Bowl of Heaven (32 page)

Sarko was tall and elegant compared to the more pyramidally shaped Folk. Theirs was an unlikely friendship, since Memor was more the grave, solemn type. Yet both realized that the other had needed social skills. Sarko’s willowy manner made her an excellent social guide. She made a point of knowing everyone and let Memor know just what intrigues were afoot. In return, Memor shielded Sarko from complaints that she seldom really contributed ideas to the general purpose. Social gadflies were useful, after all, to lubricate the grinding machinery of Folk hierarchy. Sarko’s friendship with Memor went back to the ancient times when they had both been male. Such scandals they had narrowly averted! Gossip they had barely survived! The rich old days.

“Thanks, fond one,” Memor said. “What can you tell me?”

“There’ll be the usual minor business you’ll sit through, of course. The Adopted—not that your primates are, ey?—fall under the Code, nominally. Especially if—” Here Sarko gave a flare-flutter of mirth. “—they are rampaging over the landscape.”

“They are clever,” Memor allowed herself.

“And hard to catch! We had abundant testimony to that last meeting. Pity you weren’t here—exciting. I gather these primates are not like ours, not simpletons hanging around in trees. Anyway, no wonder they escaped, they seem quite clever. Tricky! I gather they got away from several large search parties, and now have—” Sarko paused in her usual headlong talking. “—have killed several Folk?… And captured a car?…”

Memor gave an assenting wave of feather-fan. “True enough. Word leaks out, I see. They have made the case against their kind quite well.”

Sarko peered into Memor’s face. “You do fathom that the best way to save your career is to agree that they must be exterminated.”

“Oh, quite.”

“So you will? Please.”

“I think we play with fires we do not know here, and should be careful.” Memor had planned that sentence; might as well try it out on a friend.

“That will not go well with the Profounds, old friend.”

A slow side glance. “Friend, I can count on your support?”

A humble bow. “I have little power, alas.”

“Use what you have. I have survived the Citadel of Remembrance, though not without scorn.”

“May you do so well here!” Sarko said, her expression returning to her usual happy state, with blue eye-feathers furling.

Memor followed Sarko’s guidance through the formal labyrinth, enjoying her quick, birdlike movements. Sarko was a quick but not deep intelligence, open to larger mental vistas but preferring the light joys of the social give-and-take.

As an Ecosystem Savant approached, Sarko fell back. “Would you have sustenance?” came the customary offer.

“Not before any other,” Memor made the usual counter. The Ecosystem Savant ruffled colors of routine admiration and the introductions were complete.

At this formal moment, a Packmistress entered, seated herself, and nodded to all with a fluttering plumage neck-arc of authority. “We will commence.” A flutter of acceptance ran round the moist chamber.

The first item was an anticlimax. An ecosystem engineer presented the latest problem. In Zone 28-94-4578, water temples controlled flow to terraces, preventing Folk tribes upstream from using it all, and so avoided impoverishing those below. Yet rainfall had slackened, despite the best Eco management. To prevent the highlands from withholding water without conflict demanded social cement. These Moist Temples used customary
subak
rituals to link the communities with full mingling ceremony and mandatory cross-breeding. Otherwise, they would be snatching at one another’s feathers. Absent such community, crops would fail. Ancient forests would be overrun with loggers, potters, shepherds, and thieves, seeking what they could wrench forth. This evolving crisis challenged lands larger than whole planets.

The biology of all lands shifted in time, of course—nature’s restless seekings making species that, in the evolutionary sense, pass by each other on their way to somewhere else. Adapt, evolve, or die—the eternal rule. But drought hastened nature here.

Memor watched as several Profounds tossed the problem among themselves. Much verbal artistry could not conceal the hard choices. There seemed no merciful solution. Accordingly, the Packmistress let each side play out, stating cases, pleading for more aid.

Then the Packmistress showed a crescent display of resolute judgment—a bad sign. She said, “No extensions for longevity throughout the threatened domain. No appeals, no exceptions.”

There it was. A hush fell upon the chamber. Memor could hear the gentle splashing of the calming waters on the walls. The Packmistress had condemned millions to their natural extinction. They could not claim special aging preventives.

The Packmistress ordered a recess for contemplation. Sarko immediately appeared at Memor’s flank. “Perhaps such stern justice will be of help.”

“Or set the tone,” Memor said dryly.

“I have been circulating.…” Sarko always opened with a teasing promise, fluttering side feathers near her eyes. “Some say you know the most of these aliens, so should lead the hunt.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes, those who spoke at all seemed quite friendly to your cause.”

“I do not seek to lead a hunt.”

Feathers ringing Sarko’s neck fluttered. “But you fathom these strange—”

“Has it occurred to you that I could
fail
?”

“Ah, no. You have such a sterling record—”

“This is the first alien invasion in countless twelve-cubed Cycles. We are inexperienced. As well, no one has ever dealt with such evil little creatures.”

Sarko’s elegant head jerked, weaved. Feathers fanned the astonished violet-rimmed eyes. “But you! Everyone says—”

“Everyone hasn’t walked in my path. I do not wish to exchange one route to death for another. This hunt could fail, the aliens could do much damage—and there will be victims among us, then.”

Sarko’s joyful face collapsed. “Surely you can’t—”

The summoning chimes sounded, reverberating in the high chamber. Memor drew in the soft air, but tasted a bitter hint—her own bile?

Back in chambers, more Eco deliberations droned by. Movements of the Folk were not following the Design. Memor let her Undermind rove as she half listened.

All life was properly in movement, on the grand plains of the Bowl World. But the bigger, lower-grade-intelligence Folk, who lived as primitives and augmented their diet browsing shrubs and trees, were to move on—to give grazers a chance to live on the grasses that followed the loss of shrubs. These primitives were not crop-raising Folk, and should remain in their wild condition.

So populations had to be forced to move, and not set up camps and villages. The Packmistress made quick work of this matter, directing Suborns to destroy the primitive camps and force the subFolk to move on. They had their role in the Design, and should be reminded of it.

She reminded them all that the Originals had learned the Great Truth that governed all: that given vast new lands, the Folk then quickly invade these spaces, wreak destruction, and when resources grow short, fight with neighbors for more. Under the first rush of exploding populations in the Original Times, wildland had to pay or perish, to persist. Poachers and loggers turned lands into battlefields.

Only after much strife that threatened the Bowl itself did the Codes come, managed by the Savants. There was no alternative to a constant, assuring order. Another revelation was that death did not permit one to stay out of the Cycle. In some Bowl societies, the Folk tried to deny their own role, and so put their dead into coffins and mausoleums, burned themselves in pyres, even suspend themselves in cold for future resurrection. All were a wrongness, for the Bowl needed these bodies.

“Mites and worms
should
have us,” the Packmistress said. “This is the Cycle and it must be obeyed. Such is the Design. The Code does not protect lands and seas from the Folk, but rather
for
the Folk—by taking the long view. The Code teaches humility, because it engages us with Nature in the eternal dance with all other species.”

Memor bowed her head at this obvious platitude and wondered how it would affect her—well,
trial
was not quite right, but the stern faces of those around her did not bode well.

At this moment Sarko piped forth, “I suppose the message here is, just remember that you can never predict the behavior of a system more complex than you. And if you want a project to stay on track after you’re gone, you don’t give control to anything that’s guaranteed to develop its own agenda.”

Ah,
Memor thought. Sarko was drawing fire to defuse the tension in the room. And it worked. Those clustered around made derisive noises, though some just fluttered their feather-fans. “Surely that is too simple,” an elderly Savant hooted. Others just laughed.

The Packmistress allowed a flicker of irritation to ripple through her feathered corona. “For we—Savants, Profounds, all those in the tier below Astronomers—corruption of purpose means simple bribery, graft, or nepotism. But for lower Folk who enjoy their lives in the unchanging state our Bowl ensures, corruption has an entirely different meaning. It is the failure to share any largesse you have received with those with whom you have formed ties of dependence.”

Sarko said, “Surely that is predictable, my—”

“Our view of corruption makes sense in a culture of laws and impersonal institutions,” the Packmistress rolled right over Sarko. “But theirs is a small world whose defining feature is the web of indebtedness, of obligations that ensure the social order. So to them, not to give a job to a cousin is corrupt, even if others are better qualified. Not to do deals with tribesFolk because better terms may be found elsewhere is also corrupt. Reducing corruption of this sort demands—” The Packmistress let her voice fall to a grave tone. “—resolve.”

A sobered silence from those who saw what was going on.

“It is useful to recall the full brunt of our measures,” she began, displaying a somber arc-pattern of grays and pale blues. “I remind us all that while such social dissension occurs on occasion, there is a rogue element afoot, and not far from these territories where the water temples are failing to make a benign equilibrium.”

With this she cast a significant long look at Memor. “Witness, I bid you, the current state of those we have condemned for committing offenses of this type.” With a great sway of her body, she signaled the attendants. The dome over their heads surged with popping energy, and a wide image played upon it. Memor shivered with fear when she recognized the context.

The greatest preventive the Astronomers had, used against only those whose actions threatened the Bowl’s environment and fate, was the Perpetual Hell. Mention of its very existence could silence a crowd.

Those who violated the Code could face having their very minds mapped, and their bodies then executed. They would then awake suspended in a virtual, mental Hell from which none escaped. Ever.

Memor had gone through the mandatory sampling of a mere single Hell, and would never forget it. And now here it came again, splashed across the ceiling.

A glowering sky, shot with red and amber. Beneath lay a vast swamp flooded with fuming lava, the stench—the Packmistress had ordered the full sensorium to come into play across the chamber—so strong, it now crawled into her nostrils and stung throughout her head.

“Attend!” the Packmistress commanded. Heads had already averted the images, eyes snatched away.

Memor looked up against her will. Rooted in this acrid slime were … the doomed Folk. They writhed and screamed in tiny shrill voices. Fires danced upon them as they twisted. A din of shrieking pain played across the bodies. They could not wrench free of the fires and so endured it like trees whipped by winds of agony. Eyes pleaded with them all—for those in this place knew they were watched; it was part of the torture—begging for release from agonies she could see but do nothing about. Rocks fell from the smoldering sky and smashed the fevered mud.

The first time she had to watch this, the intent was to educate her, and the lesson never left her mind for long. Now the Packmistress meant to instill discipline. Memor trembled, for the message was clearly focused on her.

At a nod, the image and scents fled. Sighs and worried murmurs laced the air as the Packmistress settled herself, looking satisfied.

All waited and the Packmistress let tension build.
She’s toying with me,
Memor thought. At last the Packmistress said slowly, “The Bureau of the Adopted had as its Research Minister a Profound of the most high stratum. He will present their views now, and our guest, Memor, will answer. Attend—these are the firm results of our global staff, an analysis of the nature of these … aliens.”

Memor watched as the Profound—a male, of course, since males push at the boundaries, as a rightful, youthful function—gave a rather hurried talk. He swept his great head about to stress his points, feathers ruffling constantly at his neck for emphasis. Masculine energy surged through his sentences.

“These are clever creatures, a form we never saw evolve in the Bowl.” The Profound tipped his head at his audience, mirth playing in his eyes. “This may come from their tempting role as game—” This brought a storm of laughter, obviously a release from the tension of watching the Hell. “—but we can deduce aspects of their evolution from their surprising intelligence.”

Memor knew where this was going. She was not so far from the male phase; she could still anticipate the channels of their thoughts; after all, that was a core female talent. Evolutionary theory would predict a clear pattern in the aliens, and males loved the mechanisms of theory. Selection pressure on some world had favored the climbers of trees, and then had somehow shifted, so the climbers came down to the ground. There they learned to hunt. As strategies go, hunting in groups compelled social communication, to find prey and coordinate attacks. That drove speech and language. In turn, intelligence acted on social cues so that group survival became enhanced, in conflict with other hunting groups of the same species. That drove cooperation. Particularly, selection would favor both the charismatic minds that could lead, and the analytical ones, which would see deeper. The social pyramid would have a bulge in the middle, of the variously competent.