Fictions

by Nancy Kress

  “What do they do?” Ohkubo cried. “They are creating an . . . an aerodynamically feasible shape—”

  The gases in the bioloon’s central cavity suddenly shot out a point near groundside, and the bioloon—no longer shaped like a balloon—shot forward. The electronic watchers on Chujo, all except Ohkubo, fell silent. Miyuki felt an emotion creep over her she could not name. The Chupchup emotion, her own—she could no longer name anything. She could only watch, the glass etchings dancing before her eyes.

  Finally someone said, the voice hoarse, “If the bioloons manufacture more hydrogen through photosynthetic processes, maybe even other gases as well . . .”

  Someone else said, “We know the snug can interact with the Chupchup body, drawing on those resources as well . . .”

  “There is a tremendous amount of energy stored in snug chemical bonds . . .”

  “At their current altitude, how much escape velocity would they need . . .”

  “How much time would it take, sealed in those pockets . . . Of course, if the bioengineered process has the capacity to manufacture additional gases for breathing as well as propulsion . . .”

  “How could they have calculated the right entry point, the right angle for reentry. . . No, no, it isn’t possible . . .”

  “How do we know what is possible? We cannot even see the inside of those . . . craft . . .”

  The bioloons continued reshaping themselves.

  At the sub-Chujo point on Genji, the carpet whales writhed and twitched, changing with minute precision the electromagnetic signals beaming into the sky.

  “This fourth drawing,” said the formal Japanese voice, “shows a spacecraft of some sort covered with what appears to be formalized drawings of snug.

  “We do not know whether snug can survive the interplanetary void, but this is partly because we do not know whether snug can take forms different from that observed on Aaron Kammer two decades ago. Bear in mind, also, that this etching, which appears to be taking the two Chupchups to Chujo away from Genji, may just be a story. A myth. Or a stylized version of some actual historical happening unrelated to the events of the other etchings but blended with them in the retelling over time. We simply do not know. The implied narrative conclusion drawn from this ordering of etchings, that the sentient humanoid race was somehow sent away from Genji and to Chujo at the behest or order of the himatids, may be completely erroneous. Silly, even. We do not know.”

  “Quarantine of experiment,” Bruce Johnson said. “Exile,” Jordan Dane said.

  Tatsumi reached out and took his hand.

  The bioloons glided into the comparatively narrow strait of space between the atmospheres of Chujo and Genji.

  “Shape still flattening,” said Ohkubo tightly, monitoring the transmissions from the robot cameras. “I think it’s gaining maximum surface area for some sort of phototropic activity, probably releasing gases. Why did we not think to send along a probe capable of spectral analysis?” This question was a lapse of control, Miyuki thought; everyone pretended Ohkubo had not asked it. The answer was obvious, anyway. They had not sent a probe to analyze unknown phototropic reactions that might furnish propulsion capability because no one had known such an event was imminent. Or possible. Or thinkable.

  How many of the Chupchups sealed in their bioloon pockets were still alive? Had their life processes been slowed by the snug to require less breathable air, less heat, less gas exchange? It seemed probable. But, then, perhaps the snug ship had speeded up the Chupchup life processes to produce more of these things. How would the humans ever know? Unless, of course, the ship remained in analyzable form once it reached Genji.

  If it reached Genji.

  “Entry into Genji upper atmosphere in . . . three minutes, forty-two seconds,” someone said. “What will they do about the heat of entry?”

  No one answered.

  “Fifth comes an etching of a Chupchup city on Chujo. It is partially constructed. As you see, the actual hard labor appears to be mostly being performed by ‘trolls’; the Chupchups are standing to the left-hand side absorbed in an undifferentiated artifact.”

  “ ‘That’s no artifact, that’s my snug,’ ” Bruce Johnson said. He laughed and glanced around. Tatsumi would have said his manic gaze saw none of them. “They experimented with the damn stuff in the safety of Chujo until they got it right! I’ll be damned!”

  Dane Jordan said, “You are making a supposition.” Tatsumi saw that he didn’t believe his own words. He, too, could recognize snug when he saw an etching of it.

  The Japanese scientist, Miyuki, must have been under tremendous internal pressure, to draw herself back from the recognition.

  “Sixth,” Miyuki said, “is this stylized picture, virtually identical to a carving, one of many, in the abandoned Chupchup city.”

  The animal informally named “dune tiger,” now presumed extinct, glared at them from the screen. Its long, long tail stretched into a wraparound wreath that grew gnarled branches, sprouted ample flowers, twisted about itself to form a Chujoan profile, and finally curved back to be eaten by the tiger itself.

  “Full circle!” Bruce Johnson yelled. “Yeeooweee! The Chupchups perfect the bioengineered solution to the ecological catastrophe they caused—and the cycle comes full circle. ‘Masters!’ Damn straight they call themselves fucking Masters!”

  Dane said, “It could be just a story . . .”

  Johnson finally seemed to see him. “You don’t believe that.”

  Dane didn’t answer. Finally, he said, “No. I don’t.”

  “What was it that Chupchup said to the Japs?” Johnson demanded. “The same multitiered concept the Ihrdizu have taken to spouting? ‘It *is/will be* *time/an animal hunted/a problem solved*.’ No wonder they abandoned their damn cities without any sense they’d degenerated! The lab part of the process was over! They were ready for field experiments!”

  Tatsumi grasped what he was saying. For a second she went still, awed by the sheer size of it. A design for justice taking eighty generations, saving a world by exiling the perpetrators/saviors for only the most practical of motives . . . All genetically hard-wired. Justice that was genetic. Justice? Or was it art?

  Johnson said gleefully, “And we thought we on Earth understood the self-regulating nature of a biosphere! We don’t know shit!”

  Tatsumi could not understand why that should fill him with such pleasure.

  When the bioloons hit the atmosphere, they changed again. The robot camera’s telescopic lens showed a ripple over every centimeter of their surface, subtle and uniform, as if the snug were reorienting at a cellular level. The albedo increased dramatically, acting as a heat reflector and hence a heat shield. At the same time, the shape of each ship changed again. As the gravity well took hold upon the Chujoan cargo in its pockets, the ship broadened, thinned, curved in proportion to the increasing air pressure. By the time the ships were fully in the atmosphere, they were no longer ships but enormous, aerodynamically stiffened parachutes.

  “Here,” said the prerecorded voice of Miyuki, and even through her formal control, her listeners felt her relief, “is the last of the etchings in the Chujoan library box.” The screen showed parachutes, uneven parachutes unmistakably of snug, falling through the sky. Stylized Chujoan faces adorned each parachute. On the ground—so clearly Genji ground, the edge of the sea decorated with Genjian plants and a watching Ihrdizu—the sea surged. It was thronged with carpet whales, watching the sky. From each himatid, the artist had etched a faint line to a bioloon, a line made of flowers and plants no human had yet seen anywhere on Genji.

  “Coming back,” Dane Jordan said. His voice had turned husky. “Returning to Genji. Like the myth of Szikwshawmi. Angels coming from the sky to confer biological strength on female Ihrdizu.” Was that what had happened once long ago?

  “Guided by the carpet whales,” Tatsumi said. Johnson said nothing; he was updating his fuzzy-logic deduction program on the QED like a man possessed.

  “Bu
t there’s one thing I don’t understand,” Dane said. Tatsumi said, with honest astonishment, “Only one?”

  “If the carpet whales are to guide the Chujoans back to Genji with new bioengineered snug—if the whales are the masterminds—”

  Johnson looked up, with scorn. “Masterminds! That’s all wrong. They’re genetically hard-wired for their role, too. None of the three races is any more in control than the others!”

  “All right.” Dane drew a deep breath. “But if the signal or whatever comes from the himatids . . . what happened last time? Why did the Chujoans get into their bioloons and start off into their atmosphere twenty-eight years ago, only to fall back and die? What went wrong?”

  Johnson stopped typing. His forehead, sweaty with exultation, furrowed.

  Dane said, “If the carpet whales maybe started to give some kind of signal, and then the whole . . . ‘mission’ aborted—why? Why wasn’t the signal what it was supposed to be?”

  “Damn,” Johnson said. “I don’t know. Maybe the computer can come up with something. . .”

  Tatsumi saw it. Wavy lines appeared beneath her eyelids, dizzying her, then righted. She said, “I know.”

  The men turned to her. Johnson said, “You know why the carpet-whale signal failed last time? Why?”

  Again she saw Edward Philby, poor tormented justified Philby dying of his cancers among the time artists. He stood in the field dome and repeated the last words Aaron Kammer had said, just before Kammer died: “ ‘They’re the ones! They’re the ones, and you’re killing them!’ ”

  The ones. The carpet whales.

  She said, “The Ihrdizu killed too many. There were not enough left to make the right signals.”

  Everybody’s right. Everybody’s wrong.

  Cameras recorded frantically: on the south shore of Nighland, pointed at the sky; in fishing boats, as close to the himatids as the humans dared; in the sky itself, from out of flyer windows or on robot probes. No one had known what would happen, but they had known that something would, and the humans, Dane thought, were ready. Weren’t they supposed to be? Why else had the Chujoans broken three decades of disdain to give humans the library etchings? Why else had the figure of Aaron Kammer appeared above a carpet whale in exudates and light? Why else, if not to invite the humans to watch this Murasaki System story, this wordless talking that dwarfed anything the humans themselves had offered by way of petty Carnot temples or small-scale offers to day-trip to the moon?

  Dane turned to tell his thoughts to Suzy Tatsumi. But at that moment the screen in front of them, filled with sea spray from somebody’s misplaced camera, switched pictures. The images flowing into Okuma Base from the sea strait had been erratic for the last hour. Everyone at the strait was too busy recording to take time to route the best images to those unfortunates left behind at the base or at field camps. They, like the scientists on Chujo or the crew in the orbiting ship, didn’t count. Only the sea straits, glassy under the moon, counted. The off-site researchers took what the automatic transmitter sent, in the order the computer received it.

  But now the image cleared. Johnson raced back from his QED terminal to stand with Dane and Tatsumi, None of them spoke.

  The parachutes of snug hit a sudden gust in Genji’s treacherous, thick atmosphere. The affected bioloons wobbled. Light, focused by millions of tiny reflectors embedded in the upturned ventral sides of carpet whales, flashed toward the parachutes. Immediately the parachutes adjusted shape, the snug expanding or contracting at the cellular level, until the chutes once more rode the wind.

  The parachutes began to close at the bottom, meter by meter, until they once more became the shape of organic balloons. On each balloon, pockets bulged. Something within the pockets stirred faintly. The robot cameras, at extremely close range, showed the tops of the pockets begin to unseal.

  “The gravity,” Dane said aloud. “So much greater than Chujo. Bones not developed for it, muscles . . . Unless the landing of every one of those is perfect, the Chupchups won’t survive . . .”

  The image changed again, this time to the southern shore of Nighland, meters from the nearest carpet whale. Ihrdizu were wading into the water from the beach, hundreds of them. They submerged themselves to the tops of their tentacles. A few actually touched the edge of a carpet whale, which could bring its huge shape so close to land only because of its weird flatness. The Ihrdizu were laughing.

  Light, reflected in exudates, danced and beamed from the carpet whales. A peculiar noise filled the air, louder than the laughing Ihrdizu or the lapping waves, a high-pitched rising and falling wail that might have been sonic signals. Might have been keening. Might have been cheers.

  As the bioloons came closer to land, most of them aimed at the sea, the carpet whales began to submerge. One-third, half, two-thirds of each himatid, the portions farthest from the beach, sank under the water, leaving wide stretches of open sea between the remaining visible sections of whale. The light signals from these intensified. The noise rose in pitch. The first of the bioloons splashed into the water.

  And the himatids guided the rest of the Masters home.

  EPILOGUE

  Rilla stood near the birthing pool with Tmafekitch and her mate, a purplish male named Frikatim with a long snorkel and one extra toe. Rilla felt a little shy of Frikatim, whom, after all, she didn’t know very well—how could she? She and Daddy had only been in the village a few days. Tmafekitch had had months and months to get to know Frikatim, and she must like him, or she wouldn’t be having a baby with him, would she? Rilla didn’t know if she liked him or not. As long as he let her have these ten days with Tmafekitch, these ten days Daddy had promised she could have, Rilla didn’t really care if Frikatim was there or not. It wasn’t as if she were jealous of her friend’s mate. Much.

  She knew why Daddy had let her have the ten days, moving his field camp clear over by Tmafekitch’s adopted village (after they found it). Rilla knew why. But she didn’t like to think about the reason.

  Tmafekitch made a sudden noise, a high clear click that meant she was startled. She took a few steps into the birthing pool, then crowded closer to Frikatim. In the pool, the tough membrane of the egg sac began to wobble.

  Rilla said, “Is the baby coming?”

  Tmafekitch answered, in their own private language, “Soon!” and waved her snorkel in circles.

  “I’ll get the Master!” Rilla cried, glad to have something to do.

  The Master was staying in a sort of dome made of woven plants and daubed mud, since this village, unlike the one Tmafekitch had been born in, had no Carnot temple. A curtain of snug hung down in front of the doorway. Rilla knocked on a li-plant stem—the Masters had seemed to understand without any trouble the human custom of knocking—and the snug pulled apart. The Master came out.

  He carried a stick covered with crawling snug. Rilla looked at it furtively—would it grow a new kind of plant Tmafekitch and her baby could eat? One Master had already made a plant with bright red berries that Tmafekitch said were delicious, although of course Rilla couldn’t eat them. She kept her glance at the writhing stick very fast. She was never really comfortable with the Masters. Unlike the Ihrdizu, they seemed to have no interest whatsoever in a little girl.

  She said to the unsmiling face, so much farther above her than Tmafekitch’s would have been, “Tmafekitch. Baby. Now.” That was how the Masters liked you to talk to them: the simplest Ihrdizu words, in the smallest number that would convey the information.

  The Master didn’t say thank you—they never did, Rilla thought resentfully—and started toward the birthing pool. Rilla followed. The Master walked too fast for her to keep up, which was supposed to indicate something wonderful about their bodies. That the bones or muscles or heart or something were actually changing to adapt to the gravity. Rilla couldn’t have cared less. Even a Master should say thank you.

  She had to admit, though, that the Masters had been good for Genji. She didn’t understand it all, but Daddy said that
since the Chujoans returned, Genji was being transformed from the bottom ecological layer up, for greater stability and abundance. Well, Rilla didn’t know about that, but she did know it was prettier. There were thicker plants, and brighter flowers, and more food for the Ihrdizu, and the sea had more bits of colored plankton floating in it. Rilla even liked the patches of snug that crawled freely around the tidal pools, sometimes venturing onto paths, although they gave many humans the creeps.

  Like Mommy.

  She had to see Mommy this afternoon, because the new ship was leaving for Earth tomorrow and Rilla would never see her again. It was only right, Daddy said, that Rilla see her one last time. She hadn’t seen her much, because Mommy had never come down off the ship in orbit since the day the Masters had sailed out of the sky from Chujo. That old ship was too damaged by its trip to Genji to ever leave again, so it just stayed in orbit, and Mommy just orbited along with it. Everything Mommy knew about the Masters, she had watched on screens.

  Rilla hated to admit to herself that she didn’t want to see Mommy.

  So instead she hurried along the path to the birthing pool, and by the time she got there the baby was tearing at the inside of the egg sac with its tiny sharp claws. Tmafekitch and Frikatim watched anxiously, their front legs in the pool up to their tentacles, not helping but making encouraging bleats and clicks. Everybody knew you mustn’t help a baby out of its egg sac. If you did, it might not be strong enough to live.

  But the baby did get out. It tore the sac and stuck its snout through, and then its front claws, and then pulled its claws back in and stuck out its little tentacles. It kept struggling until its back claws were free, and then it stood in the shallow of the birthing pool where Tmafekitch and Frikatim had fed it for so long with bits of plants and secretions and their own shit, which Daddy said was good for eggs. The Master had pissed in the pool, too, every morning. Now the Master picked up the baby and gently shoved a bit of special snug down its throat and another bit, a different color, under the flap of its tympanum. Then the Master handed the baby to Frikatim, who would care for it while Tmafekitch hunted and protected them.