Eric Flint - Mother of Demons

The warriors had greeted the news with mixed emotions. Anger at Kopporu's apparent disdain for the invincibility of the Kiktu warriors. Disquiet, because all knew of Kopporu's genius on the battlefield. Determination to prove Kopporu wrong. Fear that Kopporu was right. But, most of all, admiration for Kopporu's nobility of spirit.

Guo herself had no doubts of her own feelings. Her faith in the battle leader was absolute. And thus, she knew the tribe was doomed. But she would follow Kopporu's example.

She grasped the mace in a huge palp. So fiercely that even a kogoclam would have been crushed within.

The Utuku will never take me alive. I will die with the tribe. And I will slay the savages in numbers beyond counting.

She stared at the mace. It was a gift. Kopporu had given it to her on the day the battle leader announced to the tribe that Guo had completed her training and was accepted into the battle group as a battlemother. It was a gift worthy of a great clan leader. Guo had no idea how Kopporu had managed to obtain it. The haft of the club was made of uluwood, beautifully carved. But the treasure was in the blades-made of the finest bronze, honed to a keen edge. The blades of most maces were obsidian. Guo, as a young and untested battlemother, had expected a mace with flint blades.

That night, Guo made a solemn vow. If she and the Kiktu survived the battle, she would see to it that justice was done. Like many of the younger warriors-and even some of the older ones-she was tired of the stifling regime of the clan leaders. She had no wish to become a mother, but when the time came she would do so-without complaint. She would devote herself to rising within the complex, intrigue-filled world of the mothers until she became the Great Mother of the Kiktu.

When that day came, she would see that Kopporu was given her rightful place in the tribe. Traditions be shat upon.

Let the old clan leaders wail.

PART II: The Warp

Indira Toledo turned the page of the notebook. A passage caught her eye.

It's not as if I hadn't spent years thinking about it. I wanted to be an exobiologist from as far back as I can remember. Fought like hell to win a place on the Magellan. But all those years I was convinced the vertebrate Bauplan-or some variation on it-was the only suitable structure for large terrestrial life-forms. That's why I specialized in vertebrate paleontology.

Well, here I am. My dream come true. A planet full of large terrestrial life-forms. Including intelligent life forms-the first we've ever encountered. And the joke's on me!

Molluscs. Of all things-molluscs!

They're not really molluscs, of course. Hardcore cladists would lynch me for even thinking it. A totally separate evolutionary history. But the convergence is uncanny. It makes you wonder if old Arrhenius was right-all life came from spores drifting through interstellar space. That would make us distant relatives. Very, very, very distant. Even if Arrhenius was right, we'd be more closely related to algae and bacteria than we are to anything on Ishtar.

Indira smiled ruefully. She remembered criticizing Julius once for using the human name for the planet.

"Typical biologist," she'd said to him. "Arrogant beyond belief."

"But it's a great name!" he'd protested. "In most pantheons, the goddess of love and the god of war are separated not only in person but in sex. Ishtar was both. What could be more suited for this planet? A goddess of war and love. I should think you, of all people, would approve."

That had made her even angrier.

"I am not one of those feminists who thinks it's an advance for women to participate in slaughter. Anyway, that's beside the point-and you know it. Throughout history, the first act of aggression on the part of a more advanced society toward a less advanced one is to rename everything. Goes all the way back to your damned Bible. The first thing Adam did was name everything. That gave him the right to do what he pleased with his beasts. Columbus was just following the program. Rhodesia, for God's sake!"

Julius had grinned. "Egad, I'm exposed. Julius Cohen, slavering imperialist." He rubbed his hands, cackling with glee. "Wait till I get these natives into the gold mines! Copper mines, rather. Doesn't seem to be much gold on this planet, curse the luck. Pizarro'll never forgive me."

She chuckled, remembering the argument. Julius was the most good-hearted of men, in all truth. And, in the end, he had been proven right. For reasons which would have astonished all of the adult colonists at the time.

Her eyes watered. She and Julius were all that was left, now, of that small group of adults who had survived the first months after the disaster.

She raised her head and stared at the kolo-cluster down in the valley. They were all buried there. Vladimir Koresz. Janet Mbateng. Hector Quintero. Francis Adams. Following owoc customs, the humans had adopted the grove as their own cemetery. The owoc had a particular reverence for the kolo. Indira was not sure why, exactly. The owoc were not good at explaining things. But she thought it was because of the way the kolo always grew in dense clusters, the willowy shoots intertwining and curling about each other like vines. And they were pale green, color of tranquillity.

The Coil of Beauty. It was when she had finally grasped the meaning of that owoc concept that her gratitude toward them had crystallized into a profound love for the gentle creatures. Even Julius, once she had explained it to him, had been shaken out of his normally linear way of thinking. Thereafter, to her relief, he had stopped referring to the owoc as "dimbulbs."

She shook her head sharply, exorcising the sadness, and resumed reading.

I shouldn't be all that surprised. How long ago was it that Stephen Jay Gould pointed out how chancy the evolution of vertebrates had been? There was hardly a trace of chordates in the Burgess Shale, after all. Even on Earth, the phylum might have easily disappeared during the Permian extinction, if not sooner. And then what would have happened?

Still, I would have bet on some branch of the arthropods. But perhaps not. Maybe the very success of the arthropod Bauplan militates against them ever evolving into forms suitable of filling the ecological niche of large terrestrial life forms. And why should they? Popular mythology to the contrary, that niche has always been on the outer edge of existence. It's amazing, really, how the large size of humans prejudices our view of life. To this day, biologists talk of mammals dominating the earth. That's news to bacteria! Not to mention insects and worms. We, and all our bulky mammal relatives, are just rare clouds drifting over the teeming landscape of life. So were the dinosaurs.

It reminds me of J. B. S. Haldane's quip, when he was asked what his life's study of biology indicated about God. "He has an inordinate fondness for beetles."

No, not the arthropods. They've always been evolution's biggest winners. And winners don't evolve, in any major way. Losers do.

Still, it's odd that I haven't seen any signs of an arthropod equivalent on Ishtar. It's certainly not because of any lack of life! Ishtar's biomass is as big as Earth's. Bigger, probably, than today's Earth. About the same, I would guess, as the Earth during the Mesozoic. The climate's right-semi-tropical, no seasons worth talking about. Whereas the modern Earth is in an unusually frigid period of its existence. Has been for millions of years.

Indira smiled again. The words in the notebook brought back the first conversation she'd ever had with Julius. It had taken place shortly after the Magellan had left Earth orbit, on the start of the first leg of its voyage. It had taken three months to build up the ship's velocity to its maximum 13% of light-speed. During those months, the adults had remained conscious, getting to know each other in order to lay the basis for forging an effective team once they arrived at Tau Ceti. After the Magellan had reached its maximum velocity, and the crew was satisfied that the huge vessel was performing properly, all the adults had joined the children in coldsleep, there to spend the long years of the voyage in blissful unconsciousness. Weeks before that time came, she and Julius had become lovers.