by James Gunn
Aerie, Tordor went on, was a world much more like Earth than like Dor. It was the same weight as Earth but sixty percent larger, which meant that it had a thick, gaseous atmosphere. Its sun was also a dim red dwarf but this one was ninety percent as large as Earth’s sun. Aerie orbited in the favorable zone where the temperature was neither too hot nor too cold for water to remain liquid. Aerie was, of course, much closer to its primary than Earth. Still it might have evolved into a world much like Earth except that it either accumulated a larger, deeper atmosphere during its formative period, or retained much more of it, perhaps because the solar wind emitted by its sun was minimal. As a consequence the atmosphere of Aerie is thick and deep, much more like that of a gas giant than that of a normal rocky world, but without the gas giant’s mixture of toxic gases.
The creatures that evolved in this unusual environment, Tordor said, were shaped by it, as all creatures are. That is the wisdom of the scientists who have studied these matters on a multitude of Federation worlds. On Aerie, microscopic materials in the sea clumped together into larger aggregates that developed into creatures who evolved into larger creatures that crawled out onto the land. The pressure of the atmosphere that benefited vegetation made life less advantageous for animal existence, and storms were even more common on Aerie than on Oceanus. Living in the air, however, was far easier, and land creatures of all kinds evolved wings while microscopic plants and plankton-type creatures were blown into the sky and some evolved into permanent residents, able to transform the sun’s energy more available at that altitude into carbon-based compounds. The upper atmosphere of Aerie, where the air was not as thick and storms were less common, became filled with flying creatures and the basic foods they lived upon.
One of those flying creatures, challenged for its existence by competition, adopted tools and developed the brains necessary to handle them. With this advantage, they secured their evolutionary future and the understanding of their world that led to the development of self-awareness and the curiosities that go along with it. At first they built structures on the tops of their highest mountains, where they had once constructed their nests, and then they constructed platforms that soared at high altitudes, even higher than the mountains, to absorb the feeble energy of their sun and to harvest the vegetation and plankton. Slowly the platforms were transformed, bit by bit, into habitats and then into cities, and the winged creatures created an aerial civilization above the clouds where they could see the other planets of their system, which were much closer than those around a more radiant star, and then, beyond their own system, the other stars.
Finally they converted some of their harvesters into ships to explore their planetary neighbors and finding none of them capable of nourishing life they converted their spaceships into interstellar transports that, over the long, long cycles, eventually made contact with the Federation. The Aerieans became an apprentice member.
“All your descriptions of these worlds have the same inspirational theme,” Riley said.
“The story of galactic civilizations share a common basic narrative,” Tordor said. “They either succeed in fulfilling their potential, or they fail and their stories are never told. The story of successful species is written by evolution.”
“Joining the Federation isn’t my concept of nirvana,” Riley said.
“Nirvana?”
“A state of final bliss, the perfect condition that ends all striving.”
“A condition without striving is no better than death,” Tordor said. “Joining the Federation is reaching the stage in a species’ existence when everything becomes possible. Even discovering a Transcendental Machine.”
“Which you and the Federation tried to stop,” Riley said.
“To my regret. But if you want inspiration, think of the Aerians who set out to explore the stars. Winged creatures accustomed to soaring free in the air in a way that a Dorian like me could not even imagine. Confined to a metal prison for generations, sacrificing their flight, even amputating their wings, so that they might eventually reach their goal—that is inspiring.”
“And so,” Asha said, “we may discover that all their sacrifices were for nothing.”
* * *
They had time to consider all of those possibilities while the red sphere sped, at what seemed like a crawl, toward the nexus point that would take them to their next appointed task. Riley and Tordor quarreled about Tordor’s theory of galactic history and the meaning of what they had discovered so far, Asha tried to find a middle position that they all could agree upon. Even Adithya found moments of disagreement with Tordor about the Federation Pedias and their control over the bureaucracy that had developed to use their services and had their roles reversed without knowing it. And the Pedia reported periodically about its progress in analyzing the various bits of evidence their previous explorations had produced.
Then, when their waiting seemed as if it would never end, they reached a nexus point and experienced once more the out-of-this-world experience of un-space and emerged once more into the material universe. They faced another long passage from that place to the solar system of the planet Aerie. They had not yet reached halfway to their destination when the Pedia announced a breakthrough in its analysis of the Oceanus creatures’ song.
“By comparing it with other communications from the worlds we have already investigated,” the Pedia said, “I have managed to produce a partial translation of the critical portion of the mammal-like creatures’ narrative.”
“By critical,” Riley said, “you mean that portion of sharp disturbance.”
“That is correct,” the Pedia said. “The rest is far easier to translate, and I could give you a rendering of the mammal-like creatures’ epic story from simple beginnings to complex conclusions, and transitions from easy satisfactions punctuated by life-and-death struggles to the more complicated pleasures of critical discovery and self-analysis—”
“Enough of that,” Tordor said.
“We can hear the mammal-like creatures’ epic later,” Asha said. “There will be time enough of that before we reach Aerie. What’s the important part?”
Words, or what might be words, appeared on the wall of the red sphere:
Serve dying ♐❒□❍ protect energies bodies ♋●● nourished heat plentiful ♌♦◆ used up youthful
“This is nonsense,” Tordor said.
“It is no more than we got from the Centaurs,” Adithya said. “If your solution in that case had any merit.”
“Similar but different,” Asha said.
“Asha is correct,” the Pedia said. “Cryptic still, to be sure, but a further step toward a more complete understanding.”
“How so?” Adithya said.
“There are words still to be deciphered,” the Pedia said, “but by comparing what we have discovered with other possible messages, we are another step closer to an answer.”
And so the long next journey went, with time enough, as Asha had promised, to listen to the mammal-like creatures’ epic, with its brief, cryptic and tragic interlude, not once but many times when there was nothing else to relieve the monotony of travel through featureless space. It was, indeed, a gripping narrative of life and love and death, of striving and success or failure and defeat, of evolution at work, finally guided by thinking creatures to a better end, and then final destruction. And particularly gripping when accompanied by the music of the mammal-like creatures, the sad low tones, the triumphant glimpses of other worlds and the concepts that bred philosophical musings, and the discovery of other solar systems and other intelligent creatures in them.
Asha, at least, listened, and Riley sometimes listened, but Adithya almost never and Tordor not at all. The Pedia, however, never tired of repeating itself, which was, to some, its least companionable trait and to others the computer characteristic that made it indispensable.
Finally, however, the system of the Aeriean sun swam into what served them as a viewscreen in the control room of the red sphe
re. It was a compact system, clustered close to its stingy primary: a clutter of ice and stone materials in an outer belt with an occasional dwarf planet accumulating enough mass to acquire a satellite or two, a couple of gas giants with assorted moons, and then Aerie, in the privileged zone, followed by a couple of lesser worlds too close even to their cool red dwarf sun to support life.
Aerie looked different from any world that Riley and Asha had ever seen, and even Tordor found it unusual. It was completely shrouded in clouds. Riley compared it to Venus, whose early history turned it into a furnace world wrapped in embalming-fluid-like gases, or Jupiter’s envelope of gases kept in constant motion by hurricane-like winds that lasted for hundreds of long-cycles. But here, above the clouds of Aerie, were bluer layers of atmosphere with occasional brown patches.
“What are those?” Asha asked.
“Swarms of floating plankton, I think,” Tordor replied.
And then, as they got closer, they saw the first of the floating cities, riding above the clouds, glittering in the reddish rays of the dwarf sun. They were not close enough to discern individual structures nor any signs of life, and the Pedia reported that it could not detect any electronic emissions that might indicate a thriving technological civilization, so it was unlikely that their approach had been noticed.
“It raises the question, however, of how we are going to put investigators on those cities,” Asha said. “We can’t land this ship on one, even if that were possible, without being observed and avoided—or attacked.”
“You need wings,” Tordor said.
“Wings?” Asha said.
“We are going among winged creatures,” Tordor said. “Aerieans are humanoids with wings.”
“Where are we going to get wings?” Asha said.
“You will have to get them from the place you and Riley get everything,” Tordor said. “From this intelligent-matter vessel you get along with so well.”
“Even if we could do that,” Riley said, “the kind of wings the red sphere might provide would be nothing like the wings the Aerieans have.”
“At least,” Asha said, “it would get us to one of their cities.”
“Us?” Riley said.
“Adithya and me,” Asha said. “We might have some chance of going unnoticed, at least for a while. You’re too sturdy for wings, and Tordor—well, Tordor could never pass for a flyer or a humanoid either.”
“But you’ve never flown,” Riley said.
“Nor have you. Anyway, as you did in the waters of Oceanus, we can learn.”
“Are you all right with this, Adithya?” Tordor asked.
“I can do it if Asha can,” Adithya said. “Humans have always wanted to fly.”
It was something less than that. And something more. Getting the red sphere’s cooperation was difficult. Its matter may have been intelligent, but it wasn’t omniscient, and producing a workable wing was not an easy concept to transmit, as Asha had learned to do, concentrating her thoughts on a realizable outcome. But she did not know how a wing functioned, and even with the Pedia’s help with design the red sphere required several attempts before it produced something that looked like wings. They emerged from a garment that covered Asha from head to foot.
From there it was a matter of nerve and practice. The nerve came into play when the ship descended into Aerie’s upper atmosphere—though still as dense as Earth’s at sea level—and Asha had to push her way through the ship’s permeable skin and launch herself into the air and feel herself falling helplessly into the shrouded world below. The first few attempts were nearly catastrophic as Asha tried to get the wings beating and plummeted through the sky before she was caught by the red sphere descending beneath her.
“There once were birds that did not flap their wings,” the Pedia said. “They spent long hours in the air soaring on wind currents and rising columns of air while they searched the land or the sea for prey.”
On the fourth attempt Asha spread her wings and soared. It was exhilarating, and she felt a curious empathy with the Aerieans that she had never met and the freedom their wings gave them to inhabit their vast, atmospheric domain. Adithya required even fewer attempts to adopt Asha’s technique and soon they were performing intricate soaring maneuvers before being swallowed up again by the red sphere.
Until at last the time arrived for them to trust their newfound ability without the safety net of the ship. It was time to land on an Aerie city.
CHAPTER TWENTY
It wasn’t much of a jail cell as cells go, but it was good enough. On Federation Central there were no criminals. It wasn’t that people on Federation Central were always law-abiding—or rather “regulation-abiding,” because there were no laws; in a consensus society, there is only proper behavior and improper—people who did not behave properly were returned to their home worlds, where they faced whatever fate their local customs dictated, or they were transported to prison planets, or, if neither of those options was available and the breach of behavior was egregious, exposed to the cold embrace of airless space.
What distinguished Jer’s cell then was its lack of qualities that distinguish most cells, except one. The walls were bare rock. The cell had been carved out of the barren planet on which the world-girdling structure that housed Federation Central had been built. Probably it had started as temporary housing for workers before they were able to put up more suitable quarters on the surface. After that it was used as a storeroom. Both uses meant it was very old, though it had been outfitted with a few modern conveniences, a pallet made for a larger creature than Jer, a bench, a spigot for water, and a disposer for bodily waste. But it did have one distinctive feature of cells—sturdy metal bars at one end of the space that Jer now had occupied for six months, or half a long-cycle as the Federation counted it—and a barred metal door with a lock operated remotely, probably only by command of the Pedia that controlled all the rest of Federation Central.
Jer had no visitors for the entire period of her imprisonment until the very end. The only interruptions of her solitude were the arrival of food containers under the barred door, delivered by a mindless scuttling machine, controlled by the Pedia. The machine also retrieved the used containers when Jer pushed them back under the bars, but it had no capacity for speech. That didn’t matter at first. The food was adequate—level-two cuisine, she judged, rather than the basic level-one gruel—but that didn’t matter either. She was not interested in food, or speech either, at least not for the first two months. She spent a great deal of time thinking about what she could have done differently and what the future held for her and the transcendents and the Federation, and, indeed, all sapient life in the galaxy. She had allowed her impatience at the stubborn refusal of Federation scientists to apply their special skills to the test at hand, and she had tried a dramatic shortcut to understanding. And it had landed her here, without results and without an explanation for the breach of conduct that had imprisoned her and left her helpless to affect events.
Which had led her finally to address the machine that delivered her meals. “Look,” she said in Galactic Standard. She could have used human, but she wanted to approach whoever or whatever was listening as a citizen of the Federation rather than a supplicant human. “I know you’re monitoring me, as you monitor everything else on this miserable excuse for a world you call Federation Central. I want you to know that I’m monitoring you, too, and all the other Pedias who have brought this galaxy to its sorry condition.”
The mindless serving machine went about its mindless task without a pause, but then she didn’t expect a response. A month later she tried again. “I want you to know that I represent no threat to you or to the people you serve and protect. Instead I bring hope for a better and more secure future for the Federation through new and improved technologies.”
The silence of Jer’s cell, which only her recent attempts to communicate had broken, engulfed her once more. A month later she made her final attempt, again addressing the lowly food-del
ivery servomechanism. It was, at least, something to talk to, and she was getting a little concerned about her mental state. “The Federation is facing its greatest test since Federation Central was constructed, bigger than all the wars that have threatened its consensus, including the human/Federation war. Aliens with unknown powers and intentions have invaded, and the ordinary measures that have helped the Federation survive its earlier tests no longer seem to work. You need help.”
The food-serving machine stopped in the act of sliding a food container under the barred door. “What help can a miserable, disgraced, and imprisoned human provide to a Federation that has endured and prevailed for two hundred thousand long-cycles?” it said. It had speech capabilities after all.
“The inventiveness and resourcefulness and stubborn survival characteristics of a species that has always struggled against great odds including taking on the entire Federation and fighting it to a standstill,” Jer said.
“Aided by dissident elements of the Federation,” the scuttling machine said, “and betrayal from within.”
“Only after humans had demonstrated their ability to survive Federation attacks,” Jer said. “And that elements of the Federation were willing to breach Federation consensus suggests a basic issue with Federation consensus and a growing problem with Federation creativity and tolerance for change.”
“All of which has been restored,” the machine said. It resumed inserting the food container under the bars, like a period at the end of a concluding sentence.
“And yet worlds at the edge of the Federation have fallen silent,” Jer said. “And only a few humans and a Dorian are attempting to find out why. All official Federation attempts have failed.”
The scuttling machine had returned to its previous silent state, and the Pedia, through it, was saying nothing more. That lasted another month, while Jer’s attempts to restore communication went unanswered.
She had resigned herself to more silent contemplation and had nearly completed a mental reconstruction of the Jak Machine with new fixtures capable of accepting the shapes and sizes of all Federation citizens, a simplification of its control system, and an expansion of its capabilities, when the serving machine spoke again. “The purpose of imprisonment has been served,” the machine said. “You are free to go.” The lock on the barred door clicked, and the door came ajar.
