by Larry Niven
He set them down and tapped the sphere, carefully, as if it were fragile. “This looked like a globe of Avalon, mostly unfinished. I looked further, and damn! The surface features are nothing. What counts is the magnetic fields! It’s a map of the magnetic fields!
“All over the planet there are little nodes similar to what we’re calling a temple. Without visiting maybe two more, we can’t be totally certain what we’re looking at . . .”
“But?” Dr. Martine asked. “We’re free to speculate, yes? And I don’t know the planet very well.”
“No one does. Look. The main temple room had symbols similar to some Carlos found in Mama Grendel’s cave.”
The reference was immediately understood. “And those symbols mean?” Martine asked. “I’m remembering cliff carvings in California.”
“Cassandra?” Little Shaka called. Since she’d been brought down to the surface, the colony had begun to turn to her more often, to take her for granted. This must have been what his Dad had experienced.
“I believe this analysis has no more than a sixty percent chance of being correct, but we have enough symbols from the temple, and the cave, and the map to make projections.”
Cassandra paused, more for inflection than need for time. “If our assumptions are correct, then the creatures called cthulhu are using a kind of magnetic language with tactile-visual analogues. If we are correct about this, then there may be a relationship between this symbol—” And here she indicated a raised pentagram.
“—and the concept ‘value’ or ‘private’ or ‘wealth.’ Something precious.”
Carlos’ brow wrinkled. “What was precious about the cave?”
“The cthulhu may have been performing some kind of breeding experiment. They could have come up the Miskatonic River from the ocean, and bred grendels who could not survive in salt water. For some reason they wished to isolate them from the mainland. This may have been thousands of years ago, and their precise motivations may never be known. But if it is true . . .”
“Then this might have been why Mama Grendel choose that cave as a nest?” Carlos asked. “Some kind of ancestral memory?”
“It is possible,” Cassandra admitted.
“And the temple?” Cadzie asked.
“The globe was found in a room marked with a version of this symbol—”
And here she displayed the same pentagram, with a smaller one nestled within it. “I speculate that this arrangement serves a function similar to a superscript, indicating ‘to the power of.’”
Big Shaka said, “Value to the power of value.”
“Yes. I believe so,” Cassandra said. “Look here . . .” Here she produced an image of the copper globe, now enhanced with continental shelving. A number of sites leapt out, engravings amplified.
“That’s a lot of value,” Cadzie said.
“If we are correct,” Cassandra said, “then each of these might well be a node, a temple of unusual value. In them we might find important information about the cthulhu.”
Little Shaka suddenly had a notion. “Can you identify other symbols for value? Higher symbols?”
“Again, I have to expand my parameters to allow guessing. If I do, then this symbol might very well be a progression on the former one. Not just a concentric image, but the degree of raising, and the number of times it has been touched. A chemoreceptor might have detected traces of something . . . and indeed on Blackship Island we have recent chemotraces indicating mapping for the breeding grounds. We can only speculate.”
“That the map indicates a combination of magnetic, tactile and chemical symbols,” Big Shaka offered. “Some kind of four-dimensional imaging, a language it would be very difficult to interpret.”
“Additional data would lead to greater certainty.”
“But if you had to make a guess?” Big Shaka asked.
“Then there are four sites on the planet that would be thought to have the highest value. As if there was something extremely precious and rare. And one location that has a symbol that might mean ‘infinity.’”
“Where is the ‘infinity’ symbol used?”
“At the magnetic north pole.” Cassandra replied.
“But it might mean something else.”
“Yes.”
Dr. Martine asked, “And the lesser locations?”
“I cannot say ‘lesser’ with any degree of certainty, because the new symbol cannot be evaluated with any certainty. It is present nowhere else, but might be a progression on some of the others. But the highest symbols we can read with any level of certainty above thirty percent are in these locations . . .”
These new offerings were displayed.
“What are these? They’re all between the equator and the North Pole.”
“Yes,” Cassandra said. “And they are locations of enormous value.”
“But still less than the Magnetic North.”
“Yes.”
“Great value,” Martine asked. “Riches? What would a cthulhu think is great value?’”
“I don’t know. But knowing what a culture considers of great value can be a key to understanding the culture.”
“Gold?” Cadzie asked. “Gems?”
“Or the cthulhu equivalent thereof,” Little Shaka said.
“How would we get to it? Deep from the surface . . .”
Zack rubbed his mustache. “There’s a mining installation about three hundred miles east. Here. If we get serious about this, we can skeeter in a crew.”
“Drill down through . . what? Maybe two hundred feet of rock? Into what?”
“We can deep scan,” Zack said. “See what we’re dealing with. You know . . after all this is over.”
“Yeah,” Cadzie said, suddenly remembering the situation he was in. “After it’s all over.”
♦ ChaptEr 32 ♦
exiles
Cadzie leaned against the fence, chewing on a snakeroot, and thinking bleakly of his future.
He turned as he heard footsteps: Joanie approaching. She stopped at a distance. “What happened in there?” He knew she didn’t mean the biology hutch. She meant the caves.
“All you need to know is that he was dead when we found him. I did nothing, Joanie. I don’t expect you to believe me, but it’s the truth.”
“Look at me, Cadzie.”
He turned, did. “Here I am, Joanie. You’ve known me all your life. I’ve never made a secret of how I felt about your father. Never made a secret about any aspect of who I am.”
“No, you haven’t.”
“So . . .” Snakeroot had a mild euphoric quality, ranging from relaxant to stimulant, depending on how close to the root you chewed. At the tip, effect was roughly comparable to beer. “What do you want to ask me?”
She shook her head. “Nothing. Nothing at all.”
There had been only three voices when they left the shrine, and that had been terribly lonely. Gorb’s agony was not pleasant, but it was worse after she went silent. There was only Insel’s voice muttering terrible, bloody thoughts about the Walkers. Insel had never loved them. Land creatures intruding in water that belonged to the sea people!
Tool users, but silent. Why had they never tried to speak? Barring that random babbling from the dam they’d built.
Whast had kept her own opinions to herself.
She should have shared thoughts. It was the silence and the guilt that had killed Insel. It was killing Whast now.
Whast heaved. Insel rolled up onto the beach, tentacles sprawling limp in all directions. Tradition said that a dead person should rest on dry land, if possible. Predators were less likely to attack a sea creature, and the body could be found later and its amplifier recovered.
No matter now. Whast dug into Insel’s torso and had the amplifier in one scoop. She put it in her pouch with the other, which she had taken from Gorb.
Amplifiers didn’t decay. Sooner or later a person would find Whast’s body and take the thought amplifiers home.
About fifty
miles east of the caves, the soil was poor enough to be grainy and near-desert, but it was still dotted with scrub brush. Humans hadn’t explored the region extensively, but two “mappers” named Towner Farr and Hal McCann liked the solitude. They were partners in every sense of the word, but also had a slightly romanticized notion of nineteenth-century prospectors, growing beards and wearing widebrimmed hats even in cool regions. Perhaps they hoped to one day discover something valuable enough to trigger the Avalonian equivalent of a gold rush.
Most of the time, they just mapped the territory, trading their detailed reports for scrip back at the main colony. Then they’d usually plunge back out into the wastes and enjoy their solitude.
“What is this?” the shorter, more sunburnt Farr asked. He was looking at something out of place, a squidlike creature far from water. Very dead and largely dehydrated.
He pried up a tentacle. Its sucker tried to cling to the rock. What was so obviously an aquatic creature doing here? “I think . . they called them cthulhu, didn’t they?”
“Water creatures?” Hal McCann was integrating photographs. He didn’t look around. “Long way from home, isn’t it?”
“I don’t know. Look at the bite mark. Does that look like a grendel bite?”
Now Hal came over to look. “Just one bite? I’m not sure I’ve ever seen anything get bitten and survive. I mean, usually it’s all or nothing.”
“Let’s call in a skeeter, see if anyone wants to look at this.” Towner reached to pull at the corpse. “Ow!”
“What?”
He shook his hand, trying to shake the tingle out. “It shocked me. Like an electric shock. It’s okay now.”
♦ ChaptEr 33 ♦
aboard messenger
Speaker Augustus had not considered luxury as a prerequisite of his office, but his attendants—not servants, as he often vainly reminded them—insisted on luxuries until he gave them a direct order. Over the years the furnishings in his office and quarters changed surprisingly often, sometimes to the more lavish, sometimes to much plainer and simpler, and the result generally amused him.
This compartment, tiny by some standards but a large space for a room which would be used by only one man, was furnished by the ship’s artificial intelligence. Not just any artificial intelligence. This one was special, and only a few of his advisors knew of its existence. One day his Successor must be told, but not yet. Surely it was not yet time to choose one of the cadets for that task.
Gus supposed that many would want the position, but their very desire for it was a disqualification. Perks of leadership were also its scourge. The Prophet had emphasized that. “You deserve elegance and we can afford it,” the Prophet had told him. “But you deserve no more than that, even though you will be tempted to desire more. For us the power must be unified in one dedicated to the Mission.”
Gus adjusted the rotation speed of the rotating arm that held the capsule. While Messenger was under acceleration or deceleration the engineers advised against deploying the rotating arm, and Gus had to endure whatever gravity the ship’s accelerations required; now that they were in orbit he could choose whatever gravity he wanted. Today he would try forty percent of Earth’s gravity. Somewhere—he never bothered to find out the details—electronics controlled electric motors, and the gravity adjusted to his desires. When it was steady, Gus rested comfortable in the very comfortable chair. The screen built into the bulkhead that held up his desk flashed.
The Prophet appeared.
“Hello, Gus.”
“Your Worship.”
“Call me Channing today, Gus.”
“Yes, Your Worship. Channing.”
“You summoned me. You need help?”
“I need to organize my thoughts, to discuss the situation with someone who thinks like you.”
The image looked so much like the Prophet that Gus found it disturbing. “Gus, I remind you that this is a simulation. I am not Channing Newsome nor am I his ghost. I am an artificial intelligence program, a virtual Prophet, running in a segregated portion of Messenger’s main computer.”
“I understand.”
“Do you, Gus?”
Again The Voice. Gus could never have believed that wasn’t his friend and Master, whom Gus had seen laid away in cold sleep as a man twenty years older than this apparition. And yet this was more real than his later memories. “Yes, Channing. I have to keep reminding myself, but yes. I know you are real, but not the Prophet.”
“And I will keep reminding you. Now what is disturbing you?”
The crewmen who maintained this small compartment had no idea of what it was for. Godsons were not forbidden to ask, but Gus was not surprised that none did. They got their orders from the ship’s computer. The Prophet’s AI proxy could communicate directly with Messenger’s main computer, although the primary preference table gave no more authority to the AI Prophet’s commands than it would to any midranking Godson officer. The prophet simulacrum could not order course changes, or any permanent changes in ship’s structure, but it certainly could control the compartment’s furnishings, and Gus was often surprised when things changed unexpectedly.
He opened the small refrigerator. There were various flavored drinks. A strawberry soda stood closest to his hand. That had been Channing’s favorite drink, and one of the Prophet’s quirks had been inflicting strawberry drinks on his disciples whether they liked them or not. The Prophet AI program was aware of every habit, act, saying, and writing recorded of the Prophet, and the sodas in the refrigerator were proof of that. More disturbing was that Gus could not order the AI to stock orange flavor. It would, however, provide him with a few ounces of Genever. Gus found the gin in a small bottle and poured himself a gin and tonic.
“I’m concerned about the locals,” Gus said.
“I am aware of no hostile acts. Of course, they do not accept the necessity of the Mission. And are unaware of our search for the God Knot.”
Gus was again disturbed by the reality of the conversation. The expressions were correct, even the slightly quizzical look of mild disapproval of the gin glass. The tone was correct. It was exactly like talking to the Prophet.
“There is no hostility.”
“But you are concerned about their lack of ambition.”
“Yes. Precisely. How did you know?”
“For the same reasons you are. I have seen all of Narrator Marco’s recordings. Remarkable young man. Not exactly a Believer, but given his task he probably should not be. Very reliable, though.”
“The Earthborn had ambition enough to come here. The Starborn, less so. Some have none at all. There are even those who would return to an Earth they have never seen.”
“Even a dull tool can be useful, if the workman does not mistake it for a knife. The Starborn can serve. Let them go their way, unless it can be determined that they require guidance.”
“And if I determine that?”
“Then,” the Prophet said, “you must act without hesitation.”
♦ ChaptEr 34 ♦
pre-trial
It was common for discussions in Camelot to run late into the night, but over the last four days, speed-enhanced coffee and various varieties of home brewed beer had fueled some of the briskest debates in colony history.
The biology lab had a lounge with plenty of natural and artificial light, couches deep enough to mimic quicksand, and stocked with all the relaxants and stimulants that made such conversations lively. The Shakas were, as often the case, holding court before an avid audience, an informal debate with several Godson guests.
“But there are an avalanche of questions,” Big Shaka said. “For instance: exactly how did aquatic creatures forge metals?”
A theatrical wave of Marco Shantel’s hand warded that question off. “A more important question might be: what happened to their civilization?”
Little Shaka had an amazing tolerance for beer, and the table before him was littered with empty pods, while he had yet to exhibit the slightes
t slurring of speech. “Why do you consider that more important?”
“A cautionary tale, perhaps.” He waved his hand in a theatrical gesture. Joanie, sitting close as she had an increasing tendency to do, watched avidly. “Please indulge me.”
Big Shaka shrugged. “We don’t know. We may never know. Or we might learn enough in the next years to tell us everything. Or . . .”
“Or what?”
“Or we might discover that they’re still here, have things we would call cities or even nations. It’s a big planet.”
Marco’s raised eyebrow was politely challenging. He opened his mouth to speak but had waiting a moment too long: Toad Stolzi entered in an excited state. “Everyone!” he croaked. “Zack has finalized the arrangements. Cadzie goes on trial tomorrow! Biggest trial in twenty years!”
And that was the end of the evening’s inquiry into xenobiology, and the beginning of a very different line of conversation that lasted until dawn.
The court was held in the mess hall, as there was no other facility large enough to house the hundreds who demanded the right to attend.
If not live, then by remote hookup. There was no one on Avalon who hadn’t access to every word and action, and few who didn’t take advantage of some part of it. The room was packed.
Zack sat at the juncture of two black-draped folding tables, holding the gavel, two judges to either side. He was the voice of the law, but would only offer an opinion as a tiebreaker.
“We are gathered here today to establish the guilt or innocence of a citizen of the commonwealth, Cadmann Sikes in the matter of the murder of Aaron Tragon. As this is a matter of utmost gravity, we ask that the courtroom observers obey the laws of decorum. We also have a number of visitors, our recent guests and now neighbors, known as Godsons. We ask them to remember that they are still guests in this matter, and not involved in the actual proceedings until more formal arrangements have been made between our two groups. Is this understood and agreed upon?”
