Sundiver

by David Brin

  “But all of that is beside the point. If my Ancestor, Se-quo-yi, and his kin, had adapted completely to the ways of the white man they could have won a small place in his culture and been absorbed in peace, without suffering. If they had resisted with indiscriminate stubbornness, along with many of their Amerind neighbors, they would have suffered still, but finally been given a place, through the ‘kindness’ of a later generation of white man.

  “Instead, they tried to find a synthesis between those obvious good and powerful aspects of western civilization, and their own heritage. They experimented and were choosy. They picked and fussed over the meal for six hundred years and suffered because of it, more than any other tribe.

  “The moral of this story I have told, should be obvious. We humans are faced with a choice similar to that faced by the Amerinds, whether to be picky or to accept wholeheartedly all of the billion-year-old culture offered us through the Library. Let anyone who urges choosiness remember the story of the Cherokee. Their trail has been long, and it isn’t over yet.”

  There was a long silence after Jacob finished. Bubbacub still watched him with little black eyes. Culla stared fixedly. Dr. Martine looked down at the deck, her eyebrows knotted in thought.

  The crewman, Dubrowsky, stood well back. One arm was crossed in front of him. His other hand covered his mouth. Crinkles around his eyes; did they betray silent laughter?

  Must be a League-man. Space is infested with them. I hope he keeps his mouth shut about this. I took enough of a chance as it is.

  His throat felt parched. He took a long drink from the liquitube of orange juice he had saved from breakfast.

  Bubbacub finally placed both little hands behind his neck and sat up. He looked at Jacob for a moment.

  “Good sto-ry,” he snapped, finally. “I will ask you to rec-ord it for me, when we get back. It has good les-son for Earth folk.

  “There are some ques-tions I would ask, though. Now or la-ter. Some things I do not un-der-stand.”

  “As you wish, Pil-Bubbacub,” Jacob bowed, trying to hide his grin. Now to change the subject quick, before Bubbacub could get started asking about pesky details! But how?

  “I too, enjoyed my friend Jacob’s story,” a whistling voice fluted from behind them, “I approached as silently as I could, when I came into range to hear it. I am pleased that my presence did not disturb the telling.”

  Jacob shot to his feet with relief.

  “Fagin!” Everyone rose as the Kanten slithered toward them. In the ruby light, he looked jet black. His movements were slow.

  “I wish to offer apologies! My absence was unavoidable. The Commandant graciously assented to allow more radiation through the screens so that I could take nourishment. But, understandably, it was necessary that she do so only on the unoccupied reverse side of the ship.”

  “That’s true,” Martine laughed. “We wouldn’t want any sunburn here!”

  “Quite so. And yet it was lonely there, I am glad to have company again.”

  The bipeds sat down and Fagin settled himself onto the deck. Jacob seized the opportunity to get out of his fix.

  “Fagin, we’ve been exchanging some stories here, waiting for the surfing to start. Maybe you can tell us one about the Institute of Progress?”

  The Kanten rustled its foliage. There was a pause. “Alas, Friend-Jacob. Unlike that of the Library, the Institute of Progress is not an important society. The very name is poorly translated into English. There are no words in your language to represent it properly.

  “Our small order was founded to fulfill one of the least of the Injunctions that the Progenitors placed upon the oldest of races when they left the galaxy so long ago. Crudely stated, it imposed upon us the duty to respect ‘Newness.’

  “It may be hard for a species such as your own, orphans so to speak, who have until recently never felt the bittersweet bonds of kinship and patron-client obligation, to understand the inherent conservatism of our Galactic culture. This conservatism is not bad. For admidst so much diversity a belief in the Tradition and in a common heritage is a good influence. Young races heed the words of those older, who have learned wisdom and patience with years.

  “You might say, to borrow an English expression, that we hold a deep regard for our roots.”

  Only Jacob noticed that Fagin shifted his weight slightly at that point. The Kanten was folding and unfolding the short knotty tentacles that served as his feet. Jacob tried not to choke as a swallow of orange juice went down wrong.

  “But there remains a need to face the future, as well,” Fagin continued. “And in their wisdom, the Progenitors warned the Oldest not to scorn that which is new under the Sun.”

  Fagin was silhouetted against the giant red orb, their destination. Jacob shook his head helplessly.

  “So when word got out that somebody’d found a bunch of savages sucking at a wolfs teat, you came running, right?”

  More rustling foliage. “Very graphic, Friend-Jacob. But your surmise is essentially correct. The Library has the important task of teaching the races of Earth what they need to know to survive. My Institute has the humbler mission of appreciating your Newness.”

  Dr. Martine spoke.

  “Kant Fagin, to your knowledge, has this ever happened before? I mean, has there ever been a case of a species which has no memory of Ancestral Upbringing, bursting into the galaxy on their own like we did?”

  “Yes, respected Doctor Martine. It has happened a number of times. Space is large beyond all imagining. The periodic migrations of oxygen and hydrogen civilizations cover great distance, and rarely is even a settled area ever full explored. Often, in these great movements, a tiny fragment of a race, barely raised from bestiality, has been abandoned by its patrons to find its way alone. Such abandonments are usually avenged by civilized peoples . . .” The Kanten hesitated. Suddenly Jacob realized why with a shock as Fagin hurried on.

  “But since it is usually at a time of migration that these rare cases occur, there is an added problem. The wolfling race may develop a crude spacedrive from the dregs of its patron’s technology, but by the time it enters interstellar space, its part of the galaxy might be under Interdict. Unknowingly it might fall prey to hydrogen breathers whose turn it may be to occupy that cluster or spiral arm.

  “Nevertheless, such species are found occasionally. Usually the orphans retain vivid memories of their patrons. In some cases, myth and legend have taken the place of fact. But the Library is almost always able to trace the truth, for that is where our truths are stored.”

  Fagin lowered several branches in Bubbacub’s direction. The Pil acknowledged with a friendly bow.

  “That is why,” Fagin went on, “we await with great expectation the discovery of the reason why there is no mention of your Earth in that great archive. There is no listing, no record of previous occupation, in spite of five full migrations through this region since the Progenitors departed.”

  Bubbacub froze in his bow. The small black eyes snapped up to bear on the Kanten with narrowly focused ferocity, but Fagin appeared not to notice as he continued.

  “To my knowledge, mankind is the first case in which there exists the intriguing possibility of evolved intelligence. As I am sure” you know, this idea violates several well-established principles of our biological science. Yet some of your anthropologists’ arguments possess startling self-consistency.”

  “It is quaint idea,” Bubbacub sniffed. “Like per-pet-ual motion, these boast-ings by those you call ‘Skins.’ The theories of ‘natural’ growth of full sent-ience, are great source of good-natured jokes, human-Jacob-Dem-wa. But soon the Lib-rar-y give your troub-led race what it needs; the com-fort of knowing where you came from!”

  The low hum of the ship’s engines grew louder, and for a second Jacob felt a slight disorientation.

  “Attention everybody,” the amplified voice of Commandant deSilva carried throughout the ship. “We’ve just crossed over the first reef. From now on there will be
momentary shocks like that one. I’ll inform you when we near our target area. That is all.”

  The Sun’s horizon was now nearly flat. On all sides of the ship, a sparse red and black tangle of curling shapes stretched away to infinity. More and more of the highest filaments were coming even with the vessel to become prominences against what remained of the blackness of space, and then to disappear into the reddish haze that grew over their heads.

  The group moved, by mutual consent, to the edge of the deck where they could look straight into the lower chromosphere. They were quiet, for a while, watching as the deck quivered from time to time.

  “Dr. Martine,” Jacob said. “Are you and Pil Bubbacub ready with your experiments?”

  She pointed to a pair of stout space-trunks on the deck next to Bubbacub’s station and her own.

  “We have all we need right here. I’m bringing along some psi equipment I used on earlier dives, but mostly I’m going to help Pil Bubbacub in any way I can. My brain wave amplifiers and Q-devices are like knucklebones and tea leaves next to what he’s got in his case. But I’ll try to be of assistance.”

  “Your help be take-en with glad-ness,” Bubbacub ^aid. But when Jacob asked to see the Pil’s psi-testing apparatus he held up his four-fingered hand. “Later, when we are ready.”

  The old itchiness returned to Jacob’s hands. What does Bubbacub have in those trunks? The Branch Library had next to nothing on psi. Some phenomenology, but very little on methodology.

  What does a billion-year-old galactic culture know, he thought, about the deep fundamental levels that all sentient species seem to have in common? Apparently they don’t know everything, for the Galactics still operate on this plane of reality. And I know for a fact that at least some of them don’t have any more telepathy than I do.

  There were rumors that older species periodically faded away from the galaxy; sometimes from natural attrition of war or apathy, but also occasionally by simply “stepping off” . . . disappearing into interests and behavior that have no meaning to their clients or neighbors.

  Why does our Branch Library have nothing on these events, or even on the practical aspects of psi?

  Jacob frowned and locked his two hands together. No, he decided. I’m going to leave Bubbacub’s trunk alone!

  Helene deSilva’s voice came on again over the intercom.

  “We will be approaching the target area in thirty minutes. Those who wish may now approach the Pilot Board to get a good view of our destination.”

  The rest of the Sun seemed to dim slightly as their eyes adapted to the added brightness of the area. The faculae were bright pinpoints, flashing on and off far below in sudden brilliance. At some indeterminable distance, a great sunspot group stretched away. The nearest spot looked like an open pit mine, a sunken recess in the grainy “surface” of the photosphere. The dark umbra was very still, but the penumbral regions around the sunspot’s rim rippled incessantly outward, like wavelets spreading from a pebble thrown into a lake. The border was vague, like a plucked piano string, vibrating.

  Above and all around, the huge shape of a filament tangle loomed. It had to be one of the biggest things that Jacob had ever seen. Following the lines of magnetic fields that merged, twisted, and looped around one another, giant clouds swirled and flowed. A strand emerged from nothingness, rose, twisted around another, and then disappeared into “thin air.”

  All around them now was a swirl of smaller shapes; almost invisible, but excluding the comforting black of space in an overall pink haze.

  Jacob wondered what a literary man would make of this scene. For all of his egregious—perhaps murderous faults—LaRoque had a reputation built on a beautiful facility with words. Jacob had read several of his articles and enjoyed the flowing prose, while perhaps laughing at the man’s conclusions. Here was a scene that demanded a poet, whatever his politics. He thought it a pity that LaRoque wasn’t here . . . for more than one reason.

  “Our instruments have picked up a source of anomalous polarized light. That’s where we start our search.”

  Culla stepped up to the lip of the deck and stared intently at a position pointed out to him by a crewman.

  Jacob asked the Commandant what he was doing.

  “Culla can detect color far more accurately than we,” deSilva said. “He can see differences in wave length down to about an angstrom or so. Also he’s somehow able to retain the phase of the light he sees. Some interference phenomenon, I suppose. But it makes him really handy at spotting the coherent light these laser beasties put out. He’s almost always the first one to see them.”

  Culla’s mashies clacked together once. He pointed with a slender band.

  “It ish there,” he stated. “There are many points of light. It ish a large herd, and I believe that there are sheperdsh there ash well.”

  DeSilva smiled, as the ship hastened its approach.

  15. OF LIFE AND DEATH . . .

  In the center of the filament, the Sunship moved like a fish caught in a swift current. The current was electrical, and the tide that swept the mirrored sphere along was a magnetized plasma of incredible complexity.

  Lumps and streaming shreds of ionized gas seared thither and back, twisted by the forces that their very passage created. Flows of glowing matter popped suddenly in and out of visibility, as the Doppler effect took the emission lines of the gas into and then out of coincidence with the spectral line being used for observation.

  The ship swooped through the turbulent chromospheric crosswinds, tacking on the plasma forces by subtle shifts in its own magnetic shields . . . sailing with sheets made of almost corporeal mathematics. Lightning fast furling and thickening of those shields of force—allowing the tug of the conflicting eddies to be felt in one direction and not another—helped to cut down the buffeting dealt out by the storm.

  Those same shields kept out most of the screaming heat, diverting the rest into tolerable forms. What got through was sucked up into a chamber to drive the Refrigerator Laser, the kidney whose filtered waste-flow was a stream of x-rays which clove aside even the plasma in its path.

  Still, these were mere inventions of Earthmen. It was the science of the Galactics that made the Sun-ship graceful and safe. Gravity fields held back the amorous, crushing pull of the Sun so the ship fell or flew at will. The pounding forces of the center of the filament were absorbed or neutralized, and duration itself was altered by time-compression.

  In relation to a fixed position on the Sun (if such a thing existed), it was swept along the magnetic arch at thousands of miles per hour. But relative to the surrounding clouds, the ship seemed to7 poke its way slowly, pursuing a quarry seen in glimpses.

  Jacob watched the chase with half an eye, and kept Culla in sight the rest of the time. The slender alien was the ship’s lookout. He stood by the helmsman, eyes glowing and arm pointing into the murk.

  Culla’s directions were only a little better than those given by the ship’s own instruments, but the instruments were difficult for Jacob to read. He appreciated having someone there to show passengers, as well as crew, the way to look.

  For an hour they’d chased after specks that glowed in the distant haze. The specks were extremely faint, in the blue and green lines deSilva had ordered opened, but occasionally a burst of greenish light stabbed out from one or another, like a searchlight that suddenly took in the ship and then swept past.

  Now the glimpses occurred more frequently. There were at least a hundred of the objects, all about the same size. Jacob looked at the Proximity Meter. Seven hundred kilometers.

  At two hundred their shape became clear. Each of the “magnetic grazers” was a torus. At this range the colony looked like a large collection of tiny blue wedding rings. Every little ring was aligned the same way, along the filamentary arch.

  “They line up along the magnetic field where it’s most intense,” deSilva said. “And spin on their axes to generate an electric current. Heaven knows how they get from one active regio
n to another when the fields shift. We’re still trying to figure out what keeps them together.”

  Toward the edge of the crowd a few toruses wobbled slowly as they spun. Processing.

  Suddenly, for an instant, the ship was bathed by a sharp green glow. Then the ochre hue returned. The pilot looked up at Jacob.

  “We just passed through the laser tail of one torus. An occasional shot like that doesn’t do any harm,” he said. “But if we were coming up from behind and below the main herd we might have had trouble!”

  A clump of dark plasma, either cooler or moving much faster than the surrounding gas, passed in front of the ship, blocking their view.

  “What purpose does the laser serve?” Jacob asked.

  DeSilva shrugged. “Dynamic stability? Propulsion? Possibly they use it for cooling like we do. I suppose there might even be solid matter in their makeup, if that were true.

  “Whatever the purpose, it sure is powerful to punch green light through these red-tuned screens. That’s the only reason we discovered them. Big as they are, they’re like pollen blowing in the wind down here. We could search for a million years and never find a toroid, without the laser for a trace. They’re invisible in the hydrogen alpha, so to observe them better, we opened up a couple of bands in the green and blue. Naturally we won’t be opening the wavelength that laser’s tuned to! The lines we choose are quiet and optically thick, so whatever you see that’s green or blue comes from a beastie. It should come as a pleasant change.”

  “Anything would be welcome but this damned red.”

  The ship passed through the dark matter and suddenly they were almost among the creatures.

  Jacob gulped and closed his eyes momentarily. When he looked again, he found that he couldn’t swallow. On top of three days of unbelievable sights, what he saw left him helpless before a powerful tremor of emotion.

  If a group of fish “is called a “school” for its discipline, and several lions comprise a “pride,” named for their attitude, Jacob decided that the cluster of solar-beings could only be called a “flare.” So intense was its brilliance that its members seemed to shine against black space.