Heaven (23 page)

“The young human took today’s revelations surprisingly well,” the !t! remarked. “I was expecting angry denunciations.”

“Perhapsss he was overwhelmed by our presensss,” hissed the Rhemnolid. “He seemed to be very ssslow on the uptake.”

“Only at first,” said the Veenseffer-co-Fropt, defending his tutee. “Servant of Unity Fourteen Samuel Godwin’sson Travers
is fundamentally a good person, and for a time he was in denial about what he was witnessing. Subconsciously, of course, he
knew. But he was not prepared for such an unpalatable truth, and so he ignored the obvious until it became impossible to deny.
From that moment on, I think he showed serious promise.”

“More so than our unfortunate client,” said the !t!, taking a further jolt of electricity. “I cannot credit his stubbornness.
It caused him much needless anguish. And such a pity that his main digestive vessel was weak-walled. I really thought that
we were beginning to make some progress with him.”

“I beg to contradict,” said the Rhemnolid. “I have encountered his kind before. Their minds become fixed, and they respond
poorly to treatment. If pushed too far, they bend, but they ssseldom break.”

The Veenseffer-co-Fropt slurped syrupy liquid from a small goblet with his ingestion tube; he had acquired a taste for ethyl
alcohol when a novitiate. The !t! consumed another jolt of current. “Personally,” put in the Rhemnolid, “I find both of your
habits preposterousss. We Rhemnolidss have no need of artificial stimulusss.”

“Return your thoughts to young Samuel,” said Sam’s instructor. “I need your advice. I am thinking of recommending him for
an accelerated program of advancement. He is malleable and intelligent. I am convinced he has the potential to rise high in
the ecclesiarchy. And we all know that such entities are in short supply.”

“The Church’s logistics are being overstretched, so great is the need for its ministrations.”

“That soundsss perilously like criticism,” said the Rhemnolid.

“Don’t be an idiot. It
is
criticism. And it stays inside this room, as we long ago agreed. We three must be able to speak freely amongst ourselves,
the better to assist the propagation of Cosmic Unity.

“We all know that the Church is fighting too many battles on too many fronts.
And
you can keep any dislike of military metaphors to yourselves—we’ve been over that before. We are soldiers, my friends—soldiers
of the Memeplex. With the difference that the will of the Cosmos is on our side.”

The !t! idly flicked its sticklike forelimb against the floor in a counterrhythm to its speech. “But that alone cannot guarantee
victory, yes? Not if our strategy is misguided.”

“Or our numbers are constrained. Which returns me to my question. Fourteen Samuel: what is your impression of him? Is he ready?”

The Rhemnolid heightened its consciousness to verify its opinion. “You are right, of course. He is the most promising novice
any of us have yet ssseen, is he not?”

The !t! clicked its agreement. The question scarcely needed asking.

“So you recommend that I proceed to the next, most sensitive stage of his training without further delay? Or should we instruct
him to assist at other treatments, to make sure that his innate disgust is abating as he becomes accustomed to the harsher
aspects of lifesoul-healing?”

The !t! and the Rhemnolid made eye contact and confirmed their agreement. “We are of one mind,” click-chirruped the !t!. “All
three of us. The risks of an accelerated program are high, but the Church’s needs are becoming desperate. And—”

“And that demands that the risssk be accepted,” the Rhemnolid finished for it. “The decision makes itself, in general terms,
but I do not see the specificsss. What, precisely, do you have in mind?”

The Veenseffer co-Fropt took a deep breath. The issue had been decided. There was no point in further delay.

“We must send Samuel to Heaven.”

Empathy has many uses. It can help you to understand your fellow beings, and thereby make their lives—and your own—more pleasant.
On the other hand, if you understand another beings’ feelings, you may be able to use that knowledge against them. Of course,
such actions would be highly unethical. That is precisely what makes them so useful.

Archives of Moish

T
o all but the most careful observer, No-Moon seemed the same as it had always been. Tailfins, jelloids, and other sea creatures
went about their business; mariners sailed the oceans and caused mayhem in the dockside bars. But two hundred miles above
the ocean’s surface, Cosmic Unity’s magnetotorus-powered mission fleet had settled itself in orbit. And a few feet below the
ocean’s surface, the reefwives were making preparations for war.

What they had in mind was biological warfare on a planetary scale. It was a contingency that they had prepared for long ago.

The first line of defense was a virus, which millions of years ago the reefwives had sequestered in sealed capsules, locked
into impermeable rock around the shoreline in a dozen locations. The virus would need genetic modification before it could
be used to defend the planet. In its present form, several key genes had been deactivated, and protection against common mutations
had been added. Such molecular engineering—“gene-hacking,” the reefwives called it disparagingly—was never completely straightforward;
genetic changes that seemed harmless in themselves could interact with other genes, with noncoding sequences, with other organisms,
or with the environment, in unpredictable ways. But this particular suite of modifications had been tested extensively several
times in the past, back on Three-Moons, and experience showed that it could be trusted. Even if the deactivated viruses escaped
from their confinement, they would harm nothing.

Once activated, however, this virus would be devastating. It had been designed from the start to be multispecific—it had the
ability to disrupt the biochemistry of virtually any animal species, with suitable modifications to its surface structure.
The reefwives’ timechunk had told them which species to target: Fyx. So they added carefully tailored receptor molecules to
the virus, based on Fyx biochemistry. The virus would target the neurotransmitter molecules that controlled the signaling
pathways in Fyx nerve cells. Its action was inhibited by a wide range of proteins found only in No-Moon’s plants, and the
reefwives had been vaccinating the animals of No-Moon for months—especially the sentient ones, using a short-lived prion complex
distributed in the ocean and spread overland on the winds. So only the enemy would be vulnerable.

Cosmic Unity’s adherents were primarily carbon-based. Lacking immunity, the coming invaders would quickly be infected with
a virulent and extremely nasty plague.

Already the reefwives’ timechunk was predicting an acceptable contagion rate for the plague, and the death of several thousand
invaders. This gave the reefwives some satisfaction; they were beginning to find out more about Cosmic Unity’s methods as
they cross-correlated Galactic records, and they had never seen any sense in protecting entities that had no scruples about
harming others. They had long been puzzled by some species, which had developed a curious concept that they called “rights”;
a few seemed to imagine that these rights should be extended to every sentient individual, of whatever species, independently
of how it behaved. The reefwives found the idea romantic, and the principle delightfully impractical—but when it came to the
crunch, they felt that rights were something you had to
earn
. Anything that was given away indiscriminately became valueless. Their view was that any creature that failed to respect
the rights of others automatically forfeited its own rights, up to and including the right to exist. Nobody had
invited
Cosmic Unity to inflict its memeplex on No-Moon; it had been the Church’s own idea, and whatever happened to it as a result
would be entirely its own fault. There was no need to warn the invaders or otherwise offer them any potential advantage. That
would just be poor strategy.

As far as the reefwives were concerned, their own survival was an absolute, and they would take whatever steps were necessary
to ensure it. On the other hand, they would never even think about inflicting their own way of thinking on any other species.
As long as others left them alone, they were benign.

So, even though their ways were utterly peaceful, they envisioned the appalling effects of their plague on the unwanted interlopers
with unalloyed pleasure. Unfortunately, their current timechunk also showed the invaders analyzing the virus and quickly coming
up with their own vaccine. So the plague would only slow them down and reduce their numbers. The pleasure, then, would be
transient.

As the defeat of the virus moved to center stage in the unfolding timechunk, the reefwives would have to fall back on alternative
strategies. Simple deceptions involving Neanderthal allies. Mass attacks by hyped-up husbands. The war would escalate, with
no predictable limits to its ferocity. Eventually, they were confident, they would win—but at what cost to the planet? Their
collective memories proved that so far, they had never failed—but on one occasion they had been forced to evacuate their homeworld,
because Three-Moons’ ecology had been unable to recover.

And nothing would
guarantee
that they would win. Their confidence was high, but it might also be misplaced. Perhaps there would come a time when the
enemy was too cunning. Or too lucky.

It pained them that their males would have to bear the brunt of the fighting. The sad fate of Second-Best Sailor and his compatriots
was never far from their thoughts, and they continued to make strenuous efforts to find out who had been responsible. An increasing
proportion of timechunks pointed squarely to Cosmic Unity, but timechunks were subject to revision, however convincing they
might seem.

The reefwives had no doubts, however, that their forthcoming defiance of Cosmic Unity’s invading force would condemn thousands
more mariners, perhaps millions, to equally nasty deaths—along with the other sentient aliens who made their home on No-Moon.
When it came to war, individual organisms with individual minds were at a serious disadvantage. They were easily identified;
they
looked
like intelligent entities.

The reefwives looked like a coral reef. They could wage guerilla warfare, and the enemy would have no idea where it originated.
Who would see a reef as a threat?

So far, no invader had ever recognized the reefwives’ collective intelligence, and so had never tried to attack the reefwives
themselves. Nonetheless, they had a strong suspicion that this time around, their own continued existence might well be on
the line.

That offered one advantage, and as far as they were aware, only one. It was
amazingly
good motivation.

The Aquiferian sandskater was thirsty. Ordinarily, it could get enough moisture from the shrubs upon which it browsed, but
growing an egg required more. Its flukes would have to survive for eleven years in their hideaway beneath a flat rock, and
to do that they would need to be kept wet. They would float in mineral-laden water inside the egg, like miniature goldfish
in a tiny glass bowl, until the egg’s internal clock decided that it was time for them to find a host. Then the rubbery shell
would soften and dissolve, releasing them into the sand. The patch of dampness would attract bush scarabs, which would suck
up the flukes along with the wet sand. As the scarab’s digestive system filtered out the sand for excretion, the flukes would
burrow into its intestinal linings.

At first they would steal some of the scarab’s intake of food. But as they grew, their needs would become greater, and they
would begin to consume the body of their host, starting with its thick deposits of stored polysaccharides, accumulated to
carry it through the colder seasons. The flukes would move on to more critical organs, until soon the scarab lay paralyzed
on the desert floor and baked in the hot sun. The heat would trigger a metamorphosis in the flukes, and they would emerge
from the scarab’s dried-out exoskeleton as a thousand pinprick-sized sandskaters, perfect miniatures of the adult.

This sandskater’s midbody was about the size of a cat and covered in ugly lumps: the creature’s sensory organs, feeding parts,
and reproductive attachments. It was held away from the hot desert sand by dozens of spindly legs, with tufts at their numerous
joints. The creature was close to term: Its bulbous midbody was taut and bulging, inflated by the egg within. But the egg
was still too dry.

The sandskater had stolen water from Aquifer’s ponds before. One final foray, and its egg would be wet enough for burial.
The animal had already selected a suitable rock, half concealed by the leeward slope of a dune. It had dug a spiraling entrance
tunnel and constructed a suitable birthing chamber. All was ready. A little more water—that was all it now needed.

The sandskater was scared. It could sense water, but it could also sense danger. The pond shimmered seductively as the wind
rippled its surface, but the desert surrounding the pond was barren, apparently devoid of all life. The sandskater had already
advanced several yards into this no-man’s-land, leaving behind it the relative safety of the scrub. As always, the evolutionary
imperatives of reproduction were overriding those of self-preservation. Who dares, wins.

Or loses.

Now, frozen by fear, it had stopped. Nothing is worse than hesitation. Out here, on the bare shore, the sandskater was exposed.
It might be taken by a duneglider, an awk, or any of a dozen species of aerial predators. Instinct honed by evolutionary eons
compelled the sandskater to take a decision. Fast.

It scuttled toward the pond’s edge, halting as far away as it could while still obtaining water. Anxious senses searched for
danger. Nothing disturbed the crystal waters of the pond, or its mats of floating algae, but beneath its surface numerous
creatures swam and played. The pond looked tranquil, harmless. The sandskater extended a long feeding tube and began to drink.