Swallow the Sky: A Space Opera (13 page)

“Hey! Aren’t you going to
buy me dinner first?”

He laughed and let go.

“Sorry, but we need to
have each other’s scent on our bodies – you’ll understand why in a moment.”

“Oh well in that case
perhaps we should…”

“Oh no!”

“You said we had plenty
of time…”

“Aiyana, please stop
doing that…”

“Oh look Professor, I
knew you liked me!”

“Right, young lady, you
asked for this…”

Ten frenetic minutes
later, their pheromones thoroughly intertwined, Carson and Aiyana each stepped
into a pod and made themselves comfortable.

“Okay, in a moment we’re
going to close up. The upper surface of the pod’s interior is a display like
the buggy’s, so you’ll have the feeling of being able to see around. And as
this is your first time in Vegrandis, let me do the driving.”

“How do we get the pods
out of this room?”

“We don’t. Did you ever
train in a simulator? This is similar except that we’ll be remotely controlling
a moving vehicle.”

“Then why don’t we just
–?”

“You’ll see”

He grinned and gave the
command to close the pods. Aiyana was momentarily surrounded by a blank wall
then the display came to life. They were in some form of hanger containing tracked vehicles that were embellished with a wild collection of antennae and sensing devices. She
glanced behind her and gasped: the hermetically sealed container towered over
them – it had grown to at least five meters high – the cargo was resting on a
trailer attached to their tractor.

“I’m leaving the hanger
now” said Carson’s voice in her ear. Aiyana braced herself – she had finally
realized what was about to happen – even so she emitted a short scream as the
doors rolled open.

The moment daylight
flooded into the hanger a colossal insect, at least two meters tall, rushed up
to them, its feelers twitching furiously. The creature’s black body had the
classic trifurcated configuration but with eight legs rather than six, although
the front two were smaller and clearly not used for walking. In addition to two
pairs of antennae, the flat triangular head sported a terrifying pair of jaws
but there was no sign of eyes. Hanging round the segmented neck was a gold
plaque upon which was inscribed
Official Guide
in neatly-lettered
Universal.

“Darkness and warmth to your nest
[untranslatable]. You wish assistance?”

“Greetings, may your
grubs flourish” Carson replied “yes, we wish to meet Tallis, can you take us to
her?”

“Translation is hell” Carson said to Aiyana.

“Insects communicate by
smell, touch, movement, and some sound. And if you think the meta-Cetaceans are
hard to figure out, wait till you’ve dealt with this bunch.”

“Affirmative [untranslatable, untranslatable]
that service will be ten Ecus”

“Lead on, we follow your
scent.”

The huge creature spun
round and plunged into the tropical sunlight. Except it wasn’t huge at all,
Aiyana now realized that it was about half the size of her smallest finger
nail, and their remotely controlled vehicle was not much bigger.

While Aiyana was vaguely
acquainted with the history of the first encounter with intelligent insects she
was not in the least surprised to learn that Carson knew all about it. The
human race had stumbled across the Callidus five thousand years ago in the
Outer Norma Arm of the galaxy, he explained.

Until that time the only
other intelligent creatures known were the meta-Cetaceans, who had evolved
independently on innumerable ocean-bearing worlds. But the Leviathans wanted
nothing to do with technology; they thought the whole concept was hysterically funny.

“Of course, that’s an
attitude that may be perfectly correct.”

The Ants, as they were immediately
if inaccurately named, were utterly different. At the time the human colonists
found them in the tropical forests of Pindan d, one hundred years after settling
on the planet, the Callidus had established a sophisticated Stone Age
civilization, but they were in danger of staying that way forever – the little
creatures hated and feared fire which denied them the ability to smelt metal.

The astonishment of discovery
was mutual. At first, humans could not understand how a creature whose central
nervous system weighed a few milligrams could possibly display intelligence. Finally
it was realized that the Ants employed an organic form of distributed
processing, making the cognitive power of the whole infinitely greater than
that of the individual.

“It’s very similar to our
machine systems. In prehistoric times humans used localized collections of
logic circuits, storage units, visual displays and God knows what else – it was
a tremendously inefficient paradigm. Now of course all logical structures exist
independently of the underlying hardware. It’s the same with the Ants. Their
brains communicate using high frequency radio signals generated by their
antenna, so each nest a single conscious organism, bound together by the
queen’s genome.

“Come to think of it,
human beings are the only single-processor system left in the galaxy.
We’re
the freaks!”

But if humans were amazed
by the discovery of another intelligent species, the Ants were traumatized. Effectively
blind and had never having seen or even conceived of the stars, the existence
of other worlds was a shattering revelation that still reverberated throughout
their culture.

Aiyana knew that the
encounter had been of tremendous mutual benefit. Once communication was
established, the human race was able to help Ants lift themselves out of their
stone age. And in a universe where most forms of nanotechnology were forbidden,
the advent of creatures that naturally worked on a very small scale was a
godsend. Now the Callidus filled an important economic niche throughout the
galaxy.

“It’s not just the small
scale” Carson added “the Ants have a genius for fitting together puzzles like
this one: Tallis can deploy thousands of small clusters of workers that can
function quasi-independently while staying integrated with the whole nest.”

By now Aiyana was
scarcely listening, she was too busy was staring about as they made their way
through Vegrandis. The streets were a river of creatures constantly bumping
into each other, touching feelers, and clambering over individuals who got in
their way. To her they appeared identical, but Carson assured her that their
smell made the progeny of each nest as distinctive as if they had been painted
different colors.

Individual workers were
constantly streaming in and out of the buildings. Aiyana was delighted to
observe that they moved between floors by the simple expedient of climbing up
the outside walls. At first glance they seemed like any other insect, but
closer inspection showed that many carried saddle bags and tool belts strung
over their abdomens, and some were fitted with complex electronics.

The Callidus no longer
built their own nests and usually inhabited man-made structures that had the
appearance of open, incomplete buildings, though they were much more elaborate
underground. The tractor display added descriptions as they passed. Aiyana was
amazed to see many familiar names: the Bank of New Earth, the Embassy of the
Huan Federation, Nakkita Biologics, and even Harrini Entertainment Media.

“Well if you make money, everyone
wants to sell you something. Anyhow, this is the business district.”

Finally they stopped
outside a structure that the tractor identified as Tallis Industries. Carson
tried to give their guide a five Ecu tip which caused no end of confusion. Finally
the creature shot off down the street.

The tractor swung round
to face two fearsome soldiers posted at the entrance, their giant mandibles twitched
in curiosity.

“Carson, how good to smell you!”

“Good to smell you too
Tallis. I trust your queen prospers.”

“She ages, but she lays new eggs [untranslatable]
since we got your message.”

The antennae swiveled
some more.

“You have brought a nest mate.”

“Hello, my name is
Aiyana”

“But you are of Carson! [untranslatable] You
have his smell.”

“Remember Tallis – we can
be nest mates but have different names.”

“Humans! [untranslatable] [untranslatable] What
confusing creatures you are. Come inside, we must dance in celebration of your
arrival.”

“Individual members of
the nest only live for about a year” Carson said to Aiyana “but memory is
collective, otherwise Tallis would have forgotten about me long ago.”

Carson unhitched the
trailer. The soldiers seized its tow bar in their jaws and dragged it inside. Their
tractor followed them into the nest. They found themselves in a large enclosed
area; as the large doors closed they were encompassed by darkness. The tractor
automatically switched to infrared vision to reveal workers pouring in from all
sides.

“Sorry” Carson said to
Aiyana on a private channel “we have to go through this part – it will only
take about ten minutes.”

As he spoke the tractor
and the surrounding workers began to gyrate.

“Welcoming dance –
standard procedure for the Callidus – a bit like shaking hands” he explained. “Fortunately
the tractor is pre-programmed; we just sit and relax until it’s over.”

But that was not good
enough for Aiyana.

“Hey, it’s not following
all the turns correctly, and see how they’re waggling their abdomens.”

With that she seized
control from the machine. Carson groaned, but before he could override her
Tallis’s voice came online.

“Strength to your queen! [untranslatable] The
spirit is with you!”

Carson laughed – had to
admit it, whether it was schoolchildren or insects, Aiyana knew how to dance.

Finally the celebration
ended. The workers touched feelers with each other and with the synthetic
feelers on the tractor, then dispersed leaving them alone with a single
soldier.

“It only takes one member
of the nest to communicate with us. In theory it doesn’t matter who it is, but
soldiers are better at dealing with human interfaces.”

“So, you have puzzle for us.”

They got down to
business. The story Carson told was heavily redacted. He had purchased the two
ancient cassettes in a flea market.

“Fleas [untranslatable] are they tasty?”

He backtracked and explained. One tape had disintegrated; could Tallis reassemble it?

“I’ve also got a
functioning reproduction of a cassette. I am hoping this will help you model
the correct structure.”

The Ant was cautiously
optimistic but needed more time.

“First we examine fragments, then we give
you estimate of completeness, plus cost.”

A crane appeared
controlled by a soldier. The sealed container and the other, intact cassette
were unloaded and immediately surrounded by a swarm of workers.

“I didn’t know Kalidas
had given you one of his blank cassettes” Aiyana said to Carson.

“He didn’t, I swiped it. He’s
already paranoid that I’m going to steal all his work and claim the glory. Asking
for a replica cassette would have confirmed it. Anyhow, Juro’s engineers made
him a dozen copies; he’ll never miss one.”

Business concluded, they
were taken to pay their respects to the queen.

“The queens are
different” Carson said as their tractor headed underground on a freight
elevator “they act as the nexus for the collective. They’re no smarter than any
other individual but somehow the nest is able to work through them to recognize
extraordinarily subtle patterns.”

“So she’ll be helping to
put together the tape?”

“No, not that kind of
pattern. They perceive changes in ecologies, social behavior, even the physical
world and use them to synthesize… visions. Legend has it that five thousand
years ago the queens predicted the arrival of humans.”

The elevator bumped to a
stop and they trundled into the royal chamber. The queen’s image swam out of
the darkness – a huge ghostly presence in the tractor’s infrared sensors. She
lay on her dais at the center of the circular room surrounded by her nurse
workers. Her head and thorax looked like any other Ant but her abdomen was a
gigantic glutinous sack, hundreds of times larger than normal. Every thirty
seconds a ripple spread along its length as it disgorged another egg for the
nurseries.

The tractor approached and
its robotic arms placed a small container directly in front of the queen’s
head. Her antennae twitched then she plunged her mandibles into the pot.

“Royal jelly” Carson said to Aiyana, then addressing the queen “Greetings your majesty!”

“Loyal subjects, [untranslatable] nest
mates, we bid you welcome!”

“I trust your eggs are
fertile”

“[untranslatable] The eggs fare well, but
we are dying.”

“The nest abides”
rejoined Carson, giving the traditional response.

“The princesses have hatched, and tomorrow
will take their nuptial flight. You must smell how excited are the drones! One princess
will return, fertilized, to take our place.”

“We rejoice in your renewal”

The queen fell silent and
continued to eat the royal jelly.

“Do we go now?” whispered
Aiyana.

“No, we wait”

Finally she finished
feeding. Nurses rushed forward and cleaned her mandibles. After several more
minutes of silence she seemed to notice them again.

“You too, Carson, await a new queen.”

“I hope to visit your
successor”

“No, not us, not the Callidus, something
else is coming”

Carson’s skin prickled.
Something
else?