Sundiver

by David Brin

  “Good! And don’t forget, you still owe me that story about how you saved the Finnila Needle. I never did tell you how glad I was to see that old monstrosity when the Calypso returned, and I want to hear about it from the man who preserved it.”

  Jacob stared past the Sunship Commandant. For a moment he thought he could hear a wind whistling, and someone calling . . . a voice crying out indecipherable words as somebody fell. . .. He shook himself.

  “Oh, I’ll save it for you. It’s much too personal to talk about in one of those story-swaps. There was someone else involved in saving the needles, someone you might like to hear about.”

  There was something in Helene deSilva’s expression, something compassionate, that implied she already knew about what had happened to him at Ecuador, and would let him tell about it in his own good time.

  “I’m looking forward to it. And I’ve finally thought of one for you. It’s about the ‘song-birds’ of Omnivarium. It seems the planet is so silent that the human settlers have to be very careful lest the birds start mimicking any noise they make. This has an interesting effect on the settler’s lovemaking behavior, particularly among the women, depending on whether they want to advertise their partner’s ‘abilities’ in the age-old fashion or remain, discreet!

  “But I must go back to my duties now. And I certainly don’t want to give away the whole story. I’ll let you know when we reach the first turbulence.”

  Jacob rose to his feet with her and watched as she walked toward the command station. Partway into the solar chromosphere was probably an odd place to be enthralled by the way a fern walked, but until she went out of sight he felt no inclination to turn his eyes away. He admired the limberness that members of the interstellar corps inculcated into their extremities. Hell, she was probably doing it on purpose. Where it didn’t interfere with her job, Helene deSilva obviously pursued libido as a hobby.

  There was something strange, though, In her behavior towards him. She appeared to trust him more than would normally be warranted by the small contributions he’d made on Mercury and their few friendly conversations. Perhaps she was after something. If so he couldn’t figure out what.

  On the other hand, maybe people were more naturally ultimate when they left Earth for the long jump on Calypso. Someone brought up on an O’Niel Colony, in a period of introspection caused by political stultification, might be more willing to trust her instincts than a child of the highly individualistic Confederacy.

  He wondered what Fagin had told her about him.

  Jacob went to the central dome, the outside wall of which contained a little boxlike head.

  When he came out, Jacob felt much more awake. On the other side of the dome, by the food and beverage machines, he found Dr. Martine standing with the two bipedal aliens. She smiled at him, and Culla’s eyes brightened with friendliness. Even Bubbacub grunted a greeting through his Vodor.

  He pressed buttons for orange juice and an omelette.

  “You know, Jacob, you turned in too early last night. Pil Bubbacub was telling us some more incredible stories after you went to bed. They were astounding, really!”

  Jacob bowed slightly at Bubbacub.

  “I apologize, Pil Bubbacub. I was very tired, otherwise I would have been thrilled to hear more about the great Galactics, particularly of the glorious Pila. I’m sure the stories are inexhaustible.”

  Martine stiffened next to him, but Bubbacub showed his pleasure by preening. Jacob knew it would be dangerous to insult the little alien. But by now he’d guessed the Ambassador wouldn’t know any accusation of hubris as an insult. Jacob couldn’t resist the harmless dig.

  Martine insisted that he come over to eat with them, where the couches had already been raised for dining. Two of deSilva’s four crewmen ate nearby.

  “Has anyone seen Fagin?” Jacob asked.

  Dr. Martine shook her head. “No, I’m afraid he’s been on Flip-side for over twelve hours. I don’t know why he doesn’t join us here.”

  It wasn’t like Fagin to be reticent. When Jacob had gone to the instrument hemisphere to use the telescope, and found the Kanten there, Fagin had hardly said a word. Now the Commandant had put the other side of the ship off limits to everyone except the E.T., who occupied it alone.

  If I don’t hear from Fagin by lunchtime, I’m going to demand an explanation, Jacob thought.

  Nearby, Martine and Bubbacub talked. Occasionally Culla said a word or two, always with the most unctuous respect. The Pring seemed always to have a liquitube between his giant lips. He sipped slowly, steadily consuming the contents of several tubes while Jacob ate his meal.

  Bubbacub launched into a story about an Ancestral of his, a member of the Soro race who had, some million or so years ago, taken part in one of the few peaceful contacts between the loose civilization of oxygen breathers and the mysterious parallel culture of hydrogen-breathing races which coexisted in the galaxy.

  For aeons there had been little or no understanding between hydrogen and oxygen. Whenever conflict arose between the two a planet died. Sometimes more. It was fortunate that they had almost nothing in common, so conflicts were rare.

  The story was long and involved, but Jacob admitted to himself that Bubbacub was a master storyteller. Bubbacub could be charming and witty, as long as he controlled the center of attention.

  Jacob allowed his imagination to drift along as the Pil vividly described those things which only a handful of men had ever even sampled: the infinite strangeness and beauty of the stars, and the variety of things which dwelt on a multitude of planets. He began to envy Helene deSilva.

  Bubbacub felt the cause of the Library intensely. It was the vehicle of knowledge and of a tradition which unified all of those who took in oxygen as breath. It provided continuity and more, for without the Library, there would be no bridges between species. Wars would not be fought with restraint but to extinction. Planets would be ruined by over-use.

  The Library, and the other loosely-knit Institutes, helped to prevent genocide among its members.

  Bubbacub’s story reached its climax and he allowed his awed audience a few moments of silence. Finally, he good-naturedly asked Jacob if he would care to honor them with a story of his own.

  Jacob was taken aback. By human standards, perhaps, he had led an interesting life, but certainly not remarkable! What could he talk about from history? Apparently the rules were that it had to either be a personal experience, or an adventure of an Ancestor or Ancestral.

  Perspiring in his chair, Jacob considered telling a story about some historical figure; perhaps Marco Polo or Mark Twain. But Martine would probably not be interested.

  Then there was the part his grandfather Alvarez had played in the Overturn. But that story was rather heavily political and Bubbacub would think its moral downright subversive. His best story had to do with his own adventure at the Vanilla Needle, but that was too personal, too filled with painful memories to share here and now. Besides he’d promised it to Helene deSilva.

  It was too bad LaRoque wasn’t here. The feisty little man would probably have been able to talk until the fires below burned out.

  An impish thought struck Jacob. There was a character out of history, who was» a direct Ancestor of his and whose story might be sufficiently relevant. The amusing part was that the story could be interpreted on two levels. He wondered how obvious he could get without certain listeners catching on.

  “Well, as a matter of fact,” he began slowly. “There’s a male from the history of Earth who I would like to talk about. He is of interest because he was involved in a contact between a ‘primitive’ culture and technology and another that could overpower it in almost every respect. Naturally, you’re all familiar with the premise. Since Contact, it’s been almost all historians talk about.

  “The fate of the Amerind is this era’s morality play. Old twentieth-century movies glorifying the ‘Noble Red Man’ are shown today strictly for laughs. As Millie reminded us, back on Mercury, a
nd as everyone back home knows, the Red Man did just about the poorest job of any of the impacted cultures at adapting to the arrival of Europeans. His vaunted pride kept him from studying the white man’s powerful ways until it was too late, exactly opposite to the successful “co-opting” made by Japan in the late nineteenth century . . . the example that the ‘Adapt and Survive’ faction keeps pointing out to all who will listen these days.”

  He had them. The humans were watching him silently. Culla’s eyes were bright. Even Bubbacub, usually inattentive, kept his beady little eyes on Jacob. Martine had winced when he mentioned the A & S faction, though. A datum.

  If LaRoque were here, he wouldn’t care for what I’m saving, Jacob thought. But LaRoque’s distress would be nothing next to that of his Alverez kin, should they ever hear him talk like this!

  “Of course, the failure of the Amerinds to adapt wasn’t entirely their fault,” Jacob continued. “Many scholars think that western hemisphere cultures were in a periodic slump that happened, unfortunately, to coincide with the arrival of Europeans. Indeed, the poor Mayans had just finished a civil war in which they’d all moved out to the country and left their cities, and princes and priests, to rot. When Columbus arrived the temples were mostly deserted. Of course, the population had doubled and wealth and trade had quadrupled over the Golden Age of the Maya, but those are hardly valid measures of cultures.” Careful, boy. Don’t go too heavy on the irony. Jacob noticed that one of the crewmen, a fellow he’d met named Dubrowsky, had backed away from the others. Only Jacob could see the sardonic grin on the man’s face. Everyone else appeared to be listening with unsuspicious interest, though it was hard to tell with Culla and Bubbacub.

  “Now this ancestor of mine was an Amerind. His name was Se-quo-yi, and he was a member of the Cherokee nation.

  “At the time, the Cherokee lived mostly in the state of Georgia. Since that was the East Coast of America, they had even less time than the other Amerinds to prepare to deal with the white man. Still, they tried, after their own fashion. Their attempt was nowhere near as grand or complete as the Japanese, but they tried.

  “They were quick to pick up on the technology of their new neighbors. Log cabins replaced lodge houses and iron tools and blacksmithing became a part of Cherokee life. They learned about gunpowder early, as well as European methods of fanning. Though many didn’t like the idea, the tribe even became a slaveholding enterprise at one point.

  “That was after they’d been whipped in two wars. They’d made the mistake of supporting the French in 1765, and then backed the Crown during the first American Revolution. Even so, they had a fair-sized little republic in the first part of the nineteenth century, partly because several young Cherokee had picked up enough of the white man’s knowledge to become lawyers. Along with their Iroquois speaking cousins to the north, they did a fair job of playing the treaty game.

  “For a while.

  “Enter my ancestor. Se-quo-yi was a man who didn’t like either of the choices offered his people, either staying noble savages and getting wiped out, or co-opting the settlers’ ways completely and disappearing as a people. In particular, he saw the power of the written word but thought the Indian would forever be at a disadvantage if he had to learn English to become literate.”

  Jacob wondered if anyone would make the connection, comparing the situation that faced Se-quo-yi and the Cherokee with humanity’s present predicament, vis-a-vis the Library.

  Judging by the look on Martine’s face, at least one person was surprised to hear such a long historical tale from the normally quiet Jacob Demwa. There was no way she could, or ever would, know about the long lessons, after school, in history and oratory that he and the other Alvarez children had endured. Though he had turned away from politics, a family black sheep, he still had some of the skills.

  “Well, Se-quo-yi solved his problem to his own satisfaction by inventing a written form of the Cherokee language. It was a Herculean task, accomplished at cost of episodes of torture and exile, for many in his own tribe resisted his efforts. But when he finished all of the world of literature and technology was available, not just to the intellectual who could study English for years, but to the Cherokee of average intelligence, as well.

  “Soon even the assimilationists accepted the work of Se-quo-yi’s genius. His victory set the tone for all succeeding generations of Cherokee. These people, the only Amerinds whose principle hero was an intellectual, and not a warrior, chose to be selective.

  “And that was their big mistake. If they’d let the local missionaries change them over into imitation settlers they would have been able, probably, to merge into the yeoman class and be looked upon by the Europeans as a slightly lower type of white man.

  “Instead, they thought they could become modern Indians, retaining the essential elements of their old culture . . . obviously a contradiction in terms.

  “Still, there are some scholars who think they might have made it. Things were going well until a group of white men discovered gold on Cherokee land. That got the settlers fairly excited. They got a bill through the Georgia legislature to declare the land up for grabs.

  “Then the Cherokee did a strange thing, something that wasn’t adequately duplicated for about a hundred years after. That Indian nation took the Georgia state legislature to court over the land seizure! They had some help from some sympathetic white men and managed to bring the case before the United States Supreme Court.

  “The Court ruled that the seizure was illegal. The Cherokee could keep their land.

  “But here is where the incompleteness of their adjustment let them down. Because they’d made no major attempt to fit themselves into the basic structure of settler society, the Cherokee had no political power to back up the tightness of their cause. They trusted, and cleverly used, the high and honorable laws of the new nation, but didn’t realize that public opinion has every bit as much force as law.

  “To most of their white neighbors they were just another tribe of Indians. When Andy Jackson told the Court to go to hell, and sent the Army in to evict the Cherokee anyway, there was nowhere for them to turn.

  “So Se-quo-yi’s people had to pack a few belongings and march the tragic Trail of Tears to a new ‘Indian Territory,’ in western lands none of them had ever seen.

  “The story of the Trail of Tears was an epic of human courage and endurance. The sufferings of the Cherokee on that long march were deep and sad. Some very moving literature came out of it, as well as a tradition of strength in privation that has affected the spirit of that people ever since, even down to today.

  “That eviction wasn’t the last trauma to fall on the Cherokee.

  “When the United States had a Civil War, the Cherokee did as well. Brother killed brother when the Confederate Indian Volunteers met the Union Indian Brigade. They fought as passionately as did the white troops, and usually with more discipline. And in the process their new homes were ravaged.

  “Later there were troubles with bandit gangs, diseases, and more land seizures. In their stoicism they came to be known by some as the ‘Amerind Jews.’ While some other tribes dissolved in despair and apathy in the face of the crimes committed against them, the Cherokee maintained their tradition of self reliance.

  “Se-quo-yi was remembered. Perhaps in symbolism of the pride of the Cherokee, his name was given to a certain type of tree, one that grows in the misty forests of California. The tallest tree in the world.

  “But all of this leads us away from the folly of the Cherokee. For while their pride helped them survive the depredations of the nineteenth century and the neglect of the twentieth, it held them back from participating in the Indian Consolation of the twenty-first. They refused the ‘cultural reparations’ offered by the American governments just before the beginning of the Bureaucracy; riches heaped on the remnants of the Indian Nations to salve the delicate consciences of the enlightened, educated public in that era that is today, ironically, referred to as America’s ‘I
ndian Summer.’

  “They refused to set up Cultural Centers to perform ancient dances and rituals. While other Amerind revivalists resurrected pre-Columbian crafts to ‘regain contact with their heritage,’ the Cherokee asked why they should dig up ‘Model TV’ when they could be building their own specially-flavored version of twenty-first-century American culture.

  “Along with the Mohawks and scattered groups from other tribes, they traded their ‘Consolation’ and half of their tribal wealth to buy into the Power Satellite League. The pride of their youth went up to help build the cities in space, as their grandfathers had helped build the great cities of America. The Cherokee gave away a chance to be rich in exchange for a share of the sky.

  “And once again they paid terribly for their pride. When the Bureaucracy began its suppression, the League rebelled. Those bright young males and ferns, the treasure of their nation, died by the thousands alongside their space-brothers, descendants of Andy Jackson and of Andy Jackson’s slaves. The League cities they built were decimated. The survivors were allowed to remain in space only because someone had to be there to show the Bureaucracy’s carefully selected replacements how to live.

  “On Earth the Cherokee suffered, too. Many took part in the Constitutionalist Revolt. Alone of the Indian nations, they were punished by the victors as a group, along with the VietAms, and the Minnesotans. The Second Trail of Tears was as sad as the first. This time, though, they had company.

  “Of course, the first ruthless generation of Bureaucracy leaders passed, and the era of the true bureaucrats arrived. The Hegemony cared more about productivity than vengeance. The League rebuilt, under supervision, and a rich new culture developed in the O’Niel Colonies, influenced by the survivors of ‘the original builders.

  “On Earth, the Cherokee still meet, long after many tribes have been absorbed into cosmopolitan culture or into quaintness. They still haven’t learned their lesson. I hear that their latest crackpot scheme is a joint project with the VietAms and Israel-APU to try to terra-form Venus. Ridiculous, of course.