Heaven (18 page)

Ykzykk-Knazd clicked his claws, as if already preparing for combat. Extreme measures must be used only when authorized; the
penalties for misuse were themselves extreme. But so were the penalties for failing to take such measures when circumstances
required them. The tactic was a draconian response to a limited but potentially disastrous threat. He knew the reasoning behind
it—the highest echelons of the Church had analyzed the risk cascades and determined the optimal strategy. Typically, in a
context like the present one, an isolated group of intruders was most likely to be a scouting party, sent to make a preliminary
assessment of an unexplored world. Such parties occasionally disappeared, and if anyone noticed their absence—scouts often
acted on their own—then further exploration was usually curtailed. The planet would be flagged in Galactic records as being
potentially dangerous, and people would tend to avoid it.

He was aware, as were those who had drawn up the standing orders, that extreme measures could go wrong—by attracting precisely
the attention that they were intended to prevent. But several unlikely factors had to combine for that to happen.

“Very well,” said Ykzykk-Knazd, reassured that he had assessed the nature of the threat correctly and could justify ordering
a preemptive strike. They all knew the form that it would take. First, take out the intruders’ means of communication. Then,
take out the intruders. If possible, capture one for questioning, but that was a secondary goal. The hierocrat had made the
priorities very clear: Destroy the immediate threat at all costs. No spiritual or moral aspects were to be considered—this
was to be a military action, not a Church mission. Later, more informed judgments could be made by those who were qualified
to assess the nature of the threat and to determine any further response.

There were six floaters in the patrol, flying close to the ground in a tight formation. Under the coordination of Ykzykk-Knazd
in the lead craft, they swung in a wide arc and headed for a stretch of coast about 140 miles away, where the brief ansible
transmission had originated.

At supersonic speeds, they were there in under ten minutes. The final approach was made in total silence. Through sensitive
nightsights they could see obvious signs of the intruders. The bay had been blocked off using a forcewall, and several strange
boats bobbed in its shallow waters. No evidence of any backup—just an isolated group. Definitely a case for extreme measures.

Ansible first, then. Sensors had already revealed its location inside a tent at the base of a cliff. The first bolt of laser
fire took it out, and much of the cliff as well. The second turned one of the boats into a floating bonfire, which quickly
fizzled out as the wreckage sank. Two more boats suffered the same fate. The patrol captain decided to leave the intruders’
forcewall intact—for now. It would hinder their escape. After the battle was over, its generator would be destroyed.

Ykzykk-Knazd noticed that some of the intruders were in the water. They were swimming around in total confusion—no doubt still
trying to work out what had hit them. Had they escaped from the burning boats, or had they been in the water all along? From
their shape, they were marine creatures; he could not put a name to their species, but they had numerous tentacles and thickset
bodies.

One of the creatures was making a run up the beach, trying to head inland for cover. He wondered how it could function on
land, and realized that it was wearing some kind of life support. That probably meant that this particular creature had some
special function among the group of intruders, which automatically made it a prime target for interrogation. Like all the
intruders, it was unarmed; Ykzykk-Knazd gave orders for a squad to capture the fleeing creature, if that could be done without
killing it.

None of the other interlopers had left the sea. He didn’t think they could—as far as he could tell, none of them was wearing
life-support equipment. That made things a little trickier, because the water offered a certain amount of protection. But
orders were orders, and his had been made crystal clear on many occasions. What the hierocrat wanted, the hierocrat got, and
what the hierocrat wanted in these circumstances was total annihilation.

There were standard tactics for dealing with an underwater threat. He quickly assessed his firepower: six floaters, each carrying
a dozen heavy laser cannons. The swimmers were confined to the bay by their own forcewall; the bay was shallow . . . He would
have power to spare.

He ordered the floaters to deploy around the margin of the bay, three on each side at the top of the cliffs.

This would not take long.

The morning sun had dispersed the nighttime clouds, and the beachhead at No Bar Bay was clearly visible from
Talitha
’s gallery. It seemed tranquil and undisturbed, so Sharp Wit Will Cut was not particularly worried when no one answered his
ansible call. No doubt the mariners were racing their boats again. But a closer look at the bay showed no boats out in the
deeper waters. In fact—and now he did begin to worry—it showed no boats at all.

Then he looked really closely, saw what had happened to the boats, and
really
began to worry.

He was the first to drop down from the transpod into the trampled chalk sand, and when he did so, he was looking over his
shoulder as often as forward, watching out for any threat that might emerge from the landward swamp or the rocks beneath the
cliffs. The ansible shelter had been annihilated, and it wasn’t alone. He saw at once that the tunnel to the power source
had collapsed; rubble of a kind he had never before encountered lay strewn at the foot of the cliff where the tunnel had once
been. It was as if the chalk had melted and flowed like syrup before freezing solid and cracking into dangerous needle-sharp
spikes and razor edges.

The boats were little more than scattered fragments, charred debris floating among the waves, strewn along the tide line.

A dozen steps, and he saw the first body. At first he failed to recognize it, so blistered and mutilated was the viscous,
rubbery flesh. But then he saw the stumps of tentacles and realized that he was looking at what had once been a mariner.

A search turned up more bodies. Most were scattered about the shore; a few were floating in the sea. All bore appalling injuries.

One of
Talitha
’s Tweel engineers bent over one of the corpses and shuddered. “What calamity caused this?” he asked, not to anyone in particular
but to the universe in general. He straightened and looked nervously around. Whatever had done this might still be nearby,
hidden in dense vegetation, concealed by rocks.

Will had a sudden suspicion. He put his hand in the water. The sea was warm. Too warm.
Definitely
too warm, given that the forcewall had been turned off and colder water had been diffusing into the bay from the ocean, and
running into it from the streams.

“What calamity?” he said, turning to the engineer. “A military calamity, my friend. An energy weapon. The mariners and their
wifepieces have been boiled alive.” Now that he had some idea what had happened, the evidence around him slotted neatly into
place. His theory was supported by the state of the bodies—more accurately, from the fragments of cooked meat that were all
that remained of their polypoid friends. Some pieces were streaked with the telltale burns of laser fire. Others were just
sickening parboiled chunks.

In his mind he could not avoid reconstructing the scene in all its horror. The attackers must have trained powerful lasers
into the bay, either from levitating cars or from the cliff tops. As the water heated up, the mariners would have been caught
in a terrible dilemma: Stay in the sea and boil, or emerge onto the sand and suffocate for lack of oxygenated water. Even
with a sailor suit, the land was no real option, for anyone exposed on the shore could be roasted with lasers or blown apart
by explosives.

It would only have taken a few hours. At night the Neanderthals suspended direct surveillance of the bay because in normal
circumstances there was nothing to be seen, even if clouds failed to form. As it happened, last night had been cloudy, but
Talitha
’s records might still show some signs of the attack. It would be easy to check.

There was no point in hanging around on the beach, and the attacking force might come back at any time. He and his companions
ran back toward the transpod. Later they would return, if their instruments showed that it was safe, and count the bodies.
Right now it looked as if all the mariners had perished.

Once off the ground, Will summarized the disaster for those still on board the huge, ancient vessel. Even now he could not
assume the transpod was safe from attack, so
Talitha
had to be told what it was up against, straightaway. Right now there was very little to go on.

A patchwork of bright curves, surging and reforming moment by moment, rippled across the pale sand of Crooked Atoll, playing
on the grotesque outlines of coral and weed and scattering shoals of light-sensitive crustaceans, who fled beneath the shadows
of the rocks until the brightest concentrations of wave-focused light had swept past their refuge.

Beneath the sand, neural connections switched on, and the reefmind awoke. The husbands in Atollside Port had passed on an
ansibled report from
Talitha
. On this occasion the reefwives elected to divide their collective intelligence into three autonomous, intercommunicating
parts. The tactic increased the mental power of each participant, but the small number of components reduced the quality of
the debate and the diversity of opinion.

The mood was somber.

Sinker:
It is as we feared, my sisters.

Line:
No, it is worse. Look at the edge of our perception, where it trails off into mist and chaos. You see the pattern?

Hook:
Compared to the bright, central clarity of the disaster on Aquifer, this ‘pattern’ of which you speak is flimsy and impossible
to discern. I say there is no pattern.

Line:
Then your perceptions are inadequate, sister. The pattern exists. I/we recognize it from long, long ago. Cosmic Unity is
a new instance of an ancient evil, awoken again. It is a benevolent memeplex at the apex of its trajectory, rigidified by
its own memetic feedback, locked in the straitjacket of its single-valued logic. It is powerful and malignant, a cosmic cancer.

Hook:
We have no proof that the slaughter of our husbands on Aquifer was carried out by Cosmic Unity.

Sinker:
The threat to No-Moon is the same, whoever is responsible. Share my/our vision, and you will understand.

Hook:
(Reluctantly) You are perhaps right. I do see something, indistinct but full of menace. Now I feel uneasy.

Line:
Affirmed.

Sinker:
Emphasized.

Line:
How should we respond?

Hook:
Whoever killed our husbands, Cosmic Unity’s benevolent memeplex threatens our very existence. That must be our main concern.
We must seek an alternative refuge, offworld. Refuges. Many. A nine, a ninesquare. Send nine ninesquares of males to each
planet, not nines!

Line:
Having changed your opinion, you now overreact. The more ships we dispatch, the more attention we will attract to ourselves.

Sinker:
In any case, our stock of trade information is limited. We cannot afford to pay for mass evacuations of our world.

Hook:
And we ourselves cannot yet leave this world, sisters, if ever. For the moment we can only send husbands and wives to rebuild
our species, slowly, on another world. While we grow to maturity in a new home, our males will lack guidance and advice. And
you know what they are like when we are not taking care of their best interests.

Line:
Useless layabouts.

Sinker:
Utterly worthless.

Hook:
Alga-craving sex maniacs.

Together: Males!

Sinker:
Much as we love our mates for all their adorable faults, we are becoming distracted from the main threat. The awakened evil
approaches even as we debate. Its arrival cannot long be delayed. In some of my perceptions it is already here.

Line:
You are too fearful, sister. I/we have survived worse.

Sinker:
Yes, but at what price?

Line:
Whatever price it is necessary to pay. There are strategies, tactics, devices we can employ. They have succeeded before,
and they will succeed again. Look, even now our vision includes their first use.

Sinker:
Yes. And it seems to me that they are failing.

Line:
That must be a temporary problem, I am sure. Always they have succeeded. Always.

Sinker:
Except when our foremother had us conveyed to this world.

Line:
That strategy succeeded. We are here.

Sinker:
And our foremother died, along with Three-Moons.

Line:
It was still a success. Our species survived.

Hook:
Past successes do not guarantee present ones. Circumstances can change.

Line:
We have no option, for only those strategies are known to us.

Sinker:
Nonsense! We must invent a new strategy.

Line:
Against an ancient evil? There is no philosophical match there. How can the new defeat the old?

Hook:
What else can defeat the old, when the old fails?

The reefmind grew quiet as it struggled without an answer.

Servant-of-Unity XIV Samuel Godwin’sson Travers immersed himself in his work, depressed by his failure with his first client.
He missed his daily sessions with Fall, even though they had driven him close to despair, and at the back of his mind he was
worried about her. She was so relentlessly logical in her delusions that he could see no possible way to break down her mental
barriers. But since there was nothing he could do, he busied himself with the familiar and comforting rituals of duplication
and gave thanks that, for a time, his mind need not be occupied by anything more challenging.