Heaven (9 page)

The prohibition on bargaining went even more against the grain than the instruction to reveal the secret of the reefmind to
offworlders, but Second-Best Sailor had long ago learned the hard way that the wishes of the reefwives were not to be denied.
He wondered what could possibly have caused such a panic. The sun about to go nova? A comet strike? With a heartfelt flush
of his siphons, he headed for his cabin, to put the suit back on.

It was a lot to ask. He hoped the Neanderthals would agree. But he never doubted for an instant that the reefmind would persuade
the ’Thals of its own existence. Second-Best Sailor knew from personal experience exactly what his mother was capable of.

The Neanderthal ship didn’t really have a commanding officer—it pretty much took the decisions itself. As far as the crew
were concerned, Sharp Wit Will Cut behaved as a leader, but the ship took its own counsel and seemed generally to respond
to the overall consensus. In fact, experience with Precursor starships showed that the more diverse a population the crew
members were, the better the ship seemed to function, and the easier it was to control.

This particular vessel had been part of a fleet found drifting in the vicinity of Iota Ursae Majoris by a band of magnetotorus
herders, and it had taken part in the original Neanderthal evacuation from Earth, forty thousand years ago. Its official name
was
Talitha
, the name that ancient Arabic astronomers had given to the star where it was found, but the Neanderthals called it “Ship.”
Talitha
was a generation ship: Its crew lived the main part of their lives on board, and their families traveled with them. And most
of the time it traveled at just below the speed of light. However, unlike a true generation ship, it also possessed a Precursor
faster-than-light hydrive. But the hydrive consumed large amounts of energy and so could be used only when it was really necessary.

Despite its gigantic size, the ship was a village, not a city, housing some six hundred crew, along with their families—maybe
fifteen hundred altogether. Of the half dozen or so species on board, the majority were Neanderthals, Tweel engineers, and
Cyldarian ecologists. A lot of the space on the ship was taken up by life-support systems for their varied environments—oxygen,
nitrous oxide, chlorine, and so on. Cargo holds occupied much of the rest. Even so, the ship could have housed a city, had
that been necessary.

Like all Precursor ships that had ever been found,
Talitha
had no weapons. But its size alone was intimidating.

Ancestral Neanderthals had inherited the ship forty thousand years back, along with several others, from their rescuers, and
had been using it ever since to travel the length and breadth of the Galaxy. Because of relativistic time-dilation, the crew
had lived through a mere three thousand years of subjective time since the evacuation.

They generally traveled for subjectively short periods—a few shipboard years, long enough to reach the nearest worthwhile
star, maybe fifty light-years away—and then based themselves in that region of the Galaxy for a generation or so, trading
goods and facilitating the exchange of valuable information. They were in no great hurry to go anywhere in particular or achieve
anything special, but they were wanderers at heart and seldom stayed anywhere for more than twenty years, fifty at the outside.

Like most of the Galaxy’s nomads, they mainly followed the spiral arms that wound outward from the Galactic Hub. In the arms,
stars were more densely distributed, so travel times to the next habitable system were less. A few adventurers had struck
out across the interarm voids, with mixed success. Most had never returned.

Along the way, the Neanderthals had made contact with many civilizations, and occasionally representatives of some of these
had been added to the crew. Now Will was faced with a problem. The reefmind had convinced him that she existed, and his ansible
had a new encryption disk to prove it, a direct link to Atollside Port. This was a big secret, and he would probably be able
to exploit it to advantage at some future date. In the meantime, May and Stun had negotiated a potential deal with that strange
little polypoid Second-Best Sailor. It was a very favorable deal from the Neanderthals’ point of view. But the rest of the
crew weren’t convinced that they wanted to move again yet, and Ship was sensing that majority opinion and refusing to budge.

There was no point in arguing with Ship. Instead, over the years, Will had developed several effective techniques for persuading
the crew to go along with his wishes. If he could develop a consensus, Ship would go along with the decision, he was sure.
So he bustled about the mile-long vessel, arguing and persuading, cutting side deals if necessary, wheedling and disputing,
reminding his crew again and again of the astonishing revelations about the reefwives’ collective mentality. And the innate
empathic sense that all Neanderthals possessed gave him such an edge that soon Ship was positively enthusiastic about the
whole idea and was offering unsolicited advice and assistance.

May and Stun, waiting patiently, got word that the deal was on.

“
How
many transpods?” May asked Will, almost shouting into her ansible.

“Ship says it is sending three. Plus a small one to communicate directly with the reefmind.”

“We were only expecting one.”

“I know. But you know what Ship is like when it senses a really strong consensus. I guess I must have oversold the evacuation
analogy. Everyone seems to think that it would be a great idea to make a symbolic gesture and repay the universe for arranging
our rescue. The Tweel in particular like the sense of closure in that, and they seem to have inspired the others with a sudden
sense of cosmic brotherhood and historical fitness.”

“That sounds dangerously like Cosmic Unity.”

“No, just a harmless, spontaneous upwelling of goodwill. It will not last. Anyway, you had better tell Second-Best Sailor
to round up another forty of his friends. And get busy duplicating sailor suits.”

“We will not be using a transible, then.”

“No, the power drain would not be justified, and the recycle time is too long for us to transport enough mariners by that
means,” said Will, confirming May’s own unexpressed judgment.

“Transpods will be more effective,” she replied, speaking her thoughts out loud.

“Correct. Ship is creating a suitable environment on board, where space is all but limitless, but the transpods cannot carry
enough seawater.” Which reminded him. “Tell Stun to get the analysis of dissolved minerals in No-Moon’s oceans sent up to
Ship as quickly as possible. And pay careful attention to the isotope proportions. The reefwives say that their husbands are
very sensitive to deuterium imbalances.”

May hung the ansible back on her invisible belt and set off in search of the polypoid captain. The strange sense of apprehension
that had dogged her these past few days was much sharper now that she could put a name to it. But were the approaching strangers
truly a menace, as the reefwives feared? Even they were unsure.

The uncertainty worried her. Cosmic Unity’s declarations of universal love worried her more. It all added up to impending
trouble. But what
kind
of trouble? She hadn’t a clue.

Her mind returned to the task at hand. She had left Second-Best Sailor on his boat, kitting out his two apprentices and fifteen
other mariners. He had had enough difficulty persuading those to accompany him offplanet, even with dire warnings of impending—but
unspecified—doom. Now she was going to have to tell him to find twenty or thirty more.

It wasn’t only Will who needed to be very persuasive.

While she was doing that, Will was delving through Ship’s records, trying to find the best choice of a destination. It shouldn’t
be too close—there was no point in evacuating the mariners to a world that would shortly suffer the same fate as their own.
But it shouldn’t be too far, either.

He had called up a three-dimensional star map of the local zone, a cube of space some five thousand light-years wide. The
worlds currently embracing Cosmic Unity glowed lime green, and the frontiers of that religion’s expansion were highlighted
in yellow. A long streak of yellow, running along the spine of the Trailing Spiral Arm, was pointing straight at No-Moon.
They were coming, and they were coming fast. This memeplex was a powerful one, and no mistake. He began to appreciate
why
the reefwives wanted a random selection of their husbands evacuated from their homeworld before Cosmic Unity’s peace mission
arrived in planetary orbit.

The star map would help him to decide on a good choice of world to receive the evacuated mariners. The Tweel engineers had
well-defined priorities, but these contradicted the advice of the Cyldarian ecologists. It was hard to gain consensus. The
Cyldarians didn’t help. One of them was adamant that what mattered most was climate and atmosphere; another flatly contradicted
this, insisting that what really mattered was the existence of at least one large sea, preferably an ocean. With an acceptable
chemical composition, of course—that was one thing they both agreed on.

The only thing, it seemed.

Will valued diversity of opinion, because constructive dissent generally led to more effective decisions and kept everything
functioning effectively. Nothing made Ship more sluggish than mere conformity. But dissent cannot continue indefinitely, and
eventually he was forced to offer one of the Cyldarians a small inducement to shut up. The bribe worked like a charm, and
within ten minutes, Ship had marked out six likely candidates in blue. Another ten minutes’ work by the Cyldarians and Tweel
reduced that number to just one.

Hoping that further study would not reduce it to zero, Will called up the data for this sole remaining candidate. It was a
fairly ordinary world. Its main planetological features were two large polar icecaps. At their fringes they produced copious
quantities of meltwater that fed a network of underground aquifers. Much of the land above was tundra, scrub, and desert.
The aquifers fed into a single ocean, covering about a quarter of the surface, which was bordered by thick, impenetrable swamps.
Water evaporating from the ocean fell as snow at the poles, and this kept the circulation going and topped up the aquifers.

There were no sentients. Nothing even came close. Plants, yes . . . insectoids in abundance, various flying things. Lots of
strange beasties in the ocean. Almost anything in the swamps. And funny walking things that lived in ponds and made long treks
across the desert.

The climate ranged from freezing cold at the poles to uncomfortably hot at the equator. But it wasn’t hot as in
molten rock
—there were places on No-Moon that were just as warm. On neither world would such places be a problem, because the mariners
normally stayed in the sea, and if they had to go onto the land, they wore suits.

The atmosphere had a bit more nitrogen and argon than No-Moon’s, along with some irritating sulfides. There was a slight methane
deficiency. The oxygen level was a bit too low for Neanderthals to avoid wearing breathing apparatus, but there was enough
oxygen dissolved in the ocean for the polypoids to feel perfectly at home. The deuterium levels were comfortably within tolerance.

They would need to seed the ocean with the polypoids’ food organisms, because the native ones were unlikely to be compatible
with mariner metabolism. There could well be dangerous predators in the ocean, so the mariners would have to restrain their
natural urge to travel until the Neanderthals had time to carry out a survey of the marine ecosystem. Their records were inadequate
on this point, as on many others. Nobody had ever done a full planetological study of the planet. That was a nuisance, but
it added to the planet’s attraction—unwanted visitors would be unlikely.

All this meant that initially they would have to find a suitable body of water, like a landlocked bay, and seal off its connection
to the main ocean. It would have to be swept for dangerous life forms and, if necessary, sterilized. The polypoids would have
to remain confined within its boundaries until the wider situation could be assessed. However, all this was relatively simple
with Precursor gadgetry.

If it all worked out, then eventually they would be able to transplant reefs to the planet, too. Apparently, that was how
the reefwives and their males had originally come to No-Moon. At first they had created protected environments to live in,
much as they were doing now, but within a million years of their arrival they had transformed the planet to suit themselves.
Now it was as if they had always been there—had evolved there. When it was safe, and necessary, to move the reefs, they would.
Until then, the reefwives were confident that whatever effect Cosmic Unity might have on their husbands, it would do their
wives little harm. Cosmic Unity didn’t even know the reef was sentient. So the wives could wait.

In the longer term, their new home’s ocean might be permanently nomoonformed, but there was no need even to think about that
step right now.

May was on the ansible again. “Have you come to a decision?” The Neanderthals’ empathic sense did not function at a distance.
If she’d been with Will on board Ship, she would have known that he had.

Will could hear that she sounded agitated—probably because of the sudden change in plans. Trading one day, in charge of an
evacuation the next. “Yes, I have narrowed the options down to just one,” he reassured her. His crevit, now curled in his
lap, buzzed in blissful contentment. Will tugged its ears affectionately. The contact helped to relax them both. “And it is
suitable. Far enough away to be well out of range of the probable future expansion of Cosmic Unity, but close enough for hydrive
access without us going bankrupt. It will need some work, and the polypoids will have to exercise restraint for a time.”

May chuckled. “There is little prospect of that, Will. Even now, the natives are getting restless.”