Bowl of Heaven Read online

  Beth said. “This came up through the ground, though.”

  “Upside-down lightning, yes,” Abduss said thoughtfully. “Somehow opposite from our experience on Earth.”

  “Upside down can still kill you,” Tananareve said. Goes with the territory.

  They returned to the discussion. Tananareve repeated her remark about the spidows, and Beth said, “They get into this enclosure anyway. If we escape, we can just stay away from tunnels in the foliage. Back off if we see the spidow strands.”

  They all nodded, but she could see they were grudging nods. Abduss made the point that they had now set up “housekeeping” here, had food and water and help from Memor’s servants. “Meanwhile, we know nothing whatever of Cliff’s group and of SunSeeker. They could be negotiating with the locals right now. Let’s wait. Give them a chance to make some progress.”

  More talk as they ate some of a spongy, spherical fruit, and Abduss’s view emerged as the consensus. Beth had to admit there was some logic to it. “But we can negotiate, too.”

  Tananareve said, “I’m getting better at translating. I’ll approach Memor about a deal. But what’s on our want list?”

  In the way group decisions often occur, this was the signal to abandon escape plans. More talking to Memor got everyone off the hook. Their faces said they were glad to play for time. Escaping would be scary, and they had been scared plenty already.

  TWENTY-TWO

  The tiny primate learned quickly. Memor had the Serfs bring in a mindscan. This was an oddly compact version of the ancient devices. At her order, the techserfs had been working on it diligently since Memor summoned forth the customary device used by scholars, but scaled down to these small bipeds.

  Here in the Greenhouse Terraces — a privileged verdant garden of vast natural wealth the size of the Old Continents — dwelled many vibrant, quite different creatures. The Astronomers had studied them since ancient long-gone eras of the Voyage. Their mental processes, as viewed in mindscans, told of the slow press of evolution even under the constant condition of the World. But now such crafts could aid in dealing with the Late Invaders — an idea that had come to Memor while letting her Undermind gush up into full view.

  Memor persuaded the translator primate to enter the machine. Indeed, it — yes, she — seemed to like the prospect of leaving the corral. Serfs had erected the scan tunnel near the corral entrance, and the primate gazed about with quick interest at the technologies assembled.

  Memor spoke warmly, using soothing tones and feather-fans of quiet resolve. Serfs attended the cautious Invader, chattering in their simple tongues, and soon all was ready.

  The device worked surprisingly well. The Serfs had tested it against the arboreal simians, simple forms that were the nearest approximation to these Late Invader aliens. The primate female submitted to the device after being told that it would help the translations. False, of course. But useful, as so many passing illusions are when dealing with those less adroit. Memor sighed, a long, slow, and satisfying vibration it used to let its mind process data.

  The scan revealed a brain startlingly different. Strange, yes — but Memor’s Undermind could see structural connections, similarities (primitive, to be sure) to the Astronomer-class minds honed by more Cycles than time could count.

  The female disliked the incisive, magnetic lacing of the scan. Clearly so. She became uneasy, and with the Serfs attending to the process, Memor could see her anxieties forking like dendritic lightning fingers through a mind cloudy, veiled, mysterious. And … divided.

  Memor experienced the exquisite tremor of an insight. An idea emerged fresh and flowering from her Undermind.

  These awkward, tenuous aliens lived in a sort of middle scale. Their senses had evolved to perceive things on their own puny scale. Of course, they could not see bacteria, but they could sense minor dimensions. The larger scales of a world were beyond them, though — no doubt because they evolved on some gravitational mass, as Memor’s own ancestors had. They had a perceptual horizon limited by the curve of primitive worlds, seen at heights no more than their own stature. They must feel trapped here.

  Still more shrunken was their sense of time. Typically they sensed the grind of orbital cycles, seasons, incessant day-night, the brute revolutions of planets. They lived in the mire of cyclic mechanics, sleeping and mating to the tick of some planetary clock. Slaves to time.

  Memor had the Serfs interrogate the primate’s innate mind-time scales. They scampered about, using their instruments. The result was desperately plain.

  The creature had a summing time of a few of its own eye-blinks, a trifling interval. It used that scale to integrate information. That meant that it could not delegate to its lesser parts the usual boring business of keeping itself alive. It had to keep incessant watch.

  This was difficult to believe. The Folk had abandoned the drumming rhythm of short cycles long ago. That was the informing idea behind their pursuit of constancy — of freedom from the ticktock of early origins. Instead, the Folk dwelled on the eternal Quest through the Voyage.

  This small, intense being was forced to worry about its housekeeping, such as digestion, excretion, even the intake and outblow of oxygen. Could it be so pointlessly busy? Difficult to know, but depressing to contemplate.

  Such a short processing time meant that it could seldom spare computational power on issues beyond its own heart rate. It lived a poor, distracted life. Yet it had built a starship!

  Did it even sense the gyre of evolution? Or of the World?

  Memor pondered. Her Undermind worked, fretful and persistent as always, yet came forth with nothing. She inspected her Undermind workings, peeled back layers — yes, nothing. The Undermind was justly perplexed. So many questions remained!

  Could these hairy bipeds fathom why their slavery to oscillations in dark and day made them primitive? Once even the Folk had submitted to such endless toils. But they had learned otherwise, had in the Deep Times built the World to escape such bondage to primitive cycles. In its way, this small thing represented the ancient past, brought forward by circumstance for Memor’s instruction.

  When the alien came out of the scanning, Memor tried to get the female to speak. It was staggering a little, waving its small arms for balance. “I see you find our insightful machines a trial,” Memor said.

  “You trying to pick my brains?” it — no, she; hard to remember; how could one tell? — shot back.

  “I have analyzed your capabilities,” Memor said, which in a way was true.

  “You goddamn smelly elephant-bird! You have no right — !”

  Its noise carried little information. Hot-eyed fervor marked it, and even more its limbs whirled entertainingly, as if they were beset by breezes. The effect was comic. She had noticed this one was darker in hue than the others, which might mean it had spent more time in starglow, and so was older, and thus wiser. That was why Memor had selected her — hoping for a faint trace of wisdom in it. Futile, perhaps. But Memor did not know enough yet.

  So Memor had the Serfs return it — her — to the scan. It squalled, of course.

  Ah. Revelation dawned up from the Undermind. New data flowed into Memor, and she could see it working amid the low minions of her own mind. She could flick back and forth between her own mental understory and that of this Late Invader primate. A unique experience, laced with shadowy strangeness.

  So … could she question the female while she was in the scan? She had never known this to be done, in all Astronomer history. Yet her Undermind pushed this concept up from its ripe swamps, and Memor saw the value of the idea. Onward, then.

  The Serfs stood in awe as she called up the image-data, learning from it in quick bursts. She let the Undermind hold sway. Serfs could not of course understand, as they — indeed, nearly all of Creation — were all linear minds. Unified minds, yes — but with little Undermind. Serfs used a variant of linear thinking, just as did these Late Invaders, but apparently the Late Invaders had strengths Serfs d
id not. Certainly no Serf could have escaped from the traps laid for generic Invaders.

  She scrutinized the alien brainscan with care. Hereditary neural equipment governed them. Primitive, indeed. Their minds were divided! Straight down the middle, a clear cleft. Most of Creation was so configured. Evolution had apparently used this often as an early, rudimentary precaution. The Folk shared this property as well, and it was common in this explored region of the galaxy, at least.

  But there were new features here, as well. Simple forms of animals divided functions so that they could not interfere with basics, and so interrupt the fundamentals. Later, further up the evolutionary pyramid, various utilities like digestion, heartbeat, the underlying housekeeping — all became walled off in the mind, their work uninterrupted except in emergencies.

  But some fundamental features of advanced minds were beyond these Late Invaders. Higher intelligence needed not mere utilitarian modes, but rather the creative ones. The source of cross-association, and thus ideas, had to be accessible. The Undermind was common to all sentient creatures — yet these primates could not see theirs! Only a mind unified at the upper levels, above the shop floor of bodily business, could have deep ideas, surely? Then a mind could manipulate them, force them on the twin forges of reason and intuition, into great leaps.

  These aliens had no such ability. Their greatest drives, intuitions, associations — all lay concealed from their foreminds, the running agents and authorities of the immediate, thinking persona. They were primitives.

  Yet they had built a starship.

  Memor was shocked. In a while, she got control of herself and pondered. Interrogated her Undermind. Found no lurking answers. Perhaps the Undermind needed a rest. Often, sleep brought ideas.

  TWENTY-THREE

  Beth listened to Tananareve’s summary intently, brows furrowed. Better to hear it first and hash matters over, well before calling a group meeting.

  “Incredible! They put you into some kind of device and then asked you to think about things?”

  Tananareve shrugged. “A sort of CT device, I suppose. So I thought on command about astronomy, about SunSeeker, about what my left hand was doing while they put my right hand in cold water. Memor found it interesting, I guess.”

  “Um. We have to use this.…”

  Beth realized that she was acting instinctively like a leader now. Think, judge, act. That was what irked Lau Pin, she knew. But she intuited that the others didn’t want the sometimes impulsive, emotional, very young Lau Pin to take over. Too bad Lau Pin didn’t know that.

  “It didn’t bother with the rest of your body?” Abduss asked intently. “No medical exam?”

  “No, just that suffocating box with its foul scent. We had some of that in our physicals, remember?” Tananareve shuddered. “But this time — creepy, like snakes swarming over my skull.”

  Mayra put an arm around Tananareve. “Maybe it was trying to improve translation?”

  Tananareve snorted derisively. “I doubt it.”

  “What did it feel like?”

  Tananareve gazed off into the distance. “Like fingers in my head. I’d think something, then feel it slip away, as if something was … feeling it.”

  “Um. Creepy.”

  “You bet. Next time, if Memor does it again, I’ll deliberately think of something lurid. Just to poke at her.”

  Beth started diplomatically, “I know how you feel, but that might provoke — ”

  “Hey!” Lau Pin shouted, and came trotting over to the bower where the women sat, using the leafy enclosure to muffle their voices. His eyes danced. “I got a beamer signal — a message!”

  “From Eros?” Tananareve asked.

  “No, that’s what’s amazing. It carries SunSeeker’s bitcode. Message is loading now.”

  Beth felt her pulse quicken. Lau Pin’s little beamer beeped and he put it to his ear. And scowled. Lips pressed into white lines, he handed it to Beth. “Captain Redwing. For. You.”

  Redwing spoke rapidly in his usual growl, as if afraid the connection would drop out. She restarted the recorded message. “We saw the big electrical discharges up near the top of the Bowl. Filtered out the noise and found this beamer flag frequency. So if this works, here’s our situation: We can’t get much out of signaling the aliens. They acknowledged us, but they take their own sweet time about getting back to us when we transmit. We demanded your return. They say they’re learning our language ‘in person,’ so it’s more efficient to keep you. It’s just you, too, Beth. They won’t tell us anything about Cliff. So for now, try to transmit back. Beamers don’t have any real focus, but we’re now to the right of their star, as you see it, maybe thirty degrees. I’m focusing all our high-gigahertz-range antennas on that spot where the big electricals went off. We’re seeing flares, lightning the size of continents. Hope that didn’t fry you! Over and out.”

  Beth smiled. The old-fashioned over and out was typical Redwing. To her surprise, she felt affection for the old hardnose. He butted his head at problems until they got solved.

  She glanced at Lau Pin and saw it was time to mend fences. “Here, try to send. Tell him we’re okay but captive. Trying to talk to the aliens. Ask if there’s any chance they can send us supplies in one of the auto-landers?”

  Lau Pin nodded and his mouth lost its irritation. “I’ll send some visuals, too,” he said. “Mayra? Mayra! Can I have your file of photographs? I’ll send mine also.”

  “Sure,” Mayra said, and handed over her phone. “I don’t see what use he’ll get out of them.”

  “Not him.” Lau Pin looked at Beth and said, “He’ll get Cliff sooner or later. We’ve been photographing what we can and can’t eat. Cliff’s party needs to know that.” His smile said, Why didn’t you think of that?

  Cliff might have starved by now, she thought. Beth walked out into the middle of the little clearing they used as a gathering spot and called with more joy than she felt, “Hey, everybody! We caught a break.”

  TWENTY-FOUR

  Memor was puzzled. Only lowly beasts used divided minds. That was a known method of letting parts of the mind work separately, so that some efficiencies emerged from specialization. But it also meant that the mind could not function with all its many parts in the mix. That stunted split minds. This was conventional evolutionary theory, well verified by contact with many planets.

  These Late Invaders had brains split into hemispheres that did not always interact. Yet they had built high technologies! Quite shocking. Some of them had even evaded the Folk, as well — a shock in itself. These affronts to both experience and even reason demanded explanation.

  So Memor summoned the female she had tested before. Had she overlooked some essential clue? Perhaps another viewing of her divided mind in action, plus active simultaneous use of her Undermind, would reveal an insight.

  To do this she had to do the necessary mental work first. Carefully, she isolated herself from the Serf breed chatter. First she withdrew, letting sight and sound drop away from her. Inner peace came, sliding slowly. The world fell away. Gingerly, to avoid startling the working elements of her mind, she opened the vistas within.

  Into her higher levels swept ruminations galore. Some of these thoughts mixed senses, as the unruly Undermind often did. Liquid amber lightning shot through her Inmind with a sharp, bristly scent — and Memor knew she was amid the chemical swamp of associations. Buzzing red flaps peeled back to reveal punctured pathways.

  She was ready. So prepared, she began inspecting the biped’s mental landscape. Alarm rang down its corridors.

  She delved into this and felt something else, a sort of … memory. Only it came freighted with feelings of desire, moist expectation, flaring scents. She saw the female as if in a mirror, looking at her and yet — yes, it was locked in embrace with a large male. They were lunging at each other.

  She shot a glance at the female, lying flat on the preceptor bed. She was agitated, moving her legs and hands, clasping herself —

&nb
sp; Memor realized that she was showing Memor how her kind reproduced.

  Then, unmistakably, she heard her cackling rise. Laughter, it must be. The biped was making fun of Memor.

  She rocked back, red anger flaring. This tiny thing was jeering at her, using her mind to send the insult.

  She let her Undermind deal with this fresh event. Soon soothing cadences passed through her, damping the prickly irritation into milder currents. As this happened, she saw that the biped was now back to a normal state. Perhaps it — she — felt that she had made her point, and was now calming down.

  Very well. She would do the same. This had taught her something profound — the bipeds were quick-witted beyond their limitations. She must remember that her brain was as large as Memor’s own.

  The biped spoke directly to her. “I want to go back to my friends now.”

  Of course. These were social creatures, and she felt — she could see directly — fretful emotions down in her Undermind. The Late Invader female could not feel this clearly, though, because she could not directly see her own mind.

  Instead, she sensed a vague unease. In such moments, apparently, she wanted the company of her kind. Now that Memor saw this, she understood with her Overmind the sense of it. Evolution had to converge on such social chemistries, on any world. Because more often than not, the most adaptable thing one could do to survive and reproduce was to be cooperative and altruistic. This knowledge was an Absolute, time honored and proved often in the enduring history of the Bowl. Evolution never slept, even in the great constancy of the World.

  Memor answered her warmly, trying to defray her inner, vexing storms. These aliens showed much mental evolutionary selection. Whether this arose naturally or from their own genetic tailoring, she could not perceive. Their hidden Underminds were an adaptive unconscious that let them size up their world quickly, set goals, decide. Of course: these bipeds had evolved in a place where speed was vital. In contrast, the Folk prized long-term judgment, because they planned for a larger scale of time. These primates were a fresh, young species, untried.