by David Brin
Uriel first saw the idea in an old Earth book — a quintessentially wolfling concept, briefly used in an old-time Amero-Eurasian war. Soon after, humans discovered digital computers and abandoned the technique. But here on Mount Guenn, the urrish smith had extended it to levels never seen before. Much of her prodigious wealth and passion went into making the concept work.
And urrish haste. Their lives are so short, Uriel must have feared she’d never finish before she died. In that case, what would her successor do with all this?
An array of pillars, arches, and boo scaffolding held the turning shafts in proper alignment, forming a three-dimensional maze that stretched away from Sara, nearly filling the vast chamber. Long ago, this cavity spilled liquid magma down the mountain’s mighty flanks. Today it throbbed with a different kind of creative force.
Light rays played a clever role in the dance of mathematics. Glancing off selected disks, pulselike reflections fell onto a stretch of black sand that had been raked smooth across the floor. Each flash affected the grains, causing a slight spray or rustle. Hillocks grew wherever glimmers landed most often.
Uriel even found a use for lightning crabs, Sara marveled.
On Jijo, some shorelines were known to froth during electrical storms, as these tiny creatures kicked up sand in frenzied reaction. We thought it might be static charges in the air, making them behave so. But clearly it is light. I must tell Lark about this, someday.
And Sara realized something else.
The crabs may be another Buyur gimmick species. Bioengineered servants, reverted to nature, but keeping their special trait, even after the gene meddlers left.
Whatever their original function, the crabs now served Uriel, whose hooves clattered nervously as the sandscape swirled under a cascade of sparkling light. Individual flashes mattered little. It was the summed array over area and time that added up to solving a complex numerical problem. Near Uriel, the little chimp, Prity, perched on a high stool with her drawing pad. Prity’s tongue stuck out as she sketched, copying the sand display. Sara had never seen her little assistant happier.
Despite all this impressive ingenuity, the actual equations being solved were not profound. Sara had already worked out rough estimates, within a deviance of ten percent, by using a few simple Delancy approximations. But Lester Cambel needed both precision and accuracy under a wide range of boundary conditions, including atmospheric pressure varying with altitude. For that, machine-derived tables offered advantages.
At least now I understand what it’s all for. In her mind, she pictured bustling activity beneath the towering stems of a boo forest, throngs of workers laboring, the flow of acrid liquids, and discussions in the hushed, archaic dialect of science.
They may be crazy — Lester especially. Probably the effort will backfire and make the aliens more vicious than ever Dedinger would look at this — along with all the semaphores, gliders, balloons, and other innovations — and call it the futile thrashing of the damned.
Yet the attempt is glorious. If they pull it off I’ll know I was right about the Six. Our destiny was not foretold by the scrolls, or Dedinger’s orthodoxy … or Lark’s, for that matter.
It was unique.
Anyway, if we’re to be damned, I’d rather it be for trying.
Just one thing still puzzled her. Sara shook her head and murmured aloud.
“Why me?”
Kurt, the Tarek Town exploser, had acted as if this project desperately needed Sara, for her professional expertise. But Uriel’s machine was already nearly functional by the time the party arrived from Xi. Prity and Emerson were helpful at making the analog computer work, and so were books Kurt hand-carried from Biblos. But Sara found herself with little to contribute.
“I only wish I knew why Uriel asked for me.”
Her answer came from the entrance to the computer vault.
“Is that truly the only thing you wish to understand? But that one is easy, Sara. Uriel did not ask for you at all!”
The speaker was a man of middling stature with a shock of white hair and a stained beard that stood out as if he were constantly thunderstruck. Kawsh leaves smoldered in his pipe, a habit chiefly indulged in by male hoons, since the vapors were too strong for most humans. Politely, Sage Purofsky stood in the draft of the doorway, and turned away from Sara when exhaling.
She bowed to the senior scholar, known among his peers as the best mind in the Commons.
“Master, if Uriel doesn’t need my help, why was I urged to come? Kurt made it sound vital.”
“Did he? Vital. Well, I suppose it is, Sara. In a different way.”
Purofsky’s eyes tracked the glitter of rays glancing off spinning disks. His gaze showed appreciation of Uriel’s accomplishment. “Math must pay its way with useful things,” the sage once said. “Even though mere computation is like bashing down a door because you cannot find the key.”
Purofsky had spent his life in search of keys.
“It was I who sent for you, my dear,” the aged savant explained after a pause. “And now that you’re recovered from your ill-advised spill down a mountainside, I think it’s high time that I showed you why.”
It was still daytime outside, but a starscape spread before Sara. Clever lenses projected glass photoslides onto a curved wall and ceiling, recreating the night sky in a wondrous planetarium built by Uriel’s predecessor so that even poor urrish eyesight might explore constellations in detail. Sage Purofsky wore stars like ornaments on his face and gown, while his shadow cast a man-shaped nebula across the wall.
“I should start by explaining what I’ve been up to since you left Biblos … has it really been more than a year, Sara?”
“Yes, Master.”
“Hmm. An eventful year. And yet …”
He worked his jaw for a moment, then shook his head.
“Like you, I had grown discouraged with my former field of study. At last, I decided to extend the classical, precontact geometrodynamic formalisms beyond the state they were in when the Tabernacle left the solar system.”
Sara stared.
“But I thought you wanted to reconcile precontact Earth physics with Galactic knowledge. To prove that Einstein and Lee had made crude but correct approximations … the way Newton preapproximated Einstein.”
That in itself would have been a daunting task — some might say hopeless. According to reports brought by the Tabernacle, spacetime relativity was ill regarded by those alien experts hired by the Terragens Council to teach modern science to Earthlings. Galactic instructors disdained as superstition the homegrown cosmology humans formerly relied on — the basis of crude star probes, crawling along at sublight speeds. Until the Earthship Vesarius fell through an undetected hyperanomaly, ending humanity’s long isolation, Einstein’s heirs had never found a useful way to go faster — although some methods had been recorded in the Galactic Library for over a billion years.
After contact, humans scrimped to buy some thirdhand hyperships, and the old mathemetric models of Hawking, Purcell, and Lee fell by the wayside. In trying to show validity for precontact physics, Purofsky had taken on a strange, perhaps forlorn, task.
“I had some promising results at first, when I restated the Serressimi Exalted Transfer Shunt in terms compatible with old-fashioned tensor calculus.”
“Indeed?” Sara leaned forward in her chair. “But how did you renormalize all the quasi-simultaneous infinities? You’d almost have to assume—”
But the elder sage raised a hand to cut her off, unwilling to be drawn into details.
“Plenty of time for that later, if you’re still interested. For now let’s just say that I soon realized the futility of that approach. Earth must by now have specialists who understand the official Galactic models better than I’ll ever hope to. They have units of the Great Library, and truly modern computer simulators to work with. Suppose I did eventually manage to demonstrate that our Old Physics was a decent, if limited, approximation? It might win something for
pride, showing that wolflings had been on the right track, on our own. But nothing new would come of it.”
Purofsky shook his head. “No, I decided it was time to go for broke. I’d plunge ahead with the old spacetime approach, and see if I could solve a problem relevant to Jijo — the Eight Starships Mystery.”
Sara blinked.
“You mean seven, don’t you? The question of why so many sooner races converged on Jijo within a short time, without getting caught? But isn’t that settled?” She pointed at the most brilliant point on the wall. “Izmunuti started flooding nearby space with carbon chaff twenty centuries ago. Enough to seed the hollow hail and change our weather patterns, more than a light-year away. Once the storm wrecked all the watch robots left in orbit by the Migration Institute, sneakships could get in undetected.”
“Hr-rm … yes, but not good enough, Sara. From wall inscriptions found in a few Buyur ruins, we know two transfer points used to serve this system. The other must have collapsed after the Buyur left.”
“Well? That’s why the Izmunuti gambit works! A single shrouded access route, and the great Institutes not scheduled to resurvey the area for another eon. It must be a fairly unique situation.”
“Unique. Hrm, and convenient. So convenient, in fact, that I decided to acquire fresh data.”
Purofsky turned toward the planetarium display, and a distant expression crossed his shadowed face. After a few duras, Sara realized he must be drifting. That kind of absentmindedness might be a prerogative of genius back in the cloistered halls of Biblos, but it was infuriating when he had her keyed up so! She spoke in a sharp tone.
“Master! You were saying you needed data. Is there really something relevant you can see with Uriel’s simple telescope?”
The scholar blinked, then cocked his head and smiled. “You know, Sara … I find it striking that we both spent the last year chasing unconventional notions. You, a sideline into languages and sociology — yes, I followed your work with interest. And me, thinking I could pierce secrets of the past using coarse implements made of reforged Buyur scrap metal and melted sand.
“Did you know, while taking pictures of Izmunuti, I also happened to snap shots of those starships? The ones causing so much fuss, up north? Caught them entering orbit … though my warning didn’t reach the High Sages in time.” Purofsky shrugged. “But to your question. Yes, I managed to learn a few things, using the apparatus here on Mount Guenn.
“Think again about Jijo’s unique conditions, Sara. The collapse of the second transfer point … the carbon flaring of Izmunuti … the inevitable attractiveness of an isolated, shrouded world to sooner refugees.
“Now ponder this — how could beings with minds as agile as the Buyur fail to notice advance symptoms of these changes, about to commence in nearby space?”
“But the Buyur departed half a million years ago! There may not have been any symptoms back then. Or else they were subtle.”
“Perhaps. And that’s where my research comes in. Plus your expertise, I hope. For I strongly suspect that spacetime anomalies would have been noticeable, even back then.”
“Spacetime …” Sara realized his use of the archaic Earth-physics term was intentional. Now it was her turn to spend several silent duras staring at a blur of stars, sorting implications.
“You’re … talking about lensing effects, aren’t you?”
“Sharp lass,” the sage answered approvingly. “And if I can see them—”
“Then the Buyur must have, and foreseen—”
“Like reading an open book! Nor is that all. I asked you here to help confirm another, more ominous suspicion.”
Sara felt a frisson, climbing her spine like some insect with a million ice-cold feet.
“What do you mean?”
Sage Purofsky briefly closed his eyes. When he reopened them, his gaze seemed alight with fascination.
“Sara, I believe they planned it this way, from the very start.”
PART EIGHT
ILLEGAL RESETTLEMENT OF FALLOW WORLDS has been a predicament in the Five Galaxies for as far back as records exist. There are many causes for this recurring problem, but its most enduring basis is the Paradox of Reproductive Logic.
ORGANIC beings from countless diverse worlds tend to share one common trait — self-propagation. In some species, this manifests as a conscious desire to have offspring. Among other races, individuals respond to crude instinctive drives for either sex or xim, and spare little active attention to the consequences.
However different the detailed mechanisms may be, the net effect remains the same. Left to their own inclinations, organic life-forms will reproduce their kind in numbers exceeding the replacement rate. Over periods of time that are quite brief (by stellar standards) the resulting population increase can swiftly overburden the carrying capacity of any self-sustaining ecosystem. (SEE: ATTACHED SORTED EXAMPLES.)
Species do this because each fecund individual is the direct descendant of a long chain of successful reproducers. Simply stated; those who lack traits that enable breeding do not become ancestors. Traits that encourage reproduction are the traits that get reproduced.
To the best of our knowledge, this evolutionary imperative extends even to the eco-matrix of hydrogen-based life-forms that shares real space in parallel with our oxygen-breathing civilization. As for the Third Order — autonomous machines — only the relentless application of stringent safeguards has prevented these nonorganic species from engaging in exponential reproduction, threatening the basis of all life in the Five Galaxies.
For the vast majority of nonsapient animal species in natural ecosystems, this tendency to overbreed is kept in check by starvation, predation, or other limiting factors, resulting in quasi-stable states of pseudo-equilibrium. However, presapient life-forms often use their newfound cleverness to eliminate competition and indulge in orgiastic breeding frenzies, followed by overutilization of resources. Left for too long without proper guidance, such species can bring about their own ruin through ecological collapse.
This is one of the Seven Reasons why naive life-forms cannot self-evolve to fully competent sapience. The Paradox of Reproductive Logic means that short-term self-interest will always prevail over long-range planning, unless wisdom is imposed from the outside by an adoptive patron line.
One duty of a patron is to make certain that its client race achieves conscious control over its self-replicating drives, before it can be granted adult status. And yet, despite such precautions, even fully ranked citizen species have been known to engage in breeding spasms, especially during intervals when lawful order temporarily breaks down. (SEE REF: “TIMES OF CHANGE.”) Hasty, spasmodic episodes of colonization/exploitation have left entire galactic zones devastated in their wake.
By law, the prescribed punishment for races who perpetrate such eco-holocausts can be complete extinction, down to the racial rootstock.
IN comparison, illegal resettlement of fallow worlds is a problem of moderate-level criminality. Penalties depend on the degree of damage done, and whether new presapient forms safely emerge from the process.
Nevertheless, it is easy to see how the Paradox of Reproductive Logic applies here, as well. Or else why would individuals and species sacrifice so much, and risk severe punishment, in order to dwell in feral secrecy on worlds where they do not belong?
OVER the course of tens of millions of years, only one solution has ever been found for this enduring paradox. This solution consists of the continuing application of pragmatic foresight in the interests of the common good.
In other words — civilization.
— from A Galactographic Tutorial for Ignorant Wolfling Terrans, a special publication of the Library Institute of the Five Galaxies, year 42 EC, in partial satisfaction of the debt obligation of 35 EC
Streakers
Kaa
THEY MADE LOVE IN A HIDDEN CAVE, NESTLED BENEATH seaside cliffs, while tidal currents pounded nearby, shooting spume fountains high enough to ri
val the craggy promontories.
At last! Booming echoes seemed to shout each time a wave dashed against the bluffs, as if everything leading up to that moment had been prelude, a mere transport of momentum across the vast ocean, passed from one patch of salt water to the next. As if a wave may only become real by spending itself against stone.
Rolling echoes reverberated in the sheltered cave. That’s me, Kaa thought, listening to the breakers cry out their brief reification. As a coast fulfills a tide, he now felt completed by contact with another.
Water sloshed through his open mouth, still throbbing with their passion. The secret pool had her flavor.
Peepoe rolled along Kaa’s side, stroking with her pectoral fins, making his skin tingle. He responded with a brush of his tail flukes, pleased at how she quivered with unguarded bliss. This postcoital affection had even deeper meaning than the brief glory dance of mating. It was like the difference between mere need and choice.
Can the burning stars
Shout their joy more happily
Than this simple fin?
His Trinary haiku came out as it should, almost involuntarily, not mulled or rehearsed by the frontal lobes that human gene crafters had so thoroughly palped and reworked during neo-dolphin uplift. The poem’s clicks and squeals diffracted through the cave’s grottoes at the same moment they first resonated in his skull.
Peepoe’s reply emerged the same way, candidly languid, with a natural openness that brooked no lies.
Simplicity is not
Your best-known trait, dear Kaa.
Don’t you feel Lucky?
Her message both thrilled and validated, in a way she must have known he’d treasure. I have my nickname back, Kaa mused happily.
All would have been perfection then — a flawless moment — except that something else intruded on his pleasure. A tremor, faint and glimmering, like the sound shadow made by a moray eel, passing swiftly in the night, leaving fey shivers in its wake.
