Super Extra Grande (9 page)

Since its smallest fellow laketons, Gargantua and Pantagruel, are “merely” sixty kilometers in diameter and grow at a proportionately slower rate, experts have concluded that Tiny has been the largest cell and living creature in the galaxy since long before humans discovered fire.

A peevish Parimazo once calculated that at its current rate of growth, in about six billion years Tiny would outweigh all of Brobdingnag and might even be larger than its primary star, Swift-3. And in three and a half billion years, it could outweigh the combined mass of the Milky Way.

It’s good to know we won’t be around by then. Just in case.

Naturally, not even a planet as huge as Brobdingnag can harbor many creatures as immense as laketons. Only 611 of them have been counted moving across its surface.

The “small” laketons, Gargantua and Pantagruel, are assumed to be mere cubs. As weird as it seems to use the word “cubs” for those monstrosities, which must have been born around the time Columbus was discovering America, at the latest.

The speculation is that laketons reproduce by simple binary fission, like many well-known protozoa, but to date the process has never been witnessed. Given their longevity, whole centuries might pass before one decides to start dividing. The event might depend on some planetary alignment, or a cellular clock set by an unusually long biological time scale… or who knows what else. So much is still unknown about laketons.

The titanic amoeba of Brobdingnag has a feeding method as spectacular as its size. It has no eyes or ears, and it wouldn’t even need them to capture its “prey”: the meteoroids continuously falling from space. Its cellular membrane, several meters thick in some areas, is highly resistant to cosmic and ultraviolet rays but also extremely sensitive to changes in the intensity of light, air pressure, and, above all, gravity.

No gravimeter made by humans or any of the other “lucky seven” races could compete. A laketon has been shown to have the ability to detect a fragment with a mass of only ten kilos falling through the planet’s atmosphere at a distance unimaginable for any artificial instrument. By some unknown means, which must be entirely instinctive given that it has nothing remotely resembling a brain, it instantly completes the complex ballistic calculations that reveal the meteoroid’s velocity and trajectory, telling it to a very close approximation where its delicious “snack” will fall—and allowing it to capture the meteor in flight.

A laketon can also determine—by spectrography, long-distance taste, smell, or some other poorly understood sense—whether the meteoroid is an indigestible fragment of purely inorganic rock with metallic ore (best avoided) or a succulent cometary agglomeration of ice water or carbonaceous chondrites (not to be missed).

It also has a sense of its own reach and abilities that would make it the envy of many baseball players. If the impact site is too far off, it doesn’t even budge, but if the zone lies instead at a reasonable distance, it will stretch trillions of tons of cytoplasm in that direction at the speed of an express train, forming a pseudopod dozens of kilometers long by a few hundred meters wide, which it uses to capture the meteoroid before it touches the ground.

Fly ball! Yer out.

How it absorbs the tremendous kinetic energy of the impact, dissipating it throughout its gigantic body without the heat generated by the blow vaporizing its cytoplasm or causing any other damage, is an enigma that has fascinated engineers and biologists alike. But so far, in vain.

A pity, because you could perform miracles with a thermal conduction system as efficient as that.

Engineers also dream of constructing similar gravitational wave detectors and/or controls for spaceships. Biologists, for their part, fantasize about synthesizing materials to keep astronauts equally comfortable in weightlessness or under dozens of
g
’s of acceleration.

While they’re at it, they’d love to discover the genetic mechanisms behind these creatures’ unmatched longevity.

It is a law of biology that the more massive an animal is, the longer it lives. Tsunamis and other giants tend to be quite long-lived. But even titans die.

So far, no laketon has ever been known to die. Some biologists even doubt they can. It’s hard to imagine the sort of planetary cataclysm it would take to wipe out so much living matter.

In short, they’re fascinating bugs. Given their huge size and the powerful gravity on their home world, they are studied from the comfort of orbit, using telescopes. Floating in weightlessness while observing such magnificent beings can be an absorbing occupation—but also monotonous and boring; no observer can take it for more than a week.

But of course there’s never any shortage of enthusiastic volunteers to take their place. The crew of the
Fancy Appaloosa
would have been surprised to learn that four fully crewed biological observation ships are now in permanent orbit around the planet that they somewhat rashly described as being “of no interest whatsoever.” Each ship holds four observers… and the waitlist holds the names of more than fifteen thousand applicants, with representatives from each of the “lucky seven” races.

Mine is one of them. I checked my place on the
loooong
list a few days before Governor Tarkon called me to Nerea, and there were still three thousand applicants ahead of me, so I’d have to wait “only” another three and a half years…

They’re popular critters, no doubt about it. At least among veterinarian biologists like me.

My never having been within fifty light-years of a laketon was a painful, unpardonable gap in my résumé. What sort of a “Veterinarian to the Giants” was I, if I hadn’t been able to study the largest of all known living beings?

Aside from two or three parasites, which some even doubt count as distinct and independent species, there seem to be no life forms on Brobdingnag other than laketons. So it wasn’t strange at all for me to volunteer, without a moment’s hesitation, the second I deduced from what Gardf-Mhaly was saying that the affair would involve the titans I had yearned to see for so long.

There’s an old Cuban saying: “If he doesn’t want soup, give him three bowlfuls.”

But what if he does want soup? What then? Pelt him with bouillon cubes?

*

To lend a little stylistic variety to my still-pending autobiography (and who knows how much longer it will pend), I could narrate my face-to-face meeting with Gardf-Mhaly and the other top brass in the Galactic Community Coordinating Committee in the form of a play.

Might be interesting.

It would go something like this:

SCENE
:
Inside a Juhungan mother ship. Probably a hangar for faster, smaller attack craft, judging from its size and the honeycombed walls.

In this room, the volutes of germanium polymerase foam that characterize the hydrogen breathers’ organic constructs are lined with a neutral boron nitride coating, allowing the beings engaged in heated debate around a giant holoprojection to breathe oxygen freely without danger of compromising the vehicle’s internal structure.

There are two Cetians, two humans, and one Juhungan. The last, barely a meter tall, is apparently the host; he only watches, takes no part. Decked out in an organic spacesuit typical of his species, he looks like a gigantic, transparent sea urchin.

The members of the two oxygen-breathing races, wearing a variety of uniforms all tinted the distinctive silver of the Galactic Community Coordinating Committee, argue among themselves in Spanglish.

GARDF-MHALY, CETIAN COORDINATOR
: Este ship acaba de docked; he’ll be aquí in a few minutos. Insisto que we must tell him toda la verdad. The fact que sus two former employees happened to coincide en estos… discussions may be a signo. The Goddess esta trying to tell us algo…

ADMIRAL WILLIAM HURTADO, HUMAN
COORDINATOR
: Yes, que we’ve got a ticking bomba de tiempo en our hands! Goddess o no Goddess, if young Kmusa no regresa a home within las próximas seventy-two horas, the gang of Olduvailan fanatics que follow her como they used to follow a su padre will pensar que she fell into a Cetian trap. They’ll atacar, y luego you can kiss adiós a nuestro ceasefire y to any hopes of settling nuestras interspecies differences pacíficamente.

CONFLICTMASTER
JHUN-LIKHA,
CETIAN COORDINATOR
: Admiral, does it not le preocupa what my people might hacer if they creen their envoy fue asesinado by the human colonizers ilegales? Su frustrated and regrettable… romantic affair con the human Sangan Dongo has made her muy popular among our people. If she does not regresa soon, ni siquiera nosotros, their elected military leaders, will be able to controlar la situación. The anti-human faction es already very strong, and if they come al poder, an immediate escalation de ataques on the Olduvailans will follow.

GENERAL JUNICHIRO KURCHATOV, HUMAN COORDINATOR:
Let’s hope que no llegue to that. No, en honor a la memoria of the fallen of both our razas at the Second Battle of Canaan… But quite right, no estamos as worried sobre what your people may do pero sobre how these rebellious colonizers might reaccionar. Probablemente porque we are confidentes that you will transmitir nuestras más sincere apologies a your people—and that they’ll be un poco más rationales than we humans tend to be en such cases… y will accept them.

GARDF-MHALY
: It is sad for un líder to place más trust in the equanimity of sus rivales than in that of the members de su propia race.

WILLIAM HURTADO
: Probablemente it’s sad, pero it’s también very realístico. Besides, nosotros no somos rivales. Not ahora, anyway… Pero I insist in any case that Doctor Sangan should be given as little información as possible. Él es just un civilian. And the truth is, you’ve already told him demasiado.

At this point, realizing that the tense atmosphere could precipitate a genuine confrontation, the Juhungan observer-host speaks up, even though he isn’t a Coordinator and is theoretically outranked by everyone else in the room.

Let’s call him Mkron-Rve. Human and Cetian lips and throats would be completely incapable of pronouncing his actual name, of course.

Mkron-Rve activates the symbiotic translator-telepath that he wears attached to two of the spines on his uniform. The small organism, which looks somewhat like a quadruped parrot with feather-like antennae, instantly puts his thought-ideas into words.

In proper Spanglish, he basically says that neither the human race nor the Cetians will last much longer unless they both take extreme measures and, most importantly, move quickly. But they are rather foolishly letting their arguments get in the way of that goal.

Then Mkron-Rve adds, speaking of course through the translator-symbiote, that the Olduvailan humans illegally occupying Cetian territory are also civilians, and in any case, everyone present here must not forget that they are on board a combat vessel put at their disposal by the Most Correct Hegemony of Juhung in a manifest sign of goodwill, as representatives of two companion races of the Galactic Community, in order that they may resolve their problems with no further violence—something that the highest governing body of the right honorable hydrogen-breathing race would never have done without first completing an exhaustive study of the most obscure details of the situation.

Juhung, according to some experts, means “la people que use all las words correctamente.”

Emphasis on all…

JHUN-LIKHA
: Mkron-Rve habla wisely. Él deserves to be made un Coordinator. No tenemos tiempo for debating detalles or assigning blame; debemos forget nuestras diferencias and undertake un joint rescue. As for data leaks… bear en mente que Doctor Sangan might have refused to take on el caso si two of his former employees were not envueltas. That was algo we could not risk. On my planet nosotros decimos, “Discover dónde están el honor y también duty y the people will follow.”

JUNICHIRO KURCHATOV
: Well, on Earth nosotros decimos, “Discover dónde están los profits y people will come corriendo.” Given the laketons, yo creo que this Sangan should have rushed aquí on the double even if su peor enemigo were involved. He’s been trying to get cerca to them por años. I’ve been following su carrera for a long tiempo; él tiene the skills, for sure, pero he wasn’t un especially brilliant estudiante at Anima Mundi, did you know?

MHALY
: You have been keeping un ojo en him for so long, General? I think that data point alone suffices para mostrar how special él es. My milk cousin An-Mhaly once harbored, and probablemente still harbors, strong feelings por this Sangan. Therefore I thought him deserving de la verdad. He is a good person. For a human and an hombre, that is.

HURTADO
: Okay, maybe we’re judging al hombre too harshly. For a Cetian to fall in love con él, he must not be your run-of-the-mill personaje. Nosotros don’t have a whole lot of otras opciones, either. Let’s let him try the rescue—so long as he signs the most ironclad, restrictive secret confidentiality agreement que nuestros abogados can produce before he lands on Brobdingnag.

LIKHA
: As you quiera. Yo insisto that having him work without knowing todos los detalles is más dangerous, not safer. And we truly tenemos few alternativas.

KURCHATOV
: So it’s agreed. Tres a uno. For the record, yo estoy en contra, pero… majority rules. Send him in.

And this is where I walk in.

Alone, of course, because when it comes to confidentiality you’re better off not counting on Narbuk. Oh, he’ll keep a lid on it, alright, but he’ll bang that lid like a kettledrum. The Laggoru’s brain is an echo chamber: He’s genetically incapable of keeping things to himself. The second you tell the reptilian a secret, it ceases to be a secret.

So, ignoring his protests, I’ve sent him on to Abyssalia, non-stop. And on his own. Let him figure things out for himself without hiding in my shadow for once. Maybe he can resolve the problem of the grendels spawning out of season without having to get close to them, maybe not. In either case, he’s such a virtuoso at making up excuses, he might be able to convince the anxious ecologists that I’m late getting to them because I’ve run into unavoidable obstacles.