Starborn and Godsons

by Larry Niven

  Such a man would find no dearth of people willing to trust and follow him. Someone able to deal with such deep, almost unimaginably total aloneness for the sake of others was . . a fanatic? A great man? Certainly. A good one . . ?

  For the sake of this woman she had barely met, whose tread was so measured compared to the joyful gallop of the movie star who was the hero of his own adventure, she hoped so.

  “What was the dream?” she asked. “Why are you here?”

  The major smiled. “It’s simple, really. Man was born to take dominance over the galaxy.” She said it with no trace of doubt, no smidgeon of humor or exaggeration, or reluctance to use a gendered pronoun. It was an article of faith.

  “It is simple scientific truth—we’ll show you if you like—that a single race, species, whatever you want to call it, will dominate each galaxy. We are that people.”

  She paused to let that sink in. “Oh yes, we believe in science. It is a simple and profound truth. One people will dominate the galaxy. We are here as the first step of that. God Knot willing, we will found a colony and spread across the planet, but every generation we will send out at least three ships. Within fifty generations . . .”

  “‘God not willing’? What does that mean?”

  The taller woman’s face went a little blank, and then animated again. “I misspoke,” she said. Then she smiled, dreaming a private dream, something deeply held.

  Joanie lost her urge to laugh. Her grandparents had wished safety, and growth. Careful management of lives and resources in the process of mastering Avalon and its potential gifts . . and dangers.

  This woman was different. She and her kind had come to conquer.

  And with sudden fullness, she thought to herself: this is what Cadmann Weyland was like. Not the same goals, but the same certainty, the same strength. He had been one of them, not one of us.

  “This is good,” Stype said.

  “What were you looking for? Exactly?”

  “We were prepared for anything,” the major said. “Scans suggested water and plant life before you left Earth. But we didn’t know the precise microorganism counts in air or soil, or exact mineral. So . . we had to be prepared for anything. We didn’t even know precisely what had become of your colony.”

  This woman made her feel inadequate. “What would you have done if . . if the soil wouldn’t grow Earth plants?”

  Stype chuckled. “We brought some very frisky microbes. We’d have set up greenhouses and created our own soil. Spent a generation mastering one little corner of this planet. Two generations. It wouldn’t matter. We’d still be ahead of our ancestors, who started simply by noticing that cast-off seeds blossomed into fruiting plants. We had the tools.”

  “All right. What then?”

  Marco was splashing in the waterhole. He took a bottle clipped to his backpack, sampled, and read some kind of monitor. Apparently it said good things, because he was jubilant enough to drink deeply, and belch with satisfaction.

  “Master that island. And then spread to the mainland. We’d watch for molds, fungi and diseases. Parasites and pests. And of course . . carnivores. Your ‘grendels’ for instance.”

  She snorted. “They’re not ‘my’ grendels. Maybe my father’s.”

  “You’ve seen them?”

  Smiling, she wondered how much she would tell Stype, and decided that some secrets should be kept.

  “Yes.”

  “They’re really as dangerous as people say?”

  “Imagine a Komodo dragon on growth hormones. Now give it acceleration like a racing skeeter.”

  “Whoa.” Well, that got the Amazon’s attention. Good.

  “Now imagine thousands of them.”

  “Thousands?” The conversation had caught Marco’s attention, and he’d waded out of the water to join them.

  “Well . . not full-size grendels, no. But adolescents. They eat everything they can outrun, and that means everything, including each other. It sorts out to hundreds of full-sized hungry bastards, yes.”

  “And that’s what your grandparents faced?” The former star seemed incredulous.

  “With no idea of what they were dealing with.”

  The major turned to look back at Mucking Great. “I got that impression. And the greatest battle took place on that mountain?”

  “That very one,” she said.

  Stype’s gaze was faraway, no doubt imagining heroic feats of arms. She seemed the type to hear the call of war, feel it in her bones. A woman who was the sort of hero Marco merely played.

  Or . . one who believed herself to be that hero? Something, some deep instinct, whispered that the picture wasn’t quite as it seemed. And what was that about “God not willing?” Hadn’t there been some kind of body language shift there, some change in tone?

  Something that suggested a lie?

  But about what?

  “What do you see when you look at this glen?” Joanie asked.

  “Water,” Stype said. “Runoff from the glacier—”

  “Eisenstein,” she said.

  “Eisenstein glacier. And from Mucking Great mountain into the Nile. Fertile soil. Our scientists say our crops will thrive here. So will our animals: pigs, cows, chickens. I see this entire valley filled with farms and cottages and communal buildings in a year.” She stopped. “How long is a year?”

  “It’s about 380 days. And a day is about 22.5 earth hours.”

  “Very nice.”

  “Tau Ceti is sufficiently Sol-like that the habitable zone was bound to be similar.”

  “So what now?” Joanie asked.

  “We’re going to examine the entire island,” Stype said.

  “Different teams, looking for different things. And then the Speaker chooses a home base.”

  “Speaker?”

  “Successor to the Prophet. He remains in orbit; he volunteered to serve the Prophet until his final days, and His Grace doesn’t feel he will ever adjust to gravity again. He’s still in orbit and will remain there,” Major Stype said.

  It sounded like a recital, a memorized speech, Joanie thought. A theory came to mind: with the Godsons, there were things said to outsiders, and things said only among themselves. That “God not willing” comment had been totally natural and relaxed. This was different. That had been the truth, in some way she didn’t understand.

  “We establish that base, and . . .”

  “Wait,” Joanie said. “The Speaker will decide even though he has never been here?”

  “Yes, but don’t sound so incredulous,” Marco said. “He’s a very wise man, and will have the advice of many who have been here, as well as planners who haven’t. He’ll make a good decision.”

  At least you certainly hope so, Joanie thought.

  “And then probably two minor sites as backup,” Major Stype continued as if she had never been interrupted. “Then at some point, after we’ve started producing children—”

  “The old-fashioned way, or creches?”

  “Both, I think. When we have replacement children, we will risk a few adults and teens on the mainland. One step at a time.”

  Joanie felt a sharp pang of disappointment, wanting very much to show this amazing woman her own workings. To demonstrate to Stype her competence. “So . . it might take years before . . ?”

  Stype laughed. “Oh, no. We have a list of things that need doing. We need to see these ‘scribes,’ the creatures that create ‘writing’ we could see a hundred million miles away. And . . .”

  “And what?”

  Something wolfish had emerged in Stype’s expression, an evil, joyous anticipation. “And I think I’m not the only one who wants to make the acquaintance of a grendel.”

  ♦ ChaptEr 21 ♦

  easy living

  The last fog fingers were just losing their grip on Blackship Island when their skeeters landed on the rectangular hub of a cluster of tan foam and concrete sprayed storage and work bubbles.

  Marco’s spherical drone hovered so q
uietly that Joanie usually forgot it was even there. Joanie noticed that he always seemed to be trying to present his best profile. “So . . what is it that you do here?” Marco asked.

  “This is where we train Grendel Scouts,” Toad said. They walked a while, over to an obstacle course studded with targets and water pools sparkling beneath swing ropes and gymnastic bars.

  And a hundred yards from those, a series of concrete cage-bubbles with iron bars for doors, looking oddly like frogs buried up to their heads in sand. Trudy hung back as the others approached.

  Marco seemed dubious. “Do you actually bring those things over from the mainland to train against?”

  The Surf’s Up crowd looked at each other. “Sometimes, yes,” Toad said. “And sometimes we grow them.”

  “What is it you are working on?” Marco asked.

  Joanie shrugged. “Reflexes, tactics, strategies. We were damn near programmed from birth.”

  That caught Marco’s interest. “Really? How about a little contest?”

  Joanie looked like a big cat suddenly catching sight of a mouse. “Be fun.”

  The older Grendel Scouts put the Godsons through a series of basic drills: runs, swings, firing at moving targets while the adrenaline pumped, making back-to-back sweeps of uneven terrain with grendel guns gimmicked to fire high or low. At this level, with these tools in this place, within these narrow parameters, the Scouts were superior beyond any doubt.

  “That is really good,” Trudy said. “You’re operating at the very edge of human perceptions. One of the reasons we developed other approaches.”

  “The armor?” Cadzie asked. “You can enhance reflexes?”

  “The suit learns. And supplements. Learns to recognize patterns and respond faster than the human being in the suit can possibly react.”

  Hmmm. “It’s that good?”

  Trudy smiled. “Let’s find out.”

  “Slow down,” Joanie said. “We have tons of time. We’ve seen how you can work. Time to find out how you play.”

  It took mere minutes to skeeter back to Surf’s Up. By that time the sun was bright in the morning sky, and the party was already boiling. Joanie spoke with Toad, who was raking coals in the luau pit, and he nodded and passed her an oddly shaped rifle.

  “What’s that for?” Marco asked.

  Joanie smiled. “Looking for our luau victim of the evening.” Back behind the thatch huts were a series of pens constructed of wood slats and wire: chickens, sheep, and pigs.

  “There’s a likely subject,” Cadzie said, pointing out a fat brown pig between two paler specimens, happily rooting in garbage. Enjoy your last meal, fella.

  “And so it is,” Joanie said. She turned her back to the pen, and raised the grendel gun. “On your mark.”

  The tension sizzled the air. Marco crouched with fists braced on his knees. “Go!”

  Blur-fast, Joanie spun and sighted, fired. The pig’s legs twitched once, hard, and then it fell onto its side, convulsing. And then was still, with a conspicuous pock mark dead center on its side.

  “Damn!” Toad laughed. “These new c-darts are monster!”

  They opened the gate. Toad was the first to the pig’s side. Marco grabbed his shoulder. “Is that thing safe to touch?”

  “It’s a mini high-discharge capacitor,” Toad said. “Charge gone, it’s safe as a marshmallow.” He grabbed the pig, and screamed, trembling violently . . and then grinned to general applause. Took a bow.

  Marco laughed. “I got an Oscar for no better acting than that!”

  After Toad wrenched out the dart, Marco grabbed a leg. Together they hauled the electrocuted swine to the side of the pit, where its hind legs were hog-tied and the entire carcass hauled aloft. Throat cut and drained, then efficiently gutted, it was welcomed into the crackling luau pit.

  Cadzie had wandered off somewhere, but Joanie and Toad led their Godson companions to an enclosed bay.

  Dolphins swam up to socialize with the Starborn. They stayed cautiously clear of the new folk. Toad opened a phone and spoke into it. The phone whistled and wheeped.

  The dolphin named Archie answered. They spoke for a few minutes. Then Archie went to examine Marco and Trudy. He faced Marco’s camera and wheeped at it, then did a backflip.

  “So now they know who you are,” Toad said. “That’s Archie, that’s Faith. They’ll know you from now on. Archie wanted to know how you’re different from us, and I tried to tell them.”

  “What did you tell them?”

  “Dolphins like toys. They think we’re all about tools. I said you had more and better tools.”

  “Is translation a problem? I’m wondering,” Marco said, “if we can improve the dolphins’ translation program. Dolphins had thousands of languages in Earth’s oceans.”

  “We raised them all from the same stocks of fertilized eggs, all at once. The six in cold sleep all came from the same region. They all speak the same language. Cassandra speaks it pretty good,” said Toad.

  The day was one of games and frivolity. Music played from hidden speakers, available to anyone who coded into the network. There was dancing, and games, and some of the younger Godsons demonstrated Earth dances that were strange and inviting and looked like hell on their knees.

  A few of the Earthborn had ferried over from the colony, and were watching the festivities, accompanied by several elder Godsons.

  A trio of pterodons wheeled overhead, croaking their curiosity, and the Godsons gawked. “Amazing,” one said. “Never seen anything like them.”

  Zack said, “They tend to eat our songbirds. Robins and swallows have never gotten a toehold. Birdsong was prettier than that skawing.”

  A couple of the elder Godsons agreed.

  A younger Starborn asked, “Birdsong?”

  Zack tickled his communicator, and invisible birds danced and sang in the air around them.

  Little Shaka hijacked the channel, playing recorded pterodon calls. “It’s mating and danger calls,” he said. “Here, I can show you.”

  He put the summoning call on the loudspeaker.

  Within minutes, the air swarmed with swooping, gliding winged pseudoreptiles. The beach was a mix of people and pterodons, the pterodons bewildered but not attacking, perhaps searching for all these pterodons seeking mates, or announcing food, or warning of predators. Delighted, the Godsons tried feeding the pterodons, but when they discovered the creatures preferred fresh pig guts to popcorn, that notion lost some of its sparkle.

  Jessica showed a cluster of Godson women how to feed them bits of Avalon crab. “They usually eat the clamlike things in the tops of the horsemane trees,” she told them.

  “And joeys. Any animals that the grendels couldn’t get at. Grendels used to get low-flying pterodons, and ate everything—everything not a long way from streams. Now that there aren’t any grendels on the island, there are more joeys and pterodons. We’re going to have to control the populations. Nobody wants to, but it has to be done, only we can’t decide on numbers.”

  A half-kilometer south, just outside the lagoon, training for night-surfing was the activity of the evening. A bearded man with a weathered face and stringy, muscular body was coaching Trudy in the art of surfing. He was Stanfield Corning, known as “Piccolo” (no one remembered precisely why), and his chief claim to fame was having been the second baby born on Avalon, thirty-nine years ago.

  He held the edges of an oversized surfboard as a woman with short blond hair and a gymnast’s body crammed into a one-piece suit, struggled for balance. “This is what you need,” he said. “Until you can balance on the board, don’t even think about getting out in the real water.”

  Trudy used a moment of calm between two waves to explore her balance, and after a false start or two, managed to stand erect. She hopped off before the next wave could spill her. “This is really good.” She’d been at it for an hour, and learning fast. She obviously appreciated the attention.

  More, she was obviously also interested in her instructor.<
br />
  “So . . what do you do in the colony when you aren’t surfing?”

  Piccolo shrugged meaty shoulders. “Teaching surfing, mostly.”

  “And when you aren’t doing that?” He was older than she, and sun-cured, but apparently not too much older.

  “Sleepin’ in the sun,” he said happily.

  He didn’t notice her eyes narrow. “But I mean, when you’re working.”

  “Who needs to work?” he said. “There’s plenty of everything.”

  She opened her mouth, then closed it again as if she had a hard time grasping his attitude. Instead, she thanked him curtly, shook water from her hair, and went off to find Cadzie.

  She found him raking coals at the luau pit. “Say, Weyland,” she said. “You know that guy called Piccolo?”

  “Our beach guru? Sure.”

  “Really, all he does is lay in the sand? Give a surfing class from time to time?”

  Cadzie laughed. “Pretty much.”

  Trudy seemed genuinely mystified. “Why do you put up with it?”

  “Well . . The colony produces so much food we plow twenty percent of it back into the soil. We have a surplus of skilled labor, and all the raw materials we need.”

  “But . . but . . .” She paused, then burst out: “You can’t let people do nothing.”

  “He doesn’t do nothing,” he said patiently. “He teaches, he surfs, and he enjoys the sun.”

  He was probably going to burn in hell, but damned if he wasn’t enjoying poking at her a bit.

  His answer, and the attitudes engendering it, seemed to make no sense at all to her. The steam pouring from her ears was damned near visible.

  Cadzie tried again. “Look, this isn’t a new thing. The twenty-first century brought in a whole new problem: robotics were capable of handling more and more basic work, so there was the same amount of wealth, but fewer jobs for people to have. That led to an adjustment of ethics and values.”

  “How so?”

  He had an inspiration. “Did you . . grow up in a Godson school?”