky. They share this unselving with us. The journey we will take together in an oarless boat across the shoreless river.

  So now he had a new chance. He could be a better self. No more playing the sharp angles, the stealthy grab, the small cheats. He had done that and plenty more to get onto SunSeeker.

  Now he could stop. Make himself anew.

  He got out of bed. A bit creaky, sure. He would stop such indulgences. Make a better Ashley. Someone that they could, yes, trust.

  * * *

  It came on and on, an earthquake that never stopped. The land beneath Mayra’s feet surged and popped and rattled. That was the sound of the undergirding that held the Bowl together. It was wrenching around under torques that rumbled the entire whirligig contraption.

  Mayra had gone to survey the valley below. She stood on murmuring rock. Animals grunted, shrieked, called, chittered. Overhead the unending spike of the jet twisted. It was somehow conveying angular momentum between the Bowl and the parent star that drove all this forward. Mayra said into her dictation software, “I found an old term that captures this, Cap’n Redwing. From some land war. Shell shock. Means going into a dazed state from having munitions dropped on you. Here, this is like that, but the ground does the job. Shakes, rattles, and rolls. Sometimes, seems like you should dance.”

  Indeed it did. She had just gotten out of her building as the Bowl floor flexed. When she felt it, she got up and took several steps toward the entrance. She nearly got out before her leg gave way and she collapsed onto some rubble. She landed next to Marie Diego, her assistant in negotiating with the Bird Folk, especially Bemor. Marie’s head was buried in debris, and her feet were twisted into unnatural angles. She put a hand on Marie’s chest, but there was no movement. No pulse in the neck. Damn.

  She peered into the distance for a long time. Watched this world work on. Walked, felt, lingered, sighed, let the impact of the death work through her. She had done this before. Lost people under her command. Learned to grasp it full, feel it heavily. Then relax, let the emotion lodge and wait. It would come again.

  Now she had to return to duty.

  Best not to report the death, not yet. There might be more.

  “Cap’n Redwing, got to say, this job is like walking over splinters, all the time.” She paused, studying the sky. She flicked on her optical filters so the blare of raw sunlight ebbed. The jet twirled, helical coils in their slow surge. Neon majesties. The entire system was grinding around. Angular momentum twirled among the vibrant star and Bowl, geared together along the axle of the neon-bright jet.

  “Curving to circle the Glorian system will take a year or two, I’d say. The Folk are intrigued, want to stick around, get some galactic gossip, I guess. It’s good we’ll be nearby, if you want to come back, Cap’n. Can’t say there’s much motive—that Cobweb looks fabulous. So let me do the diplomacy dance here, and we’ll keep popping out babies. I’ve got a new mate, as I po
sted before. He wants a dozen kids! I’ll restrain him, somehow.”

  It had been a combo of amused cynicism and bittersweet romance to get back into the mating game with a recently defrosted guy. But promising. A gal’s gotta keep herself amused.…

  She watched dust plumes rise out of the valley. “This ol’ Bowl is taking a beating, seems like. But they’ve piloted through worse than this, the Folk say. Mere classical mechanics, they call it. Mere! Ha! Not much I can do about it, is there? So—signing off for now.”

  She felt and watched the commotion. The only constant was change, here, now. And indeed, she enjoyed it enormously: the scent of the strange, flavoring the alien wind.

  * * *

  Viviane stood watching the roaring fireworks beside Redwing, thinking: this solemn man was like a sharp stick, hardened in the fires of his own life. Here came the bass notes of a thundering symphony he had in a tiny way helped write, over centuries. The Bowl-Glory masterpiece.

  Redwing had speculated that the methane breathers backed off from Beth’s attack because they also saw a need coming. The Bowl had to be neutralized as a threat, and to keep their location secret. So they had agreed, after tedious talks with Ashley Trust using better comm and translation gear. They would let Beth’s team stay on Glory. The humans running the incoming zoo could also manage the Methaners’ affairs. That would come after the zoo created a terraformed forbidden turf for them, maybe a methane paradise with a view of the stars. That tech could be fashioned soon. It could fit in with the cylinder zoo now booming down from above. All politics is local, she had learned somewhere a century or two ago.

  Viviane said, “You’re not bothered by one of your sayings, ‘More cooks, thinner broth’?”

  “Not really. Even the Methaners have slowly gotten over their deep fears. Time heals. Beth jolted them out of their traditional patterns, is all. Now they can get to see the sky again without fear.”

  “This zoo is going to be weird. What was that thing you called a one-eyed, one-horned, flying, purple people eater?”

  “Just what it looked like, on that survey we got last week.”

  Viviane had watched on a big screen as the Bowl’s gift unfurled slowly. Losing the thousand-kilometers-per-second speed from its infall, after peeling off the Bowl’s rim, had been a pyrotechnic display bigger than planets, grander than stars.

  “Purple people eater? Is that some ancient god thing?”

  “No, a pop song. Same thing, once a few centuries pass.”

  “There will be plenty for us to see,” Viviane said. “An unsupervised alien landscape. Planting it down on that desert beyond the ridges, over there”—she pointed—“has got to be a huge managing problem.”

  “Right, but not ours.” Redwing pointed to the zingo hovering nearby. “We can complain to management.”

  “That huge thing we had learned about—will it be in the zoo?”

  “Plenty of space beasts can be adapted. The zingoes seem to know how. This culture has been managing their whole biosphere for longer than primates have been around on Earth.”

  “So how big? Huge? The data feed says some of those things breathe through pipes that a human could fly through.”

  Redwing chuckled. “Another sport in the making, then.”

  * * *

  The true gift that Fungoid Sphere had given him was this ability to dip into his own unconscious. When needed, of course. Redwing let himself have a quick sliver of it.

  * * *

  —fiery skies and rumbling storms, and all the power of it coming in good solvent time, dissolving the rude edges of events—tied to them as once he was, with ropes of care—sudden solemn picture of his father, died centuries back, and the longer Dad is dead, the smarter he gets, while now I, too, am older than whole nations—a merry oil spreading to lube time itself, slick-sliding he feels the sentence leaving him and in the saying knows it full—“wonder what wunnaful civilizations might lurk up there amid the stars, hunkered down for fear of being plundered for scrap iron or worse?”—their grandeur past pilfered from them, while grav’s grave grip here now liberates them into the Cobweb, if they want it—variable grav on demand, just take the elevator—while all this spectacle is a mere mote itself, in the bee swarm of hot stars in the discus galaxy, Redwing unable to see who threw the discus in some cosmological Olympic game, nobody keeping score—Karma has no shelf life at all around here—

  —and so it went, when he wanted it—his Undermind mulls matters over, builds a story to ship upstairs, delivers—

  * * *

  An incoming signal had jerked him out of his inner stream.

  He licked away his drool and listened.

  “You asked who’s in those incoming rogue ships? Just behind the cylindrical zoo? Several species—but also some of the Ice Minds. They want to talk to the Glorious historians. There are even some of those Stone Minds Beth ran across. Same interests—long-term thinking.”

  From Ashley. Irritating, yes. Useful, too. As Ashley was.

  Redwing sighed, sucked in bright air. Back he came from the riverrun of life, gotta be cap’n again—

  He made himself relax and enjoy the confections of radiant light streaming through the sky. Flickering halos hovered around the steadily growing zoo rectangle as it fell. A brassy glow pulsed with shimmery waves, somehow braking it. He could see a purple rain falling like strips of rectangular confetti and could not imagine what it was. Here’s tech beyond description.…

  He recalled glancing through the latest laser signals from Earthside. At a great remove, it becomes obvious that history is just organized gossip. Back there, people still followed video adventures whose heroes battle ogres, dodge dragons, admire unicorns, and consult with elves while seeking their elusive goals. How about giving a glance at what we found here?

  More news, too, even more predictable. He had never fathomed why people made idols of those who were able to convincingly pretend to be other people—actors, politicians, and the rest. The sort who had to be robo-sewn into their party duds by automated servants.

  Viviane said, “Incoming call.”

  “Kill it.” He didn’t want any interruptions. He had just now persuaded Bemor Prime to stay with this colony. Not an easy discussion. He had gotten the original creature, Bemor itself, to come into a message exchange with Bemor Prime and the wily Ashley. It turned out that a cultural commandment of the Folk was, the copy has to obey the original. Good! Bemor Prime didn’t know it, but the big lug would end up running the Bowl embassy here. Hire locally!

  There were myriad details. Should he import a couple of finger snakes to this new Bowl colony? Ashley said they had some training as veterinarians for aliens. Hard to know. Nobody but Artilects to help him figure it out, too.

  It had taken a long while, talking to the Twisted forms, to get their history straight. The Glorious, it turned out, were as emotional, fevered in logic, and nonlinear in speech, as humans were. The ancient Glory–Bowl hatred came because Glory lost many of its original species. Ironically, that was much as humanity had done on Earth, just more so. The lost species that once inhabited Glory and Honor numbered hundreds of thousands. Just like Earth. But the Bowl took immigrants: an Ark, many millennia ago.

  He pressed Viviane to him as the zoo spread itself across the sky, lowering on magnetic hinges. Furious energies lit the landscape as it settled into place. Here was the new preserve. Beth and Cliff, nearby, cheered and kissed.

  Viviane kissed him, too. Her patented combination of cheek and chic, pose and poise, on view. “Lover, how did you get so old?”

  “Two ways. Gradually and then suddenly.”

  “Sounds gloomy.”

  Redwing shrugged. “I suppose it is. Age brings wisdom? Maybe just caution. The Folk and the Glorians alike have gotten far beyond our Paleolithic hunter-gatherer genes. They have engineered away our shortsighted habits of mind—assuming they had such. That’s why they’ve survived to get old, big, and stable.”

  “So how do we co
py that?”

  “Slow work. Run the Glory zoo, learn, earn, evolve.”

  “A human colony in the middle of … such strangeness.”

  “Right. We’re useful, we primitives. The Increate sent along that big colorful zingo over there to nudge us. See? They want us, vital primates, to use our inscrutable ways in talking with that big primate woman.”

  “She seems friendly enough. Came, like us, from a partly tree-dwelling life that had free use of its forelimbs, could walk upright. Sounds simple!”

  Redwing looked skeptical. “But the Glorians came from something different. They’re not saying what—not yet.”

  Viviane asked, “How did they install the basic mind-set of a species hundreds of light-years away?”

  “They can transmit such stuff. Make bodies. Make minds. Don’t ask. They won’t tell. So the zingo, speaking for its Increate selves, gives weight to words they rang into my head just now. ‘To learn which questions are unanswerable, and not to answer them: this skill is most needful in times of stress and darkness.’ Maybe that’s wisdom.”

  She kissed him and that seemed wise, too.

  AFTERWORD

  The mind, that ocean where each kind

  Does straight its own resemblance find,

  Yet it creates, transcending these,

  For other worlds, and other seas.

  —ANDREW MARVELL, “The Garden”

  A dialogue has been going on for centuries now. It may have started with Dante’s Divine Comedy, and continued with Star Maker by Olaf Stapledon. Freeman Dyson, inspired by Stapledon, calculated limits on a structure’s size in outer space, set by the strength of materials. Niven’s Ringworld was part of these explorations, and Bob Shaw’s Orbitsville. It’s a conversation about advanced societies building outrageously big habitats, using plausible science. Such were called Big Dumb Objects by Peter Nicholls as a joke in 1993. He quoted British writer Roz Kaveney in The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction. There is now a Wikipedia entry on the many such fictions. The Bowl of Heaven trilogy is a part of that, though we prefer to call the Bowl and the Glorian double planet Big Smart Objects, since they must be continuously managed to be stable. Our trilogy is undoubtedly not the last word. As a reader said, we aimed for “Amazing vistas, shocks, sensawunda.” Just so!