Shipstar

Nineteen

As soon as Memor sat down, she noted that the Late Invader Tananareve was carefully watching the bulk of Contriver Bemor settle into place. Bulging eyes, lips tight-pressed and white, body tensed as if ready to flee—Tananareve showed the classic primate fear signals.

Fair enough; being the smallest creature in the ample cavern, more slight even than Serf-Ones, must draw up primordial dreads of being trampled. Memor tossed Tananareve some glossy sweatfruit to ease her trembling. She took it, bit, considered the taste. Gave a small smile. No sign of gratitude, however.

Intelligence generally emerged on worlds only after earlier forms exploited the advantages of being large, slow, and stupid. Size was a ready defense inspiring no selection pressure toward more complex neuro systems and forward-seeing capability. Indeed, Memor had learned about such creatures as Tananareve in her study immersions. They were among the class that built models of their external world, all the better to predict where food might lie, or what predators would do, and still later, what others of their kind would think of them. Somewhere along that axis of change their internal models learned that other creatures also had models running behind their anxious eyes. Thus emerged advanced societies.

“We merely wish to question you about aspects of your species,” Memor said as a preliminary.

“That last session—where you ‘slapped’ me with that pain gun? Was that asking questions?”

“You understand, we were developing—quite successfully, I must remark—a tool to use in making contact with the others of your kind.”

“They’re still alive?” The primate seemed to honestly doubt.

“Of course. They are taking their pleasure with travel about our vast lands.”

“You haven’t caught them, have you?”

One of Tananareve’s least attractive qualities, as a medium-level intelligence, was her way of leaping ahead in a discussion.

“We have not exerted sufficient effort to capture them, if that is what you mean. They did elude us at the very moment we took custody of you Late Visitors. We decided to let them remain at large, as experience of our wonders is the best lesson we can give.”

“Do you understand our word ‘smug’?”

“I do. Our reading of your entire dictionary—both active that you use, and passive that you merely recognize—shows you have levels of nuance.”

Memor had meant this as a compliment, but Tananareve gave a dry little cackle that meant derision.

“I think you should consider our relative status before invoking your ‘smug’ word.”

“Ummm. Smug is as smug does.”

This elliptical remark brought a dismissive rumble from Bemor. Memor’s twin, though still held at the male First Life, let his words sprawl forward, languid, as if he wished the small audience to savor them. “We desire your counsel, little smart monkey. Your fellows have done harm to several castes, from Serf Prime to even a few at the lower rungs of the Folk. All this—” Abruptly Bemor belched out a bass snarl. “—because they would not submit to diplomatic engagements.”

Tananareve laughed again. “Loud bluster is still just bluster.”

Memor admired how Bemor did not allow emotion to flare further in his speech. This was evidence of an Undermind fully and well integrated, unlike the turmoil Memor felt bubbling up from her own. His voice and feather display suddenly smoothed, becoming a cool refrain. “I wish you all now to focus upon our slow, steady response to the Glorian crisis. This goal we have long sought, for it is the plentiful world long observed but never understood—and so we pursue it.”

“Because we seek the origin of the gravitational messages,” Asenath interjected. “And now, the electromagnetic sendings from Glory are so simple, we can at least decipher those. Yet they do not speak to us.”

Bemor allowed this interruption, though only marginally within conversation protocols, and gave a feather-rush of agreement. “Indeed. As we approach, suddenly these Late Invaders appear in our skies. So arrive the primates in their adroitly engineered magnetic funnel fusion rammer—and we receive a message from our destination. The simple drawings carried in electromagnetic codings are of the primates, not of the Bowl. These two events are not coincidences. They come so very close together in the great abyss of galactic time.” Bemor reclined in his chute, easing his bulk. “The Glorians convey a strange warning message. As Memor noted, they warn away these smart monkeys, but not we of the Bowl. So we must act. The vectors of our circumstance demand so.”

Memor turned to Tananareve. “Your expedition knew none of this?”

“Right,” Tananareve said, eyeing them both warily. “Your—what do you call it?—Bowl, that was enough.”

Memor began, “Their story is that they did not suspect our presence or trajectory. As well, their ship lacked supplies—”

“I know all that.” Bemor gave a feather-fan shrug. “And their star ramship rode a prow of ionization that absorbed the microwave emissions we saw, so they could not have received them in flight. Their own communications are simple digital amplitude-modulated laser beams—and those are directed back toward their star, not ahead.”

He waved an arm-fan at Tananareve. “You have said your ship did not receive messages from your home world for a long time, then did. Why?”

“Political instability, we think. We did send reports, but apparently our people went through a phase of no interest in the interstellar expeditions.” She sat stiffly, Memor noted, as though reluctant to admit this.

Bemor looked skeptical, his eyes turned upward derisively—though Memor knew Tananareve could not interpret this. “Why this lack of concern?”

Bemor saw this primate was unable to follow their discourse, and so waxed prolific in his remarks. Memor cocked a scarlet at him in ironic interest, for this was unusual for him. Bemor said, “We have only a few long-flight expeditions, such as this one. Most are from stars we pass nearby, who see us in their night sky. Those mount an expedition, those who have interplanetary abilities. In that sense, we inspire progress among slumbering civilizations, simply by appearing to them in passing. Those that have arrived had great trouble living in the biospheres they found. Microbial mismatches, food-production difficulties, and some unknown health problems.”

“But we did receive a message about the time we discovered your … Bowl.”

Tananareve was still edgy, and yielded this information only, Memor saw, because she feared Bemor. Something about an inherent caution with males? Bemor’s rank musk was a bit overpowering. Or had the earlier pain gun incident made this primate more willing to cooperate? If so, it had been a good move.

“Ah. The primates did not expect to receive signals from Glory, suggesting that this is their first attempt to reach that star. So—” Bemor turned to Tananareve and whispered in her tongue. “—I hope you are telling true?”

She returned his gaze. “Right, we’re the first expedition. Your Bowl … We knew none of this.”

“You had no plan when you invaded our paradise?”

Tananareve snorted. “The team I was in, Beth Marble’s team—until we escaped, we had as much control over what happened as a kitten does in a clothes dryer. Cliff’s team is showing you what we can do, I hear.”

Bemor gave a bemused eye-flutter with his delicate purple fringe. “I saw in your vessel a high level of ingenuity, more than expected of First Stage intelligences.”

“Which is…?

“Curiosity, as you display in that admirably simple phrase. Artifice in magnetic engineering, particularly the ingenious flux conservation mechanism in your scoop. We have studied it, following the fluorescence of decaying ions, and so mapped your magnetic artifice. Your configuration can navigate on the skimpy ion density gathered from our star. Admirable!”

Tananareve blinked, unsure how to respond. Memor began, “I, too, am surprised that you manage to—”

“Moving on,” Bemor said, turning away from Tananareve and Memor alike, “I believe you, Asenath, have questions for the primate?”

Asenath fluttered forward—glad of some attention, finally, Memor guessed. She questioned Tananareve, with Memor supervising occasionally, and learned nothing new. Bemor became bored. They were still close enough in manner—since, after all, they shared the same genetics—for Memor to know that Bemor was remaining politely present, but in fact was importing signals from elsewhere in the Citadel. Perhaps from superiors?

“This Late Invader is most useful for studies of the structure of her mind,” Memor said, trying to introduce what was for her the most original Late Invader trait, their submerged and unreachable unconscious.

But Asenath went on, her agenda becoming apparent. “The message from Glory is aimed at primates. The Glorians think primates are running the Bowl!”

Cackles, hoots, coughs, and murmurs. General hilarity, even among the assistants, who normally suppressed any show. “Good!” Asenath said. “Let them keep that misapprehension. Make the true rulers, ourselves, unpredictable.”

“We surely are that,” Bemor said sardonically. Yet something in his tone conveyed ironic skepticism.

Asenath made a submission-display flutter, but it was unconvincing. “Ideal setting for an entire suite of deception-maneuvers, yes. We will need cooperation of the primates to bring this off.”

Bemor turned to the primate and said in its tongue, “You follow this?”

Memor was surprised that Bemor articulated the alien fricative consonants quite well, directing breath with his tongue over the sharp edge of the teeth and into the capture hollows of his cheeks. It gave Bemor a solemn, echoing way of pronouncing the rather simple constructions the primates could manage. Memor had taken several sleep-times to master that, and her words still came out reedy and thin. Worse, the primate understood Bemor immediately, saying, “I don’t know your language.”

So Bemor gave a guarded version of their conversation, keeping it minimal, giving away nothing, omitting of course anything the primate could use. Artfully done, Memor had to admit.

Tananareve’s first comment was a question. “What about the light-speed problem?”

Bemor said, “We think long. Perhaps few of us will live to arrive near Glory.”

“So you want to reply to their signal? Deceive them?”

Memor felt the primate showed insufficient respect for their company, but Asenath chose that moment to recover some role in the conversation. “My team is putting together a response for Glory. No great hurry, but there may be a time limit.”

Tananareve shot back, “What if the Glorians send out an exploring expedition of their own?”

“We can surely see it well in advance and defend properly,” Asenath said with a fan-flutter in ivory that said, Such is obvious.

“You know about the gravity waves, right?”

Bemor said, “You imply, we should be wary of what weapons might they have?”

Tananareve stood, stretched, plucked some sweatfruit from an ample bowl. A show of indifference? Perhaps this was all the primate could do, since it could not give feather displays or more subtle signals. With a mouth partly full of the fruit—a grave social error for the Folk—she said, “Well, I sure would be.”

“I believe,” Asenath said, “and Contriver Bemor may amend this, that the Lambda Spear can be revived?”

Bemor made a ring-show of blue and green, meaning “yes,” for he knew the primate could not grasp this.

“What’s that?” Tananareve said.

“It is a truly terrible device, able to alter the fundamental constants of a small region of space-time, upon command,” Memor put in.

Her eyes widened. “You use this … how?”

“With great care, obviously,” Bemor said. “We can project such an effect only over long distances, so to avoid being in the realm affected. It is appropriate for defense on a system-wide scale.”

“It comes to us,” Memor added, “from the Time of Terror.”

“I’d love to hear the story,” Tananareve said.

“I can show you a worked example of how we avoid such dark times, soon enough,” Asenath said with a mild feather-rustle. “I have an appointment at a Justice Rendering. Duty summons.”

Twenty

Cliff and the others were glad to get back into the warmer precincts of the Bowl underground. They rested in a large view space that gave them warmth, yet through a broad portal gave a closer view of the “vacuum flowers,” as Irma termed them. They ate the food they carried, and the Sil leading them brought water from a small delivery system lodged in the hard rock walls. The Bowl’s outer hull was intricately woven through with passages, rooms, narrow little living quarters, and shops for what looked like repairs. As well, they passed by warrens that seemed to be where the finger snakes lived and worked. In some of the shops, snakes wearing harnesses labored at rack arrays, doing metal and electronics work. They were intense little creatures of glistening, gunmetal blue skin, beady eyes focused at close range on implements usually smaller than a finger—a human finger, not the bigger boneless ones the snakes used.

“Y’know,” Aybe said, “it’s kind of reassuring that in this incredible place, they’re making flanges and hex joints, pressure sleeves and shafts with ball joints.”

“Engineering,” Terry said, “is a universal.”

Some of the snake teams were working now on a large, intricate wall. They worked with a fevered energy, clacking and hissing to each other and slithering adroitly over copper arrays. This wall lay behind where the humans watched the dim landscape of the hull. Hull ice was thick here, and vacuum flowers lapped against the transparent portal. Cliff touched the window and had to snatch his hand away at a sudden sharp pain. He feared it was so cold, his fingers would freeze to it. Quert had said there were multiple vacuum layers in these transparent walls, but the cutting cold came through.

“That’s it,” Aybe said, “these corridors are below the mirror zone. We’re at the edge of a big mirror area, too. This whole section of the Bowl must be chilly.”

It seemed so. So the land beyond was extremely cold, dotted with rock that formed roofs over areas of gray ice steeped in dark. Following Quert’s advice, Irma played her laser beam, set on dispersed mode, into those dark spaces. In this flashlight mode, they were surprised to see odd, ivory-colored things moving with agonizing slowness.

Aybe asked what these were. “On our way here we saw bizarre life-forms feeding on ice, but those—”

Irma said, “Those slow creatures with mandibles and eyestalks, yes—like lobsters, but living in high vacuum and low temperatures.”

Terry eyed the moving gray things. “These shapes are amorphous. More like moving fluids.”

“Ice life,” Quert said. “Kin to ice minds.”

Irma said, “So, ah … You brought us here to…”

Quert let the silence lengthen, then said, “Sil want speak.”

“To…?”

“Ice minds.”

“What can we do?” Irma asked.

“Ice minds speak to you.” Quert made eye-moves that might imply hope or expectation; it was still hard to tell.

“Won’t they speak to you?” Terry asked.

“Not speak Adopted.”

Irma said, “You mean, species brought onboard the Bowl? Why not?”

“Ice minds old. Want only new.”

“Y’know, those blobs in the shadows are moving, together. Toward us,” Aybe said.

“Watchers,” Quert said. “Allied with ice minds.”

Cliff said, “So you were ignored before—,” and saw that now the vacuum flowers were opening and turning. “Why … why are those doing—?”

Quert gestured at the vacuum flowers that abandoned their slow sweep of the sky, dutifully tracking nearby stars for their starlight. They rotated on their pivot roots toward this transparent wall.

The company fell silent as the flowers began to open fully, from their tight paraboloid shapes that focused sunlight on their inner chemistry. Slowly they nosed toward the wall where humans and Sil watched. As they did so, they blossomed into broad white expanses, each several meters across.

“They’re really large,” Irma said. “Still hard to imagine, plants that can live in vacuum, and bring in starlight from over a large area. To feed … Quert, did you mean these flowers provide energy for the whole biosphere living out there, on the hull?

Quert simply gave eye-signals, apparently a “yes.” Then the Sil said, “Commanded by cold minds,” and would say no more.

The thin glow of the jet brimmed above the horizon here, and some flowers seemed focused permanently on that. It seemed an unlikely source of much energy, for the plasma was recombining and emitting soft tones in blue and red. On the other hand, that was steady though weak and some flowers had perhaps evolved to harvest even such dim energies.

They were all transfixed as the radiators spread open and completed their pivot toward the humans. There was silence broken only by the faint sound of air circulating, as the field of flowers—Cliff swung his head around to count over a hundred within view—then began to pulse with a gray glow. Behind the flower field the stars still wheeled, cutting arcs in the black. The humans stood mutely watching, their heads tilted up to see the spreading flowers, who in turn clung to the rotating hull. The gray glow built slowly, the whole flower display assuming a shape like a giant circle flecked with light, staring at them. Cliff felt a chill wash over his skin that was not from the temperature. This is truly alien.…

A pattern began to emerge. In the dim light their eyes had adjusted, and so the brighter flower circles made blotchy spots while the darker flowers accented a contrast … and the entire array began to form a speckled image.…

A picture came into view. Irma gasped. “It’s Beth’s face—again!”

The picture was crude because there were fewer pixels to be had from the flowers, but still Cliff found it unsettling. He gazed at the cartoon of Beth Marble while others talked on. Finally he said, “Reasonably close, too. Whoever commands these vacuum flowers knows the method they used with the mirror zones. They’re using this to get our attention.”

Quert gave a rustle of agreement. “Ice minds.”

“At least her lips aren’t moving,” Terry said. “That gave me the creeps.”

“So … no message,” Aybe said. “Just a calling card.”

Quert looked around and pointed to the wall behind them. The snake team was still working, this time with some armatures like waldoes. They had somehow extruded a flat tank from the wall, and snakelike machine arms were completing it. This was not repair but construction. They worked by coaxing features from a substrate that simmered with flashes of orange light. The whole working team was laboring with new members. A big lizardlike thing of crusted hide had four tentacles, each of which alone was larger than a finger snake, fissioning into more small ones that snakes did not have. Cliff watched one use fingernails, too, that deformed into helical screwdrivers, snub pliers, a small hammer. It was trimming away and adjusting features freshly drawn from the wall. Cliff glanced back at the Beth portrait, still frozen in a smile. When he turned, the work team was slithering away across the wall, as the central oval they left brimmed with orange glows.

Letters and then words seemed to drift to the surface of the wall, as if bubbling up from deep ocean water.

“It’s Anglish,” Terry said. “How do they know?”

“Ice minds,” Quert said. Across the Sil’s face—and across those of the other Sil with them, who had been quiet all along—the skin stretched and warped, framing the eyes. Did this mean joy? Fear? Impossible to tell. But there were no other signs of concern in the body, which remained still.

The script ran slowly.

We have ranged the Deep and kept history near.

We are not of you carbon-children of thermonuclear heat and light.

We ride here to preserve the greatness you have found now.

Long ago we shaped this traveling structure, when the warm folk came to us from deep within the whirlpools that girdled our suns. The warm folk gave us tools to build large. Some of us stayed among the comets, but we here have clung to the Bowl. We live through eons of time, and so have seen the many thousands of faces intelligence can assume. We dealt with them in turn. We are the Bowl memory.

Irma said, “This looks like a prepared lecture.”

Aybe nodded. “Must be. They’ve used it before. I guess if there are thousands of years between passes nearby other stars, you work up an all-purpose greeting.”

Terry smiled. “Boilerplate, huh? This doesn’t look like a greeting, though. More of an announcement, I’d say.”

“Intended to awe, yep,” Cliff said.

“As if this place didn’t impress us enough? Their Anglish is good,” Irma said. “They must have access to the Folk’s experience. But are we missing a point? These—Ice Minds—claim they built the Bowl.”

“Shaped it. Designed it, maybe,” Terry corrected her. “After intelligent warm life found them. After they ranged through the solar system and then the planets of this other little companion sun, after they worked their way into … would you say a mutual Oort cloud? And found these forests of supercold life. And the Ice Minds used them for engineering.”

“Or they could be bragging,” Cliff said. Nobody laughed.

They watched as the words faded and a long series of still pictures followed. Each came in at an easy pace, as though there were all the time in the world to show images of planets—crisp and dry, cloudy and cool, cratered yet with shimmering blue atmospheres—and stars, sometimes in crowded clusters, at times seen close-up and going nova in bright, virulent streamers, or in tight orbits around unseen companions that might be neutron stars or black holes. Wonders the Bowl had seen while driven forward by its jet. Portraits of the early Bowl years, Cliff gathered—the jet flaring and trembling in tangled knots of ruby and sharp yellow as the vast cup got under way.

For these ones that Quert termed Ice Minds there was indeed all the time in the world. The screen visions streamed on and the humans sat with backs against the rough walls to watch them. Strange landscapes loomed.

“They call us warmlife,” Quert added as the screen showed an iceworld. Against a black sky odd lumps moved, in a lake lit by a smoldering red light. There were dune fields, ponds, channels. The lake sat in a convoluted region of hills cut by valleys and chasms.

Aybe said, “I’d say that looks kind of like Titan, Saturn’s moon.”

“There was small life there,” Irma said. “Microbial, some pond scum, nothing more.”

“There’re moving forms on that screen,” Terry said. For this view the screen showed sequential shots. The lumps seemed like knots of fluid, assisted by sticks that crossed through the globular bodies. Blobs that somehow used tools like rods? These coherent colloids moved across bleak fluid that might be hydrocarbons like ethane. On the beach the lumps moved ashore with viscous grace, pulling themselves forward with extruded feelers that managed the sticks. “They’re clustering around that domed thing that looks like a termite mound,” Irma said. “Even blobs can build.”

“Those forms we saw in the shadows out there—” Terry gestured to the ice plains beyond. “—might have some connection to these. Except these are on a planet.”

“Life adapts,” Irma said. “A big leap, from a Titan-like cold around a hundred degrees Kelvin, with high atmospheric pressure, to those vacuum flowers and the rest of it, all holding on to the outside hull.”

“A big jump,” Terry said. “But there must have been incremental steps, and they had billions of years to do it.”

By this time the image had faded, replaced by a view of a dense jungle. This one, though, had spiral trees, whipped by high winds against a purple sky of shredded clouds. The stilled storm had a big beast in the foreground, something like a dirty brown groundhog, its head tucked in against the wind.

The show went on and then on some more. After a while even exotic alien landscapes became repetitious: blue green mountain ranges scoured by deep gray rivers, placid oceans brimming with green scum, arid tan desert worlds ground down under heavy brooding brown atmospheres—

“All planets,” Terry said. “They’re not showing us comets. Not showing us themselves.”

—iceworlds aplenty beneath starry skies, grasslands with four-footed herds roaming as volcanoes belched red streamers in the distance, oceans with huge beasts wallowing in enormous crashing waves, places hard to identify in the swirling pink mists. Life adapts, indeed.

After a while, the slide show was over and more Anglish words appeared.

You warmlife now learn to journey from star to star.

We have seen your kind before.

You expand outward at great cost to you, for fleeting quicklife reasons.

Most warmlife comes in small ships, as do you.

The dream of this Bowl enticed us with its capacity. Its slow progress fits our minds, our style. Over eons we have seen little need to change its design.

Through voyages we gain passengers warm and cold. This is only part of us. Other ice minds live elsewhere in the Bowl’s shadow.

We deeplife are one in fluidity.

We address you now because this is an unusual time. This Bowl approaches a fresh world. As do you.

We have no reason to intervene in warmlife affairs. We act when the Bowl faces threats to its stability and endurance.

You will help us.

“We will?” Aybe said.

“They’re probably listening in some way, y’know,” Cliff said sternly.

Aybe blinked and said loudly, “Ah, yes, we will. If we know how.”

Irma stood and gazed out at the dim icelands where the vacuum flowers still held Beth’s image. She fanned her laser and said, “Those blobs, they’re moving, all right.”

“Maybe these Cold Minds keep those forms around because they’re related by mutual evolution?” Terry asked. “Hard to know. If these Cold Minds are as old as they say, there’s not much that can be new to them.”

Cliff said, “And even less that’s interesting.”

Liquid life-forms? he thought. Trying to think on huge time scales was hard. Maybe warmlife is just a buzzing, frantic irritant to them. And there is something in their manner, dealing with us warmlife, that suggests immense distance. These things had probably evolved in the outer fringes of solar systems. They could travel on comets, maybe, bouncing from star to star. So maybe they freely roamed the galaxy while the most advanced warmlife consisted of single-celled pond scum.

None of this was reassuring.

“What did you have in mind?” Irma addressed the screen.

Twenty-one

Memor watched Tananareve carefully as their party entered the chamber for the Justice Rendering. The primate studied the walls and ornamental traces with a quick and ready eye, as though cataloging all she saw. Quite natural for an explorer, who expected to report back to her superiors. That might well not happen, but no need to give the primate a hint of that.

They sat in high rows above the steeply inclined vault. Above them hovered ancient tapestries of gold and ivory, while the funnel at the vault’s floor was an ominous jet black. Bemor sat higher than Asenath, Memor, and the primate, as fitted his rank. He spoke with the Highers, even the Ice Minds. Memor knew—and envied, of course. Though Bemor was her twin genetically, but for those genes that expressed sex, he had been reared to deal with long-term thinking and abstractions at a level Memor had not. Perhaps that explained, Memor thought, the tenor of irritation that crept into his sentences when discussions flagged or failed to reach a sharp point of usefulness. Male traits indeed, she recalled.

A clarion call sounded deep and long in the vault. It comprised some high trills, playing against long strumming bass notes that Memor knew were resonant with the body size of Folk, and so would be felt rather than heard. Such musics instilled an uneasy impression of immensity and whole-body involvement, a tool persuasive yet hard to recognize. It instilled an apprehensive awe.

Tananareve watched and listened, saying nothing. Her eyes darted with quick intelligence. Only her tight pale lips told of some inner tension.

Resonant chords came from the music walls. At a signal, a team of brawny Folk strode from the witnesses gathered on the lower level. With prods, these forced each of the Maxer Cult members forward … closer to the edge … their legs slipping in the slime … then at the teetering brink … as a deep voice extolled their violations of the Great Pact. At a second hooting call, the Folk thrust the Maxers into the pit. Some flailed in resistance. Others turned with resigned shrugs and jumped. Cries, shouts, shrieks.

“This is a most useful spectacle,” Asenath said mildly. “Well done, too.”

The music rose to a triumphant chorus, high notes rejoicing. Barely audible beneath the sound was a chanting—

“Live in this moment. Give in this moment.”

“Ritual reprocessing is too good for those who undermine stability,” Asenath said, spitting out the words. “They endanger us all.”

“So may we,” Memor said, and at once regretted it.

Asenath shot back, “Not if we exterminate the humans as we have these!”

They had apparently forgotten that the primate sat among them, Memor saw. Tananareve’s head jerked up for a moment; then she bowed it … which meant, Memor knew, that the primate had learned some of their speech. Had understood Asenath’s remark. These creatures were smarter than she knew.

There was a long silence after the ceremony, hanging in the heavy air.

Bemor said softly, “We Folk must conquer our own festering anxieties, as well. These reprocessings are necessary for stability and for life itself. We Folk in our own wide variety, along with the multitudes of Adopted, should accept the hard, simple fact that we ourselves and all we encounter are transitory, ephemeral, beings of the moment. We matter little. We should embrace the beauty and pleasure of the world, knowing it will cease for us, inevitably. We are not the Ice Minds. Such is the Order of Life.”

Memor added her agreeing fan-display to that of Asenath and other Folk within range of Bemor’s deep bass voice. For her it was a satisfying moment. Bemor could make these matters far more resonant and inspiring than she; just another sign of his ability range. When they were both young, cared for by their long dead Principal Mother, he had early on shown his ability to handle higher-level abstractions and find the nugget of wisdom in passing moments. She admired him.

But Asenath would not let it be. She said, “These primates do not see such wisdom. They are an expansionist species, such as has been seldom seen in the Bowl for great ages. Their ship has maneuvered below range of our defense gamma ray lasers. Their parties afoot elude us. It is time to marshal efforts to eliminate them.” A pause and vigorous fan-rattle. “Obviously.”

Bemor gave an agreeable rainbow flourish with mingled eye-frets, but then said soberly, “There have been, down through the vast generations, uncounted acts to restore stability. All these carried a penumbra of drownings, starvation, sad sickness, massacre, looting, ethnic scourges, laser conflagrations, air-cutting slaughters, assisted group suicides, expulsions into vacuum—the list trudges on.”

“You seem saddened by this,” Memor said—a bit presumptively, but after all, she was his identical.

Bemor yielded on this with an embarrassed flutter. “I recall when young—you were spared this, my twin—assisting the more militant among us. We walked on corpses, sat on wrecked bodies to rest, stacked them as they stiffened to provide us a momentary table to eat upon. The delay in recycling them into the Great Soil meant they had to be assembled and even defended, against predators both feral and intelligent. But it had to be done.”

Memor said kindly, in mellow tones, “Brother, I do not follow—”

“The Bowl grows errant beliefs like mutant species. There were obscure faiths and ethical theories that held the body was some kind of holy vessel, whose owners had not yet departed. Or else such spirits would require the body, even though rendered into dust, to be made animate again. So they resisted return to the Great Soil, a true sin.”

He looked around at nearby Folk, who regarded him with varying displays of doubt. “You flutter your fan-feathers with disbelief, yes—but I have seen this in historical records, and even in person. Sad sights I regret witnessing now.” Bemor sagged a bit as if borne down by history, his feathery jaws swaying. “Alas, my memory is long and I cannot erase those laid down with such feeling.”

Crowds come to witness now shuffled out of the Vault. Other Folk dispersed until it was Asenath, Bemor, and Memor, plus of course the primate.

Asenath said, “Your report is due, Memor. Your hunt for the bandit crew still loose among the Sil continues?”

Memor duly reported finding the Late Invaders among the Sil. With a quick air display of images, she told of the attack upon the Sil city, the vast destruction.

“Approved by upper echelons?” Asenath asked severely.

“I ushered it through,” Bemor said mildly, eyeing Asenath but making no feather-display at all. Lack of fan-signal was a subtle sign of coolness, but Asenath missed this and rushed ahead, eager with a point to make.

“And they are dead?”

Memor suppressed her usual feather-rainbow to convey irked response and said, “No. I had surveillance auto-eyes study the Sil buildings. While they are rebuilding themselves, they involuntarily shape new messages in their forms. This is not a language but a gesture-speak. The influence of building style plainly shows a vagrant presence among the Sil, and I deduce that the humans survived the assault.”

Asenath pressed forward with full fan-clatter. “So. You failed.”

“I did not command the skyfish. Those who did not achieve their goals were demoted. But recently one fast-fly craft caught this.” Memor flicked an image into the air surrounding them. A down view showed a primate running between recently shaped buildings. A pain beam rippled over it, and the figure crumpled. The beam stayed on and the writhing thing kicked and thrashed and then lay still.

“A single kill?” Asenath said with downcast tones.

“We now know we can hurt them at will over distance. My primate here”—a gesture at Tananareve—“was our test subject. But I found also that the Sil have secured access to my own surveillance.”

Bemor said, “So the Sil are watching you, too?”

“I withdrew immediately, of course. In that interval the primates made their way toward a nearby mirror zone.”

Asenath brushed this aside, pressing on. “Memor, we have not heard your report on this primate of yours. I take it she has been well fed and often exercised?”

Memor puzzled at Asenath’s apparently friendly tone, suspecting something. “Of course. I brought her here to higher gravities, for her health. Her species was clearly not made for lightness—indeed, their bone and joint structures suggest a world of heavier gravitation than even the Great Plain.”

Bemor asked, “You have read her mind structures enough? Your reports mentioned this odd character, inability to see her own Undermind.”

“Yes, obviously an early evolutionary step. Imagine building a large, coherent society of individuals who could not know their own impulses, their inner thoughts! Touring her mind was instructive. I got most of what I need.”

Asenath fluttered with appreciation. “I shall depend upon your ability to monitor this primate. We will need her cooperation to convey our response to their ship’s attempts at contact.”

Memor hid her surprise. “Now?”

Asenath said sternly, “We must deceive the Glorians about who commands the Bowl. Your primates can do this for us, if properly handled.”