Shipstar

Twelve

Memor watched the primate scream. She tried to lunge out of the beam and tripped. Sprawled. Gasped. The armaments team dutifully tracked her as the poor dim creature scrambled to crawl away. She kept up the sobbing little shrieks as the weapons crew tuned their large antennas further. It went on until Memor waved an impatient fan-display and the team cut off the pain beam.

The team was pleased, their feathers fluttering with joy, though they kept discipline and said nothing. They had correctly adjusted their weaponry and hit the right resonance for nerve stimulation in the alien.

“Tananareve,” Memor in her best learned accent, trying to address the primate by name in its own awkward tongue, “you can survive this level of agony for, you would say, how long?”

Free of agony, the primate leaped to her feet. Eyes narrow, mouth tight, voice high. “You torture me like a lab animal!”

“A legitimate use,” Memor said mildly, “in warfare.”

“War? We landed on your world-thing, tried to open negotiations—”

“No use to revisit the past, little one. We are on to other matters, and this experiment was useful to us.”

“How?” The primate sagged to her knees, than sat, wiping sweat from her forehead. “How can slamming me with that damn fire-beam help?”

“We need to know how to … negotiate … with those of your kind.”

“You mean fight them.”

“The opening struggle comes first, of course.”

Tananareve’s face took on an expression Memor had learned to interpret: cautious calculation. These primates managed to convey emotion through small moves of mouth, eyes, chin. They had evolved on some flat plain, apparently, without benefit of the wide range of expression that feathers conferred. Tananareve said slowly, “I’m very glad they’re still free. It means you don’t know how to deal with them.”

Memor disliked the sliding logic of this creature, but knew she had to get around it. “We need the means to bring them to order. Inflicting pain is much more … virtuous … than simply killing them, I think you will agree?”

Tananareve shot back, “Do you have anything you would die for? Your freedom to make your own way, for example?”

“No, dying seems pointless. If you die, you cannot make use of the outcome of the act.”

“Die to save others? Or for a belief?”

“I certainly would not die for my beliefs. I could be wrong.”

Tananareve shook her head, which seemed to be how these creatures implied rejection. “So you experiment on me, to see what power level of your beam works best?”

“That, and tunable frequency. How else are we to know?”

Thin lips, narrowed eyes. Anger, yes; Memor was getting used to their ways. “Don’t do it again.”

“I see no need to. You obviously felt a great terrible agony. That will suffice.”

“I need … sleep.”

“That I can grant.” In truth, Memor was tired of this exercise. She did not like to inflict stinging hurt. Yet her superior, Asenath, had commanded that a fresh weapon be developed, capable of delivering sudden sharp pain. The customary such radiator, which worked well on the Sil, had failed in the first, clumsy battle. Memor did not like to think of that engagement, which had killed the skyfish she rode in. Her escape pod had lingered long enough to witness the giant, buoyant beast writhe in air, its hydrogen chambers breached by rattling shots from the ground cannon below. Then the hydrogen ignited in angry orange fireballs and the skyfish gave a long, rolling bass note of agony. The mournful cry did not end until its huge cylindrical body crumpled, crackling with flames, against a hillside. What a fiasco!

Now Memor had to redeem herself. She could do so by developing and delivering quickly a pain projector, one that could damage the primates without overloading their nervous systems, and thus killing them. And now she had. Further, at the insistence of the weapons shops, Memor’s stroke of insight had been to carry out earlier testing on small tree-dweller primates, gathered from the Citadel Gardens for the purpose. They seemed to have similar neurological systems and vulnerabilities, and so were the optimal path to this success.

Memor swelled with pride. The trials on the Sil city had been preliminary, and it was difficult from the skyfish to discern if humans had been affected at all. But these tunings made that probable. The Sil had needed discipline, and the possibility of death-stinging the humans hiding among them was a bonus, of course.

“We will speak later,” she told the primate. “I have more interesting experiments in mind for us to work upon together.”

The primate made a noise of deep tones—nothing more than grunts, really—perhaps some symptom of a residual pain. Memor thought it best not to notice this as she departed, her small attendants and the weapons team following dutifully.

Thirteen

Memor hated when her insides wanted to be her outsides.

She did not like the testing of new weapons upon her charge, the primate. To do so made her nauseated, her acids run sour. Yet Asenath had ordered quick results quite clearly, and to preserve her position Memor had to comply. She accepted the logic, however distasteful the experience.

Looked at another way, the slap of pain did not merely withhold: the slap imparted. It conveyed precisely the knowledge of greater power withheld. In that knowledge lay the genius of using, the deep humiliation it imposed. It invited the victim to accept a punishment in pursuit of a larger purpose, one that might have been worse—that would in fact be worse if the use wasn’t accepted. The pain-slap required that the higher goal be understood.

Of course, the primates could not understand this, but in time with their Adoption that would come. If they could not be so opened, then they would have to be extinguished, well before their vagrant abilities could be a threat.

Memor relaxed a bit by regarding the aged wonders nearby as she passed down corridors and through yawning archways. The teeth of time wore long on the Bowl. By its nature it must run steadily. Engineer species must fix problems without the luxury of trial and error experimenting. That meant engineer teams relied on memory, not ingenuity. Intelligence was less vital than ready response to situations that had occurred before, and so were lodged in cultural recollection. Species had their mental abilities shaped to do this. It was the Way.

Memor thought on this as she watched some mutants being culled. They were small variants on the repair snakes, long ago acquired from a world with rapid tectonics. They had evolved swift, acute responses to those treacherous lands, a driver of their crafty intelligence. Memor had witnessed the underground cities this kind built, when allowed, in the underskin of the Bowl—labyrinths of elegance and deft taste she had been much impressed by. Memor remained surprised that these snakes had subsections of their genome that made them resist the nirvana of the Bowl. Surely here they should be endlessly joyful, for they were free of the frightening ground-quakes, foul volcanoes, and hammering ocean waves that often dashed their hopes and their subsurface homes to oblivion?

These, however, had a touch too much of their crafty independence. They were in a nearby chamber with transparent walls, where another research team had tried to correct the mental errors in the snakes. Apparently, this corrective experiment had failed. The researchers were exterminating them by gas, and Memor paused to watch the agonies of these smart serpents, who under duress flung themselves into twisting knots. It was revolting, writhing bodies and pain-stretched mouths. At least she could not hear them, as she had Tananareve’s shrieks. Gazing through the wall at this, she could not help but reflect upon the fate of the primates, should they continue to provoke.

They would face the fate of the Sil, whose rebellion had united with the renegade primates and brought down Memor’s skyfish. That had made the reprisal destruction of the Sil city inevitable—though it came first as an idea sprung from the slim though weighty head of Asenath, the reigning Chief of Wisdom.

Memor sighed and trudged on, putting the image of the snake agonies behind her. Now she must go to Asenath and confer, though she sorely disliked and feared the Chief of Wisdom, who was known to be capricious.

An oddity of long history had placed the confinement and punishment chambers together with ancient honoring sites. They were all now encased in a great Citadel that loomed above the lush green landscapes here. She lumbered past large, luxuriant stone structures of vast age, moss clinging to the doorways of crypts polished by time. Some bore blemishes of tomb raiders, but even those harsh, jagged edges had smoothed. These chambers held ancient dead who had been allowed burial, in a far-distant time when that was possible, and before the realization that all mass and vital elements must be reprocessed. Surely that was the highest honor, to be part of life eternally, not a mere oxidized relic. The bodies inside had long returned to the air, of course, with only shriveled bones remaining as a small, unharvested calcium deposit. No doubt the grave goods—ornaments and valuable family remembrance-coffers that some added to the sepulchers of that age—had disappeared long ago, at the hands of vagrant intruders. The past was the easiest venue to rob, after all.

Though not to fathom, came a vagrant sliver of thought. Memor stopped, shocked. Her attendants rustled, unsure what to do. With a feather rattle Memor bade them stand away. The sudden thrust of not to fathom carried guilt and fear wrapped around it. Memor felt the thought-voice and knew it had come lancing up from her Undermind. Something had festered there, and now propelled out, calling to her. She would have to deal with the unruly, understand what this shaft of emotion meant. But not now. She forced herself to resume her stroll, not letting her aides see her vexed condition. Best to rattle her feathers, sigh, casually move on.

She noted there were pointless messages for the unknowable future, here: TO BE READ UPON YOUR WAKING, from some lost age when minds stored in silica or cryo could, they hoped, work forth from their decay into some future with vaster, smarter resources. None awoke, for there was no shortage of minds in the Bowl. Nor of bodies, for the number of walking, talking minds was a matter of stability, not wealth. Minds were not the point of the Bowl, but the long-run destiny of the Folk was … and of course, of those lucky species who came onboard through countless Annuals of time, to help make the Bowl sail on, sail on, to witness and grasp the great prospect offered by the whole galaxy’s own vast, strange, ponderous assets. Whoever or, indeed, whatever wrote TO BE READ UPON YOUR WAKING lived in some illusion of past times. They now drifted as fragrant dust beneath Memor’s great slapping feet.

She looked around, savoring. Some mausoleums carried chiseled epitaphs noted for their charm, which may have preserved the blocky tombs’ hard carbo-concentrated walls in their revered sanctity. Here one referred to

Another was more dry:

Pleasant, to think that wit was ancient. She wished that the Chief of Wisdom Asenath had a touch of wit in her genes. One more tomb inscription caught well Asenath’s melancholy spirit:

Since this passage was carved, Memor noted, whole worlds had evolved to harbor life, and others had been scorched of life by ancient brutalities. Yet the image saw a jet-curl carve the sky endured.

Ah! Here was the entrance; no more time for rumination. Step proud and high—

Memor marched in grandly, head held high with casual grace, her attendants trailing beneath the grand arches of this Citadel of Remembrance. Herald music rumbled and sang to greet her. Pungent mists fell in tribute and out of duty she sniffed, bowed, fluttered a quick ruby tail display. Skin-caressing life fell in curling display around her, caressing her head leathers, whispering faint blessings and salacious compliments. Invitations whispered in her ears, promising succulent delights, then fluttered away. Aromas of heady prospect swarmed up her nostrils and tainted the air with ruddy promise.

Impatient, she shook these off and looked around for the right portal to find Asenath. From the court rabble here dawdling came much sensory babble, greetings, aromas, electric skin-jolts, high hails, a murmur of veiled gossip—all usefully ignored, for now, to show that she was above the insolent fray.

High ramparts trimmed in grace notes of colorful mega-flowers loomed like cliffs over the noisy gathering crowd, most of them come for the extermination ceremonies. They knew the ancient rules against recording in any medium, sight or sound or scene—a ritual death—and so came for the immediate experience. They did carry magnifier scopes and had an anxious, eager air. Skittering voices surged with a hunger that had no proper name. All these she avoided.

Administrative high offices were disguised from those unwelcome, which meant of course the crowd schooled in mere sensation—and the even greater number of the unknowing, unschooled, blunt of mind—all got shielded away by pale luminances that misled the unwary, sending them down dank corridors to their elemental raw pleasures. In such holes the halt and lame of mind would find some passing delights, and forget why they came, forget for their short vexed time the whole point of the Folk. Good enough.

Yet the dancing sheaves of prickly glow were smart sensors, and the walls knew well whom to admit. Those embedded intelligences, ever circumspect in their ways, sent fraying brilliant amber fingers to direct Memor down somber, ancient corridors. Crusty, glistening rock winked her forward past a sensor net of embedded eyes. She drew in the soft moist airs. There were always fresh changes in the Citadel, yet the Ancient Zone captured best the colossal powers lodged here. The rough stones held much elegant and courtly wisdom of ages past, canny knowledge set in stone. Memor heaved a sigh. She belonged here.

A quiet, delicious blend of dread and strangeness flowed in her Undermind; she sensed it with a tingle of relish. She forgave it the sudden lance that had jarred her, and concentrated on the immediate. That strumming presence knew that this primordial, welcoming Citadel could well be her place of execution. Should she not perform well, and fail with the primates that were fully her charge now, she would receive little mercy.

Yet this did not fully overcome her awe at the majesty here. Of course, her Undermind often used its trickster mode, slipping words and even phrases into her speech, in its keen, eager way. Jokes about Underminds escaping control were a staple of classic literature and current japes. She could feel its hopeful spikes of muted zeal and would have to keep it carefully controlled now. Though not to fathom, indeed.

Drama entered seldom in an Astronomer’s life, and for that she was grateful.

Ah! The correct portal. She entered into a small knot of Astronomers, to be greeted by feather-riffs in orange and emerald, then small trill songs that echoed complimentary status-signals. Heads turned. Eyes widened. Bass calls of friendship resounded. A shield, of course, for what all knew: Memor had been summoned and they were looking forward to the show. Anticipation danced in their eyes and neck-feather-flutters.

She had to wait while a Revealing ceremony concluded. It had been a passage of legendary ardor and travail. The recent male, unsteady and weak-eyed, now advanced toward the welcoming cadre, where she knelt with gravid solemnity. The new She looked around in a many-wrinkled face full of bewildered puzzlement. She blinked with surprise, her feather-fan awash in ripples of wonder and flourishes of muted purple hope. Memor recalled this stage, when the male dwindled away into memory and a new She emerged, dewy-eyed.

From this fresh female’s Revealing she would, through the difficult next Annuals, acquire the long views of a She, yet retain the robust memories of prancing, exploring thrill that had marked her vivid He era. Memor could not help joining in with her deep soprano the rising fulsome joy-song, full of deep welcoming tones, and from above, the high, tenor resonances—all celebrating the conferred judgment and sympathy-from-experience that the Revealing summoned forth. This new She would in time, and with much further study of the essential astrophysics and the Vast History, join the Order of Astronomers. From this essential balance—more a sure dance, truly—between the He and She, wisdom could and thus would come.

Striding forward, clumping with big solemn feet, Memor took note of this new Her-name: Zetasa. In time this new She could, and so might, bring a new, vital stabilizing element to their colloquy—a wise method evolved by the Folk over many, many twelve-millennia in the truly ancient past. This was the essential, time-honored, and stabilizing truth. She relished it.

“Memor!” came Asenath’s solemn, deep bass voice. “We have not greeted in longtimes, I do say.”

Untrue, but perhaps useful. “I greet in tribute, and wish to confer on present problems,” Memor said in long sliding tones, with a penumbral, light-yellow feather display. This drew an attendant twitter of speculation. As tradition demanded, Memor ignored the light trilling soprano chorus of conjecture.

“Which have multiplied, I gather.”

“I captured one of the primates and am learning much from her,” Memor said. “As we speak, skyfish descend upon the Sil lands, to either capture the primates remaining on the Bowl, or else kill them.”

“Ah! As Governors, we must attend to the dismay of the Bowlcrafters, who do not relish such punishments.” Asenath made a flutter-rush of red and gold to signal concern, but Memor thought it was only a pretense. Something else was in play.

“Please lead me,” Memor said to place the conversation in the right ranking order. Asenath had to take the lead.

“You showed us results of your neural net and brain interrogations of these primates, I recall. Eukaryotic multicellular bilaterians, they are, with unexposed Underminds—fascinating, I am sure. You then estimated their capacities as well below we Folk, and perhaps somewhat above others of the Adopted. Yet they continue to elude us, and now half of them have fled the Bowl.”

The attendant minor figures drew in their collective breath at this. To escape! was their clear, unspoken message. Memor made a half turn to block most of them from Asenath’s piercing gaze. She was saying, “Now they have returned to their plasma scoop starship. Do you still feel they can be integrated into our Way?”

Making a ritual humble-flush, Memor said, “Apologies most firm indeed, for my failure to retain or recapture these strange primates. I believe their curious gait—a continual, controlled toppling upon those hind feet that have thick, artificial coverings—must be a key clue to their ability to improvise. They can hop to new ideas far more readily than we anticipated. Their ability to form a quick bond-alliance with the Sil is an example—another two-footed species, I remark, which perhaps helps explains their rebellion. The primates arrived on train transport, and immediately engaged with the Sil in a battle against our skyfish. How this came about with such speed is a puzzle. Perhaps there is a species-signal here that may explain it in part.”

“I would think their two-legged forms were adaptive on a more aggressive and quick-fighting world.”

“So … you would urge extermination.”

Asenath saw she had been maneuvered into a hasty conclusion, always a mistake. “Perhaps not immediately. Their ship has interesting features of magnetic control I and others feel would be useful to examine.”

“Ah, wise. Perhaps a consultation, then?” Memor motioned Asenath into a speaking cloister. She took the feather-flush hint. They made it seem they were merely strolling as they spoke. Memor dropped the shimmering, electric-blue sonic cloak behind them once in the narrow confines, where luminous walls gave a warm green glow.

“I did not want to refer to our continuing trouble with the jet flare guidance,” Memor said.

“You venture that primates could help somehow?” Asenath’s neck fringe fluttered with skepticism.

“They are inventive—”

“Surely you do not imagine that we could allow them to touch what is most sacred and vital to the Bowl!”

“I was trying to—”

“The very idea would be transparent heresy to some of the Folk.” A slow, studied gaze, no feather signals at all. “Perhaps … including me.”

There was surely danger here. Asenath’s feather tones shifted from bright attentive colors of rose-purple and olive into hues tending toward pewters and subdued solemn blues. They rustled, too, with an air of menace. Betrayal by Asenath could take several avenues, all hard for Memor to counter. So—admit failure, and do so quickly and first.

“I mention that possibility only because my own narrow escape—when they and the Sil attacked my starfish—was essential. I had learned that the primates could quickly use the chemically driven Sil weaponry. Our assault teams needed to hear that. The primates are swift, original, unpredictable. I wished to report this firsthand—”

“Your death at their hands would have carried the same message,” Asenath said dryly.

Without hesitation at this sally, Memor said, “I brought recordings, Wisdom Chief, to analyze—”

“Which show that these Late Invaders are erratic, impulsive, volatile, capricious—yes, all qualities we Folk have suppressed, in order to preserve the Bowl of Heaven. Yet these very same Late Invaders you now propose to use, to harvest, to—”

“No, no! I think they could show us new technologies, aid us—and perhaps bring word of a world we do not know, have never visited.”

“And then?”

“Of course, if they cannot be Adopted into our society, then they and their odd ship must be erased.”

Asenath gave a subtle fan-salute, undercut with a skeptical throat-wash of dubious red. “I must say, Attendant Astute Astronomer, that you maneuver well here in chambers, though alas, not on the battlefield.”

“I was not commanding the skyfish!”

“I hear otherwise.…”

Too late, Memor recalled giving orders to the skyfish Captain. She had been unnerved while the simple Sil artillery hammered loud and strong at the great beast’s walls. There was some panic then, before the hydrogen vaults were breached. Only her own quick commands had gotten her into her pod. Her parting sally to the doomed Captain had been, Soon we shall have no further disputes. I will have my pod now. The Captain had of course not appreciated the ironic tone. Memor had not looked back as she quickly departed. The Captain had gone to his proper reward.

Memor had been a bare short distance from the lumbering gray-skinned beast when a Sil shot struck a girder-bone and ricocheted into a hydrogen vault, then through the outer wall. Surely that had been a lucky shot, which Memor witnessed at a distressingly close distance. The hard slam of the exploding hydrogen had very nearly thrown her fleeing pod into a fatal yaw and tumble. She had shuddered as the skyfish bellowed a long, hoarse cry, realizing its imminent death.

Memor sensed she had been silent too long, reflecting on the sudden memory welling up. Her Undermind had not processed those harrowing moments then. But now was not the time to dally over the past. “I made a few suggestions to the Captain, all in the heat of the moment.”

“It became even more heated as you escaped,” Asenath said with brittle brevity, eyes narrowed.

“Had I not, you would know little of the engagement.”

“You are aware that you are already in disfavor?”

“I know that my efforts have not been widely recognized. These primates are difficult to reason with, for their mental structures suffer primitive modes we have not dealt with for a great while.”

“At least you recaptured one of those who escaped in the original party. Yet the others now divide into two groups: those ones we have never captured, somewhere among the Sil, and as well a party of four, who escaped the Bowl entirely, and now return to their ship. This last is most infuriating. Their ship somehow glides just below the firing field of view of our gamma ray lasers on the Rim.”

“Yes, most regrettable.” Memor made an apologetic display of amber and blue gray, rippling her feathers to convey remorse. “I did note that our defenses are deliberately unable to be aimed downward at our Bowl, and this decision was made by Elders long ago, after the Maxer Rebellion.”

“Your history is correct. Alas, the Maxer Movement is not completely extinguished, and I fear this flaw in our defenses can be laid at their door.”

“I did not know!” Memor did not have to pretend; this was indeed bad news, a defense flaw coming at the worst time, with Late Invaders at large.

“It is not your matter, Memor. Concentrate upon the Late Invaders.”

“You mean, capture and kill?” That would be easiest, and would get Memor out of the spotlight. Though she would regret their loss, for they were intriguing in their odd mysteries.

“No! I felt that way before, but there are now new issues. To understand, and keep these discussions secure, we must visit the Vaults.”

Memor felt a tremor of unease ripple up from her Undermind. Grave matters came to those who had to consult the Vaults. “But why?”

“That you must ask Unajiuhanah, Keeper of the Vault Library.”

The idea itself was puzzling, and filled Memor with dread.

Fourteen

About Unajiuhanah there was a timeworn joke, that she loved to sing the ancient songs at public events, even at funerals. Asked if she had performed at a recent high burial, Unajiuhanah answered no, and the riposte was, “Then it was a merciful death indeed.”

“Compliments to you, Asenath,” Unajiuhanah began with a ritual rippling feather salute in gray and violet. This achieved the feat of representing the Great Seal of the Vaults in an actual fluttering picture, a striking image on Unajiuhanah’s high fan display. Memor could even see a jittering vague white patch that stood for the formal writing of ancient times, indecipherable now but signifying the weight of vast history. It shimmered like a mute reminder of the long purpose of the Bowl and thus of the Vault.

Asenath introduced Memor, which proved unnecessary as Unajiuhanah brushed aside a summary of Memor’s life details and turned to address her directly.

“Memor, I will entertain your notions because I knew your great ancestors and feel I owe them some indulgence. Indeed, I live because a certain fine SheFolk many generations ago stood and fought against an insurrection that very nearly toppled all order in this Vault. That ForeFolk stands before me now, represented by a minute genetic fraction—in you, Memor.”

“I am most grateful,” Memor said with a simple mild flourish of ruby, embarrassed neck-fringe.

“Now I have a surprise of sorts for you, to bring you into our deliberations. Here is your other self.”

Unajiuhanah paused, her voice rising to call, “Bemor, come forth.”

“Be More” Memor heard, the very name plunging her backwards into her young days—while her eyes fixed on the big, somewhat ungainly senior male that was … she saw, breathing hard … herself. At least, genetically. Bemor! Lost brother! They had been separated long before Memor went through the Revealing. Now with “Bemor” she heard again the joke between the two of them. It had been funny then while young but had turned sour many twelve-cubed Annuals ago … Be More. More than Memor. Be smarter, swifter, know more, exert power, fathom more deeply, stand taller, command power. Be More.

“Brother!” Memor called, for Bemor had not suffered the Revealing’s agonies and transformations—all done in their youth, by high design. Be more … be male.

“I thought this meeting should best come as a surprise, or else one or the other or even both of you would surely dodge it.” Unajiuhanah gave a mirthful display, fluttering ruby breast-feathers discreetly. Clearly she was enjoying this.

“Your great turbine of a mind reports you well,” Bemor said as overture. “I’ve sensed your reports. Quite complex and deep.”

“Sensed?” Memor realized her own whole-mind scans, carried out routinely to monitor performance, were not private. Usually they were, but of course not in matters of high security.

“They are also quite entertaining,” Bemor said. “You remember well, and your Undermind is a source of insight. The facts you confronted alone are high drama. I could scarcely imagine such odd aliens as these Late Invaders. What zest!”

“You mean, how did I let them escape?”

“No, I mean they have a crafty nature we could use.”

Memor was sure Your great turbine of a mind was an ironic salute, but best not to draw Unajiuhanah’s attention to it. “If we can Adopt them, perhaps—”

“I think not. Too unstable, as species go. They can be better used to carry out our larger cruising agenda.”

This was new, beyond the time-honored precepts of the Astronomers, and indeed, of all other castes. Larger cruising agenda? Memor should be shocked, she knew, but had no time for that now. “I acted to constrain their actions, under Asenath’s direction.”

Bemor waved this aside with a cluster-flourish in green and sea blue. “Those orders now vanish. There is new wisdom, falling upon us from the stars.”

Memor contented herself with a fan-feather gesture and let Asenath carry the conversation. She was still staggering mentally from the sudden meeting of her near-self: the path not taken, if somehow she could have stayed a male. Bemor had a quick, brusque way of saying things that swept away the niceties of diplomacy and polite evasion. Quite male. Best to change direction.

“I was discussing how I was forced to carry forward the reconnaissance of the Sil, who had sheltered the primates. They proved better at bringing down our skyfish with their simple chemical cannon, admittedly. I—”

“Fled, as you should.” Bemore spoke kindly, shuffling his large feet in a faint echo-dance of welcome—to soften what was to come? “The primate ingenuity combined nonlinearly with that of the Sil, who were always an irksome and crafty kind.”

“Destabilizing,” Asenath added, “still.” But then she backed away, as if to let the twins negotiate their own newfound equilibrium. So did Unajiuhanah, with a muted bow. Memor saw this meeting was arranged to divulge information, in a way slanted to make best use of the perpetual jockeying for position in the Astronomer hierarchy—and of course, in the status of the Vaulted, who tended the most ancient records, integrating them with the emerging new.

So, take the momentum away from them. “What new wisdom intrudes?” Memor chose to use an ancient saying, said to come from the Builders, though across the sum of Bowl eras, no one truly knew.

“We fathom more of the gravitational waves, and their true origin,” Bemor said.

“As I recall, they come from Glory, or from some source well beyond,” Memor said, for this had been the received wisdom from before she was born.

“Not so,” Bemor said. “Not beyond. The source is in the immediate Glorian system.”

“There is no plausibility, as some argued, that the gravitational waves came from a chance coincidence in the sky? From some cosmological source far away?”

“Not even close. I see your early education has been a waste of time.”

Memor knew this gibe, a lancing shot at her earlier ranking in the rigorous status queue of the elect, pre-Astronomer examinations. Quadlineal calculus had always eluded her somehow, and Bemor had never let her forget it.… She now had to get back some position in this conversation playing out before their elders.

“But surely there cannot be heavy masses moving near a planetary system. That would render unstable the orbits of any planet nearby—”

“No, that must now be considered untrue. Facts say otherwise. We have heard from our Web trading partners.”

“What can they—?”

Bemor beamed, yet kept to his clear, factual mask. “You may recall some long Annuals ago we asked them to erect gravitational wave antennas to concentrate upon Glory. They have so done, and with felicitous trading strategies, we have secured their data.”

Very well, play for time. And think. “I did not know that. Expensive, I suppose?”

Bemor was enough similar that Memor could easily read the quick, darting expressions in feather-flutter—quill rattle, spines flexing so hues slid from steel blue to indigo sheen—that bespoke anticipation of an opportunity to make a veiled boast.

Asenath raised some pink neck-rustle as a deft, ironic signal. Memor realized this was what some intimates of the court termed Status Opera, the only true game when the social structure must remain static, for the sake of Bowl stability. Maneuver for position, yes, but carefully, deftly, for the system must always endure, above all.

Bemor was in his element, and so took his fulsome time. “I engaged three other Galactic Web partners, one of whom knew nothing of gravitational waves whatever, and how to detect them. As expected, those who did know had technologies smaller and less sensitive than ours.”

Bemor delivered this in a flat, factual way, almost offhand, and with a subtle wing-shrug—a good precursor to a revelation. Memor appreciated the method, as it was hers as well. They were twins, after all.… Though Bemor seemed to do it with more verve, as if knowing their audience would approve verve.

“I had to trade valuable arts and science to induce their cooperation,” Bemor said. “We barter and gain, delayed for many Annuals, of course. I employed a rich trading language to describe our wants, and used the artificial, intelligent agents we had installed in those societies long in the past.”

Memor was at a disadvantage here, since she had learned little of such distant diplomacies. She did know that the Ancients had seen value in establishing agents, transferred as sealed minds in code, to distant worlds. Interstellar commerce over huge distances made sense only if exchange of knowledge—arts, science, engineering, the equivalent of patents—could be traded for some return value. Such a market occurred, mediated among artificial intelligences run solely inside mutually agreed upon containment: the Mind Province established among alien societies. Elaborate protocols ensured that no artificial intelligences could run outside the Mind Province. They were safe there, too, to run their code without corruption. This protected Bowl secrets from the alien locals, and in turn, the local infosphere from the agent.

“I chose truly distant worlds for two reasons,” Bemor said. “They had to be displaced from our trajectory, so that we could gain triangulation on Glory. I then—”

“You transmitted double-encrypted?” Asenath demanded. “You are sure the gravitational wave signatures were unwrapped in secrecy by our sequestered agent?”

“I received the coded instant return notice, yes. I got it back many Annuals before the official trading partner even acknowledged receipt.”

“Meaning? That they pondered it long before even notifying us?”

Bemor was not disturbed by these thrusts; he seemed bemused. “Caution is admirable, do you not think so? The first reply came from an insectoid civilization, apparently hungry for further astronomical knowledge. They trade such wares eagerly and built the needed detectors with speed.”

“How distant are they?”

“Over a twelve-squared light-Annuals, at a high angle with respect to our trajectory. The second reply came from a similar distance and a different, large angle. We paid them with techno-lore, methods our prior history implied would interest them. These were duly lodged in the host species’ banking system. Credits not spent locally may be transmitted, securely encrypted, between solar systems, of course. Then came a third reply, also willing.”

Bemor made to condense around them a shimmering shell display of the realm around the Bowl. The three agreeable trader stars shone bright yellow, all at considerable angles away. One lay very nearly parallel to the Bowl, along the trajectory axis they followed, ending in Glory. The simulation showed message flags denoting ongoing info-commerce transporting among all three, as well as their links to the Bowl.

“So they set to work, these trade partners—”

“Ran their gravitational wave detectors. Learned our skills. And nailed firm the site of the waves. It is in our destination system—Glory.”

Memor said slowly, “Agents do amass more and more knowledge about their host species. They report back. Do these worlds have any opinion about the cause of the waves?”

Bemor looked pleased, with a body-flutter of magenta flush. To Memor this was a giveaway: a salute, really, as if to say, I recognize!—you can leap ahead, see what’s coming. “They could not resist diagnosing the long wavelengths and their resonances. And … there are messages within.”

Asenath gasped and could not resist: “Saying what?”

Bemor’s elation collapsed, his neck wattles compressing to thin red layers. “We do not know. These, too, are apparently deeply encrypted.”

Memor felt a tremor of awe, that emotion mingling fear and wonder, so seldom sensed in a calm, regular life. It swept her like a tidal slap. “Sending coded messages, by oscillating huge masses to make waves of gravity itself?—in organized ways? That is…” She was about to say, impossible—but caution ruled. “… improbable, in the extreme.”

Asenath added wryly, “We are approaching something strange and perhaps quite dangerous. Glory seems innocuous, but they send gravitational messages—somehow. The escaped primates are headed that way, too—or were, until they decided to land upon the Bowl of Heaven. They seem—” She preened with an oddly insulting fan-gesture, ominous and foreboding. “—ambitious.”

Memor decided not to rise to the bait. “They are able and may be of use.”

Unajiuhanah came in then with a gentle, sad wing-shrug. “I enjoy your sparring, but there are larger issues, you twins.” A nod to Asenath, to proceed. “Our larger cruising agenda, recall?”

Asenath said, “The Glorians, as we term them, have sent an electromagnetic signal.”

“Directed at us?” Unajiuhanah prompted.

“I … suppose.” Asenath looked puzzled.

“There is no distinction in spatial coordinates between the Bowl and the primate star rammer,” Bemor said. “That may explain the content.”

“Which is?” Memor asked, impatient with this parrying.

“Cartoons,” Unajiuhanah said. “Such as primitive cultures employ. They might as well be painted on cave walls, but for the fact that they move. Showing violence, often physically improbable.”

Silence. “I would truly like to know some way to discover if these abject signals are insulting, from a culture that has devolved so deeply that it thinks these are useful, or even amusing.”

Bemor said, “Beings who can hurl huge masses to make messages would not be so. All our knowledge of cultural evolution, gathered in your archives, Unajiuhanah, says so.”

“I would so believe,” Unajiuhanah said simply.

“Or else…” Memor hesitated. “We are mistaken in our assumptions.”

“Whatever can you mean?” Asenath said with a nasty rebuke-rustle.

“Suppose they are not sent to intersect us, or the star rammer.” Memor envisioned the line of sight—Glory, the Bowl, and upon it the alien ship, orbiting above … and beyond, at an unknown distance, farther from Glory … “The Glorians may be transmitting to hail and instruct, and so to warn … the primate home world.”

“But then—” Bemor hesitated. Fevered rattles came from his wing, a note of harried distress at what he glimpsed.

Imagination helps, Memor realized. The insight had come from her Undermind, direct and unsaid until now.… She felt a rumble of discontent from deep within her—of knowledge pent up, unexpressed, and so vagrant and wild. Fear surged in her, but she suppressed it, focused on the moment. She had been in a duel with Bemor here, and now there was a sally she could use, at last, an advantage coming from within, uninspected, yet sure, she felt, sure.

Memor said, not without some pleasure, “They are afraid not of us, but of the humans.”