by Greg Bear
Still, in the middle decades of the 2100s Earth had sent “slow boat” solar sails out into the Oort cloud, bound for Centauri and beyond. Making close solar passes in ‘sundiver’ mode got them up to 500 or 600 kilometers per second, a thousandth of c. In thousands of years they could arrive at stars, after dutifully passing data on interstellar space back to Earth. Most of these were still on the way, forlorn robot voyagers long outdated in their very mission.
But the Furians, as Fraq termed them, had thought on even longer perspectives before humans evolved. Ruth researched Fraq’s tale, and found it made sense.
The ancient Furian civilization had reached its end as their sun left the main sequence and became a red giant, its luminosity rising by a factor of a thousand. The swelling ruddy sphere doomed their world, but also brimmed with photons, a rich launcher for Furian solar sails. That dropped the time for an interstellar transit down to centuries. Sailcraft wouldn’t last forever in transit, when they might smack into a random rock. Best to keep the sailing time low.
But how could the sails slow down when they arrived? Their light sails would be nearly useless for getting captured into the gravity well of a main sequence star, with its puny sunlight. A magnetic sail, braking on the solar wind, could help, but not nearly enough. Without something more, the Arks the dying Furian world sent out would simply blow by their target stars.
The Furians, Fraq said, had identified stars with circling worlds known to have working biospheres, but that gave forth no SETI signals, no leakage of artificial emissions, nothing. Someday they might harbor intelligence, and the Arks could carry the life lore of the long-dead Furians down to the next generation of life in the galaxy. A biological legacy. Better than a funeral pyre, or a repeating microwave message touting Furian art and culture and religion to the cold stars.
The Furians knew that most stars are members of binary or multiple systems. Their Arks targeted binary systems with a red giant and a widely separated dwarf star. Ark sail vessels could use the red giant’s intense luminosity to decelerate, then sail on to the planetary system of the dwarf.
Librarians don’t just rely on hearsay; they check. Ruth checked Sol’s neighborhood.
She looked at red giant/dwarf star binaries within a hundred light years of Sol. There were four. Beta Aquila had a dwarf companion roughly 150 AU from the star. Astronomers had found in the 2100s that it had no planetary companions the size of Earth with working biospheres. The other three red giants—Epsilon Cygnus, Aldebaran, and Theta Ursa Major—also had no life-bearing worlds orbiting the red giants or the giants’ companion stars, as shown by looking at their atmospheric chemistries. So these were not good prospects for the dying Furian world. Apparently such life bearing pairs were unlikely.
The Furians’ star was a bit more than a hundred light years from Sol. So the Furians looked for happy coincidences instead.
Ruth shook her head in wonder. The Furians were smart. Roughly every 100,000 years, random orbital motions made stars drift by within two light years of Sol. By chance, a red giant was a few light years from Sol when the Furians launched their Ark sails. So they took advantage, she guessed, of the coincidence. It checked out with the astro simulations she ran.
About four million years ago, a red giant had passed by in stately splendor, lighting the sky of an Earth busy evolving mammals with a ruddy glow. Small primates scuttled beneath this glowing ember in the night, trying to stay alive. Perhaps some of them puzzled at the lights in that dark celestial bowl as the Furian probe made its passage, braking around the red giant. Then it set sail for the biosphere the Furians knew orbited the ordinary yellow dwarf star two light years away, Sol. The passage time at lower velocities would be dozens of centuries, but the Ark had time to play out its slow logic.
It had entered the solar system and, following instruction from a Furian society that had died on their burning world, took up orbit. What would stimulate it to activity again?
Fraq thought the Ark awaited a visit. Only an interplanetary civilization could reach it and understand its genetic heritage. The Ark orbited somewhere near Sol, awaiting a knock at its door.
The Ythris wanted to go there, harvest the heritage. With help from the evolved primates, and their SETI Library.
What had her mother used to say? Adventure means opportunity. Sure, Mom.
The Lunavator Bolo was running often and not fully booked, but they had to wait for the synchronous connection to the high velocity Flinger. And Fraq wanted to hunt. So . . . they wanted her to join in. More diplomatic social niceties, and for Ruth a command performance courtesy of the Prefect.
“You must hunt with them,” he said blandly. “They request it.”
“I nearly broke my neck last time.”
“You exaggerate. In any case, I instructed you to practice.”
“Practice flying, sure—that was fun. But hunting? How?”
“In the Verdant Void, of course. We have stocked it with animals that we believe will appeal to the Ythri instincts. They are carnivores and enjoy the sport of getting their own game.”
“I’m a vegetarian.”
“I don’t recall seeing that in your file.”
“I’m a recent convert.”
Did his eyes narrow by a millimeter? “How recently?”
Ten seconds ago, she thought, but said, “Some time now.”
“That is of no matter. You will not have to eat what you help them catch.”
How would you know, freezeface? Have you hunted with them? “I will do my best.”
He did not bother to smile. Indeed, she could not recall that he ever had. “Excellent.”
Fraq had taken perch some distance from her and the other Ythris. They all chose perches in the spire trees that grew near the Void walls, facing the kilometers of forest just below. When she gazed toward him he looked away quite deliberately. That fit the background inferences the translators had fed Ruth. Ythris were solitary types.
Fraq yawned his jaws widely and sent a long, howling call. Ythris echoed it, clashing their claw-hands together in a savage applause. They wore little clothing beyond a weapon belt and genital covers, for feathers guided their flight. In their preparing moments before she had seen and understood—the grooming, preening, trembling with hot-eyed desire for the hunt.
The Ythri were moving appetites, the translators said, carnivorous except for a sweet tooth for fruits. Carnivores needed larger regions per individual than herbivores or omnivores, even though meat has more calories per kilo than vegetable matter. A pride of lions needed a lot of antelope, and antelope needed a lot of land to graze.
They had emerged from a long drought on their largest continent, forcing the ancestors from deep forests, out onto savannahs. They grew larger and sharpened their hunting skills, forming groups that drove their solitary natures toward social skills. That in turn improved their ground locomotion and evolved claws into hands, though they never lost their sharp hooked nails. So the Ythri had evolved extreme territoriality and individualism, with social cohesion when needed. This had consequences in their governments, mores, arts, faiths, and philosophies. All that came from their extreme carnivore appetites.
So, she guessed, Fraq and his other Ythri expressed in their beautiful golden-brown feathers the itchy tensions that came to them while in close association. Even a kilometers-wide Void was too tight for them. Their feathers riffled with jittering waves. Zooming through the wormhole, confronting humans in confined spaces—these were fresh challenges, driving uneasy stresses.
She had to admit, Fraq was an admirable male, proud and aloof. And those eyes . . .
For this event the Library had leased the Verdant Void exclusively and filled its dense forests with animals, many brought especially from Earth. (Thriftily, the Library also discreetly posted micro cameras throughout, and had already sold the media rights for more than the Void lease cost.) The translators, who studied Ythri culture as rendered in conversations and a few grudgingly given texts, all
advised not to make it easy for the Ythri. This was the central “sport” of the Ythri life, as well as their food source. They rose to civilization not through agriculture but through managing vast populations of animals, kept in the enormous forests and hunted daily. All their culture focused on pursuit, stalking, attack, and feasting—the intense code of “bloodpride.” If they inferred that the prey here was being staked for easy plucking, or was tame, the aliens might well take grave offense.
Fraq sang forth again from his booming lungs, this time in Anglish, for her benefit. “No few be the winds that blow on our souls! Maychance our technics bring to bear! Stiffly upwind we go a-wing!”
More claw-clashing and hooting big-lung calls. The Ythri females added skittering grace notes, Ruth noted, probably challenging the males to do better than they. The battle of the sexes was a galactic scale universal. Or perhaps more like a dance.
Meat desire rang in their booming voices. The Ythri rustled and fretted and now steam rose from their feathers as their blood pumped energy into swollen tissues. Eyes jerked with predator speed and beaks clattered a rattling rhythm.
The Ythri were now steamed with energy. Eyeing them, Ruth checked her own gear and wondered what it would be like to have feathers she could arch and bunch into control surfaces, the better to master the vagrant winds.
Into the brawling air, Fraq sheered off his perch at a steep angle. He opened to the full five meter wingspan and floated without labor. Ruth took a breath of the thick, sweet air and leaped after him, arms opening to embrace the updraft with her wings.
The Library had set the atmospheric pressure higher to give Ruth a bit of help keeping aloft. The rich green canopy had breaks and corridors that funneled winds, creating turbulence and even vortexes, driven by the updrafts that rimmed the Void and the descending currents that dove down at the center. A side effect—unavoidable, the Prefect assured her with lofty tones—was increased vapor density, which meant . . . clouds. A gray puffball glided up from the distant floor, getting darker as it rose and droplets condensed. And Ruth was swooping into it, following Fraq.
He was already hundreds of meters ahead, swooping in a V search pattern with other Ythris. She was playing catch-up in every turn they made, surveying the canopy. Some Ythri dove down in long swoops to peer under the broad stretching branches of the tall trees. There was maneuver space for them because under Lunar grav Earthly trees had shot up, many of them several hundred meters tall. Give life opportunities and it seizes them.
Something seized her then—a vortex. She tumbled, turned her ankle flaps, got back in line to cut across the turbulence. A Ythri nearby, making a return swoop, looked at her oddly, mouth wide, and she saw its tongue and palate were purple. A hunting sign?
Here came the gray cloud. She angled in, rising, and suddenly droplets washed over her. Rain! Within moments, flying blind in the gray mist, she could feel herself gain weight as rivulets ran along her back. When she popped out into the shafts of light she was above the canopy and Ythri were angling below the treetops. She coasted, watching, and when a clearing came she made herself dive lower, scooting under the dense branches. Still fifty meters above the ground, she watched the Ythri throng down on—wild pigs! The animals snarled up at the immense birds and the Ythri fell upon them with glad cries. Claws sank deep into the boar. The slaughter brought whooping calls as the sky predators savaged a dozen pigs within minutes. She had never seen anything like it.
Fraq rose from the bloody ground, jumping into the air effortlessly, and shot up to fly parallel to her circling. “Like stump legs, these are!” he shouted, and she supposed his twisted mouth bespoke fun. “Come!”
He veered away and she labored to follow. Soon they came out onto a grassy plain and Fraq bellowed with obvious joy. “Sugarmeat!”
He dived immediately at a group of kangaroo. She zoomed over the killing, as Fraq sprang from one to the next, expertly slicing their throats with his claws as they turned to flee. He caught each at the top of the hop. The roos fell dead, legs still kicking. Blood stained the ground.
She let her left wing drag to double back to see more and it caught on a branch. Her “Uh!” made Fraq look up as she tumbled in a slow, stupid gyre—and smacked down hard on her left shoulder.
Sitting up, she was sure Fraq was laughing, a high booming cackle no human had heard before.
The Lunavator Bolo dropped down the black sky for them.
The grappler looked like a long cable plunging straight down vertically from the starscape, jaws yawning. Its tip speed at the grab platform was exactly zero, she knew, but Ruth braced herself for the yank.
It was a heavy load to haul. The Ythris were in the craft they had flown in on from the wormhole, in its own big chamber. The entire human vehicle held Ruth, Prefect and staff, plus the booster crew, a complete interplanetary spacecraft ready to fly. Here it came—snap and they were aloft, zooming up into the dead black Lunar sky. She watched the silvery ground rush away and then saw the latest comet head slide up from the horizon. It seethed with fogs, all captured by a gossamer envelope. Kilometers across and managed by robots, it glowed under sunlight focused by silvery mirrors. Water, food, fuel—the key to mastering the inner solar system lay in dropping iceteroids down the grav gradient, sliding them into useful orbits, and sucking them dry. Luna needed about one comet head a week these days, a burgeoning world.
They arced up into the black under an easy half-a-grav acceleration. Ruth had been a Lunatic long enough to notice the strain. The Lunavator was a rotating bolo that touched down at the launch port exactly the same way every time, a classical mechanics milk run. Best to rest and not think too much about the high-wire handoffs involved. She let herself drowse, thinking about the still mysterious Ythri motives, when the Prefect said at her elbow, “I wish I knew more about what they plan.”
This was unusually revealing. “Um, why?”
The Prefect allowed himself a frown. “They say this Ark is a legacy they want to ‘harvest’ but . . . somehow, it’s connected to their own history.”
“Maybe one visited them?”
“Then why would they need this one?”
“They’re hunters.”
“With long memories, apparently.”
“They insisted on bringing their own ship, too . . . ” she prompted.
“It makes sense. The ship is very small and they say it fits their physio needs. All they took aboard was the basics: volatiles, air, food.”
“Which means they could scoot out to the Oort, jump through the wormhole wherever it is, and be gone with whatever they get from the Ark.”
The Prefect gave a small eye-twitch. “We have thought of that, yes.”
“And taken measures . . . ”
“Yes.” He would say no more.
The Bolo central tether facility was a big captured asteroid, massive enough to prevent payloads from stealing too much energy, lowering the Bolo orbit. The Lunavator rotated in the same direction as its orbit, precisely so that the velocity of each Bolo end’s tip equaled the orbital velocity of the system’s center of mass. So the center had to hold steady.
They spun upward, sliding elevator fashion around the dark asteroid, a rocky cinder brightly lit by the control station, and onward to the Flinger. Ruth knew she was not privy to Prefect-level strategies, since the Library historically sponged up knowledge and gave forth only trickles, even to librarians such as her. But he seemed relaxed, and this was an unusual chance. She gave him her best party-girl smile. It seemed to have no effect, so she said, “I’m getting on well with Fraq.”
“Yes, I see him eyeing you at our table meetings.”
“What?” She never knew where his thinking came from. “He’s another species!”
“From an entirely different kingdom of life, true. But male strategies seem to be an invariant.”
She wondered if this was a joke and suddenly felt a blush spread cross her cheeks. She had liked the strong look of Fraq, his tawny feathers wreathing s
lim muscles, the glinting golden eyes—
Best to deflect this talk, yes. “I tried to get out of him where the Ark is.”
“I know. You failed.”
Okay, try the front door. “You didn’t seem bothered when the issue came up.”
“I already knew.”
“Where is it, anyway?”
The Prefect grimaced, another unusual expression. So you’re not the perpetual Sphinx after all. “They finally revealed that. They spotted it using code-response transmissions while they came in from the Oort. How they knew the code they didn’t say.”
“They must’ve had a visit from an Ark, then.”
“They won’t discuss that, which means you are probably right. The translators think so, too.”
“So the Ark, it’s . . . ?”
“A small thing in the asteroid belt, the obvious place to hide.”
“That big a sail—”
“It’s probably folded up, to elude detection.”
Ruth tried to get more but the Prefect went forward to the Venture bridge. She sat, watched Luna shrink to aft, and pondered the Ythri mysteries. She was having coffee in a bubble cup when the Flinger came rushing down. She could make out the slender cables as they came out of the dark, spindly fingers reaching for the grapple. Their “package” in Lunavator lingo was the human ship, Venture, and the smaller Ythri ship, bundled together. The package got handed off in gruff shoves to the wrought-carbon Flinger cable. It snatched them at high, slam-into-the-couch accelerations, a brutal thrust heading them into their fast interplanetary orbit. She relaxed as the huge invisible hand forced her deep into her sighing smart-cushions. Her joints ached.
