Uplift - Infinity's Shore Part 43

"Sara, I believe they planned it this way, from the very start."

dtvidual is the direct descendant of a long chain of successful reproducers. Simply stated; those who lack traits that enable breeding do not become ancestors. Traits that encourage reproduction are the traits that get reproduced.

To the best of our knowledge, this evolutionary imperative extends even to the eco-matrix of hydrogen-based liie-iorms that shares real s.p.a.ce in parallel with our oxygen-breathing civilisation. As for the Third Urder-autonomous machines-only the relentless application or stringent saleguards has prevented these nonorganic species From engaging in exponential reproduction, threatening the basts of all life in the Five Galaxies.

For the vast majority of nonsaplent animal species in natural ecosystems, this tendency to overbreed is kept in check by starvation, predation, or other limiting tactors, resulting in quasi-stable states of pseudo-equilibrium, However, presaplent llfe-forms often use their newfound cleverness to eliminate compet.i.tion and indulge in orgiastic breeding Iren^ies, followed by overutilizatlon of resources. left for too long without proper guidance, such species can bring about their own ruin through ecological collapse.

This is one of the Seven Reasons why naive life-forms cannot self-evolve to fully competent sapience. The paradox of Reproductive Logic means that short-term self-interest will always prevail over long-range planning, unless wisdom is imposed trom the outside by an adoptive patron line.

The duty of a patron is to make certain that its client race achieves conscious control over its sell-replicating drives, before it can be granted adult status. And yet, despite such precautions, even lully ranked cillsen species have been known to engage in breeding spasms, especially during intervals when lawlul order temporarily breaks down. (SEE REF: "TIMES OF C,HANOE. } Hasty, spasmodic episodes of colonisation,exploitation have lett entire galactic ?ones devastated in their wake.

By law, the prescribed punishment (or races who perpetrate such eco-holocausts can be complete extinction, down to the racial rootstock.

IN comparison, illegal resettlement of lallow worlds is a problem of moderate-level criminality, lenalties depend on the degree of damage done, and whether new presapient lorms salely emerge From the process.

Nevertheless, it is easy to see how the laradox of Keproductive L,ogtc applies here, as well. L,r else why would Individuals and species sacrifice so much, and risk severe punishment, in order to dwell in feral secrecy on worlds where they do not belong'

OVER the course of tens of millions of years, only one solution has ever been lound for this enduring paradox. I his solution consists of the continuing application of pragmatic foreslght In the Interests of the common good.

In other words-civilisation.

from A Galactographic tutorial for Ignorant Vmlning terrans, a special publication of the library Inst.i.tute of the Five Galaxies, year 42 EC, in partial satisfaction of the debt obligation of 35 EC Kaa THEY MADE LOVE IN A HIDDEN CAVE, NESTLED BEneath seaside cliffs, while tidal currents pounded nearby, shooting spume fountains high enough to rival the craggy promontories.

At last! Booming echoes seemed to shout each time a I' wave dashed against the bluffs, as if everything leading up I to that moment had been prelude, a mere transport of moj mentum across the vast ocean, pa.s.sed from one patch of salt water to the next. As if a wave may only become real by spending itself against stone.

Rolling echoes reverberated in the sheltered cave. That's me, Kaa thought, listening to the breakers cry out their brief reification. As a coast fulfills a tide, he now felt completed by contact with another.

Water sloshed through his open mouth, still throbbing with their pa.s.sion. The secret pool had her flavor.

Peepoe rolled along Kaa's side, stroking with her pectoral fins, making his skin tingle. He responded with a brush of his tail flukes, pleased at how she quivered with unguarded bliss. This postcoital affection had even deeper meaning than the brief glory dance of mating. It was like .the difference between mere need and choice.

Can the burning stars Shout their joy more happily Than this simple fin? *

His Trinary haiku came out as it should, almost involuntarily, not mulled or rehea.r.s.ed by the frontal lobes that human gene crafters had so thoroughly palped and reworked during neo-dolphin uplift. The poem's clicks and squeals diffracted through the cave's grottoes at the same moment they first resonated in his skull.

Peepoe's reply emerged the same way, candidly languid, with a natural openness that brooked no lies.

Simplicity is not Your best-known trait, dear Kaa.

Don't you feel Lucky? *

Her message both thrilled and validated, in a way she must have known he'd treasure. I have my nickname back, Kaa mused happily.

All would have been perfection then-a flawless moment-except that something else intruded on his pleasure. A tremor, faint and glimmering, like the sound shadow made by a moray eel, pa.s.sing swiftly in the night, leaving fey shivers in its wake.

Yes, you have won back your name, whispered a faint voice, as if from a distant seaquake. Or an iceberg, groaning, a thousand miles away.

But to keep it, you will have to earn it.

When Kaa next checked the progress of his spy drone, it had nearly reached the top of the Mount Guenn funicular.

At the beginning, Peepoe's decision to stay with him had been more professional than personal, helping Kaa pilot the special probe up a hollow wooden monorail that climbed the rutted flank of an extinct volcano. While the bamboolike track was a marvel of aboriginal engineering, Kaa found it no simple matter guiding the little robot past sections filled with dirt or debris. He and Peepoe wound up having to camp in the cave, to monitor it round the clock, instead of returning to Brookida and the others. A fully autonomous unit could have managed the journey on its own, but Gillian Baskin had vetoed sending any machine ash.o.r.e that might be smart enough to show up on Jophur detectors.

A moment of triumph came as the camera eye finally emerged from the rail, pa.s.sed through a camouflaged station, then proceeded down halls of chiseled stone, trailing its slender fiber comm line like a hurried spider. Kaa had it crawl along the ceiling-the safest route, offering a good view of the native workshops.

Other observers tuned in at this point. From the Streaker, Hannes Suessi and his engineering chiefs remarked on the s.p.a.cious chambers where urrish and qheuen smiths tapped ominous heat from lava pools, dipping ladles into nearby pits for melting, alloying, and casting. Most questions were answered by Ur-ronn, one of the four young guests whose presence on the Streaker posed such quandaries. Ur-ronn explained the forge in thickly accented Anglic, revealing tense reserve. Her service as guide was part of a risky bargain, with the details still being worked out.

"I do not see Uriel at the hearths." Ur-ronn's voice came tinnily from Kaa's receiver. "Ferhafs she is ufstairs, in her hovvy roon."

Uriel's hobby room. From the journal of Alvin Hphwayuo, Kaa envisioned an ornately useless toy gadget of sticks and spinning gla.s.s, something to hypnotize away the ennui of existence on a savage world. He found it puzzling that a leader of this menaced society would spare time for the arty Rube Goldberg contraption Alvin had described.

Ur-ronn told Kaa to send the probe down a long hall, past several mazelike turns, then through an open door into a dim chamber . . . where at last the fabled apparatus came into view.

Peepoe let out an amazed whistle.

Advance description Leaves the unwary stunned by Serendipity! *

Yeah, Kaa agreed, staring at a vaulted chamber that would have been impressive even on Earth, rilled with crisscrossing timbers and sparkling lights. Alvin's account did the place injustice, never conveying the complex unity of all the whirling, spinning pans-for even at a glance one could tell that an underlying rhythm controlled it all. Each ripple and turn was linked to an elegant, ever-changing whole.

The scene was splendid, and ultimately baffling. Dim figures could be glimpsed moving about the scaffolding, making adjustments-several small, scurrying shapes and at least one bipedal silhouette that looked tentatively human. But Kaa could not even judge scale properly because most of the machine lay in deep shadows. Moreover, holovision had been designed to benefit creatures with two forward-facing eyes. A panel equipped with sono-parallax emitters would have better suited dolphins.

Even the normally wry Hannes Suessi was struck silent by this florid, twinkling palace of motion.

Finally, Ur-ronn cut in. "I see Uriel! She is second fron the right, in that groiif standing near the chinfanzee."

Several four-footed urs nervously watched the machine whirl, next to a chimp with a sketchpad. Random light pulses dappled their flanks, resembling fauns in a forest, but Kaa could tell that gray-snouted Uriel must be older than the rest. As they watched, the chimp showed the smith an array of abstract curves, commenting on the results with hand signs instead of words.

"How we gonna do this, Streaker?" Kaa asked. "Just barge in and start t-talking?"

Until lately, it had seemed best for all concerned thai Streaker keep her troubles separate. But now events made a meeting seem inevitable-even imperative.

"Let's listen before announcing ourselves," Gillian Baskin instructed. "I'd rather conditions were more private."

In other words, she preferred to contact Uriel, not a whole crowd. Kaa sent the robot creeping forward. But before any urrish words became audible, another speaker interrupted from Streaker's end. "Allow me this indulgence, " fluted the refined voice of the Niss Machine. "Kaa, will you again focus the main camera on Uriel's contraption? I wish to pursue a conjecture. "

When Gillian did not object, Kaa had the probe look at the expanse of scaffolding a second time.

"Note the stretch of sand below, " the Niss urged. "Neat piles acc.u.mulate wherever light falls most frequently. These piles correlate with the drawings the chimpanzee just showed Uriel. ..."

Kaa's attention jerked away, caught by a slap of Peepoe's tail.

"Someone's c-coming. Peripheral scanner says approaching life signs are Jophur!"

Despite objections from the Niss, Kaa made the probe swivel around. There, framed in the doorway, they saw a silhouette Streaker's crew had come to loathe-like a tapered cone of greasy doughnuts.

Gillian Baskin broke in. "Calm down, everyone. . . . I'm sure it's just a traeki."

"Of course it is," confirmed Ur-ronn. "That stack is Tyug."

Kaa recalled. This was the "chief alchemist" of Mount Guenn Forge. Uriel's master of chemical synthesis. Kaa brushed rea.s.suringly against Peepoe, and felt her relax a bit. According to Alvin's journal, traeki were docile beings quite unlike their starfaring cousins.

So he was caught completely off guard when Tyug turned a row of jewel-like sensor patches upward, toward the tiny spy probe. Thoughtful curls of orange vapor steamed from its central vent. Then the topmost ring bulged outward . . . . . . and abruptly spewed a jet of flying objects, swarming angrily toward the camera eye! Kaa and the others had time for a brief glimpse of insects-or some local equivalent-creating a confusing buzz of light and sound with their compound eyes and fast-beating wings. A horde of blurry creatures converged, surrounding Kaa's lenses and pickups.

Moments later, all that reached his console was a smear of dizzying static.

Gillian A MAGNIFIED IMAGE FLOATED ABOVE THE Conference table-depicting a small creature, frozen in flight, whose wings were a rainbow-streaked haze, painful to the eye. By contrast, the Niss Machine's compact mesh of spiral lines seemed drab and abstruse. A strain of pique filled its voice.

"Might any of you local children be able to identify this bothersome thing for us?"

The words were polite enough, though Gillian winced al its insolent manner, j Fortunately, Alvin Hph-wayuo showed no awareness of being patronized. The young hoon sat near his friends, throbbing his throat sac in the subsonic range for both noor beasts, one lounging on each broad shoulder. To the machine's sardonic question, Alvin nodded amiably, a hu man gesture that seemed completely unaffected.

"Hrm. That's easy enough. It is a privacy wasp."

"Gene-altered toys of the Buyur," lisped Ur-ronn. "A well-known nuisance."

Buck's four eyestalks waved, peering at the image "Now I see how they got their name. They normally move so fast, I never got a good look before. It looks kind of like a tiny rewq, with the membranes turned into wings."

Hannes Suessi grunted, tapping the tabletop with his prosthetic left arm.

"Whatever the origins of these critters, it seems Uriel was armed against the possibility of being spied upon. Oui probe's been rendered useless. Will she now a.s.sume thatil! was sent by the Jophur?"

Ur-ronn shrugged, an uncertain twist of her long neck "Who else? How would Uriel have heard of you guys . . . I unless the Jophur thenselves sfoke of you?"

Gillian agreed. "Then she may destroy the drone, unless we make it speak Anglic words right away. Niss, can you and Kaa get a message through?"

"We are working to accomplish that. Commands rise from the control console, but the bedlam given off by these so-called wasps appears to swamp all bands, thwarting confirmation. The probe may be effectively inoperable."

"d.a.m.n. It would take days to send another. Days we don't have." Gillian turned to Ur-ronn. "This might make our promise hard to keep."

She hated saying it. Part of her had looked forward to meeting the legendary smith of Mount Guenn. By all accounts, Uriel was an individual of shrewdness and insight, whose sway on Jijoan society was notable.

"There is another off-shun," Ur-ronn suggested. "Fly there in ferson."

"An option we must set aside for now," replied Lieutenant Tsh't. "Since any aircraft sent beyond these shielding waters would be detected instantly, by the enemy battle ship-p."

The dolphin officer lay on the cushioned pad of a sixlegged walker. Her long, sleek body took up the end of the conference room farthest from the sooner youths, her left eye scanning the members of the ship's council. "Believe it or not-t, and despite our disappointment over the loss of Kaa's probe, there are other agenda items left to cover."

Gillian understood the lieutenant's testy mood. Her report on the apparent suicide of the two human prisoners had left many unanswered questions. Moreover, discipline problems were also on the rise, with a growing faction of the dolphin crew signing what they called the "Breeding Pet.i.tion."

Gillian had tried boosting morale by getting out and talking to the dolphins, listening to their concerns, encouraging them with a patron's touch. Tom had the knack, like Captain Creideiki. A joke here, a casual parable there.

Most fins grew more inspired and devoted the worse things got.

I don't have the same talent, I guess. Or else this poor crew is just tired after all the running.

Anyway, the best workers were all outside the ship now, in gangs that labored round the clock, while she spent hours closeted with the Niss Machine, eliminating one desperate plan after another.

At last, one of her schemes seemed a bit less awful than the rest.

"Tasty, " the Niss had called it. "Though a rash gamble. Our escape from Kithrup had more going for it than this ploy."

Ship's Physician Makanee raised the next agenda item, Unlike Tsh't, the elderly dolphin surgeon did not like to ride around strapped to a machine. Naked, except for a small tool harness, she took part in the meeting from a clear tube that ran along one wall of the conference room. Makanee's body glistened with tiny bubbles from the oxygen-packed fluid that filled Streaker's waterways.

"There is the matter of the Kiqui," she said. "It must be settled, especially if we are planning to move the ship-p."

Gillian nodded. "I'd hoped to consult about this matter with-" She glanced at the staticky display from Kaa's lost spy probe, and sighed. "A final decision must wait, Doctor. Continue preparations and I'll let you know."

Hannes Suessi next reported on the state of Streaker's hull.

"Weighed down like this, she'll be as slow as when we carried around that hollowed-out Thennanin cruiser, wearing it like a suit of armor. Slower, with all the probability arrays gummed up by carbon gunk."

"So we must consider transferring to one of the wrecks I. outside?" ; That would be hard. None had the modifications that made Streaker usable by an aquatic race.

The mirrored dome containing Suessi's brain and skull nodded.

"I have crews preparing the best of the drossed starships." A chuckle' then escaped the helmet speaker vent. "Cheer up, everybody! With Ifni's luck, some of us may yet make it out of here."

Perhaps, Gillian thought. But if we get away from theJijo system, where will we go? Where else can we run?

The meeting broke up. Everyone, including the sooner kids, had jobs to do.

And Dwer Koolhan will be waiting in my quarters, asking again for pa.s.sage ash.o.r.e. Or to swim, if necessary.

To go back to a savage place where he's needed.

Ambivalence filled her. Dwer was hardly more than a boy. Still, in all the years since Streaker'was forced to abandon Tom on Kithrup, this was the first time she felt anything like physical attraction to another.

Naturally. I've always been a sucker for hero types.

It brought to mind the last time she had felt Tom's touch-one final night together on a metal island, set amid a poison sea. The night before he flew away on a solarpowered glider, determined to mislead great battle fleets, thwart mighty foes, and make an opening for Streaker to get away. Gillian's left thigh still tingled, from time to time . . . the site of his last loving squeeze as he lay p.r.o.ne on the flimsy little aircraft, grinning before taking off.

"I'll be back before you know it," Tom said-a metaphysically strange expression, when you thought about it. And she often had.

Then he was gone, winging north, barely skimming the waves, just above the contrary tides of Kithrup.

I should never have let him go. Sometimes you have to tell a hero that enough is enough.

Let someone else save the world.

As Gillian made ready to leave the conference room, she saw Alvin, the young hoon, trying to collect both noors. The female was his longtime pet, to all appearances a bright nonsapient being, probably derived from natural tytlal rootstock, dating from before their species' uplift. The Tymbrimi must have stockpiled a gene pool of their beloved clients here on Jijo, as insurance in case the worst happened to their clan. A wise precaution, given the number of enemies they've made.

As for the other one, Mudfoot, Dwer's bane and traveling companion across half a continent, scans of his brain showed uplift traces throughout.

A race hidden within a race, retaining all the traits the Tymbrimi worked hard to foster in their clients.

In other words, the tytlal were true sooners, another wave of illegal settlers, but guarded by added layers of camouflage. So disguised, they might even escape whatever ruin lay in store for the relatives of Alvin, Huck, Ur-ronn, and Pincer.

But that can't be the whole story. Caution isn 't a paramount trait in Tymbrimi, or their clients. They wouldn't go to so much trouble just to hide. Not unless it was part of something bigger.