Bowl of Heaven

by Gregory Benford; Larry Niven

  “How can we sleep in this glare?” Irma asked, fidgeting, ready to push on.

  “In the shade.” Cliff said it flat and sure … and after a long moment, they accepted it.

  Aybe said, “Let’s build a fire.”

  “We could make some hot soup, tea,” Irma said, brightening.

  Cliff shook his head. “The smoke will draw attention.”

  Irma blinked. “From who? The aliens?”

  Cliff nodded. “And maybe something else that we don’t know.”

  “What’s our strategy here, then?” Aybe stood, hands on both hips. “Hide?”

  “Yes. If we can.”

  “For how long?”

  That was the nub of it. “For now, yes. Get our bearings first. Then we’ll see.”

  Aybe sniffed. “Not much of a strategy, I’d say.”

  Cliff was tired, his back ached, and he didn’t want to deal with this now. “Luckily, you aren’t saying.”

  Aybe shrugged and glowered. “What’s that mean?”

  Cliff kept his voice mild. “We have to get oriented first.”

  Aybe held the glower. “You’re giving plenty of orders here.”

  Cliff sighed. He really was tired. “So I am. We’re in strange lands. I’m a biologist and the senior science officer in this team. Learn the life-forms first, find out what we’re dealing with—yeah, seems like a good strategy.”

  “I don’t recall us electing you.”

  Now Cliff shrugged. “This isn’t a constitutional convention.”

  “I’ll say.” Aybe grimaced and opened his mouth to say more, and Irma broke in. “Running around here on our own, strange goddamn place, aliens, hell—where I come from, sounds like we’re cruising for a bruising.”

  They all gave dry laughs and glanced at one another.

  “Let’s get some rest, guys.” Irma looked at each of them in turn, beseeching.

  Cliff nodded again. This issue wasn’t over, but it would keep. He might even remind them that he was first officer. Scientists didn’t pay much attention to chains of command usually, but this was not a lab.

  Once they sat and ate, the momentum seeped out of them. They talked little and stared off into the distance—the forest that just felt strange and low valleys fuzzed by blue gray water and dust haze. The view was idyllic, still. A breeze blew through, aromatic and soft. Comforting. They were each still processing the dramatic events just past, trying to get some perspective. Too much had come at them too fast.

  Then in the distance, Cliff saw a round blob high in the air. Dark, small, impossible to tell how far off even with zoom lenses. No discernible movement. He watched it for a while and wondered if it was some suspended artifact. Another mystery.

  Cliff drank some water and curled up under some low hanging limbs. He conspicuously pulled his hat over his face. This was an important test, he sensed, peeking at them. They looked at one another once more. Irma shrugged. They settled in.

  Cliff took the hat off and said, “Aybe, you up for taking the watch?”

  “Uh, sure.” The lean, muscular man climbed up on a thick limb to improve his field of view.

  The others laid out soon enough. Hats went on faces. Within minutes, somebody was snoring. The hard bright daylight remained.

  He woke—two hours later, by his left eye watch—and sat up, disoriented. He had been dreaming of Beth, a jangled bunch of lurching images and a vague sense of threat offstage. Aybe was lying on the branch, head turned the other way. Cliff walked around and looked up at his face. Aybe’s eyelids fluttered and he jerked up. “I, I was—”

  “It’s okay. Sleeping rhythm’s going to be a problem for a while.”

  They roused slowly. Howard still was gray, worn. Irma looked at his wound, and his eyelids fluttered with pain. In the enduring sunlight, they ate and drank and didn’t talk much. The air was dry and dusty and a breeze had kicked up dust clouds in the distance. Cliff wondered how anybody could figure out the weather here. There might be something like the Hadley circulation in the atmosphere, since the Cupworld wasn’t a perfect spherical surface—but the scales were immense. Surface gravity varied over the entire hemisphere, but not solar heating. He found it hard to think through the atmospheric dynamics. It seemed unlikely that Cupworld had seasons; no axial tilt. What carried moisture around, in what patterns? What happened to evolution, without the seasonal cycle?

  He made them go downwind, slanting off the ridgeline. That way they could see whatever was interested in them, coming up ahead. Their rear guard could be pretty sure of no surprises—from animals, at least. The sapient aliens were after them with smart technology, so they could come from anywhere.

  Out of the sky? Cliff gazed up into the gossamer blue bowl. Birds of many sizes flapped across the immensity. Their body designs were familiar, excellent examples of convergent evolution shaped by the laws of physics—but some were huge, oddly angular, and rode thermals until they vanished in puffy high clouds. He could not see the rest of Cupworld through the high white water haze, or the jet. No sign of industrial pollution, at least. The aliens were somewhere out there, looking for them. Their only advantage was the size of this place, its refuges.

  They made their way down a valley, seeing nothing much. Yet the air of strangeness kept them uneasy, on guard. Cliff led by example—always looking around, keeping them from talking. That way they could let their ears do the advance warning.

  Irma got it. “Think like we’re in Africa,” she said. “Lions around every corner.”

  The two new guys, Howard Blaire and Terry Gould, seemed capable tech types, but with little field experience. They didn’t hike well, kept talking. Irma shushed them a lot. The trees got shorter, and on all sides were brown bushes and tall gray grass. Birds trilled and sang in the tree bowers and stopped whenever anybody spoke.

  They crept carefully into the high grass. In the dry perpetual afternoon, the stalks rattled as they brushed by. Thirty meters in, Cliff sensed something moving up ahead.

  He felt a cold adrenaline shock trickle down his spine, his chest tightening. They went to ground in tall grass and watched a bobbing, tawny spike move across their path at about twenty meters ahead. Cliff saw the spike—a tail?—turn and then stop, directly downwind of them. They all tensed.

  Then it moved off again, faster, at an angle. Maybe they smelled funny to it. Or maybe, he thought, it was going to get some buddies.

  Crossing the grass had been a mistake. Their lasers gave them control of a ten-meter perimeter, but that shrank to how far they could see in grass or dense forest. They all got edgy. They got out of there fast and headed partway up the side of the narrow valley, to get viewing range. They were still seeking water. Cliff had them do an inventory on the way.

  He had chosen to fill out his backpack carry weight, fifteen kilos, with other gear. Luckily, he had guessed right, and brought a light sleeping bag and cooking equipment. He had left behind all the techy gadgets and gimmicks available in Seeker’s supplies for planetary landing. Most of those presumed a power supply and backups. One item he had found and brought was a pair of sturdy boots and, most important, spikes for climbing trees—or anything fairly soft. Light, foldable carboaluminum, they weighed little and clamped snugly around the boots. They popped out on a sharp heel-clinking command—smart tech, quite cute.

  They moved carefully and kept down talk to a minimum, but they were basically city types, able to keep the expedition’s technology running. Not a bad group for this place, which was, after all, an enormous machine. Their attention wandered after the first hour.

  Without warning, something like a wiry, fanged slick-skinned squirrel leaped down on Irma and tried to eat through her hat. Howard snatched off her hat by its brim and hurled it like discus. The squealing creature hung on until the hat landed in thorns, then dived into the briars and was gone.

  Irma snatched at her hat as if it would fight back. She was flushed and trembling. “Why’d it do that?” she asked.

  �
�It thought you looked like some tasty thing, I figure,” Cliff said. He wondered what that thing might be, but kept the thought to himself. “Or maybe he liked your hat.”

  There were worried faces all around. He waved the matter away and changed the subject. “Try to listen for water. Or better, smell it.”

  “Smell it?” Aybe frowned. “Water doesn’t smell.”

  “Sure it does.” Aybe and Terry really were a bunch of office engineers and computer types, he thought, living out their lives indoors. And they had been inside for a long time. Good thing they didn’t have to learn to build a fire or make bows and arrows. Or at least, not yet.

  Except Howard Blaire, who was grinning at Aybe. Howard had run a private zoo, and collected for it, too. A field guy, he’d know the smell of water. “It smells fresh, kind of,” he said.

  They sniffed the air as they moved. Cliff wondered why they had seen no aircraft. It was the obvious way to search, and anyway, wasn’t there routine air commerce? Anywhere on Earth, they’d have seen commercial flights by now. He recalled a glorious week rafting through the Grand Canyon, when the only sign of civilization was contrails scratched across the deep blue.

  But this place was alien, and they should learn from it. What had his mother used to say? Problems are just disguised opportunities. Sure, Mom.

  Maybe the natives were afraid of aircraft puncturing their atmospheric cap? He filed the puzzle for future study and went back to scanning the woodland they moved through.

  They were halfway across a clearing when something charged them.

  Irma got off a shot at something that looked like a giant red badger. The shot didn’t slow it down much. Cliff and Irma both walked backwards fast. Without a word spoken, the other three ran for the trees.

  Irma shot at it again, and Howard, but it didn’t seem to notice. It turned away from them—for Cliff.

  His fingers itched for a laser, but instead he ran for the nearest tree. He jumped, clicked his heels in midair, and had his spikes dug into the tree bark before he thought about it. Then he was up and over, just as the badger clawed up at him. He could hear teeth snap behind him. It was a pretty nasty beast, all big teeth and claws and temper. Smelled bad, too.

  Cliff scrambled out onto a thick limb and looked around. His team was intact, making for higher altitude. The badger hadn’t gone after Irma, not after she hit its muzzle with a laser bolt. Aybe had been light on his feet and was now far up a big tree.

  They were spread out but safe. The badger jerked and snarled when Irma and Aybe gave it some encouragement to leave. Cliff could see the laser bolts spouting puffs of gray smoke from its fur. They could not get through the thick mat.

  Impasse. It prowled around their base trees for hours, spitting mad. Their laser bolts made it angry, but it didn’t go away. Maybe it was used to a waiting game, Cliff mused. And didn’t like to climb trees.

  The badger seemed mammal-like, but that was just appearances. Convergent evolution fitted life to niches. Like marsupials compared to placental mammals: similar forms but completely different physiology.

  Finally, after much shouted talk, they started to quiet down. Fatigue, again. At least it was shady here. He took a deep, moist breath from the twilight air beneath the trees, and let himself relax. He could feel the tension ease from his back and legs. This was the first real rest he’d had since coming through the lock. A long time ago, yes. His stomach growled. He fetched out stiff blocks of protein/carb mix and munched them thoughtfully. Their taste burst with lemony richness in his mouth and he carefully let himself have a gulp of water. Ah.

  Then, resting despite the badger, he heard this world. It buzzed (insects?) and barked (predator pack signaling, territory assertion?) and twanged (what the hell?). The symphony of life, singing strange in a colossal zoo …

  He fell asleep without meaning to. And dreamed of Beth—dark images, fraught with lurid worry.

  PART III

  Good judgment comes from experience. Experience comes from bad judgment.

  —MULLA NASRUDIN

  THIRTEEN

  A Serf-One brought Memor a delicious skreekor, fragrant with the scent of its own fear. She ate it with lip-smacking pleasure while she watched the invaders.

  The skreekor was an ample beast, about the size of the new invaders, but certainly far more tasty. This one was lightly spiced and big enough for a midwake meal, six or seven bites. It had been preserved by radiation; its taste was savory but slightly stale. It did not wriggle, in a final gesture of its knowledge of the right order of things. Memor paid no attention to the smaller bones that snapped as she ate. She would disgorge them later.

  She’d wondered if the invaders could do magical things, tricks beyond known science. This was most unlikely. They had not presented any real problems, though the Folk had responded slowly. The aliens now seemed safely confined. One was injured or dying. Their gear was unfamiliar, but it seemed crude. They fumbled with their toys and jabbered endlessly. Primates always seemed to do that, as ancient Bowl records showed from similar adaptations of the four-limbed. In their simple forms, it made them easier to hunt, though they never seemed to learn that.

  The group that escaped had shown not cleverness, but panic. Mere luck had aided them. But luck was occasional. No matter what their strange origins might be, their frenetic movements showed intelligences not able to deal with new elements. Or incapable of planning, an even worse sin. Perhaps, indeed, the only true sin.

  They were dull creatures, as well. They had no coloration feathers—indeed, no feathers at all. Camouflage was therefore beyond them. How simple! From what odd world had they descended?

  They seemed incapable of conveying meaning with even their elementary skin signals—and so incapable of nuanced speech. Talk from their wiggly mouths, and antic hand gestures, had to somehow suffice. The females displayed mammal signatures, bumps and curves, and lesser mass. Curious. How did sexual selection occur? Through such constricted pathways? What sour, diminished channels they used! And so tiny! Memor wondered how to teach them to speak the Tongue.

  Of six Astronomers and twice that many Serf-Ones, only Memor had been trained in TransLanguage. She had long thought there would never be a chance to use her training. Vast time would pass before the world came near Target, where they expected to find their first intelligent species in many million-folds of time. Now Memor’s TransLanguage and neurological sensing arts would advance her prospects. Her pulse quickened agreeably.

  The Target Folk were powerful; that much was obvious to any telescope array. But they had never shown interstellar ambitions, judging by the lack of visible fusion torch signatures near their star, or large constructions.

  Still less likely was this startling appearance of visitors. Such were discussed in the Long Records, but none had come for a countless time. Until now, suddenly, from behind. A crafty approach. The Astronomers were plainly disconcerted by their drawing near. A vast failing, really. Yet now that Memor was female, all seemed somehow clearer. This was an opportunity!

  But at first it was not Memor’s, for it had not been Memor’s watch for many, many Turns. Plus, she had been he in those times, and thus had less judgment. Yet she, in the racked torture of the Change, had seized the moment, banding with others of the Dancers, and so now could show her newfound abilities in judgment. This would surely help her career. The prospect warmed her, beyond the pleasure of anticipation. She was on the cusp of a great era; of that, she was sure.

  Memor had been trained long and diligently in TransLanguage, because one of every generation must be educated, to pass on the skills. She’d never hoped to use those elaborate methods of transcending ordinary language, designed in antiquity for speaking with these Target species, these candidate Target Folk. The Bowl’s beamed transmissions at the approaching ship and at the Target had never been answered, but that did not reflect a failing of TransLanguage. There could be many reasons why the Target Folk did not reply.

  Or … Were these aliens
Target Folk at all? The thought struck her, apparently from her Undermind. She would have to trace its origin.

  No doubt they might be from the Target sun, still scores of light-years ahead. Memor’s great heart thumped agreeably at the very idea—but their big ramship had come from behind the World. Unless, of course, they thought to conceal their origins. But Memor was sure routine Astronomer observations would have picked up their fusion plume, had they approached from the Target direction.

  Call these chattering things something else for the moment, then. Call them Late Invaders.

  There were feeds from cameras in Sector 1126. Memor watched in hope of learning more. A second group of Late Invaders was running loose there … but for five wakes they never came near a camera. Perhaps they were more clever than they seemed at first?

  There must be living invaders in the big ramship, too. Memor watched it on her input screen as it now arced around the sun, shedding momentum, grasping its way forward with magnetic claws. She had wondered if it would come back, if it would attempt rescue of its small invaders. But in over five wakes, it did nothing but maintain its almost-orbit, thrusting a little against the pressure of stellar gas. Perhaps they were benign. For now.

  Memor bristled her feathers, air humming richly through them in a darting pride-song, to match her thumping heart. Joy of life, that brings such opportunities.

  She opened her Undermind, a narrow window for now. This could refresh her thinking. It was like a sudden shaft of crimson light, startling to her Overmind. She could feel thoughts and emotions wrestling endlessly there, combining and mating. A rich bed of vibrant murk. She thought of these roiling notions as a sort of food for her Overmind, endlessly wriggling. So different, so oceanic, as female …

  Deftly she dipped in. Notions purred. Slick sounds keened at moist harmonies. Richness! She might need some new combination of previous ideas, properly cast in a pale glow of fresh scrutiny, to deal with this emerging situation. Perhaps she would even have to let the Undermind churn until it produced something fresh. That had happened seldom, but the possibility was exciting. Memor would come into her own then, her talents in demand. She could ride her Undermind to become perhaps even Overlord. Thus did Astronomers rise in the pyramid of status.