Authors: Gregory Benford
“We must.” Seeker was carefully picking the briars from a pretty bunch of red berries. She had assured Cley that the thorns were quite tasty, whereas the berries were poison; the bush was a master of sly deception. Cley passed.
“Where to?”
“Jove.”
“Not Venus?”
“Events accelerate.”
“Who says?”
“The captain. That rodent who passed by brought word.”
“If you trust a rat. Is the Leviathan dying?”
“No, but its pain is vast. It—the captain, if you must personify—seeks succor.”
“From this Jove thing?”
“No, though the Leviathan expends its fluids to take us there. It can receive the aid of its many friends as we travel. The point is for the Leviathan to rid itself of us.”
“Us? Um. We brought the pain…?”
When Seeker said nothing, Cley scrambled away impatiently. So much was going on that she didn’t know about. She recalled the clubby way small girls had kept secrets from her out of spite. Try as she did to be more mature, through all this, she felt the same way now: irked, rejected, angry.
Better to go find out for herself. But nobody would talk to her. The sticks-and-stones workers swarming everywhere ignored her. Very well, she would explore. After getting lost three times, she found a translucent bubble that gave an aft view.
Long, pearly plumes jetted from the Leviathan. They came from tapered, warty growths that Cley was sure had not poked from the Leviathan before. They had been grown with startling speed and somehow linked to a chemical system, one fed in turn by the Leviathan’s internal chemistry. Her nose prickled at the scent of peroxide, and the thunder of steady detonations made nearby boughs tremble.
She tuned in her inboards and let them free-associate on what she saw. She had never been a big fan of inboards, preferring to learn from the rub of experience. But she knew now that she was hopelessly outclassed out here in the wild and woolly, too. The inboards filled in whispery knowledge, keyed to what her eyes took in.
Even as the immense bulk accelerated, Cley could see groups of space life detach themselves and spurt away. Some species seemed to be abandoning ship. Perhaps sensing that something dangerous lay ahead? They spread broad silvery sails, which reflected images of the shrinking sun.
Others had sails of utter dull black, and Cley guessed that these might be the natural prey of skysharks. Reflections would attract unwanted attention, so these oddly shaped creatures deployed parachute-shaped sails to absorb sunlight. They gained security at the price of getting only half the propulsion of their reflective brothers. They were also warmer. Some of them contrived to shed the buildup of heat through thin, broad cooling vanes. In space, without the warmth of air about them, their infrared images would draw predators, too.
Such adaptations led to every conceivable arrangement of surfaces. Creatures like abstract paintings were quite workable here, where gravity had no hand in fashioning evolution’s pressures. There was no price for size, so creatures of apparently arbitrary extent flourished. Their living struts, sheets, tubes, and decks made use of every geometric advantage. Pivots as apparently fragile as a flower stem served to turn vast planes and sails. Transparent veins carried fluids of green and ivory.
Yet as these fled the wounded giant, others flocked in. Great arrays swooped to meet the Leviathan—things that looked to Cley like no more than spindly arrays of green toothpicks. Nonetheless, these unlikely assemblies decelerated, attached themselves to the Leviathan, and off-loaded cargoes. Some brought their dead. All moved with a springy energy born of zero gravity and a billion years of crafting by blunt nature.
It struck Cley that the Leviathan played a role with no easy human analogy. It cycled among worlds, yet was no simple ship. Fleets of spaceborne life exchanged food and seeds and doubtless much more with it. All shaped their existences by intersecting the Leviathan’s orbit, hammering out biological bargains, and then returning to the black depths where they eked out a living. The Leviathan was ambassador, matchmaker, general store, and funeral director, and many other unfathomable roles as well.
Now the vast beast was deeply damaged, and panic ran through the labors outside. As well, a fretful tang layered the air around Cley. She turned away from the sunlit spectacle of the aft zones just in time to glimpse a small, ruddy disk coming into view. Then the hackles on her neck rose and she whirled, already knowing what she would see.
You brought this upon me
, the captain sent.
The restless shape towered above her. Its thumb-sized components hovered as though full of repressed anger, buzzing, buzzing. Their fevered motions, like caged birds, gave the stretched shape the appearance of a warped statue. Across the humanoid figure the fluttering was like dappled light, as if it were made of leaves stirred by fitful breezes.
Cley felt her throat tighten. “I didn’t know the skysharks even existed. You’ve got to understand, I—”
I understand much. Toleration requires more
.
It made a sound like dry winds blowing through palm fronds. The head of the thing was a blob—no eyes, no mouth—that stirred as if small crabs ran beneath the skin. The whole mass of it fidgeted. As the blob-head turned, it exuded a yellow vapor with a cutting smell.
Cley ached to flee. But how could she elude this buzzing, manic swarm? Better to keep it talking. “It wasn’t my idea to come here.”
The elongated human form bulged. Its left arm merged with the body. She sensed a massive threat behind these surges, underlined by spikes of anger that shot through the murky Talent-voice of the captain.
Nor mine.
“I—I’ll leave as soon as I can.”
I shall rid myself of you.
She backed away, despite herself.
The Malign sends tendrils everywhere.
“I know, it’s…” What to say? That it was after her? Not likely to win this thing over.
They snake into me.
Throw herself on its mercy? That was a human category. At least try to get some information. “Do you think it can find me?”
The constantly shifting form curled its fat legs up into the body, as though its components had to be brought closer to ponder this point.
Soon, yes. It probes me.
“How much time do I have left?”
This set off an agitated dance of the thumb-birds. They whirled around one another, spun, hovered with tiny wings abuzz.
It would have tracked you by now.
“Why hasn’t it come here?”
It is opposed by another of similar skill.
“What? Who?”
The buzzing changed to a hiss.
I cannot predict the outcome of such large collisions.
Cley tried to make herself think of this thing as a community of parts, not simply an organism. But the moving cloud seemed to purposefully make itself humanlike enough to send disturbing, atavistic fears strumming through her. And she wondered if that, too, was its intention. She sensed a certain holding back, to avoid flooding her again.
“What other ‘skill’? Another magnetic mind?”
The hiss became like a liquid fire.
Similar in power, and winging on the flexings of the fields. It is called the Multifold.
“Is it dangerous to you? I, I am sorry if it is…”
Despite herself Cley edged away from the shifting fog of creatures. She resolved to stand straight and undaunted in the slight pseudogravity of the Leviathan’s centrifugal acceleration, to show no sign of her inner fear. But how much could the captain sense from her unshielded thoughts?
I do not know. I despise all such human inventions.
“The Multifold?”
In typical human fashion, as a corrective to your earlier error—the Malign.
“Look, even Leviathans must make mistakes,” Cley said giddily.
Ours do not remain; we winnow. Ours do not keep, encased in the lace of magnetic fields, while the galaxy turns upon itself again and again. Our errors die.
The cloud-captain hummed and fretted. Its head lifted into the air. Suddenly, it had a mouth, gaping like a huge bullet hole that ran completely through the head. Cley could see the vegetation beyond. Angry waves roiled up and down the torso.
This thing could kill her in seconds. Showing fear wasn’t going to do any good. All right, then, do the opposite.
“So we build things to last.” Cley shrugged with airy abandon. Damn it, she was not going to let this talking fog intimidate her. “Can’t blame us, can you?”
Why should we not?
“We don’t last long ourselves. Not Ur-humans, anyway. Our creations have to do our living for us.”
Nor should you endure. Time once honored your kind. Now it drags you in its wake.
Despite her fear, this rankled Cley. “Oh, really? You seem pretty scared of stuff we made.”
The captain lost its human shape entirely, exploding like shrapnel into the air. Components buzzed angrily around Cley. She stood absolutely still, remembering the time on Earth when she had sealed her nostrils against clouds of mites. But that would be of no use here.
She stared straight ahead and kept her mind as steady as she could. Small and limited her brain might be, but she wasn’t going to give the maddened cloud any satisfaction.
The captain’s flyers came swarming. They brushed her like a heavy, moist handclasp—insistent, clammy, repulsive. She shut her eyes. Wings battered across her face. Tiny voices shrieked and howled in her mind. Slapping her hands over her ears would be no help.
Panic struck. Flyers covered her face, her nostrils, started to smother her. She frantically shoved several away, trying to clear breathing room, and dozens took their place.
She opened her mouth to scream. A humming thing flew into it. She did not dare bite down. It fluttered against her teeth, her tongue; she tried blowing it out and felt herself beginning to vomit…
“You will kindly go about your tasks,” Seeker’s voice came cutting through.
Cley jumped backward, startled by the smooth, almost liquid quality to the sound. The thumb-bird scooted out of her mouth. She clamped her jaw down, opened her eyes.
Seeker hung by one claw from a strand, peering at the center of the fog.
“Now,”
she added.
A long moment passed. Silence.
Slowly the components steadied, whirling in a cyclone about both Seeker and Cley, but keeping a respectful distance
.
Then,
I suffer agony for you!
“As you should,” Seeker replied evenly, “for you must.”
Be gone!
“In due time,” Seeker said.
Now!
“You know we are your hope,” Seeker said, peering sharply at it, “in the long run.”
In the long run we shall be dead!
With that the thumb-birds streaked away. Cley felt a spark of compassion for the strange things, and their even stranger sum. She supposed that in some way she was also an anthology being, and that her cells suffered in silence for her. But the captain was a different order of thing, called by numberless tasks. It was more open to both joy and agony, in a way she could not express but had felt deeply through the Talent.
“Thanks,” she said in a whisper, her throat still tight.
Seeker coasted to a light landing near the transparent bubble. “Even a great being can harm in a moment of self-loss.”
“Getting mad, that’s self-loss? Funny term.”
“For Leviathan, the pain is of a different quality than you can feel.”
Quietly Cley said, “I think I got some of that.”
Seeker shook her head. “Never think that you can sense its sacrifice.”
Cley did not know what to say to that. She had seen the terrible damage, the shriveled zones, the creatures that had died as their blood boiled, and worse.
“Meanwhile,” Seeker said in the way she had of abruptly changing the subject, “enjoy the view.”
Ahead, the ruddy disk was much larger now. It was a planet of silver seas and rough, brown, cloud-shrouded continents. As they approached, Cley saw that a circle hung over the equator like a belt. It seemed to be held above the atmosphere by great towers.
These thin stalks were like the Pinwheel she had ridden, but fixed. With feet planted in the soil, their heads met the great ring that girded the planet. Each tower could remain erect by itself, and perhaps they had stood alone once. Now the ring linked each to the others, making the array steady.
The Leviathan intended to sweep by the great circle, Seeker told her. Cley relaxed and let the slow energies of this approaching world steal over her. Even at this distance she could see twinkling, tiny compartments sliding up and down the towers, connecting the spaceborne to the worldborne. And larger shapes shot along the grand ring itself, bringing their stores around the planet. At the tower nearest their eventual destination, goods got off-loaded.
This was how the Leviathan and its myriad passengers merged their fortunes with the spreading emerald of the world below. Some towers plunged into the silver seas, while others stood at the summits of enormous mountains. All were wedded into a slow symphony of patient metabolism.
Close-upping her eyes, Cley could make out the texture of the towers now. With surprise she saw that they were made of the same woody layers as the Pinwheel—indeed, that the entire ring system was like a living, balanced suspension bridge, cantilevered out into the great abyss of vacuum.
“What is this place?” Cley asked.
“Mars,” Seeker answered.
“What about Venus?”
Seeker gestured at a blue-white dot. “Nearby. We do not need it now, so I directed the captain to bring us veering close to Mars. We shall gain momentum, stealing from the planet’s hoard, and hasten on.”
“Either we’re moving very fast, or these places aren’t very far apart.”
“Both. All the ancient worlds are now clustered in a narrow habitable zone around the sun, each finding its comfortable distance from the fire.”
“And we moved them?”
“Yes. A later form, not you Originals. The work required a particularly long-sighted human form, the Staple Dons—alas, now extinct.”