Glorious--A Science Fiction Novel

by Gregory Benford

  “We’ve got to get you outfitted,” Redwing said. “The robos I brought down will get your gear fleshed out, repaired.”

  “Yes, sir” seemed to hit the right note. “Have you noticed”—Cliff waved—“that?”

  “All right, let’s look.”

  It appeared to be an ellipsoid of rotation. Half the crew were playing in and around it. There was no obvious point of entry. Cliff watched until he saw a recent revival, Brenda something, dive through the side. He tried it himself. The captain followed. The walls simply sensed their approach, opened in a spread circle, and snapped closed behind.

  Now what? Crew were bounding off the wall, laughing, whooping, getting the exercise they’d need after too long in low g.

  What the hell: Cliff jumped.

  Bounced off a wall. Jolted. He curled up before he struck again.

  With a good jump, you could bounce across at least twice. Cliff tried it a few times, noticed the captain just watching, Ash Trust beside him. It occurred to him to wonder, how do you get out?

  Was it a snare? Like a lobster trap?

  Bemor Prime jumped. Hit the wall with curled legs. Crossed the great gap and hit again—nope, he’d gone through the wall and out. How had he done that?

  Ash jumped. Captain Redwing jumped after him, past a flying, writhing finger snake. The air was full of flying crew. Cliff watched, and got it.

  He made his way to a wall, gathered himself, and jumped. Recoiled, flew toward another wall, and passed through it.

  Ellipsoid of rotation! An ellipse has two foci. You had to guess where they were. Jump through one focus, bounce correctly, you’d fly through the other. Then the wall would let you through.

  What a toy. Cliff laughed. He hovered nearby and watched the joyful gang cavort. Some were playing tag.

  Redwing emerged next to him. He bellowed, “Enough! Team, assemble!”

  * * *

  The team formed up a bit slowly, reluctantly. Their blessed R and R was over.

  Soon enough, they were managing the bots that carried gear and repair tools out onto the floating platform that measured a few hundred meters across, rich in greenery and even slowly splashing waterfalls that fell languidly in pond-sized droplets and gave off soft sounds like wind musics.

  Cliff hove to and Redwing circled among the team as they worked. He spoke with each in turn, murmuring as he crouched down beside them, his voice tilting into a gliding whisper at times. Cliff had to realign some gear and get inventories straight, plus some hauling bulk supplies in the low grav, but he could watch and learn from the cap’n, too. Newer crew had arrived, faces Cliff did not know, the recently revived.

  When Redwing passed nearby, Cliff asked him, “You want to start building up our team numbers here? We could use more help for sure.”

  Redwing nodded. “I need the room shipside. We should evaluate all these biospheres and decide where to put a settlement. No, make that plural.”

  “Low-grav zones won’t treat us well in the long run,” Cliff said. “But both Honor and Glory have a bit less than one grav. We saw plenty of partial-grav platforms strung out along the Cobweb axis, beautiful places.”

  Redwing nodded. “Plenty to explore here. I need a recon of Glory itself before deciding anything.”

  Bemor Prime came ambling over, always a startling sight. Cliff had to make himself not react to the spidow body, focus on the oddly shaped words coming from it. The great beast squatted to address Redwing at eye level, ignoring Cliff—which was perfectly fine with Cliff.

  Bemor Prime’s voice was slow, wheezing a bit, grave. “I must remark, Captain Sir, on my own understandings of what has occurred.”

  “Glad to hear,” Redwing said warmly, though from his expression, Cliff knew the captain felt much as he did.

  Bemor Prime settled lower. “One of the strangest matters for us to grasp about the human mind is that it can reason about unreasonable things. I have read much of your history and literature, its legends. It is possible, for example, to calculate the speed at which the sleigh would have to travel for your Santa Claus figure, apparently a jolly genius, to deliver all those gifts on Christmas Eve. Though Santa does not exist. It is possible to assess the ratio of a dragon’s wings to its body to determine if it could fly. Though your world has no flying dragons. I gather that long ago, one could decide that a yeti is more likely to exist than a leprechaun, even if you think that the likelihood of either of them existing is precisely zero.”

  Redwing blinked, clearly feeling out of his depth. “So what?” he countered gruffly.

  Bemor Prime hunkered down lower still, as if to focus on Redwing alone. Other crew had found ways to get nearer, to overhear. Cliff found it easier to look away from Bemor Prime while listening.

  “You can do detailed contemplation of impossible things. This is unusual, combined with your other mental oddity. We of the Folk have now understood that you primates do not have the access to your own Undermind, as we do. Such ability as ours is an integral element of sapience. Or so we thought. Among we Astronomer Folk, the Undermind is accessible by the conscious Overmind at will. We connect when new perspectives or fresh ideas are necessary. Among the humans, this self-awareness is truncated, leaving them shockingly unconscious of their own decision-making processes.”

  “Works for me,” was Redwing’s stern reply.

  “My point is that the mysteries we encounter, including the deaths, are aimed at the human Undermind. That is why you struggle so with the sheer size of this artifact—its unending days, its bewildering diversity of species, and its massive scale.”

  Cliff said, “I don’t get it.”

  “That is my point,” Bemor Prime said, shuffling its legs in a way that sent chills running through Cliff. The thing could not help looking dangerous to the monkey mind lurking in any human, but knowing that did not help.

  “The many species here have a different view of living,” Bemor Prime said, pealing out its words. “They learn by immersion in the real, the passing moment. They do not lecture—as, alas, I am doing now.”

  Cliff decided to let his puzzlement come out. No reason Redwing should always run the discussion, after all. “So they don’t explain themselves?”

  “Apparently so, as a matter of culture,” Bemor Prime said. “You must not think of those like the Increate as resembling your Made Minds. They are of, as your biology would term it, another phylum.”

  “Made Minds?”

  Bemor Prime spread its arms in an explanation pose. “Your Artilects. Those are wholly artificial. The Increate are more a store of minds created through life exposure. They are alive and capable, not mere storage. They have different ways of knowing. And of acting.”

  “Including killing us? Twisty just shrugged it off!”

  Bemor Prime let a ripple run through its body, a gesture Cliff could not interpret. “This seems part of their culture, as well. Sending only one representative. Indifference to our well-being. Even when we disposed of Twisty, Captain Anarok did the deed and then persisted in not explaining what was to come.”

  “She wanted to come to the Bulge herself,” Cliff said. “Jumped at the chance, I’d say—but not a whisper about why.”

  “True,” Bemor Prime said. “I sense, though, that they are pushing us toward a new way of thinking.”

  Redwing shook his head angrily. “That doesn’t explain anything.”

  Bemor Prime gave a twisty leg gesture Cliff knew meant agreement. “I believe they have foreseen that our ideas are in crisis, at least in part. That word itself comes from your Greek term krisis, which means ‘decisive moment’ or ‘turning point.’ It was especially used in a medical context as the end of a disease.”

  “Look, I don’t give a damn about some crisis coming—if there is one coming, why not just tell us?”

  Bemor Prime paused and said in a soft, sliding whispery tone, “We are in the phase of discovery those Greeks termed the moment of eureka. Approximately, ‘I found it.’ We are immerse
d in that, have some distance still to go. The Greek phase of consolidation, following eureka, is the moment of maturity. Then we will know more deeply.”

  Redwing was plainly getting angry, his reddening face scowling. “We’re losing people fast. How do we stop that?”

  “We must learn more quickly. The distinct impression I receive—and recall, I have access to my Undermind—is that this danger is not as severe as you think.”

  Redwing kept his voice tightly under control. “Plenty dead seems severe enough.”

  “I cite your own past. The phase after eureka, of krisis, is that progress leads to confusion, leads to progress, and on and on, without respite. Every one of your species’ many major advances created new problems sooner or later—more often sooner. More moments of opportunity.”

  Redwing made a rude sound. Bemor Prime took no notice and said, “These confusions, never twice the same, are not to be deplored. Rather, those who participate experience them as a privilege.”

  “A privilege?” Redwing shouted. “To die?”

  “Perhaps I chose the wrong term. I would remark, however, that a doctor who is unable to find the right diagnosis cannot simply declare the patient healed. Or dead.”

  Redwing stared at the alien for a long moment. Grimaced. Then he turned and lofted away, taking long springy jumps in the low grav.

  * * *

  Redwing calmed himself by roving among the team, just watching how they performed in this low grav, amid the high spectacle around them. He watched Viviane move as she got the fresh members integrated into the larger team. Part of this was simply social, and she was fine at that. At times she seemed more like a baroness at a cocktail party than an officer in the field. The new members were vigorous, looking around with wonder at the reaches of the Bulge stretching away. They had expected to awaken to a planet, not a construction a thousand times more rich in land and life.

  Still, Redwing knew his need to feel urgent and engaged often came across as itchy and impatient. So he let her work her ways. Supple and sincere, she was, a useful buffer.

  He thought about what Bemor Prime had said. He reflected that wild chimpanzees are very unhappy with the presence of these strange tall white apes who cover themselves up and who make these funny noises with their mouths. Maybe mere humans should let Bemor Prime and the Bowl wisdom have their say, then move on. Dealing with alien minds was not exactly diplomacy, but rather something humanity didn’t have a term for, as yet.

  The skyfish lingered nearby, its crew also sporting among the hanging gardens. They were smaller than Twisty but quite dexterous, twisting and flying in the low grav like impossible birds.

  The life here was spectacular and eerie, all at once. Redwing had lived in spinning asteroid colonies, so low grav was not new—but the infinitely tapering-away expanses were. Especially since the view of milky air was peppered with life.

  Here came an angular thing with, improbably, breasts. She moved her jaws back and forth instead of up and down, gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes. Perspectives were hard to judge, so Redwing felt a shock as the thing’s grainy skin snapped into detail and he saw this creature was the size of a skyscraper. She took a long lazy look at him and then the massive head turned away, for which he was suddenly quite grateful. She bellowed like a foghorn flourishing forth in soprano, lifted her pale forearms and thoroughly washed her face with hands like the sails of a windjammer. Then she languidly snapped her wings open and floated away with lazy flaps.

  He close-upped a dark ruddy brown plateau in the distance. It seemed wrapped in a firm, glossy envelope, and Redwing sent an object definition signal through his inbodied comm. Back came within seconds news that this was a methane colony, a separate biosphere with a reducing atmosphere and knotted black clouds. These seemed to circle in orderly fashion around clusters of glistening tall spires.

  “Welcome to our Lands of Flight,” a whispery voice said at his elbow.

  Redwing blinked; Captain Anarok had somehow arrived without even an air current. “A good name for what we called the Bulge. So much life!” He pointed at a big fat rhomboid thing flapping in place as it tore apart a poor lesser bird.

  Anarok paused, then said, “‘Humminghawk’ would be a translation from our language to your tongue. Like your hummingbird but a top predator.”

  Creatures sporting skirts of skin swam lazily toward them, chewing on flocks of unwary pink tube worms. Then a strong wind blew suddenly through, dragging mist with it. A muffled quiet fell around their shoulders like a rain-soaked blanket. A spike of ivory cloud came down nearby like a falling spear. Some birds flew into it, as if for shelter.

  Redwing wondered about the grav gradient all along the Cobweb. It was very weak here in the Bulge, where grav was nearly zero, but to its sides, grav tugged in opposite directions toward Honor and Glory. He asked Anarok about this, and she quickly pointed out that to avoid big pressure differences along the lengthy Bulge axis, which was hundreds of thousands of kilometers, they used pressure zones.

  “It resembles a series of great air locks.” She gestured proudly at the shimmering wealth in the air all around them, using four arms. “A few layers of planes for living in each, sealed off, so no big gradients in air density. The tubes we all use to move axially keep adjusting these pressure differences. I am the Captain of a giant organism—amusing that you choose to term it a ‘fish’! We call it”—a sound like an angry zipper—“which means ‘acquiescent balloon.’ We can voyage on the worlds, or in the Cobweb. We sail within a dynamic airflow structure that also transports water and species, with that pressure difference. Key is that pressure gain in one tube is transferred to power an oppositely flowing tube, since energy is conserved. What goes down must go up, in the long run. And the run is very long, between our worlds.”

  Redwing built toward his real question. “So some layers span the entire width. Others don’t, I see.”

  Anarok gestured at one, barely the size of a small town, gliding by. It was a lush jungle with a single tower jutting above. “Some are far smaller—floating island planes, separate domiciles. This is how we evolve and shelter many species.”

  “All intelligent?”

  “By no means!” Anarok gave a small laugh Redwing judged was an attempt at how a human would do it, but with odd squeaks and grunts. “We cherish a full range of biospheres. Many Smarts can change into wild Naturals.”

  Redwing bored in. “Then how does Glory—your large world—manage this?”

  “It does not. Our system runs itself on many descending scales.”

  Now for the big question. “Would you take us to Glory itself?”

  Anarok took a long time replying, staring into space. Redwing guessed she was conferring with others—but who? Beth had asked about the power structure here before, and Twisty had either twisted the question away or said their complex did not have a ready answer for that.

  Anarok said, “I must allow for evolution in responding to you. I gather—we all have, from your enormous cultural gifts to us, and from observing you in the field—you descend from the earlier cultural context of a near relative, the chimpanzee.”

  “That was six million years ago!”

  “But relevant. Homo troglodytes, your science labels them. You are Homo sapiens, I receive the term from your library. You think in terms of primate troop dynamics—the pyramid of power.”

  “Of course.” Redwing knew he was getting into deeper water here, and his knowledge in such matters was quite shallow.

  Anarok spoke carefully. “Those social structures include advantages, such as decreased likelihood of predation, defense of shared resources, better feeding efficiency, and higher success in copulation because of access to mates. The latter you have raised to high use in pair bonding—hence your fondness for romance. A reward sensation. Unlike, apparently, the chimps, who copulate only in periods of ten days and then ignore the other sex for long times.”

  Redwing smiled. “We get a lot of fun o
ut of it, gotta say.”

  “The price is significant. Linear dominance hierarchy, often with males commanding females, old ruling the young.”

  Redwing laughed. “Somehow we’ve made it work.”

  With hesitation, as if these matters were delicate, Anarok said, “I rather like that effect you have. Conveying a rapidly changing mental state, usually with pleasure or surprise. For you, triggered vocal communication conveys a wide variety of emotional states and intentions. You and your relations, chimpanzees, both employ alternating inhalations and exhalations that sound like celebrations, and at times, to us, more like lost control of breathing and panting.”

  Redwing was going to laugh at that, too, but something caught his eye.

  “What the hell is that?”

  “An observer, no more.”

  “Who’s doing the observing?”

  “A consortium of our intelligences.”

  Redwing noted that Anarok got very precise and looked away as she said this. “Beth, my team leader, reported these. Called them zingoes. What’s behind—?”

  An urgent Artilect prompt from the ship poked at his inboards. He thumbed it into his left ear as he watched the zingo. “The two odd spacecraft have approached and hailed us. They have a living outer portion of unknown use. Possibly they are alive, in some sense. Each is arrayed at the pressure boundary of the magnetic fields that clasp us. They wish us to send emissaries.”

  “Why?” Redwing waved to Anarok to show he was on comm.

  The ship’s Omnilect said, “They wish to converse and make themselves manifest in our thinking, they say.”

  “Diplomacy? Manifest? In person?”

  “They seem to so desire.” The flat voice carried no implications, as usual. “As well, they—whoever speaks we cannot discern—wish to see a maximum of two persons, to fit their biometric constraints.”

  “Sounds fishy.”

  “They are insistent. We observe they are served with resupplies as they wait. Tugs rise through the atmosphere and suckle to the ships. Be aware these are vehicles much larger than SunSeeker.”