Silver Gods From the Sky

by James P. Hogan

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  Silver Gods From the Sky

  by James P. Hogan

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  Science Fiction

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  Fictionwise, Inc.

  www.Fictionwise.com

  Copyright ©1998 by James P. Hogan

  First published in Star Child, 1998

  NOTICE: This work is copyrighted. It is licensed only for use by the original purchaser. Making copies of this work or distributing it to any unauthorized person by any means, including without limit email, floppy disk, file transfer, paper print out, or any other method constitutes a violation of International copyright law and subjects the violator to severe fines or imprisonment.

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  Second story in the “Star Child” series. Series comprises:

  1. “Silver Shoes for a Princess"

  2. “Silver Gods from the Sky"

  3. “Three Domes and a Tower"

  4. “The Stillness Among the Stars"

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  SILVER GODS FROM THE SKY

  1

  The astrologer, the augur, and the chronicler were ushered into the presence of Cyron, “The Vengeful,” King of Leorica, Begotten of the Sun. They stood respectfully in the light cast by torches mounted on the marble columns and suspended in arches around the anteroom, highlighting the gold and jeweled ornaments, and the helmets and armor of the guards posted by the walls and inside the entrance. Forborem, Chief Counsel to the Throne, standing two steps below and to the right of Cyron's chair, made a motion with his hand. The astrologer stepped forward and spoke, gazing downward without meeting the king's eye.

  “In just over three months, the Messenger has grown brighter than any star. Its motion has altered such that it now turns with the heavens but more swiftly than the heavens, traversing the vault east to west five times between setting and rising of the sun. Thus has it retraced its path precisely and without deviation through the past seven nights."

  “And what message does it bring? What interpretation have you made?” Cyron asked.

  “Of such as this, our tables offer no precedent to guide us, Majesty. We are still consulting the charts. It seems that the gods whose word the Messenger brings have not yet chosen to make their purpose known."

  Cyron snorted and shifted his gaze to the augur. “And what of the winds, the clouds, and the beasts that fly? How do they foretell? Times of plenty or of famine? Should we vigorously prosecute war? Shall the mountains send down clear water and fish, or earthquake and fire?"

  The sky-reader replied, “Mornings are streaked with violet and pink, but the days become troubled with rains from the east. At dusk, high furrows of gold point north, and the hooked-wings soar close to the cliffs. Build thy plans carefully. Caution is indicated in all contemplations of change."

  A worthless appraisal. The High Priest, Ishtelar, who was standing by Forborem, interjected before the displeasure on Cyron's face could translate itself into action, “There is a seer come into the city, a one they call Serephelio, who is spreading word that prophecies handed down from times long forgotten are soon to be fulfilled. Excitement and agitation are rife among the people. Some say that the Vozghan war will end, and our expedition against Halsabia will be recalled.” The prelate's tone carried warning as well as disapproval. “It will be as much to the detriment of morale and discipline in your army as of the faith that holds mine."

  “What are these prophecies of which this seer speaks?” Cyron demanded. Ishtelar nodded for the chronicler to answer. The chronicler spoke nervously, unaccustomed to being summoned to the royal presence.

  “The Essantine Oraculars, Majesty, parts of which trace back to before the Conflagration, tell that a new light would move in the sky at a time of great conflict. It is written that gods of silver would come down to walk among men...” The chronicler hesitated.

  “Go on. And?...” Cyron commanded.

  “The Warrior Kings will learn ways of gentleness, and peace come upon the land."

  The astrologer and the augur kept their eyes averted. If a bolt wasn't about to strike from above, one surely would from the king. Counsel and priest eyed each other for a moment, saying nothing. Then Cyron rose and strode out onto the terrace, waving an arm for his ministers to follow, out of earshot of the other three.

  Around them, the domes and columns of Aranos, Leorica's principal city, loomed into the night, transformed into pillars of orange, yellow, and murky whites by the watch fires on the ramparts and in the squares. In one of the streets below, visible over the top of the palace's outer wall, captives from a recent battle were being driven by mounted guards in the direction of the prison behind the circus stadium, to be sent to the galleys, picked for the public games, or disposed of in whatever other way might be decided. Every now and again one would stumble or fall. The motions of the guards as they raised their arms to wield their rods and whips were indistinct in the shadows.

  “I see the plot clearly,” Cyron said. “Nothing proves this supposedly prophesied light in the sky to be the Messenger that now passes above us. The Vozghans have taken advantage of an old fable and sent their agent to spread disunity and subversion.

  Have this Serephelio arrested and brought to me. Let's see if silver gods intervene for him when he is questioned."

  “The mischief that he has spread has caused much damage already,” Ishtelar reminded him. “And there may be others at large of which we know nothing, spreading similar tales. What of them?"

  Cyron glowered down from the terrace in silence for a while. How many prisoners has Gallestari brought us in his triumph?” he asked Forborem finally.

  “I am told, upward of five thousand, Majesty,” the counselor replied.

  “Select five hundred of the wounded and least fit, unsuited for work or to perform ably in the games, and have preparations made for them to be impaled and burned before the main city gate,” Cyron ordered. “We'll see what that does for the people's morale and discipline.” Forborem glanced at Ishtelar, read his approving look, and nodded.

  In the cloudless black above, half the sky's width from the moon, a bright light moved silently across the background of stars.

  2

  It was as if the universe had divided itself into two parts, all its matter collecting together in what had become “below,” leaving behind emptiness to form what was now “above.” The curve of the planet swelled and flattened as the lander descended, its swirls and flecks of white on blue filling half the view, with outlines of green and yellow showing in places beneath. In the shrinking tract of void beyond the rim, the last stars to remain visible in Vaxis's glare faded as the blackness changed to a clear, diaphanous blue.

  Taya peered out through one of the oval viewing ports, too overwhelmed to speak. Alongside her, Cariette, Jasem, and Bron, three of the six young-ones drawn by lot to come with her on the first descent by bio-people, watched, wide-eyed and spellbound. Nyelise, Marcala, and Eltry crowded around the other port on the opposite side of the cabin. The view was being presented on one of the screens built into the forward wall, but all of them wanted to take it in directly, as if witnessing the scene through the glass added somehow to its veracity. Kort and Scientist—who also had a remote-directable “robot” body now, as did most of the mec-people—stood motionless behind them. They could couple to the lander's sensor channels directly and needed neither screens nor windows. To make themselves easily recognizable in the earlier days when the children were smaller, the robots had adorned their metal bodies with distinctive color schemes, which having become familiar, they had kept. Kort's was a pattern of blue and silver points, with black bands at the neck, waist, and cuffs. Scientis
t had narrow black stripes on gray, interrupted in front by a V-shaped design of white tracery extending downward from the shoulders.

  Merkon had changed through the years, as more of its volume was transformed into environments suitable for its newly acquired complement of bio-life. Taya was nineteen now, the young-ones eleven, numbering forty-six of the original fifty. “Biochemist,” a new mec-mind, who specialized in the molecular processes underlying biological life, was contemplating beginning another group of fifty in the nursery laboratory up in Merkon. Apart from their superficial differences in body size and proportions, facial features, and skin color, the bio-people came in two basic forms: “he's” and “she's". The significance or purpose of this distinction was not readily apparent.

  Nobody was sure why four of the fifty had stopped functioning at different times during the early part of the ten years that had gone by since their resuscitation. Thinker thought it was probably due to some not-yet-understood breakdown in internal coordination, as happened from time to time when a machine ceased operating. With a machine, it was generally a straightforward operation to trace the failure and replace the affected part. In the case of bio-bodies, however, nobody knew how to replace a part, even if they could tell which one was defective—and there didn't seem to be any way of growing replacement parts separately, outside of bodies, in any case. Everybody—Taya, the machines, the youngsters—had watched, powerless to change anything, while the afflicted ones became less energetic, and eventually stopped moving and sensing altogether. Then they would grow cold, and over a period of time revert back to the chemicals from which they had formed. Subsequently, a new entity, “Medic,” had formed, specializing in knowledge for keeping bio-life functioning optimally and for repairing bio-bodies when—as happened—they encountered mishaps.

  Four failures in ten years did not seem an excessively high number. Nobody had thought to add a word to the dictionary to describe such a happening.

  Over those ten years, sure enough, Vaxis had grown, and soon Taya could pick it out with her unaided eyes, standing out like a beacon against the background of other stars. Pictures obtained through Merkon's telescopes and other instruments revealed it as a globe of light of unimaginable heat and size, it surface constantly convulsing in storms and turbulence, throwing out immense streamers of plasma that Kort said would consume Merkon like a speck of dust drawn into a flame. And then, as Vaxis drew closer, slight fluctuations that Scientist had detected in its position were shown to be due to what Thinker had suspected: cool, dark bodies gravitationally bound to it, observed finally by star's reflected light. “Planets"—conjectured by Scientist long ago as possible places of origin for Taya's kind—actually existed.

  Scientist identified seven of them to begin with, moving in orbits confined to a plane—although, since Merkon was approaching the plane almost edge-on, the complete picture was difficult to construct, and so there could have been more. Then smaller bodies were discovered orbiting about some of these in turn, and as the distance diminished, swarms of even smaller ones tracing all kinds of eccentric trajectories until the question of counting exactly how many there were lost any real significance and the increasing glare of Vaxis made it impossible to be sure what existed in the inner regions.

  Thinker wondered if it was mere coincidence that Merkon had always moved in the direction of Vaxis; or was Vaxis a destination that the Builders of Merkon—whatever it had been—had set out for deliberately? If the latter, then what would halt Merkon's motion when it arrived there? Nobody knew. Thinker asked Scientist if there was a way in which Merkon's power sources could somehow be used to nullify its momentum. Scientist examined the laws he had formulated, and got into a long series of debates with Thinker and Skeptic about possible ways to halt Merkon. By the time Merkon was two years from Vaxis, a new entity named Engineer had emerged to take charge of a project to develop specialized modifications to Merkon's structure for altering its momentum through space. It occurred to Thinker that if Merkon had been meant to go to Vaxis, it must have included such adaptions originally. Presumably, then, the early generations of machines that had come into being after the disappearance of the Builders had dismantled them as serving no recognizable purpose. He put the thought to “Historian,” another new entity, who specialized in trying to piece together what had happened in Merkon's distant past from the remains of ancient codes and records, and Historian added it to his list of things to investigate.

  One question that did get a partial answer as they entered the region of objects orbiting and whirling about Vaxis was, what were these “planets” made of? Merkon's radars detected thousands of them, ranging in size from the enormous spheres that had made their presence known from hundreds of millions of miles away, down to inches or less. While Engineer could by this time maneuver Merkon to avoid the larger bodies, it was clear that collisions with smaller ones would be inevitable. The implications were cause for alarm. Mec-minds were distributed across different places and backed up—and the machine hosts that they existed in wouldn't be affected unduly by much short of a direct hit. Bio-people, on the other hand, were localized, and their bodies incapable of withstanding the environmental changes that even moderate damage to Merkon's structure would entail. Accordingly, their quarters were reinforced within a double-layer outer skin, and then divided into sealed subcompartments as a further precaution.

  The first two encounters did indeed occur with explosive violence, the first tearing a hole in the forward part of Merkon, the second blowing away an external pylon, neither of them leaving a trace of the object responsible. Then a series of collisions with minor bodies followed, all of which were again vaporized. Finally, Merkon passed through a scattering of slower-moving objects, several of which penetrated to yield fragments that the maintenance robots were able to recover. It was the first direct experience of worlds that existed beyond Merkon.

  The pieces turned out to be not of metal or plastic or anything immediately familiar, but for the most part amorphous minerals: metallic oxides and other compounds, especially of iron and aluminum, silicates and glasses, and various crystalline forms. In fact, the substances were similar to some that Scientist had created experimentally but never found any great use for. However, some were rich in compounds of carbon, while others showed abundance of water in its ice form. Hence, the basic necessities for creating bio-life were indeed present—although lack of gravity strong enough to retain a gaseous envelope ruled out all but the very largest planets as viable environments for sustaining it. And even then, some of these had too much gravity, or the wrong mix of gases, or orbited too far away from Vaxis for water to exist as a liquid....

  But one, out of all of them, was different. It met all of the requirements that Scientist had specified. They called it Azure, after one of the colors that Taya had named in her mosaic designs when she was younger.

  As Taya gazed down at it now, her excitement exceeded anything she had felt on seeing the pictures sent back by the smaller probe that had been sent down earlier—although they had been astounding enough. Merkon's mec-forms and bio-forms alike had watched in awe as view after view came in of expanses of reds, browns, yellows, and grays unfolding in vast, massive formations as far as could be seen, more varied than anything ever guessed at or imagined. Some parts rose into high, jagged ridges, covered in a white crystalline form of ice; others extended away flat and featureless. Huge areas, wider than any that experience had provided standards for comparison, were covered in strange, filamented structures, primarily green, of astonishing complexity. And there was water: huge towers of white water vapor riding in the air covering; endless, winding ribbons of water; tumbling, falling walls of water; shining carpets of frozen water; blue universes of water extending over whole regions of the planet, into which Merkon could have vanished a thousand times over. Nothing had prepared anyone for this. There weren't the words. New terms poured into the dictionary as fast as they could be invented, and the bio-minds forgot them again almost a
s quickly in the torrent.

  And finally, yes, there was bio-life. But not just the kind known in Merkon, with two arms, two-legs, and a head on a body that walked upright—the form that Taya had assumed when she began growing, and upon which the mec-bodies had been modeled. Such forms did exist on Azure, sure enough—often in large numbers around peculiar kinds of spread-out, mineral-built Merkons made up of repeating rectangular units that they seemed to inhabit. But there were countless other forms as well. Many had horizontal bodies and walked on four legs: plain bodies, patchy bodies, striped bodies, spotted bodies, with legs that could be anything from long and slender to short and stubby. There were forms with round heads, pointed heads, spiked heads, huge-jawed heads; forms covered in hair, covered in skin, covered in curling, layered coats that looked like plastic fiber. They walked in the dry areas, climbed among the strange branching structures, stood in the water, or just lay in Vaxis's warmth and light. Some even flew—Engineer said, after studying the images, by using ingeniously contrived body surfaces to counter gravity by creating pressure imbalances in the air.

  Even Thinker was dumbfounded by it all. Never in all his existence as a conscious being had he conceived anything remotely comparable to the diversity flaunting itself and abounding on every side. Biologist and Evolutionist had no explanations. Skeptic, for once, was without words; all the things that he would have insisted on as proof, had this been offered as a conjecture, were taking place before his eyes. Mystic, however, was jubilant. Scientist, working with all his knowledge and techniques for untold aeons, had managed to produce one solitary demonstration that chemical-based life was possible: Taya, and the variations of her that had followed. And that had been only when the codes that gave the key were provided for him out of the information passed down from the forgotten past. Who but Supermind, Mystic demanded, could have created this pulsing, reverberating luxuriation of life that abounded on Azure?