TWENTY-FOUR

“They seem as recalcitrant as you implied,” Asenath said, leaning toward Memor and fluttering irked yellows about her neck. Her harsh warm breath rippled Memor’s ruff feathers, an unpleasant sensation.

Bemor added, “More so.”

They were ensconced in a shadowy side chamber after the transmission to the alien ship. The dark rock walls were of truly ancient times, furrowed with past attempts at adornment—panoramas that once depicted vast sagas of civilizations, long vanished. These had nearly worn away, leaving the striations and sparkles of the original grit-soil substance from which the Bowl was first built. The air of great, chilly expanses of time clung to them.

Tananareve, the last remaining Late Invader prisoner, was bending, flexing, pulling her foot to her forehead, sitting up and lying down over and over with a weight on her straightened hind limbs. The motion was distracting. They were flexible creatures, indeed. Memor told herself that the primate was doing it for her health and tried to ignore it.

Asenath restlessly gave an agree-flutter. “I do not enjoy negotiating with those who can see so little of their true position.”

Memor gave a fan-salute of agreement but said, “They are new to all this. No doubt they wish to take their best possible outcome as a beginning position.”

Bemor gave no feather-signals at all, but let his voice range down into low registers. “They are not negotiating from strength.”

“I think they imagine they are,” Memor said.

“I could not diagnose that from their speech,” Bemor said with a casual, superior sniff.

Memor still felt uncomfortable around Bemor, and tried to tell herself that his dismissive murmurs and small feather-displays were not meant to offend her. Perhaps they were mannerisms he had evolved to deal with staff and lower workers? Stiffening her resolve with this thought, she allowed herself some of what the Folk termed “lubrications” on what she had learned, using images of the primate cast on a shimmering wall projection. “I have studied their ‘tells,’ their limited visible methods of adding meaning beyond their words. They communicate, process, and fully feel emotions by mimicking the facial expressions of others nearby. So I studied the subtle shifts in their Captain’s eyes, mouth, even the slight expansions and contractions of his nostrils. Apparently they have no ability to signal with their ears.”

“Ah, their Captain is male? Unusual.” Bemor looked skeptical.

“Bemor, there have been other Invaders who had male hierarchy leadership, yes?” Memor felt this appeal to his greater range of knowledge would mollify her brother. And give a nod to the very idea of male leadership, too—though he knew well that his prominence at high levels was a planned aberration in Folk social structures.

“Of course, though we managed them throughout their Adoption to cleanse them of that destabilizing structure. They are now all proper matriarchies.”

“But not the Sil,” Asenath said.

“They are young, not fully formed,” Bemor countered.

Asenath gestured outside the Citadel, toward where the primate was hanging from a tree limb, her legs raised to form a V. She remained in that position as the moments passed, but her eyes were on her captors. Distracting. “And that one—you watched her during the talk with Captain Redwing? She gave some facials.”

“Of course. Tananareve is under therapy: well fed, often exercised. This local gravity is closer to her home world, too. A fairly simple creature, she is. And she used no unusual signals, as I could see.” The Late Invader was still watching her, but surely Tananareve could not follow the swift, layered Folk speech. Simple commands, yes, but nothing sophisticated. She might overhear a word or two, but never the feather-nuances.

“The eyes,” Bemor said. “What does a slow wink mean to them?”

“Puzzlement, I believe,” Memor said.

“Nothing more?”

“Uh, I believe not.”

“She used a long slow wink when questioned by that male Captain about the whereabouts of their other party.”

“I noticed, but how much can a single small gesture convey?”

“Could it be a sexual signal?”

They all found this amusing, since sex among the Folk involved ritual feather-displays lasting through several mealtimes, classic dancing and cadences, song-trills of expectation and mutual agreed definition, then the ultimate mounting, all with urging songs and the completing union—not a matter to be taken lightly or often.

Memor was pleased that this remark drew amusement; she was known for her humor. “They are storytelling creatures, transferring useful knowledge from short-term into long-term memory, with assigned significance, all by telling a narrative to themselves.”

Asenath said, “They constantly update this?”

“Without complete fidelity to the original, yes. Remembering a narrative alters it.”

Bemor said mildly, “So they know their inner selves as fictional characters, written by themselves? Then rewritten?”

After more agreeable and incredulous laughter, and then a timely arrival of small tasty animals served on sticks by the attendants, Asenath said, “I fear that adds to their lack of realism. We should remind them of it.”

Bemor looked skeptical, with purple rushes at his neck. “That would be…?”

“Memor, fetch forth your primate.”

When Tananareve came hesitantly through the arch, the contrast of her spindly, pale skin and dull-toned clothes with the three large full-feathered Folk was striking. Her feet slapped the bare cold stones in her frayed boots and her breath wheezed as she got used to the moist, salty scents of life within a Citadel. She was only a bit larger than the attendants who sat dutifully near Asenath, Bemor, and Memor, their faces always tilted upward hopefully in the ivory light, watching to see what their superiors might need.

“How do you think, little one?” Bemor addressed the primate with his rumbling voice.

Memor was shocked. Somehow in a mere few sleep-times, Bemor had mastered the Late Invader tongue, solely from Memor’s reports and recordings. His pronunciation was accurate, too, strong on the clunky primate vowels. She felt a wash of cold anxiety and not a little fear. My brother truly is quicker, sharper. Can it be because he links so much with the Ice Minds?

“Clearly,” Tananareve said. “Quietly.”

Bemor gave an amused rustle that no doubt the primate did not fathom. “Quite well put,” he said in Anglish. “Do you think your Captain will cooperate with us?”

“If you let go of our people, he will.”

“We will compromise on that. We might very well let many of you go on to Glory.”

“Nope, we all go.”

“That is unreasonable.”

Bemor turned to Memor and in Folk said, “This is normal?”

“They sail before the thousand breezes that blow through their opaque unconscious Underminds,” Memor said. She noted the primate was looking at them, but did not worry that this creature could fathom their speech. After all, Folk had layered grammars and conditional tenses the primates totally lacked.

Bemor huffed skeptically. In formal Folkspeak he said, “Very pretty. What do we do?”

“They do learn by experience,” Asenath said. “Memor herself says so. They are in a wholly strange place and may relapse into patterns from their past, fearing to face their future here.”

“To face their fate,” Bemor said.

Asenath said, “In them there is an undercurrent of strong neurological response to social life. In their neural patterns I read connecting elements, plainly honed by long natural selection. They evolved as hunter-gatherers within a socioeconomy where sharing and justice were critical to long-term survival. Yet these fail when extended to larger groups—a major problem of theirs, even now. Judging from the encased memories I read, even their stable societies oscillated between banquets and barbarism.”

Bemor said formally, “Our long voyages have revealed much poignant wisdom. I have often viewed from the hull observatories, the vibrant stars glaring in their perpetual dark. That star swarm marks not so much a mystery but a morgue, brimming with once glorious and now dead civilizations. This I learned from the Ice Minds.”

Memor rustled at this. Here at last Bemor played his strong card, the slow intelligences of great antiquity. They dozed through the Bowl’s long voyages, else they might try too many experiments. In this way they were a reserve of long-term wisdom, not of mere passing expertise. They had been present at the Bowl’s construction, even participating in its design, or so legend had it. How such cold creatures could know mechanics was an ancient puzzle.

Bemor used the rolling cadences of formal speech to stress his different status. Infuriating, but she could do nothing overt about it. And she was his sister twin, too. Asenath would falsely assume they worked together. Perhaps, Memor saw, she could use that in her own favor.

“You believe they wish to play a role in this Glory matter already?” Asenath asked intently.

Bemor fan-marked yellow agreement tones. “They must. The Glorians have technologies we need to ascend to a higher level of communications, with minds that have ignored us until now. The Ice Minds also surely wonder if these primates could ever fit in on the Bowl. They have implied such.”

Asenath said, “The primates will have to.”

Bemor said with casual superiority, “If they are able. We live among the long history of spaces and species. We encourage local groupings and discourage long travels across the Bowl. These adventurers may not fit in well. They seem obsessed with pushing beyond their horizons.”

Asenath said, “Most of our Adopted give their names as ‘the people’—whom they of course assume to be blessed. Others are, well, not so blessed. Each likes to see itself as central and important even among the vast tracts of the Bowl. Many live within a history of faces—bosses and chiefs, matrons and managers on high. As they adapt, these Adopted, to the majesty that is the Bowl, their history becomes simple. It is about who wore their own species’ crown and then who wore it next.”

Bemor fluttered agreeably. “Of course, as planned long ago. The Adopted do not any longer reflect upon great matters, beneath our eternal sun, untroubled by the universe around them. They dwell in comfort, without the horrors of unsteady sunlight, of seasons and slantwise sun. The Ice Minds see nothing but the entire universe, all around them. They are of the constant dark.”

Memor thought this a bit much, attaching Ice Mind majesty to his own agenda. But she said nothing. She thought, though, upon her own past roles in this. Species grew in number until the Folk had to shepherd them to their equilibrium value. Belligerence and slaughter ran their bloody course. Borders brought a fretwork of scars, a long scrawl of history made legible on ground. With borders of sand or forest or water, Astronomer Folk shaped place to match species. Boundaries defined. When warring muddles arose, they examined yet again why territory caused them. Often this came from inept borders drawn by yawning bureaucrats far in the past.

So Memor and others thrust themselves into the ground truth of locales, letting time brew wisdom from raw rubs and strife. Such lands were often the equivalent of cluttered attics, stuffed by history with soiled rags, dented cans, and old, oily wood: a single spark could ignite them. Such running sores where species war raged unchecked, the Folk could only cleanse with great diebacks. Quite commonly, the packing fraction of religious passions in too little space was the deep cause, and had to be corrected. Folk molded the Adopted so none sprawled in an unending tide. Conversations and genetics shaped better and longer than mountains and monsoons could. Tribal beliefs in a tyrannical God figure running an imaginary, celestial dictatorship were often easier to manage. They understood hierarchy.

Such was the aged truth the Folk learned either from the Cold Minds or from hard experience. Memor had climbed up with a chilly indifference to necessity, and so now had merited the honor of dealing with the Late Invaders. I hope I can capture the renegades and win approval, Memor thought, suppressing her Undermind’s qualms. Or else there will come … execution. She felt a shudder from her Undermind—something she could not see, a secret of great implication … it slipped away.

Her reverie done, Memor snapped back to attention. Asenath ventured, “So … we should not consider these primates good Adoption candidates?”

Bemor gestured at the primate, who narrowed her eyes and looked intently at him. “No, I believe they can be broken to the rule of reason, in time. But their Adoption should not be assumed to be an important value to us. We need them to help negotiate with the Glory system, true. But we can then cast them aside like a sucked carcass, if we wish, at little loss.”

“What habitat would suit these creatures, then?” Asenath asked.

Memor said, “I have plumbed the mind of this primate, Tananareve. I gather they want to be on a height looking down, they prefer open savanna-like terrain with scattered trees and copses, and they want to be close to a body of water, such as a river, lake, or ocean. They prefer to live in those environments in which their species evolved over millions of years. Instinctively, they gravitate toward parklands and transitional forest, looking out safely over a distance toward reliable sources of food and water. They can flee predators from land to water, or back, or to forest, where their kind once lived in trees.”

“What a primitive mode!” Asenath seemed repulsed.

“Is this opinion, that the primates are mostly useful for dealing with Glory, the sole wisdom the Ice Minds wish to convey to us at this point?” Memor asked, turning to Bemor.

“I think that is quite enough indeed,” Bemor said—rather haughtily, Memor thought. “But…” Bemor moved uneasily, feathers rustling. “The Ice Minds do not always reveal their thinking. They seem unusually interested in these primates. Still, they wish us to secure the help of these Late Invaders.”

Asenath rushed to send an assent-flutter toward Bemor and turned a subtle angle toward him, and so away from Memor. “So, Contriver, I propose that we give the primate ship a reminder of their true position.”

“Um,” Bemor said with a skeptical eye-cant. “How?”

“They are inspecting the magnetic configurations around their ship, probably to better guide their own craft. But it could be they will use it to disturb our magnetic mechanics, as well. Their technique is to spread a wide array of sensors.”

“Adeptly so?” Bemor said.

“These are craftily done, hundreds of disks the size of my toenail. I suggest we wipe our skies free of them.”

“Destroy them?” Memor asked.

“It will serve as a calling card,” Aseneth said with a smirk-flutter.

“I’m sure it will,” Bemor said, sending an assent corona of yellow and blue. He leaned forward eagerly. “We will at least learn something from their response.”

“I shall see it is done,” Asenath said happily. “I believe these Late Invaders will be put in their proper place, and soon realize it.”

Memor wondered if she had been outmaneuvered here. Caution would have been her policy, but Bemor seemed bemused by the idea of overt action. “I hope you enjoy it as well, Asenath,” Memor said with what she hoped was just the right tone of sardonic agreement. It was always difficult to get these things right.