The Spheres of Heaven tmp-2

by Charles Sheffield

  Bony, wanting to ask how you explored a place when you couldn’t leave the ship, bit his tongue.

  Vow-of-Silence went on: “My colleague, Eager Seeker, detached a sizeable collective, to whom we gave a temporary name, Blessed Union. The components of Blessed Union would leave this ship and travel to the surface, from which they would fly to the land. They did not need a suit. The waters of — Limbo, you call it? — are high in oxygen, enough for individual Tinker components to survive without artificial assistance. Preparations for the journey were made with great care. Blessed Union would re-assemble when ashore, except when a few components were needed to fly ahead as scouts. Is this clear?”

  Bony nodded. His self-image as smart savior of the Pipe-Rilla ship was steadily declining. It nose-dived when Vow-of-Silence continued, “We had been told that this could be a perilous undertaking. We had spoken extensively to the Sea-wanderers, and they said that death had come recently to many of their companions near the shore. However, we were confident. We did not believe that we were in danger, since we have ways unknown to the Sea-wanderers to protect ourselves against attack from native life-forms.

  “The new collective of Blessed Union left, promising to return no later than nightfall. After components of the collective had departed we pumped the airlock dry, slowly and laboriously; and we waited. That was days ago. We are waiting still, though our time of hope is ending.”

  The Pipe-Rilla began to rock slowly up and down, half-extending her hind limbs. Finally Bony asked, “Do you think that Blessed Union has been killed?”

  At the question, the Pipe-Rilla covered her eyes with her forelimbs. Bony wondered if he had committed some dreadful inter-species violation of protocol.

  Finally Vow-of-Silence said, “This is a matter of some delicacy. It is possible, yes, that Blessed Union was destroyed. However, it is rather more likely that Blessed Union swarmed . You see” — the narrow head bowed low and the sibilant voice dropped in volume — “we knew at the outset that there was a risk. Eager Seeker was, by intention, an unusually abundant Composite. Once on land, the urge of Blessed Union to swarm and breed and form a second independent Composite may have been irresistible. This possibility is, of course, a matter of great potential embarrassment to Eager-Seeker. A Tinker never admits to such unsanctioned breeding. And still we do not know what lies ashore. The Sea-wanderers cannot tell us. Are you able to answer the question?”

  “Not completely. But how do you talk to the Sea-wanderers, if you can’t leave the ship?”

  “Through the translator, of course, on the hull. Did you not see it?”

  Bony hadn’t. Among the thousand devices that festooned the outside of the Finder , it was easy to miss any particular one. But Bony also had the feeling that he had seen too little overall, and understood even less.

  “We did go ashore,” he said. “Once. But we found no sign of your companions. Of course, we were there for only a little while, and it would have been very easy to miss them.”

  He described his and Liddy’s experience, including the brief glimpse of a great trifoliate flying vehicle. He offered his impression of what the land interior looked like. Finally he told of the foaming circle in the sea, a place that might form part of a Link entry point.

  That grabbed the attention of his audience. Vow-of-Silence said at once, “Aha! Where was this anomaly located?”

  “It’s hard to describe in words. If only we had a map …”

  “One moment.” Vow-of-Silence picked up a flat plate and a marker and began to draw. She did it without looking, and her movements were so fast it seemed impossible for them to be accurate. In less than thirty seconds she was showing the result to Bony and Liddy. She said diffidently, “This is based on conversations with the Sea-wanderers and our own observations. It is, of course, no more than a tiny region of the whole of Limbo, but it represents our current knowledge. Here is where we are.”

  She touched the plate, where she had drawn a tiny but recognizable picture of the Finder . “And here is the shoreline. Now, where was the steaming circle in the water?”

  “About here.” Bony stabbed at the drawing with an index finger. “I think that’s right. Liddy?”

  She nodded. “I couldn’t put it any closer. When we went ashore we travelled as far as here .” She touched a point on the upper right of the plate, and Vow-of-Silence instantly added a notation there and a dotted line leading from the shore. Liddy nodded, frowned, and said, “But what’s this ?”

  Bony had not noticed it when he examined the plate, but a small circle toward the top left contained another small and stylized drawing. He stared at it. His eyes were not acute enough to make out the fine detail.

  “It looks like—” Liddy turned to Vow-of-Silence. “I’ve never seen one, but I’ve seen drawings of Angels that look like that.”

  “Of course.” The narrow head bobbed. “When I said at the beginning of this meeting that there was a third ship, I was referring to your vessel. The second ship, the one that the Sea-wanderers told us about and which apparently arrived soon after we did, is an Angel ship. And there is — not surprisingly — an Angel on board.”

  * * *

  The Angel ship sat about five kilometers away from the original position of the Mood Indigo , on a narrow part of the same off-shore shelf. Looking at the map drawn by Vow-of-Silence, Bony realized for the first time how lucky they had been. Only a couple of hundred yards seaward of where the Mood Indigo had landed, the map showed the seabed dropping off steeply to a region marked “Deep Water.” Too deep, apparently, for the Sea-wanderers, and more than deep enough to cave in the hull of any ship unfortunate enough to descend there.

  The Angel ship had been even luckier than the Mood Indigo . According to the drawing it sat on the very brink of the shelf, which was unusually narrow at that point. Twenty meters in one direction would plunge the ship into the abyss. Fifty meters the other way would bring it onto the rocky beach. Eager Seeker and Vow-of-Silence had been considering a visit to the Angel when Bony and Liddy arrived, but they were reluctant to leave the Finder while there was any chance at all that Blessed Union might return.

  There had seemed no great urgency in a visit to the Angel ship. That idea changed as Vow-of-Silence was pointing out a river on the map, used in the past by the Sea-wanderers to penetrate a little way inland while remaining under water.

  “Here is the farthest point of their progress.” The Pipe-Rilla tapped it with a black claw. “They call it Bad Things Fork, and also Death Fork. Any Sea-wanderer who went beyond it never returned.”

  She was interrupted when a unit in the control desk of the Finder suddenly beeped for attention, and a bubbling voice that seemed to speak without consonants said, “It darkens. Violence comes in the above the world. We will feel it in the world. We go to seek safeness in down.”

  “The Sea-wanderers.” Vow-of-Silence leaned across to the sound unit and said clearly, “We hear you, and we thank you for the warning.”

  Liddy added, “I hear them, but what do they mean?”

  “It has happened before, probably before your arrival on this world.” Vow-of-Silence bent to a remote viewer and called for a new display. “So far as these natives are concerned, the sea is the world. The atmosphere of the planet is the above-the-world. The Sea-wanderers can tell when a surface storm is on the way, and when that is the case they refuse to go near the shore. There are huge breakers, and strong currents. Look at the sky thirty kilometers west of here, and you will see what is coming our way.”

  If the ship could receive a distant view from above the surface, why had it not been able to learn the fate of the Tinkers who went ashore? Bony postponed the question. It was less important at the moment than what filled the display. The time was close to the middle of Limbo’s day, but the blue sun’s disk shone only intermittently. The clear sky had filled with clots and streaks of gray and black clouds, torn by wind and driving along furiously. The same force that propelled them across the sky lashed
the sea surface into monstrous surges, broken at their peaks and flecked with white foam.

  “Can it hurt us?” Liddy asked.

  “Not us.” Vow-of-Silence was reaching out at full length to pluck a set of linked tubes from a cabinet. “The Finder is safe at this depth and in this location. So is your ship, providing that it remains more than twenty meters down. I am sending a signal to it, warning of the storm. But the Angel ship will be in peril. It lies on the narrowest part of the shelf. When the storm arrives, shifts of sediment might send it over the edge into deep water. Waves could pick it up and smash it on the shore. The ship must be moved, or at the very least the Angel taken to safety. Let me see, three kilometers across the seabed, that would take …”

  Bony wondered how Friday Indigo was doing, up there on the surface. Also what he was doing. The captain had been very secretive. The Mood Indigo could always descend again and sit the storm out safely on the bed of the sea — provided that Indigo had the sense to listen to the warning message, and act on it. On the other hand, this was a situation where the Mood Indigo would have been invaluable. The ship could fly three kilometers far quicker than anyone could walk.

  Eager Seeker was already in motion, Tinker components rapidly removing themselves from the main body. The process appeared totally random. Bony began to put his suit back on, but he could not hide his curiosity.

  While he was waiting for his suit to climb back up his body, he asked, “How does a Tinker Composite decide what size to be?”

  The Pipe-Rilla said at once, “It is all a question of necessary function. If there are—”

  “Vow-of-Silence, do you mind? After all, this is our own self that is being discussed.” There was a definite testiness to Eager Seeker’s tone. Bony, recalling that the Tinker Composite had not said one word after their initial greeting, decided that Vow-of-Silence might represent not so much a name as a desire on the part of others.

  The blunt head-like upper part of the Composite turned toward Bony, even as components sped away from it. Eager Seeker was taking on a distinctly ragged appearance as the Tinker Composite went on, “A full answer would require much time. But there are certain simple rules. First, if we wish to we can join every component together. When we do so, we have increased thinking power. But we are also less nimble mentally. We are slower , with a longer integration time. Thus, we are not so quick to complete a thought or to reach a decision. The integration time grows very quickly — exponentially — with the number of components. When the problem is large, we combine all units. This, of course, is why we came here as a Composite of unusual size, with the expectation of problems of unusual difficulty. Normally, we choose a compromise between speed of thought and depth of thought. In a possible emergency — as now — smaller is better. And since we must soon leave the ship” — more and more dark-winged bodies flew away from the main bulk of the Composite — “we will take that action not as an entity, but as a non-entity. As individual components …”

  The voice faded to nothing, the speaking funnel closed, and a blizzard of purple-black swirled about the cabin before vanishing up a narrow tube in the ceiling.

  “Eager Seeker leaves through an airlock too small for me or you.” Vow-of-Silence was wriggling her body and legs into the odd array of tubes, which mysteriously transformed into a suit. “We will use the exit method you so kindly provided. Come now. The Angel’s ship waits for us, but the storm declines to do so.”

  She led the way back out through the airlock. Bony and Liddy followed. Under the sea there was no sign of the coming storm, although all the bubble people had vanished. Eager Seeker, in the form of its thousands of separate parts, was already outside. The components seemed as much at home in water as in air, turning and tumbling around each other with easy flaps of tiny wings. And then, in a moment, all of them darted off at great speed in the same direction.

  Vow-of-Silence set off after them, saying, “Of course, our presence may be quite unnecessary. Eager Seeker can probably ensure the Angel’s safety without us.” Her voice came, perfectly clear, into Bony’s suit. So much for the opacity of water to radio waves. He wondered what other technical tricks the aliens had up their sleeves, also what strange physiology the Pipe-Rilla possessed. Vow-of-Silence appeared thin and fragile, and she was strolling along at what appeared to be a moderate pace, but no human could travel so fast in water. Bony and Liddy had to rise off the sea floor and use their thrustor jets to keep up.

  They had gone only a short distance when the Tinker components came winging back. A group of them formed a tight cluster about Vow-of-Silence’s suited figure, so that the Pipe-Rilla was obliged to stop moving and stand half-hidden on the seabed. After a few seconds the Tinker bodies lifted and again flew rapidly away.

  Vow-of-Silence turned to Bony and Liddy. “Strange. Very strange. Eager Seeker went to the Angel ship, which is in exactly the position reported by the Sea-wanderers. It appears unharmed. However, the ship is open to the sea and the Angel is not on board.”

  Liddy said, “Does that mean the Angel is dead?”

  “Not necessarily. The actions of Angels are often impenetrable, but self-preservation is high on their list of priorities. If you will excuse me …” Vow-of-Silence ducked her head and the Pipe-Rilla took off with gigantic strides, stepping easily across waving sea-grass two meters tall. Her rate of progress was enormous. Even with thrustors set to maximum, Bony and Liddy fell steadily behind. The undersea light was fading, though nightfall on Limbo was many hours away. Bony took a quick swoop up toward the surface, close enough to feel turbulence in the water. A few meters above his head, the full storm was arriving. He looked up and saw dark and light patterns rippling across the surface, synchronized to the movement of pressure waves across his body.

  He dove back down, peering into underwater gloom and suddenly afraid that he might lose contact with both Liddy and Vow-of-Silence. The Pipe-Rilla had vanished but he saw Liddy plowing steadily on, just far enough above the seabed to avoid the clinging sea-grasses. He flew after her, across a sea valley, over a ridge, descending steadily and trying to will the suit thrustors to produce more than their maximum possible power. Was it imagination, or was Liddy slowing down?

  Yes. Not just slowing. She had stopped. And then he could see Vow-of-Silence. And the clustered components of Eager Seeker. And then, in the middle of the group, a stout and unfamiliar form shaped like a giant artichoke.

  When he came up to them, the Angel was speaking. Bony detected an unmistakable petulance in the computer-generated tones. “Naturally we left our ship. It was impossible to predict whether we would be swept into the ocean abyss, or carried onto the rocky shore. Neither outcome was acceptable. The Bard of Terra spoke truth: Cowards die many times before their death . However, the superior coward prefers not to die at all.”

  Vow-of-Silence said, “But are you all right, Angel? You seem helpless. Can you breathe under water?”

  “You do not need to call us Angel. In Stellar Group company we answer to the name of Gressel. And we are certainly not helpless. In fact, we were heading for your ship when you found us. And although we cannot breathe under water, we can not breathe under water, which is what we are doing now.”

  As the Angel spoke it was creeping along the sea floor. The roots of the Chassel-Rose that formed the Angel’s lower part retracted, pulled free of the bottom silt at a glacial rate, and quiveringly stretched forward to root themselves again. Bony’s guess was that the three-kilometer journey to the Finder could well be all over in a matter of weeks.

  Vow-of-Silence must have reached the same conclusion. The giant pipe-stem figure bent over the Angel, said, “With your permission, Gressel,” and hoisted the bulky mass effortlessly up. “It is likely,” the Pipe-Rilla went on, “that no effects of the storm will be observed at this depth, but we cannot be sure of that. We would rather be in our ship than outside it.” Vow-of-Silence turned with the Angel in her arms and headed rapidly back the way that she had come.


  “Perhaps you are right.” After one moment of resistance, Gressel allowed itself to be carried. The Angel gloomily added, “A long farewell to all our greatness. We perforce accept assistance, and admit the maxim: better safe than sorry .”

  So far as Bony was concerned, safe was a debatable term. The deep sea remained calm enough, but something was happening above the surface. Dense clouds must have covered the blue sun, because the deeper waters had become so dark that Bony could no longer see the ocean floor. He grabbed Liddy by the hand and the two of them followed the faint suit lights of the Pipe-Rilla through abyssal gloom.

  And then those suit lights, though not shrinking in size, began to fade in brightness. After a few baffled seconds Bony realized what was happening. The waves on the surface could not damage him at this depth, but they could stir bottom sediments. Their whole party was moving through a thickening cloud of gray silt.

  In that moment of understanding, the scene ahead of Bony lit in brilliant blue-white. Everything — lank sea-grasses, Pipe-Rilla, Angel, darting Tinkers, and pale mud cloud — became etched in light. There was a moment of startling clarity, which was as suddenly gone.

  A lightning bolt — a major one — had hit the surface of the sea. The thunder came at once, shatteringly loud. The strike must have been directly above them.

  But now Bony, blinded by the flash, could see nothing at all. Holding on to Liddy he allowed himself to coast to a halt. He had lost all sense of direction. The only hope was to follow Vow-of-Silence and the other aliens back to the Finder . But he could not see them, unless another bolt of lightning came to his assistance.

  How many people stood and waited, hoping for a close lightning strike? Bony felt Liddy’s arms around him. Even through the suits he could feel her trembling.

  Come on, lightning bolt. Do your thing. Hit!

  The response after five more seconds was a weak, far-off flicker, the puny glow of a lightning bolt several miles away. By its brief light Bony saw Vow-of-Silence, standing motionless with the Angel cradled in her forearms. Every Tinker component had vanished, he hoped to safety.