Shipstar (20 page)

“Those forms we saw in the shadows out there—” Terry gestured to the ice plains beyond. “—might have some connection to these. Except these are on a planet.”

“Life adapts,” Irma said. “A big leap, from a Titan-like cold around a hundred degrees Kelvin, with high atmospheric pressure, to those vacuum flowers and the rest of it, all holding on to the outside hull.”

“A big jump,” Terry said. “But there must have been incremental steps, and they had billions of years to do it.”

By this time the image had faded, replaced by a view of a dense jungle. This one, though, had spiral trees, whipped by high winds against a purple sky of shredded clouds. The stilled storm had a big beast in the foreground, something like a dirty brown groundhog, its head tucked in against the wind.

The show went on and then on some more. After a while even exotic alien landscapes became repetitious: blue green mountain ranges scoured by deep gray rivers, placid oceans brimming with green scum, arid tan desert worlds ground down under heavy brooding brown atmospheres—

“All planets,” Terry said. “They’re not showing us comets. Not showing us themselves.”

—iceworlds aplenty beneath starry skies, grasslands with four-footed herds roaming as volcanoes belched red streamers in the distance, oceans with huge beasts wallowing in enormous crashing waves, places hard to identify in the swirling pink mists.
Life adapts, indeed.

After a while, the slide show was over and more Anglish words appeared.

You warmlife now learn to journey from star to star.

We have seen your kind before.

You expand outward at great cost to you, for fleeting quicklife reasons.

Most warmlife comes in small ships, as do you.

The dream of this Bowl enticed us with its capacity. Its slow progress fits our minds, our style. Over eons we have seen little need to change its design.

Through voyages we gain passengers warm and cold. This is only part of us. Other ice minds live elsewhere in the Bowl’s shadow.

We deeplife are one in fluidity.

We address you now because this is an unusual time. This Bowl approaches a fresh world. As do you.

We have no reason to intervene in warmlife affairs. We act when the Bowl faces threats to its stability and endurance.

You will help us.

“We will?” Aybe said.

“They’re probably listening in some way, y’know,” Cliff said sternly.

Aybe blinked and said loudly, “Ah, yes, we will. If we know how.”

Irma stood and gazed out at the dim icelands where the vacuum flowers still held Beth’s image. She fanned her laser and said, “Those blobs, they’re moving, all right.”

“Maybe these Cold Minds keep those forms around because they’re related by mutual evolution?” Terry asked. “Hard to know. If these Cold Minds are as old as they say, there’s not much that can be new to them.”

Cliff said, “And even less that’s interesting.”

Liquid life-forms?
he thought. Trying to think on huge time scales was hard.
Maybe warmlife is just a buzzing, frantic irritant to them. And there is something in their manner, dealing with us warmlife, that suggests immense distance. These things had probably evolved in the outer fringes of solar systems. They could travel on comets, maybe, bouncing from star to star. So maybe they freely roamed the galaxy while the most advanced warmlife consisted of single-celled pond scum.

None of this was reassuring.

“What did you have in mind?” Irma addressed the screen.

TWENTY
-
ONE

Memor watched Tananareve carefully as their party entered the chamber for the Justice Rendering. The primate studied the walls and ornamental traces with a quick and ready eye, as though cataloging all she saw. Quite natural for an explorer, who expected to report back to her superiors. That might well not happen, but no need to give the primate a hint of that.

They sat in high rows above the steeply inclined vault. Above them hovered ancient tapestries of gold and ivory, while the funnel at the vault’s floor was an ominous jet black. Bemor sat higher than Asenath, Memor, and the primate, as fitted his rank. He spoke with the Highers, even the Ice Minds. Memor knew—and envied, of course. Though Bemor was her twin genetically, but for those genes that expressed sex, he had been reared to deal with long-term thinking and abstractions at a level Memor had not. Perhaps that explained, Memor thought, the tenor of irritation that crept into his sentences when discussions flagged or failed to reach a sharp point of usefulness. Male traits indeed, she recalled.

A clarion call sounded deep and long in the vault. It comprised some high trills, playing against long strumming bass notes that Memor knew were resonant with the body size of Folk, and so would be felt rather than heard. Such musics instilled an uneasy impression of immensity and whole-body involvement, a tool persuasive yet hard to recognize. It instilled an apprehensive awe.

Tananareve watched and listened, saying nothing. Her eyes darted with quick intelligence. Only her tight pale lips told of some inner tension.

Resonant chords came from the music walls. At a signal, a team of brawny Folk strode from the witnesses gathered on the lower level. With prods, these forced each of the Maxer Cult members forward … closer to the edge … their legs slipping in the slime … then at the teetering brink … as a deep voice extolled their violations of the Great Pact. At a second hooting call, the Folk thrust the Maxers into the pit. Some flailed in resistance. Others turned with resigned shrugs and jumped. Cries, shouts, shrieks.

“This is a most useful spectacle,” Asenath said mildly. “Well done, too.”

The music rose to a triumphant chorus, high notes rejoicing. Barely audible beneath the sound was a chanting—

“Live in this moment. Give in this moment.”

“Ritual reprocessing is too good for those who undermine stability,” Asenath said, spitting out the words. “They endanger us all.”

“So may we,” Memor said, and at once regretted it.

Asenath shot back, “Not if we exterminate the humans as we have these!”

They had apparently forgotten that the primate sat among them, Memor saw. Tananareve’s head jerked up for a moment; then she bowed it … which meant, Memor knew, that the primate had learned some of their speech. Had understood Asenath’s remark. These creatures were smarter than she knew.

There was a long silence after the ceremony, hanging in the heavy air.

Bemor said softly, “We Folk must conquer our own festering anxieties, as well. These reprocessings are necessary for stability and for life itself. We Folk in our own wide variety, along with the multitudes of Adopted, should accept the hard, simple fact that we ourselves and all we encounter are transitory, ephemeral, beings of the moment. We matter little. We should embrace the beauty and pleasure of the world, knowing it will cease for us, inevitably. We are not the Ice Minds. Such is the Order of Life.”

Memor added her agreeing fan-display to that of Asenath and other Folk within range of Bemor’s deep bass voice. For her it was a satisfying moment. Bemor could make these matters far more resonant and inspiring than she; just another sign of his ability range. When they were both young, cared for by their long dead Principal Mother, he had early on shown his ability to handle higher-level abstractions and find the nugget of wisdom in passing moments. She admired him.

But Asenath would not let it be. She said, “These primates do not see such wisdom. They are an expansionist species, such as has been seldom seen in the Bowl for great ages. Their ship has maneuvered below range of our defense gamma ray lasers. Their parties afoot elude us. It is time to marshal efforts to eliminate them.” A pause and vigorous fan-rattle. “Obviously.”

Bemor gave an agreeable rainbow flourish with mingled eye-frets, but then said soberly, “There have been, down through the vast generations, uncounted acts to restore stability. All these carried a penumbra of drownings, starvation, sad sickness, massacre, looting, ethnic scourges, laser conflagrations, air-cutting slaughters, assisted group suicides, expulsions into vacuum—the list trudges on.”

“You seem saddened by this,” Memor said—a bit presumptively, but after all, she was his identical.

Bemor yielded on this with an embarrassed flutter. “I recall when young—you were spared this, my twin—assisting the more militant among us. We walked on corpses, sat on wrecked bodies to rest, stacked them as they stiffened to provide us a momentary table to eat upon. The delay in recycling them into the Great Soil meant they had to be assembled and even defended, against predators both feral and intelligent. But it had to be done.”

Memor said kindly, in mellow tones, “Brother, I do not follow—”

“The Bowl grows errant beliefs like mutant species. There were obscure faiths and ethical theories that held the body was some kind of holy vessel, whose owners had not yet departed. Or else such spirits would require the body, even though rendered into dust, to be made animate again. So they resisted return to the Great Soil, a true sin.”

He looked around at nearby Folk, who regarded him with varying displays of doubt. “You flutter your fan-feathers with disbelief, yes—but I have seen this in historical records, and even in person. Sad sights I regret witnessing now.” Bemor sagged a bit as if borne down by history, his feathery jaws swaying. “Alas, my memory is long and I cannot erase those laid down with such feeling.”

Crowds come to witness now shuffled out of the Vault. Other Folk dispersed until it was Asenath, Bemor, and Memor, plus of course the primate.

Asenath said, “Your report is due, Memor. Your hunt for the bandit crew still loose among the Sil continues?”

Memor duly reported finding the Late Invaders among the Sil. With a quick air display of images, she told of the attack upon the Sil city, the vast destruction.

“Approved by upper echelons?” Asenath asked severely.

“I ushered it through,” Bemor said mildly, eyeing Asenath but making no feather-display at all. Lack of fan-signal was a subtle sign of coolness, but Asenath missed this and rushed ahead, eager with a point to make.

“And they are dead?”

Memor suppressed her usual feather-rainbow to convey irked response and said, “No. I had surveillance auto-eyes study the Sil buildings. While they are rebuilding themselves, they involuntarily shape new messages in their forms. This is not a language but a gesture-speak. The influence of building style plainly shows a vagrant presence among the Sil, and I deduce that the humans survived the assault.”

Asenath pressed forward with full fan-clatter. “So. You failed.”

“I did not command the skyfish. Those who did not achieve their goals were demoted. But recently one fast-fly craft caught this.” Memor flicked an image into the air surrounding them. A down view showed a primate running between recently shaped buildings. A pain beam rippled over it, and the figure crumpled. The beam stayed on and the writhing thing kicked and thrashed and then lay still.

“A single kill?” Asenath said with downcast tones.

“We now know we can hurt them at will over distance. My primate here”—a gesture at Tananareve—“was our test subject. But I found also that the Sil have secured access to my own surveillance.”

Bemor said, “So the Sil are watching you, too?”

“I withdrew immediately, of course. In that interval the primates made their way toward a nearby mirror zone.”

Asenath brushed this aside, pressing on. “Memor, we have not heard your report on this primate of yours. I take it she has been well fed and often exercised?”

Memor puzzled at Asenath’s apparently friendly tone, suspecting something. “Of course. I brought her here to higher gravities, for her health. Her species was clearly not made for lightness—indeed, their bone and joint structures suggest a world of heavier gravitation than even the Great Plain.”

Bemor asked, “You have read her mind structures enough? Your reports mentioned this odd character, inability to see her own Undermind.”

“Yes, obviously an early evolutionary step. Imagine building a large, coherent society of individuals who could not know their own impulses, their inner thoughts! Touring her mind was instructive. I got most of what I need.”

Asenath fluttered with appreciation. “I shall depend upon your ability to monitor this primate. We will need her cooperation to convey our response to their ship’s attempts at contact.”

Memor hid her surprise. “Now?”

Asenath said sternly, “We must deceive the Glorians about who commands the Bowl. Your primates can do this for us, if properly handled.”

PART VII

C
RUNCHY
I
NSECTS

It is a common experience that a problem difficult at night is resolved in the morning after the committee of sleep has worked on it.

—J
OHN
S
TEINBECK

TWENTY
-
TWO

“These snakes are incredible,” Beth said to Karl. It was pleasant to have time to relax and just watch without feeling endlessly responsible. She had gotten used to that on the Bowl.

“If you’d asked me before I saw them, I’d have said more like improbable.” Karl could not take his eyes from the screen. “Hard to see how evolution worked out skills like this.”

They were watching some aft zone electronic repairs carried out in the narrow spaces near the magnetic drive modules. The snakes wriggled into spaces that would have taken her and Kurt hours to unsheath, disconnect, monitor, diagnose, and fix.

Karl called to them, “Go left at the condenser bank. They’re cylindrical drums with oil valves on the upper side, colored yellow. Then spin open the double diode—they’re the blue plates.”

The Maintenance Artilect took this from Karl’s mike and translated it into the sliding vowels and clipped sharp notes that made up the finger snake language. On the screen they both watched the snakes make the right moves. They each had a tool harness that they plucked small instruments from. With these they deftly inserted, turned, levered, and adjusted their way through one task after another, with speeds almost impossible to follow. The interior cameras were tiny light pipes and gave barely enough definition to make this work. All the while, the ship hummed on and occasional thumps and surges hampered the work.
SunSeeker
’s magscoop was operating close to its shutdown threshold already, and repairs while operating were the bane of all ships—but it had to be done.