Heaven (24 page)

Immediately, an amphibian’s stubby head broke the surface of the pond right where the sandskater was drinking. Without warning,
it spat a thick gobbet of mucus, which hit the sandskater’s midbody full on and clung in a sticky mess. The neurotoxins in
the mucus would have felled a top-of-the-food-chain predator, and had done so on many occasions; the sandskater never stood
a chance. Its legs splayed, and it collapsed. Its skin split open to reveal the rounded contours of its egg.

The carcass rested inertly at the edge of the pond, the tip of its feeding tube dangling in the water. A shoal of shrimps
converged on the feeding tube and began to gnaw at it.

Now the sand beneath the carcass began to change. It turned into a thick, runny fluid, like quicksand. Strange waves in the
fluid began to nudge the sandskater’s dead body closer to the pond. It would have taken a microscope to work out what was
happening. Branching fronds of algae were growing into the shore beneath the creature, pumping water into the sand. Other
microorganisms were changing the viscosity of the wetted sand in a cycle, from thick to thin and back again. These changes
caused the sand to form mobile ridges, pushing the carcass toward the water.

The dead sandskater slid smoothly into the pond, with hardly a ripple. The dense shell of its water-filled egg dragged it
beneath the surface.

A million tiny threadworms began to eat their way in, through any region of soft tissue, quickly turning the animal’s interior
into mush. Then the exoskeleton began to fall apart as its supporting muscles turned to shreds.

The threadworms’ feeding frenzy was halted only when the amphibians moved in to eat the softened carcass.

Soon all was still again. Only the egg remained, lodged in mud at the bottom of the pond. The cool ripples were ready to lure
their next victim.

While the mission fleet prepared to enforce tolerance and love on the citizens of No-Moon whether they wanted them or not,
other representatives of Cosmic Unity were trying to work out the implications of an invasion in the other direction—the invasion
of Aquifer by a small contingent of aliens.

Hhoortl555mup had studied Ykzykk-Knazd’s report with unusual care. The incursion had indeed been an extreme measures circumstance,
and a commendation for the patrol captain’s rapid and correct decision had been entered into Church archives. Privately the
hierocrat disagreed with the ecclesiastical decree about extreme measures. She would have preferred a more cautious approach
initially, with force held in reserve. But if she had allowed the intruders to establish a secure base, and they had then
used their ansible to invite others to join them, she would have regretted her disobedience. Oh, yes.

Extreme measures were only the first step. Now she must find out more about the intruders, decide what to do next. What had
the creatures been up to? Why had they installed a forcewall across an obscure bay? To find out, she had dispatched a carload
of technicians to the bay, to turn up whatever information they could while disposing of any remaining evidence of the attack.
Now the car had returned, and a certain amount of light was beginning to dawn.

“The incursion was small and localized,” said the head technician, a Baatu’unji that was far enough past its breeding peak
to engage its mind on impersonal investigations.

“This one was,” said the hierocrat sourly. “The next could be bigger. Maybe this was a trial run.” She had stationed herself
in front of her Ankh of Authority, a potent symbol, and she was disappointed that the technician seemed unaffected. It was
next to the console that she used to access the archives. Her fashionable fringe of lopworms writhed prettily in response
to her concealed anger. They responded to temperature shifts caused by emotional stress.

“For what, Hierocrat?” asked the Baatu’unji technician, unwisely.

“That, you fool, is what I sent you to discover!”

The technician blinked. “We were able to discover facts, Hierocrat. Motives are seldom preserved in physical form. On this
occasion—”

“Your expedition failed!”

“. . . we were unable to establish any motive. But we can now identify the type of alien involved in the invasion.”

This was news to the hierocrat. “Well, out with it.”

From the agitated state of the hierocrat’s lopworm headpiece, the Baatu’unji could see she was in a very foul mood, and the
technician shuddered inwardly. “There were nearly fifty of them, Your Eminence. All from the same species, all male. Some
young; most coming to the end of their active phase, though not yet senile.”

“Yes, yes . . . Tell me something I can
use
.”

“We examined the corpses carefully. We took tissue samples and made extensive tests. The physiological damage done to them
by our weaponry was extensive, but we can say with certainty that they are marine creatures, Hierocrat.”

“
I know that!
They were in the
sea
!”

“They could have been land animals with a degree of aquatic tolerance, Your Eminence.”

Hierocrat Hhoortl555mup had long ago become resigned to Baatu’unji logic-chopping. “Very well, so they are marine by nature,
not by inclination. What does that tell us?”

“To be more specific, they are polypoids. Male corals. Such creatures have evolved on several hundred worlds, and it will
take time to pinpoint exactly which of these worlds was the source of this . . . infestation. Assuming it was a single source,
of course. But”—the technician hastened to move on to the good news—“we now know where to concentrate our efforts in identifying
the aliens.”

The hierocrat was slightly mollified. These things took time, she knew. “I trust those efforts are already being concentrated?”

“Oh, yes. And we also . . . we know that we were not the target of the invasion. The invaders had no idea we were present
on this planet. They were merely seeking a suitable aquatic environment to found a colony.”

The hierocrat was impressed. “You managed to deduce that from dead bodies?”

The Baatu’unji blinked again. “Oh, no. Not at all.”

The hierocrat rippled with frustration at the obtuseness common to this species. “Then how . . .”

“. . . do we know? Simple, Your Eminence. Two of the invaders survived the attack and were captured. One is still very weak.
We have interrogated the other one, and he has told us that—”

The technician wilted before the verbal onslaught, outright terror visible in its features. The hierocrat had not been aware
that there had been any survivors. What annoyed her most was that the Baatu’unji was unable to comprehend her outrage at being
told about it
now
.

The polypoid needed no extra life support. It was wearing its own suit. The hierocrat recognized the make: Its golden color
showed it to be a duplied copy of a Precursor original. The suit, no doubt, was what had allowed the creature to survive the
onslaught; it must have fled the boiling sea and taken cover on land. Even so, it was a miracle that the creature had escaped.

“What is its designation?” she asked the Fyx interrogator, who had replaced the Baatu’unji technician.

“Pardon?”

“Its
name
.”

“Ah. It translates as something along the lines of ‘Inferior Aquanaut,’ Your Eminence.”

“Eel crap!” the polypoid protested. It reconfigured its suit to lift itself upright and defend its dignity.

“Your name is Eel Crap?”

“No!” it said with scorn. “I’m Second-Best Sailor! I’m a mariner an’ proud of it! An’ my suit’s translator’s better’n yours,
too, matey.”

“Inferior Aquanaut? That’s what I just said,” the Fyx responded, getting the same mistranslation as before from his own unit
and failing to appreciate what was happening. The hierocrat decided not to enlighten him. There was more urgent business.
“As senior representative of the Church of Cosmic Unity, I will interrogate him. After that . . . I will decide when the time
comes. It will depend on what is best for the Church.”

Hhoortl555mup had been expecting resistance, but Second-Best Sailor answered all her questions without any need for persuasion.
In fact, the biggest problem was to stop him talking, given that much of what he said conveyed no information whatsoever.
The polypoid was a coward, she decided. Item by item, the hierocrat extracted nuggets of fact from a torrent of braggadocio.

“Home world? We call it No-Moon, Yer Innocence, on account of ’ow it ain’t got no moon. Good name, right? Flouncin’ brilliant,
it is, unlike its moon, on account of ’ow it ain’t got none, ya appreciate.”

The hierocrat called up a planetary catalog. “There are forty-six worlds of a similar name within the civilized Galaxy,” she
said. “All but two of them have no moon. Be more specific.”

“I ain’t no spacer,” said Second-Best Sailor. “Fat Apprentice, now, ’e was interested in that kind of thing. But ’e’s dead;
you zygoblasts boiled ’im when you attacked us.”

“An error on our part. We might have learned something useful. Do you know how far away your homeworld is from here? In which
direction?”

“Nah. Like I said, I ain’t no spacer.”

The hierocrat gestured at the technician. “This one is useless. Dispose of him as you—”

“Now wait a minute! Give me time to think! Umm . . . the cap’n did say something about that, though. Let me put me mind to
it. . . . Yes, ’e said it was years. That was it.”

“Years are a measure of time. Do you mean light-years?”

“Light, heavy—I dunno. ‘Light’ sounds familiar.”

“How many light-years?”

“’Ow
many
? It’s supposed to ’ave a
number
? Well, spike me a marlon and prick me with a jelloid! No one mentioned no number.”

“A pity. It will take time to determine which of the forty-four moonless No-Moons you originated from. You will find it more
comfortable if you can assist us in shortening that period. What kind of star did your planet orbit?”

“Star?”

“Sun. Your world must have had a sun.”

“Oh, yes.”

“What kind?”

“Round, bright . . . I never looked at it much, bein’ underwater mostly. . . . Well, it was white, an’ it came up in the day
and disappeared at night.”

“Was there just one sun? Or more?”

“More’n one sun? You people do live fascinatin’ lives, an’ no mistake. No, there was just one of it. And no moon, did I mention
that?”

The hierocrat decided to try another tack. “Why did you come here?”

“The ’Thals brought us.”

“Neanderthals?” That was news. A trading ship, no doubt. Was it still orbiting nearby? Such a big ship would appear in the
night sky like a bright, fast-moving star. The patrol had seen nothing—ah, but the night had been cloudy. The follow-up car
had not reported a ship, but in daylight, with the naked eye, that was understandable. So the ship could still be there, below
the horizon, invisible to her telescopes.

She made a mental note to order a portable telescope to be sent to lower latitudes, to see if her guess could be confirmed.
If the ship was still in orbit around Aquifer, it was probably already too late. Destroying the ship was not an option—the
monastery did have one spacecraft, but it was small, intended only for the emergency transportation of key personnel. It could
not attack one of the giant trading ships. And the Neanderthals could slip away long before larger vessels arrived.

She already knew what the ecclesiarchs would order her to do if there was any chance that Neanderthals had detected a presence
on Aquifer. Safety would be paramount, expense irrelevant. Nevertheless, she had to find out as much as she could, and quickly.
She returned her attention to the interrogation. “Why did the Neanderthals bring you here?”

“To start a new colony,” Second-Best Sailor affirmed haughtily. “There was some kind o’ trouble on No-Moon, an’ we ’ad to
evacuate. I loaned the ’Thals a bit o’ my wife,” he confided. “To keep her safe. ’Course, I kept another bit for my own use.”

That was more like it. They could correlate this with Galactic news and information sources and narrow down the search. “What
kind of trouble?”

Second-Best Sailor’s skin went the blotchy green of futility. “I dunno much, Your Impudence. We was only told that we ’ad
to get off the planet fast. Before it was overrun by some bunch arrivin’ in a fleet of spaceships . . . Religious nuts, the
’Thals said they were. Comic Nullity—something like that.”

The hierocrat blanched, but finally she had what she wanted. Hadn’t the new arrival, XIV Samuel something-or-other, been transibled
from a mission fleet
en route
to a world named No-Moon? She called up the archives. Yes, he had. So now she knew where the intruders had come from, and
how. She was beginning to understand why, too, but she wanted more details about that.

The interrogation continued. Piece by piece, Second-Best Sailor let slip useful hints about his homeworld and why the Neanderthals
had attempted to establish a small force of polypoids on Aquifer. Hhoortl555mup was confident that the colonists had thought
Aquifer to be uninhabited: The ease with which they had been exterminated proved that. But now the orbiting Neanderthal ship
would be running a high level of surveillance, and there was a definite chance that it would locate the monastery under the
ice dome. The ice would be slightly warmer than it ought to be. No concealment could be perfect.

Despite the careful risk analysis that supported the ecclesiarchs’ decree, she was becoming ever more certain that on this
occasion extreme measures had backfired. Perhaps the patrol should have held back. . . . But if they had, she might at this
very moment be informing the ecclesiarchs that more intruders were arriving, that the monastery had been discovered,
and
that she had disobeyed standing orders.

No contest. She put the seditious thoughts aside and tried to concentrate on carrying out her responsibilities.

She wondered what weapons the Neanderthals possessed. Normally, their trading vessels were unarmed despite their impressive
bulk, but there were dozens of worlds that would fit almost any kind of weapon, for the right price, with no questions asked.
The hierocrat had no wish to find out that weapons had been installed by being on their receiving end.