Bowl of Heaven (33 page)

“But this is a commonplace,” Memor injected, a calculated move whose risk made her heart pound. She tasted in her breath the tang of her own sour apprehension. “We can all see where the argument goes. We ourselves evolved in something like this manner, in the Home.”

Invoking the Home was a bold move, but she had to make it. Memor made a fan display of rattling colors. “But these creatures are tiny! They would lack the advantage of size, and so should not be very successful.”

The Profound gave a jut of his head and a jaunty spray of derisive colors. “Size can become an instability, as surely even nonspecialists must know.” This dig provoked a titter among some. “It is simple to grow large and dumb, yet remain secure. We—the Folk—found a balance. We became smart and yet our size let us develop the civilized arts. Our societies matured. We learned to sustain, the greatest of virtues. We learned to Adopt other species through modification of their genes, our great skill—though, of course, even the Adopted at times need recalibration.”

Memor rose to her full height to challenge this. Rising was a risk, for it could offend. But her life was at stake here. Plainly, the Packmistress had chosen to subject them to the Perpetual Hell to make this point without speaking of it. “You speak of strategies we do not in fact know at all. Adopting is our method here, yes. But, I might remind the Profound, we do not know how
we
evolved!”

Memor had not expected this sally to deflect the Profound’s argument, and it did not. He said, “Standard theory declares that this skill, plus our extraordinary social coherence, was decisive. I am not surprised you do not know this, for you are untutored in the evolutionary arts.”

“Do
you
know what sort of world we came from?”

“Of course. The best parts of it were much like our Bowl.”

“You like mean the Great Plain, the Knothole, the Zone of Reflectance, or—what?”

He shot back, “That is a specialist question, beyond the concerns of—”

“You do not know, do you?”

“I did not say that. I think it beside my point.”

“Let us note the Profound did not answer the question.”

“Halt!” the Packmistress ordered. “We are getting away from the reason for your appearance here, Memor,
and
I note you are using this diversion to delay our proper considerations.”

Memor saw she had gone too far and so made the ritual bow with coronations of dutiful apology—three fan-trills and a rainbow display of self-dismay. The attendees nodded in approval and a few even sent quick fan-toasts at Memor’s performance of a difficult salute. That seemed to calm everyone, but Memor knew it was mere polite manners.

The Profound said slowly, voice filled with deep sour notes, “Memor here has allowed to
escape
the
only
of these aliens our Security had captured! They are far away from the other primates, who escaped immediately when they entered.”

“How did that occur?” a senior figure asked.

“Inexcusable oversight. I might add that the commanders responsible have been recycled.”

“That seems brutal,” a voice at the back called. “We are unaccustomed to invasion, and do not have anyone living who has experience.”

The Profound said slowly, “As well it might, but word of recyclings spreads, and aids in discipline.”

Silence. A senior member said, “We still cannot find those, the ones who got away at the air lock?”

“No, and that is the salient threat. These primates are vicious—they have killed some of us!—and at a demonstrably lower stage of evolution. But they are infernally hard to find, catch, and kill.”

“We have
none
in captivity?” The senior figure rustled head feathers in surprise.

“Exactly so—” The Packmistress’s head swiveled. “—due to Memor. The only dead primate we have found, left behind by his companions as they fled, apparently died from a large predator—which the other primates then killed. All this occurred during their escape from Memor.” She ended with a long stare at Memor, aided by fan stirring of rebuke at her shoulders.

Memor disliked such smug orations but kept still.

The entire body turned and looked at Memor. She decided the best tactic was to stare right back.

The Profound did not hesitate. “There is a further issue. These are not truly rational minds. They cannot view the Underminds and so do not know themselves.”

Gasps, frowns. Memor started to object to this intrusion into her own area. “Ah, I—”

The Profound waved her off. “For these primates, there is always a silent partner riding along in the same mind. It can get in touch with their Foreselves. Yes—we do owe this discovery to Memor, I’ll grant. But! Their Underminds can speak to them only through dreams during sleep. Memor showed that they have ideas that come to them out of ‘nowhere.’ Not words or exact thoughts, just images and sensations.”

“Surely these cannot be significant ideas?” a senior asked. “They are unmotivated.”

The Profound shook his head sadly, a theatrical move that made Memor grind her teeth. “Alas, I must report to you—again, due to Memor’s work—that this primate ‘silent partner’ is the wellspring of their primitive creativity.”

“But that is inefficient!” the senior Savant insisted.

“Apparently not, on whatever strange world these tree-swingers came from in their crude ship. Evolution must have preferred to keep their minds divided between the conscious self and the silent.”

The Savant looked incredulous—eyes upcast, neck-fan puckered red, snout cocked at an angle. “Surely such disabled creatures, even if they have technologies, are no threat to us.”

The Profound flicked a command, and the dome above them popped with an image—the alien primates gathered around a campfire. The audience rustled. “These look quite helpless,” the Savant said.

“They are not,” the Profound said, and cut to an image of three Folk sprawled, their bodies stripped of gear. Burns at their necks and heads had singed away many feathers. Brown blood stained the sand around them, and surprise lingered in their staring eyes.

“And now we turn to the cause of these events,” the Profound said quietly.

Memor recognized the images she had sent in reports. Of course, the Profound had put his own interpretation on her brainscan data, slanting it to his pointed ends. Memor stood. “I am not the cause, my Profound. I am the discoverer.”

“Of what?”

“The sobering implication that these primates undermine our understanding of our own minds.”

“That is nonsense.”

“You are a male, my dear Profound, and so should be more open to ideas, since you are young as well. These events imply a painfully fresh insight. These creatures somehow avoid the risks of an unfettered intelligence. The implications—”

“Are many, but the threat is clear,” the Profound snapped. “
You
let them escape. The only concrete knowledge we have comes from the single corpse they left behind—being primitives, I would have expected them to at least try to bury it. Studying that body explains their archaic origins. They have organs that barely function, some clearly vestigial, particularly in their digestive tracts. Natural selection has not had time to edit out these simple flaws. And, tellingly, there is
no
sign of artificial selection.”

Clucks of doubt greeted this news. An elder asked, “How could they become starfarers without tailoring their bodies?”

“They were in a hurry,” Memor said dryly.

The Profound’s eyes narrowed. “They must come from quite nearby, to reach us in such simple craft. Yet I checked with the Astronomers, and there are no habitable planets within several light-years.”

Memor saw this digression was to mollify the crowd, by seeming reasonable. She said, “They caught up to us and slowed to board. They obviously do not come with an attitude of awe, as with prior aliens. Customarily we pass by a star, and any intelligent, technological life-form comes to us with great respect for the Bowl, its majesty. I doubt these, who apparently found us by accident, will join the Adopted without great trouble.”

The Profound’s eyes glistened as he saw an opportunity. “Then you agree they should be killed?”

“Of course. But the implications they bring—”

“Will not matter when they are dead, yes?”

“You speak of that as an easy thing. My point is that it will not be simple. They have resources I cannot fathom.”

“But that is subject to demonstration, yes?” The Profound yawned elaborately, amused.

“If we muster—”

“I assure you we are receiving reports from varying Folk communities. I have not gotten reports from the party you let escape, alas.” With this, he gave a derisive feather-flicker. “But other Folk do glimpse the primates who stole an aircar. They’ve been sighted as they pass in the distance.”

“Then you— Wait, why do the Folk not attack them?”

“They proceed through a zone of low habitation. None who sighted them had weapons of such range, for obvious reasons.”

The Folk communities had only low-power armaments. Large explosives could breach the shell and open the Bowl to vacuum. If such were used by the infrequent Adopted rebellions, disaster would follow.

Memor could sense the shift in the audience. A senior Savant said, “If you are correct, our Profound, we must use those who know these strange primates.”

The Profound turned, puzzled. “I have made a case for extermination—”

“But only Memor knows how they think, yes?”

Memor said, “I cannot pretend to know, but I can at least sense how they respond.”

The senior was puzzled and asked for explanation with a classic ruffle and coo.

“I can predict many actions of these primates, yet without understanding their motives.”

The Profound sent his crown feathers into a circling pattern of blue and gold. “I think Memor has proved she does
not
know how—”

“She is what we have,” the Packmistress said suddenly. “She studied these aliens.”

“But the risk!” the Profound said, turning to make the strut-challenge to the entire room. “We know from prior eras that aliens drawn to us from planets arrive with a planetary view of life. This cripples them. Of course, once having seen and lived upon the Bowl of Heaven, they saw their errors and found a quiet equilibrium. The Adopted have been quite useful to us and, once rendered docile, improve the lives of us all. Yet inevitably such aliens suffer for reasons built deeply into their genes—a nostalgia for planets that necessarily suffer the pains of days and nights, of axial seasons, of uncontrolled, hammering weather. So the Adopted are susceptible to incitement. These Late Invaders could excite such nostalgia into rage, vast violence, and then—”

The Packmistress held up her arms, and the room fell silent. She did not react visibly, but turned to Memor and gazed steadily. “You will find a way to draw them out.”

Memor hesitated. “But … how can I…”

“You know them. You have seen their ways of bonding, of talking with those curious faces of theirs. The idea of an intelligence that does not fully control expression, showing all to any who see—and so lets others know what emotions pass within! Use that! You have two bands of aliens moving across the majesty of the Bowl. They are communal animals, yes?”

“True, they daily meet and speak and—”

“Good. Use that.”

“Lure them?”

“If you can devise a way, surely.”

“May I have use of the Sky Command? I can cover territory quickly with the fliers. And especially the airfish.”

“I suppose.” A sniff.

Memor hesitated, then bowed. Her caution warned her not to go further, but—“What of their ship?”

“Eh?” A Packmistress is not used to being questioned.

“Their starship orbits about our star. Suppose it has some powers we do not know?”

“That is for the Astronomers, surely.” The Packmistress stirred, as if she had not considered the issue. “I heard at Council that our mirror complexes probably cannot adjust quickly enough to focus on their ship. It has capacity to maneuver, and could evade a beam.”

A senior Savant added, “No small ship could damage the Bowl, in any case.”

“Ah, that is consoling,” Memor said with a bow and a humble submission-flurry of crest feathers. Then, as she rose, she had an idea.

THIRTY-EIGHT

When they stopped for a rest after a long journey in the magcar,
Cliff searched for food. It felt good to get out of the car and into the “sorta-natural,” as Irma called it.

There was little of animal prints or scat here, he noticed automatically. He found ripe berries, spotting them from experience. Some large trees had fruit growing off their trunks, an oddity that he used. With Howard he shot several of them off the bark by laser. He had developed a small poison detector, using the gear he had brought. That time of their landing—going through the air lock and then on the run—seemed far in the past. He had expected a few days on the Bowl, mostly doing bio tests, then back to
SunSeeker
.

The fruit was a succulent purple and tested okay.

But the purple sap drew tiny flies that went for the fruit and then tried to suck the moisture off his eyeballs. They darted into his ears and dwelled there, prying deep inside. Dozens of them danced in the air, looking for suitable targets. Only running left them behind, and not for long.

This just led the flies to the others, who batted at the buzzing irritants. It got bad and they decided to fire up the magcar and flee. Aybe was irritable; they had stung him on the neck repeatedly. He took out his ire by “trying out the dynamics.” This meant more acrobatics. Howard had measured the magnetic fields around the magcar and found it was an asymmetric dipole, with field squeezed tight under the car. With all aboard, the car sped faster by hugging the ground, so they skimmed along at only a meter in altitude. The more weight, the faster they could go. “Counterintuitive,” Howard said. “Must be the fields grip the metal belowground better.”

Aybe nodded. “I figure the Bowl underpinning is metal with magnetic fields already embedded.”