Charles Sheffield - The Spheres of Heaven

That led to another two-way stream of high-pitched whistles and grunts between The One and its Level Two subordinate. It went on for a while. Something in Friday’s last speech seemed to be producing excitement, and he wondered what it might be.

“It is possible that you are correct,” Two-Four said at last. “Although we could assuredly learn everything that you and your kind know, time is important to us. The One is willing to consider acceptance of your assistance. You will become the intermediary between us and your kind. In return, you will not be harmed. However, there is one additional condition. The One is not satisfied with this slow and possibly inaccurate method of communication, first through me and then through your machine. You must agree to receive Level One compressed speech directly, and be able to speak for the Malacostracans to your own kind. How do you answer?”

Friday thought about it. The deal sounded pretty clean and simple, but he had to be sure that his lousy translator wasn’t crapping out on some vital point.

“Let me make sure I understand you. I’m going to play back what I heard you say, and you can tell me if I have it right. I learn to understand The One’s speech, right?”

“That is correct.”

“How long does that take?”

“Very little time, with our technology. A small fraction of a day. At the same time, The One will learn your speech.”

“All right. After that, I become the interface between your people and my own and any other visitors from outside this world?”

“Again, that is correct.”

“The only interface?”

“Certainly. Only one is needed.”

“Ah, but what about your technology?” Friday thought he saw the catch. “Will you be willing to tell me about that?”

There was a pause, followed by another two-way transfer between the Malacostracans. Friday again wondered what he had said. It had sounded pretty straightforward to him. But Two-Four was finally replying, and the tones that came from the translator sounded puzzled: “Of course, all knowledge of our technology will be available to you. That, together with all other facts regarding our origins and our plans.”

“And I will not be harmed.”

“Why would we harm someone who is serving as our intermediary? We repeat, you will not be harmed. You will be our valuable interface.”

“Then — I accept.” Friday wondered what would have happened had he declined, and decided he preferred not to speculate.

There was a brief squeak from The One, and the translator said, “Excellent. We will begin at once.”

“Wait a minute!”

A pause, and a polite, “Yes? Do you have more questions?”

Did he? Friday couldn’t think of any, but things seemed to be going awful fast and easy. He reviewed everything he had been told, and finally shrugged. “I guess I don’t.”

“Very good. Then we will proceed.” Two-Four scuttled suddenly and sharply backward. At the same moment, six black hoses, each as thick as a human thumb, emerged from the holes as the base of The One and snaked in Friday’s direction. At their ends they divided into fine bundles of thin filaments.

He tried to jump backwards, the same as Two-Four had done, but he was too slow. Two of the flexible arms curled around his thighs, two around his waist, and they pulled him closer to the black rock. The other two moved to attach to the sides of his head, just above his ears.

Friday cried out, “Hey, you told me I wouldn’t be harmed.” Before he could complete the sentence, something much worse was happening. He felt the divided ends of the cables sliding down his skull. They were entering his ears. They were inside him. He opened his mouth to scream in pain and terror, but he was too late. And suddenly it wasn’t necessary. Instead of pain he felt the most intense ecstasy of his life. Nothing else — food, drugs, sex — nothing came even close. It was as much as he could stand.

Then it became more intense. Stronger, better. More than he could stand. Friday, safe in the protective embrace of The One, swooned into an ecstasy of unutterable pleasure.

Bony had met Elke Siry less than an hour ago, but already he had formed his impressions. The scientist was naturally shy to the point of appearing antisocial — he could relate to that — yet she could not bear to sit by and hear wrong deductions being made from hard data. As a result, she had become the leader of the meeting.

General Dag Korin, who was already a known name to Bony, didn’t seem to mind. He acted almost as the blond scientist’s protector, encouraging her to speak and give her opinions. As a result the whole group had clustered around her and paid close attention to her words. The Angel sat with its roots deep in a great pot of dark soil dragged in by Chan Dalton and Deb Bisson from the garden of the Hero’s Return . The Pipe-Rilla hovered high above it, with Tinkers clustered around her lower part. The humans, except for Chan Dalton somewhat uneasy with the recently arrived aliens, sat well away from them.

“Most of us seem to have ideas as to what’s happened to us,” Elke was saying.

Wrong , thought Bony, most of us have no idea at all .

But he did not speak, and Elke Siry went on, “Before we start to speculate, let’s look at what we know for sure. Four different ships set out for the Geyser Swirl. Each one expected to emerge in open space — more than that, we saw no way that they could emerge to anything other than open space, because of the safeguards built into a Link transition.

“Each of us arrived in water, on a planetary surface. It should have been impossible but it happened, not once but four times. Beyond the planet, according to the observations of the two unmanned orbiters that we sent out, is a region of space that looks nothing like the Geyser Swirl. Instead of dust clouds and normal stars, we see strange dimly glowing circles. We assume that they are spheres of some kind, but note that this is an assumption. So far as real knowledge is concerned, they could be circles painted on the sky.”

Dag Korin said, “But—” then paused and shook his head.

“No, General, I don’t think they are, either.” On anyone else’s face the slight relaxation of Elke’s tight mouth would have been a smile. “I merely point out the difference between knowledge and assumption. What else do we know ? Well, we know that the gravity field of this planet is abnormally small for its size. So small, the interior must be made of something less dense than ordinary water. But if that were the case, the heavy-water ocean should have sunk toward the planetary center. So let’s call that a paradox, with no explanation.

“Also, we know from observations made by orbiters and by some of our party, that the primary star around which this planet revolves is a blue giant. We also know, again from the experience of some here, that there is life in this ocean. The bubble people are not only alive, they appear to be intelligent.

“These two facts together, the short life span of a blue giant star and the long time needed for living things to develop on a planet around it, give some of us problems. But those problems arise from our trust in our own scientific ideas. According to standard astrophysical theories, blue giant stars must run through their stellar lives very fast, in millions of years rather than billions. So Limbo can’t be more than a few tens of millions of years old, at most. But according to our biological theories, the development of life requires a much longer time scale. It needs at least hundreds of millions of years to evolve from its primordial forms, and maybe billions of years to produce multicelled complex beings with intelligence. So we have two of our basic scientific theories, and they seem to be incompatible with each other.”