Starborn and Godsons

by Larry Niven

  At the water level he found what might have been living quarters. He wondered: when they examined the underwater levels, would they find the same? Or had these creatures preferred to live like amphibians?

  In the higher levels, he found what might well have been workshops, shelves of extruded concrete, overgrown with living coral. The coral-stuff had grown halfway to a forty-meter stalactite-toothed ceiling and then died, as if it needed the cthulhu to water or feed it. A self-limiting living construction material? He found blackened smears, perhaps scorch marks, suggesting that fire had been applied to walls and extrusions. He looked back over his shoulder to see Evie Queen climbing in the window after him. She nodded, eyes bright with a combination of discovery and fear.

  That he understood. Nodding in answer, he returned to his investigations.

  The last quarter-mile to the city cavern had been swum in eighty-degree water, and the walls had been studded with forearm-length rotating spiral-grooved cones, still turning slowly in tide after thousands of years. The colonel had noticed that they were connected to what might have been cables sheathed in some kind of water weed, and that those cables ran all the way into this cavern, buried into the rock near sheets of glowing cement. Could the cthulhu have grown electrical cables? Was there an organic life-form that could conduct electricity efficiently? Surely not and survive . . .

  He heard Trudy’s footsteps behind them. What did it say that he recognized their sound? Without turning, he said, “So you’re sure they’ll come after us?”

  “I’m sure,” Trudy said. “And I even think I know what they’ll do.”

  “And what is that?” Cadzie asked. He split one of the ancient cables, and found what seemed like strings of pale rust-colored beads wrapped in seaweed. Some conductive material, copper or some combination of metals? But why in this bead formation? They almost looked like clusters of dull red rabbit droppings. Was there an animal that ate ore and crapped copper beads? Too much to think about, and no time to focus, dammit. If they lived long enough, there was an entire amazing world to explore.

  He hoped they’d have the time.

  “There was a man they talked about,” she said. “His name was Tsiolkovskii. Colonel Anton Tsiolkovskii. He was a U.N. Force hero, blown up in battle somewhere in Africa, I think. He’d have died, or lived like a cripple if we hadn’t invested millions saving him.”

  “He was a Godson leader?”

  “No. He had some familiarity with us, and had been friendly after we supplied U.N. troops with some performance programs. When he was wounded, his career was over. We offered him life, in exchange for service.”

  “Service?”

  “Yes. We froze him until the medical technology improved enough to regrow limbs. But the arrangement was that in exchange, he would lead our security forces on Hypereden.”

  “He agreed to it?”

  She nodded. “He’ d been badly damaged. His life was over. I heard rumors his wife left him and his children had already been alienated by long absences. We gave him the only chance he had.”

  “All right,” Piccolo said. “Let’s say they wake him up. What then?”

  “You don’t understand,” Trudy said. “He was the best. I think some of our troops were actually frightened by his reputation. He won’t stop, and you won’t be able to throw him off your trail. He’ll find us. He will.” She spoke so calmly, as if reciting an article of faith.

  “What are you suggesting?” Joanie asked. “And why didn’t you tell us this before?”

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “So much has happened, and so fast. Security wasn’t my arena. But once I started thinking about it, his name kept coming back up.”

  “So . . what do we do?” Cadzie asked.

  “Get ready to fight,” Trudy said. “But if that’s who they send after us, I don’t think we can win.”

  “Do you have any new thoughts?” Nnedi asked.

  “Well . . if Trudy is right,” Little Shaka said, ticking off factors on his fingertips. “Then these structures are more like temples than cities or workshops. Whatever they did here was sacred. If it was sacred when they built it . . all I can think about is old novels of degenerate followers of ancient religions.”

  “Didn’t Lovecraft write some of those?”

  “The best. Making the whole ‘cthulhu’ thing rather eerie, I’d say,” Shaka laughed. “What we know: advanced magnetic skills, metal working, symbolic language, fire, possibly genetic technology.”

  “Wow,” Nnedi said.

  “And consider the path to fire. Human beings observed it: spontaneous combustion, volcanic activity. Lightning strikes. Maybe sunlight focused through natural crystals. Can you imagine how magical it was? They learned to shelter it, nurture and protect it. At some point they learned to create it themselves.”

  “So?”

  “Let’s assume,” Shaka said, “that it took the cthulhu about the same amount of time to domesticate fire that humans required. We really can’t know either way, but let’s start there.”

  “Okay,” she agreed. “Okay, what then?”

  “Aquatic creatures would have a fraction of the opportunities to observe fire. A fraction of the opportunities to tame and shelter it and learn about it. Would have had far fewer direct uses for it prior to smelting. That implies that they understood its potential and deliberately sought to master it.”

  “I . . oh, God . . they might be smarter than us.”

  “Yes. And if they were, and built a civilization with technology still beyond our own, and then something went very wrong . . that’s a long way to fall.”

  ♦ ChaptEr 49 ♦

  binding

  Their lamplight reached the toothy ceiling without evening out its shadows. White limestone and pits of darkness loomed above them, alien and distant as the surface of an unexplored moon.

  If only we had time, Cadzie thought. But this was the only time they had, perhaps the only time they’d ever have. And with that in mind, he found a way to separate himself and Trudy from the others, and guarantee themselves a bit of privacy.

  “I love you, you know,” she said after they had sat for a while, just looking out at the limestone spires and twisted shadows carved out by their lamp. In this cavern, branching off from the main city-space, the mysterious cthulhus seemed to have made few modifications.

  Cadzie watched her carefully. “Marco said you can switch your emotions on and off.”

  “Do I act like someone who can turn them off?”

  “I don’t know,” Cadzie said. “Never met anyone like you.” He paused. “Can you?”

  “Not exactly. I was trained to be what I am . . a companion for a warrior-king. Not just sex. Not just support or advice. Love.”

  “How would he know the difference?”

  “He wouldn’t.” She grinned. “I would.”

  “You would. So . . you can just turn it on?”

  She took his hand gently, twining their fingers together. He had the sense she might have taken a child’s hand in a very similar manner. “Imagine that you have a set of switches in your head. Respect, attraction, care, affection, lust, protectiveness . . how many of them would you have to throw before you called the result ‘love’?”

  “Some, yeah. Most, maybe.”

  “Arranged marriages work just fine, Cadzie. You work side by side, make love, care for each other, take turns getting sick, raise children . . and fall in love. It happens.”

  “You’re saying the Godsons just took conscious control of that process?”

  “We are going to conquer a galaxy. Find the source of all life.” Spoken without hesitation or irony. “The foundation of all human civilization has been a breeding pair. Two people against the world, Cadzie. I made my choice. You.”

  “You were told to?” He was alarmed to hear the thread of dismay in his voice.

  “I was asked to consider it, yes. Strongly encouraged. I don’t think the leaders realized what might happen. I had a choice between them,
and you.”

  “And you chose me.”

  “And now I can’t easily go back. And . . I love you.”

  There was something appealingly vulnerable about this woman now. Almost a pleading.

  He wanted to push her away. Scream wake up! in her face.

  And to pin her to the ground and screw her brains out. The contradiction was dizzying. “I don’t know what I feel,” he said. “I’m so mixed up. But . . you are beautiful, and sexy as hell and smart, and . . you put everything on the line for me. Give us time. I promise I will. And there’s no one else. Can that be enough?”

  “That’s enough. Just give me a chance.” She unwound a thread from her tattered wet sweater and wrapped it around her wrist.

  “What’s that?”

  She had suddenly become much more serious. “We do not know what comes, Cadmann. Yesterday does not exist. Tomorrow is a dream. But we have to both remember history, plan for the future, and live in the moment. Can you see?”

  She was saying exactly what he had felt, that had motivated him to find some quiet, private together time. “Yes.”

  Suddenly there was an unexpected gravity about this woman, as if she was more priestess than courtesan. And her shift in demeanor triggered a more sober response from him.

  “This place . . .” she said, “was a sacred place to these creatures, whether long dead or still here. I feel it. Don’t you?”

  He felt a faint, cool air current. Mist drifted around their ankles like cold smoke. Distantly, water burpled and human voices rose and fell, combinations of fear and curiosity.

  That was not what she spoke of. Trudy was asking him to go deeper, to find something within him that sensed things that could not be heard, or touched. For her sake, he tried. “Yes,” he finally said. “I think I do.”

  “When we rescued you from Blackship, I told the guards that I was there to perform a cord cutting ceremony.”

  “A what?”

  “A form of divorce, Cadzie. Godsons have no casual sex, so they assumed I was simply ending something we’d started.”

  Whoa. “No casual . . really?”

  Trudy grinned impishly. There was the smile he’d guessed at but never seen.

  This strange woman as a child. The image . . warmed him.

  “But . . we do get married for short periods. For the night, for instance.”

  “You have got to be kidding.”

  “Not at all. It guarantees that the emotions are taken seriously. And that, if there are any children resulting from the union, they are protected and nurtured. It is similar to a Sufi ‘muta’ contract.”

  “It’s . . a tying ceremony?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then cord-cutting is a divorce?”

  “Yes.”

  “Jesus. Do I owe you alimony?”

  Trudy laughed. “First, you need to shut up.”

  “Lips sealed.”

  “Not too tightly, I hope.” Damn, she was mercurial. Shifted between priestess, teacher and courtesan so fluidly that it kept him dizzy. Part of her magic, perhaps. But behind the teasing, he sensed something more serious, like a sober child peeking out from behind a mask of gaiety. Please. I’m giving all I can. All I have to offer. “I look at this, all of this. And what is happening. And realize that we might not live through it. It was always possible.”

  “And you helped me anyway.”

  “And now you’re going to help me. I lied to free you. Lied about something . . sacred. They believed me, because we don’t lie about things like that.”

  What will you lie about? He heard the question in his head, realized that some part of him was searching for a way to disbelieve her. Distance himself. And with a flash of guilt realized that was just self-protection. There was something about this woman so worldly and yet so sincere that it felt as if he had no defenses to her at all. If he let go, if he dropped those barriers he was going to fall hard.

  And then . . he realized that he already had, damn it.

  He felt the heft and heat of her words. She had given everything, including total loyalty. Compared to that transgression, murder might be almost a misdemeanor. He had badly underestimated this woman. “What can I do?”

  “Make it truth,” she said.

  He gazed into her eyes, and then nodded. She tied her right hand to his left.

  “I, Gertrude Hendrickson,” she said, “freely and of my own will commit to you, to care for and love you in the time we have, this moment, the only moment we have, with all my heart.” She sighed. “Now you.”

  “I, Cadmann Sikes, freely and of my own will commit to you, to care for and love you in the time we have, this moment . . .” He paused, emotions bubbling up. These were not his words, not his tradition. But in this alien place, considering all that she had done for and by him, all that she had thrown away to protect him . . those words seemed sacred. This was a bond, something deeper than culture or tradition, like two nervous systems twining together to create a single creature.

  “The only moment we have.”

  “The only moment we have, with all my heart.” He paused, head spinning, far more moved than he had anticipated. “Now what?”

  Her smile blossomed. “Now you kiss me.”

  He did. Then without the need for conversation they gathered armfuls of the dried waterweed, and made themselves a bed in the shadows. And upon it, within a womb of ancient rock, lit only with a beacon’s pale light they sealed that bond again, in a manner that men and women had embraced since a time before starships, or beacons, or even words had ever existed at all.

  The western wall ran from floor to ceiling, with a rectangle as tall as two men cut into the middle at floor level. In the light of glowing nonfish and their own lamps, it appeared constructed of some composition substance, like glazed concrete. A vast convexity swelled the middle.

  “What is this wall?” Joanie asked.

  “We don’t know,” Shaka said, slapping his hand against it. “The material is extremely hard, very strong. It might be a ceiling support.” He sounded uncertain. “Perhaps a dam, blocking a river?”

  Water did trickle out from under it, running down to the main pool. Just a trickle, though. “Not a river on the map,” Evie said.

  “We have no idea what everything was a thousand years ago,” Joanie said. “Ten thousand years . . .”

  “We may never know what it was designed to support.”

  “Or contain,” Shaka said.

  A new thought occurred to him. “What weapons are Godson soldiers likely to bring?”

  “Automatic rifles, tactical battle suits. Gas, armor piercing, fragmentation . . .” That was Trudy’s voice, Trudy coming up from behind them, holding hands with Cadzie. Where had they been?

  “Oh, shit,” Nnedi moaned.

  “Yes,” Trudy said. “I don’t know how you counter that, or how much time you have.”

  “Neither do I. We have an advantage in that we know where we are, and they are having to guess. They’ll have to look down the branching tunnels to be sure. Look for ambush.” The cavern was like a clock, with the buildings in the center, the warm-water lagoon between seven and five, that odd wall at nine, and five passages radiating away at eleven through three.

  “Ambush is good,” Shaka said.

  “So . . .” Cadzie said. “The first thing we might want to do is collapse the tunnel we came through.”

  “How the hell do we get back out?” Jaxxon asked. A perfectly natural question, that.

  “One thing at a time. We’ve seen two tunnels heading up, and two down. I’m willing to bet that the cthulhu had another way in here.”

  “There’s that,” Joanie said. “There’s that. There’s also that if our people, or the Godsons know we’re here, they’ll eventually drill down and get us.”

  “If it’s the Godsons, we might not be happy with that ‘getting.’” Jason said.

  “Well, if they come through a blocked tunnel somehow . . and we survive . . then maybe we’
ll be able to circle back around them . . .”

  “Go out the way they came in?”

  “Maybe.”

  “Not much of a plan.”

  “When you get a better one, speak up.”

  Most of what could be done had been done. The children of Avalon and their guest had retreated to a cleared circle, something reminiscent of an amphitheater, on the far side of the reef-city and near the imaginary clock’s “twelve,” invisible from the underground lake, down at the “six.”

  And there, seated in a circle so they could see each other, they held what all knew might be their final meeting. The question Cadzie placed before them: why were they here? If death was heading toward them, bearing down at what might be cataclysmic speed, clarity was the least he could ask of any willing to die at his side.

  Why are you here?

  “I’m with you, Cadzie,” Nnedi said. “This is our planet. They had no right to do what they did.”

  “Are you prepared to die for your rights?” Cadzie asked.

  “We don’t know what will happen,” she said. “We never do. But if I didn’t stand up for what was right, I don’t know how I’d live with myself.”

  “Thor?” Cadzie asked.

  The shaggy-haired Viking seemed shrunken, as if he’d lost six inches and thirty pounds in the last two hours. “I helped get you here, Cadzie.”

  “Yeah, thanks a lot.”

  That triggered a few much-needed chuckles.

  “I . . think that in a way, it was jealousy. I didn’t think I felt that, but I did. So when I had a chance to strike out at you . . well, you scared me, Cad.”

  That was unexpected. “I what?”

  “Come on, man. Don’t you know who you are?” He gestured vaguely. “You’re Cadmann Weyland’s blood. You tore through everyone but the twins in your combat tests. You really are better and stronger and probably smarter than most of us.”