Orion's Hounds

by Christopher L. Bennett

  “Okay,” Vale said. “But what am I supposed to do when you and he have a consultation I’m not even privy to?”

  “That’s a valid point. I’ll talk to Will about it—we’ll both make more of an effort to avoid that in the future.”

  Deanna’s gentle, wise openness defused Vale’s anger…although a part of her still envied how easy Deanna made everything look. “Okay.”

  “And keep one more thing in mind, Christine: Will Riker chose you. He pushed for you, courted you until you said yes. He arranged for that fast promotion because he felt there was no one better suited for this job. He values you as his first officer, his partner. And take it from me: He’s very committed to his partnerships.”

  Vale smiled, heartened by her words. “I’ll remember that. Thank you, Deanna.”

  “My pleasure.” She looked up. “Computer, resume.”

  The lift went on its way again, and the two women stood there in companionable silence for a moment. Then Vale said, “So, uh, what do you think I should do about Jaza?”

  “I can’t tell you what to do….”

  “I know, but if you have any thoughts…”

  “Computer, hold,” Deanna said, and the lift stopped again. “I think it’s important to find your comfort level. If you’re unsure of yourself right now, if you want to find balance in your career, then maybe this isn’t the time to pursue a relationship. It isn’t always necessary to rush into what you want. My relationship with Will didn’t go smoothly the first time, because we were both young and unsure of what we wanted. But on the Enterprise, we had the time to grow together, to build the foundation of a strong personal and professional partnership, and our love eventually grew from that.”

  Vale nodded. “Okay. But on the other hand,” she said, remembering how she’d felt after Oghen, “either one of us could get killed at any time, and then we’d have missed our chance.”

  “That’s true too. There isn’t always a simple answer. Some relationships do require time and patience, but there’s no guarantee of getting it. Whichever way you go, it’s a risk.”

  “Great. So you’re saying there’s no way to decide.”

  “I’m saying that maybe the decision comes down to your other priorities. If your career is what’s most important to you right now, and if you feel a relationship with Jaza would disrupt that, then that’s a perfectly valid choice to make.” Deanna touched her shoulder. “What matters is that you make the choice based on the factors in your life and Jaza’s. It shouldn’t be about Will and me, or you and me.”

  Vale took a moment to absorb that. “Okay, then. Thanks for the talk.”

  “Anytime. Computer, resume.”

  Another companionable silence arose, to be broken again by Vale. “Um, what I said about your decades of experience…I wasn’t calling you old or anything.”

  “No, of course not. I understand.”

  “I just meant—”

  “I know.”

  “A little maturity, it’s very becoming on a woman.”

  “Certainly.”

  “You’re definitely still hot.”

  Deanna threw her a sidelong look. “You better believe it, kiddo.”

  The jellies’ destination was a star system with a G8 primary, smallish and yellow-orange, surrounded by five planets and a brown dwarf which orbited at about sixteen AUs. The dwarf’s gravity had perturbed any outer planets out of the system, but had also cleared the inner system of most of the asteroidal and cometary debris which could have posed an impact hazard to its planets. The second world had a nice low-eccentricity orbit right in the heart of the star’s habitable zone. The star itself was stable, with minimal flare activity, and it was comfortably far from any potential supernova stars, pulsars, stellar nurseries, or other celestial hazards. All told, it was one of the safest abodes of life they were likely to find this close to the Vela Association.

  “So what do we call it?”

  Riker turned to Deanna and quirked an eyebrow at her question. “Don’t the star-jellies have a name for it?”

  “Nothing that translates into words,” she answered with a shrug. “Just a general sense of safety, family, nurturing. Perhaps ‘Nursery,’ but that’s more its category than a name for the particular place. So you’re free to call it whatever you want.”

  He grinned at her. “Captain’s prerogative, eh?”

  “It’s one of the perks of the job. So what’s the first place name that Captain Will Riker adds to the almanacs?”

  “Oh, that’s easy. Deanna’s Star, of course.”

  She blushed, laughed. “Oh, no. Will, please, no. That would be too embarrassing.” She exchanged a look with Vale. “And not entirely appropriate.”

  “All right, then, how about I let you name it instead? What would you like to call it?”

  Deanna again looked at Vale, as if for approval. The younger woman shrugged assentingly. Deanna gazed at the star on the viewscreen for a moment. “How about Kestra?”

  They exchanged a long, meaningful look. That would be an even better gift to Deanna, he thought. “Kestra it is, then. Mr. Jaza, please log it as such.”

  “Aye, sir.”

  Although the planet—which he could now call Kestra II, Riker supposed—was a fairly safe place as far as cosmic hazards were concerned, it was still girded by a cordon of star-jellies, dozens of them patrolling its orbital space in armored mode. Below them, scans revealed other, unarmored jellies at various altitudes, apparently keeping watch over their sessile young on the surface.

  “The planet is fairly active geologically,” Jaza reported. “I’m reading star-jelly-like biosignatures congregating around zones of hydrothermal activity—hot springs, alkali lakes, and the like.”

  “That fits with what Se’hraqua said about them burrowing their roots to feed off their planet’s warmth,” Deanna said.

  Jaza nodded. “And the Bandi sustained their captive jelly with geothermal energy. It must be their preferred energy source during their sessile phase.”

  “That might be why the wounded jelly came to their world in the first place,” said Riker, remembering that geothermal energy had been the one resource Deneb IV had possessed in abundance.

  “One thing puzzles me,” said Vale. “If the Pa’haquel have been hunting them for millennia, they should’ve been able to find this world by now. Why haven’t they attacked it?”

  “I’ve been wondering that too,” Jaza said. “For that matter, why haven’t the Pa’haquel come to one of these breeding worlds and domesticated its jellies, rather than going to the trouble of hunting them in the wild?”

  Riker frowned. “You saw how much their culture revolves around the hunt.”

  “That wouldn’t explain it,” Deanna told him. “Even the most ideologically driven cultures, when you get right down to it, base their ideologies on their practical needs. If those needs then change, the culture may cling to its traditions for a while, but eventually later generations will grow up seeing more harm than good in them and rebel, replacing them with a reformist ideology that suits their needs better. So there must be some other reason why the Pa’haquel have kept their hunting traditions.”

  “Well, whatever it is,” Vale said, “we’ll have to ask them. I doubt we’ll find it here.”

  “We never know until we look,” Riker reminded her.

  Soon Titan and the jellies’ funeral procession had reached the orbital cordon. They passed through it without incident; no doubt the defender jellies had been advised of Titan’s friendly status. However, one armored jelly broke formation and took station several dozen kilometers off their stern, keeping unobtrusive guard. The other armored jellies in visual range signalled with their meridional chaser lights in acknowledgment of the bereaved school.

  Soon the school settled into a low orbit above Kestra II, with Titan and its shadow following suit. The pallbearers released their charge and let it float free. This continued for a full orbit, taking over an hour. Those jellies above and
below, tending to their duties, blinked their lights and commiserated telepathically (so Deanna reported) as the procession went by. Those that could spare the time flew up alongside and exchanged solemn tendril-caresses with the grieving school, although they left the corpse untouched. Deanna narrated the whole affair in somber tones, her tears flowing freely. After a while, concerned at the sheer volume of grief she must be processing, Riker leaned over and whispered, “Can’t you block out some of what they’re feeling?”

  Her eyes widened. “I can…but this should be acknowledged.” She clasped his hand. “I’ll be all right. It’s…cathartic. A healing grief.”

  Once a full orbit had been completed, the school took up a new formation around its lost member, essentially stacking themselves into a column with it in the middle, keeping a few hundred meters between them. The rings of red lights within their bodies, normally almost washed out by their overall glow, began to shine brighter. “They seem to be…drawing residual energy from the dead one’s distortion generators,” Jaza reported. “Sharing it among themselves.”

  Vale was startled. “That seems…a bit vampiric.”

  “No,” Deanna said. “They’re preserving a part of its life essence, making sure it endures within the school.”

  “It also makes practical sense,” Jaza added, “if they mean to inter the body on the planet. Even lifeless, those generators contain massive amounts of energy—enough to warp space. They’d have to either drain them or remove them first, if they didn’t want to risk serious environmental damage in the event of a rupture.” He furrowed his brow. “I suppose the sessile young don’t fully charge theirs until they leave the surface.”

  “Or else they don’t grow in until adulthood,” Vale countered.

  “Maybe. But they’d need gravity manipulation to be able to lift their own mass into orbit.”

  “Unless the adults carry them there.”

  “People,” Riker advised, “could we curb the scientific speculation for now, out of respect?”

  Vale bowed her head. “Sorry, sir.”

  Once the energy transfer was complete, the two pall-bearer jellies took hold of the corpse once more, and the school began a deorbit maneuver. Titan followed suit for part of the way, until they began drawing too close to the atmosphere. “Their destination appears to be a cluster of wide, deep hydrothermal lakes in the southern hemisphere,” Jaza reported. “I’m reading what must be sessile jellies in various stages of growth, living in the lakes. Of course—I should have realized. Living things that huge, they’d need to live in water to avoid being crushed in planetary gravity—at least until their gravity-control systems are mature.”

  “Helm,” Riker ordered, “maintain orbit over those lakes at current altitude.”

  “Maintaining, aye,” Lavena said, entering the commands for the forced orbit.

  Meanwhile, Jaza was checking his scans. “The other regions of heavy geothermal activity on the planet…I’m reading very similar lake complexes at each of them. There’s little chance of that happening naturally, with such regularity all over the planet. The jellies must engage in…I don’t know whether to call it nesting or terraforming. Amazing. Seeing them out in space, it’s easy to lose your sense of scale about these creatures. They need to transform whole ecosystems just to nurture their young.”

  “Mr. Jaza,” Riker cautioned. “I don’t want to repeat myself.”

  “Sorry, Captain. But this is how I show reverence for the universe—by trying to understand its truths. The more I learn about them, the more I can appreciate their beauty.”

  Deanna touched his arm. “It’s all right, Will. They’re a curious people themselves. They appreciate our inquisitiveness toward them. Even now. It’s a sad time, yes, but it’s also a time of renewal, of growth. Once they inter their sibling in the nesting ground, its biomass will sustain the ecology that in turn sustains the growing jellies. And the energy they drew from it…” She drew her brows together. “I’m having trouble interpreting what they’re telling me, but they say it will bring new life as well. In fact, I think that will be the final part of the ceremony.”

  Soon the jellies reached the largest lake in the cluster and hovered above it. Jaza put a magnified overhead view on the main screen. Around the rim of the lake were a number of shapes that had to be immature jellies, half-submerged in the water. From above they appeared as eight-pointed starbursts, consisting of eight narrow radial vanes with lobes growing outward between them from their central masses. The lobes were different in color from the adult jellies; if not for their regular shapes he would have assumed they were islands. It appeared they had plants and soil atop them, and presumably animals living upon them as well, much as the Pa’haquel had described.

  Something bleeped on Jaza’s console, and he looked at the readouts in amazement. “Prophets. Sir, I’m reading huge amounts of transporter activity down there. Directed beneath the lake.” Even as he spoke, the deceased jelly began to glow with a watery purple-white shimmer which Riker had seen—and experienced firsthand—before. “Of course,” Jaza breathed. “Any other way of trying to bury a creature a kilometer wide would massively disrupt the ecosystem. They’re beaming out a space for it beneath the lakebed, then beaming it in quickly before the bed collapses.”

  “What are they doing with the excavated earth?” Vale wanted to know.

  “It’s being stored inside one of the jellies.”

  Now the jellies, their grim burden delivered to rest at last, hovered in slow circles above the nesting grounds. “They’re communing with the children,” Deanna said. “Explaining to them what’s happened, sharing their memories and emotions. Assuring them that the cycle of life continues…that after death there is new birth.” She gasped, and just then the jellies began to circle faster, spiraling upward into the sky. “Oh my God,” Deanna breathed, though it was with excitement and wonder. “They’re starting.”

  “What?”

  She beamed at him. “Something wonderful.”

  The jellies’ helical dance carried them up into orbital space, past Titan and beyond. The pattern twisted, evolved, and came to center around one jelly, now glowing more brightly than the rest. “It’s the one that took in the clay and soil,” Jaza said. “There’s something happening inside it now…some kind of matter transformation.”

  Deanna met Riker’s eyes with wonder. “Conception!” she said. “After death…comes new birth.”

  Riker stared at the screen. “This one…just happened to be ready to conceive? Or are they always ready?”

  “It makes sense,” Jaza said. “With their ability to transmute matter, synthesize anything, they could create an ovum whenever they wanted. Or maybe ‘bud’ is a better term for it. Asexual reproduction.”

  Deanna shook her head. “No. Well, not entirely. What I’m feeling…it’s decidedly not ‘asexual.’ ” Indeed, she was breathing hard, and Riker noted a familiar flush in her cheeks. He stared at her. She reached out and took his hand, but otherwise seemed only distantly aware of his presence. “The others…the whole school, we’re all part of it.” We? “This is just the beginning…oh!”

  “Transporter activity,” Jaza said. “The, uhh, embryo, it’s been beamed into another jelly!”

  “It passes through every one,” Deanna said, as the onscreen dance shifted to center on a different jelly, presumably the embryo’s recipient. “Each one contributes something…each one helps craft the final form. It passes through all until a consensus is reached…until it reflects them all, their essences, their visions. It’s…” She shook herself, and gave an abashed chuckle at herself for getting so carried away. “It feels as much like…a creative collaboration, a group sculpture or performance piece, as a sexual act.”

  “If they can make an egg from scratch,” Vale said, “they can remake it. Rewrite its genes, edit them into whatever form they want.”

  “Eugenics,” Keru said, disapprovingly. “Choosing every trait about your baby…it seems so cold and cal
culating.”

  “It’s not like that at all,” Deanna said. “There’s no set of preconceived notions behind it, no attempt to give themselves greater power or limit their diversity. What I’m sensing…there must be a more scientific way of putting it, but I’m feeling it like a work of art. Learning the right techniques, the right basic forms to use, making sure they’re free of error…but once you have them laid down, there’s still so much freedom, and getting them right is what gives you that freedom.”

  “Error-checking,” Jaza said. “The environment cosmozoans live in—all the hard radiation, the quantum distortions—they’d need a means to guard against harmful mutations. But one that at the same time would leave them free to evolve and maintain a healthy level of diversity. This kind of conscious design and revision of their genome—it’s perfect for that.”

  “Yes, that’s it. That’s what I’m feeling from them. They sense that balance on an instinctive level. They only want what’s best for the baby. And so they try to give it the best of all of themselves, and the best of the kin they’ve lost.” She beamed, her eyes glistening. “There is such bittersweet joy in this.”

  “Maybe this is why the Pa’haquel haven’t tried to domesticate the jellies,” Jaza mused. “Any attempt they made to reengineer them could be consciously undone during procreation. They have no choice but to take them from the wild.”

  And so it continued for some time, the jellies transferring the embryo between them one by one, until all fourteen members of the school had left their mark on it. Then it was returned to the originator, but Jaza reported more replicator-like activity from inside it. “Second-draft revisions?” Vale suggested.

  “Essentially,” Deanna said, still breathless. “They’re nearing consensus…very nearly…Yes,” she said, though it seemed she was holding herself back from shouting it. Riker had long since stopped watching the viewscreen, though the others on the bridge remained studiously focussed on their consoles. She grinned at Riker, eyes wide with wonder. “And now the quickening.”