by David Brin
“First of all … survival of the nest.…”
The priest looked up sharply and saw a glint in the eye of the Suzerain of Cost and Caution. And in that instant it knew that its rival had won a subtle but important point. There was triumph in the other’s eye as it bowed again and hummed lowly.
“Zooon.”
4
Robert
Dappled sunlight found gaps in the rain forest canopy, illuminating streaks of brilliant color in the dim, vine-laced avenue between. The fierce gales of mid-winter had ebbed some weeks back, but a stiff breeze served as a reminder of those days, causing boughs to dip and sway, and shaking loose moisture from the prior night’s rain. Droplets made fat, plinking sounds as they landed in little shaded pools.
It was quiet in the mountains overlooking the Vale of Sind. Perhaps more silent than a forest ought to be. The woods were lush, and yet their superficial beauty masked a sickness, a malaise arising from ancient wounds. Though the air carried a wealth of fecund odors, one of the strongest was a subtle hint of decay. It did not take an empath to know that this was a sad place. A melancholy world.
Indirectly, that sadness was what had brought Earthlings here. History had not yet written the final chapter on Garth, but the planet was already on a list. A list of dying worlds.
One shaft of daylight spotlighted a fan of multicolored vines, dangling in apparent disorder from the branches of a giant tree. Robert Oneagle pointed in that direction. “You might want to examine those, Athaclena,” he said. “They can be trained, you know.”
The young Tymbrimi looked up from an orchidlike bloom she had been inspecting. She followed his gesture, peering past the bright, slanting columns of light. She spoke carefully in accented but clearly enunciated Anglic.
“What can be trained, Robert? All I see there are vines.”
Robert grinned. “Those very forest vines, Athaclena. They’re amazing things.”
Athaclena’s frown looked very human, in spite of the wide set of her oval eyes and the alien gold-flecked green of their large irises. Her slightly curved, delicate jaw and angled brow made the expression appear faintly ironic.
Of course, as the daughter of a diplomat Athaclena might have been taught to assume carefully tutored expressions at certain times when in the company of humans. Still, Robert was certain her frown conveyed genuine puzzlement. When she spoke, a lilt in her voice seemed to imply that Anglic was somehow limiting.
“Robert, you surely don’t mean that those hanging tendril-plants are pre-sentient, do you? There are a few autotrophic sophont races, of course, but this vegetation shows none of the signs. Anyway …” The frown intensified as she concentrated. From a fringe just above her ears her Tymbrimi ruff quivered as silvery tendrils waved in quest. “… Anyway, I can sense no emotional emissions from them at all.”
Robert grinned. “No, of course you can’t. I didn’t mean to imply they have any Uplift Potential, or even nervous systems per se. They’re just rain forest plants. But they do have a secret. Come on. I’ll show you.”
Athaclena nodded, another human gesture that might or might not be naturally Tymbrimi as well. She carefully replaced the flower she had been examining and stood up in a fluid, graceful movement.
The alien girl’s frame was slender, the proportions of her arms and legs different from the human norm—longer calves and less length in the thighs, for instance. Her slim, articulated pelvis flared from an even narrower waist. To Robert, she seemed to prowl in a faintly catlike manner that had fascinated him ever since she arrived on Garth, half a year ago.
That the Tymbrimi were lactating mammals he could tell by the outline of her upper breasts, provocatively evident even under her soft trail suit. He knew from his studies that Athaclena had two more pair, and a marsupial-like pouch as well. But those were not evident at present. Right now she seemed more human—or perhaps elfin—than alien.
“All right, Robert. I promised my father I would make the best of this enforced exile. Show me more of the wonders of this little planet.”
The tone in her voice was so heavy, so resigned, that Robert decided she had to be exaggerating for effect. The theatrical touch made her seem oddly more like a human teenager, and that in itself was a bit unnerving. He led her toward the cluster of vines. “It’s over here, where they converge down at the forest floor.”
Athaclena’s ruff—the helm of brown fur that began in a narrow stroke of down on her spine and rose up the back of her neck to end, caplike, in a widow’s peak above the bridge of her strong nose—was now puffed and riffled at the edges. Over her smooth, softly rounded ears the cilia of her Tymbrimi corona waved as if she were trying to pick out any trace of consciousness other than theirs in the narrow glade.
Robert reminded himself not to overrate Tymbrimi mental powers as humans so often did. The slender Galactics did have impressive abilities in detecting strong emotions and were supposed to have a talent for crafting a form of art out of empathy itself. Nevertheless, true telepathy was no more common among Tymbrimi than among Earthlings.
Robert had to wonder what she was thinking. Could she know how, since they had left Port Helenia together, his fascination with her had grown? He hoped not. The feeling was one he wasn’t sure he even wanted to admit to himself yet.
The vines were thick, fibrous strands with knotty protrusions every half-meter or so. They converged from many different directions upon this shallow forest clearing. Robert shoved a cluster of the multicolored cables aside to show Athaclena that all of them terminated in a single small pool of umber-colored water.
He explained. “These ponds are found all over this continent, each connected to the others by this vast network of vines. They play a vital role in the rain forest ecosystem. No other shrubs grow near these catchments where the vines do their work.”
Athaclena knelt to get a better view. Her corona still waved and she seemed interested.
“Why is the pool colored so? Is there an impurity in the water?”
“Yes, that’s right. If we had an analysis kit I could take you from pond to pond and demonstrate that each little puddle has a slight overabundance of a different trace element or chemical. “The vines seem to form a network among the giant trees, carrying nutrients abundant in one area to other places where they’re lacking.”
“A trade compact!” Athaclena’s ruff expanded in one of the few purely Tymbrimi expressions Robert was certain he understood. For the first time since they had left the city together he saw her clearly excited by something.
He wondered if she was at that moment crafting an “empathy-glyph,” that weird art form that some humans swore they could sense, and even learn to understand a little. Robert knew the feathery tendrils of the Tymbrimi corona were involved in the process, somehow. Once, while accompanying his mother to a diplomatic reception, he’d noticed something that had to have been a glyph—floating, it seemed, above the ruff of the Tymbrimi Ambassador, Uthacalthing.
It had been a strange, fleeting sensation—as if he had caught something which could only be looked at with the blind spot of his eye, which fled out of view whenever he tried to focus on it. Then, as quickly as he had become aware of it, the glimpse vanished. In the end, he was left unsure it had been anything but his imagination after all.
“The relationship is symbiotic, of course,” Athaclena pronounced. Robert blinked. She was talking about the vines, of course.
“Uh, right again. The vines take nourishment from the great trees, and in exchange they transport nutrients the trees’ roots can’t draw out of the poor soil. They also flush out toxins and dispose of them at great distances. Pools like this one serve as banks where the vines come together to stockpile and trade important chemicals.”
“Incredible.” Athaclena examined the rootlets. “It mimics the self-interest trade patterns of sentient beings. And I suppose it is logical that plants would evolve this technique sometime, somewhere. I believe the Kanten might have begun in such a way, be
fore the Linten gardeners uplifted them and made them starfarers.”
She looked up at Robert. “Is this phenomenon catalogued? The Z’Tang were supposed to have surveyed Garth for the Institutes before the planet was passed over to you humans. I’m surprised I never heard of this.”
Robert allowed himself a trace of a smile. “Sure, the Z’Tang report to the Great Library mentions the vines’ chemical transfer properties. Part of the tragedy of Garth was that the network seemed on the verge of total collapse before Earth was granted a leasehold here. And if that actually happens half this continent will turn into desert.
“But the Z’Tang missed something crucial. They never seem to have noticed that the vines move about the forest, very slowly, seeking new minerals for their host trees. The forest, as an active trading community, adapts. It changes. There’s actual hope that, with the right helpful nudge here and there, the network might become a centerpiece in the recovery of the planet’s ecosphere. If so, we may be able to make a tidy profit selling the technique to certain parties elsewhere.”
He had expected her to be pleased, but when Athaclena let the rootlets fall back into the umber water she turned to him with a cool tone. “You sound proud to have caught so careful and intellectual an elder race as the Z’Tang in a mistake, Robert. As one of your teledramas might put it, ‘The Eatees and their Library are caught with egg on their faces once again.’ Is that it?”
“Now wait a minute. I—”
“Tell me, do you humans plan to hoard this information, gloating over your cleverness each time you dole out portions? Or will you flaunt it, crying far and wide what any race with sense already knows—that the Great Library is not and never has been perfect?”
Robert winced. The stereotypical Tymbrimi, as pictured by most Earthlings, was adaptable, wise, and often mischievous. But right now Athaclena sounded more like any irritable, opinionated young fem with a chip on her shoulder.
True, some Earthlings went too far in criticizing Galactic civilization. As the first known “wolfling” race in over fifty megayears, humans sometimes boasted too loudly that they were the only species now living who had bootstrapped themselves into space without anybody’s help. What need had they to take for granted everything found in the Great Library of the Five Galaxies? Terran popular media tended to encourage an attitude of contempt for aliens who would rather look things up than find out for themselves.
There was a reason for encouraging this stance. The alternative, according to Terragens psychological scientists, would be a crushing racial inferiority complex. Pride was a vital thing for the only “backward” clan in the known universe. It stood between humanity and despair.
Unfortunately, the attitude had also alienated some species who might otherwise have been friendly to Mankind.
But on that count, were Athaclena’s people all that innocent? The Tymbrimi, also, were famed for finding loopholes in tradition and for not being satisfied with what was inherited from the past.
“When will you humans learn that the universe is dangerous, that there are many ancient and powerful clans who have no love of upstarts, especially newcomers who brashly set off changes without understanding the likely consequences!”
Now Robert knew what Athaclena was referring to, what the real source of this outburst was. He rose from the poolside and dusted his hands. “Look, neither of us really knows what’s going on out there in the galaxy right now. But it’s hardly our fault that a dolphin-crewed starship—”
“The Streaker.”
“—that the Streaker happened to discover something bizarre, something overlooked all these aeons. Anyone could have stumbled onto it! Hell, Athaclena. We don’t even know what it was that those poor neo-dolphins found! Last anyone heard, their ship was being chased from the Morgran transfer point to Ifni-knows-where by twenty different fleets—all fighting over the right to capture her.”
Robert discovered his pulse was beating hard. Clenched hands indicated just how much of his own tension was rooted in this topic. After all, it is frustrating enough whenever your universe threatens to topple in on you, but all the more so when the events that set it all off took place kiloparsecs away, amid dim red stars too distant even to be seen from home.
Athaclena’s dark-lidded eyes met his, and for the first time he felt he could sense a touch of understanding in them. Her long-fingered left hand performed a fluttering half turn.
“I hear what you are saying, Robert. And I know that sometimes I am too quick to cast judgments. It is a fault my father constantly urges me to overcome.
“But you ought to remember that we Tymbrimi have been Earth’s protectors and allies ever since your great, lumbering slowships stumbled into our part of space, eighty-nine paktaars ago. It grows wearying at times, and you must forgive if, on occasion, it shows.”
“What grows wearying?” Robert was confused.
“Well, for one thing, ever since Contact we have had to learn and endure this assemblage of wolfling clicks and growls you have the effrontery to call a language.”
Athaclena’s expression was even, but now Robert believed he could actually sense a faint something emanating from those waving tendrils. It seemed to convey what a human girl might communicate with a subtle facial expression. Clearly she was teasing him.
“Ha ha. Very funny.” He looked down at the ground.
“Seriously though, Robert, have we not, in the seven generations since Contact, constantly urged that you humans and your clients go slow? The Streaker simply should not have been prying into places where she did not belong—not while your small clan of races is still so young and helpless.
“You cannot keep on poking at the rules to see which are rigid and which are soft!”
Robert shrugged. “It’s paid off a few times.”
“Yes, but now your—what is the proper, beastly idiom?—your cows have come home to roost?
“Robert, the fanatics won’t let go now that their passions are aroused. They will chase the dolphin ship until she is captured. And if they cannot acquire her information that way, powerful clans such as the Jophur and the Soro will seek other means to achieve their ends.”
Dust motes sparkled gently in and out of the narrow shafts of sunlight. Scattered pools of rainwater glinted where the beams touched them. In the quiet Robert scuffed at the soft humus, knowing all too well what Athaclena was driving at.
The Jophur, the Soro, the Gubru, the Tandu—those powerful Galactic patron races which had time and again demonstrated their hostility to Mankind—if they failed to capture Streaker, their next step would be obvious. Sooner or later some clan would turn its attention to Garth, or Atlast, or Calafia—Earth’s most distant and unprotected outposts—seeking hostages in an effort to pry loose the dolphins’ mysterious secret. The tactic was even permissible, under the loose strictures established by the ancient Galactic Institute for Civilized Warfare.
Some civilization, Robert thought bitterly. The irony was that the dolphins weren’t even likely to behave as any of the stodgy Galactics expected them to.
By tradition a client race owed allegiance and fealty to its patrons, the starfaring species that had “uplifted” it to full sentience. This had been done for Pan chimpanzees and Tursiops dolphins by humans even before Contact with starfaring aliens. In doing so, Mankind had unknowingly mimicked a pattern that had ruled the Five Galaxies for perhaps three billion years.
By tradition, client species served their patrons for a thousand centuries or more, until release from indenture freed them to seek clients of their own. Few Galactic clans believed or understood how much freedom had been given dolphins and chims by the humans of Earth. It was hard to say exactly what the neo-dolphins on the Streaker’s crew would do if humans were taken hostage. But that, apparently, wouldn’t stop the Eatees from trying. Distant listening posts had already confirmed the worst. Battle fleets were coming, approaching Garth even as he and Athaclena stood here talking.
“Which is worth m
ore, Robert,” Athaclena asked softly, “that collection of ancient space-hulks the dolphins are supposed to have found … derelicts that have no meaning at all to a clan as young as yours? Or your worlds, with their farms and parks and orbit-cities? I cannot understand the logic of your Terragens Council, ordering Streaker to guard her secret, when you and your clients are so vulnerable!”
Robert looked down at the ground again. He had no answer for her. It did sound illogical, when looked at in that way. He thought about his classmates and friends, gathering now to go to war without him, to fight over issues none of them understood. It was hard.
For Athaclena it would be as bad, of course, banished from her father’s side, trapped on a foreign world by a quarrel that had little or nothing to do with her. Robert decided to let her have the last word. She had seen more of the universe than he anyway and had the advantage of coming from an older, higher-status clan.
“Maybe you’re right,” he said. “Maybe you’re right.”
Perhaps, though, he reminded himself as he helped her lift her backpack and then hoisted his own for the next stage of their trek, perhaps a young Tymbrimi can be just as ignorant and opinionated as any human youth, a little frightened and far away from home.
5
Fiben
“TAASF scoutship Bonobo calling scoutship Proconsul.… Fiben, you’re out of alignment again. Come on, old chim, try to straighten her out, will you?”
Fiben wrestled with the controls of his ancient, alien-built spacecraft. Only the open mike kept him from expressing his frustration in rich profanity. Finally, in desperation, he kicked the makeshift control panel the technicians had installed back on Garth.
That did it! A red light went out as the antigravity verniers suddenly unfroze. Fiben sighed. At last!
Of course, in all the exertion his faceplate had steamed up. “You’d think they’d come up with a decent ape-suit after all this time,” he grumbled as he turned up the defogger. It was more than a minute before the stars reappeared.
