Starborn and Godsons

by Larry Niven

  “Oh, come on.”

  “You don’t see it,” Thor said. “And I think I hated you for that, too. You didn’t even have the decency to be egotistical about it.”

  “Well, I’m sorry all to hell.” More laughter.

  “See there? See how decent you are? I . . I don’t think I could have done that. I think I would have lorded it over everyone if I had an advantage like that. I hated Joanie being with you up on Geographic. You made me feel . . small. And so when I had a chance, I struck out at you. And took real pleasure in it. But . . I was happy I failed, too. I mean, I never really thought we’d convict you.”

  Trudy interjected. “But then we took your arguments and ran with them.”

  Thor nodded ruefully. “When I watched what the Godsons did with it, I went out and threw up.”

  “I held your hair,” Evie said.

  Again, laughter. It felt good. Even Thor managed a smile.

  “So . . I think I speak for a lot of us, Cadzie. We were given a world we didn’t earn, and our parents have never stopped reminding us of that. I think maybe we thought we were looking for a fight. Now I think we were looking for something to mean something.”

  “And this is it,” Evie Queen raised her hand, and then her voice. “I think you’re stuck with us.”

  Cadzie looked at the faces around him.

  Quiet swallowed them, until the faint drip of water and their own breaths were the only sounds. Then Trudy spoke. “There is something that happens when a group of people share the same perspective. It is even more powerful when that is a shift, a way apart from their previous way of being. We call it ‘Tribing.’”

  “This is Godson stuff?”

  “Yes. And a ‘Tribing’ happens under stress. Soldiers experience it in combat, when there is a survival payoff for shedding some of their individual identity. They can spend the rest of their lives trying to regain it. We . . .” She touched her chest. “The Godsons experienced it when the Vision was revealed, when the Elders gave the inner teachings to everyone. Some left, but those who remained experienced a Tribing, and it was wonderful.”

  “I bet,” Evie said.

  “There were people who could not themselves go, but sold all their possessions to contribute, to send their genes to the stars. Numbers decreased, but we also gained thousands of new members, and those who remained were more loyal than ever. The Tribing.” They nodded soberly.

  “This is what we’re experiencing?”

  “Yes,” Trudy said. “Finding something you are willing to die for. Seeing in those to your right and left something more important than your individual identity. Something worth living for so powerfully that even the fear of death stops having a hold on you.

  “All marriage ceremonies speak of two becoming one. And ceremonies bringing people into military or religious communities also Tribe. Secret societies have their own languages that not only describe mysteries but change the consciousness of the members. Ingroup language and outgroup language. The first analysis of this might have been the Sapir-Worf hypothesis, and the weak version, that language binds and influences thought, has strong evidence.”

  “The strong version, not so much,” Cadzie said.

  The others seemed entranced.

  “True. I want to be a part of you. As Cadzie is a part of me. If this is the end of my existence, let us be Tribe together. You struggled to define yourself, and did so in opposition to intent.”

  “‘Opposition to intent’? More Godson talk?” Evie.

  “Sorry. Your parents and grandparents had intent.

  “Grandparents: conquer the stars, establish a colony.

  “Parents: secure the planet, make it safe for their children. You saw not only their greatness, but their dysfunction. The degree to which they couldn’t enjoy their victory. Efforts had poisoned their dreams. They programmed their own children with nightmares . . .”

  The Grendel Scouts nodded soberly.

  “And we didn’t want any part of it.” Joanie said. “We rebelled.”

  “As children often do. And as a result, became indolent . . or so it seemed to my people. Is there anyone here who has no skill in anything?”

  They talked among themselves for a time, voices alternating between strident, philosophical, frightened and cajoling.

  “Not really,” Joanie finally said. “Everyone always does something, even if it doesn’t make productive sense.”

  “But ‘practical production’ wasn’t needed,” Trudy said. “Not the way your grandparents intended. To win the war against grendels and even hunger, they needed exceptional focus. But that same focus prevented them from understanding why the children they loved wouldn’t continue to have that focus, even after it no longer served a purpose.”

  “But we all found excellence anyway. Art. Surfing. Exploration. Sciences . . .”

  “Not because we had to.”

  “Because that is what healthy human beings do,” Trudy said, slipping further into teacher mode. “It’s what we do. Maybe my people forgot that. They certainly knew it once. We accepted people who were good at anything, whether or not society agreed.”

  “But you’re all so organized!”

  “Because everyone on this mission agrees upon an external goal. Otherwise, we’d splinter. Like other people.”

  Joanie laughed. “It’s an illusion!”

  “It’s an illusion. Created by a philosophical filter. We are all the same because only those of a particular mind would come on such a mission. But the illusion was compelling, and seductive.”

  “So . . what do you do? I mean . . not necessarily you, personally, but the Godsons?”

  “Here are our principles,” Trudy said. “First, that Mankind must conquer the galaxy.

  “Second . . .” And here she paused. “This is not spoken of to outsiders.” She glanced at Cadzie, and he knew what she was about to say. “The God Knot. The panspermic point from which all life in the galaxy sprang must be found by humanity for us to leap to our next level of evolution.”

  The Starborn glanced at each other. Most had never heard this. None laughed. Absurd it might have been, but this didn’t seem the time for rude questions. And all of them knew they’d heard worse.

  “Third. That all humans must fulfill a purpose, that purpose is more important than their transitory desires.

  “Fourth, that pleasure can be postponed for decades, lifetimes, to accomplish a worthy goal. Lack of ability to postpone pleasure is the cause of all lack of discipline.

  “Fifth, our deepest essence is survival of our species. All pleasure comes from service to survival.

  “Sixth, that Tribing is the melding of individual will into group identity. The pleasure of this is in direct proportion to the degree you release limiting ego.

  “Seventh: All individual psychosis is a failure to submit to and embrace the good of the group.”

  She paused, letting that sink in. “We stand here, facing death,” Trudy said. “But I would guess that in a way you can barely admit even to yourselves, you also feel more alive than ever before.”

  “Yes,” Little Shaka said.

  “We would say this is because you have submitted your individual needs . . even the need to survive . . to the group.”

  Joanie frowned. “But how does that make sense? I mean, evolutionarily?”

  “Because humans have the best chance of surviving when they stand as a group. So the paradox is right in front of you: the greatest way to increase chance of survival is to accept death.”

  Jaxxon nodded. “That is the way of the warrior. He who abandons his life in a worthy cause, gains his life. He who clings to life loses it.”

  “Even if they ‘win.’” Cadzie said.

  “Yes. Even if they win.”

  “So . . there you have it,” Trudy said. “The rules at the heart of the Godsons. We do not live as individuals. We live as a group.”

  Joan said, “I can see why it appealed so much to Marco.”

&nb
sp; “Why Marco?” Cadzie said.

  “Because he had conquered his world,” she said. “Become the greatest star, climbed the mountain. But knew that it was all for himself, and that all the millions of people who loved him didn’t know him at all. He wanted something real. He wanted to know himself.”

  “And he could only know himself by losing himself?”

  “As only those who embrace death truly taste life,” Jason said.

  The two brothers shared a secret smile, as if they knew something that no one else can know.

  “You guys weird me out,” Joanie said.

  “One of us chose art. The other, science. Both of us wish to be warriors, like our ancestors.”

  “And you can’t do that unless you die?”

  “No. I’m not surprised that you can’t understand. Jaxxon?”

  “Being a warrior is just a path of inquiry,” the older brother said. “A way of seeking truth. ‘What is true?’ is the question. And that question can be approached through science, or art.”

  “Science is more exacting,” Jason said.

  “And because of that,” Jaxxon offered. “Appeals to younger minds, incapable of nuance.”

  They smiled at each other again, a pair of tiger cubs.

  “Well, that’s special,” Cadzie said. “What do we do now?”

  “You ask me?” Trudy asked. “You are not Godsons.”

  “No. But we are seekers of truth. If the Godsons have a truth about this, we are willing to embrace it.”

  “Then I would say that what we do is embrace what is happening to us. That we live or die . . together. That we Tribe.”

  “How do we do that?” Cadzie asked.

  “You already know.” Trudy’s smile was full of mischief. “You and I did this last night.”

  “We all get married?” Joanie asked.

  “We become family. We sit here in a circle. Any can leave now, without rancor or blame. Move aside, and allow the circle to hold only those with the heart to live or die with each other.”

  “Is this what you did before you left Earth?”

  “Every one of us. Can you imagine traveling a trillion miles without such a commitment?”

  “I think our grandparents did.”

  “Then they were great. Because they stood, even though they had no conscious commitment. That is a mark of greatness. But if you are great, and decide to stand . . you will be even stronger.”

  Trudy stood. “I stand. Here and now. With you. Live or die.”

  Cadzie stood. And Joanie. And Jaxxon and Jason, and Little Shaka. All of them . . .

  Except the young man in the very back, with the golden beard.

  “I . . can’t.” Thor said. “I thought I could. But I can’t. I’m sorry. I want to live.”

  “It’s all right,” Trudy said.

  “It’s all right, Thor,” Joanie said. “You’ll go home.”

  Thor was shaking with terror and shame. The standees regarded each other.

  “Look,” Trudy said. “See each other. These are your brothers and sisters.”

  “What . . what am I?” Thor asked, miserable.

  “You’re our neighbor, Thor.” Cadzie said it as kindly as possible. “And most of the time, you’ve been a good neighbor.”

  Thor trembled, then made a great choking sound, doubled up and began to sob. On the outside of the circle.

  “And now what?” Jaxxon asked.

  “Now . . we prepare.”

  Jaxxon had been first to use the term “Whoville,” but the appellation had stuck. The rainbow of coral-reef buildings had a gloriously haphazard appearance, until you noticed the spacial geometry that described very precise and oddly beautiful negative spaces, resembling Avalonian aquatic vegetation and animal life. An amazing work of art and architecture in one. Most astonishingly, as one walked through the buildings and looked up and around, the images shifted from one creature or plant to another, in endless array, with every shift in perspective.

  “I have no idea what kind of minds could create functional art like this,” Evie murmured. “Honestly, its like an entire culture of Leonardos. Or at least M.C. Eschers. Mindblowing.”

  “Can we drop this building on this pathway?” Cadzie asked Piccolo.

  Evie and Jaxxon looked like they wanted to kill him.

  Piccolo the lapsed miner scratched his beard, looking up at the five-story honeycomb. “Lots of problems, man. We don’t know the tensile strength of this material. We don’t know the stress geometries—the way their design distributes weight and so forth. We know that it’s lasted ten thousand years without maintenance. Maybe.” He considered. “We also don’t know whether there are internal supports we can’t see. Whether they varied the density or composition of the material, and what kind of stresses it was designed to resist. If all of this was concrete, I’d be able to predict stress waves, so that simultaneous explosions at different points would create clashing waves of force, vibrations that could destroy load-bearing structures so that . . .”

  He paused. “You do know that classic building demolitions on Earth aren’t about destroying the building, right?”

  “What are they, then?”

  “All you want to do is reduce the building’s ability to resist vertical pull. Good old gravity does the rest. Weaken the structure, and its own weight pulls it down.”

  “Got it.”

  “The same would be true with bringing down a dam—the water pressure behind it is intense. The dam has to be very carefully designed to distribute this stress. Change a load tolerance at any point, and it is like the water gets frisky, concentrates all its attention there, and takes it apart. The same is true with a building. You weaken key points, and the entire structure goes boom.”

  “And you can’t do that here?”

  “No. We have no idea what the structural load points might be—the geometry is too complex. Or the structural specifications of the material.”

  “Can you make a best guess?”

  He nodded. His voice got sleepy again. “But I can’t be efficient, man.”

  “I’ll settle for effective.”

  ♦ ChaptEr 50 ♦

  a maze of twisty

  tunnels, all alike

  Four men in power suits could haul tons of collapsed rock in minutes. What would have taken days with the best drilling machinery on Avalon would be clear in another hour.

  Nothing in Tsiolkovskii’s first life prepared him for this new world, and he had to keep himself focused on what he understood, not on the wonder of new technology. So despite the obvious tactical advantages of the suits, the Russian had made a decision none of his new subordinates understood: to forgo the armor.

  He’d worn one for an hour, been stunned by the capacity for strength and firepower. But it would require days to begin to learn its use. Wearing the power suits was a revelation, but Tsiolkovskii had had less than an hour of practice. Taking them into the water was surreal, like cruising in a small close-fitting submarine exoskeleton. Ordinarily the suits were open to the water, but after the bee attack they had been modified and sealed.

  Following his hunch, his entire force of twenty men traveled downstream. If he was wrong, and the fugitives were headed upstream into the mountains, they might be lost forever.

  For a time he wasn’t certain instinct had sufficed. No traces, no clues. But then he found a discarded shoe, and knew they were on the wrong track: he was intended to think one of his fugitives had accidentally kicked off a shoe while in frantic flight.

  Tsiolkovskii in an emergency helmet and rebreather, looped onto the nylon towing cable extended from Greg Lindsey’s armor, chose the other tunnel. The water was cold, had been since they first submerged. He had survived Spetsnaz survival training in taiga forest region, and this was nothing. Another mile of almost silent propulsion and they hit an odd patch of light. He paused, and examined it. Touched it carefully, and found it a kind of glaze, almost like glass, with an embedded row of things that looked lik
e forearm-sized, ridged spinning tops. Glowing. Could those spinning objects be power generators? Operating off the current, perhaps?

  A thousand questions, with damned few answers. His father had been an engineer, and installed in him a love of natural forces harnessed to human needs. Maybe, just maybe, after this was over he’d have time to indulge his curiosity.

  Another five miles, traveled in a soothing drifting timeless state, he was lulled nearly to sleep by the purr of the power armor engines. He’d always loved diving, hadn’t done it for too many years before Ngorongoro. This was different, enmeshed in a technology that had not existed in his lifetime. His former life.

  He chuckled to himself. It was a bit of a confusion to adjust so quickly to being in a new world, dealing with new people and places, so rapidly forced into a command role. What did you expect, idiot? A vacation in Tahiti? He’d known he would awaken in a strange world.

  He’d just not really understood what that implied. How could he?

  This was all so mysterious. So beautiful, and alien. If life would just slow down a bit. He was running on discipline alone, and inadequate data. Perhaps there would be time . . .

  The tunnel turned, and they ran into a wall of rock.

  “This is recent,” Sergeant Lindsey said. “Some of the edges are clean, not mossed up, sir.”

  After the rock fall was blasted away, Anton Tsiolkovskii and his people came through, very carefully. Up to the water’s surface, power armor at alert.

  Before he could fully untie himself from the nylon cord, a flash of light from the corner of his eye made him dive to the side. A rock the size of his head, traveling as fast as a baseball, missed him by less than a foot and smashed into an armored soldier behind him.

  “Major Stype,” Tsiolkovskii said, pressed into a shadow between two oddly shaped glazed ceramic buildings. Rubble filled the alley, obscuring their view but also blocking floor-level enemy fire. Two rockets flashed from Lindsey and Major Stype, blowing a crow’s-nest sniper position into splinters, rendered it to a smoking ruin. Armored snipers leaped out of the rubble and retreated. So. They did know how to use the armor. Good to know.