Raising Caine - eARC

by Charles E Gannon

  “Without your filter masks,” W’th’vaathi continued, “you would be affected. However, even with them, you would eventually succumb. Uptake also occurs through mucous membranes, albeit more gradually.”

  Great. In addition to my eyes, I have a vented suit, courtesy of those damn pirhannows. “Can I be cured?” Caine asked when he was sure he could keep his voice level and calm.

  “Yes,” W’th’vaathi replied. “But my knowledge in such matters is incomplete. I was not even aware of these defense spores until Senior Ratiocinator Mriif’vaal informed me about them.”

  Ben Hwang was frowning deeply. “W’th’vaathi, did Mriif’vaal happen to mention whether these defense spores would impact all biota that are not Slaasriithi in origin?”

  “No. For instance, they do not affect the indigenous biota of Disparity. If they did, we could not build symbiotic relationships and ecological synergies with it.”

  Ben nodded. “Of course. But that’s not what I’m referring to. I’m talking about, well, unwelcome xenobiologies.”

  “I do not know. Why do you inquire?”

  Caine saw it before Ben replied. “Well, it’s somewhat peculiar that, even before we arrived here, both Yiithrii’ah’aash and Mriif’vaal knew that these spores would be dangerous to humans. And evidently they also knew that you possess an antidote or cure for afflicted humans. I find that curious.”

  W’th’vaathi’s “head” turned toward Ben, wobbled a bit as the water-strider moved into slightly shallower water and cast about for better footing. “Yes. That is curious.”

  “It makes me wonder if you’ve had human visitors before,” Caine speculated in a casual tone that, he realized, was probably lost on the Slaasriithi.

  “I believe so,” W’th’vaathi affirmed. “Of course, you have been long known as a protected species, watched over by the Custodians of the Accord. But it seems you must have been known before that, even before we started receiving your broadcast signals more than a century ago.”

  “What makes you think that?”

  W’th’vaathi’s neck wiggled a bit. “Because there is no mention of your ever being ‘discovered’ or ‘assessed’ by the Custodians, as were the Hkh’Rkh, and even the Arat Kur. From the earliest Custodial records, knowledge of your homeworld and the systems reserved for your expansion have always existed. Logically, our species may have had earlier contact. At that time, perhaps it was deemed prudent to create spores that are particularly inimical to your biochemistry. Otherwise, how would our Senior Ratiocinatorae know to preemptively provide for your safety during your visit, and indicate that there was a cure in the event of an accidental exposure?”

  “How indeed?” murmured Ben Hwang with a quick glance at Riordan. Once again, getting a better picture of what had been going on in this particular stellar cluster twenty millennia ago rose up as a significant, even urgent, intelligence objective. “Tell me, how do the spores work?”

  “There are many different spores: a novitor or hortator would be able to provide a comprehensive explanation. My understanding is that when human secretions are detected in our environment, the small but persistent production of defense spores is triggered to enter a hyper-production stage. Some of the defense spores cause our fauna to avoid humans, some will agitate suitable species to attack, instead. But the most common variety of spores simply lodge in your mucous membranes and generate a pronounced histaminic response, as well as respiratory swelling. The sequelae include decreased cognitive clarity and mobility, thereby rendering the subject—

  “—extremely tractable,” finished Hwang.

  “You perceive, then.”

  “All too completely,” Hwang murmured.

  “And what of you, Caine Riordan? Do you understand how very profoundly you were marked by the dying water-strider, and why?”

  “I probably don’t fully understand either,” Caine confessed.

  “Then I shall elucidate. The water-strider marked you more deeply and broadly than is typical outside the limits of its own species. To simplify, it marked you with powerful rapport and affinity spores when it last breathed upon you. When it rubbed you, it saturated you with compliance pheromones. That is why the water-striders are waiting to aid you.”

  “And it imparted these gifts because I was kind to it when it died?”

  “That is part of it, certainly, but there is something else: you have been marked before. That other mark is deep and strong, but it is also unfamiliar. I believe it is very old.”

  “Yes. It happened about two years ago.”

  “I do not mean that the marking occurred long ago. I mean that the marker itself is unfamiliar to today’s taxae. It seems ancient, even primal. It is—most striking.”

  Ben nodded slowly. “So, you feel it yourself.”

  “Yes. It is peculiar to find glimmers and scents of our unrecorded past wafting about an xenosapient such as yourself, Caine Riordan. It elicits many questions.”

  I’ll bet it does. Caine was wondering whether he should let the topic slide when a flapping sound and a rising shadow distracted him: the water-strider upon which he was riding had raised the two membranous fins that had been laying folded to either side of its back-perched passengers. “Is everything all right?”

  W’th’vaathi’s bifurcated prehensile tail flicked dismissively. “Our herd has detected the presence of another, downstream. Although none of us are masters of water-strider communications, I presume it is alerting the others that our approach is not a challenge or a purposive territorial encroachment.” Her tone changed. “Or they could be sending pre-mating signals.”

  “Mating signals?” Caine suddenly wanted to be off the water-strider’s back, far away from having to witness, let alone dodge, the amorous frolics of these ungainly giants.

  W’th’vaathi may have been amused: one of her tails shimmied irregularly. “Allow me to be more precise. They might be exchanging expressions of interest and receptivity. For later.”

  From further back on the creature’s back, Macmillan snorted. “Hey, baby, here’s my number. Call me.” If W’th’vaathi understood Macmillan’s truly alien quip, she gave no sign of it.

  Caine glanced at the two ribbed and leathery fins rising up on either side; fully extended, they were more akin to long, triangular pennants. “These extensions must serve a purpose other than imparting mating signals. Stability while swimming, perhaps?”

  W’th’vaathi’s head swayed gently from side-to-side: a gesture that Riordan had come to associate with tentative agreement. “Fossil records suggest that this may have been their original purpose. But that was probably before their large flippers elongated and evolved into legs. However, the force of evolution does not waste useful resources. Study the tips of the spines which raise and spread the fins.”

  Caine did so and noticed that the spines protruded beyond the membrane of the fins and did not end in tapering points, but were angle-cut, akin to the nub of a quill pen. It took several moments of scrutiny before Riordan realized what he was looking at: “Are those breathing tubes?”

  “Yes. When a water-strider submerges and seals the row of large respiration ducts on either side of its spine, the fins function as snorkels.”

  Hwang nodded. “So, the fins’ courtship use is secondary. Tell me: do fin differences signal sex differences?”

  W’th’vaathi turned from her position just behind the head of the water-strider. “As with us, and many other species that we brought to the stars, the water-striders are not gendered or sexed as is your species. Rather, among striders, there are two different reproductory variants, the impregnator and the depositor.”

  “Those sound like the same things,” Macmillan murmured.

  “In your heterosexual dyads, yes, but not among this species. The impregnator chooses which of the depositors it shall fertilize, as well as the kind of offspring: either a depositor or, far more rarely, another impregnator. In this way, the herd’s fertile and dominant impregnator determines the demog
raphics of the herd, and even its genetic characteristics.”

  “So why are the impregnated water-striders called depositors?” Hwang asked, hanging on to a fistful of their mount’s fur as it dipped back out into the deeper water.

  “Because they do not retain the fertilized egg. It is immediately passed back to the impregnator and embeds in its womb.”

  Macmillan stared. “So the impregnator is also the…the mother?”

  W’th’vaathi’s left tail-half flicked once. “As I mentioned, terrestrial sexual dyadism offers few productive analogs for understanding water-strider reproduction. Caretaking and post-birth nutrition are the province of the depositor which was impregnated, not the impregnator. Also, any attempt to apply the sex-associated dominance and behavior templates common among your planet’s social mammals will be quite futile. For instance, genetic selection is not established through external forces, such as you biota’s male aggression contests, but by the impregnator’s detection of desired traits in a depositor’s pheromones.”

  Riordan nodded, seeing the paradigm of Slaasriithi consensuality reprised in the water-striders. “So the evolutionary rule is not survival of the fittest, but selection of the fittest, according to the changing needs of the herd.”

  W’th’vaathi’s tendrils straightened with a pop. “An apt adaptation of one of your own axioms, if I am not mistaken. And, as you may perceive, not wholly inapplicable to we Slaasriithi. Water-strider reproduction resembles ours in many particulars.”

  “Och, here we go,” Keith exclaimed, “the alien ‘birds and bees’ talk. Damn, how I wish I’d stayed home in Dundee.” Caine raised an eyebrow at Macmillan who simply shrugged and smiled.

  W’th’vaathi had, once again, shown no understanding of the big Scotsman’s comments. “These words baffle me, although we know of your terrestrial bee and admire many of its features.”

  Ben glared at Keith who smiled sweetly in return. “Mr. Macmillan was using an idiom that refers to the—the details of mating.”

  “I understand. Although I must offer an initial correction; one could not characterize any stage of Slaasriithi reproduction as mating. What humans refer to as sex—and the consequent emotional phenomena you label longing, romance, and passion—are anathema to us. Our reproductory process is partly instinctual, and partly guided by Senior Ratiocinatorae, much the way that a water-strider impregnator determines which depositor shall be fertilized.”

  Hwang stared dubiously at W’th’vaathi. “So you have a womb?”

  “No, not presently. As I mentioned, all Slaasriithi are capable of all reproductory roles. The ratiocinator that guides the process will, itself, not receive a quickened egg. However, in conjunction with communally informed instinct, it determines the demographic mix that shall arise from a gathering of Slaasriithi who are to be quickened.”

  “And how does the ratiocinator accomplish that?”

  W’th’vaathi’s tendrils swayed in time with the rolling gait of the water-strider. “Pheromonic emissions from the entire community determine what proportion of each caste should be quickened, which is achieved in a communal pool. Each individual who is to become gravid both releases and receives genetic material from all the others.”

  Caine tried to rise above the bizarre images W’th’vaathi’s description was prompting. “Then how do the taxae remain, er, coherent subspecies? Doesn’t the free exchange of”—the mind reels—“genetic material create hybrids?”

  “This is, again, an expectation that would be logical in your genetic template, but not ours. Fragments of each Slaasriithi subspecies are present in every individuals’ genome, regardless of their taxon. Therefore, all taxae are repositories of genetic diversity for all taxae.

  “Once the genetic exchange is complete, the ratiocinator releases a second pheromone that triggers the chemical process which determines how each pre-gravid Slaasriithi’s host gamete will select and become receptive to the various genetic material that surrounds it. In this way, the community maximizes genetic diversity while also producing demographic outcomes optimal to its changing needs.”

  “But then…you have no families?” Macmillan’s voice had become serious, now. Haunted, even.

  “Not such as you mean. Our young are far more self-sufficient upon birth; the genomes of the respective taxae pre-specialize its members for their predetermined tasks and predilections. Consequently, the genetic complexity that enables humanity’s variability and versatility is not necessary. Our young aggregate in groups maintained by older and less mobile members of their taxae, who control them through pheromones and redirection.”

  “It all sounds very…logical.” Ben’s nod was emphatic, but his voice was carefully controlled.

  “Logic is often over-rated, Doctor,” Macmillan countered quickly. His face was pale and his freckles stood out more profoundly than before. “And so do these, eh, OverWatchlings also oversee your breeding, prodding the ratiocinators here and there, where needed? That would be logical too. Why let anyone make a choice for themselves?”

  Riordan turned toward the Scotsman, who matched stares at first, but then looked away, jaw muscles bunching. What’s got into you, Keith?

  If W’th’vaathi had detected Macmillan’s sarcasm, he nonetheless elected to treat the question as serious. “I have failed to make clear the role of the OverWatchlings. They are not, strictly speaking, intelligent. To use the closest terrestrial analog, imagine a queen bee who sleeps until the nest is disturbed. Awakened, she instinctively sets about sending pheromone commands to alert and marshal the hive’s defenses.”

  “Given its reactions so far,” Macmillan grumbled, “Disparity’s OverWatchling doesn’t seem very versatile. Or bright.”

  “If by ‘bright’ you mean perspicacious, this is a non sequitur. The OverWatchling does not yet have enough experience for that assessment to be made. But it is quite ignorant.”

  “Because it hasn’t dealt with crises before?” Caine asked.

  “In part. But being new, it has also benefited from very few Absorptions.”

  Riordan heard the emphasis. “What are Absorptions?”

  “The primary way the OverWatchling learns and how we pass on knowledge to subsequent generations .”

  Ben Hwang’s deepening frown opened into something approaching alarm. “You mean you absorb each others thoughts? But how? Yiithrii’ah’aash explicitly indicated on several occasions that the Slaasriithi are not a hive mind.”

  “And so we are not, Doctor Hwang. But this does not prevent us from passing on our life experiences when we expire. As does your own brain, ours chemically encodes and stores our life’s many lessons and discoveries. The most dramatic of these are passed along at the time of our demise.”

  “Physically?”

  “Yes. Strong emotional or cognitive reactions are not only retained in our active memory, but in crystalline structures produced by that part of our brain which is located in our trunk.”

  The concepts were so novel, and came in such a cascade, that Caine could already feel them slipping away. “Wait. So firstly, your major, uh, life events, are recorded in crystal form? And that’s stored in your brain—which is actually not all in one place?”

  “Correct. The decentralization of our brain was evolutionarily essential, given our arboreal origins and the smaller sensor and reaction clusters which you have identified as our ‘heads.’”

  Hwang nodded. “Of course. Your head, er, sensor cluster was too small to develop a large enough brain for cognition. But once that seat of proto-intelligence was sited in the trunk of your body, the neurological lag time was too long for it to coordinate your arboreal acrobatics. So your brain evolved along a distributed processing model. Your conscious decisions are sited in your ‘body-brain,’ but your physical coordination is at least partially sited in your sensor-cluster.”

  “Yes.”

  Caine resisted the impulse to shake his head. “All right, but let’s get back to these, er, memory crystals. W
hen you die, how do they get transferred?”

  “They are released from the brain stem and become encysted near the top of our spine. When the cyst ruptures, it releases the crystals in a liquid medium which we call Past Water, for it is how we pass along the collective insights and taxon-specific knowledge of our species.”

  Too weird: cerebral kidney stones with a purpose. “So the OverWatchling is somehow, uh, upgraded by exposing it to Past Water?”

  “Yes. Crystals with fundamentally similar encoding do not get absorbed by other members of a taxon, and so, are passed on to the OverWatchling. It does not so much understand the data as its behaviors are shaped by it, much as the way you would train a dog to perform certain tasks or tricks.” W’th’vaathi’s neck shimmied slightly. “But since there have been few crises on Disparity, our Senior Ratiocinatorae have had little to add to the defense instincts of the OverWatchling. This partly explains what you perceive to be its tepid response to the current threats.”

  “There’s another reason?”

  “Yes. The recent war depleted Disparity’s defense systems. When our ships were dispatched to conduct raids along the border between the Arat Kur and the Hkh’Rkh, they expanded their stocks of defense spheres and related systems by appropriating one or two from every planet they passed on their way to engaging the enemy. Those depletions have not yet been restituted.”

  “So that’s why you don’t have much defensive gear to help us on the ground here, either?” Macmillan sounded like he was trying to come up with an excuse for the Slaasriithi insufficiencies of the moment.

  “No: our engagements with the Arat Kur and Hkh’Rkh were limited to space. Ground systems were not required. We have not released any ground systems because this situation has not yet evolved to that point where OverWatchling deems it necessary to set aside our primary constraint protocol.”

  Caine frowned. “And what, exactly, is that protocol?”

  W’th’vaathi’s tendril-toes writhed slightly. “It is deemed unwise to send advanced technology into an environment where aggressive species are involved, and in which it is possible that we might lose control over the machines in question. We consider this protocol particularly urgent to maintain in regard to your species, Captain.”