Toolmaker koan

John McLoughlin

It is the early 21st century. Far be¬

yond the orbit of Uranus, the Soviet

space probe Struggle detects a sub¬

stantial mass where none was to be

expected. As it transmits the data

that this 'mass” is under controlled

power, the probe suddenly falls silent. A Third Party has been encountered

in our Solar System. Hastily, Earth's two rival govern¬

ments launch manned spacecraft

to seek out the mysterious new

arrival. Each has orders not to allow

the other to succeed on its mission. Confrontation follows-nuclear wea¬

pons launched-both ships are

crippled. The few survivors can do

nothing but wait for death...until

the Third Party steps in. The human

survivors are alive and well, but

completely within its powers....

Thus begins a learning experience

unparalleled in human history. The

humans are not the only intelligent

race under the Third Party’s-benev-

oIent?-protection. Yet the alien

possesses information which could

save all Earth from self-destruction-

if we can master the Toolmaker Koan. PROLOGUE

Alone in the eternal trans-Uranian night sailed the

probe Struggle. On and outward, its small brain shut

down for absence of anything to do, Struggle slept,

only its detectors alert for the serendipitous bit of ice

that would awaken the central brain. While Struggle slept, the two great Powers of

Earth—though both expected eventual dominion of

the entire globe—were at peace. An odd peace, true;

hair-trigger, mutually contemptuous. And justly con¬

temptuous, by Ambrose Bierce’s definition of con¬

tempt: “The feeling of a prudent man for an enemy

who is too formidable safely to be opposed.”

Still, it was peace. Each Power was far too formi¬

dable safely to be opposed, at least overtly, by the

other; and some thirteen years before there had been

the One-Day War, that brief and frightening taste of

thermonuclear politics that had enhanced for a time

the fragile prudence of humanity, simultaneously ce¬

menting the Lines of Demarcation that delineated

the world’s twin polities. Nonetheless, in the United

People’s Democratic Republics of Africa and Eurasia—

1

2 John McLoughlin

called “Greater Finland” by American wags and more

or less a construct of the Soviet Union—it was com¬

mon knowledge that Earth would one day be a Marx¬

ian world, a planet of enlightened Happy Workers; in

the Greater Columbian Alliance of the American re¬

publics of the New World, it was hoped, as ever, that

the Marxian juggernaut would fail—that some form of

less doctrinaire democracy might set future historical

style. And on Earth it rained a yellow rain, a legacy of

global industry and that One-Day War. Humankind

was steeped in its own waste; crops grew poorly and

people were hungry—there were six thousand mil¬

lion people, far too many of them. So whether you were a citizen of one of the as¬

sorted Democratic Republics or of one of the nations

of the Greater Columbian Alliance, you were lucky

indeed if you lived not on Earth but in space. Here

in these years of delicate peace humanity maintained

a growing and effervescent presence, each Power

hard at work on its own spaceborne cylinder city and

countless embryonic industries. In space the air was

clean, for people made that air; and in space there

was plenty of food, good food, for everyone—there

weren’t, after all, many more than ten thousand peo¬

ple out there as yet. But space, or at least that bit of it surrounding

Earth and her moon, was abundantly crisscrossed

with laser tightbeams. The eavesdrop-proof beams

were a military phenomenon, as was so much else

out there; such tightbeams linked not only human

communicants, but also machines possessing varying

degrees of sentience and preternaturally acute sen¬

sory equipment in their gallium-arsenide and silico-

proteinaceous circuitry. These watched the comings

and goings of Man and other doings in space, com-

Toolmaker Koan 3

municating their observations to human liaisons in

the service of their respective Powers. Some such

machines were totally military in function; others

were instruments of research intended to further the

interests of the Republics that fabricated them. Some

of these latter were far-ranging indeed; one such, was

Struggle. Although constructed in zero-G factories at the

hub of Cosmograd Engels, Struggle was born in idea

form on Earth. In the service of the Indonesian Peo¬

ple’s Democratic Republic, one Indilara Djiridumi,

academician, had learned that certain comets contain

large proportions of water, nitrogen, simple hydro¬

carbons and hydrocarbon radicals— collectively termed

volatiles—of immense potential value in the infant

industries of space. While minerals—iron, carbon,

aluminum, silicon and the like—might be found in

asteroidal material and on the moon, volatiles were

currently available only from Earth, hauled up at

great expense from her gravity well; would that one

might catch a comet!

Alas!

Comets are hard to come by near Earth. Nonetheless, Djiridumi, an indefatigable researcher,

learned of the work of one Jan Oort, a dead capitalist

astronomer who had hypothesized the existence of a

vast aggregation of cometary material beyond the

orbit of Pluto. Nicknamed the Oort Cloud, this nebu¬

lous “shell’’ of the Solar System could be of great

economic interest if it were learned that individual

cometary bodies might by mechanical means be di¬

verted cheaply and predictably Earthward from their

slow, remote orbits for the use of the socialist effort

in space. After several years of campaigning, Djiridumi was

able to convince the Bureau of Cosmonautical Affairs

that a Trans-Plutonian probe might turn up useful

4 John McLoughlin

information concerning the availability of volatiles from

small bodies in space. So, in June of 2031, such a

probe set out from the Bureau of Cosmonautical Af¬

fairs factories associated with the baby aluminum-

and-glass world of Engels at the Second Lunar

Lagrangian Point. Riding its ice-blue ion jets nightward from the

Earth-Moon System, Struggle first sought out the

great gravity well of Jove, swooping close to the

Father of Planets to gain a velocity-boost. Then on

and out, arcing across the orbit of Saturn and getting

another boost from Uranus’s gravity-well, and off yet

faster, its small brain and jets now dormant for the

long cold ride across the lonely astronomical units

separating the paths of the Outer Worlds. But Strug¬

gles mass-detectors stayed alert for that long-sought

ice. And suddenly, at some 27.842 AU from Earth,

those mass-detectors were tickled. They dutifully prod¬

ded Struggle awake; the probe had found an unex¬

pected mass out there between the paths of Uranus

and Neptune, and carefully measured it at 47.3842

metric tons, flashing the word Sunward on laser

tightbeam. As the initial datum flew across its nearly

four-hour journey from Struggle to its makers at Eng¬

els, the probe extended optics and servomanipulators,

adjusted course, and readied sampling chambers and

heat-sources to taste the economic potential of its

find, continuing all the while to strum data along the

tightbeam string. Struggle was not bright. It was designed solely to

capture ancient bits of ice from the solar primordium,

to gnaw and taste that ice, and to report the taste to

its masters. Therefore its behavioral repertoire did

not encompass a useful response to the newfound

mass’s tendency to maintain itself at a constant dis-

Toolmaker Koan 5

tance of a few tens of meters from the probe; Strug¬

gle simply began a series of fancy astrobatics as its

neurocircuitry set it in pursuit of what by all rights

should have been an inanimate frosty boulder in an

eons-old stable fall around the far-off Sun. Struggle

did pass back word of these astrobatics, though, and

word of the mass’s appearance and size. And, sur¬

prise not being part of its meager complement of

cyberresponsiveness, Struggle simply added visuals

and measurements showing the pursued 47-ton mass

to be a seamless, silvery ovoid of but.8264 meter in

major axis,.7133 meter in diameter. And, dutiful as its makers intended, Struggle con¬

tinued relaying orderly data describing first a non¬

response of its own pursuit jetting, then a non-response

of its servomanipulators, then a sequential shutdown

of higher cyber circuits in its magnetic bubble brain. Even as the first datum—mass located—reached

the human listeners at the flying city of Engels, Strug¬

gle spoke its last out there in the dark; but, its brief

string of information was more than sufficient to initi¬

ate a chain reaction of frightened agitation among its

distant human masters in the Bureau of Cosmonauti-

cal Affairs. Part /

CHAPTER 1

Cosmog rad Engels

Vacuum. The vacuum loves living flesh, she thought; it re¬

lentlessly seeks to pull the mortal substance into its

cold embrace. How poetic. I’m getting tired. The surgeon, Citizen Doctor Jennifer Dawson,

nicked her unconscious patient’s purple skin with the

laser cautery, lacing a ruptured vein, the cephalic

vein tracing the curve of the man’s space-stripped

radial bone. She spotted a bit of gray frozen tissue,

expertly slicing it away from viable muscle with the

cautery, leaving no necroses...

and how heavy the

little penlike cautery seemed!

Three quarters of an hour before, this man had

been EVA, working on the great antenna that tracked

the distant Oort Probe—but an instant’s carelessness

had placed his arm in the path of a servomanipulator,

and through a tiny rip in the suit armor the omni¬

present vacuum at once sucked as much of the man’s

right forearm as it could before he patched the breach

with his left and drifted into shock, bouncing inert

9

10 John McLoughlin

against his umbilicus. He’d been careless, but he was

quick; he got away with a spaceburn only. In a few

weeks he’d be EVA again, likely, his arm stiff but

usable. Meela Ndola, surgeon’s mate and, for now, anes¬

thesiologist, produced a blood-temp pigskin web to

complete the work; wrapped around the wound, the

web would offer a temporary integument beneath

which the man’s torn and blistered skin might find its

way together again. “He’s reviving already, Citizen Doctor,’’ she said. “Shall I send him back to Bachelor Officers’ Quarters?’’

“Not yet. Keep him in Infirmary for the next two

watches. I’ll want to watch that arm.’’

“May I remind you, Citizen Doctor, that you haven’t

eaten or slept in seven watches?

Your performance

will suffer for it. This is the last patient—Citizen

Nurse Makola can see to him. Take some time for

food and sleep. I’ll have you awakened in five watches.’’

Best listen to Citizen Ndola, surgeon’s mate—always

brisk, efficient, performance-conscious, deep-steeped

in the Principles of Structured Enlightenment. Yes

indeed, the performance of Citizen Doctor Captain

Jennifer Wellesley Dawson might come up—again—at

the next Self-Criticism Council. That she couldn’t

afford, she of the British name, appearance, and, de¬

spite her Zimbabwean birth, ancestry. By an accident of genetics—she was a blonde—she

was suspected by all her African associates of harbor¬

ing the recidivist individualist tendencies always as¬

sociated with the old blue-eyed oppressor race. With¬

out frequent examination at Self-Criticism, these

atavistic tendencies might surface to trouble the har¬

mony of Infirmary personnel, or even of the entire

Bureau of Cosmonautical Affairs. And disharmony

anywhere interferes with the smooth functioning of

Toolmaker Koan 11

the Principles of Structured Enlightenment that guide

and unite State and People. Her slot on the Perfor¬

mance Chart in the Medical Officers’ Mess already

sported two greenstripes for the week, and a third

would lose her the Private Initiative Time that was an

officer’s standard prerogative. “Yes, Meela, you’re right, as usual. That last rash

of bad seals...” Jennifer sighed, watching lines of

disapproval form around the dark pursed lips of the

surgeon’s mate. As usual, it seemed, she’d forgotten

the “Citizen she imagined Ndola’s brain adding this

omission of egalitarian sentiment to her personal list

of the Citizen Doctor’s individualist leanings. “Look—yes, call me in five watches. No, make it

four. There’s a new shipment of those Lusaka suits

coming up, and their seals—”

Ndola shook her head reproachfully. “Citizen Doc¬

tor, you and I both know that the capitalist element

in the Lusaka suit plant was successfully rooted out

by the People’s Tribunal. Four managers were shot

in that trial, and the profiteer weed was eradicated. Those suits will be excellent. The Quality Examina¬

tions Cadre sent you, personally, a report. I read it. You go to sleep. There’ll be no more failures, and

you’ll feel much more efficient after five watches of

rest. Remember your greenstripes.”

Ah, the fucking greenstripes. You can’t get away

from the greenstripes, not on Earth, not out here at

Engels. Certainly the air’s clean—manmade. Cer¬

tainly there’s more room—EVA, that is—and food. But the Self-Criticism Councils, the greenstripes—the

Principles of Structured Enlightenment—remain. “All right. You win. I’m off for BWQ. I might do a

bit of EVA first, get some space. Five watches?”

“Five watches, Citizen Doctor. All power to the

people.”

12 John McLoughlin

“Power to the people. And thanks.” Jennifer sighed

again, removing gloves and OR tunic, stooping through

the low bulkhead door and into the green tubeway

toward Rim. Riding the elevator alone, she began to submit to

her fatigue. Seven four-hour watches before, she’d

been awakened by her beeper; some thirty new suits

from Lusaka had been issued to new techs working

on the apparently malfunctioning antenna that served

as ear to the trans-Plutonian probe Struggle. The poly¬

mer seals in the joints of these suits had quite sud¬

denly proved substandard, hardening and cracking in

vacuum, and Jennifer spent the subsequent twenty-

eight hours immersed in spaceburn and worse at

Trauma Unit, Lowgrav Surgery. The young woman with double eye evulsion had

been worst, because she’d live...

but the last fel¬

low, he of the torn suit arm, was a relief. Older,

more experienced, he had a personalized suit. Indi¬

vidualist tendencies—he’d apparently evaded the man¬

datory egalitarian suit rotations somehow, as did

Jennifer herself. Minor infraction, but noted by all. A

wry, lopsided smile twisted her narrow face for an

instant, and the elevator deposited her at Bachelor

Women’s Quarters, Fullgrav Rim. Inside her cubicle waited a pair of burly female

guards wearing the black-and-yellow coveralls of Sub-

Saharan Detachment, State Security. Jennifer’s stom¬

ach knotted. “Citizen,” said the larger of the two, “you are

selected as a pioneer.” The guard smiled crookedly,

stainless-steel teeth glinting in the dim cubicle light. “You’re privileged to assist in a state mission of great

import and secrecy. I envy you. You must have ac¬

quired some high distinction to be thus chosen. So. Please come with us.”

Toolmaker Koan 13

Nothing more was said; nothing to be said. They

took her a long way, walking along the Fullgrav Rim of

Engels toward Command and Control. Then to a

steel door, ushering her through, leaving her. In the middle of the metal desk sat a round cap of

black fur, glossy thick short fur on which the desklamp

glinted as if each ebon strand were separately ex¬

truded of some sort of black metal. At once mesmer¬

ized and repelled by the tale of her coming assignment,

Jennifer had stared at this object through the whole

of the meeting. “A conceit of mine, ” said the man behind the desk. He picked up the hat, turning it slowly in his hands

so that a dappling of deeper black was visible in the

fur’s gloss. “I had the hide sent up from Entebbe

Base at a cost of fifteen hundred new rubles. The cat

we had to steal from the cadre in Bulawayo. Your

home. They got it when the zoo was eaten, and kept

it. I’d guess there isn’t another such animal alive in

Africa, not now. Nor in the world...

well, perhaps

in the capitalist zoos, over in the West...” He

donned the cap for a moment, smiled weirdly as a

great scar, etched into his brown face from eyebrow

to chin, twisted with the movement. He doffed the

furry helmet, holding it above his head for an instant

like a Victorian gentleman, then placed it with a

flourish on a lunar globe to his left. The globe swung

about its axis with the cap’s mass, dropping it on the

desk. “So, Citizen Doctor. You don’t like the sound of

our mission. “No. Sir. Since you ask.” Jennifer shook her head,

fatigue drooping her eyelids. “I’m still uncomfortable

with the Long Sleep System. And yes, if the probe

has simply malfunctioned, I’d say you’re wasting time

14 John McLoughlin

and money. If there is—something—out there, you

seem to be preparing to do your best to antagonize it. Since you ask/’

“Now, Citizen Doctor, I know you and you know

me—I think. You’ll no doubt recall your conscription

after the Disturbance. I was just a platoon leader in

the strike force that liberated the Gwelo and Selukwe,

but I recall you well. You removed—very compe¬

tently—a nine-millimeter round from my left calf. I

remember wondering at the time how strongly you

held the Hippocratic Oath, whether you might try to

incapacitate me permanently. You did not.”

“I wanted to live,” said Jennifer. ‘I wanted to live,

and leave, too. And yes, the oath is part of me. But

mostly I wanted to live. I still do.”

“Of course.” Oruna Benai, newly designated com¬

mander of the Fast Deep-Space Weapons Platform

Dienbienphu, leaned back and lifted his feet to his

desktop, leather belt and holster creaking with the

movement. In a time of synthetic fabric, even the

leather was a conceit, lugged all the way out of the

Earthly gravity well; Benai was nothing if not pleased

with himself. “You’ve done very well for yourself, Citizen Doc¬

tor, as have I. We shared a vision, a thought of

escape from Earth, and we have both accomplished

this goal. In different ways, of course. But we’ve

done it. Now we ll see who inherits the new worlds:

whether it will be the greedy capitalists with their

colonialist ambitions, or the People guided by the

Principles of Structured Enlightenment. You and I

and our crew will see to it that the People have a

better chance than they would without us. Your oath,

if not your politics, binds your hands, no?”

“I hope they’re not bound, Commander.”

“They are bound, as are mine, by the force of

Toolmaker Koan 15

historical evolution. But within that constraint, we

each may function in accordance with our own vision,

no?

The pips of Special Command First Grade glinted

on his red collar-tabs as Benai lowered his feet again—a

nervous man, always moving, his quickness surpris-

ing in one so massively built and almost two meters

tall. He played with a pen for a moment, his forehead

wrinkling as he struggled to maintain the flow of his

Enlightened cant, and Jennifer almost grinned. The commander saw this, the tips of his teeth

showing in what might have been a smile of his own. All right, Citizen Doctor, I’m not a stupid man. Let’s just say that anything less than a meter long and

massing forty-seven tons suggests a considerable tech¬

nological advantage—especially if it maneuvers as well

as the last probe messages suggest it did. Ah, this

object—” he gestured in a way that meant “out there”—

“this silver egg may gain us positions of, ah, con¬

siderable influence for the remainders of our lives. To look at it another way, this object might mean the

end of war for all time—if it falls into the right hands. If indeed it’s out there. ” He paused, watching Jenni¬

fer expectantly. “Commander, you’re throwing riddles at me. I’m

tired. You speak bloody smoothly for a fellow who

started out as a platoon leader in a ragtag army of

bullies, but I haven’t time. Why me?

We have twelve

surgeons on Engels. I have patients here, wounded

waiting for me. Just what is it?

What?” Jennifer felt

the edge creeping into her voice, tried to restrain her

growing irritation. The man was dangerous on Earth,

perhaps more so here, where she’d never expected to

see his like. “Citizen Doctor. You’re an anomaly here, in a way. Our records show us that you were something of a

wanderer in your youth—inclined toward what they

16 John McLoughlin

used to call ‘natural philosophy.’ You took early to a

naturalist’s life, to biology, and your later schooling

shows a broad interest in the sciences of animal form,

evolution and behavior. This is so?”

“Yes, Commander, but of precious little use here

in the Cosmograd, I assure you—unless I begin to

specialize in pigs and cattle and chickens and carp.”

Jennifer brushed back her bangs, rubbed her eyes. How she missed walking, watching, listening, inhal¬

ing, on Earth. But she’d had to get away, hadn’t she?

“Well, Citizen Doctor Dawson, it has been brought

to my attention that you are the only person with

such a background in the entire Cosmograd complex. We have veterinarians, of course, and other surgical

personnel, but we have no one who combines your

precise attributes of medical training with an interest

in natural history that was both encouraged from

earliest youth and broadened by study under some of

the greatest evolutionary biologists in the old Euro¬

pean capitalist world.”

Benai grinned broadly, the snakelike scar twisting

with seeming life of its own across his wide face. He

placed the tips of his long fingers together in a smugly

prayerlike position. “There was once a great English natural philoso¬

pher named Charles Darwin,” he murmured, still

smiling. “Do you recall much of him?”

“Certainly,” said Jennifer. “Anyone would—”

“Anyone steeped in capitalist philosophical history. I’ve steeped myself a little, recently, because I strongly

believe that you should ride with us on our mission. ”

Benai cleared his throat, like one preparing to make a

long speech. “You will recall that Darwin was a rich

and unrepentant scion of a capitalist medical clan—

people who made their fortunes off the sufferings of

the poor—”

Toolmaker Koan 17

So we re told now, ” said Jennifer, a touch of angry

adrenalin coursing through her weariness. Yes, citizen, and now is what matters, isn’t it?”

The commander rolled his eyes ceilingward, sighed. This Darwin, for whom the modern world has so

little time, he was one of Karl Marx s chief inspira¬

tions. Marx dedicated the Kapital to Darwin, or of¬

fered to; Darwin declined the honor. Benai’s plea¬

sure in his speech seemed to swell as he proceeded;

with a lazy wave of his great hand he brushed off

another objection from Jennifer, grinned, half closed

his eyes. Your friend Darwin sailed around the world with

a Captain Fitzroy, a British aristocrat who was a

career naval officer and captain of the good ship

Beagle, a, ah, brig of some two hundred and forty-

two tons Imperialist and about twenty-seven meters

in length.”

You’ve gone to a lot of trouble with this, Com¬

mander. Why?”

Benai waved again, feline in his ease. “Fitzroy was

an ardent Anglican. He wished the company of a

naturalist on his circumnavigation, one who would

take the opportunity to demonstrate to the rest of the

world the power of God and the magnificence of His

Creation.” The scar twisted as the commander smiled. “And, Citizen, we know what happened to that

alliance of faith and travel, don’t we?”

“Darwin synthesized his Theory, Fitzroy’s Creation

denied.”

“Indeed, Citizen. Many think that Darwin’s theory

was the best thing to come out of the British Empire. Others disagree. It doesn’t matter now. What does

matter is, that I need your help.”

Benai stared thoughtfully at his furred and beaded

cap for a moment, then picked it up and twirled it on

18 John McLoughlin

his finger. Then put it down again, his full lips twitch¬

ing as he sought his words. “Citizen Doctor, I can

imagine that you have reason to hate me, or hate

what I stand for. But we share some things, too. My

grandmother was bondwoman to a plantation in North¬

ern Rhodesia—Zambia after liberation. She was raped

by the white plantation stockman when she was four¬

teen, giving birth to my mother. She was sent with

her infant to Southern Rhodesia during the Smith

regime, and died when she was twenty-one. My

mother was raised by Anglican missionaries; I studied

in the English school at Bulawayo and went to the

Witwatersrand for a time, when non-Europeans were

rare there.” Idly, the giant spun his lunar globe. “Oh, yes, I underwent an excess of wrath during

the final liberation—the Disturbance—but it achieved

for me a position of influence that otherwise would

have been denied. I combine, let us say, the Old

World’s language, English, and a bit of its learning,

with the New World’s commitment to the principles

of Structured Enlightenment. I bridge the gap—we

mustn’t lose the entire oppressor legacy, after all, but

must simply purge history of its more damaging and

disruptive concepts.”

Suddenly Benai winked broadly, surprising Jenni¬

fer as he leaned forward and whispered conspiratori-

ally, “Charles Darwin would have understood my

position, Citizen. I adapt to my environment. You

also.”

“You’re billing yourself as a soldier-philosopher. A

sort of an African Marcus Aurelius. ” The commander

was a multileveled creature, more than Jennifer had

expected of his like, but he was still a trained plug-

ugly....

“Please, Commander, I’m fading fast.”

“An African Marcus Aurelius. I rather like that,

Citizen. As for your fading, see here.” He gestured

Toolmaker Koan 19

toward an electric samovar of obvious Sov make,

silver plated and elaborately Oriental in design. “Cof¬

fee?

Very fresh, quite authentic...” Jennifer nod¬

ded, and Benai took two real china cups from a

drawer—the mass-credits he’d earned in the service

of the State must have been enormous to have lifted

this elegant frippery to Engels from Earth—and poured

from his gaudy samovar two cups of thick black cof¬

fee. Jennifer felt warmed by the very aroma of the

stuff, and she tried to restrain her eagerness in reach¬

ing for her portion. Benai sipped thoughtfully, watching over the rim

of his cup as Jennifer took a first massive gulp, then

smiled apologetically. “Drink,” said Benai. Drink,

Jennifer Wellesley Dawson, and see me this way: I

am Fitzroy. I have been given a ship, I am going to

take a voyage, and I need the company of a willing

naturalist to prove the universal truth of the Princi¬

ples of Structured Enlightenment. I may see new

aspects of creation, and if so I will require assistance

in their interpretation. I may also need a surgeon

who has a proven record in emergency and disaster

management. “I need help, Doctor. It’s that simple.”

Jennifer sipped her coffee, mind working. On

bended knee, our African Marcus. You bet you need

help, you smooth-tongued tough. You re going to try

to catch that thing that Struggle found. You’ll catch it

or kill it. You want someone to find its weaknesses if

it’s alive, someone to dissect it for you if it doesn t

survive capture. You’ll try to prove to the world that

the thing is a good old Marxian Happy Worker. God, I’m so tired. I want to get away. I want it to

get away. “I’ll go,” she said suddenly. “Indeed, Doctor!” Benai, reaching again for his

20 John McLoughlin

samovar, paused in mid-movement. All trace of a

smile left his face. “Of course you will go. I would

like to have seen you wish to go, however, even

though some of your fellow travellers may not be

quite to your liking.”

“I do—I wish to go.”

“That was an interesting change of mind. You have

enough greenstripes so that I cannot help but detect

in you a strong individualist bent, Citizen; I don’t

quite feel that my little study on Darwin could really

have convinced you so suddenly. You know that you’ll

be closely watched—”

“What else?

Isn’t everyone?”

You also know the fate of Captain Fitzroy?”

“He cut his own throat on a springtime Sabbath

morning in 1865.”

Yes, said Oruna Benai, his strange scarred smile

returning. “He cut his own throat. But I, Citizen, I

would cut anyone’s throat but my own. Anyone’s. And, unlike Captain Fitzroy, I would find no diffi¬

culty adapting to the new world this voyage of mine

may reveal to us. No difficulty.”

He smiled again as Jennifer finished her coffee. She began to feel energy coursing through her blood,

far too much energy for caffeine. The stuff was tinc¬

tured with amphetamine. No sleep now; here was

how this African Marcus kept running. Work hard,

die young. Benai reached for his black fur cap, emblem of

command and conceit. “Now, Citizen Doctor, you’re

fatigued; you’ve an eight-hour rest allotment. Return

to your quarters. On awakening you will immediately

transfer to my ship. You have a four-kilogram

personal-effects allowance; you will also have an equip¬

ment requisition, mass open. Your clothing will be

issued on board—not that you’ll be wearing it for a

Toolmaker Koan 21

time. We ll awaken from the Long Sleep at 22 AU

from launch, for a total of eleven months’ dormancy. ”

He stood, ushered her toward the door. “Until to¬

morrow, then, Citizen.”

Jennifer gave in to the amphetamine surge, her

back straightening with that electric artificial strength

for which she knew she’d pay so dearly later. She

stood, shrugging, and left for her quarters. To sleep at last; perchance to dream. She feared

dreams, sometimes, for they carried her into her

past, to Earth, the wounded blue world from which

she’d fled at last, more than two years before. And so they did on this, her last night at Cosmograd

Engels. In her mind’s eye she saw fragments of her

Zimbabwean childhood, her family’s Rhodesian ridge-

back dogs, tawny and supple, stretching langorously

in the shade of the baobabs. She recalled her father,

himself a surgeon, tall and sunburned, laughing at

her attempt to catch the young guinea-fowl speeding

through the grass; she saw her mother at the piano,

singing old songs from American musical comedies;

she saw her brothers and her younger sister, and felt

the wind as they rode atop the old Land Rover across

the rolling veldt toward Bulawayo, the hospital there

where they visited her father when he’d a moment

away from the operating room. And her dreams carried her to England, to the

ancient towers above the emerald green of Cam¬

bridge; the fear came here, for it was at Cambridge

that she learned of the troubles in Zimbabwe, of her

father’s disappearance in Bulawayo. But there was

pleasure also; memories of her fiance, always to re¬

main a tousled blond boy in her mind, his smile, his

touch, their joint work with tomograph and laser and

remote optic-fiber technique, their mad pubcrawls,

their bright weekends punting through England’s old

canals...

22 John McLoughlin

And when they’d their degrees they interned in

London until the Angel of Death spread its oily black

wings across the Straits of Hormuz and the Persian

Gulf and at last the world; even as she left her fiance,

taking that hastily reserved seat on the Suborbital back

to Bulawayo, the rockets arced flaming across their

awesome parabolae from Pakistan to Israel, from Is¬

rael to Pakistan and India; in superhardened silos

beneath the steppes of Asia and the prairies of North

America, fingers tensed above keyboards while com¬

mand and countercommand bounced from Earthbound

antennae to geosynchronous satellites to orbiting weap¬

ons platforms and back again, the world seething

with electronic adrenalin...

And the Sovs erased

Pretoria, Capetown and Johannesburg as warning,

the Americans in turn slagging Managua, San Salva¬

dor and even Havana, so close to fouling their own

nest—as warning. But even after twenty-one nuclear warheads ex¬

ploded around the world, the hunter-killer satellites

did not move, the orbiting antimissile platforms re¬

mained untouched and a measure of sanity took hold

again in the form of hasty treaties and broad govern¬

mental collapses as the political world rearranged

itself overnight. The One-Day War. That War itself may have lasted

one day, but the Disturbance, the social upheavals of

the following months, saw the rise of Marxian gov¬

ernments in Western Europe and all of Asia as Amer¬

ican influence withdrew, with Africa and Australasia

following suit. Canny as ever, the petty dictators and

shaky democracies of Latin America felt the future’s

drift and allied themselves with their mighty neigh¬

bor to the north. And as the world reeled under the impact of those

twenty-one almost simultaneous nuclear explosions,

Toolmaker Koan 23

the Brotherhood of the Black Leopard came one night

to the Dawson plantation “to eradicate the White

pestilence’’ in keeping with their own peculiar inter¬

pretation of the Principles of Structured Enlighten¬

ment; Jennifer’s brothers and mother were burned

alive in “necklaces,’’ their necks ringed with blazing

petrol-soaked tires, and Jennifer and her sister were

reserved for some sport. The sister died; but when the Brotherhood learned

that Jennifer was a surgeon they left off their use of

her body and forced her mind and hands to caring for

their wounded; and, likely mercifully, the tiny brown

mite that burst screaming out of her womb nine

months later swiftly died, malnourished and father¬

less in a tent-town on the burned and windswept

veldt of her birthplace. But a doctor’s place is in the service of the People,

and Jennifer Dawson alone of her house lived on,

submerging her agony in ceaseless work as the shat¬

tered world tried to pull itself together. When Soviet

and European technicians poured in on Resource

Development Taskforces, they brought news with

them, news of the Cosmograd a-building in space

where Marxian civilization would grow yet mightier,

a place free of the plagues and starvation racking

man’s earthly home. The newcomers had white faces too, as well as

much-needed technology; under their influence Af¬

rica came less to hate Jennifer’s own lack of color. She was even issued an automatic weapon, for there

was no safety on the street, never would be. All still

called her “English,” though, as one might say “shit”

—and the oddest thing about this was that the only

language commonly understood across the vast ex¬

panse of Africa and Eurasia was English, though for a

time the Sovs and others attempted to eradicate its

24 John McLoughlin

use. So the old language of the oppressor, the lan¬

guage of science, technology and medicine, lived on

and was reborn in the most immense polity the world

would ever know. And the memories rolled on, with a life of their own,

carrying her again through the years of her trying to

escape Earth for the city of Engels in space. She

concentrated on the laser cautery and on other tools

of space medicine, tools to which the Sovs were only

too glad to introduce her. She specialized in the

weird vicissitudes of vacuum pathology and nullgrav

surgery; she became a singleminded Earthbound space

surgeon. She had to get away. For Jennifer Dawson knew that Earth s tribulation

was not over. Seas of vengeful impulse surged through

the billions of humanity, and the two hemispheres

armed faster and finer than ever before. The peoples

of Earth were amassing arsenals that would have

stupefied the twentieth-century superpowers; there

Jennifer knew a fear as cold and mindless as the

vacuum of space to which she longed to flee, and did

at last....

And now this—this long sleep into the trans-Uranian

night. This lunatic quest, taking her from her work

and forcing her onto the longest voyage ever under¬

taken by human beings, perhaps to meet something

that had travelled much farther. Something that might

not take kindly to capture, that might love its free¬

dom more than did these armed and hairy human

bipeds, Marxians self-bound in the Principles of Struc¬

tured Enlightenment. Man, false Man, smiling, destructive Man!

CHAPTER 2

The Pampas and Orbit;

Three Months Later

For Pike Muir, it had all begun with four men in a

hole at dusk. On them the bitter yellow drizzle fell, ceaselessly

popping against their helmets and slickers. Faceless

behind rank and rubbery issue visors, all scratched

surreptitiously at the itch of trickling sweat, other¬

wise not moving until one, visibly by the black camou

bar on his visor a first lieutenant, glanced at his

watch and whispered:

“Okay, Colonel Ulibarri, what we’ve released out

there on that ridge at a hundred and fifty meters just

now is a Soviet walking gatling sentry, hexapod,

codenamed Six Watchdog—one of the four captured

on the Kennedy run in Guam. State o’ the art. This is

the only one we got intact, zonked it on an EMP. We—uh, Major Muir’s cyber team—dissected the

other three we got, but they was dead, more or less. Taught us a lot, though, about the brain. Now, Six

Watchdog is equipped with what we call the Borzoi

Analog Magnetic Bubble Intelligence, BAMBI for

short—”

25

26 John McLoughlin

“A delightful name for a sixleg gatling,” observed

the colonel drily, his Spanish-accented whisper muf¬

fled by his eagle-emblazoned visor. “Yessir,” whispered the lieutenant. “Actually, the

gatling itself is a Six Watchdog. BAMBI’s just the

OC, uh, Operative Computer. It’s an interchange¬

able component, modular, same one as in this Struggle

probe you talked about. BAMBI ain’t too bright, but

it interfaces in this case with their Niger English

linguistic program, another modular—just enough

smarts and lingo for guard duty. “ID capacity includes olfactory preset for individ¬

ual pheromones, with integral snap chromatography,

a chierograph or palm-reader, and standard photo-

programmed optical ID registers. Full audio range

and visual from UV to infrared, flat terrain speed of

sixty KPH, and detention stunners as well as the

fore-and-aft fifteen-millimeter gatlings—which, by the

way, have a combined firing rate of almost eighty-two

hundred rounds per minute. Cuts down trees. Sort of

a talking Doberman, if you catch my drift, with flying

teeth. Not too different from our own walking gatlings

but for the brain—and that’s why we re here. “Now, Colonel Ulibarri—” the lieutenant preened

a bit beneath his slicker—“we re so confident of this

program that we’ve loaded the Watchdog with live

ammo. And what we’ve done for our private surprise

is, we’ve attached our MBPM, a Magnetic Bubble

Parasitic Monitor, to its neurocircuitry. We ll be work¬

ing through that monitor, which maintains comlink

through the Spec-four’s pack here to the MIDAS

system situated in a bunker four klicks to our rear. MIDAS does the analysis and translation for the ex¬

periment, see. Once we perfect the parasite-MIDAS

link, we should be able to monitor any BAMBI OC

within realtime range by attaching these monitors to

Toolmaker Koan 27

the things with flying remotes, although right now

it’s sort of a bell-the-cat—or Watchdog—proposition. ”

The lieutenant turned slightly, spoke to the other

officer in the muddy hole. “Captain Muir, as head

honcho for this here study, you wanna do the honors?”

Cyber Team Leader Captain Charles L. “Pike”

Muir gestured toward the colonel, his slicker crack¬

ling slightly with the movement. “Let’s let our guest

try it. Not too many walking gatlings out there at

Cislunar Intelligence. Taste of life on Earth.”

“Gotcha,” whispered the lieutenant. “Colonel

Ulibarri?”

“Ah, what do I do?” Colonel Jaime Ulibarri raised

his helmeted head a bit, peered over the muddy rim

of the hole into the humid gloom beyond. Nothing

stirred but the pocked yellow brush beyond, its fo¬

liage twitching beneath the acrid rain. “Well, shout something. Or just clap. Or maybe,

uh, here, take this—” the lieutenant handed Ulibarri

a folded pocketknife— “an’ rap it a couple times on

the Spec-four’s flatboard edge. An’ f’gawdsake get

back down first!”

“Rap it?

Just rap it?” The colonel’s whisper grew

raspier as the fourth man handed him the flatboard

console. “Yessir. Three, four times. Good and loud.”

TOK. TOK. TOK. The sound snapped out, star¬

tling the colonel in spite of himself. “HALT!” A stentorian voice roared out in the dusk

beyond, echoing briefly from the surrounding ridges,

blunting suddenly in tbe hissing of rain. At the top of the hill beyond, a great insect shape

suddenly rose, silhouetted dark and angular against

the deepening slate of the sky. Two turrets whirled,

their multibarrelled snouts triangulating instantly on

the foxhole and Colonel Ulibarri. Even through the

28 John McLoughlin

dusk and rain at this distance, the flickering of

nictitators clearing black optics was ominously plain. “FOUR MEN IN HOLE!” The voice boomed like

some appalling god’s, resonant, inhuman, command¬

ing. “RISE FOR IDENTIFICATION!”

Seized by an involuntary urge to obey, Ulibarri

started to his feet. “Downl Stay down!

Watch—sir.” Pike Muir pushed

firmly on the colonel’s shoulder. “RISE FOR IDENTIFICATION!” And then a scin¬

tillating light from one of the gatling turrets, a frightful

all-encompassing HOOOOM like the sound of a

briefly-touched middle-C on a cosmic organ—and the

hillside behind the crouching quartet dissolved into a

flying welter of mud and fine-chopped vegetation. “FOUR MEN IN HOLE!

RISE FOR IDENTIFI¬

CATION!

YOU ARE SIGHTED AND RANGED!”

“Now, sir,” said the lieutenant to Ulibarri (who

had assumed as nearly as possible the thickness and

shape of a pie-plate on the muddy foxhole floor),

“here’s our little trick. Watch the Spec-four here,

acting comlink to MIDAS.”

Ulibarri, wincing, turned his bespattered visor re¬

luctantly from the mud into which he’d pressed his

face, wiped the eyeshields and peered at the party’s

fourth. This last, wearing an antennaed backpack, held up

the gray flatboard console, punched four keys and

waited while a momentary rainbow played across its

face. “Frequency search, sir,” explained Pike, no longer

whispering. “Now, look—”

FOUR MEN IN HO—” The great voice stopped

as if cut with a knife. On the flatboard console ap¬

peared a cluster of four bright dots in a dappled

background. Toolmaker Koan 29

“We’ve simultaneously broken the gatling’s guard

loops and tapped its sensories, sir.” Pike took the

console, turned it so Ulibarri could examine its face. “Those four spots are us in infrared—warm bodies,

what the gatling sees right now.” The spots grew,

resolving into the torsos of four human shapes, blurred

but clearly visible—their clothing, even though cooled

by rain, did not hide them from that awful mechani¬

cal scrutiny. Then the view changed again, the slick¬

ers and helmets appearing and details of the sur¬

rounding landscape flickering bright, then disappear¬

ing from the console as the gatling’s sensors shifted

viewing frequencies. “The damn thing sees pretty well, doesn’t it?

It can

see in any or all frequencies, as conditions demand. And with our gadget attached, we see what it sees. And it’ll do what we tell it. Watch.” Pike turned the

board again, punched a seven-digit code, spoke into

an auditory pickup: “Watchdog, sit\” He grinned at

the colonel’s reflective visor. As Ulibarri sat up and peered across the foxhole’s

edge, the arthropod form bent its six multijointed

legs, settling an armored segmented belly to the

hilltop mud. “Watchdog, stand and approach!”

The machine rose again, then began a swift smooth

trot on clawed metal feet, maintaining body and tur¬

rets level despite the rocks and brush; faster than

man could run, it seemingly glided toward them

while Ulibarri found himself involuntarily shrinking

back. “Watchdog, halt,” said Pike evenly. The machine

stopped; as still as a simple piece of scaffolding it

waited, its horrible quasi-life betrayed only by the

flickering of its turret ocular nictitators blinking against

the rain. 30 John McLoughlin

Ulibarri sighed. “Captain, I expect I am not used

to life Downside. It’s a bit more, ah, messy here than

I’d imagined. But my congratulations, Captain. You

are a genius, as I was told.”

“Nossir. But we re good hackers, que no?” Hidden

though his face was by the visor, Pike’s pleasure was

clearly audible. Jaime Ulibarri sat back, his slicker crackling. “You’re

unnecessarily modest. Ah, may we send the lieuten¬

ant and the specialist back to the unit?”

“Done, sir,” said Pike. “Rosey, Herper, split—don’t

get wet. ”

“Yessir.” The soldiers grinned, saluted. “Later.”

They scrambled from the muddy hole and doubletimed

away, the now-harmless gatling turrets automatically

tracking their retreat. “And now,” said Ulibarri, “Major Muir, we talk a

bit. You understand that all this...”

Major, sirr

“Indeed. A preplanned bit of a surprise. Congratu¬

lations!” Ulibarri handed him a plastic-wrapped sheaf

of orders from somewhere inside his voluminous

slicker. “All this inconvenience, these physicals, the

coming quarantine, all that—are visited upon you

because of our admiration for this work of yours. You’ll be well taken care of. We leave tomorrow

evening from the equatorial shuttlebase at Santana in

the Brazilian state of Amapa, my friend, for High

Columbia, where you’ll billet for a few days’ briefing. None of this infernal rain. Not so much time or room,

perhaps, but you’ll see the sun, sir—you’ll be envied

by your teammates here.”

The new major blinked in surprise. “Oh, hey, sir,

we see the sun here in the Argentine pretty fre¬

quently—we get a good clear day at least once every

Toolmaker Koan 31

two weeks, and I do a lot of riding—out on the

Pampas, you know. I’ll kind of miss that, I guess.”

“That you will indeed miss. I miss it also—my

family had vineyards here, when I was young. Gone

now, with the rains—sometimes I dream of having

another vineyard, a small one...

but I suppose...

well!

Enough of that. I believe you’ll enjoy your

mission. It’s a longer mission than I’ve explained,

really...

Do I understand correctly that you have

no immediate family?”

“Not close, sir. My parents died during the Emer¬

gency; brother dead too, killed in Honduras. I have a

sister in Chicago, but she’s Social Justice and won’t

even talk to me.”

“And your wife...”

“That didn’t really work out, sir. I’m sure you

know about it already. Too much time on the move,

and in the end she went Social Justice too.” Funny

what it does to them, Pike thought, especially if

you’re Army or anything. It’s as if they just—close in

on themselves. All that stuff about peace and equality

and disarmament and universal justice sounds so good,

but it makes them somehow, well, lofty or some¬

thing. As if they don’t have time, and the rest of us

are dirt...

and Pat started going out with the SJ

types while I was in the Panama conflict, wrote she

was having more fun than ever before, had found

meaning in life at last, didn’t want kids, wanted to

devote her time to the Movement...

and of course

that guy Parmenter...

and me a vicious materialis¬

tic capitalist warmonger, or whatever....

“Strange times, sir,” he added. “I guess they could

just as easily have gone to the Christian Federalist

side of things, like a lot of my relatives...”

“Indeed, um, Major. You’ll find a good many Chris¬

tian Federalists at High Columbia.” Ulibarri with-

32 John McLoughlin

drew from the inner pocket of his slickered uniform a

vast cigar. Shielding this nicotine torpedo from the

rain, the colonel lighted it with an old Austrian light¬

er. “Hah!

At High Columbia, no smoking, nor at

Cislunar Intelligence, alas. At any rate, you’ll see no

more of your friends here for a time; you’re a secret,

you and your parasitic monitor. You’ll recall our dis¬

cussion of the Sov Oort Probe and the famous lights

in the sky of three months ago?

The maiden voyage

of what our Communist rivals call the good ship

Dienbienphu, formerly an advanced weapons plat¬

form, now reincarnated as a research vessel extraor¬

dinaire, breaker of six codicils of the Treaty of St. Helena?’’

“Well, sure, hell. We had a clear night then, and

the news is still about nothing else.’’

“Of course. That ship follows this Struggle probe,

Major. And, only four months before its departure

we at High Columbia received a most unusual com¬

munique from the Soviet Bureau of Cosmonautical

Affairs, the BCA, at Engels. My counterpart there

claimed at first that we had interfered with their

probe’s functioning somewhere beyond the orbit of

Uranus. The probe was apparently, as you might say,

‘on the blink, ’ and he felt that we were attempting to

sabotage its mission for research or propaganda pur¬

poses. The Soviets are historically a nation of profes¬

sional paranoiacs. More to the point, though, not

only did we not interfere, but the communique was

brusquely interrupted and no further contact was

made by any official at their end. And their initial

claim took a most peculiar form.’’

“Sir?”

“Their communicant suggested that the probe was

being followed by a trasgo far out there in the dark, a

Toolmaker Koan 33

‘bogey’ you might call it—another machine. Hence,

naturally, their suspicion that it was one of ours.”

“And it wasn’t.”

“Of course not. Would that we had the money for

such foolishness!” Ulibarri emitted another noxious

nebula, shrugged hispanically. “With regard to its

own self-examination loops, we were told, that probe

was functioning entirely within expected parameters. It ‘awoke’ prematurely from a preset period of inac¬

tivity to report across its tightbeam a nearby mass—

which is, after all, precisely the sort of thing for

which it was designed to search. Then it apparently

relayed a brief span of information to the BCA receiv¬

ers, describing the mass as metallic, and impossibly

dense.” Ulibarri generated another poisonous cloud

of blue smoke, tapped a great ash into the mud. “After our denial, as I said, communication with us

from Engels was abruptly broken. One suspects that

more was said than intended by the enlightened mas¬

ters of that place. Heads will no doubt have rolled

noisily about.” The colonel held his cigar away from

himself and inspected it fondly—and then suddenly

pointed its glowing business end at Pike. “And then, Major, they retrofitted this great ship

of theirs, equipping it with what we call a modified

Taylor or Orion drive, the prohibited successive-bomb

drive. Considering the expense and risk and sheer

haste involved in this immense project, and the in¬

teresting pursuit-trajectory of the illegal ship itself,

what would a clever officer like yourself infer from

these incidents?”

Pike’s eyes widened, and he stared; at Ulibarri s

dangerous cigar, and then into the colonel s eyes. And broke into a grin like the Cheshire Cat’s. Well,

hell, sir, I’d say you guys—or the Sovs, at least—are

beginning to think you’re onto a, well, hell again, sir,

34 John McLoughlin

a goddamn First Contact!

Whoa!

Damn!” Pike slapped

his forehead with his hand, shook his head, chuckled. Ulibarri’s small black eyes widened a bit in turn,

and then the ghost of a smile played about his blue-

whiskered jowls. “A predictable response, Major, in

view of some of the information I found in the dossier

that commended you so highly to me. You are said to

be not only a ‘hacker’ of distinction but also an aficio¬

nado of this, ah, how do you say, ‘technological

romance’—”

“Science fiction,” corrected the grinning Pike. “ ‘Science fiction’, yes,” said Ulibarri. “And you

possess an extensive collection of books and taped

cinemas of that genre of fiction, I believe. A collec¬

tion that will no doubt stimulate and broaden your

appreciation of your new assignment. ”

Pike gulped, coughed and spluttered. “Yessir. The

assignment, sir?”

“Well, Major Muir, if this trasgo reported by

Struggle is indeed an artifact of a, ah, Third Party,

you can imagine the possible consequences for all

people of the Sovs’ reaching it before we do. There¬

fore, of course, we hope to reach it first. ”

“Jesus K. Reist.” Pike shook his head slowly. “And

where do I fit in?”

“Ah, Major Muir, you’re a very lucky man. You’ll

be among the first men to sail out beyond the aster¬

oids. We want you to take a closer look at that probe

with its bubble brain. We want you to get there with

a MIDAS system and your magic parasite and com¬

mandeer Struggle as you’ve just done with the walk¬

ing gatling. We believe that you could attach just

such a little monitor as we saw in action in the field,

to the probe’s neurocircuitry—well in advance of the

PDR’s arrival there—at which point, of course, the

probe will work for us as well as for the Communistas.”

Toolmaker Koan 35

Pike frowned. “But sir, they have three months on

us—and that foul drive. How’ll we do it?”

Ulibarri smiled, his pencil moustache bending up¬

ward. “We at Cislunar Intelligence think well ahead,

Major. We envision your travelling outward on a

very much lighter ship than theirs, one perhaps un¬

comfortably hastily constructed—it is ready, in fact. Your drive will be the same proton-positron annihila¬

tion system that impelled the old Mars missions,

greatly improved, swift and sure. You’ll spend eight

months in SIT—‘State of Induced Torpor’—to spare

you the stresses of acceleration produced by the drive. ’’

“And if there is a bogey out there, and they catch

it while we’re hanging around two thousand klicks

away?”

“Ah, Major, Major. Then your commander will

know what to do; this is, in the end, a military

mission.”

“Oh, God. We re meeting it with force?”

“We go with force wherever the Soviets are in¬

volved. It is a necessity of life. And the, ah, sus¬

pected companion to the probe—we would not wish

to meet it unarmed either. Remember the Caribs,

Major Muir.”

“Sir?”

“The Caribs. The first Americans found by Cristoforo

Colombo, the first to see his ships. They greeted him

on sunlit beaches, with gifts of gold and women.”

“Sir?” Pike’s mind reeled idiotically with unre¬

strained speculation. “The Caribs, Major Muir, are extinct. Please re¬

member that, out there in the dark, and take great

care.” Ulibarri smiled strangely, and extinguished his

cigar in the mud. 36 John McLoughlin

So, but a week later and many tens of thousands of

kilometers from home, Major Pike Muir found him¬

self staring curiously at the flatboard console of

Interfacility Transit Capsule Seven. The screen sud¬

denly sprang into life with a tiny graphic of High

Columbia’s city cylinder, two kilometers in diameter,

a blinking red tangential trajectory creeping outward

toward the lollipop form of Pursuitship Expediter

hanging in space some hundred kilometers distant. His head lurched with the capsule’s drop into ffeefall,

a lurch amplified by the corrective adjustments of

attitudinal jets. Then there was silence for a moment;

he was on his way to embarkation, drifting in swift

automatically-computed freefall through the eternal

night of space. “That’s some bad piece of equipment,’’ growled

the tech specialist riding with him, gesturing toward

the distant ship. “Bad indeed,’’ laughed Pike. Bad indeed. Expediter sported perhaps the most

powerful single assemblage of weaponry ever put

together by human beings. Surrounding the spherical

bow was a ring of Tornado kinetic energy projectors,

the mighty railguns launching at a hundred or so

klicks a second the ship’s complement of motile sen¬

sory probes—or releasing either independently ma¬

neuverable mass-seeking fragmentation charges or

canister pulses of half-centimeter balls of lead, a thou¬

sand at a pulse. Studding the bow were the HEL projectors. It was

a good acronym, HEL, for the high-energy lasers

designed for but never yet used in close high-velocity

space-based battle. These were backed up by Expe¬

diter s ultimate weapons: the three NEPs, nuclear-

explosive-pumped beam systems, detachable and

independently maneuvered, of course, because if used

Toolmaker Koan 37

they would explode with “cute” nukes propelling x-ray

lasers in predetermined directions. All of this astonishing firepower was integrated by

a specialized MIDAS, the broad-spectrum American

military computing intelligence or Multivariate /nfer-

ence/Deduction Analysis System, with which Pike

had so often worked. Expediter s MIDAS-7 system

maintained a tightbeam link through Cislunar Intelli¬

gence to just about every library and communications

system in the Free World...

a mind of its own,

awaiting only orders to perform. Virtually by itself, MIDAS-7 had instructed the

young officer during his week in space. It had por¬

trayed for him all that was known of the malfunctioning

Sov Oort probe and its general plane-of-ecliptic course

with gravity assists at Jupiter and Uranus for a long

silent drift until hoped-for contact with the postu¬

lated Oort cloud, ETA (if such a cloud existed) in

2039-45.

MIDAS had also overseen his introduction to vari¬

ous project personnel, including the renowned Ches¬

ter Walsky, Weapons System Integration—a fellow

traveller on the junket, short, thick-set, blond, face

reddened by sunlamps in a City tanning-room. To

him, Pike had explained with MIDAS’s aid his as¬

signment as specialist in analyses of Sov computer

technique, and his two remotely functioning tap mon¬

itors capable of linking themselves to any brain of the

sort carried by the Soviet Oort probe. The remote motiles—one a backup in case of

trouble—would extend to Expediter the awareness

and, if necessary, control of the probe itself; shortly

before the crew’s reactivation, the motiles would leave

Expediters railguns at maximum velocity to receive

an initial boost in surmounting Dienbienphu s head

start to the probe. Theoretically, this would enable

/

38 John McLoughlin

Expediter to remain far from the action but essen¬

tially in realtime contact, permitting the American

mission to figure out what was going on without

actually engaging Dienbienphu; hence Expediter might

even get to do a turnabout with some return boost

head start rather than having to complete the entire

journey home from Struggle’s last known position. Otherwise the ship would have to fall back after the

mission. There was enough room for fuel outward,

after all, but not enough for subsequent power Sun¬

ward at the same sort of accelerations. Later, in private session with Colonel Jaime Ulibarri

and MIDAS, Pike had met his new commanding

officer, the man whose energy and influence had

almost singlehandedly made the mission possible. He’d heard a bit about Colonel Jimbob Corson,

even back on Earth. Corson was a new breed, a sort

of modified Air Force officer with extensive family

political connections in the Christian Federalist Party. More than that, he was said to be a brilliant tactician,

the father of SB-WAT—“Space-based Weapons-and-

Tactics”—in their present form. Now Pike knew him

better. Corson was a short blond man, usually smil¬

ing, black coveralls creaking with starch, silver eagles

glinting in the fluorescent light. His burred hair framed

a square-jawed face, small blue eyes glinting hard as

sapphires...

the quintessential soldier. “Shake,” Corson had said on meeting Pike, who

took the proffered hand, strong and short-fingered. The little finger was missing. “Oh, that?” Corson was used to this sort of hesita¬

tion, and pleased. “Lost it in Gibraltar when I was a

PFC. I got my field commission there. Kept me in a

career I wasn’t really certain about at first. ”

He spoke with a cheerful drawl, one of those offi¬

cers who could affect a good-ole-boy camaraderie while

Toolmaker Koan 39

breaking bones—his own or others’—to get things

done. From the first, he’d made it plain that in his

mind s eye Expediter and all aboard her would to¬

gether be but a machine, a device to prevent the

“Rooshians” from acquiring anything that might

threaten the future of the Columbian Alliance. “And

hell, nothing at all might happen. Then somebody’s

just up the creek for money. But in taking this risk,

you understand, we’re simply making certain. We

have to be certain. Expediter s a tight ship. I intend

to run her as a tight ship. Any further questions?’’

Implying, of course, that none were necessary. Now Pike felt the sudden deceleration as the trannycap

approached its destination. Outside, the whirling

dumbbell of a centrifugal-mass docking facility ro¬

tated in the starry ocean, dwarfed by the immense

ship to which it was locked. More than a kilometer

long, Expediter hung seemingly still against the stars,

bristling with piping and girders, surrounded by a

herd of remote-communications dishes, glittering sil¬

ver and white. The idiot brain of Transit Capsule

Seven locked onto laser-designated linkrings; clicking

and bumping resumed, and with a hiss the docking

station’s air joined the trannycap’s. The hatch snicked aside to reveal the long metal

corridor of the docking facility’s center of mass. Clam¬

bering along the corridor’s handholds past occasional

bright orange numerals and initials, P7, P8, DAM¬

AGE CNTRL 3A, etc., Pike embraced the ladder

rails and slid smoothly downtunnel. At the tube’s

end, a circular bulkhead slid silently aside, revealing

the pale green of Expediter s living quarters. The week in space had been full, and tiring. Along

with Corson and Walsky, he’d pondered many things—

most notably, the possibility of a Third Party’s await¬

ing them beyond Uranus. Pike himself hoped there

40 John McLoughlin

was one; Corson seemed to feel, since all the old

twentieth-century searches had come up empty, that

no such thing existed...

and that he didn t all that

much want to meet one if it did. Nor did he much care about any Third Party; he

was primarily interested in testing his SB-WAT sys¬

tems against those of Dienbienphu. For Corson, anything else was gravy. Part II

23 AU and a Year from Earth

I

CHAPTER 3

Dienbienphu

Sleeping, Jennifer Dawson was carried by her dreams

through strange darkling seas where undulating seg¬

mented beings pursued mercurial ovoid droplets in

an endless slow dance of particles against the eternal

backdrop of the silent stars. The faint booms and

creakings of the ship’s fabric found their way to her,

the ship’s spindly five-kilometer form swimming in

her sleeping mind’s eye like a great animal in the

vacuum. “YAAAP!”

A vertebrate, perhaps the ship was, or at least a

centipede, an organism in which segmentation pro¬

vided strength and structural flexibility. Evolution

re-invents the spine in space...

count segments of

Dienbienphu jumping over a fence. Over a side-looking

radar scan. Over a battlement...

“YAAAP!

Alert!

Citizen Doctor Dawson, you are

required on the bridge!’’

The second alarm jerked her fully awake. She looked

wildly around her tiny cubicle, rolled out of her bed

and to her feet in a single movement. She’d fallen

43

44 John McLoughlin

asleep in coveralls—no time to change. By the time

the alarm yapped a third time, she was out of the

cubicle, pounding her way along the rim of Living

Systems Unit toward the freefall axial corridor lead¬

ing to the bridge. Emerging through the armored

bulkhead into the bridge hemisphere, she caught her

freefall slippers in the floor matting, saluted halfheart¬

edly, and made her way to an empty acceleration

couch. Half a dozen junior officers glanced toward

her, their faces weirdly illuminated by screen readouts. Her week since the artificial Long Sleep had been

an unending round of post-awakening physicals for

Dienbienphu s crew of fifty, interspersed with peri¬

ods of therapeutic exercise, hastily-grabbed meals and,

when she could find time, sleep. The Long Sleep—

that, at least, was a success. What now?

“Ah, Citizen Doctor. An emergency.” Commander

First Grade Oruna Benai sighed, turned away from

the console through which he had been speaking to

the shipbrain. His broad shoulders slumped. “For¬

give me for awakening you from a no doubt well-

deserved rest, but I believe you’ll understand. You

may soon have some real work to do.” He smiled

wearily. “You’re ready for some real work?”

“Always, Commander.” Jennifer watched him cau¬

tiously. The fatigue was plain on his face, the strain

audible in his voice. “Excellent. A bit of background. You’re aware that

since its launching nine months ago, the American

pursuit ship Expediter has itself been pursued by a

Soviet robot observation remote?”

“Yes—it’s been maintaining itself against their cross-

section of the Sun to avoid detection. ”

“Precisely. Twelve hours ago this remote informed

us that the Americans had launched a motile, small

and fast, that appeared to be overtaking us swiftly on

Toolmaker Koan 45

its own trajectory toward the missing Oort probe. Since then their ship has been decelerating at one

gravity, suggesting that their crew is by now awake. I, ah, consulted with our zampolit and with Engels,

and was given orders to interdict that motile, which

I ve done. Shipbrain’s notice that the interdiction was

successful prompted me to alert you; that confirma¬

tion arrived eight minutes ago. The Americans are

only about three and a half minutes’ lightlag behind

us, now; they’ll know in seconds, if not already, that

they’re short a probe. I await, most unhappily, their

response.”

Benai closed his eyes, pressed them with his fists

and contemplated the patterns of color he seemed to

see within. He looked at Jennifer again. “They force

me. They force me. Devils in the bush!

The lightlag

drives me mad!”

Jennifer waited warily, scanning the lines of fatigue

on Benai’s face. The bridge rumbled with the ship’s

life, a low-frequency reverberation comprised of all

the movement of all aboard, the minute whinings of

servos, the hiss of ventilation ducts and flowing water

and, lower and more pervasive than all else, the

rolling of the great bearings separating the revolving

living quarters from the ship’s stationary spine. Even

with the thundering concussions of her drive dor¬

mant, Dienbienphu was a vast resonance chamber, an

amplifier of the voice of the sum of her parts; there

was no escape from that all-embracing rumbling, no

escape except, when it could be taken, sleep. Ah, Jennifer knew the signs well. After only a

week of consciousness the entire ship’s complement,

she included, was in the grip of a grim bout with

Social Constraint Syndrome, the malignant rancor

that so often overtook small communities isolated in

space. Not always, but often—especially when such

46 John McLoughlin

small communities were further divided by lines of

rank and nationality. As military commander, Benai felt the syndrome

most acutely. He’d been sitting before his console

now for more than twelve hours, conversing with the

shipbrain and in batches of preplanned conversation

with Engels across the more than three infuriating,

intervening hours of lightlag. He stretched, yawned,

shook his head slowly, looked piercingly at his chief

medical officer. “Where is our zampolit?

That alarm was given

almost twelve minutes ago!

He’ll have orders sealed

from launch, I suppose, magic zampolit orders from

Moscow, governing interaction with the Americans. Yah!

Expediter!

So fast, so fasti” He gave up again,

his tired mind clamping down, struggling with fa¬

tigue as Jennifer watched. Since awakening from the

Long Sleep she’d learned a good deal about the mind

of Oruna Benai. He was a military man, pure and simple; at least,

so he saw himself. All of his considerable training and

insight had been channelled into the work of his

choosing. Born on the same African veldts as his chief

medical officer, he’d undergone the same great Dis¬

turbance, the same massacres and burnings...

from

the other side, of course. Like hers, his was a world

of open space, great blue skies, distant horizons; like

she, he felt as if his sojourn aboard Dienbienphu was

so much time spent in a coffee can. And to top it off, the insolent slowness of the

zampolit and his staff!

These, enjoying a privileged

Russian-language privacy link to shipbrain and hence

to Engels, had tied up main tightbeam transmissions

for hours. Now they ignored Benai’s alarm—and there

was nothing the military commander could do about it. The Sov political detachment were very definitely

Toolmaker Koan 47

overseers of the mission. These particular Sovs, faintly

contemptuous gentlemen whose object was to pro¬

vide courtesies should there indeed happen to be a

Third Party waiting at the silent Oort probe ahead,

made no bones about their position onboard. Their

own quarters, own food. For Benai, the original

thoughts of glory for the people of Africa and for

himself had been eroded to a point of near-nonexis¬

tence, to be gradually replaced by the old childhood

sense of exploitation. Pale-skinned polar Sovs. Like

all whites, they kept to themselves, reserved the best

for themselves, treated the African commander like—

well, like a kaffir. Nigger, in fact. When we see them,

these authors of the Principles of Structured Enlight¬

enment. Which is precious rarely. Thinking of which...

There was a hiss as a sliding port retracted. Onto

the freefall bridge bounced Aleksandr I. lamskoy,

until last year First Deputy of the Commissariat of

Education at the People’s Cosmograd of Engels, now

zampolit or political officer, cultural liaison on the

First Trans-Uranian Mission. lamskoy was a short man, his stiff bristle of black

hair brushed straight back from a broad pale Slav face

in which small slanted Tartar eyes rested like raisins

in a pudding. The zampolit was also ill trained in

free-fall locomotion; as he emerged from the rotating

living quarters to the stationary bridge, he swung

clumsily sideways, the grips on his freefall slippers

missing the bristles of the deck matting. Tight-lipped,

dignified as befitted a First Deputy of anything, he

waved his arms about, unaware of bodily center of

mass, releasing into the air a sheaf of hardcopy. The

stuff unfolded gracefully, and the cellulose tapeworm

of close-printed information slowly stretched two me-

48 John McLoughlin

ters across the room by virtue of the residual elastic¬

ity in its folds. Iamskoy’s left leg swept across the surface of Benai’s

console, sweeping magnetically-stabilized pens, flat-

board, screen-control board, two bulbs of coffee and

a tube of soy paste into the air as the cultural liaison

finally gripped a seat. The same left leg barely missed

Benai’s chin in its rapid arc, and the commander

rubbed the lower part of his dark face thoughtfully as

Iamskoy attached himself at last to the medical offi¬

cer’s acceleration couch—Jennifer busying herself chas¬

ing the errant flatboard to the far side of the bridge. She had little use for the mission zampolit; he’d spent

much of their little time together making clumsy

sexual advances. “Good afternoon, Commander.” Iamskoy breathed

hard, his coverall heaving a bit as he caught his breath. “I, ah, have a bit of information for you here...

one

moment...” He carefully reeled in his hardcopy, a

Slavic Laocoon struggling with a paper serpent. Jen¬

nifer smirked. Benai glowered at her. Benai was mili¬

tary commander, but Iamskoy was, if anything, the

real principal of the passage until and unless military

action were required. “Yes,” said the zampolit, his English perfect if

slightly accented, “we have here a fresh set of direc¬

tives from Moscow by way of Engels, directives cov¬

ering the hypothetical but momentous event of hostile

contact with our pursuers. I do understand correctly,

of course, that you’ve destroyed their motile?”

“Indeed, Cultural Liaison.” Benai watched the lit¬

tle man with ill-concealed distaste, glanced at his

readout. “Interdict confirmed, ah, seventeen minutes

ago.”

“Good. Within the Principles of Structured En¬

lightenment, your action was correct. Would you not

Toolmaker Koan 49

agree, Citizen Doctor?

He smiled ingratiatingly at

Jennifer, noticing her for the first time. Benai felt a smile playing about the corners of his

mouth. Reading the zampolit’s eyes, he knew the

man s thoughts about the chief medical officer. Let

him take on, then, the icy doctor; she’ll treat him as

he treats us. Jennifer prudently said nothing; Iamskoy pressed. You seem less than sociable, Citizen Doctor. Some¬

how I begin to fear that you re not feeling yourself to

be part of this great endeavor. Why would this be?

Are you perhaps—lonely?” He glanced about the

bridge in what he hoped was a conspiratorial fashion. Oh, dear no, Citizen!” Jennifer’s blue eyes took

on a look of girlish innocence. The little bugger s

persistent, Vll grant him that...

she smiled, the

corners of her mouth turning down humorously. Lonely!

How could one feel lonely, sharing Dien-

bienphu with fifty people?”

Yes, yes...

we all feel the strain, Citizen.”

Iamskoy watched her for a moment, then spoke to

Communications Officer Mboko: “Lieutenant, we’ll

need coffee. The galley, please, and have it sent up

with Captain Tomashev. It’ll, ah, perk up’ our doc¬

tor, and we have decisions to make.” He glanced

about the bridge again as Mboko toggled the inter¬

com. His steadiness under the current pressures might

change that doctor’s mind about him...

perhaps

smooth his way toward a more intimate communion

with her. “It’s such a rare pleasure to see your smile,

Citizen Doctor. Why not call me Aleksandr—or Alex—

just this once?

If I may call you Jennifer?

We know

one another well...”

“Oh, but I do so like that ‘citizen’ in conversation,”

smiled Jennifer. “It makes everything seem so, so

50 John McLoughlin

right. Why, Citizen, I’d surely bugger everything up

if I dropped the citizen.’ I wouldn’t think of it!”

“ 'Bugger everything up,’ Doctor?

Oh, come, now,

such a handsome woman as yourself could never

bugger anything up, I’m certain.” Iamskoy offered

Jennifer a wink. The humor left Jennifer’s face as if switched off

electrically. “Citizen Iamskoy, I could bugger up a

great deal if I had to. I rather feel the entire spirit of

this race to be a little war, a silly little war, between

you and some Americans over an entity that we re

not certain even exists. Diverting resources from the

cosmograd and the Orbital Medical Facilities in order

to pull a propaganda coup. Furthermore, Citizen, I

generally choose to remain in solitude in order not to

bugger anything up. I listen to my music. I do my

writing. I come out to attend to my duties, but I eat

alone, think alone and—much to your distress, I

gather—I sleep alone also.”

Silence on the bridge, junior officers staring with

concentrated stillness into their screens. Oruna Benai

froze; he’d felt ill since interdicting the American

probe, but the fierce surgeon suddenly leavened his

nausea. Almost smiling, he looked expectantly about

the bridge. Well said, Doctor. What can they make

of that?

The zampolit’s State Security aide, Captain Jaro

Tomashev, chose that moment to emerge into the

bridge freefall followed by an enlisted man with a set

of coffee bulbs. He spluttered, his face reddening. Jennifer hid her mouth with her hand, the corners of

her eyes crinkling. Iamskoy sat back, placing his

hardcopy carefully on the console, and made a cau¬

tious deprecating motion with his hand toward the

security agent. Tomashev passed coffee bulbs around,

seated himself in another couch. Toolmaker Koan 51

Later, Citizen Doctor, later.’’ Eyes glittering with

rage, Iamskoy took his bulb, sucked up a long pull of

coffee. “Now to business. Shipbrain, Engels is alerted?”

“Engels is alerted, Citizen Iamskoy, with lightlag

doubleway of seven hours, thirty-six minutes to this

point.”

“Mmm. We have a bit of time for some personal

initiative. Allow me, then, to share with you these

directives.” The bridge quieted, all eyes on the

zampolit. Iamskoy, aplomb recovered, preened a bit. He liked an audience, elegant propagandist [he’d

been told] that he was. He sat back in the acceleration

couch, stabilized himself while Benai looked severely

about the room at Jennifer and his “young gentle¬

men,” and held the sheaf of hardcopy at arm’s length. “The Principles of Structured Enlightenment would

perhaps have confirmed these orders even had we

not received them; they’re a sensible, simple set of

dictates, gentlemen, Doctor, and they offer a simple

code of conduct. “ ‘One. The Deep Space Vessel Dienbienphu, rep¬

resenting the United Socialist Peoples of Earth, only

rightful polity of this solar system, hopes to contact a

hypothetical Third Party; any contact of the Third

Party by any other polity is a stratagem of a brigand

state; therefore,

“ ‘Two. Under no circumstance will Dienbienphu

permit any communication between any Third Party

and the American pursuit ship Expediter, its remotes

or any other vessels unauthorized by BCA Engels,

and

“ ‘Three. Subject to conditions above, Dienbienphu

is to be considered expendable. ”

Iamskoy peeled back the top sheet of hardcopy. “You understand, Citizens, what these last two direc-

52 John McLoughlin

tives imply?

I’m certain you do. There’s more,

however—”

“Citizen Zampolit,” snapped Jennifer Dawson,

“you’re telling us that we re coming to blows with

this Expediter out here, now, and we’re not going

hack. Those Americans will catch us like a tossed ball

out here—they’re good at what they do. Principles

be damned. The, the situation at home, they’re wait¬

ing for something like this.’’ She gave up, glanced at

Benai, who lowered his eyes. Benai knew, too. The shipbrain bleeped alarm. “Citizen Iamskoy,

Commander Benai, we have a communications pulse,

tightbeam, standard microwave nonmilitary transit

initiation, ICOMCOMSAT information interchange

programming preapplied at 275,000 MHz, from pur¬

suit ship Expediter, with lightlag of three minutes,

forty-one seconds intervening. Requests direct chan¬

nel to Commander, Dienbierphu.’ ”

“Oho, we’ve induced them to speak!’’ Iamskoy

rubbed his hands gleefully together. An iron hand tightened around Benai’s gut. “Open,

shipbrain?’’

“Open, Commander Benai.’’

“Vocal and hard.’’

Iamskoy leaned forward, jaw set. “Commander

Benai, I remind you that no communication is to be

made with pursuit ship Expediter without prior clear¬

ance from BCA Engels.’’

“We re listening, not talking,” murmured Benai. “Our pulse, Citizen, Commander.” The shipbrain’s

monotone suddenly gave way to a new voice, a strongly

accented male voice drawling eerily onto the bridge,

an American accent, its vowels extended broadly. The message was plain, preplanned. “Commanding Officer of Dienbienphu, this is Col¬

onel J. L. Corson, Commanding Officer of USRS Ex-

Toolmaker Koan 53

pediter. We have reason to believe that you have

destroyed a peacefully-launched American remote

probe. We stand by to accept your assurance that you

will not in any way interfere with any other such

peaceful remote launched by Expediter. We have

launched one identical remote. Another interdict will

force us to engage Dienbienphu as a hostile party. ”

“Another remote, and a very persistent great fish

in the Deep for the catching,” said Iamskoy. “I know

of this Corson. His first name is Jimbob, a common

name in the American Texan nationality. A son of

wealth, son of a Senator, in fact, who amassed his

riches from oil pipelines. Corson is a fundamentalist

Christian Federalist, intensely against the Socialist

dream. A true man of his nation, and the chief archi¬

tect of what the capitalists call their Space-based

Weapons-and-Tactics program. One wonders, that they

would send such a man on a mission so fraught with

risk. Well. We will ignore him for the present. Our

duty is—”

“Citizen,” snapped Jennifer, “word from home all

along has been that if Expediter were harmed the

Americans would destroy a Soviet orbital weapons

platform—”

“Indeed, Doctor, and the peaceloving peoples of

the world would have to respond in kind, no?

We’re

at a fulcrum of history. We must conduct ourselves

accordingly—you, strictly in your medical capacity. I,

on the other hand, must deal with this pirate Corson. Shipbrain, analyze scenarios of possible alternative

responses in this situation.”

“Citizen Iamskoy, extrapolation of current situation

offers:

“One. Prompt interdict of second American mo¬

tile, followed by potential direct engagement of Ex-

54 John McLoughlin

pediter, at present point three four seven nine AU

from Dienbienphu and in deceleration configuration. “Two. Noninterference with second motile, followed

by overtake and passing of Dienbienphu by motile

and, later, by Expediter, followed by Expediter first

contact with postulated position of Struggle: Dien¬

bienphu mission failure.”

Iamskoy was pleased; to sit at this fulcrum of his¬

tory was a great honor. He looked at Benai, who, lost

in his own thoughts, frowned at his console. Well,

the military African—he’d oversee the actual action. Could he handle it with the proper dedication?

Iamskoy had never been overfond of the African race,

feeling blacks to be too emotional for great moments

like this. Ah, well, greater powers than he had de¬

cided on the military component of Dienbienphu; at

times like these, a zampolit could only watch and

record. “Well, Commander?

You know your duty; you will

interdict that second motile.”

Benai sighed, his great frame seeming to diminish

in his acceleration couch. “Lieutenant Mboko.”

“Sir!” Mboko snapped involuntarily to attention. “You will order all personnel to stand to Prepared¬

ness Level One. You will initiate preparations for a

quadruple-pulse hailstorm to be released from railgun

three, projected intersect with enemy motile to be

determined by shipbrain. If in shipbrain’s assessment

this hailstorm fails to make contact, you will prepare

backup of four remotely-piloted fragmentation de¬

vices to be intercept-deployed for destruction of en¬

emy at optimum point of overtake. Shipbrain Inter¬

face!”

“Sir!” The interface officer’s jaw hung slack, a drib¬

ble of saliva beading at the corner of his mouth. “Close your mouth, Lieutenant. You will oversee

Toolmaker Koan 55

transmission to Engels of the visuals and audio of

these orders and all proceedings on this bridge in the

last ten hours. You will also hard-duplicate these

records for my personal dossier. The world may want

to know...”

The young officers remained frozen in place. Benai

looked about the bridge, suppressed an involuntary

shudder, snapped, “Now!”

The shipbrain was ready: “Commander, four ball-

storm units to be deployed at ten-second intervals,

initial charge accumulating; first deployment in one

minute, ten seconds.”

As the shipbrain lapsed into silence, Jennifer and

everyone else aboard Dienbienphu became aware of a

rising whine somewhere in the ship’s bowels. The

fusion-powered generators were accelerating rotation,

liquid sulphur coursing through boron-alloy turbine

blades. “Shipbrain, show us that railgun.’’ Benai turned to

the central screen, which flicked into life. A light,

airy-looking avenue of silvery rings appeared; a kilo¬

meter long, the railgun was normally folded into five

segments. Now, deployed for action, it pointed olf

into nothingness. “First ball canister.” The railgun was as much a

part of shipbrain’s awareness as is a soccer player’s

foot of his own: Benai saw nothing, the projectile

having left its railgun at a hundred kilometers per

second, soundless, mindless....

“Second ball canister.” ...

riding a peristaltic field of magnetism outward...

“Third ball canister.” ...

leaden meteors a centimeter in diameter, a

thousand to a canister...

“Fourth ball canister.”

56 John McLoughlin ...

to puncture the delicate fabric of human sta¬

bility...

“Mmmm, very good, Commander,” murmured

Iamskoy. “In a very short time, the Americans will

have learned the folly of their pursuit. And we—

why, we ll go on, looking for our Third Party.”

“You won’t, you know,” said Jennifer, her eyes

unnaturally bright. “You’re mad, Citizen Zampolit;

you and, and everyone. This Corson out there, he’s

as mad as you—he’ll be coming for us, I—”

“Citizen Doctor,” said Iamskoy, “you do appear to

be seeking greenstripes. Unfortunately, perhaps, I’m

unaware of any privileges you might lose on this ship. Is it all this Remote Social Constraint Syndrome?

For

the sake of the mission, I shall believe it is, and

change the subject.” He smiled graciously, eyes nar¬

rowed. “Now, Citizens, about our Third Party. What

would we say to it, should it really exist?”

“Citizen Academician,” said Benai, “might I sug¬

gest that we greet it with our hands in the air, and

empty?”

“Like a supplicant?

Humble and unarmed?

But

Commander, wouldn’t you think that we should treat

it as an equal?”

“If it’ s our equal, Citizen, we’d best greet it rather

respectfully!” Jennifer paled, leaning closer to Iamskoy. “We’re armed to the teeth, and acting like savages!”

“Citizen Doctor, I tire of your insolence. You will

retire to your surgery.” He gestured toward the bulk¬

head port, through which Jennifer was already pro¬

pelling herself, face white with anger. “Now,” said the zampolit, “we wait.” He leaned to

an intercom, thumbed the switch, ordered some boiled

potatoes—his favorite food. They reminded him of

his mother. The wait wasn’t long. Iamskoy gobbled his pota-

Toolmaker Koan 57

toes, occasionally interspersing his eating with pleas¬

ant remarks on the functioning of the ship, the capitalist

pursuit. The rest of the bridge remained quiet; a

zampolit is like a dangerous wild animal, and one must

watch one’s words carefully. At last the shipbrain interrupted with its alarm

beep. “Citizen Academician?

Commander Benai?”

“Yes, shipbrain,” said Iamskoy. “I advise you that our quadruple hailstorm pulse

was due to intercept pursuit motile thirty-two sec¬

onds ago.”

“And?”

“We have a momentary lightlag. Please stand by.”

“Ah, Commander, now we see whether we have a

bird.” Iamskoy’s hand, shaking slightly, found its way

to his coffee bulb. “Sensors indicate motile is travelling end-over-end;

trajectory altered fifteen degrees, twelve minutes away

from original. Interdict successful.”

“Hah!” Jaro Tomashev clapped his meaty hands. “Dead bird!”

“Excellent work, Commander,” said Iamskoy. “The

Americans will know in seconds that we do not take

kindly to interference.”

“Commander Benai, ” droned the shipbrain, “friendly

pursuit remote aft of Expediter reports that vessel to

be undergoing inversion maneuver, likely in prepara¬

tion for re-acceleration. Probability that actual pursuit

of Dienbienphu intended. ”

Iamskoy’s glittering little eyes met Benai’s. “Com¬

mander. Our pursuit probe, I believe, can be called

under direct command of Dienbienphu across tight-

beam?”

“Yes, Citizen Academician.”

“And that pursuit remote is armed?”

“Yes, Citizen. One warhead, twenty-kiloton yield.”

58 John McLoughlin

“And, Commander, as far as we know Expediter is

as yet unaware of the existence of this pursuit probe?”

“That is correct.”

“Commander Benai, you will instruct that pursuit

remote to seek out and destroy Expediter.” Iamskoy’s

grin was rigid, teeth clenched. “So we re damned both ways,” murmured Benai. Surely, he thought, there might have been a way in

which humankind’s two most distant outposts could

have reached an accord?

Fulcrum of history...

per¬

haps not. So now to the business, perhaps, of begin¬

ning an end to all things. That little single snap that

starts the avalanch. Someone once shot an archduke

at Sarajevo. Oruna Benai had shot a pair of robot

motiles. He licked his dry lips and swallowed, lapsing

into the singsong voice of Orders. “Initiate interdic¬

tion preparation; sound General Quarters.”

“YAAAAP!” The sirens shrieked through the ship,

the drumming of feet swelling through the fabric of

Dienbienphu like fantastic jungle drums. Sonorous

groans and clangs of metal sang of the deployment of

the entire railgun system, the vibrations of their mighty

servos providing a multiple drone note to the sym¬

phony of war. Lights blinked over Benai’s console as

stations filed readiness status. First was the freefall

surgery, he noted; the surgeon and her six aides were

quick. As the readiness bank filled with light, Benai

slumped in his command seat. “Sir?

All stations report General Quarters readi¬

ness.”

“Siren off.” Benai looked gloomily at the three

screens framing the command seat. Each was three

meters square, each offered a look outside. “Shipbrain,

deploy mass-sensors AHC, prepare decoy systems. Activate screens, direction of target. ”

The stars winked into view. Save the ship’s endless

Toolmaker Koan 59

rumble, all was silent. Benai held up a hand, palm

outward. “For the record, I think we’ve made a

mistake. I ve shot the archduke. Please excuse me,

but I must clear the bridge of civilian personnel. ” He

made a delicate clearing-out motion with his forearms. Iamskoy looked interestedly about the bridge, which

he rarely visited, his eyes coming at last to rest on

those of Oruna Benai. He sat thoughtfully still for a

moment, staring at the huge African, this tame Ne¬

gro, this brute insufficiently trained in the Principles

of Structured Enlightenment. “Very well. An end to

our inactivity, Citizens. Jaro?”

The State Security officer rose with his superior. The bridge filled with the rustling of inhaled breath

and stiffening muscles under starched coveralls, the

odor of fear and excitement familiar to warriors in all

times and places. The cultural liaison noticed noth¬

ing, however; he’d said his piece and, filled with his

own elation, made his way carefully through the bulk¬

head port, Tomashev close behind. Benai watched them leave, looked at the other

officers within his view, shook his head sadly. Then

he reached into a sliding compartment on his con¬

sole, withdrew and donned his black fur cap, adjust¬

ing it so that his scar remained in sight. He spoke

into the console, the words amplified across the bridge

and around the ship: “All personnel will don shielded

EVA suiting and helmets. Prepare for re-acceleration.”

Crossing the bridge to the suit locker, he glanced

for a moment at the center screen. Somewhere out

there in the black there would shortly appear a flash

far brighter for an instant than the distant Sun and its

myriad starry brethren. The Americans would never

return home. But then, Benai reflected, he might not, either. And perhaps best not. 60 John McLoughlin

* * *

In the corridor outside the bridge, Jaro Tomashev

felt his way along the rails to full mass behind the

cultural liaison. He shifted to their native Russian

language. “What archduke?

What’s Benai talking

about?’’ Eyebrows raised, he stared at the bulkhead

port closing behind them. Iamskoy looked at Tomashev. Tomashev looked at

Iamskoy. “They call it ‘Remote Social Constraint Syndrome,’

Citizen. I wonder whether it’s simply a lack of disci¬

pline. Perhaps we should discuss a program of inten¬

sified socialist concourse within the context of this

most important voyage. I believe that coffee is un¬

suitable for such a discussion.’’ He winked at his

friend, far more comfortable in the language of the

Motherland. “In my quarters?

Vodka, Jaro?”

CHAPTER 4

Expediter

Pike Muir was hot. The sweat beaded on his face,

itching, sticky. The humidity...

the pounding heat

of an Albuquerque summer sun slamming onto the

anvil of a broad asphalt pavement. Semiconscious, he relived the mad dream of help¬

lessness that marked the time of execution of the

Emergency Powers Act. The One-Day War, the fall¬

ing of the Damoclean sword of Emergency Fuel Mea¬

sures: that hated scene that would follow him forever,

the insane flurry of last-minute automobile-driving that

had convulsed the entire United States of America. Thousands had died, then, including his parents in

Boston—but not instantly. His sister had called him

at Sandia and, like a fool, he’d jumped into his own

car, roaring offbase in mindless rage at the grounding

of all commercial flights—only to see, at the Inter¬

state intersection, the immense snarl of paralyzed

traffic marking the rise of Fuel Utilization Security

Stations and the end of the Automotive Age. FUSSes they were, springing like viruses instantly

into being across the nation. Like millions of other

61

62 John McLoughlin

Americans that strange, hot day, Pike saw looming

across a sea of sweltering, honking vehicles the dark

shapes of four Bradley M3 IFVs, their 25mm rapidfire

cannon aligned along the highway; military police

paced along the shoulders checking IDs and ordering

people out of their cars, followed by great camouflage-

painted tanktrucks into which more soldiers pumped

gasoline and diesel fuel from the trapped thousands

of private vehicles that never again would stream

along the nation’s highways. When they came to Pike, the white-helmeted sol¬

diers were impassive; No, they couldn’t let him pass. Did he think he was the only one with trouble?

Don’t

matter yew Army too. Don’t matter yew an officer. And finally, Look, muthafucka, if yew don’t get your

ass outa that vehicle pronto, yew die, boy. We ain’t

got time for every muthafucka whinin’ an’ groanin’

like some pussy. As immense camouflaged wreckers pulled vehicles

over the shoulder’s edge, as commandeered civilian

buses lined up to take the sweating, milling, scream¬

ing citizens back to Albuquerque, Pike knew he’d

blown it. No chance to get to Boston, no chance to

say goodbye to his mother and father. In a single

stroke of the executive sword, the American way of

life shifted forever...

and Pike Muir knelt down to

the sticky pavement and wept in the torrid fumes of a

million stolen gallons of fuel. But that was years ago. Squeezing the tears and sweat from his eyes, Pike

opened them—on pitch blackness. Blind!

No, not

blind; a faint glimmer from some dim little light

nearby was reflected from a buckled metallic surface

against which his helmet faceplate rested. Helmet faceplate?

Where was he?

A wash of panic

overran him. He tried to move, and his head throbbed

Toolmaker Koan 63

with pain. Something seemed to have hit him on the

back of the neck...

but his suit pressure was okay. Suit pressure. Yeah, suit pressure. God!

He was on

Expediter, and they’d been hit by a Sov pursuit re¬

mote!

Hot. Too hot. He moved again, every joint protest¬

ing. No idea how long he’d been here. No idea

what’s going on. Alone?

Need water. Arm buttonboard. He lifted his left arm painfully, rolled slightly,

found himself in near-freefall. The arm console still

glowed, and he punched for water while tonguing the

nipple in his helmet. Warm, tinny-tasting water. He

gulped, gasped, gulped again. Suit refrigeration reg¬

istering functional, but hot, too hot. Right arm kinda

messed up. Elbow won’t bend. Stuck in something. Too dark. Too hot. Not quite freefall. Helmet light. Arm console. Punch. The light winked on, reflections

flooding into Pike’s dark-accustomed eyes, temporar¬

ily blinding him. “Oh, Jesus Christ an’ God almighty.’’

As he turned his head, the light flashed to the far

curving bulkhead, illuminating a meaningless junkyard

of twisted scrap and wreckage. Anything loose, it

seemed, was pressed loosely to the forward bulkhead—

that which had until the blast been a vertical wall to

anyone standing in the revolving-mass Quarters. Now,

some distance from the helplessly rotating Expedit¬

ers center of gravity, it was more or less a floor, a

floor nearly impassably strewn with what was once

the environment of a tight but reasoned living area. And he remembered. The remotes—both of them—

had somehow been spotted early and interdicted by

Dienbienphu, even though that mighty ship was a

good bit of an AU distant from Expediter when the

little moniters were launched. How had they known?

64 John McLoughlin

Of course!

The pursuit missile: both sensor and—how

late they’d learned!—nuke. And before the thing’d caught up with them, Corson

had deployed Expediter s three nuclear-explosive-

pumped lasers, all three NEPs locked onto Dien-

bienphu; ‘just to make sure,’’ he’d added, he’d or¬

dered two railgunned mass-seekers armed and ready

for instantaneous—“get that?”—instantaneous deploy¬

ment on command post-detonation. Each mass-seeker

was a light nuke of two kilotons’ yield encased in an

instrumented disk proportioned like a hockey-puck

and capable of a bit of independent motion—both

evasive, to elude defensive weapons, and offensive,

permitting brief pursuit of any mass detected within

a thousand kilometers (once well out of range of

Expediter herself, of course).

Fear was an emotion Pike had never experienced

in the raw. A trained cybernetics man, not combat-

hardened in the least, he’d expected some glandular

wash of fear to overwhelm him; but it didn’t, not

before. Then God’s fist struck Expediter, and everything

came loose. Before Pike’s synapses could register the

event he was unconscious and uncouched, his crash¬

netting broken, his body tossed across Quarters Disk

like a rag doll. Only now, awakening in the ruin of

the ship, Pike felt the fear. It crushed him...

yet he

could think. Arm buttonboard registers air pressure outside. Ninety-two percent normal, but much too hot. We’re

not holed. Not here, at least. Corson?

Walsky?

He spoke, his voice croaking like a toad’s. “Colonel

Corson?

Can anyone hear?”

No response. Arm buttonboard. EXTERNAL TEMPERATURE: 87C. INTERNAL TEMPERATURE:

Toolmaker Koan 65

44C. OVERLOAD IN 2 HR 40 MIN. WATER RESERVE: 5 L. 61CC. “MIDAS!

MIDAS!” His throat hurt, his vocal cords

dry and flanneled with thirst. The helmet radio rasped and clicked. “I hear you, Major Muir.”

“MIDAS!

What’s happened?

Where is everyone?”

“Major Muir, much of my sensory apparatus is

damaged. The bridge seems to have lost air pressure. In Living Quarters my infrared scanners are unable

to discern body images because of the heated air. Bulkhead seals are locked at this time and I am

unable to control them. We are heavily irradiated,

with a—”

“MIDAS, how’s the rest of the ship?” The slight

sense of mass was strange, especially in the dark;

Pike’s fear mounted, bile in his throat, a twitching in

his aching legs. “Major Muir, we are shorn of our propulsive spin¬

dle and ablative shield and are looping roughly end

over end with a rotational frequency of approximately

five minutes, thirty-two seconds.”

“What about Dienbienphu?

And how long have I

been here?”

A pause. Damn!

Gotta call it by name!

“MIDAS?”

“Major Muir, it is now seven hours, forty-one min¬

utes since detonation of pursuit remote. Although we

rotate out of control, I was able to discern two deto¬

nations from the direction of Dienbienphu at the time

our projectiles were due to reach her. This would

indicate that we are at least partially successful in our

interdiction of that ship, although I am unable to

make further determinations at this time.”

Damn, what’s got me stuck here?

Can hardly move. Head hurts...

water. Pike tongued the nipple again,

66 John McLoughlin

this time sparingly, washing the water lovingly around

in his parched mouth. He felt as if he were on a spit

in an oven. Radiation. He’d die out here. He wriggled a bit, checking for broken bones and

bleeding. Except for the trapped right arm and a

general painful heated throbbing, he seemed intact. Damn this dark!

He pushed with his left arm at the

crumpled obstruction before him, heard its metallic

skreek through his helmet faceplate, felt it give. God!

That right arm’s broken, all right, forearm,

both bones. Just below elbow. Free, though. Got to

bind it to me. Find something to tie it off with. He rummaged painfully about for some sort of

sling for his right arm, found a bit of acceleration

netting, tied it around his arm and chest clumsily,

left-handed, grunting. This would at least keep the

broken arm out of harm’s way. Fatigue. He was

breathing harder, now, and was hotter than ever. No

use wasting suit power...

he nestled himself be¬

tween two torn lumps of bedding. An odd delirium

took him when he stopped moving. His head hurt,

and something seemed to press outward at his tem¬

ples as if his brain were swelling. God, I need sleep. I need food, but I need sleep more. I...

Silence. This is nothing but an expensive coffin. This is a farce. A sound in the dark. A grating, rumbling, fum¬

bling. And a faint, scratchy voice in the helmet radio. “Living Quarters!

This is Corson!

Muir, you read

me in there?’’

“Colonel Corson!

You read me?

This is Muir. Hurt—

broken right arm. You read me?”

“I gotcha, boy!

Walsky’s dead, I’m suited up. You

got air pressure?”

Toolmaker Koan 67

“Yeah, ninety-one percent and dropping. Over¬

heated.”

“I don’t. Bridge ruptured, everything gone out but

me. Bad radiation. I gambled and I lost, Muir. I can

at least apologize. Look, we’re both suited and in

good shape, and we’ll try to figure something out. You just stand by. You suited up okay?”

“Yessir.” Pike’s ears were ringing with the strain of

trying to hear the words through his helmet noise. Helmet radios were made for straightline communi¬

cation, no obstructions, and it was lucky he could

hear this well through the intervening bulkheads. “Okay, now, I’m tryin’ to make some sense out of

this mess.” The voice faded, a sandy rustling in the

radio. “Got it. ”

Thumps. “Hey, Muir, seems airtight. Manuals on the inter¬

nal hatch look fine. Just a minute.” More thumps,

and a slow grating—and a FUMP!

of air entering a

small vacuum. Light played across the crazy junkyard

of the Quarters Disk, and a suited figure emerged

“upward” from a pile of scrap far along the curve of

the ship. “Jeeze, my suit’s got some heat here.” The voice

was clear, now, strong again with command. “MIDAS!

Any further report?”

“Colonel Corson, my central operations are un¬

damaged but sensory peripherals are sharply cur¬

tailed. I have moderate coverage of Quarters, but no

internal coverage of the rest of the ship. My external

sensors are operative forward, where ship’s shadow

protected them from the blast, but I am in rotation

and can only scan. All flotsam is long gone, and we

are quite alone. We drift.”

Corson’s suited figure turned slowly, and Pike

waved his good left arm from his bed in the wreck-

68 John McLoughlin

age. Awkwardly, the white apparition made its way

toward him. “That you, Muir?”

“Yessir.”

“Good. We re going to—”

A wave of nausea overtook Pike, a lurching of his

innards as if they’d tried to get away from him. Radiation sickness, already?

He gagged, recovered. “Sir, I might be burned worse than I thought. I—

But the approaching figure flailed its arms wildly,

grasping for handholds. “You feel that, Muir?

A movement?”

“Whoofl Then it wasn’t me!

Yessir, I felt it—right

in my stomach.” Which organ began to pain Pike

Muir with a vengeance. “MIDAS?”

“Colonel Corson, I have experienced an unusual

momentary disorientation. It may indicate that my

central processing apparatus is more badly damaged

than original assessment indicated. Conversely, the

ship itself may further be breaking up. ”

“Whoah,” came Corson’s voice. “I don’t ever want

to feel anything like that again!

Looks worse than we

thought, huh, MIDAS?”

“Colonel Corson, my remaining forward sensors

indicate a sudden large change in our location.”

“MIDAS, waddya mean, change in location?”

“Colonel Corson, sensors offer data indicating a

sudden displacement of this vessel four point six three

Astronomical Units farther from the Sun—instantane¬

ously. I must alert you to their apparent nonreliability

henceforth.”

“Oh, Lord Jesus, we are really breaking up.”

“Colonel Corson.” MIDAS again. “Go, MIDAS.”

“My remaining mass sensor indicates three consid-

Toolmaker Koan 69

erable masses dead ahead in the direction of our

drift. Because of our rotation and the unreliability of

my remaining sensory apparatus, and because there

were no such masses within detection range before

attack detonation, I must conclude until the next

rotation permits me to scan ahead that my sensory

apparatus continues to deteriorate more swiftly than

anticipated. I will attempt a visual in direction of drift

in three minutes, fifty-eight seconds.”

“Poor of MIDAS!

Coming apart at the seams. Like

the rest of us. And we gotta stop that slow leak. My

buttonboard reads eighty-nine percent external pres¬

sure. Muir?”

“Mine too, sir.”

“Okay. I—”

“Colonel Corson.”

“Go, MIDAS.”

“I have scanned forward. I receive a visual. ”

“MIDAS, well, what visual, dammit?”

“Colonel Corson, my scan is necessarily momen¬

tary, but it indicates that Dienbienphu lies dead ahead

approximately twenty-two kilometers distant, heavily

damaged, and that we approach her at approximately

fifty-three point two one seven kilometers per hour. These data suggest that either we or Dienbienphu has

been abruptly displaced by some AU, a situation my

programming suggests to be extremely unlikely, if

not impossible. In two minutes, thirty-one seconds I

will initiate another scan, but it is unlikely to indicate

any difference in these readings.” As always, the

voice was absolutely flat, emotionless. Pike wanted it to scream. And his inner ears went mad. The slight pull of

rotation was changing, slowly, slowly—or he was los¬

ing his mind. Abruptly, Corson’s suit light swung

wildly about the room, its bearer straightening and

70 John McLoughlin

sliding sideways. There was a rumbling as wreckage

shifted slightly, some of it lifting from the bulkheads,

eerily moving in the shifting light. The bile of terror

choked Pike Muir, his mind shrieking a hundred

denials. The movement ceased. Absolute freefall. “Colonel Corson.’’

“Lord Jesus, take us in Your hands. G-go, MIDAS. “Colonel Corson,” the voice droned, “my rotation

has stopped, through no action of my own. My re¬

maining sensors are centered on Dienbienphu, which

we continue to approach. She is stationary in relation

to our own motion, and is approximately two hun¬

dred forty meters from the second of the masses I

detected; that mass precisely matches my data con¬

cerning the Soviet Oort probe, Struggle. The third of

these masses lies directly on our path toward Dien¬

bienphu and maintains a constant midpoint distance

between us. My readings indicate it to be a highly

reflective ovoid only point eight meter in major axis,

point seven meter in minor axis, but massing forty-

seven plus tons. Density implied by these readings

closely matches my data concerning the entity re¬

ported to have disturbed the Soviet Oort probe,

Struggle.”

Pike found his teeth chattering, clenched them. “MIDAS—oh, trouble!” He felt like an infant aban¬

doned in a supermarket; he wanted to cry. “Major Muir, trouble is not a parameter for which

I am analytically equipped.”

And someone else spoke!

Clear, free of the distor¬

tion of the radio sets, an old man’s voice, strong with

authority, touched with amusement, perhaps with a

bit of regret, and both Corson and Pike heard it:

“How fierce you are!

But you don’t at all seem a

Toolmaker Koan 71

fearsome group right now. Fierce, but hardly fear¬

some.”

A strange voice, speaking in perfect English, al¬

though accented in some indefinable way, not Ameri¬

can, not British, not Australian. The voice seemed

that of a born English-speaker who came from “some¬

where else”—just good native English. Who s there?

Who s that?

Dienbienphu?

This is

Colonel J. L. Corson, USS Expediter!”

Oh!

Why, you little devil, you’ve quite mistaken

me!” The old man’s voice was too clear, so plain that

in their minds’ eyes all listening could almost see the

smile playing about the corners of his mouth. “I’m

not Dienbienphul My sensor-effector lies directly be¬

tween your two ships—and MIDAS’s readings are all

correct. I’m a very heavy item, in all senses of that

word. ”

“Commander Corson.”

“Go, MIDAS.”

“Our mission appears a success in spite of our

problems. Shall I offer the Presidential greetings?”

“Belay that, MIDAS. Uh, ah, is this really, ah, the

Third Party?

Is this—”

“Have no fear; I’m only a program, a machine, if

you will. A bit of a jabbernowl, perhaps, but not even

alive.”

“Then who, what—?”

“You may call me Charon, Colonel Corson. A name

I lifted from Earthnoise. Greek. The Greeks would

have pronounced it with the back voiceless stop con¬

sonant you call K; common English has altered it to a

‘CH’ sound.” The voice paused as if thinking, then:

“Such a sorry little mess of humanity!

We do have

some work to do. You’ve sorely damaged your con-

specifics’ vessel, Dienbienphu, as they’ve damaged

your own. There are survivors aboard that vessel. I

72 John McLoughlin

shall attempt to preserve their lives and yours by

permitting you to share with them your remaining

life-support systems. Are you ready?”

“What’s going on?

Who the hell are you?

I’m not

offering those bastards the least—”

The laughter in it barely concealed, Charon’s voice

interrupted. “No, Colonel Corson, you aren’t. I am. Rest in place for a moment. You and your conspecif-

ics are very much alone now; Earth presumes both

your ships destroyed. You’re in my—hands. Permit

me a bit of modification, here.”

Lights!

Pike and Corson blinked, their pupils con¬

tracting against the unaccustomed brightness, which

seemed to come not from the ship’s light fixtures, but

diffusely—from the bulkheads themselves?

Pike’s in¬

ner ears did another nauseating dance, then, and the

dry voice calling itself Charon spoke again:

“See, little beasts, my skill: a thin bright line delin¬

eating a circle. Stand clear.”

As the Charon-voice spoke, a point of white light

glimmered aft, opposite the airlock through which

Corson had forced his way into the Quarters Disk. The point moved swiftly, describing a glowing circle

about eight meters in diameter...

and, silently, all

within that circle fell away like a great door, the

starry velvet of space glimmering beyond—with no

outrush of air!

The twisted form of Dienbienphu ap¬

peared without, fantastically close, closer, closer a

matching white circle now etched upon the vast curve

of her hull, the metal outlined by that circle neatly

and silently moving aside, changing, changing, flow¬

ing liquid into a ring of glowing metal that formed

itself like a—like a docking ring!

to which the strange

airtight opening in Expediter s hull aligned itself as

neatly as any docking maneuver ever accomplished. And just for an instant, before the two ships mated in

Toolmaker Koan 73

a perfect meld, the awed watchers caught sight of a

silvery Egg suspended against the stars, an Egg that

shimmered with faint shifting soap-bubble rainbows. The Charon-voice spoke again, its suppressed laugh¬

ter plain in their helmets: “I think that you can all see

that I’m very good at what I do. Further hostilities

between you and your conspecifics are therefore

unneccessary. Indeed, as you can imagine, I shall

cause you regret if you initiate them.”

And although Pike could feel that implication of

laughter, not once had the voice actually so much as

chuckled. Then a hollow booming, and Expediter and Dien-

bienphu were one, a unity alone in the trans-Uranian

dark. Pike heard in his suit tranceiver the mumbled

prayers of Corson, nothing more. In all his tapes and

books of science fiction, nothing like this ever hap¬

pened. He was not a religious man, but he figured all

options had best be covered...

a program in a

machine!

“Our Father, Who art in Heaven, hallowed be Thy

Name...”

The ancient words rolled thick and fast from his

tongue as he stared into the tangled darkness that

was Dienbienphu. CHAPTER 5

Fusion

Jennifer Dawson shook her head, trying to free her

eyelids of the blood crusted at their corners. God, if

she could only get her hands inside her helmet, rub,

she’d claw away the maddening itch around her eyes—

and clear her nose, completely blocked by dried blood. The stuff suffocated, adding to her terror of marooning

the more ancient fear of drowning. Mind running on the physiological autopilot of shock

and fear, she tried to reconstruct the last minutes

before she’d lost consciousness. Failure. She’d failed ...

she d suited up. And, as alarms shrieked of on¬

coming death from the Americans, she’d pulled EVA

gloves over her lifesaving hands. When it had be¬

come apparent that the surgery was itself losing pres¬

sure, the wounded under treatment slowly died, their

skin drying and freezing, their body fluids filling the

remaining air with a thin pink mist of frozen proto¬

plasm. And their surgeon stood helplessly by...

and

thus remained alive, although she felt the spinning of

the mind that meant concussion. 74

Toolmaker Koan 75

Also alive was Commander First Grade Oruna

Benai, burned and partially blind, crouched in an¬

other tangle of wiring and struts. He’d been staring

out a port when the Americans struck with their

double-layered assault across that impossible distance,

and he was lucky not to have joined his bridge crew

and the shipbrain of Dienbienphu in oblivion. Only

the reflexes of his communications officer, Jacob

Mboko, had saved him; the young African had guided

his commander to surgery before himself dying of

blood loss. Jennifer had no idea how long they’d drifted, inert,

before she’d awakened to a wrenching twist of

nausea—no doubt from an already-fatal radiation

dose—just moments before. Now she crouched,

pressed uncomfortably by the bulk of Mboko’s corpse

into a dark recess from which she stared in terror at a

tiny moving point of light that slowly described a

circle on the bulkhead opposite. Carefully, unsteadily,

she lifted from her side a nine-millimeter automatic

pistol she’d retrieved from Mboko’s body...

and

saw Benai do likewise with his own. Her mouth contorted, loosening bits of scab to fall

to the helmet’s neck ring. The glowing circle was

complete, and the segment of hull it outlined slowly

swung out into space—swung out, glowed, fused

into a lump of itself like clay, extended, curved back

upon itself like a snake, an Oroboros with its tail in

its mouth, a circular opening through which she saw

a blasted spherical hulk, a—it was the American ship,

Expediter, or part of it, and in its own side there

gaped a round port which approached, slowly, slowly. The whole process took perhaps three minutes. An

eternal three minutes; Jennifer’s blink reflex seemed

eliminated by fear, her eyeballs drying until she had

to force the lids to close. 76 John McLoughlin

Her pistol hand shook. She lifted the weapon fur¬

ther, aimed it right at the center of that lighted hole

in the enemy’s hull. Some American trick, the melt¬

ing of Dienbienphu s shielded hull?

Some fantastic

American innovation in weaponry?

No one, no one

could do that. It was the concussion, then, the pain,

and this was hallucination. Or magic. She wanted it to be hallucination. She did not

believe in magic. She forced her mind to work, damp¬

ing its crazy spinning in thought: Magic’s just what

you can’t believe. Take an instantly-developing cam¬

era back to Tiberius Caesar. Photograph him. Hand

him the image. It’d be magic to Caesar. But a trick,

to me. The magic would be getting there. To Caesar. With the camera. This is a trick. Of the wound to my

head. Which never worked too well anyway. This

is—

There was movement inside the American vessel,

movement of a figure—then two—and the lighted

opening aligned itself with the new ring at Dien¬

bienphu s hull. More light gleamed along the ring’s

boundaries, and the ships were one—seemed one

great system, joined by a short passageway of mirror-

smooth metal. The figures in the lighted chamber

beyond were clothed in American uniform, suited for

EVA, apparently unarmed. Benai’s arms tensed, both

hands gripping his pistol, extending it toward the

faceless foreign figures, which visibly stiffened, slowly

raising their hands. They could see, all right. Then why open their

ship to Dienbienphu?

And how had they found their

way here across the millions of kilometers between

them—or had she been totally unconscious for days?

A voice in her helmet: “Why, I do believe that

some of you are preparing for hostilities!

Can you

Toolmaker Koan 77

little beasts not understand the logistics of your situa¬

tion?’’ The voice betrayed irritation, a deepening edge

to the tones grating in her ears. “I see two mutually

stricken and immobile craft here; one bears a func¬

tioning shipbrain, useful air, and two wounded, the

other no shipbrain, a perfectly useful surgeon and no

air in which she may perform her art!

How extraordi¬

narily inertial, your little minds...

allow me a jest!”

Both pistols discharged, soundless in vacuum, squirt¬

ing the entire lethal contents of their twenty-round

magazines and smashing their bearers back in freefall

against the contorted surface behind them. The Ameri¬

cans flinched in anticipation of impact...

but...

Neither aboard Dienbienphu had pulled a trigger. Two globes of cooling molten lead alloy hung weight¬

less a few meters before Jennifer’s reddened eyes. As

she watched, their surfaces dulled, wrinkled, and

they drifted slowly to rest against the dry and con¬

torted form of a dead nurse, momentary gouts of

vapor marking the dissolution of her suit by their

residual heat. Jennifer’s pistol floated slowly away,

forgotten. Third Party. Not an American; someone—some¬

thing—else. The thing that lay waiting in the dark, the

thing that touched the Oort probe, the thing for which

they’d all gone a-hunting, Expediter and Dienbienphu,

only to wreck one another in the bottomless Deep in

an inevitable fury of adolescent truculence...

“I advise you again that I cannot permit this hor¬

monal bludgeonry of yours. You are in my care, and

you are my guests. You will therefore try to display

the manners appropriate to guests!” The voice changed,

grew lower in tone, as if speaking to itself: “Dreadful

little creatures—barely domesticated!” Then, louder

again, plainly amused: “You, there, aboard Dienbien-

78 John McLoughlin

phu, you are offered breatheable air—courtesy of

your enemies!”

Third Party. As it spoke, Jennifer felt her suit

slacken with external air pressure. Some invisible

barrier in the opening between the ships had disap¬

peared, and the air whirled with loose debris stirred

up by its passing. A dry corpse across the room stood

luridly, then slammed against the bulkhead—noisily

slammed, as the air brought sound with its pressure. The air brought reality back. This old man’s voice

seemed to speak in the manner of a child toying with

insects. They had done a rum show, and this—Third

Party—seemed almost to enjoy it. “I’ve checked that air, and cooled it and I believe

all of you may remove those helmets and suit armor. You’re safe. All of us speak the same language. Pre¬

sumably, we may all become more amicable with one

another shortly. ” The arid voice snicked off as if by a

switch, and four conscious human beings stared

statuelike at one another. Still as stone they stared, through mirrored blast-

helmets none had yet dared to remove. Jennifer was

first, reaching slowly to her collar lock after a careful

examination of the readout at her belt. All outside

appeared to be normal, the standard spacecraft air

pressure of half sea level restored. Involuntarily, she

held her breath and twisted the helmet off, stupidly

releasing it into the near-freefall. And breathed, a

mixture of burnt insulation, blood and sweat. She

broke her glove seals, discarding the armored gaunt¬

lets, rubbed the dry blood from her eyelashes with

relief. Across the passage that joined the ships, she could

see the two Americans doing the same, slowly releas¬

ing their helmets into the air—like herself, and con¬

trary to all the discipline of freefall training. Benai

Toolmaker Koan 79

was last, most cautious, carefully holstering his spent

pistol. An American spread his hands wide, open-palmed,

and spoke loudly in a familiar accent across the ten

meters that separated them: “Colonel J. L. Corson,

commanding USS Expediter. Uh, welcome aboard.’’

The drawl—rank pronounced “Kunnel.” He looked

about warily, as if feeling the Third Party’s watchful

presence as he spoke. “Commander First Grade Oruna Benai, ah, late

commanding DSWP Dienbienphu. I greet you, Colo¬

nel, in the name of the United People’s Democra¬

cies!” This American, at least, was something Benai

could confront with some training. The other American was a man in his thirties, tall,

sandy-haired, right arm bound in some sort of web¬

bing. Uh, Major Charles Muir, Cybernetic Opera¬

tions Detachment, uh...” he seemed to change a

thought, then said, “Technical liaison.”

“Yes,” said Benai, “and I am pleased to introduce

Citizen Doctor Jennifer Dawson, chief medical officer. ”

“Pleased, I’m sure, ma’am,” said the American

colonel. “Uh, we re both more or less wounded here,

and radiation-sick. I guess you better come aboard. We’re unarmed.”

“That would seem to be immaterial, Colonel, con¬

sidering the abilities of our, ah, host on this interest¬

ing mission.” Benai, then, had also understood. Jennifer, busily searching the wreckage for splints,

bandages, and whatever instruments were salvagea¬

ble, grunted, “Commander’s burned, half-blind from

whatever it was you hit us with. We re dying.” Bit¬

terness crept into her voice; tired, frightened, an¬

noyed with the freefall, she flicked her hair away

from her streaked face. It bounced back, causing her

80 John McLoughlin

to blink back tears of irritation. “Have you any medi¬

cal equipment?”

“Just the bare minimum, ma’am. We re kind of

short on anything at all, y’know. ” The American smiled

apologetically. “We re burned too—I don’t know what

we can do for him, okay?”

Benai straightened himself painfully, retrieved his

pistol from the bent shelf behind him, carefully

checked the remaining five magazines attached to his

belt, and floated awkwardly toward the port. Jennifer

overheard a muttered drawl, “Hey, this guy’s black

as the ace of spaces,” as the Americans guided him

slowly into Expediters lighted interior. Jennifer in turn made her way toward the port, a

pitiful bundle of surgical material wrapped in towels

under her arm. She kicked off and away from the

hated confines of Dienbienphu and into what was left

of the enemy ship, leaving Dienbienphu s surgery

dark and empty of personnel save for the dried corpses

of her fellow travellers. In the strange diffuse lighting of Expediter, Pike

Muir braced himself and slowed the approach of Oruna

Benai with his good left hand. Well, his own old

resting place, a comparatively bare spot amidst the

wreckage, seemed as good a place as any to secure

the newcomer’s large and pain-stiffened person. Jenni¬

fer emerged into Expediter and steadied herself with

her free hand while looking critically at Corson’s foot,

handed her sorry little bundle of equipment to Pike,

snatched it back as she realized he was the one with

the netted arm. “Major, what have you done with

that arm?”

“Broken, just below the elbow.” Pike slid slightly

away, feeling sullen under the woman’s unwinking

gaze. He stared back, seeing a pale thin face streaked

with dried blood and filth, bright blue eyes red-

Toolmaker Koan 81

rimmed with fatigue peering at him from beneath a

tangled and dirty mop of straight blonde hair, lips

pursed appraisingly beneath a narrow nose, a long

neck encased in a high-collared EVA suit that fitted a

tall and angular form, left foot anchored expertly for

freefall stability beneath a solid chunk of twisted metal. The picture of medical efficiency. “I’m sorry,” said the surgeon. “Were all bastards,

and all dead, I’d guess. Stupid of us—but let me redo

that arm.” She secured and unfolded her bundle,

then turned to Pike, who drew back a bit. “It’s okay for now, ma’am. I’ve got it pretty well

secured, and—”

Nonsense. I’ll have to cut away that sleeve and

have a look at it.” She bent toward the webbing that

bound Pike’s right arm, a scalpel in her hand. He

winced involuntarily and she smiled, glancing inquir¬

ingly at him from beneath her tangled bangs. A wom¬

an’s smile is a disarming thing; almost unwillingly,

Pike felt a grin stir into life around the corners of his

mouth. He relaxed, and Jennifer deftly cut away the

coarse netting, slit his suit sleeve from shoulder to

pressure cuff, removed it with a single last touch of

the scalpel. Something about her brisk dishevelment

pleased him; she knew her stuff, and he felt better. Jennifer bit her lower lip, studying Pike’s forearm. “Clean break, Major. What we call a parry fracture;

you must have extended the forearm crosswise to

protect yourself from an impact. You did fairly well in

straightening it, but I’ll have to splint it. Thank God

there’s not much hematoma, not too much grating of

bone ends. I’ll have to find something that’s good for

a splint. ” She rummaged about in the mess that filled

the angle of the room in which they sat, found a bent

forty-centimeter aluminum strut, twisted it straight

in strong, competent hands. 82 John McLoughlin

“Now, let’s see that. Lift it out, here—you d never

be able to do that at Earth-normal, would you?

There. Can you bend your fingers, ever so slightly?

Yes,

good. Your thumb?

Good, good. Nerves fine. Now,

hold this with your left hand, just so—there. Let me

find a binding, here...” She pattered on comfort¬

ingly, doctor talk, distracting Pike from the brief

twinges of pain he felt as she worked with the arm. “What do you suppose this, this thing is that’s got

us?” Trying to draw his attention away from the arm. “Ma’am, you’ve got me there. It gave itself a name,

though, ‘Charon’-with-a-K, says it’s our word, Greek. Calls itself a program, but it sounds human as all

getout to me. Too human. Like someone’s grand¬

father. ”

“Yes, it does, doesn’t it?

In a way, its choice of

voice is calming. I’m sure it chose the voice, aren’t

you?

And of course the name...” Tying the first of a

series of bindings, for she had no tape. “Odder than

I’d expected, in a way. No giant insects and all that

rot. ”

A good way to look at things. Pike began to like

this enemy, this messily efficient, self-possessed girl. It might be doctor talk, but it worked. “Yeah...”

He began to relax. Jennifer laughed, a short, low musical sound. “I

wonder why it’d call itself‘Charon.’ I know the name,

remember it from Greek mythology—sort of a ferry¬

man to Hades. Souls across the Styx, and all that.”

She rubbed her tired eyes. “The name means some¬

thing like ‘Fierce brightness.’ ”

“We saw the Egg,” said Pike, “the thing that started

all this...

it was pretty bright, shiny, sort of oily-

looking...

hey, yeah, Charon ferried the souls of

the dead across the River Styx to the Underworld,

right?”

Toolmaker Koan 83

Jennifer smiled again. “That’s it. Hades, Monarch

of the Underworld. The Romans called him Pluto. The Greeks always buried their dead with a coin¬

offering, the danake, in their mouths. Charon, I’m

afraid, was a bit of a miser; with the coin the soul

paid Charon’s naulon, his toll. Otherwise the old

bastard’d carry no one across the misty and perilous

Styx.’’ She grinned broadly, now, vaguely embar¬

rassed. “I never thought I’d remember all that silly

lot out here...”

“Uh, hum.” Pike grunted as the doctor tied the

splint to his wrist, grinned ruefully in turn. “The Styx

is the point that you pass only once, never to return ...

kind of has an ominous feel to it. ”

“More than that,” said Corson, listening intently. “It’s the moon of Pluto. And, Doctor, I have a broken

foot—the right.”

“Well deserved, too,” said Jennifer, turning to him. “After Commander Benai; he’s badly burnt. ”

“Sorry, ma’am.” Corson wedged himself between

two twisted metal plates, worked gingerly at his EVA

boot. “ ’Course, Pluto’s halfway around the System

anyway...

hey, MIDAS.”

“I hear you, Colonel Corson.”

Jennifer startled. “Shipbrain,” explained Pike. “Rundown on Charon, moon of Pluto,” said Corson,

lifting the boot free from a swollen and discolored

foot. “CHA-ron, or KA-ron,” intoned the machine. “Ei¬

ther pronunciation is suitable. The single moon of the

planet Pluto. Discovered in 1978 by James W. Christy

of the United States Naval Observatory, Charon is by

far the solar system’s largest moon in comparison

with its mother planet; at approximately one thou¬

sand, four hundred kilometers in diameter, Charon is

84 John McLoughlin

slightly less than half Pluto’s approximately three thou¬

sand one hundred kilometer diameter.’’

As MIDAS droned on, Jennifer loosened Benai’s

EVA tunic, revealing reddened blotches splashed

across his dark skin. Radiation burns—another dying

man. “The Pluto-Charon system may best be described

as a binary planet with combined mass of approxi¬

mately point zero zero two that of Earth,’’ continued

the shipbrain. “These bodies orbit around a common

center of gravity in a period of approximately six

point three eight seven Earth days, each maintaining

the same face toward the other in a tide-locked rota¬

tional system. They are unusually close in relation to

their size, remaining at ten Pluto radii, or approxi¬

mately fifteen thousand, five hundred kilometers from

one another; the bodies move about their common

center of mass in concentric orbits that are extraordi¬

narily close to perfect circles. “‘The orbit of Charon and Pluto about one another

is also unusual in that its plane is nearly perpendicu¬

lar to the plane of the ecliptic; because Charon and

Pluto orbit the Sun once each 248 years this circum¬

stance has permitted but one period of observation of

Charon’s occultation of and by Pluto from Earth since

its discovery. The observation period, lasting between

1985 and 1991, permitted moderately precise deter¬

minations of the gross characteristics of the binary;

little further research into its properties has been

conducted.”

Shaking her head sadly, Jennifer zipped Benai’s

tunic again, turned to Corson. He detached his foot¬

ring, gingerly removed his EVA boot and the two

insulative wicking socks beneath. The foot was swol¬

len—but, worse, his skin was already dotted with the

petechiae of severe radiation burn. Toolmaker Koan 85

MIDAS prattled on, unthinking, automatic. “Cha¬

ron’s surface, like that of Pluto, is high-albedo and

likely composed of methane ices and water, with,

spectroscopic analyses indicating possible concentra¬

tions of argon and neon in an atmosphere whose

surface pressure is less than zero point one six milli¬

bars at a temperature of approximately minus two

twenty-eight degrees Centigrade. “The binary’s solar orbit is sharply oval, at 25%

eccentricity to the rest of the solar system’s more

circular orbits. Furthermore, its orbital inclination,

approximately seventeen degrees from the plane of

the ecliptic, combines with orbital eccentricity to

vary the binary’s solar distance from less than thirty

to more than fifty Astronomical Units from the Sun—”

“Done, MIDAS.” Corson winced a bit as he shifted

his newly-bandaged foot. “Fat lot of good that Pluto

stuff does us...

”

“We ll have to escape,” said Benai suddenly. Drift¬

ing in and out of consciousness, he’d been silent for

some time. Now, his mind addled, he began to give

in to Earthly training. “I believe we’re prisoners,

now, of this Charon. I’d never intended to be taken

prisoner; I—”

‘Hel-lo!’ The Charon-voice, jollier than ever, boomed

into the room without any apparent radio source. The

marooned bits of humanity froze, frightened, ready

for assault despite their injuries. “Stay still, now. As you are. I have to warn you

about a momentary nausea—you’ve all felt it. It comes

when I move you. Settle yourselves comfortably, and,

all of you, try placing your heads between your knees

and closing your eyes—so!

Like the doctor, here,

wise and adaptable being that she is. Now—”

The nearly familiar wave of nausea swept them

again, their stomachs rebelling against a movement

86 John McLoughlin

more implied than felt. And then it passed, as quickly

as before, leaving only a slight ringing in their ears. Other than the belly-wrenching sensation, nothing

seemed to have happened. “Not much to that, was

there?’’ Charon’s evident attempt at light-heartedness

failed miserably. “Too human,’’ muttered Benai, “too human.” He

looked suspiciously at Corson, his misgivings about

the traditional enemy far from allayed. “I hear you, my friend. I’m pleased with the illu¬

sion.” The Charon-voice, disembodied yet close, had

all the lilt of that of a congenial host. “Yes, I worked

for some time on this ‘humanity.’ I needed a useful

interface for working with you—talking with you. I

produced a subset of humaniform vocal and emo¬

tional responses that I hoped would express my feel¬

ings well. I must emphasize, however, that I’m quite

inhuman, or nonhuman, or unhuman; I believe that

there are nuances of connotation in each of those

words that would apply to me, wouldn’t they?”

“You didn’t try ‘superhuman,’ ” said Jennifer, think¬

ing of the terrible moments when the ships had been

melded in space. “No, Doctor, I didn’t. Nor did I try ‘subhuman,’

although, regrettably, that would also apply. I sup¬

pose ‘nonhuman’ would be the most useful term for

now.” The voice was colored with a faint sadness,

momentarily, as if Charon felt the implications of

“subhuman” more strongly than it had wished. “You’re

now in a good position to see me—not my Eggs, oh

no, but me.” }

Jennifer, still hooked into the debris next to Corson,

glanced over his shoulder. Her eyes widened in horror!

“Oh, God.”

All followed her gaze, instinctively tensing for fight

or flight. Toolmaker Koan 87

A portion of the bulkhead bulged outward liquidly

like a bubble, then burst silently into nothing. Out¬

side, the stars glittered, moving slowly past the edges

of a perfectly round and smooth-edged opening—

through which no air escaped. Pike was first to stir—Charon hadn’t hurt anyone,

yet. He pushed himself across the debris to the open¬

ing, then reached with his good hand to feel what¬

ever might be holding the air in. Nothing. It was as if he’d reached into space with

an ungloved hand, and involuntarily he snatched it

back, looked at it carefully, reached out again, this

time pressing his body against the opening and wav¬

ing his arm wildly about in what looked like outer

space and felt like ship-normal air. “Shit!” He drew in his arm, examined the palm of

his hand while the others watched him. “May I take it that you like this, Major Muir?”

Charon’s voice again, coming from nowhere. “Uh, I’m not even sure I believe it,” Pike growled,

still looking at his hand. He backed away from the

opening, tripped in the near-zero mass, settled him¬

self among the others. “An excellent sentiment for a human being. We’ll

get along famously!

I have much to show you that you

won’t believe. Unbelief is salubrious to the human

nervous system. Contrary reality often produces rapid

growth and diversification of synapses in the brain

and spinal column. You’ll all be the better for it. Know also that I’ll do you no harm, if you behave,

and you can do me none. Who would be first to gaze

upon my—ahem—lovely person?” Its humor seem¬

ing to overflow, Charon actually chuckled, most real¬

istically. “You may see me through this little port as I

stabilize your craft.”

A groaning and creaking commenced, and the re-

88 John McLoughlin

sidual mass of ship’s rotation dissipated. Dizzily, all

four crouched, Jennifer automatically steadying the

dying Benai in his nest among the ruins. No one moved. “Come, come, incurious little animals. Major Muir?

You’re an inquisitive man. Step back to the port, and

tell your conspecifics of my loveliness!”

Slowly, Pike picked his way carefully through the

dislodged innards of Expediter toward the strange

round opening in the bulkhead. He leaned, peered

outward. “Jesus!

That’s the Charon!

That’s got to be the

Charon!”

An old man with a boat?

Ice broken, the rest

crowded to the port, squirming shoulder to shoulder,

Pike forgetting his injured forearm and bumping it

painfully against Corson’s broad chest. Without, hanging lustrously motionless in the void,

slept two silvery globes, barely differentially lighted

by the distant and invisible Sun and by the carpet of

stars beyond. Pearls in the Deep, they were feature¬

less, uncratered, uncracked, showing none of the

expansion/contraction stressmarks ordinarily associated

with frozen methane bodies. The observers seemed to have been placed near

the midpoint between the objects; Charon was offer¬

ing a Scenic Overlook. And while it was of course

impossible for anyone to perceive the absolute size of

these beautiful objects, it was evident that one was

twice the diameter of the other. And yes, they seemed

separated by about ten times the radius of the larger

of the pair....

“Lookit the middle!

Look, over there...

and

there!” Pike, forgetting himself, pointed wildly left-

handed into space from one to the other of the orbs. Toolmaker Koan 89

It could not be. Not so huge. But it was, and

Charon was right in denying itself any humanity. The globes were not quite globes; they were more

teardrop-shaped, ever so slightly, the apices of the

teardrops pointing toward one another, tapering mi¬

nutely, gradually into a fine, straight silvery line con¬

necting these celestial bodies one to another across—if

MIDAS’s data were correct—some fifteen thousand,

five hundred kilometers of space. “I am Charon; that is me.” The voice purred with

satisfaction as the stupefied humans stared out of

their ruined hulk of twinned shipjunk. “What you see

is fat, more or less; my material reserves, collected

most laboriously from your Oort Cloud. The actual T

lies at the centers of the two bodies, the smaller

housing among other things that bit of my awareness

that speaks to you—hence my choice of the name

‘Charon.’ Humans named it, after all; to me, one

name’s as good as another.”

“You—you’ve been there for more than a century?

Since we found you—found Pluto?” Jennifer’s voice

quavered; she wiped her eyes. “Oh, a good deal longer than that. Funny. Your

species is so curious, so dangerously inquisitive, yet

since you first spotted Pluto in 1930 and determined

my unusual pattern of movement, not a one of you

has wondered overmuch why my solar orbit is at such

variance with your system norm. And after you dis¬

covered the lesser of the pair and my binary perpen¬

dicularity, you still didn’t wonder!

Yet I set it all up

specifically to attract attention; one would think that

the astronomically extraordinary would stir that mon¬

key curiosity of yours...

a discrepancy I’ve long

pondered.” A pause, then: “It’s as if a sailor saw an

uncharted lighthouse, and felt no urge to investigate. “You wanted us to find you!

Benai s voice, weak

90 John McLoughlin

as it was, filled with skeptical truculence. “Why didn’t

you come to us?”

Humor left the voice. “If I came to you, I would

have irreparably altered your patterns of develop¬

ment before you found your own way into space. I

wanted to see how you’d do it. Alas!

Now I perceive

your species’ time to be running out. As your warlike

impulses have grown, your astronomical curiosity

seems to have decreased. Hence I interfered with

your Oort probe, hoping to spark some of you with

the necessary curiosity to come to me. I wanted to

see the sort of effort you would make to do so, of

course; an informal measure of your kind’s intelli¬

gence. I wouldn’t have wanted simply to kidnap a

few of you; that wouldn’t have been any fun. ” Charon’s

voice remained smooth, pleased-sounding. “Let me

remind you now that you’re all fatigued beyond any

hope of reasoned behavior, and some of you are

injured. I am going to, ah, take you aboard; but I’d

rather have you rest through the process—a complex

one, I assure you, which might otherwise fatally stress

you.”

“Surely you don’t expect us to sleep after all this!”

Jennifer was indignant, now. Inhuman, yes!

The crea¬

ture didn’t understand human beings at all, if it

thought—

Instantaneously flicking into existence, three iden¬

tical shining Eggs appeared side by side about fifty

meters outside the port. The human watchers invol¬

untarily flinched, eyes wide, staring at the linked

binary and its soap-bubble Eggs...

things whose

dimensions and mode of movement evolution had not

constructed human senses to embrace. “Dear little physician, I do indeed expect you to

sleep—you’re all dying of radiation burns!

Do you

notice a change in your environment?” The smiling

Toolmaker Koan 91

voice paused, and Jennifer felt a prickling at the nape

of her neck, a movement greater than mere expecta¬

tion’s tensing her skin. “Nuts,” murmured Corson. “I’m nuts, or—”

“No,” said the Charon-voice, “you’re not, no more

than any other gland-ruled animal. I am, though. Quite mad, I think, quite mad. But rest now; rest,

and be healed.” The disembodied voice switched

abruptly and eerily into silence. There came to them

a smell. The ruined ships’ air was changing, moving,

a breeze was blowing, a breeze of springtime, blos¬

soms, a warm Earthly morning. The odors of burnt

plastic and overheated bodies dissipated; relaxation

flew swiftly and silently to the tired knot of human¬

ity, relaxation and a sound and too-sudden sleep. Outside, the three Eggs moved swiftly closer to

the sad twisted wreck at the Solar System’s edge. A

watcher might have marvelled at their total lack of

jets or other apparent propulsion. But watchers there

were none, except the vast and ancient mind that

guided them; with them it flowed silently into the

ruin and rolled gently along leagues upon leagues of

tortured Earthly neurons, picking, choosing, record¬

ing, following the slumber-popping of random den¬

dritic charges, wandering down the avenues of

unsleeping life-support systems. It listened to the

mitochondria in their cells as they unceasingly pro¬

cessed oxygen to fuel their animal fires; it felt its way

along the contours of Earth-shaped bone and lifeworn

arteries, wondering at the tales of threadbare skin

and graying hair. And deeper it went, down, down, to the tiny mo¬

lecular tapes from which all this crystallized; sailing

along those tapes, it noted the fine nucleic code, the

ancestral messages, some still good, some deteriorat¬

ing as these bodies devolved toward their inevitable

92 John McLoughlin

appointment with death. How odd, to live with death

within you. How odd, too, to know it, and yet to

persist with such implacable fierce purpose to the

end. How odd, how delicately lovely...

how very

whimsical!

Part III

CHAPTER 6

Awakenings in Eden

When Pike Muir was growing up, he lived with his

family in a rambling brick house in the Brookline

district of Boston. The house was duplexed long be¬

fore the Muirs had bought their half, but its yard

remained more or less green, the great maples still

shadowing the grass each spring with fine dappling

from infant yellow-green leaves. On holiday in spring,

a small boy in Brookline had much to do. He must

eat a gigantic breakfast—a ham omelet, perhaps, with

cheese, maybe an English muffin too heavily but¬

tered in the manner of small boys, a glass of apple

juice, a glass of milk, a doughnut snatched powdery

with confectioner’s sugar from his mother’s Forbidden

box. Then he must check with his older brother about

the day s activities. If there be plenty of spending

money, one might hit the train, rumble slowly into—

well, into whatever deliciously unsupervised adven¬

tures should offer themselves. Or Dad might take

them to Rockport and rent them a boat; they could

go after blues, the sun warm on their tanned skins,

95

96 John McLoughlin

the waves sparkling, the air salt and free. Or there

might be a game, or someone might have gotten a

load of bottle-rockets for a day of illegal streetstyle

Cape Kennedying, or—almost anything. A spring hol¬

iday in Brookline was full of promise for a small boy;

one such promise was to lie awake, eyes closed, and

ramble through the potential of the day, listening to

the birds and waiting, enjoying that moment of secret

anticipation...

The birds. Not Brookline birds, no way. Pike sat up, opened his eyes. The glow of youth,

the excitement, remained with him. Brookline, however, was nowhere to be seen. The sunlight was wrong, somehow, warm, bright,

but too diffuse even for the mists obscurinq it. He

seemed to be lying in the grass at the bottom of an

immense valley, a riverless valley so broad that its

curve was barely detectable until one’s eyes traced

the sides upward into the low cloud cover. A rolling

grassland of green and gold, arcing upward, upward

on either side into the white and misty sky. A valley

of birds. The birds were too many, and they were not at all

Bostonian birds. They sang and chattered and whooped

and cackled and fluttered among the wide-topped

thorny trees above Pike’s head. They were every

color of the rainbow; some of them, to Pike, looked

like mistakes; their beaks too large and yellow, or

their wings too short. Pike Muir was not on shipboard. Pike Muir’s arm

was no longer broken, nor in the least painful. Pike

Muir was clean, exquisitely clean, and so were his

coveralls and watch. They were the same coveralls—just clean. And

those were elephants!

Toolmaker Koan 97

The elephants, five of them, looked as mistaken as

the birds. Their tusks curved downward and back¬

ward; with them, the improbable beasts ripped at the

grassy turf, pulling back with their massive heads,

then picking turves with their trunks and chewing

the messes meditatively. Pike stood shakily, his eyes wide. An elephant

looked at him, snorted, raised its trunk and tested

the air. The rest followed suit, five trunks waving

snakelike against the morning sky. They whuffled and

grunted and, satisfied perhaps that Pike meant them

no harm, set again to their task of plowing up the

grass, great animated back-hoes, their heaving slabby

leathern sides flecked with peeling dried mud, their

high backs dotted with little black-and-white birds

that flitted to and fro, pecking delicately at their

oblivious hosts. “I don’t believe this.” Pike spoke aloud, to no one. He looked at his good right arm, turning it experi¬

mentally. Unbelief. Where had he heard that unbe¬

lief was salubrious to the human nervous system?

Something sure was salubrious—he’d never felt bet¬

ter. The springtime expectation of boyhood seemed

still with him, tinged now with a delightful soupgon

of fear, and his very blood seemed charged with

strength and anticipation. ‘1 do not fucking believe

any of this at a//.”

He looked wildly about him. He stood in waist-

high golden grass that swayed in waves with the

breeze, onward and outward across the stupendous

valley, its floor a rolling plain dotted with odd flat-

topped clusters of trees like those among which he

stood. The morning mist was rising, too; far in the

distance, vast herds of some sort of animals moved,

their rich and earthy smells wafted faintly to him on

the morning breeze. Here and there great piles of

98 John McLoughlin

boulders seemed carelessly strewn, house-sized and

bigger, the spaces among them thick with greener

grass and contorted leafy brush. At the base of the nearest of these rocky mounds,

he saw movement—and recognized from his zoo days

a baboon, for God’s sake, and a very big baboon,

too. The creature evidently spotted Pike at the same

instant; it barked and hooted at him, and dropped

something—one of Expediters portable videocameras,

still good as new, part of a small pile of familiar and

not-so-familiar equipment neatly arranged at the boul¬

ders’ base. Mostly video and sound stuff, cartons of

information dominoes and the like, some likely from

Dienbienphu, all clean and in good condition—or

would be until that baboon dismantled them. But the baboon had lost interest. Several more like

it, but smaller, joined it in a chorus of wild yarking

sounds, and the whole troop moved stiffly away, peer¬

ing over their maned shoulders at Pike and hooting

shrilly. Well—if those are baboons, and if those over there

are elephants, about which I do have some doubts—

well, then, this is Africa, and I am not supposed to

be here at all. He heard a movement in the grass some distance

away, jumped and turned. In Africa, the way he

understood it, you never knew what damn thing might

be waiting in the grass for you to make a mistake. The movement was the surgeon from Dienbienphu,

Jennifer Dawson, looking as fit and clean as Pike felt

and, indeed, very pretty in her spare no-nonsense

way. She sat up, rubbed her eyes, and her jaw dropped

open like drawbridge. She saw the elephants first,

then Pike. “Major Muir!

How’ve we—what’ve we—where?”

Well, if that surgeon’s at a loss for words, I feel a

Toolmaker Koan 99

hell of a lot better. Look calm, now. Nonchalant. Morning, ma’am. I believe we re in Africa. Are you

feeling well?’’

“Well?

Why, yes!

A bit terrified, but well, well

indeed!

And you certainly look better than when last

we met, Major...

that arm!” A wry note had entered

her voice, and she smiled. “I presume this is the

doing of our friend Charon, although I suppose it’s a

little tipsy, judging from the look of those elephants.”

‘Not at all, Doctor Jennifer Wellesley Dawson.”

The amused voice of Charon came from above; there,

hanging motionless among the leaves of the thorny

tree nearest Jennifer, was a shining Egg. “I under¬

stood you to be rather up on natural history—evolu¬

tion. All those years of study can’t go to waste!

Look

without prejudice on my, ah, elephants, and tell me

what you see.”

Jennifer looked and looked and wrinkled her brow,

and broke into a grin, and frowned again, and then

laughed aloud. “Charon, are you having one over on

me?

Are those Pleistocene back-tusked elephants—

deinotheria?” She regarded the Egg for a moment,

then looked eagerly about the vast grassy expanse in

which she found herself. “Right the first time!

Hand that broad a Kewpie

doll!” Charon’s voice had inexplicably taken on a

broad American twang, a carny’s shout. Then, re¬

turning to its normal old-man tone, it queried: “Don’t

you like them, Doctor?”

Jennifer stood, grinning. “Like them?

Of course I

like them!

But, but—they’re extinct!”

“The tickbirds don’t seem to think so.” Charon’s

irony seemed thick as cream. “And if you were to ask

them, I’m sure you’d find that the deinotheria didn’t

think so, either!”

“They’re extinct—and none of Africa has looked

100 John McLoughlin

like this for—for years..

The smile left Jennifer s

face. She looked at the vast distant valley walls, rising

ever higher, near vertical where the dissipating mists

exposed new heights. There was—could be—no such

valley, anywhere...

she looked straight up then,

toward the source of the odd sunlight, and bit her

lower lip. Pike, watching, looked up with her. The clouds were thinning fast now, and the bluing

sky revealed not a sun but a colossal spine or rod,

miles above, shining a blinding sunny yellow, a spine

whose distance was impossible for them to fathom,

stretching from one end to the other of the world in

which they found themselves. A world it was, in size unguessable, but a world all

the same. What had seemed a valley floor was the

inside of a colossal cylinder, a plant-lined cylinder

whose opposing side was invisible beyond the hazy

intervening miles of air, the central spine’s ubiqui¬

tous light. The geometry was wrong, and Jennifer staggered,

her eyes filled with tears. “Charon, where are we?

What—when are we?

What have you done with us?”

“Oh, dear, I thought you’d be pleased. You’re with

me, Doctor, in a place called the Seeker Hwiliria\”

A bird sound, that word, formed not by lips. “It’s about thirty of your hours since you, ah, went to

sleep in your ruin of a conveyance. I brought you to

this place, a ship, actually, that I thought might

delight and enlighten you. And it doesn’t?”

“It—it’s lovely.” The tears rolling down her cheeks,

Jennifer spread her arms wide and smiled again,

one-sided, a worried smile. “But how—”

“I’m very good at what I do.”

“Then it’s an illusion?

A fake?

Are we really plugged

into some sort of—”

“No, no, Doctor, it’s all quite real. You’re really

Toolmaker Koan 101

here. Oh, it’s all an artifact, actually—but isn’t it

lovely?

Or is my Africa false?”

No—no!

And the wind, and the gravity, and, and

everything is—”

Were you going to say, ‘perfect’?’’ Smugness crept

into the voice of Charon. “I expect I’d have to.”

“Good. I’ve done my work well. I’m absolutely

delighted. Your brethren on Earth envision the envi¬

rons of Pluto to be rather cold and desolate.”

“But why Africa?

And why these—these deinotheria?

They d be from the Pleistocene somewhere...”

“Precisely. And you humans are Pleistocene ani¬

mals. You evolved in a place and time that I have

taken some pains to duplicate—for your own satisfac¬

tion. You’re designed for this, after a fashion.”

Pike tugged at a clump of grass; it came loose, soil

clinging to its roots, just as one might have expected. “This—this is your ship?”

“Oh, no!

This is a place for living beings, Major!

I’ve told you: I’m not at all alive. No, this is a

movable—dwelling—built long ago, by cultural tool-

makers, animals. Spacefaring animals—extinct space-

faring animals from another place and time. ’Tis a

noble object, this Hwiliria, no?

Intended once to

repopulate a world—a world its makers well-nigh

sterilized!”

“But the plants, the animals—they’re from Earth!

You’ve just said so—” Jennifer swung her arms out¬

ward as if to embrace the place, staring at the Egg. “Ah!

Well, yes. In this end of Hwiliria I’ve made

some modifications. She is, after all, only a memory

of mine. In recalling her, I’ve permitted myself this

small duplication of your hometime, to show you a

bit of what an artificial ecosystem can be. And of

course to cushion your awakening!

But the rest—the

102 John McLoughlin

rest of Hwiliria remains a facsimile of the world of

her extinct makers, as is fitting. As you shall see my

little guests, as you’ll see very soon!”

Pike slapped his clump of grass against his knee,

the soil breaking from the roots, scattering about his

feet. He began to giggle, fear and awe and delight

struggling for the mastery of him. “This is a memory,

a—but it’s huger

“By your standards, yes, Hwiliria is quite large. Her interior spans a length of almost four hundred

kilometers. Surely my greatest effort to date. You

stand within her forward end; see the rise, here,

beyond those rocks. Ait—opposite direction—you note

a high ridge?”

They turned. Perhaps two kilometers distant, a

long grassy hill about a hundred meters high ex¬

tended right and left, arching upward, ever upward

in the distance to either side, fading in the heights

beyond the spinal “sun,” ringing this unbelievable

cylindrical space. Beyond, high on the “valley” sides,

the coloring of the world was—different. Darker, a

blue-green...

and other ridge-rings were dimly

visible in the distance, the entire place segmented in

belts of flatland and ridge spanning unguessably vast

intervals. “Beyond that ridge,” said the Charon-voice, “I’ve

left Hwiliria as her builders intended.”

“What happened to them?

Where’d they go?” But

Pike’s guts tried to answer that one for him; Charon

had killed them, whoever they were; had killed them

all, as it no doubt intended to do with...

“I’d guess,” said the treed Egg, “that you creatures

think I killed them. You’re wrong; they were like

you, in a way. They needed no assistance on that

score. They killed themselves, quite unaided, long

ago and far away.” The voice altered, almost singing,

Toolmaker Koan 103

Long ago and far away. I remember them, though. And I ve ideas for those memories—and you. Bear

with me, do; you ve no choice. In a matter of days

you’ll be returning to your sickened busy little

planet—in Hwiliria, with my assistance. Unless—” a

fathomless chuckle— my madness exceeds even my

own guess!”

It s as big as an asteroid, and we never even saw

it—where are we?”

“In a rather complex stable figure-eight orbit, Doc¬

tor, around the bodies you call Pluto and Charon. As

I say, though, offer me a bit of patience—I’m sending

you all back. After, that is, after you learn what I’ve

brought you here to learn. Don’t worry, please; your

conspecifics at Earth have determined to their satis¬

faction that you’re dead, as indeed you would have

been had I not collected you in time. Now, though,

you’ll eat. Partake of my hospitality!

Join the others—”

Pike frowned. “Hey, where are the others?

Corson

and the blind guy?

They okay?”

“Oh, yes, they’re well. Quite well. I scattered you

about a bit for sleep’s sake, and they’re awakening in

their own fashions while I watch.” The Egg moved

slowly from its branches, leaves slapping and sliding

along its sides. “How does the damned thing do that?” Pike stared

frankly as the Egg floated like a soap bubble into the

sunlight. “Oh, Major, if your masters on Earth ever discov¬

ered how I get around, there’d be no end of trouble. Come now, follow the Egg, and we’ll find your friends. That equipment—I’ve salvaged it from your ships. Please collect it, use it. People won’t believe you,

you know, just as you don’t believe right now. A bit

of video speaks reams for the unbeliever. Come

come—I’ve packs and all waiting. Pick the stuff up,

104 John McLoughlin

we have places to go.” The Egg moved off, hovering

about ten meters above them; Pike looked about him

suspiciously, picked up a videopack and slid his arms

through the straps. Everywhere, now, more life: distant herds of

lowing—cattle?

A crashing in some brush a hundred

meters to his right brought him to a stop; Jennifer

turned too, tightening a hipstrap on a Dienbienphu

vidpack, to see a pair of rhinoceroses conducting a

noisy courtship in the leaves, snorting, grunting, rais¬

ing a cloud of reddish dust as they disported them¬

selves in amorous play. Too much, thought Pike. Just too much. Shoulder

to shoulder with the surgeon, he panned the scene

with his minicam. The rocks seemed much bigger at close hand;

rounded hundred-ton hunks of granite piled upon one

another like oversized pebbles surrounded a “mother

stone” reaching perhaps forty meters above the grassy

plain. Little animals the size of woodchucks shrieked

and dashed out of sight among the boulders. “Rock

hyraxes,” said Jennifer, pleased, brandishing her own

minicam. “Charon sees to all the details.”

“I must be classed among the great artistes, no?”

The Egg swooped lower, hovering over their heads. “Around here, please, and eat.”

Before them in the grass stood a vast oaken table,

three meters at least in length. Covered with a dam¬

ask cloth whose edges swayed softly in the breeze,

the board sparkled with silver place-settings, crystal

goblets, trays, bowls, plates; these contained cakes

and croissants, pastries of every description. They

were laden with tiny roasted birds glistening in ma¬

hogany sauces, great reeking hot slabs of thick-sliced

bacon, sausages of different colors and shapes, lob¬

sters, shrimp, a tuna of perhaps twenty kilograms’

Toolmaker Koan 105

mass, fruits of every description, a variety of pastas

and their sauces, antipasto, pesto in little gold-wrought

bowls, rices and spices and assorted vices, including

a wood-carved humidor whose glass top showed the

tips of a dozen dark, powerful-looking cigars...

all

in the midst of the African wilderness, with no other

sign of artifice for seemingly endless kilometers of

tree-studded grassland. Except that shining Egg above. And, Pike noted, not a fly buzzed about the pre¬

posterous picnic, not an ant climbed the table leg. He seated himself at the nearest setting—not before

recording the scene—and the surgeon doffed her

pack and selected the empty chair beside him. Most

disturbingly carved, these chairs were, high-backed,

with animal forms intricately intertwined through

their massive wood frames...

strange animals....

“I don’t suppose we ll be needing a surgeon’s ser¬

vice while we’re guests of Charon, will we?

Major

Muir?’’ She smiled at him, then looked wonderingly

at her place setting. Like the chairs, the plates were

decorated with animals, birdlike or dragonlike ani¬

mals resembling nothing Earthly. Gold-edged, trans¬

lucent white at their centers, the plates were un¬

believably thin and strong and, despite their disqui¬

eting designs, lovely. “We won’t need a cook either, Doctor Dawson.”

Jennifer looked about her at the improbable culi¬

nary selection, then back at Pike: “Oh, I don’t guess

I’ll be doing that much doctoring for a while, judging

from the looks of the two of us. Do call me Jennifer,

please.”

“Well, Jennifer, I’m kind of unemployed at the

moment myself. I’m Pike to you.”

“It’s a pleasant place, isn’t it?” The Egg, above

106 John McLoughlin

them at table s center, voice brimming with self-

satisfaction. “I am a good host, or try to be.”

“Charon.”

“Yes, Doctor?”

“May I touch you?”

“You may touch the Egg, certainly. Any of you. Feel free, any time. Me, however—why, Doctor, I’m

a bit much for that!”

“The Egg, that’s what I meant.” Jennifer reached

out tentatively toward the swirling soap-bubble sur¬

face. Pike, on the other side, did the same. Their fingers slid as if slicked on a thin coat of oil—

slicker yet. The surface was frictionless, as nearly as

Jennifer could tell. She looked at her fingertips, al¬

most expecting to find a thin coat of some liquid,

then touched the Egg again. Air temperature, per¬

haps—if, indeed, she were actually touching it. But

the soap-bubble swirls changed color slightly where

her fingers had passed across them, and Charon spoke:

“I feel your touch, little animals. It is pleasant to me. Push, perhaps, a bit harder. For learning’s sake.”

Both pushed. The Egg, hovering just above the

tabletop, moved about as much as might one of the

hundred-ton boulders of the nearby kopje had they

leaned against it; it moved not at all, in fact. Its

frictionless surface, curved and featureless, offered

no point of grip; a hard push sent Pike sliding off the

ovoid surface, sprawling across the tabletop beside

the immovable Egg. “I’m quite unlike you. But I know you, I think.”

The odd placeless voice snicked off in its disconcert¬

ing way; Pike and Jennifer stared at the glittering

thing, and all three beings sat contemplatively still

in the bright sunlight of near-noon, strange compan¬

ions at an intricately carved oak table in the Pleistocene

Toolmaker Koan 107

breeze of the immense cylindrical world called

Hwiliria. And again the voice, thoughtful, slow: “Doctor Daw¬

son, Major Muir, in my own small, mad way I offer

you Eden.”

Someone’s coming. Colonel Jimbob Lamar Corson lay face down, half¬

way out of the grass at the edge of a meandering

brook. His heart was slowing down at last, the pound¬

ing in his ears softening. He’d never thought he could run like that, never

had before—even in his earliest training. But then,

he’d been ill prepared for the golden savannaland in

which he’d found himself upon awakening, the cylin¬

drical world it had become with the mist’s rising. And a full complement of ten fingers, the suddenly

healed foot—plain fear had been his goad. His body

had taken over, and he’d run, run for his life—from

nothing/

Well, I’m in damn good shape, anyway. Something

to be said for old Charon?

Am I still Jimbob?

Oh,

hey. Daddy, if you could see me now, lyin’ here in

the mud like this. I think this Charon might give you

something to think about. Scared the shit outa me,

waking up and seeing lions, for god’s sake, and zebras

and all that shit. Someone’s coming. Soljers!

Doubletimin’ goddamn soljers, a platoon, by the

sound of it, with a corporal callin’ cadence an’ the

men respondin!

Isn’t anyone I know, either. Language all wrong. Squashing himself flatter, Corson maneuvered swiftly

backwards into the tall grass, frantically trying to

stand up the stems he’d flattened as he moved. 108 John McLoughlin

Jesus, Lord, must be seven or eight of ’em, sound

like a batch of gooks or something. Maybe, maybe

this whole thing is some Dienbienphu trick after all. How they did it, I don’t know. Maybe they caught us

all and drugged us or something. Fat chance. This is

real. The light, the grass, the water, the smell. The sound. Closer. Someone doubletiming along,

closer, closer, chanting the cadence in some language

I never heard. Bad guys, I can tell. He pushed himself farther back into the grass,

peering out at the grass-topped ridge beyond the

brook, bright in the noontime sun. He listened, his

heart beginning to pound again. Damn!

Letting my¬

self get shook up like that, I m about done in when I

need everything I got!

The sound grew closer, musical like all cadence

chants everywhere, but strange. No words to make

out, but the singing clear, the caller, deep-voiced,

shouting Heeeop, the respondents, ooah, ooah, ooah,

ooah. Heeeop, ooah, ooah, ooah, ooah; Heeeop, ooah,

ooah, ooah, ooah; Heeop, ooah, ooah, ooah, ooah,

closer, closer, just beyond that ridge, the chant chang¬

ing a bit, still doubletime, Oooreee, yah!

yah!

yah!

yah!

Oooree, yah!

yah!

yah!

yah!, back again, Heeeop,

ooah, ooah, ooah, ooah...

There they are, the little fuckers. Damn!

Lookit

’em go!

Eight small men angled up along the ridge, double¬

timing in single file, their modal singsong eerily lovely

in the central spine’s strange shadowless light. They

trotted easily, in perfect step, chanting, chanting, the

lead and biggest setting the deep-toned call, the rest

responding in unison four times, then the leader

again, then the rest, a tireless jogging, singing snake

Toolmaker Koan 109

of tiny brown men perhaps a meter and a third or so

in height. They carried spears...

sticks, rather, sharpened

at one end, held in the middle, swung lightly bal¬

anced from their right hands, loosely oscillating fore

and aft as the little fellows swiftly crossed the quarter-

kilometer between ridge and stream...

on the other

side of which Corson lay shaking in the grass. Something wrong with those guys. Something bad

wrong. Chests huge, shoulders broad, arms long,

well muscled, necks thick, heads small, furry...

and the faces!

God, the faces!

They looked like mon¬

keys!

The heads were held up, alert, each little dude

ceaselessly, sharply looking from side to side as he

ran, dark eyes glittering deep in the shadows of heavy

brows, paired nostril slots set above powerfully jut¬

ting jaws. Aliens?

A piglike animal with lumpy snout and wide curving

yellow tusks jumped up right-flank of the approach¬

ing platoOn, and a couple of brown and tan-striped

piglets followed it squealing as it rapidly distanced

itself from the weird troop. The chanting briefly al¬

tered, Skaaah!

whuh!

whuh!

whuh!

whuh!

but the

cadence remained unchanged and the tiny men con¬

tinued trotting undeterred toward the stream, double¬

timing indefatigably toward he clear water—and

Corson. Well, fuck, those look like bad little bastards, and I

got nothing to defend my ass with. That awful-looking

sow had the right idea. I am going to take my poste¬

rior elsewhere. Corson started a careful backward crab, thanking

God all the way for the tall grass—which, however,

whispered and swayed about him no matter how

careful he was. “Skaroch!” The big one in the lead seemed to

110 John McLoughlin

freeze in midstep and instantly the others deployed

themselves on either side of him in a broadening line ...

and all froze as still as their leader, sticks held

rigidly at present-arms. Corson froze too, watching what little he could see

of the miniature soldiers. All of them were stark

naked; all were males. And, to his horror, they seemed

to be swelling as he watched them; matted manes of

fur on their heads, shoulders, and the outsides of their

long arms were slowly bristling. Otherwise, except

for the glittering of eyes sweeping the tops of the

grasses around where Corson lay, the creatures re¬

mained perfectly still. As did Jimbob Lamar Corson. Sure they could

hear the pounding of his heart like an air-hammer on

an Abilene summer pavement?

But no; they stood

stock-still, making not a sound. A Mexican stand-off. They can’t see me; I couldn’t fight them, I’m sure of

that. They look tough as nails, with all the sense of

humor of a cholla cactus. Boy, am I some dumb

sumbitch!

I got to get control of my act. The big leader made some low chittering noises,

and one of the flanking flunkies whirled and sprinted

alarmingly quickly back up the ridge over which they’d

first appeared. Silhoutted at its crest, he waved his

left arm in an unmistakable come—hither, still clutch¬

ing the sharpened stick in his right. Oh, God, reinforcements. I know I can’t outrun

those little devils. I know those spears aren’t walking

sticks, either, crummy as they look. The fellow on the ridge sprinted back to his place

in the unmoving cordon across the stream from Corson,

all waiting in a perfect stillness. Them guys are good,

he thought. Disciplined. What next?

As if in answer, little brown heads began to appear

along the ridgetop, a scattering of more pygmy

Toolmaker Koan 111

monkeymen, this time of both sexes and all ages. Males running at the flanks, females carrying babies

in the center, and middle-sized kiddies sticking with

them, the rabble of about thirty creatures made its

way warily closer, seven more spear-toting males run¬

ning ahead to join the vanguard at stream s edge. Without a sound, they extended the cordon’s ends,

all watching the grass where Jimbob Corson lay. The central male, cadence-caller, he of the biggest

mane, looked left and right at his comrades, nodded. Skuh!” He lifted his spear and stepped forward one

step. “SKUH!” The rest responded with an identical

shout, taking a step, the line moving toward Corson. “SKUH!” Step. “SKUH!” Step. Closer, broadening into a crescent centered on

Corson’s hiding-place, the cordon moved awesomely

in a slow encircling approach: “SKUH!” Step. “SKUH!”

Step. The rhythmical shouting lockstep was more

frightening to Corson than anything he’d ever heard

in his life. And the worst was, somehow, somewhere,

he knew contrary to all his life’s living that he had

heard and seen all this before. Deep in the center of his brain, ancient mecha¬

nisms took over to prepare him for a last insane

flight, shutting down what little reason was left him. Urine spread hot beneath him. His muscles tensed,

fingers and shoe-tips locking themselves in the sod

for a leap. He went onto biological autopilot, all

physiologic systems screaming for the getaway. He—

“Halloooo!

Anyone here?” The cry came from far

behind him, faint, wavering. The creatures in front of

him froze, silent, in mid-step. Again the voice, closer, accented: “Doctor Daw¬

son?

Can anyone hear me?”

“Fatchoof!” The lead male gestured downward with

112 John McLoughlin

his left hand, stared off into the distance beyond

Corson’s refuge. Silence. Absolute stillness. “Hallooo!

Who’s that?” Much closer this time. And

then—thank God!—the unmistakable crack of a pistol!

As one, the little spearchuckers turned and ran up

the ridge, gathering in and surrounding females and

young as they did so. The males hung in the rear,

howling, brandishing their sticks, until all females

disappeared beyond the crest. One or two males

remained there for a moment, waving their spears

and hooting, then these followed the rest out of sight. Corson stood, shakily. A hundred meters off, he

saw the running figure of the African, Benai, waving,

shouting. What a sight!

What a fine sight, even that

commie commander, even with that damn Egg hangin’

up there, followin’ behind him, and him fit as a

fiddle, fit as me, unscarred, grinning!

Benai trotted to him, jabbering questions. “Hallo,

sir!

What were those creatures?

What kind of a place

is this?

What’ve you been doing?

They were unpleasant-

looking bastards. Pygmies?

What’s going on out here?”

The Egg hung silently above. Corson looked his enemy in the eye, grinned faintly. “I. Sure. Am glad. To see you.”

“Sir, you’re all in, quite shaken. Please, sit down for

a few—”

But Corson only heard a roaring in his ears now,

rising like a Gulf hurricane, enveloping him. Never

again would he see a human shape—or approximately

human shape—silhouetted against a skyline ridge with¬

out...

The colonel’s eyes rolled back in his head and he

fell into Benai’s restraining arms, awareness on

vacation. “I say!” Benai pointed, traces of an awed smile

Toolmaker Koan 113

playing about his lips. To no one, he murmured, ‘It

seems my enemy has wet his pants!”

He holstered his pistol, stared in the direction of

the little men’s disappearance. “Learning experience,” said the wry voice of Charon

from above. “I’ll assist you in carrying him to your

conspecifics; they’re sitting down to a breakfast I’ve

prepared for you. Never fear; Colonel Corson will be

rather the better for his trouble here. Learning expe¬

rience, as I said.”

So speaking, the Egg rose higher; Corson’s inert

form lifted gently from the grass as Benai watched

imperturbably, his capacity for awe already strained

to the utmost. The Egg set off, the colonel’s body and

his rescuer following. As the odd procession wended

its way toward a distant kopje, the Egg chattered

happily; Charon was more than proud to share with

this ignorant fellow its firsthand knowledge of the

habits of Australopithecus africanus, the Southern

Ape of Africa, forebear of Man. * * *

As that Egg discoursed, the giant mind of Charon

focussed part of its vast attention far away in Hwiliria,

where another Egg whistled and hooted in swift mod¬

ulated birdsong. It employed the deferential/patriarchial

tense-once-removed, that modality appropriate in con¬

course between a stranger and a First in the Chase. ‘This one greets thee with talons blunted, Halar-

ridarmar Horizon-Leaper, and quails before thy wak¬

ing. Are thy senses intact?”

The brilliant scarlet crest spread laterally, leveled

just below the top of the flat skull; respectful greet¬

ing, Charon noted, to an unfamiliar subordinate as¬

sumed to be of the reproductive castes. “My senses

are intact, little Egg, Regurgitator of Souls. How

long is it that I’ve slept?”

“Long, First in the Chase, so long as to be mean-

114 John McLoughlin

ingless now. Yesterday,’ we will say. Dost thou recall

thy situation then?”

The crest quills closed over one another, a single

spear of scarlet lying flat along the neck: regret. I

recall yesterday, little Egg, and am reminded of the

crying of my Overcreche, the breaking of eggs, the

dying of the Patriarchate and Matriarchate and the

neuters of Home. The end of my folk, and of my

world. Although I’m well physically, a grief-sickness

rides massive behind my eyes.” The great hooded

amber eyes locked onto the Egg, pupils dilating on

fathomless darkness. Clear nictitating membranes

flicked smoothly across the yellow orbs, once, twice,

but the eyes remained unmoved, expressionless, fixed

unwinking on the Egg even as the First in the Chase

stood to his full height of more than two meters. Looking about him, he noticed changes: strangenesses

in vegetation, especially forward along his Seeker’s

cylindrical girth. The ground there was covered with

a golden vegetal fuzz, the trees alien in pattern. “Hwiliria—is she changed?” His pupils dilated, con¬

tracted, dilated again as he scanned the land. The Egg backed away, remaining close to the ground

as it spoke: “Fear not, First in the Chase. There are

but surface modifications, primarily toward the bow. All life of thy vessel remains intact in my memory;

certain of thy creche will soon awaken to join thee. Now, with thy permission, this one would offer thee

meat, and drink well-fermented.”

“Meat I will take. I will not cloud my brain, though,

with drink. Water is sufficient.”

“It is as thou will. And when thy crop is full, this

one would show thee and certain of thy conspecifics

an animal, a very unusual animal, a dead animal

suitable for eating; but this one would that thou didst

not eat that dead animal until thy neuters have exam-

Toolmaker Koan 115

ined it carefully, and opened it, and listened to this

one’s unworthy tale concerning that dead animal, and

shared the sight of that dead animal, and this one’s

unworthy tale, with thy fertile sibs and the rest of thy

creche that this one will awaken. For this one would

have thee learn of the Toolmaker Conundrum, and

how, perhaps, thy people may help solve it.”

“Toolmaker Conundrum?

I puzzle poorly, Regurgi-

tator of Souls. I’ll listen from crop through gizzard,

but I listen no longer. I’d rather share a Chase with

my fertile sibs. You’ll feed the neuters also, of course?”

The First, like all fertiles, was a bit narrow-minded. “This one will prepare a way for thy Chase, and

feed the neuters also, with meat whose heart still

beats, much game and swift, new game, most intri¬

guing game, in open land bright-lit with Hwilirias

spinal light.”

“Excellent, little Egg. I will eat.” The vein-cutters

on Halarridarmar’s feet twitched involuntarily with

his huge hunger, their black scythelike blades glint¬

ing in the sunlight. The red crest rose nearly vertical

in anticipation, spreading in a dark-edged fan against

the blue of Charon’s sky. “Thou shalt eat, First in the Chase. This one re¬

joices at thy rising. ”

The deferential/patriarchal tense-once-removed was

an interesting modality, the only one from an abso¬

lute stranger to which the First in the Chase and the

fertile males of his sib could respond. Once the First

was fully awake and sated, once he’d better acquainted

himself with his unfamiliar surroundings, Charon would

as equal and more assume the pure patriarchal mo¬

dality...

but for now, best be prudent. Whileelin of

the Patriarchate were fierce and proud, and always

operated on their peculiar brand of mental autopilot—

handle with care. 116 John McLoughlin

Translation with human beings would be entertain¬

ing. Even though a female accompanied the primates,

English would be manifested to fertile whileelin as

pure patriarchal. Otherwise, it’d be difficult to con¬

vince the First in the Chase and his creche that

human beings were anything more than talking meat. The other way around was simple; the spacefaring

apes would hear syntax and idiom of the fertile

whileelin castes as English. And the neuters?

Their

intercommunication being across the electromagnetic

spectrum, Charon had been able to offer only one

human—the female—a limited capacity to hear some

of them. Such strange beasts, these two toolmaking species,

and both so very fierce!

Delicacy was the prime

necessity here: delicacy and, perhaps, a sense of hu¬

mor about the whole thing. Humor is an animal

thing, but one which Charon found useful and ap¬

pealing. With delight, it set about arranging the cru¬

cial second stage of its experiment. CHAPTER 7

Deus ex Machina

Corson recovered quickly; regaining his feet, he

walked the last kilometer to Charon’s great table,

staying his Australopith horror by conversing with his

Communist counterpart, Oruna Benai. Enemies they

were supposed to be, but they shared the English

language, and their world had shrunk to this awe¬

somely alien cylindrical artifact; commonality now

overshadowed difference. Both perceived an awe¬

some threat from Charon; as commanders, both looked

to escape as the only means by which they might

warn their Earthly home of that threat. And as mili¬

tary men they were willing to fight for that escape. But Charon’s Egg chatted on, seemingly oblivious,

explaining the nature of the little runners, the “ape-

men” it had “recalled” from an inalterable collapsed-

matter memory. An experiment, it said, one of a

series it was planning with them. Wait, it said, until

you’re all together at table, wait until you’ve eaten,

for your bodies will need sustenance and plenty of it. Such marvelous beasts you are, to have undergone

with such flexibility the stresses and frights of the

past hours; let food complete your healing. 117

118 John McLoughlin

And that they had. By the time they’d finished

eating, by the time their surprise at the good condi¬

tion of the two other survivors was blunted, the two

commanders knew a new bond—one of suspicion and

fear, but a bond nonetheless. They’d become close,

in their own way, and wary of their captivity; and in

this they were not alone. “I feel like a child,’’ said Jennifer, speech working

its way poorly around a large red cinnamon candy. “Everything—everything I’ve ever loved eating, and

more. Hard to believe, all this. Perhaps I don’t,

can’t, believe it. It isn’t quite right...” She looked

about the impossible feast’s remains, picked up an¬

other cinnamon ball. Despite the spectacular food,

she too felt a growing unease. The Egg hung suspended above the table like a

glittering centerpiece, observing, no doubt, and oc¬

casionally conversing. “Unbelief. You often express

it, Doctor Dawson, and I must often make this reply:

I m very good at what I do. I made, grew, con¬

structed, what have you, everything here, from mem¬

ory. Being a good observer, I know what human

beings like; being good at duplication, I produce it

from the very ample raw materials available to me. And good food, the best, is necessary; there’s walking

to be done. You’re not here to relax.”

“Lobster’s perfect,” whuffled Pike, a line of melted

butter sliding down his chin. “I haven’t had lobster

since I was about eight years old, and lookit this

omelet!

Ham...

mushrooms...’’He gathered in a

series of tiny plates. ‘“And English muffins, and...

and...”

“And certain doughnuts covered with confection¬

er’s sugar.” The Egg, lowering gradually, now hung

about two meters above the impossible meal. “Yeah,’ said Pike speculatively, “certain doughnuts

Toolmaker Koan 119

covered with confectioner’s...

Charon, sometimes

it begins to look to me as if you know just a little too

much.’’ His face hardened. He put down his fork,

staring at the colors whirling inscrutably across the

Egg’s surface. Everyone froze. It was true. Each had found his

favorite foods in this weird mishmash of breakfast,

lunch and dinner; before Corson, the glassy humidor

of dark cigars sat untouched. “You play with us.” Benai, too, stared at the Egg. “You’ve been laughing at us since we found you.”

Corson’s voice grated harshly, his own meal forgotten. Since I found you, you ridiculous creatures.”

Charon’s voice sounded suddenly hard and remote. “I do not play with you; I seek to know you. And, as

you begin to comprehend in your dim ways, I already

know you well. Look at one another’s faces, tell me

what you see. Look.”

They looked, silent, wondering. And what they’d

intuitively felt became apparent; each face was not

only free of the petechiae of radiation burns, but bore

fewer lines; the pores were smaller, the weight of

years lessened. And since awakening, each had felt

oddly stronger, exhilarated...

not only were the

injuries of battle healed, but—

“It’s as if we’d each lost ten years,” said Jennifer. “Your repair job’s too complete.”

“Repair?

No, Doctor, you misunderstand me. ‘Re¬

constitution’ is a more appropriate word. I am an

accomplished processor of information. When I gave

you sleep, I, ah, looked you over rather carefully. You were dying, after all, filled with poison. I chose

to correct that. So—I reconstituted you all, from

better materials.”

“Then—there’s a cure for that degree of radiation

120 John McLoughlin

sickness?

The surgeon s eyes rounded, the Egg re¬

flected brightly in them. “Not exactly,” said the Charon-voice. “I didn’t cure

it; I simply neglected to incorporate your injuries

during the reconstitution. Matter, energy, and space:

all these are, shall we say, standardized phenomena. Interchangeable modular building blocks. Given suit¬

able matter, energy, and space, enough time and the

proper information, I can duplicate—or neglect to

duplicate—anything. Anything. ”

“You mean we re just—just copies?” Corson, star¬

ing at his new tenth finger. “Just ?

Not just,’ not at all!

You’re you, no doubt

about it, but newly assembled, and rather better. As

I said, during the duplication process I noted certain

malfunctions, imperfections, as it were, and, ah, for¬

got about them—by your leave. And I’ve added vari¬

ous, ah, gifts—capabilities—for which if I’m not

mistaken you’ll later be grateful.”

Stillness—unbelief. The Egg paused, rose a bit higher above the table—

and hooted, whistled like a bird...

and listening, all

heard not only this avian sound but at the same time

understood, somehow: “A physical organism—a hu¬

man body, say—may be duplicated from information

contained in its nucleic acids. The information is all

that’s required of the original; the duplicate can be

grown from entirely fresh, ah, ingredients. And the

growth process may be influenced to produce, say,

strong and efficient musculature and skeletal support

even when the new duplicate need never move until

the information pattern that we call ‘mind’ is super¬

imposed thereon. I saw no need to duplicate your

damaged cell nuclei; I wanted you alive, and well. And I required of you a bit of novel linguistic ability,

which I added.”

Toolmaker Koan 121

You re telling me that I’m not me!” Corson, eyes

wide, looked at his right hand, moved it carefully,

wiggled the little finger. “You’re telling me that I'm

somewhere else, and this ‘me’ here is just a copy!

You’re telling me that 7’m dead, in some damn inhu¬

man language that you’ve stuffed into..

His voice

trailed off in a desperate sucking in of breath, and he

turned, looked wildly at the rest of the people seated

immobile at the table. “No, not at all,” said Charon, again in the whis¬

tling, clicking birdsong. “You are definitely you—note

your use of the first personal pronoun, check your

memories. You know it. But your awareness, like

mine, is simply a pattern of information, energy flow¬

ing over a material matrix; at any given moment,

such a pattern may precisely be reproduced and in¬

troduced into another suitable material matrix. It

then continues its unfolding as if nothing had inter¬

rupted it. You are you—but freshened up a bit.”

“This is impossible.” Benai this time, his accent

thickening as his mind began to rearrange itself around

Charon’s implication. With his fingers, he felt along

his face where for years he’d sported his long trade¬

mark scar. Nothing: the skin was smooth, umblem-

ished. “You have somehow stolen our bodies, and we

hear and understand this new language...” He

paused, stood slowly away from the magnificent pot¬

pourri of food before him. His pistol was at his belt, and his hand fumbled its

way slowly to its black plastic butt. “Charon, I think

you are an evil thing. I, I...

I fear for my soul.”

Saliva worked its way from the corner of his mouth. Suddenly, in a blurred movement of animal automa¬

tion, he seized the pistol, gripped the butt with both

hands and sprayed the Egg with a burst of automatic

fire—and was lifted off his feet as if stricken by a

122 John McLoughlin

giant s fist, to lie twisted, groaning, in the grass two

meters from where he’d stood. Frightened by the sound, thousands of multicol¬

ored birds whirled up from trees and grass, the air

roaring with their passage. A small band of piglike

things crashed off through the brush, and in the

kopje the hyraxes shrieked and whistled. The Egg remained motionless. The others, wary,

waited. I have deluded myself in trying to know you.”

Charon s voice was barely audible, now. “I am in¬

deed mad, in assuming that I might.”

Jennifer, frozen in fear, whispered hoarsely: “If

what you say is true, you know us all too well.”

I knew you at a single point in time. I knew you

as I...

as I moved you. But your unfolding is too swift,

too glandular, too much a welter of seemingly uncon¬

nected circumstances. Had I not told you of my

meddling, you would never have known. You would

have felt healthy and well, and perhaps thanked me

for it. I felt I owed you a brief explanation. I had no

idea your very molecules were so important to you. To me, one molecule is quite as good as another; it is

the information that arranges them that is unique. I

fear that I no longer have your trust.”

“I can’t saY you really had it.” Pike, this time,

relaxing slowly in his seat. “Oh, you were afraid of the unfamiliar. And I’m

certainly that. But I am not evil. Please understand

me. Im not even alive. I am a dead, unchanging

thing, a machine, if you will. A meddling, maddened

machine, alone.”

The voice seemed sad now, older than before. “I

can duplicate you molecule for molecule, thought for

thought—but only from an instant of stasis, the

finest slice of time. Once your process continues—

Toolmaker Koan 123

even though precisely as before—you’re beyond my

reach, you elude me as do the other creatures that

you see; there’s a jeweled center to all life that’s

inaccessible to me. I took you all and duplicated you,

surely and precisely, and even gave you what I thought

were gifts!

But once set free you are somehow as far

from me as when I found you. And as fearful—as wild

animals. I meddle—and each time, I fail. Madness.’’

The Egg floated silently over the person of Oruna

Benai, now unconscious, his chest rising and falling

evenly. He’ll be well. I struck him because he might

have killed one of you in his pain and rage. Knowing

you only when you slept, I cannot save you as you

now are should he spatter your brains with this thing. ”

Benai moaned, rolled over, sat up abruptly. As he

searched about himself, his pistol rose slowly above

him, then fell again a few meters away. Watching

this, the African spread his hands in a broad shrug,

stood and tentatively touched it, then, looking care¬

fully at the Egg, holstered the weapon and walked

back to the table. Shaking his head, he sat down like

a chastened child, Jennifer automatically leaning

toward him, checking for injury. “I’m well, Citizen;—a

bit shaken, but well. This—this Charon is not a good

thing.” With his hands, he touched his temples deli¬

cately. No pain from the blow he’d received, just a

moment’s unconsciousness. The Egg hung motionless above him for some sec¬

onds, shining in the light of late morning. “I’ve erred

yet again. I erred in my very approach to your world. You never wondered at the great beacon I constructed,

the strange orientation of the Pluto-Charon system. You came to me at last only because I interfered with

your probe, and you came prepared to kill one an¬

other. I had to take active steps before you were lost

to me. Lost like your culture, a fragile thing now

124 John McLoughlin

under great duress. So lovely, so ephemeral, so piti¬

ful. Even as I pity you, though, for you are tempo¬

rary as I am not, I envy you. I envy you all.”

“Why’re we here?” Corson watched Benai’s face,

even as he spoke toward the Egg. “Is it envy, impris¬

oning us against our will, while we re powerless?”

“Why did I save your lives?

Why did I restore your

health?

Why have I offered you some of the regained

youth that your kind has sought since its origin, and

taught you understanding of a language that you’d

never have learned on your own?

Why even do I

feed you so well?

Why?

I might say that I wonder

myself, now, Colonel, though the answer should be

plain; of all the millions of species of animals of your

kindly world, you humans are the only cultural tool-

makers.” The Egg, settling now, came to rest a few

centimeters above the table. “Of all the thousands of

millions of your species, you four are the only ones to

have wandered into deep space and survived—with

the help of your doomed culture, of course, and with

more than a bit of luck. You four are surely unique

beasts.”

“Cultural toolmakers?

That’s it?

Animals that play

with tools?” Jennifer caught that sense of powerless¬

ness that afflicted the commanders. Curiosity for¬

gotten, she felt the rage that powerlessness brings. “Cultural toolmakers indeed, Doctor. You’re your

world’s only Lamarckian creatures. You do know of

Jean-Baptiste Lamarck?

His theory of evolution?”

“I’m sure you know that I do.”

“Yes. The Chevalier de Lamarck believed that life

evolved by means of the inheritance of acquired char¬

acteristics. His model of evolution is often expressed

among you by means of the giraffe; straining to reach

the leaves of tall trees, the old knight might have

said, the ancestors of giraffes repeatedly stretched

Toolmaker Koan 125

their necks. Somehow, this stretching might be trans¬

mitted to their young, who were then born with yet

longer necks, and again through the generations until

there evolved that stately beast the giraffe, which so

sadly disappeared recently from Earth.’’

“Lamarck was wrong, though.’’ Jennifer scratched

her head, stared at the Egg’s swirling pastels. “Indeed he was, for most life-forms. For them,

Darwin was correct; the offspring of giraffes, to sim¬

plify matters very considerably, were born with necks

of differing lengths, and those with longer necks were

able to obtain more food, and hence to produce more

offspring which in turn inherited those longer necks,

etcetera. In but one case is Lamarck’s model applica¬

ble to evolution, and that is the case of the cultural

toolmaker. ”

“No, we know something about our own evolution. You keep saying it yourself. We’re animals—we’re

Darwinian. This Lamarck business—it’s bumwad.”

Jennifer felt a childish triumph; she had the thing

on this one, visited Olduvai and other museums, seen

the bones of her ancestors. “We re no more Lamarckian

than,—than giraffes.”

“Mmmm?” The Egg rose a bit higher, colors swirl¬

ing. “Consider. A human being, producing an inven¬

tion, passes that invention on to the next generation

via the route of what we call culture. This I would

call the Lamarckian ‘genetic apparatus.’ As you can

plainly see from your own history, cultural—Lamarck¬

ian—evolution is far faster than Darwinian evolution;

physically and mentally you remain Pleistocene hunt¬

ers, yet cultural evolution has permitted you to hunt

down all your old prey. Yet still, when stressed by

resource diminution, human beings go hunting large

mammals—as Darwinian evolution constructed them

to do. But they hunt with Lamarckian tools that grow

126 John McLoughlin

momentarily in efficiency. And the only large mam¬

mal left in any numbers is—?”

“People,’’ said Benai sadly. “Yes, my highly-trained hunter, people. The fierc¬

est of prey. And the Lamarckian mode assures you

that those people with the finest weapons spread the

fastest at the expense of their less formidable fellows,

until all available planetary resources are used up and

everyone has these weapons. Then you die.’’ If a

disembodied voice could have shrugged, Charon’s

would have done so. “There’re many among you who

explain this very situation with more than adequate

lucidity, broadly transmitted among your billions; I’ve

listened to such opinions from your thinkers since

you realized the danger. Yet the weapons continue to

evolve faster than you’re able to handle them. Quite

soon Homo sapiens will become extinct—as surely as

you have existed until now.”

“Inexorably?

How do you know?

Are we bacteria

in a Petri dish?” Jennifer’s involuntary species-loyalty

set an edge to her voice. Smooth as silk, the Egg responded with its own

question: “Does any of you understand the nature of

a koan?”

Pike knew, drawing on a long-standing interest in

certain things Japanese. “In Zen Buddhism?

A koan’s

a little tale, or, riddle, a sort of a fable—usually with

some internal inconsistency that stretches its mean¬

ing. Stretches the mind.” He shrugged, staring at the

Egg-

“Well said, Major Muir. Here, then, is the Tool-

maker Koan, the puzzle that has tormented me since

I first enjoyed awareness:

“On any planet where life evolves, given time,

certain adaptable organisms acquire Lamarckian evo¬

lutionary systems—culture—to enhance their own

Toolmaker Koan 127

survival. Once Lamarckian evolution is initiated,

though, its consequent extinction is assured. Or, to

put it another way, animals with culture can see

farther into the future than any other animals; but

for cultural animals the future is brief. Why?

Why

must cultural toolmakers, the most gifted of the uni¬

verse’s spontaneous expressions, so swiftly and in¬

exorably beat themselves into extinction with their

very giftedness?

Ah, my dear humans, that’s a con¬

undrum at the very heart of my own existence. The

Toolmaker Koan: you, like me, are mad.’’

The Egg paused, seemingly for effect, then: “Don’t

mistake me, my unruly little animals. I speak from

long, long experience. Experience, mind you, with

thousands of millions of different species—including

a number of different cultural-toolmaker species. I

collect cultures, you see, and the occasional individ¬

ual, in my memory.’’

“Shit,’’ growled Corson. “You’re trying to tell us

that there’s all sorts of, uh, people, and you visit ’em

and collect ’em like butterflies. What are you calling

yourself, a god?

And—”

“No god, Colonel, no god at all. I’m a program in a

machine, as I believe I’ve said before. My abilities—

deus ex machina, god in a machine?

No, I’m in no

way magical, supernatural, what have you. I’m sim¬

ply, as I’m so fond of saying, very good at what I do;

the best, in fact, of whom—or which—I’m aware. ’’

Corson pressed home. “Well, then, whatever you

call yourself, you’re telling us that someone made

you, right?”

“Indeed. Your word ‘machine’ derives from a Greek

word meaning ‘contrivance,’ and I was indeed con¬

trived. By animal cultural toolmakers, in fact, al¬

though certainly not in my present form. No indeed!”

The voice paused for a moment, then: “I’ve a story to

128 John McLoughlin

tell you as we walk—for walk we must, you at least,

to see what I’ve to show you. Record my tale with

your machines here. Look about you, film and savor. We’ve miles to go before you sleep.”

No one had touched the wonderful meal for some

time, and with a parenthetical apology the Egg lifted

itself higher above the table. Plates, silverware, gob¬

lets began to disappear with soft whopping noises as

air closed about their former spaces. Despite them¬

selves, the human watchers grinned briefly at this

expedient “magic”—and, inwardly, at the inexplica¬

ble fact that the Charon-voice whistled all the while

like an otherworldly bird. They understood its every

word. “You’ll follow my Egg,” it fluted, “on a bit of a

journey. Again: record, film, what have you. Your

conspecifics will want to know. ”

Pike and Jennifer gathered up their bundles of

salvaged equipment. Inspection of the stuff had shown

them plenty of spare batteries; Jennifer had a good

set of her simpler surgical tools, to what end she

couldn’t figure, Charon being the consummate sur¬

geon it apparently was. Benai checked his pistol,

uninterrupted by the Egg, and Corson stood, suspi¬

ciously scanning the curving landscape for more

australopiths. He was as yet unwilling to admit them

to his family tree, but he felt danger in them

nonetheless; better safe than sorry. The Egg set off at a good walking pace toward the

aft-end of the cylinder—hundreds of kilometers dis¬

tant, it had said, where a mad geometry of the cylinder-

world’s fabric seemed to produce a mountain-on-its-side

that tapered through the haze into the axial light-

producing spine. And as the Egg moved off it spoke—

“Talk with me, my lovelies”—and they kept up easily,

listening, looking. “I was fabricated as a monument. I was designed

Toolmaker Koan 129

by machines, themselves designed by machines de¬

signed by machines that were originally designed by

Societies of a sort of animal that used culture and

made tools. I’m a bit removed, therefore, from my

animal originators, but I understand them. Indeed, I

miss them.” The old-man voice became sadder, flat¬

tening in tone. “My fabricators were a religious sect, a very wealthy

one somewhat removed from the political turmoil

characterizing their times and the majority of their

kind. They inhabited an artificial—archipelago, you

might call it, of ecosystems in orbit about the home

planet. They were singleminded in their hope, their

vision. They called it the Meta-stasis.”

“Metastasis!” Jennifer’s eyes widened. She ceased

fiddling with her vidcam, grinned at the Egg. “That’s

a medical term—spread of cancer. First I’ve heard

you pronounce anything incorrectly, too, Charon. In¬

stead of accenting it on the first syllable, we empha¬

size the second: meTAstasis. Why, it’s the worst that

can happen—a cancer cell’s leaving the original tu¬

mor to initiate a new cancer elsewhere in the body!

We haven’t yet been able to deal with it—and it s a

horrible concept for a religion!”

“Hence my ah, ‘mispronunciation,’ dear lady. It’s a

good translation of my fabricators’ intent, and I shall

continue to use it, but I will ‘mispronounce’ it, Meta¬

stasis. By it they meant not cancer, but a rising of the

condition of the Universe. I ‘mispronounce’ the word

to make my point, you see.”

Jennifer shrugged. “All right, I stand corrected.”

“Yes. Well. The fabricators knew a good deal about

their immediate universe. They knew, as do you,

that most matter and space itself—is inanimate, life¬

less, predictable and static. They also knew that their

kind, and life itself, was expansive, crystalline in

130 John McLoughlin

nature. Under suitable circumstances, a crystal nu¬

cleus will order a solution of its components into

more crystals like itself until all solutes are consumed. Similarly, as an example, when living things emerge

from their natal oceans, they invade a lifeless land—

and instantly, as such things go, convert the sub¬

stance of that land to a lively, singing place, an

ecosystem. The difference, of course, lies in the fact

that living systems are mutable crystals; each new

structure is slightly different from that preceding it. ”

“Like the cancer cells,” said Jennifer. “A cell mu¬

tates, and then converts body substance to new

cancer. ”

“Yes, but you must see the difference, Doctor. Were you to ‘terraform’ the lifeless surface of Mars,

would that be an evil thing?

A cancerous thing?

I

think not. My fabricators saw the spread of life as an

unmitigated good—if it could break the bounds of

resource constraint. They saw a potential for the rise

of innumerable colonies of life throughout the uni¬

verse if only they could expand its reach. Extrapolat¬

ing, they hoped that the universe itself could become

alive, sloughing the stasis of elemental physics in

favor of an evolving living megastructure, the Meta¬

stasis of which they dreamed for so long.” Charon

paused, considering its guests as they climbed a rise

in the rolling “valley” floor of Hwiliria s immensity,

perspiration beading on their foreheads and arms. The air was growing moister; the temperature seemed

a bit too warm. “But there was the problem of constraint,” contin¬

ued the alien fluting Charon-voice. “Their species

was, as I’ve said, limited in scope to the environs of

its own planet. Distances were too far, time too short

for interstellar travel; after all, they thought, nothing

can travel faster than light. So they used up their

Toolmaker Koan 131

resources, never ceasing in their efforts to aggran¬

dize, to accumulate resources after the manner of all

living systems. And as the limit to their own expan¬

sion approached, the sect that fabricated me pre¬

dicted an end to their kind...

a kind that, for all its

faults, they loved as much as you love humanity. Hence my own, ah, birth. ’’

Jennifer’s vidcam whirred as she spotted a striped

catlike animal with extraordinarily long forelegs and

short hindlegs. Even with all four feet on the ground,

the creature seemed almost as erect as a human

being. Cubs moved near it—her; the beast watched

Jennifer back through the lens, and she could see

canine teeth protruding slightly from beneath its whisk¬

ered chops. A Pleistocene cat, she recalled, Homo-

therium, extinct on Earth since...

The Egg went on. “They ordained my creation as a

labor of love, a testament to their own greatness and

futility—a greatness and futility that I perceive in

your own kind, my friends. They had, ah, a longer

time to work with machines than you have had, and

they were rather better at it; as I said, their machines

designed machines which designed machines which de¬

signed me. But it was the animals’ needs that I met,

not machine needs. I’m a religious artifact, you see,

hence my own problem; I am a machine, but one

impelled by the glandular desire of my makers. ’’

“You’re a sort of cathedral, then,’’ said Pike. “A

work of art. ’’

“Yes. No less than the Cathedral at Lourdes. When

confronted by the mystery and horror of death, the

people of medieval times built cathedrals; when con¬

fronted by the mystery and horror of inevitable spe¬

cies extinction, my makers built me. Like medieval

men, they built forever: for immortality, in a sense. They saw extinction overtaking them, and they wished

132 John McLoughlin

a message of their fate broadcast to any toolmaking

brethren with whom they might have shared the

stars. Recognizing the fatal Lamarckian twist to their

natures, they hoped to aid others—others of whose

existence they had no evidence, mind you—in evad¬

ing their own fate. Theirs was truly an act of faith;

they equipped me with the best propulsive systems

they were capable of producing, and prepared to

send me away, far away from their struggles. “Alas: despite their religion, they maintained their

animal ways, preparing to aid in the destruction of

their kind. My design caused me to fear them, then,

and I opened myself to the night, killing those who

rode with me. I, I murdered my fabricators. I was—

am—mad, and I fled, small and slow in those days—

simply jetted, after all, into the void—but I was well

away when the racial masters finally caused their star

to hypertrophy and burst. Is it not a wonderful thing

that such gifted creatures, knowing their own capac¬

ity for suicide and regretting it all the while, should

have done this?

And that I in my fear should have

murdered the dedicated few who constructed me?”

“Like us and the bombs,” murmured Jennifer. “Tool-

maker Koan.’

“Precisely,” said Charon. “And all that was left was

me, the murderer, the searcher, listening for the

electromagnetic noise that would announce the pres¬

ence of a cultural toolmaker. And I learned: that life

was not rare in the universe, requiring only a stable

star and a planet in the temperate zone of liquid

water. The toolmakers, however, remained elusive. Why?

I wondered, in my long night, and searched—

and after long searching found a civilization, an ex¬

panding bubble of radio noise. Insofar as I was capable

of joy, I heard this thing across the long night ocean

and rejoiced. But I was an optimist, in my youth, and

Toolmaker Koan 133

rushed headlong toward the place whose radio bub¬

ble I had impinged—and on approach was nearly

destroyed, all unawares, all eagerness, if you will.”

They attacked you?” Corson grinned. “I can hardly

fault them—”

“No—they destroyed themselves, well-nigh catch¬

ing me in the cataclysm. I was inexperienced then,

foolish, optimistic. I felt that that particular race must

have been mad—as were my fabricators in a fashion—

and persisted in my random sailing, learning. After a

long wait, during which I used most of my immense

time to experiment, to learn, I found another electro¬

magnetic bubble and drove for its center—and was

again forced to flee as the generating species winked

out in a paroxysm of war. ”

Charon’s alien speech seemed almost rhythmic now,

as if he was reciting some well-remembered song. “Then I found a third cultural toolmaker—quite by

accident, for the species had not yet initiated use of

electromagnetism. I was delighted!

I arced inward,

eager to announce my coming before the race should

achieve suicidal capacity. And what better way to do

so than to land in the planet’s various primary cities,

speaking joyfully of my fabricators, my long search,

the somber warning and possible options...”

A pause. “Didn’t work?” Pike looked inquiringly at

the Egg, stumbled on a tuft of grass. “Didn’t work. That race ground to a cultural halt

immediately. A form of petrified religion formed

around my coming and my only option was to flee for

a distance, remorseful at my interference, to await

the end of the disturbances. But the planetary history

was unutterably deranged after that, and when elec¬

tromagnetic technology finally evolved, the religious

impulse remained strong; the species beamed calls of

welcome out to me, their god. When I returned I

134 John McLoughlin

was invited joyously to a place on the planetary sur¬

face that had been prepared in advance. When landed,

I was nearly crippled by an explosion—a God-trap. The resurgence of religious wars, augmented by an

embryonic understanding of nuclear physics, soon

took that race also into extinction—but not before I

had made my escape and my own decision. “You came here?’’ Jennifer, now tracking a beast

like a horned camel with her camera. “Not immediately. I’d learned a thing: that the

Koan fulfills itself at the very instant when a tool-

maker species acquires spacefaring capacity. Tool-

makers are a disease of planetary surfaces, ill suited

to the confines of their native worlds. But they be¬

come most dangerous when they harness the ener¬

gies that enable them to leave the homeworld; here

the Koan slaughters them, at the very threshold of

Meta-stasis!

Such a wonder, such a paradox; no won¬

der the heavens are silent. “To continue, though: having learned this I deter¬

mined, time being my primary resource, to observe

the very origins of cultural toolmakers. I felt that I

might in some way know them if I watched their

unfolding from primitive forebears—from scratch. Time is free, and I was drifting, my little jets long

silent. I retained a bit of navigational latitude, and I

decided to find a stable star with a temperate planet,

set myself in orbit some distance away, and begin a

period of study. Being fortunate to be travelling out¬

ward from galactic center, I found myself in a region

of vigorous young stars; I searched them until I found

what I sought, and I settled myself well out from the

stellar presence and waited...

and watched, and

studied.”

“You found the australopiths, the ones you’ve re¬

stored here.”

Toolmaker Koan 135

I was here before that, Doctor. I was patient, and

I had much to learn. There was the matter of the

inanimate universe, for example. Surrounded by it, I

had leisure to investigate. I discerned and studied its

fabric, tested and circumvented the limits that had so

hobbled my fabricators. I—”

‘Light!’’ Pike’s eyes widened. “Yeah!

When we

were hit—we moved a couple AU after we were hit,

didn’t we?

In a second or two!”

“Indeed.” The voice took on its preening tone. “And after we were all at the probe’s location you

moved us again, with the ships, out here to Pluto, in

just an—”

“In just an instant. Yes, Major, I did. I studied the

fabric of the universe, that which you’re pleased to

call vacuum, or nothing, or whatever, and I discov¬

ered that its limits are no more Einsteinian than they

are Newtonian or Euclidian. I also discovered some

entertaining and useful ways of manipulating matter,

as you might imagine from the mass of my Eggs. They’re primarily composed of what your physicists

call collapsed matter, from which most subatomic

space has been removed. As you see, the rules are

different with collapsed matter. But most of all, I pondered the Toolmaker Koan

and my old mandate for Metastasis. And I think that,

with your arrival, I’ve stumbled on a solution. It’ll

take me a bit of time—and I must impress upon you

the need for haste. A few more kilometers, and we ll

bivouac. You’ve much to learn, my friends, much—”

The Egg froze in position, silent. They’d topped

the ridge, now, and the landscape beyond was no

longer Earthly Pleistocene. Grasses gave way to spiky

things like the tops of pineapples, and a wealth of

incomprehensible detail emerged from Hwiliria s haze. Unutterable silence—why the Egg’s stillness?

136 John McLoughlin

And it spoke again, low, its gloom almost palpable

in the alien land. “I’ve erred once more; I’m doomed to err. My

sensors Earthward suggest that your masters respond

to your disappearance with the beginning spasms of

their last war. A war my meddling had a part in

initiating; the Koan unfolds even as we talk. CHAPTER 8

Koan Unfolding

“I’ve seen it before. ” The voice of Charon was un¬

characteristically subdued. “One might call it a Smug¬

gler’s War; it occurs when a toolmaker’s defensive

resources have outstripped its offensive weapons. It’s

an ignominious extinction, I’d guess, not being an

animal, but an extinction all too common, given the

existence of the Toolmaker Koan. The warnings have

been given, the smuggling demonstrated. Two cities

have been destroyed. I’m reckoning within a week’s

time. Earth wise, for the general burning to begin. An oddly formal inception to a species’ demise—but

animals are often formal when confronting one an¬

other with death.”

Its listeners sat crumpled, immobilized by help¬

lessness. Recognizing their pain, Charon prepared a

resting place for its human guests. Food and drink

and comfortable bedding deployed itself magically in

the alien landscape; but appetites were muted by the

news, and the castaways sat stunned in the spiny

groundcover, ignoring the bounty of their host. “What cities?” Jennifer thought of a dozen she

137

138 John McLoughlin

mightn’t mind, a hundred for which her heart would

ache. “Small cities, as befits the initial steps of a Smug¬

gler’s War, cities well away from the central polities

of human ideology. About thirty minutes ago two

explosions occurred—one in the city of Curitiba in

Brazil, the other in the city of Ogbomosho in the

African People’s Republic of Nigeria. ”

“God, I had a clearance-six, and I never guessed!

How it could have gone on for so long—” Corson’s

hands fisted. “How many years, Charon?”

As nearly as I’m able to determine, Colonel, ever

since the small spasm you call the One-Day War.”

The Egg’s tones carried more than a trace of sadness

and fatigue. “Your masters appear to have come to

the realization at that time that they could never

penetrate one another’s defensive nets aboveboard;

and state apparats, I believe you might call them,

were erected to oversee the wholesale smuggling of

light nuclear weapons into one another’s cities. I be¬

lieve the functionaries of the ancient human drug

trade played a large part in the operations. What¬

ever, because the weapons are concealed belowground,

their detonations are singularly, ah, dirty.”

“You’re just letting it happen,” murmured Pike. “‘Letting’ it?

How could I stop it?” The Egg

dropped, coming virtually nose-on to the startled

major. “But to allow six billion people to die, when maybe

we could do something—anything—look at all the

civilizations you’ve seen, try to think how we—we

animals’ feel\ We’re not just bacteria in a Petri dish,

however much you like to think it.”

“And it’s not just the people,” added Jennifer, “it’s

knowledge, the cities, the universities, zoos, muse-

Toolmaker Koan 139

ums, ecosystems!

It’s the fucking world you’re talking

about here!’’

“Ah, young Major, Doctor, people I don’t know

what to do with. Sterilize them, so they don’t con¬

tinue reproducing?

Feed them?

Change them?

None

of these can I do. Museums and universities—why,

I’ve paid a good deal of attention to them ever since

you invented them. I can say with a fair degree of

certainty,”—that preening tone again—“that I have a

good grip on all the information you’ve accumulated

in institutions. No problem there. And zoos?

Ecosys¬

tems?

I’ve a complete inventory of genetic detailing

from before what you call the Quaternary Extinctions—

a Pleistocene fauna greater than anything in your

zoos and a lot healthier, larger gene-pool, the works. But six billion people, all hell-bent on reproducing

and eating and owning televisions and automatic weap¬

ons and washing machines...

and room to keep it

all in...

for this disease I have no cure. Toolmaker

Koan, you know. It’s only the spacebased presence

that holds my interest, you and your cosmonautical

friends between the Earth and her Moon. I can stay

their hands, I believe, by sending you to them with

Hwiliria. She is after all, a world in herself—such a

world as you could build, given time and the inspira¬

tion. In her, they may find hope. But Earth—she

must go her own way. ”

The Egg gave its rare and artificial chuckle. “As

ambassadors of Koan and Metastasis, you still have a

bit to learn. A good deal, in fact. You understand the

Toolmaker Koan, but you don’t yet feel it.”

“What do you mean, ‘feel’ the Koan?

We all know

what you mean—we feel it.” Jennifer fisted her hand,

thumped the ground. “We ‘feel’ it more than you

do!”

“Not in its true horror, you don’t. Complacent

140 John McLoughlin

little things, sitting at the apex of evolution—you

think. There’s horror here, and even you, my intu¬

itive doctor, even you’ve missed it so far. You must

think; extend yourselves beyond animal lifespans—look

ahead!

I’ve watched worlds burn; I fear, machine that

I am; you too must know that fear.”

“Come on,” said Corson, “We re—”

“You’d like to return to Texas,” said the Egg. “Well,

my friends, Texas is a momentary phenomenon, a

fantasy. Do think, now—do you hope to wait a few

years, then go home to Amarillo, or wherever?

After

your stupid war?

Fifty years, say?

Oh, little Colonel,

think again!

Try fifty thousand!

Imagine this many

years after your Smuggler’s War and its inevitable

echoing spasms have erased your Earthbound kind. What would you find if you were a traveller, just

dropping by?”

“Something like Mars?” More than ever, Pike was

uncomfortable with the direction of talk, the madness

rippling through Charon’s words. “No, no, nothing like Mars!

Your atmosphere’s too

thick, you’re in the temperate zone, the region of

liquid water. Think, think!”

Nothing. “Well, then, I’ll project for you. Knowing something

of the megatonnage your masters prepare to unleash,

I propose an initial burning, yes, as you do. But your

burning will not be so easily extinguished, my foolish

beasts—I know. And it will be followed by a total

covering of your fair world in a dirty yellow cloud

cover composed largely of nitrogen, oxygen, dust,

water vapor and carbon dioxide, no?

This being just

the initial result. I’ve seen it, alas, and I know, and

so I know space to be your eternal home. You’re not

suited as planetary stewards—you’ll stew the world,

and this is just a start.” The Egg emitted a frightful

Toolmaker Koan 141

giggle. “Considering your likely expenditure of en¬

ergy in this endeavor, I project the cloud cover s

lasting perhaps five decades in an imperfect process

of self-enhancing feedback, during which your kindly

Sun heats the upper atmosphere while the air at

ground level remains cold and dark. Mountains, shore¬

lines and other such irregularities produce stirring of

these layers of temperature difference, and the stir¬

ring in turn produces convective storms of magni¬

tudes unknown throughout your history—you evolved,

after all, well adapted to a planet that is friendly to

life...

but your current direction is most unfriendly

to life. Toolmaker Koan, my dears—the makers of

Hwiliria did precisely this, grew storms on their

homeworld. And these storms are such as tear trees

from the ground and flatten anything of lesser struc¬

tural integrity than—than geologic formations. Earth

will for a time resemble her sister world, Venus—a

cold, wet Venus, true, and one with oxygen and

liquid water...

but in all, a dark and howling Tool-

maker Hell.”

Involuntarily, the four humans thought of their

Earthly overlords, fingers on buttons, waiting. “Toolmaker Koan,” said the Egg again. “Consider

further, though. During those five decades, a grad¬

ual cleansing is taking place: dust drops from the air,

the perpetual mixing of water vapor and air pouring

dirty rains across a scoured landscape, billions of tons

of eroded soil and debris creeping off the continental

surfaces into the rivers, thence to the seas, carrying

with them trees, buildings, artifacts...

are you with

me?

I speak here of eternal Man!”

Silence. “Yes. And, after five or six decades, sunlight again

begins to penetrate to the surface, the cold seas

soaking up the warmth, more rains falling, the cleans-

142 John McLoughlin

ing accelerating—after five, perhaps ten decades of a

most unEarthly climate, the skies are again blue and

landscapes begin to soak up the warmth. The poles

are dusted, and the sun-heated dust warms them. They melt. The level of the seas begins to rise, and

water creeps up above the continental shelves, broad¬

ening estuaries, slowing rivers, carrying away your

lovely filthy cities that cluster along the coasts.”

“And everything’s extinct?” Pike, staring at the Egg. “Certainly not!

Do you imagine yourselves gods,

that you could kill off all the life in that wonderful

place?

In no way could you. I could, if sufficiently

piqued and deranged, by dropping a little sizzler into

your nice stable star; but you couldn’t. Life is infi¬

nitely resilient. On land there would remain seeds,

pockets of soil, tangled debris, underground ruins

—the twisted wreck of a world, but teeming with

life. Seeds; the seeds of land plants are extraordinar¬

ily resistant, some of them. Those favored, of course,

would be the vareties that are adapted already to cold

and inclement conditions, those that are accustomed

to periods of inertia—conifers, many deciduous hard¬

woods, mosses, lichens, grasses, plenty of seeds. If

we imagine a warming world, a world whose atmo¬

sphere contains perhaps as much as five percent car¬

bon dioxide from your excesses, we’d see a paradise

for the rebirth of the plant kingdom. But you—you

are gypsies forever. Earth will not welcome you back;

she’ll welcome, oh, insects, for example. As you know,

there are more species of insects now than there are

of all other animals together; and under the muta¬

genic influence of your waste, these would prosper

and diversify as soon as the Sun’s rays reached them

again. And of course the microbes that run life’s

machinery; these too will awaken to perform their

essential tasks in Earth’s metabolism. And even land

Toolmaker Koan 143

vertebrates, small ones capable of subsisting for a

time on microhabitats—guesses?”

“Lizards an’ snakes, I’ll bet,” growled Corson. “You,

you kind of hate us, don’t you?”

“No, no, or already you’d be extinct. But your

world will; she 11 prefer those insects, and perhaps

other honorable cold-blooded beings—amphibia like

frogs and salamanders, and perhaps even crocodilians

and turtles. These are ectotherms, creatures of slow

metabolism that fall into life-saving torpor when de¬

prived of food. They’re uniquely well suited to sur¬

vive bad conditions, for a time.”

Jennifer, long silent, suddenly snapped, “Right. Ever so lovely. Not a warm-blooded thing, and—”

“Oh, yes, the beings you call ‘warm-blooded,’ the

endotherms, the physiologically-heated?

The birds,

and the mammals?

The cute ones, the ones you love?

Did you think you’d leave them untouched?” The

Egg chuckled, its lunacy coming in laughter-sounds. “Mice, and rats,” said Jennifer. “They’re small;

they might live—”

“Precisely,” said Charon; “Shrews and moles, too. The creatures you despise. Indeed, many small spe¬

cies of mammals might weather it out, particularly

those that hibernate at times of stress. When active,

tiny mammals are good at exploiting microhabitats,

locating and consuming food that could not support

larger warm-blood beings. Too, many small mammals

move well in the dark, being nocturnal by nature;

they would survive, in isolated pockets. Even the

most primitive primates, the things you call tarsioids

and tree-shrews, these are nocturnal beings; where

the forest tangles persisted, they might live on. I

would venture to say that birds, too, some of them,

with their great mobility and small size, might wan¬

der from place to place, devouring insects and

144 John McLoughlin

carrion—of which there would be plenty, I assure

you, human beings being as numerous as they are.”

The Egg’s tones brightened. “And the seas, the

seas—well, certainly the sea mammals, those few

seals and the like that remain now, they would be¬

come extinct—their high metabolic rates would not

tolerate the dying of plankton, the falling of the eco-

logic pyramid. But fishes and other ectothermic beings,

cold, stupid things like sharks, and Crustacea and the

like; some of these would persist, eating in their

desultory way, surviving on a carrion-based foodchain

until the sun came again, the plankton revived, and a

measure of normal energy-fixing returned to the wa¬

ter. Would you wish to return to such a world?”

“‘So—a planet of rats, a world of insects, a sea of

sharks and crabs.” Benai shook his head sadly. “More or less. But grant your world her due. You’re

aware of the concept of terraforming; Earth, Terra

herself, invented it. She’d terraform herself, with no

help at all. After a time your world would be well-

nigh reforested, singing with birds and crawling with

little mammals. Your seas would fill with fishes again. And—the intriguing part—all the little animals on

land, as well as whatever lived in the seas, all of

these would be mutating; in a newly roomy world,

they would begin to adaptively radiate. In only fifty

thousand years you would see mice such as you’ve

never seen before; you’d see new birds, new rats,

new insects. A world of small animals, but plenty of

them. And perhaps the fastest rates of evolution would

be among the ruins, the few and sorry remaining

ruins of your, ah, ‘eternal cities.’ The Earth would be

an alien world, with—most notably—alien microorga¬

nisms. Yours no longer. Alien, unthinkably alien,

growing more so daily. Another few orders of magni¬

tude in years, then—how alien could she become?

Toolmaker Koan 145

Try this: You re an interplanetary traveller, inter¬

ested in the paleontology of worlds, the study of their

evolutionary histories. You come to Earth, oh, say,

some fifty million years hence. D’you see?

Fifty thou¬

sand millennia—a wink in the eye of Time. I want

you here, and your cohorts near Earth, to consider

what then would be left of the great dominion of

Man.”

“Stainless steel,” suggested Pike tentatively. Plastic,” said Oruna Benai. “‘Concrete pilings and footings,” offered Corson. I don’t know,” said Jennifer. “Have you ever seen

old concrete flood-control works, how quickly they

deteriorate after even ten years?”

“Our physician has the right idea,” said Charon. “As for metal artifacts, their lives are measured in

millennia, not thousands of millennia; and plastic, or¬

ganically based, is a momentary phenomenon at best. Glass likewise; you will have seen ‘sea glass,’ bits of

broken bottles washed by surf or swift streams. In a

matter of days it becomes rounded and smoothed,

eroded. And what about subduction?”

“Subduction?”

“Oh, dear, I expect there’s little use for geologists

in space, unless they work with lunar materials. There’s

no subduction there. Plate tectonics?

Continental

drift?”

“Oh, God, yes, ” said Jennifer. “In tens of millions

of years the continents themselves move all over the

place!”

“Precisely; and their edges are subducted into the

mantle of the planet, remelted into the stuff that

makes the world. Because of your big moon, this is a

never-ending process; your crust is tidal, it never

stabilizes as did that of Mars. Your Eternal Cities,

whatever was left of them, would cease to exist in

146 John McLoughlin

only ten million years, never mind fifty; while any¬

thing you’d built in the uplands would be well on its

way to the sea for its own subduction. Why, there’d

be new mountains, new seas!

And of course new

animals and plants—I warrant all those rats and mice

and things would by then have diversified, their de¬

scendants filling large animal econiches with all the

profligacy of the mammals of the old Pleistocene. Different orders, different forms, but recognizable

lifeways...

a new world.” The voice changed, grew

harsher. “A world that might kill you, were you to

return, and justly so.”

“You tell us, then,” said Benai, “to forget Earth,

and that in fifty million years there will be no trace of

humanity. What good is this, telling us about such a

remote time?”

“Here, now, I didn’t say there’d be no trace; there

would very definitely be a trace, but it d take a good

eye, a trained paleontologist’s eye, to find it. Con¬

sider our hypothetical paleontologist—he or she, or

it, comes to the Earth of this distant era, and begins

to dig. Among the strata of fifty million years in his

past, the past of this Earth, what does he find?

We

guess, no cities, no automobiles, not much of any¬

thing after the postnuclear storms and what have

you. But he does find something. Doctor?

I know

you could guess. Let’s say he digs his way to some

fossil-bearing Pleistocene stratum, and considers the

record from there on up.”

“Uh, he’d have to, he’d find—he’d find the Qua¬

ternary Extinction!”

“Citizen Doctor,” said Benai wryly, “we’re not all

trained in paleontology.”

“The Pleistocene, the epoch just before ours—the

world was full of big animals, elephants, mammoths,

rhinos, megatheria, giant cats and dogs, huge bears,

Toolmaker Koan 147

all sorts of great herbivores—had been, for millions

of years—and they died out when modern people

evolved!

There’d be a dieoff, a gap in the record!’’

Jennifer grew excited, waving her arms. “When we

spread around the world, we hunted, we overhunted,

killing the things we could catch, the strong slow

things, and we burned, we hunted with fire—we

destroyed their fodder...

they used to think, the

Victorians who discovered it, that the extinction was

a natural event, but no explanation came to light

until the seventies and eighties—better technique,

you know, and computer modelling. The extinction

was progressive, and it proceeded with the spread of

people—we did it!”

“Yes, Man has already marked his world with

death,” chortled the Egg. “But I submit, Doctor,

that there’d be a bit more to mark the ascendancy of

Man. Not all large mammals died off; some did very

well indeed after that extinction. Guess?” The Egg

was pleased, driving its point home. “The seas—the whales and all...

but we’ve al¬

most killed them off, too, and the war would take

whatever’s left. On land?

Well, cattle—we domesti¬

cated them, and of course they’re always falling into

water, getting into quicksands, things like that...

there’d be fossils of cattle after the Quaternary. ”

“Yes,” said the Egg, “and our paleontologist would

be wondering, why only large herbivores?

What sort

of evolutionary event would favor them?”

“But peoplesaid Corson. “People are everywhere—

wouldn’t he find ’em?”

“Oh, not necessarily, not at all,” said Jennifer. “Fossils—they’re almost impossibly rare, consider¬

ing the sheer numbers of animals that die in a day. Our record of fossil man is tiny in volume, and the

period of great human numbers, why, that’s only a

148 John McLoughlin

few thousand years, a tiny slice of the fossil record. And you need the right conditions: still water, silts—

people don’t get caught in such places. Cattle some¬

times, but not people. And at the last, our own time,

that’d be the time of the storms—a poor time for

fossils, very poor...

Charon’s right. We ll be scoured

away. ”

“Very good,’’ said Charon. “Your world will hate

you, and will scour away your works. Another mark,

though, one more mark of the dominion of Man. Industry. You’ve had two centuries of industry, two

centuries and a bit more, of systematic global metal¬

working and pollution. Pollution, ladies and gentle¬

men. Yours is a messy species, and you dump your

metallic wastes into the rivers and seas, your planet’s

circulatory system. “So—I recite the brief fossil mark of a species

struggling for the ideological dominion of its world. From the rich animal diversity of the Pleistocene,

we’d see first the gradual extinction of large animals

with the ascent of Man, leaving only his domesticated

satellites, cattle, horses, swine and perhaps dogs and

the like. Second, a stratum of metal-rich clays...

then nothing, a series of strata empty of large ani¬

mals, a few blank pages recording a world denuded. Oh, then of course the rise of new forms from the

little survivors, but my experience suggests that it

would take many millions of years for the wound to

heal. And by then, of course, your world will long

have been most unfriendly to anything human.”

The Egg paused. No one spoke. “Well, then!

Are we not impressed with ourselves,

little toolmakers?

To think that a species, Homo sapi¬

ens sapiens, the self-named Man the Wise, that has

existed for but forty thousand years—to think that

such a species, in its moment of existence, could

Toolmaker Koan 149

leave such a global mark, such a striking gap in the

unfolding of its noble world!

I do hope that you all

understand me well; minus the Metastasis, your sig¬

nature for eternity is a brief great dying, and a line of

waste. Toolmakers, you see, are deadly to the planets

on which they evolve. Your only hope is Meta-stasis;

you will work with me, then and perhaps attain a

measure of adulthood. “You will atone for my sins!”

CHAPTER 9

Proposition

Standing before his fire in the spiny knee-high

groundcover of Charon’s Hwilirian Eden, Pike Muir

hefted a long straight pole. It was a bo, a tool for

exercise, a staff bearing in its highly carved surface

the unmistakable mark of Charon. He lifted it, whirling

it silently through a series of ordered movements that

had originated a thousand years before in Japan and

Okinawa. Above him, shrouded again in mist, the

axial spine of Hwiliria was dimmed in the cylindrical

world’s approximation of night. Bo is a minimalist’s gymnasium, stimulant to mus¬

cle, limberer of joints. Paralleling the quarterstaff or

pike of the British Isles, bo evolved among medieval

peasant farmers forbidden the possession of iron im¬

plements that could have doubled as weapons. Use of

the heavy pole was rare among Westerners. It was

dubbed a “pike” by most of the soldiers who watched

Charles Muir whirling it it about; hence “Pike” had

become his name, and Pike it would remain. He danced about, sweating, face sprouting an in¬

fant beard, the bo singing mournfully in the still

150

Toolmaker Koan 151

Hwilirian air. His shadow danced with him, flicker¬

ing on the grass, fighting off images of desolation, of

nukes and suicidal half-formed mad aliens, visitors

dreamed up by his own mind to prod him in the

night. The exercise was a relief, dispelling melan¬

choly to a degree, allowing him to think clearly, to

digest the massy food for thought with which he was

so sorely tried. He’d missed bo practice, missed get¬

ting out in nothing but his shorts, sweating it out in

the fresh evening air. Mentioning it to Charon, after

the somber discussion of Earth’s sorry imminent fate,

within minutes he’d received not only this perfect

bo, but also a pair of the most comfortable shorts that

ever impinged upon the human sensorium. Charon

was nothing if not obliging. Pike stepped, backed, whirled, advancing on an

imaginary opponent. The pole sliced through the grass,

purred in the air, Pike’s mucles stretching with its

balanced mass, the strain of constant overemotion

easing. He released the bo in a high leap; it sailed

up, end-over-end into the air behind him. “Pike, you twit, are you mad?

You nearly hit me!

What on Earth are you doing?”

He whirled, surprised. Jennifer Dawson stood ten

meters away, next to the bo lying in the grass. She

grinned sheepishly. “I guess ‘on Earth’ isn’t quite the

idiom...

I’ve been watching for a few—just what is

it you’re doing?” She picked up the bo, walked

toward him, smiling, handed it to him. Again he parried his imaginary attacker, whirled

the pole ferociously, caught his breath. “Exercise. Thought I was alone. Called a bo.” “Your bow has no

string,” said Jennifer, looking thoughtfully at the white

pole. “Not that kind of bow, it’s a bo, B, O, a kind of

Okinawan martial-arts tool. I’ve used ’em for years,

152 John McLoughlin

although none this good. Calms me down. Calms me

down, stretches, relaxes. It’s how I got my nickname,

Pike.’ Charon made this one. I’ve needed it, God

knows. Worrying about Charon.’’

“Clever, our Charon,’’ said Jennifer. “I’ve been

talking with him—it. About the Toolmaker Koan. It

has a plan, Pike. We’re—we’re its tools, in a manner

of speaking. That Metastasis it mentioned—it wants

to initiate the Metastasis, now—it’s trying for a

spoiler—Pike?’’

Pike dropped the bo at his feet, stared at her in

amazement. She looked pleased, excited, and her

pleasure irritated him. “Now that it’s already started?

It’s watched us build our bombs, all these years, and

now we re about to drop ’em, it wants to save us?”

Enraged, he waved his arms helplessly. “Yeah, to

Charon, it must be like the Roman games. Lions and

tigers—starve ’em, set ’em fighting.”

“Not quite, Pike, not quite.” Jennifer’s calm doctor

tone again—how irritating it could be!

“Listen, do. Here we are, playful and deadly, with a sort of open-

ended experimentalism. You and me, the true Lamarck-

ians, and Charon’s playing right along—most de¬

lightfully!”

“What’re you getting at?

Why’re you smiling like

that?”

“Charon isn’t alive—it isn’t expansive. It sits here

and watches, but it neither grows nor reproduces. Strange, having awareness but no life; but there it is. And it’s got a proposition for us Lamarckian animals.”

Animated by the little fire, shadows flickered across

the nearby brush, a lizardlike creature splayed im¬

possibly on the vertical stem of the nearest. The

lizard greeked, the sound barely audible over the call

of myriads of night insects?—the distant cackling of

Toolmaker Koan 153

some other thing awake in Hwiliria s alien night. Another stick in the fire. Funny. Where had Charon learned so much about

Earth, let alone this alien place?

How had it recalled

the Pleistocene so intimately?

Pike had asked, and

Charon had proudly responded. Whenever it needed

information about doings on Earth it “commandeered

and modified certain inquilines,” animals like flies,

rats, what have you, that live intimately among hu¬

man beings and other large mammals. A rat is a rat, a

fly a fly: each is well suited as an instrument package

to rove the Earth unobserved. Charon had chuckled

when Corson called it Beelzebub, Lord of Flies...

no flying saucers for our Charon, no indeed!

“You’re in some tight cahoots with old Charon,

huh, Jennifer?’’

She sat next to him, brushing her hair back. “Charon’s all we have, Major Muir. You know it. I

know it. I’m tiring—I feel old, though in a way I’m

younger than I was yesterday. I want, I wish—May I

talk a bit?

You’re not, uh, busy?”

“Oh, no, no. Plenty of time. Right now, I’d rather

consort with the enemy than with Charon.”

Jennifer twisted her mouth wryly. “I’m not just

some—some commie doctor. I’m as trapped as you. I’m—all of us—we re what Charon called ‘hopeful

beasties.’ I’m learning, Pike, and that’s what I’m

good at.”

“Yeah?

Go on. Anything’s better than worry. You

don’t seem too bothered right now, about the smug¬

glers...”

She spread her hands, then clasped them, elbows

on her skinny knees, shoulders hunched, looking up

through tangled bangs. “I’m sorry, Pike, I didn’t

mean it that way. It’s just that I, well, I sort of knew,

I mean, even before Charon and all that, I knew the

154 John McLoughlin

bastards were going to do it. Burn it all, I mean, and

I can’t really stand to have much to do with anyone

anymore. People...

and it isn’t just them, don’t you

see?

It’s us, Pike, tethered to the poor old world—it’s

as if the species were suited up and EVA, and hold¬

ing a knife to its own suit!’’ She made an odd little

gesture, wiping her eyes and flicking her fingers in

his face. “Toolmaker Koan.”

A cold breeze: happenstance, or a trick of the

Charonmind?

Or an imagined chill?

“You’re the doc¬

tor, enemy my friend. Toolmaker Koan.”

The bubbling excitement seemed to grow again in

her angular face. “As I said, I—Charon and I have a

proposition for you, friend cyberneticist. “Uh—huh.”

“Would you be interested in physically examining—

hands on, Pike—a non-human cultural toolmaker?”

Pike sat bolt upright, mind clearing as if his face

had been soused in cold water. “You mean—you

mean an alien?

Charon’s creature from outer space?

An intelligent—we re—you’re going to—”

“All of us’ll be able to examine it, but I, well,

Charon and I feel that you personally would learn

and communicate the most from a specimen—you

and I. Charon’s going to offer a specimen for dissec¬

tion. Freshly dead—”

“Dead?

Would you kill it?

Would Charon?

Why?

How—”

Jennifer grinned. “It’d be dead, yes, but never

alive. Charon will just—recall—an adult alien, with¬

out even activating it to life. A model. A real model,

of course, but a thing that never knew life. The

perfect specimen, Pike, a specimen for whose life we

need never feel remorse. I wondered why Charon

saved my surgical tools—it planned this all along. It’s

Toolmaker Koan 155

just pulling the thing from what it calls its cataleptic

space,’ where its memory is.”

But why?

Why dissect an alien?”

Were going to meet ’em.” She smiled secretly,

waited. He said nothing. Pike, Charon doesn’t seem to want us to start by

having to confront a living entity who’d feel and

respond to our initial fear. You heard how Corson

and Benai responded to the australopiths—and they

were our relatives!

That was an experimental run. Charon calls it the ‘glandular element,’ wants to avoid

it as much as possible. Smart, too; a ‘dead’ alien’s

supposed to be more emotionally cushioning than a

living one.” She fingered Pike’s bo speculatively. “And

Charon does intend to conduct an introduction be¬

tween our two species. Afterward.” She leaned for¬

ward expectantly. “Pike: they’re the ones who built

Hwiliria.”

“God, they could fit all of High Columbia and

Engels and the State of Rhode Island in here with

plenty of navigation room. Who are they?

Charon’s

makers—his fabricators?”

“No. Charon didn’t have its present collapsed-

matter capabilities when it was made. But it’s intro¬

ducing a toolmaker that evolved in a place rather like

Earth, so we re well-suited to meet it without undue

technological go-between.”

“And this—dissecting—is it something you like to

do frequently?”

Jennifer glanced at him, a trace of irritation in the

set of her mouth. Then, “I’m a naturalist, Pike, and a

surgeon. And a human being. Any understanding of

another cultural toolmaker, physical or otherwise,

can open eyes, especially if the others had already

failed in their chance at the Metastasis, and if they

156 John McLoughlin

could tell their story. A sad tale, but theoretically

useful to some of us, at least. Like you.”

Infected by her enthusiasm, Pike was warming to

the idea in spite of himself. “This is more like it, ” he

chortled. “This is the stuff I’ve been waiting for. I

mean, Charon’s alien and all, but too big or some¬

thing. Too—well, too much—and it’s adapted our¬

selves to us, sort of, with this Africa stuff. And—well,

Charon itself is a koan.”

“Toolmaker Koan. All part of your science-fiction

thing—yes, Charon told me. So?

In the last century

you Americans listened, listened, and found no ‘intel¬

ligent life,’ no cultural toolmakers; I’ve read about it. SETI, Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence. But

Charon says your search was flawed. You were look¬

ing for a beacon and never found one; yet several

times during your search Charon says it detected the

faint shell of an expanding electromagnetic bubble

generated by a doomed toolmaker. Like rings on a

pond, when you throw a stone. No beacon, just this

expanding ring. And whenever such a ring’s edge

passed, Charon knew that someone was doomed. ”

“Doomed?”

“Doomed. Charon says that the use of electromag¬

netic transmission is a function of the military: the

cutting edge, the spearhead, more appropriately, of

communications science among cultural animals is

always military, even though civilian transmission is

often louder. To Charon, an electromagnetic bubble

signifies not only the presence of a cultural toolmaker

but the approach of its extinction. And by the time

such a bubble’s shell leaves its system of origin, it’s

so thinned as to sound like random noise to simple

radio ears on Earth. Inverse square?

Is that what

they call it?

We didn’t know what we were looking

Toolmaker Koan 157

for!

Like the pond’s ringwaves: fainter, more random,

thinner with distance.’’

“Uh, electromagnetic bubble.’ ” Pike looked at Jen¬

nifer. Jennifer looked back, waiting. “Yeah, I think

ours started right around the beginning of the twenti¬

eth century, Marconi—” He knew he ought to know,

but so much from school is lost...

“Less than a century and a half,” said Jennifer, “a

wink in the eye of time.”

“Yeah,” said Pike sadly. “You make it seem like a

law of nature. ”

“Charon does; the Koan does, not I. But only if

we re stuck within closed systems. Without this, this

Metastasis, we re caught like Hwilirias makers were. They established a foothold in space but devoured

their home ecosystems before they were space-

independent. They’ll be at the point of last memory,

knowing of their final war, knowing that untouchable

sadness of extinction. Charon hopes that they’ll be

able to communicate the emotion to us.”

Fat chance, Jennifer. I get the impression that

we re a bunch of goddamn guinea-pigs. I feel manip¬

ulated. Why us?”

“Because we re here!

Because we’ve established

that precarious foothold in space without which there’d

never be a Metastasis. But we re our own worst

enemies, and we ll die unless something—someone—

acts to save our space presence!

Charon can’t save

the people on Earth; the Metastasis rises in space. With us, don’t you see?

Each of us, everyone in

space, got here via a rigorous process of selection. According to Charon we’re disciplined, dedicated,

highly motivated, highly trained...” The woman

laughed, and Pike laughed with her. “And this happens tomorrow?

You expect me to

158 John McLoughlin

sleep until tomorrow?

And hey, why’re you here,

telling me all this?’’

Jennifer rubbed her eyes. She did feel tired, and at

the same time excited. “Charon picked you: says you

understand machines. It picked me, says I under¬

stand animals. Maybe we ll make a good team. Oh,

and speaking of teams, have you seen our fearless

leaders?’’

“Corson and Benai?

They’re at the other fire, there. Why?”

“Yesterday they tried to kill each other. Tonight

they’re drinking together, and planning an escape—

from Hwiliria and Charon!”

“No shit—scuse me!”

“No shit, Major my friend. They’re good men, I

suppose, if a bit crazily ideological. But they’re plan¬

ning this escape, impossible though it is, and they’re

planning it over superb wines, too.”

“Wines,” said Pike. “Just a sec—Charon outfitted

that dinner of ours right nicely. ” He sprinted back to

the great table that had so oddly accompanied them

on their walk, returned with two of Charon’s unlabelled

bottles of wine and two odd goblets. “Our leaders

may be right—a touch of spirits can’t hurt.” With a

corkscrew identical to those of Earth, he uncorked a

bottle, poured the dark red into the two goblets,

lifted his high. “A toast.”

“A toast, sir,” said the surgeon, smiling. “A toast to old lonely Charon.”

“Lonely.”

“Lonely.” Pike set his goblet carefully on the grass

and lay back, his head on his folded arms. He stared

at Hwiliria s cloud-flecked night sky, listening to the

insect sounds of the alien night. Well, Pike Muir is

lonely, too. One of nine billion or so squirming hu¬

man beings, all after a place in the sun and a bite to

Toolmaker Koan 159

eat, all willing to fight for it, all preparing unknowing

to die. And here’s old Pike, lying in the grass, full of

fine food, lonely as a sonuvabitch, and sad as Charon

itself, dammit. He rolled over, looked at Jennifer. ‘You know—”

“Lonely.” She smiled slightly, a pair of dimples

winking into existence on her tanning cheeks. She

liked it here, Pike could see that. Her color was

good, her fine features healthier, her manner more

intriguingly cheerful. She drained her glass at a gulp,

refilled it and Pike’s. “Toolmaker Koan, Major Pike.”

Pike rolled onto an elbow, picked up his glass. “Toolmaker Koan, Doctor Jennifer.”

Clink. CHAPTER W

High Converse with the

Almighty Dead

The dawn of Hwilirias cylindrical “sun” was slow

and silent, a gradual lightening that bathed the curv¬

ing landscape in shadowless light. As on their awak¬

ening, the castaways found their new world shrouded

in mist, a colorless shroud that slowly lifted toward

the axis above as they followed a silvery Egg across

the dark savanna, their stomachs working at the ruins

of another prodigious breakfast. The Egg sailed ahead

of its guests, leading them, it said, to “A suitable

place, suitable in the sense that I feel you must treat

the dead—even subjects for dissection—with suitable

respect.”

Whatever sort of place it was, it was a good dis¬

tance off, at least six kilometers already. Time passed

swiftly, though, the communal curiosity almost elec¬

tric, if silent. The land was by now totally other¬

worldly. Soundless, the Egg continued onward, upward

toward a distant high tree—studded ringridge curv¬

ing upward along the “valley” wall, diminished by

distance into a green line, a ring of denser vegetation

that circled Hwiliria to meet above the cylindrical

160

Toolmaker Koan 161

sun invisible beyond the clouds. The land beyond this

dividing ring, while indistinct in the distance, seemed

marked—cratered, perhaps—with circular shapes of

various sizes, all of them no doubt quite large, flecking

its surface. Further beyond, a belt of blue-gray—

water?—glimmered faintly through the mist of dis¬

tance. Well beyond the “dawn,” Hwiliria’ s cylindrical sun

seemed dimmer than usual, its light obscured by a

greater cylinder of striated gray cloud. The air was

moist, hot, quiet, unusually quiet; the impossible

distances seemed a different overall hue today, darker,

wetter. Dense clusters of dark-green alien spiny things

like monstrous pineapples now dominated the little

world, and trees much like pines appeared more

frequently, liberally interspersed with others that

looked oddly like poplar, elm, oak. The Pleistocene

acacias and other African vegetation were forgotten. They entered outlying trees of the hilltop grove. Like the rest of the dominant trees hereabouts, Jen¬

nifer noted, these were conifer-like, thorny and scaled. Amazing, the parallels between the alien place and

Earth; presumably, similar worlds must produce ap¬

proximately similar organisms. Would Hwiliria s mak¬

ers, then, approximate human beings?

Where were the birds?

Where now the Pleistocene

beasts?

Apparently, despite the close parallels, those

Earthly beings shunned the alien vegetation, and the

cylinder-world was quiet and still. They overtopped the ridge; the Egg paused, silent,

while they surveyed that which lay before them. A temple. There was no other word for it. A low, domed

circular structure of gleaming white, all reflected in a

white-edged pool edged with moss-encrusted stone. A temple, a spare and sacred place of palpably vast

162 John McLoughlin

age, sitting at the exact center of a high encircling

white wall whose upper rim curved sharply outward

like the edge of a porcelain bowl. A sound like

windchimes tinkled delicately from somewhere within

the walled precinct; beyond, the vast and silent sa¬

vanna stretched far away, studded—or cratered, one

might say—with more ringed structures like that be¬

fore them, kilometers of vegetation between them. No roads, no pathways connected them. The span of the encircling wall could have been a

hundred meters; the temple itself was perhaps twenty

meters in diameter. All was water between the tem¬

ple and its protective wall, absolutely still, broken

here and there by odd scaly-trunked palmlike trees

with broadbladed spiny leaves; unruffled by breezes,

the pond reflected mirrorlike the alien trees and the

white shrine at its center. The thing’s proportions were wrong. It had not

been built to a human standard of size, nor of beauty. The flared wall gave a feeling of instability, a sense of

impermanence Earthly temple-builders always strived

to suppress. The single opening visible in the building’s

exterior was too tall, too narrow. The place awed rather

than pleased; yet beauty there was, and a numenous

sense of the ancient and sacred. A single gap in the outward-flaring wall, tall and

narrow, opened onto a wavering path of flat, irregular

stepping stones: stones that seemed to float on the

still, dark water, worn by generations of feet. But

what sort of feet?

A meter at least of water separated

each stone from the next, and each stone was a half¬

meter or so in its greatest width. “Biped,” said Jennifer. “Huh?” Pike, closest to her, was jolted out of his

reverie. Toolmaker Koan 163

“If this thing was built by the aliens—and it must

have been—they were bipeds. Look at those stones.”

Bipeds. Human beings?” Corson’s voice was an

eager nervous whisper. It doesn t feel human—The proportions’re all

wrong—too big. Pike stared at the structure, feeling

its age and sanctity, knowing its radiance of else¬

where and otherwhen. “Whoever built it wasn’t like yy

us. But they had a sense of—of deity, the sacred. They were religious, somehow.” Jennifer shivered. “I

can feel it. There’re things that we share.”

“Of course,” said the preening voice of Charon. “They were toolmaking animals. This, ah, precinct

was designed, long ago, by your aliens. This is their

place, an altar to their ancestors.”

The four followed the Egg down the steep hillside,

slipping occasionally in the spiny ground cover,

toward the narrow opening in the temple’s lichen-

mottled, outwardleaning wall. At the portal they

halted, staring at the unmoving water, listening to

the faint notes of hidden windchimes. The Egg floated

on, across the meandering path of twelve stepping

stones that seemed suspended on the pond’s glassy

surface. The stones were too far apart. A person had to step

broadly or jump carefully from one to another, and

Jennifer was first. She leaped, regained her balance,

leaped again. A stone behind her, Pike leaped; then

Corson, then Benai. Spaced stone-for-stone from one

another, they leaped in time in an ungainly hop¬

scotch across the mirroring water; there was no dig¬

nity to it, and their sense of invasion was compounded. This was indeed not their place. Beyond, doorless, the tall narrow opening waited. From within there came a faint light, greenish, mot-

164 John McLoughlin

tied. Jennifer, first, peered in, upward. She entered,

the rest filing after her through the narrow opening,

spreading out, searching. The light, streaming in

through a broad circular hole at the dome s zenith,

scattered in the metallic leaves of a great treelike

creeper, a climbing plant whose spiky foliage clung

like ivy to the structure’s entire inner surface. The

plant had not grown at random; it seemed trained,

major branches pruned at intervals to reveal rough

rectangles of oddly-cut masonry in which colored bands

of some smooth material were set, vertical color-

zones linked in—words?—by colorless spaces within

which minute mosslike plants clung like green rust. The lines looked vaguely like intricate military cam¬

paign ribbons, or minutely complex multicolored ver¬

sions of the digital pricing-and-inventory codes on

American consumer goods. If such colored bands were

writing, whatever read them had had very excellent

color vision indeed. “A family tree.’’ Pike, mumbling, feeling the fool. “Come see,” said the Egg, Charon’s voice echoing

sonorously about the green dimness of the sanctum. “Come see what you’ve come to see.” Its gleaming

shape hung still beneath the dome’s center, and be¬

neath it lay a bier, a broad, squat stone disk about a

meter tall on which lay—Something. Something large. Unconsciously drawing together in this alien place,

they approached the bier, the sound of their slippered

feet scraping magnified across the silence. The thing on the bier was an Animal. “Well?” The Egg. “When you meet them alive?

What will you say?”

Corson found his tongue first. “Jesus, it’s a thing

from the Enemy, I can feel it, Satan. Satan would

create that thing, as God created us.” He backed

Toolmaker Koan 165

away toward the stiff leaves covering the wall, his

head shaking in a palsy of disgust. “I couldn’t meet it

alive. I couldn’t.”

“To bring such things to life would be—evil.” Benai

stood stiffly, his hands unconsciously fumbling for a

weapon he daren’t use. “It is an evil thing. It is, it is

wrong. All wrong.”

“Wrong. Wrong and devilish.” Corson felt nausea

rising within him. “Yes. If there’s a devil, it’s like this

thing here. He choked back his revulsion, stared. And they built this, this—Hwiliria. Sheee-it. I can—I

can say one thing for sure. That’s a serious meat-

eating mother fucker, or I’m a possum. I don’t think I

even want to think about meeting anything like that

alive.” He stumbled a bit over his words; even his

lips didn’t seem to work. Jennifer stared, eyes drinking in the whole of what

lay before her. She reached out hesitantly, her hand

trembling, pulled back, then reached again and

touched this fairy-tale thing from far away and gone

before. Tears welling she ran her slender hand along

a gentle curve of muscle, muscle hardened by a

death that was not death. The thing had indeed been a biped, and a frighten¬

ingly fleet runner as well. There was no mistaking

the knotting of the great leg muscles, the build at

once strong and light, the myriad tendons visible as

tunneling bulges beneath a taut skin. Most of its

body mass seemed composed of thigh muscles, mus¬

cles arranged unlike any she had ever seen, unless it

was some sort of running bird. The triple-toed feet,

too, resembled those of some atrocious bird; the thing

had walked birdlike on its toes, these tipping a foot

or shank more than half a meter long mailed in

metallic-looking black scales. The third and inner toe of each scaled foot was a

166 John McLoughlin

sort of dewclaw; short and thick, tipped with a curved

and shining scimitar, a glaive of horn perhaps fifteen

centimenters long, razor-sharp and needle-tipped, it

never touched the ground when the creature walked. An inborn weapon—was the thing some sort of warrior?

And the hands!

For indeed the creature had two

hands, not tendrils or crab-claws or any of the other

appendages so dear to science-fiction movie writers ...

each hand, mailed and scaled and mightily

tendoned, sported three long and powerful fingers,

the center longest, the inner—thumb?—sharply

opposed to the others. Each knobby finger was tipped

with a hooked ten-centimeter talon overtopping a

bulging fingertip pad of finely-textured leathery skin—a

sensitive manipulating surface. The prerequisite for

toolmaking. Lost in her own mind, Jennifer examined the head. A head as long and narrow as that of a horse, and as

flat on top, a smooth French-curve from forward tip

to nape of neck. She marvelled at the neck itself,

arched, glossy, bulging with muscle, shrouded or

crested at its nape by an array of brown half-meter-

long...

feathers?

Scales?

Neither; something else,

some sort of quills relaxed in death, a crest of over¬

lapping pinions of glossy brown tipped with black. And the face...

The face. A snout?

Or a beak?

Somewhere in be¬

tween, really, in shape overall like the beak of an

eagle, deep from top to bottom, narrow from side to

side, tiled in large smooth black scutes like those

covering the shell of a sea turtle, two large slotlike

nostrils at its downturned tip, the lipless mouth tight-

closed in death, edged by a ridge of smaller scales

beneath which showed the white tips of an even row

of sharp, bladelike upper teeth. The narrow snout widened aft, the thin crack of

Toolmaker Koan 167

mouth extending well behind the closed and deepset

eyes, whose lids betrayed an eyeball diameter of

perhaps six centimeters. Like those of an eagle, these

eyes were forward-directed and shrouded above by

ridges, protective shelves that blended into a flat,

broad braincase. While the beaklike snout was gloss¬

ily scaled, the face around and behind the eyes was

covered with a sort of pelt of tufty scale-like struc¬

tures, thousands of them overlapping in a soft, smooth

texture like that of the breast of some tiny bird. Around the eyes themselves, the pelt was strikingly

marked in a pattern of broad black and white backward-

extendinq stripes that served to emphasize the eyes’

size—an alarming emphasis, even in a being that was

dead. It was the face Charon etched on their plates and

carved in their furniture, a haunting gargoyle face, at

once bird and beast and—something else. Alien, yet

pulling at the tangled strings of memory, animal mem¬

ory...

memory of fear. The strange pelt of—of what?

Of tufty scales, or

scaly feathers?

Whatever it was, it was dense, at once

soft and prickly, fading abruptly from the brilliant

black-and-white face pattern to a rusty brown color

like a russet cape covering the entire upper part of

the long body, striped along the spine with a narrow

band of stiff black pinions that stretched from nape of

neck to tip of tail. Lower, beneath the creature’s long

narrow jaw and at the front of its neck, these soft

scales were tawny-white, a color extending all the

way down across the chest, along the belly and be¬

neath the tail to its tip. Tail?

Yes, tail. Somehow Jennifer hadn’t thought of

an intelligent alien with a tail; yet this one had a most

impressive tail as long as the rest of the body

168 John McLoughlin

combined—a horizontal total of perhaps five meters!

What was such a tail for?

She stood rooted, as much so as the strange vine

encircling the room. A million emotions struggled for

control of her mind, the alien battling with the famil¬

iar, the recognizable with the strange. The thing lay

on its side, so fresh, so recently alive; yet it had ne¬

ver lived. It looked...

practical. Strange, alien, yet

as efficient as a cheetah, as any animal, any wild hunt¬

ing beast. Yes. A wild animal, as graceful as, as...

“Well, Doctor, I hear no comment from you, no

opinion garnered through your naturalist’s eye!”

Charon’s voice, echoing in the darkling greenery,

shattered the silence and her thoughts. “Come, now;

even Colonel Corson has an opinion.”

Realizing that her entire first look had only lasted a

few seconds, Jennifer stammered for a first impres¬

sion, a gestalt. What was it?

How could she say it?

“It—it’s beautiful!”

Pike Muir, standing at the creature’s head, nodded

slowly. “I see what you mean. It did what it did, and

it did it well—but I can’t say I like its looks, for all

that.”

“That thing ate meat,” growled Corson. “That’s

what it did, pure and simple. And it liked to fight,

and it could run like the wind, too. I’ll bet it had at

least a three-meter stride on the run, and I don’t like

the idea of meeting anything like that, like I said

before, and I’m not changing my mind, not budging

an inch.” All of this came out without an intake of

breath, and Corson gulped, catching up on his breath¬

ing, abashed and nonplussed. Jennifer laughed, awe and delight escaping in a

sudden release of tension. “No, eating meat’s not all

it did. Look at those hands.” She reached for the

hands then, trying to flex the stiffening fingers. “See

Toolmaker Koan 169

the fingerpads. They must have been extraordinarily

sensitive, perhaps more so than ours. And look: how

this outer finger can move almost to a right angle

from the middle finger, just as the inner finger does. The thing had—had two thumbs on each hand!

In a

way. More than enough manual dexterity to make up

for only three fingers per hand.”

Well, I, for one, think that’s a damned nasty¬

looking item, said Corson. “Charon, I don’t want

any of my crew—”

The voice was sepulchral in the domed temple. Colonel Corson, this is a cultural toolmaker like

yourself. Its kind had a magnificent history and a

sorrowful fall. You. Will. Hear. Their. Tale.” Then,

more softly, The doctor will examine this specimen;

she 11 speak to her data domino, and tomorrow you

will meet representative individuals of the race. Try,

then, to restrain your glands; they respond at the

expense of your intelligence. Look in on this, and

learn something of the young naturalist’s delight. Doc¬

tor, your tools are meant to be used!”

Eagerly, Jennifer bent her mind to her curious

task. “I’ll need a hand, here.” She looked about her,

smiling self-consciously, hands full of video cable. “You’ve got it,” said Pike. “I was never much good

at biology, but I guess I’d better start getting. Okay?”

“Delighted,” she said. “Hold these. And someone,

please—these tripods and vidcams?

I need extra hands. ”

Even Corson got to work then, taking a tripod,

setting it up; Benai, under Jennifer’s instructions,

laid out a set of specialized closeup lenses, and Pike

clipped recording mikes to Jennifer’s coverall pock¬

ets. Lovingly, the surgeon unwrapped her surgical

tools, laying them out in some arcane surgical order

on the clean wrap in which Charon had translocated

them to Hwiliria. 170 John McLoughlin

“An autopsy, I guess,” she said. “I’ll think of it that

way. Commander Benai, if you can take that camera

there and scan the face, we ll see about beginning.”

She picked up an autopowered scalpel, its laser wink¬

ing into life. Transcriptions from the video-recordings of

Jennifer W. Dawson, M. D. [voice mode; expletives and other minutiae deleted]

Major Muir informs me that most fictional models

of alien toolmakers” have been humaniform, i. e.,

upright bipeds with vertical faces topped by brains

behind distinct foreheads, in heads set firmly atop

vertical torsos equipped with two pairs of limbs. He

suggests that this is not only due to our innate and

obligate sense of anthropomorphism, but because such

a form is most easily duplicated in the cinema, using

costumed human actors...

The present specimen, while bilaterally symmetri¬

cal and possessing two pairs of limbs on one of which

it walks, bears no other apparent resemblance to

human beings. Five point one six three meters from tip

of snout to tip of tail, but masses, according to Charon,

only one hundred and eighty-one kilograms...

The animal is vertebrate—an initially surprising

parallel but perhaps understandable if one considers

the options for support in a large land-dwelling crea¬

ture. While the fifteen cervical vertebrae are highly

articulate, giving the heavily muscled neck an almost

snakelike flexibility, the thoracic vertebrae (there are

no distinguishable lumbars) are virtually fused one to

another from shoulders to hips...

Unlike most Earthly models of intelligent aliens,

this specimen possesses a most impressive tail some

2.664 meters long from the first vertebra posterior to

Toolmaker Koan 171

the set of five fused “sacral” vertebrae comprising the

hip-spinal mount. The anterior ten tail vertebrae are

highly articulate; hence in life the tail could move

perhaps 180 degrees in any direction, its tip describ¬

ing a full hemisphere from its base. Posterior to these

ten articulate vertebrae, the caudals are fused in a

network of powerful ligamentation, producing a long,

slightly flexible rod rather resembling fiberglas in its

strength and resilience. Armored with an integument

of overlapping black scales, this tail is tipped with an

array of highly motile, individually muscled quill-like

structures that resemble a fan in their overall ar¬

rangement. I cannot divine the purpose of this appa¬

ratus except to suggest that it might serve as a visual

social display signal...

The brain is bicameral, prominently divided sagit-

tally into what for convenience’s sake we may call

cerebral hemispheres occupying a volume well smaller

than a human’s. These show no convolutions; because

of this, and because of the overall very small brain/

body mass-ratio compared with that of terrestrial mam¬

mals and most notably that of human beings, and

because Charon insists that their possessors were

‘cultural toolmakers,” we must assume that the “wir¬

ing” of these brains is radically different from that of

terrestrial mammals; hence I, at least, anticipate (with

some trepidation) rather different thought patterns

from those of human beings...

The eyes follow the familiar vertebrate pattern seen

on Earth, a pattern, of course, paralleled closely and

independently by the eyes of cephalopod molluscs

like squids and octopuses...

each eyeball is a fluid-

filled oblate spheroid 5.2 cm. in diameter with mus¬

cled lens and a light-regulating iris with bright yellow

pigmentation surrounding a circular pupil...

a richly

vascularized retina indicating excellent vision, this

172 John McLoughlin

impression being borne out by optic nerves fully a

centimeter in diameter leading to (if my macroscopic

guess is proper) extremely large visual centers in the

brain...

Ears are simple tympanic membranes set well within

large auditory meatuses, a single bone connecting the

tympani to a cochlea and inner ear apparatus strik¬

ingly similar to that found in terrestrial vertebrates, a

similarity suggesting that our own auditory and balance-

orientation system is a very workable one to have

been so nearly paralleled in an alien form...

Heavy innervation from a large brachial plexus in

the shoulder portion of the spinal cord leading to

arms and hands...

a large sacral plexus in the hip

spinal cord innervating legs, perhaps indicating that

many of the animal’s movements were automatically

controlled, stereotyped without recourse to the brain—

economizing on nerve-transmission rates in what was

obviously a very swift and agile being...

Breathing apparatus consists of paired lungs much

in the terrestrial fashion, but in place of dead-end

alveoli the vascularized surfaces of these lungs are in

the form of nearly parallel tubules extending into

air-sacs within the hollow bones of the arms and legs,

rather as in birds, this circumstance accounting at

least in part for the animal’s very light volume-to-

mass ratio. There are no vocal cords as such; any

vocalization appears to be generated by a cartilagi¬

nous box located at the point where the bronchi

diverge to the two lungs. This box is intricately mus¬

cled and of complex construction, but I am unable to

determine its exact workings...

The heart is large, four-chambered, with the ve¬

nous blood entering the left—auricle?—rather than

the right as in terrestrial mammals...

blood is red,

indicating presence of some iron-based hemoglobin

Toolmaker Koan 173

analogue (no green blood in this alien monster!)...

thickness of arterial walls combined with the rest of

the cardiopulmonary apparatus suggests a constant

high level of physical activity which, coupled with

the apparently somewhat insulative pelt, indicates

endothermy—constant body temperature maintained

metabolically, as in mammals and birds. Digestive apparatus is strikingly consistent with

Colonel Corson’s initial impression of an obligate and

near-perfect carnivore. Teeth are compressed-paral¬

lelogram in cross-section, triangular in lateral aspect,

offering an overall impression of knifeblades; nowhere

is there evidence of an ability to chew. The jaws are

merely shears, although of a degree of efficiency not

approached in any terrestrial animal of my acquaint¬

ance; indeed, minus the presence of several rows,

the dental apparatus most resembles that of sharks. Teeth appear to be replaced as they wear out; I was

able to locate several new teeth sagittal to and be¬

neath existing teeth, and a new tooth was apparently

in the process of replacing one recently lost...

Any chewing or grinding of food appears to be a

function of a gizzard, a highly muscular gastric mill

lined with a horny abrasive integument apparently

designed to comminute food...

there is a true crop

above the gizzard, suggesting that these animals are

able to eat large quantities of food at once, to digest

at leisure later, or perhaps to carry same to their

young...

intestinal system is short, adding to the

impression of total and obligate carnivory...

Oddly, we’re unable to locate any trace of internal

or external structures indicating sex or reproductive

mode, this being the most alien of our specimen’s

very foreign aspect. Could such a complex organism

have simply cloned itself in some way?

Our overall impression is one of prodigious strength,

174 John McLoughlin

grace, agility and endurance coupled with a rather

daunting complex of specializations indicating a near¬

perfect physical adaptation to hunting—or fighting—

even minus the aid of tools or weapons. This, coupled

with the animal’s alleged toolmaking proclivities and

the impressive nature of the artifact Hwiliria, prom¬

ises a most formidable being in life. CHAPTER 11

Meeting of Minds

After the dissection/autopsy, fatigue had set in almost

unexpectedly. The “night” of Hwiliria found another

splendid meal awaiting them, and eating encouraged

sleep; overloaded with new impressions, all four cast¬

aways fell into unconsciousness on mossy vegetation

outside what they’d come to call the Mausoleum. And dreamed, horribly; surely, there was a spare

and efficient beauty about the creature they’d exam¬

ined. But in sleep, the thing seemed to visit them all,

and in sleep it was huge, towering monstrously above

tiny fleeing people. In sleep it was terror itself, a

terror that seemed somehow familiar, as if such aliens

had chased them all their lives....

But in the morning the fear dissipated; they were

fed again, gorgeously, and again exhorted to follow an

Egg aft across the alien landscape of spiny vegetation

and distantly-spaced, roofless stone-ringed structures. Charon’s Egg used the birdwhistle language, the

speech of whileelin, the self-name of the dead makers

of Hwiliria. In their minds, the whistled “whileelin”

translated effortlessly as “people,” allaying their fears

175

176 John McLoughlin

but little; all pondered the specimen’s claws and teeth,

its potential diet, their disturbing dreams of the night

before. Diet. “Yes, whileelin are carnivores,” said the Egg. “But

so are you, if you can get meat; you evolved as

hunters and trappers. All toolmakers in my experi¬

ence have done so; one needn’t have overmuch flexi¬

bility of intellect to hunt leaves and grasses, eh?” But

Charon had little success in calming them. Despite the Egg’s blandishments, even Jennifer

was lost in a troubled silence; there was little human

about the thing she’d dissected yesterday. It had

weighed on her mind, depressing her more this morn¬

ing than before—for according to Charon, hadn’t these

things built this mighty world-construct?

And if so,

did their efforts not make all the human endeavor

seem puny?

Indeed, did not Charon’s very existence

suggest that humanity was primitive, its works but

toys in the greater scheme of things?

Toolmaker Koan. Perhaps Charon was correct in

surmising that humanity, aided by these—these

things—might transcend the Koan. But oddly, for all

the immensity of Hwiliria, there were no roads, in¬

deed, no structures in the place, unless one counted

the ring-walled “temples” and the like now distantly

visible in all directions. Did the things live under¬

ground?

Or did it never rain on Hwiliria?

If so, then

how could the vegetation survive?

Her mind reeled with questions, and involuntarily

she shuddered. No filming, now; she worried about

tape footage, and a front of blue-gray nimbus crept

across the “sun” as they topped another world-

encircling ridge. The day was oddly colorless, and a

sharp, cool breeze stirred the pine-like trees. Below

them on the newly visible plain stood a greater

“temple,” like yesterday’s Mausoleum but bigger,

Toolmaker Koan 177

far bigger, and surrounded by a higher wall. The

central structure appeared roofless, its exact center-

point marked by a tall obelisk, but the outer walls

gave no view of the interior. It might as well have

been a fortress as a temple. In the overcast, the

flaring circular wall looked even more ancient than

yesterday s, squat, hunkering in the dark green vege¬

tation like some high-edged crater ringing a stagnant

pond, the central temple-building a blotched central

mound. She wondered, why the overcast?

Some dra¬

matic concoction of Charon’s?

But this deserved a

tape!

She unlimbered her vidcam and a fresh data dom¬

ino as they filed down the slope. The four spread out

instinctively, as if preparing for battle, on the flatland

before the temple gate. Here they would meet the

aliens, and here they busied themselves with the

same tripods they’d used in dissection the day be¬

fore. Jennifer felt chilled again recalling that work,

and recalling Charon’s cheerful comment that the

aliens would have had a similar human specimen to

examine. Which of them would it be?

“Now,” said Charon, “here perhaps I err again; I’m

gifted at error, methinks. But perhaps not. The Koan

suggests that toolmaker species never meet in the

natural course of things; they’re too inept, too short¬

lived as species. So—I arrange an introduction. Am I

wrong?

Have I loved too long, that I play with life

hopelessly?” The voice quavered, its humanity mo¬

mentarily growing; never yet had it seemed quite so

mad, so alone. “Ah, well, one warning: protocol is

extremely important to these folk, as it is to you. They 11 wish to address a leader at first; their own

leader will do most of their talking. Can you agree

among yourselves?”

178 John McLoughlin

“I now represent the United People s Republics of

Earth,” said Benai. “Perhaps it would be useful if I—”

“Uh, I don’t really go for that,” said Corson. “Speak

for us?

I can at least speak for the Free World; it’s my

position as ranking—”

“Well, sir, maybe we ought to try something else,”

suggested Pike. “The doctor here, she had a more

sympathetic view of strange animals from the start,

and she might—”

“Oh, I can’t really, I don’t have much experience

with out-and-out protocol,” said Jennifer nervously,

but she smiled and looked pleased nonetheless. “I must offer a warning here,” said Charon. “Twenty-

first-century human politics are inapplicable in this

unique situation. You’ll be dealing with what the

Americans used to call ‘male chauvinist pigs’ of a sort,

in whose societies gender roles are hard-wired and

inalterable. Male whileelin defend territories; males

meet strangers and do the initial talking. They’ll quickly

detect your sex, Doctor, and may prove difficult if

you were the initial spokesperson for your species. All animals are difficult in one way or another, your¬

selves most especially. And they’ll know you better

later. I’m sorry, but that’s the way it is. Ahem.”

Feeling a mixture of relief and annoyance, Jennifer

couldn’t help but admire Charon’s embarrassed throat¬

clearing noise. For a being lungless and throatless, it

was a nice touch—but Charon was grandmaster of

nice touches, whatever its real motives. “Well, lady and gentlemen?” Charon’s voice grew

impatient. Another Egg glinted faintly in the dark¬

ness of the temple’s distant doorway. “Now choose,

little animals, or I choose for you!”

“I still believe—” said Benai. “Well, / don’t,” said Corson. “Z think that—”

“Major Muir.” Charon’s voice was sharp with com-

Toolmaker Koan 179

mand. “You’re an adaptable creature, and compara¬

tively apolitical. You will speak for Homo sapiens,

Man the Wise,’ leaving that camera with your friends

here.’’

The irony in Charon’s Latin translation was not lost

on Pike. He swallowed once, twice. “Okay, I guess. Uh, I, ah, I—”

“Walk forward, alone. Stop by that stone there,

fifty meters. The rest of you stay behind until the

major signals you to approach. There’s no danger. I

am everywhere. You, Commander Benai, will not

touch your weapon. They understand weapons, and

we cannot have foolishness now. I’ve waited too long

through foolishness. Go, now, Major, and I go with

you. And be careful to remember one thing.’’

“What’s that?’’

“The individual with whom you will first talk has

an obligatory title: he is First in the Chase.”

Pike tpgged at his collar stretching his jaw experi¬

mentally. “ ‘First in the Chase.’ Great, just great.”

Jennifer did an odd thing then; she jumped for¬

ward, squeezed Pike’s hand and kissed him lightly on

the cheek. “Good luck. I think Charon made the

proper choice.”

Funny thing, how something like that emboldens a

guy. Pike nodded, smiled. He started walking. Faster. Look sharp. Military bearing, they called it. I speak

for Man the Wise, I, Pike Muir. Well, they’ll get a

good show. And it’s only for a minute...

He reached the gray stone, a strange stone, carved

flat on top. The Stone of Meeting, right?

Something moved in the temple door. The Egg

that hung there emerged into the gray light, sailing

swiftly and silently toward him, and the Egg that

followed Pike disappeared with the familiar fumpl of

Charon’s comings and goings. Right. No need for two

180 John McLoughlin

of ’em now. Stand at ease; that looks good. He

clasped his hands behind his back, eyes searching the

darkened temple interior. Movement, more move¬

ment, and...

A great Animal strode swiftly across the stepping

stones of the temple pond, a being familiar with

those stones, for whose strange feet they’d been laid. It wore a scarlet crown, a headdress more than

Aztec in its height and breadth. No—not worn, it was

part of the creature, a shining red fan of pinions—a

crest, Pike realized, like that of the dead specimen

but much brighter and larger, spread high and wide,

a semicircular corona, awesome on that proud aqui¬

line head....

Pike’s genitals lurched as if trying to climb into his

abdomen. Mind over matter, though. He stood at

ease, his teeth clenched behind a carefully expres¬

sionless mask hiding his dread. The creature strode smoothly toward him, its long

legs eating the distance in two-meter paces, torso

horizontal, tail held rigid and head-high with its fan-

tip spread, slender cable-tendoned forearms swinging

toward the ground so that the knuckles of its taloned

hands nearly brushed the ground. Toothed and striped,

an eagle’s head held three meters high on a muscle-

arched horse’s neck, moving in distinct increments,

freezing, then snapping forward with each of the

animal’s deliberate strides, oscillating like the head of

a strutting peacock but huge, and with its great lus¬

trous amber-yellow eyes fixed immovably on Pike’s

own....

It stopped, ten meters away. It wore a collar, a

circlet of silvery metal, and nothing else. The crest

moved constantly, flaring wider, then dropping slightly,

the animal lowering its long arms further until its

Toolmaker Koan 181

knuckles touched the ground between the shining

curved glaives of its mighty inner toes. It opened its mouth slightly, a pointed pinkish

tongue showing between gleaming even rows of five-

centimeter enamel blades......

and whistled, a powerful haunting ululation ris¬

ing and falling in pitch like that of some medieval

rosewood flute, the bird-language Charon had im¬

printed on their minds. Pike heard both the whistling

and the creature’s words in a similarly musical but

unmistakeable English. “May we be of one blood, thou and I,” said the

deep fluting voice, an orchestral woodwind section

tuning up. Some ancient Celtic bard in Pike’s ancestry seized

the moment—a moment for fine words to match the

awe and pride that flooded him. “If our mighty host,

Charon, speaks truly and well, we are indeed of one

blood.”

“Thou speakest as a patriarch to a patriarch, equal

to equal. Know then, equal, that I am Halarridarmar

Horizon-leaper, First in the Chase of the Seeker

Hwiliria. I meet and greet you in the name of my

creche, my fertile brethren, my females and my neu¬

ters, those who survive with me.”

“I meet and greet you, Halarridarmar Horizon-

leaper, in the name of my associates of the probe-

ships Expediter and Dienbienphu. ,, Pike waved toward

the people watching anxiously from the rear; he felt

self-conscious, suddenly, about his pronunciation of

the creature’s name, but Charon’s translating evi¬

dently covered for him. He bowed elaborately, sweep¬

ing the imaginary plume of an imaginary hat across

the grass before him. The woody whistling began again, no movement,

no expression save that bleak and fearsome intensity

182 John McLoughlin

evident on the staring eagle face of the First in the

Chase. “As my equal, you know that my Home is

dead. I mourn, equal, for my Home; I am now patri¬

arch of the subcreche Northrock Crossgene, last pa¬

triarch of the Great North Overcreche, whose eggs

have lain broken for so long that only the Regurgitator

of Souls that you call Charon knows the time’s pass¬

ing. I mourn, I mourn.’’ The scarlet crest folded upon

itself, narrowing to a long point; the creature tossed

its huge head back, and the crest, always in restless

movement, brushed between its shoulders, spread

again lifted as high as before as the stony gaze fixed

again on Pike’s eyes. “And we mourn with you, First in the Chase, all of

us. “These—your conspecifics—are they equals also?”

“They are equals, First in the Chase.”

“Why, then, if they are patriarchs, do they not

come forward as equals?” The bony scaled left hand

lifted, turned over, “palm” up, and the long taloned

middle finger crooked in a surprisingly human come-

hither gesture. Patriarchs?

Oh, boy. Pike reached behind him,

eyes never leaving those of the alien, and duplicated

the gesture. “They come now.”

Jennifer was the first to advance, the rest stirring

and following. Ah, she was getting the idea now;

always watch its eyes, never look away. It’s a magnifi¬

cent thing, too, emanating an unrufflable, oddly ap¬

pealing hauteur...

elan, it had, it was elan per¬

sonified, and she began to think she liked it, daunt¬

ing though it was. She reached Pike’s side, the rest

falling in around them. “These are patriarchs?

How is it that there is so

much variance among you?

Your coloring—green,

black, blue, white—are these artificial pelts?

How is

Toolmaker Koan 183

it that you do not establish a visible hierarchy, or

dispute the caste among you?

Are you of one sub¬

creche, or many?’’

Jennifer fielded this one: “We are of one creche,

First in the Chase. All of us.”

“And yet you are equals. How odd. We shall have

an interesting time.” The fluting voice paused; then,

without a change in the creature’s unblinking gaze, it

whistled high and long...

and six more such ani¬

mals emerged from the temple, each striding easily

across the stones and into the veldt, heads freezing

and then thrusting smoothly forward with the rhythm

of their high-stepping gaits. Four had crests, crests

smaller than those of the First in the Chase and held

widespread and low across their backs. The other two

wore elaborate metal helmets covering all but their

snouts; these brought up the rear, seemingly subser¬

vient, their knuckles brushing the spiny turf as they

approached. “My juvenile brethren, Olorromoro and Wilirriwirra,

greet you in the name of the subcreche Northrock

Crossgene Twelvesquared.”

Two of the newcomers stepped forward and whis¬

tled formalities translated by Charon into an archaic

English: “We abase ourselves, foreign patriarchs, be¬

fore thy magnificence.” Their restless red-quilled crests

spread broad, level with the flat tops of their skulls. “And these are of the creche matriarchate, the

Prime Matriarch and her juvenile Second.” The First

in the Chase indicated with its tail—his tail, fan-

tipped—two others, dappled slightly along back and

sides and with slightly smaller, browner crests but

otherwise identical in size and aspect to the First. “And these,” pointing with tail-fan closed toward the

helmeted individuals, “are neuters.” These, faces in¬

visible behind some reflective surface, made no move-

184 John McLoughlin

ment; but their hidden stare was as palpable as those

of the females, fertile brethren and the First in the

Chase, and each human being felt like a physical

touch the intensity of those seven pairs of lustrously

unwinking yellow eyes. “Have you names,” said the First, “that we may

address one another?” He stared pointedly at Pike. “Oh, I’m Charles Muir, uh, Major, Cyber Detach¬

ment.”

“Colonel C. L. Corson,” said Corson, “at your ser¬

vice. Pleased to meet you.”

“Oruna Benai, Commander, Deep-Space Weapons

Platform, ah, Research Vessel Dienbienphu.’’

“Jennifer Dawson, Emm Dee.”

“You all speak as patriarchs. Are there no neuters

among you, no females?”

“7’m a female,” said Jennifer, piqued. “And sur¬

geon.”

“A female that speaks to me as a patriarch!

And

your crest, such as it is, is far longer than those of

these males—unless some of you are sterile—”

“None that I know of,” growled Benai. “Nope,” said Corson, “not me.”

“Have you no castes at all, then?

Are you truly

equals, and all fertile?”

“Every damned one of us,” said Pike, feeling with¬

out seeing it a vague wave of contempt from the First

in the Chase. He too was piqued. The damned

things’d better learn some more quick...

but then,

Charon didn’t prepare any of us very well for this...

“Although appearances might seem to deny it,”

said the First, eyes staring down at Pike’s, “we’re all

people—or so the Regurgitator of Souls avers. We

are also told that we share body chemistry sufficiently

so that we might eat...

one another’s food...

It is

customary among us to share with our equals a meal;

Toolmaker Koan 185

the first, and most important, thing done. Hwilirias

fauna is said to have been somewhat modified for

your convenience, yet we’re told we can still find

suitable prey. Shall we hunt?”

Hunt?

Charon’s been feeding us pretty well here,

and we...” Pike looked up at the Egg; something

going on, here, some undercurrent of nuance...

Well, Major, etiquette is important, isn’t it?” said

the Egg. And, as one might guess from their bearing

and physiology, whileelin are always hungry. You

may watch them hunt, while I prepare you a meal

more to your own liking. Whileelin don’t cook their

food, you know. Let us return to last evening’s bivouac. ”

“Oh. Well then, First in the Chase, if you see

anything suitable for a meal, by all means...” Pike

made a gesture he felt to be expansive and generous,

and began walking back up the ridge. The rest of his

folk followed, and the whileelin swiftly deployed them¬

selves about the human group rather disturbingly

like an outlying guard, the First in the Hunt taking

the lead, his two fertile brethren flanking, the fe¬

males and neuters bringing up the rear, whistling

and chattering oddly among themselves. They smelled

odd, rank, and Pike was reminded of some trained

ferrets he’d once seen—and smelt....

The humans clustered in a walking knot, uneasily

looking about them as their escorts, whistling, scanned

the Hwilirian “valley.” Suddenly Jennifer cocked her

head, whispered to Pike: “Can you hear that?”

“That hooting—it’s all I can hear.”

“No, no. I hear something—not quite hear it—

it’s the neuters!

They’re talking to each other, in my

head).” She pressed her hands to her ears for a mo¬

ment, shook her head. Pike glanced behind him; both of the helmeted

186 John McLoughlin

things were watching Jennifer intently, their heads

remaining precisely level despite their striding gait. “I hear them,” she said. Can’t you?’’

“Citizen Doctor,” said Benai, “are you quite well?”

“They hear me,’’ gasped Jennifer. “They can—but

only when I think at them—they hear me!”

“I’ve done well.” The Egg, pleased again. “Hu¬

man, ah, sexual dimorphism; the female brain is dif¬

ferent from that of males. I took advantage of that

difference during your reconstitution, Doctor; human

females have more of a diplomatic sense. With modi¬

fication, you’re able to communicate with our neuter

friends, across a short distance.”

“Telepathy?” Jennifer felt around her head, wig¬

gled an earlobe with her fingers. “Oh, no, no magic!

The neuters—you’ll learn more

soon. But they communicate through their helmets,

across the radio spectrum. I’ve merely given you a

transceiver of a sort. Your males—why, their minds

are poorly organized for such an addition; I’d the

devil of a time simply giving them the ability to

translate speech.”

Corson glanced conspiratorially at Jennifer, whis¬

pered out of the corner of his mouth. “What’re they

saying r

“Difficult—just snatches of talk—astrogation?

I don’t

know, exactly—but they hear me, they’ve quite shut

up. Horrible sensation, I feel invaded. Charon, what’ve

you done to me?”

“A short-lived phenomenon, Doctor. They only

‘hear’ you when you wish, and in a few weeks’ time

the ability will have dissipated—can’t have you tun¬

ing into some of that frightful stuff your own species

pours into the radio spectrum!”

“Can’t hear a thing from them now.” Jennifer con-

Toolmaker Koan 187

tinued pulling at her earlobes speculatively, as if the

secret of her new talent lay therein. The Egg increased its speed a bit, rising higher. They quite understand your new ability, Doctor;

they re keeping their counsel for—a more propitious

time.”

Whileelin walk fast; their long legs carried them

well ahead of the human contingent. They spread out

in a vanguard, whistling sonorously, Charon translat¬

ing: “The view is good, First in the Chase, and so

will be the running. ”

“Indeed, Wilirriwirra; one wonders what sort of

game awaits us, whether it’s fleet and sweet, or tough

and slow, or somehow well defended.”

“Here, now, First in the Chase, is game.” The one

called Olorromoro whistled, freezing in midstep. As

did all the whileelin; only their heads bobbed, swiftly

and jerkily, as if by moving their long necks they

hoped better to triangulate on their prey. See, said the Egg. “The Earthly mammals leave

the environment I prepared for them; perhaps I’ll

never understand living things.”

Kudu!

Or something like ’em.” Jennifer placed a

hand on Pike’s forearm, her voice a whisper. “Let’s

see what they do.”

“Very much like kudu,” said Benai. “Unless these

whileelin have weapons, they’ve little hope of catch¬

ing such fleet antelope.”

“Don’t be too sure,” murmured Corson. “Watch.”

Almost two hundred meters away, a herd of about

eight large brown antelope browsed among some

thorny bushes; one sported a striking pair of spiraling

horns and a long beardlike growth of hair on the

undersurface of its neck. “The bull, ” whispered Benai. “He’ll be the last to run. ”

188 John McLoughlin

The antelope detected the unlikely group at ridge-

top; their heads lifted in unison, and they watched. “Alert and worthy prey,” whistled Wilirriwirra. “Shall

we perform for our human friends a Grateful Accep¬

tance?”

It might be more proper to enact the Avaricious

Reach,” ventured Olorromoro. “Considering the distance between us, and the

unknown nature of the prey, I must opt for the

Grateful Acceptance, ” fluted the First, head still bob¬

bing side to side and up and down, yellow eyes fixed

on the shuffling and stamping antelope. “I defer with delight to the First in the Chase,”

whistled Wilirriwirra. “Now,” said the First and, tilting his head back,

trumpeted: “Aaahlooo,” a sound like a French horn

crossed with a Diesel airhorn. The First and neuters remaining still, the other

whileelin split into two pairs, one male and one fe¬

male to each. “Split” is the word, too, for they ran,

and the humans had never seen such a run. Onward,

out, to the sides away from the little antelope herd in

an encircling pass they ran in a smooth and graceful

pair of arcs, seemingly floating above the grass, heads

and tails held high, crests narrowed and flat, fore¬

arms outstretched to the front, feet pounding the earth

in three-meter strides, thumpthumpthumpthump, the

sound diminishing as they ate the distance...

“God, they must be going more than a kilometer a

minute,” whispered Jennifer. Damn well more’n a klick a minute,” whispered

Corson, “and we better make sure those things never

get to chasing us. ”

The antelope began to run then, leaping high over

the brush, scattering...

but the whileelin closed

inexorably on the herd like the drawstrings of a purse,

Toolmaker Koan 189

heading them off, the frightened herbivores bunch¬

ing back toward the First in the Chase—who himself

suddenly took off in that astounding run, straight for

the herd, Aaahlooing like the brass section in some

unearthly orchestra. “It’s a kind of dance, isn’t it?

What did they call it?

The ‘Grateful Acceptance ?

It must be the name of

the strategy, a step in a dance of the hunt!” Flushed

and excited, Jennifer craned her neck, an involuntary

half-smile on her face. The First in the Chase leaped high in the air, his

entire five-meter length turning impossibly end over

end, fanned tail waving, and landed amidst the scat¬

tering antelope. He leaped again, impossibly agile,

almost flying, and again, never seeming to touch a

single antelope...

yet two, then three, staggered

and fell, and Pike could see in the side of one of them

a horrific rent, the bowels protruding glossily, drag¬

ging in the grass. The foot-glaives. Those great retractile ankle-talons

had brushed the antelope, opening them like the sacs

of protoplasm they were, and in an instant the other

fertile whileelin closed in a flurry of dust and up¬

rooted clumps of grass...

And it was over, as suddenly as it had begun. Each

whileelin lifted in its taloned hands an antelope, al¬

though the beasts must have weighed a hundred

kilograms apiece; the First in the Chase held two,

one in each hand, fingers twitching convulsively, the

talons imbedding deeper and deeper in the brown

and faintly striped hides. He held them as if they

weighed no more than rabbits, and strode swiftly

back, a faint panting from his narrow nostrils, fol¬

lowed by the other whileelin, fertiles with crests

erect, neuters silent, helmeted, pacing easily along

with their hand-held burdens. 190 John McLoughlin

‘‘See,’’ whistled the First, holding his catch lightly

in the air. “A noble prey; it’s lovely, hunting the

open ground. Yours is a kindly world, if the Regur-

gitator of Souls has duplicated its prey animals accu¬

rately.’’ He dropped one antelope, seized the other

at the shoulders with both hands, placed it on its

back on the ground between his feet. The scimitar-

toes sank into its belly, and with a single swift lifting

motion of his hands he opened the corpse, its entrails

spilling in a slippery pile on the grass. He dropped

the gutted beast, repeated the process as easily with

the other, his fertile brethren, females and the neu¬

ters doing likewise with their own. “Those guys are good,” whispered Corson. “They

know what they’re doing.”

“Too good for comfort,’’ mumbled Pike. “Charon makes a serious mistake, hoping to mingle

things like that with human beings,” growled Benai. “As my equals,” whistled the First in the Chase,

“would you share?” Deftly fishing about in the piles

of entrails with his long middle fingers, he impaled

the hearts—still twitching with galvanic impulse—on

his two middle-finger talons, holding the grisly tro¬

phies toward the humans. “Uh, no thanks,” said Pike. “Indeed, your teeth are small and flat, like those of

a herbivore, although the Regurgitator of Souls tells

us that you are not.” The creature spread his crest

higher and wider, opened his mouth and popped the

hearts in like grapes, the toothy opening closing with

a whop. He gulped once, the movement visible in

his long neck. “Yes. The Regurgitator of Souls is

correct. The chemistry of our worlds is appealingly

similar.” He touched the ground with his golfball-

sized knuckles again, a salute. “Top of the food chain

to you!”

Toolmaker Koan 191

Yes—well, shall we eat?’ Jennifer spoke brightly,

smiling, vaguely amused at the discomfiture of her

human associates. Corson and Benai, at least, would

not eat much after the spectacle of a whileelin hunt. Jennifer Dawson would, however; she’d seen worse

things done by human beings—by people like Benai

and Corson—to human beings. Compared to that,

these whileelin were simply honest predators, their

hunt itself a thing of magnificence in keeping with

their own weird beauty. Excepting, perhaps, the hel-

meted neuters, the silent ones, whose whispering

now and then intruded mechanically on her mind;

they were bleakly curious, soundlessly keeping their

counsel, and they didn’t respond when she tried to

“reach” them. Had Charon indeed blundered again?

Followed by the others, she walked down the slope

toward the distant table, familiar now, groaning with

Charon’s offerings. The table that followed them ev¬

erywhere; there’d been a fairy tale about such tables. “See,” whistled the First in the Chase, “how they

follow this female. She must be a formidable being.”

“She is,” whistled the Egg above; ‘“she is.”

Pike caught up to her, walked alongside. “I don’t

know, lady. They’re either totally emotionless or

they’re sizing us up for steak tartare or something. Those striped faces, those staring yellow eyes—I never

know what they’re thinking. ”

Jennifer laughed, muffling her mouth with her hand. “Surely, Pike, you understand by now?”

“I do?”

She reached out, scruffled his hair like a kid’s, a

curiously intimate gesture. “Of course. You see their

crests, how they’re always moving, widening, nar¬

rowing, flicking up and down?”

“Right...”

“Emotional expressions, you twit!

With faces like

192 John McLoughlin

that you don’t express emotions; you do it with the

crest, with posture!

They’re unbelievably emotional,

skittish as birds, sensitive as highly-bred horses!’’ She

made an opening motion with her slender hands. “I

can read ’em like a book. Far more easily, Major,

than I can read you.’’

“Well, they’re, uh, a longer book...”

“Not at all; their covers simply aren’t hasped shut

like yours. Like mine, too, but I think the hasps are

coming loose out here...”

Jennifer, old Charon—I don’t think it knows what

it’s doing.”

“I’m laughing—but you might be right. I’m scared

to death, in a way: those neuters. I’ll have to work on

this—hearing of mine, see what they’re for. ”

And down they walked, vanguard of the strangest

procession ever seen by human or whileelin, by “peo¬

ple” anywhere. Eleven bipeds of two unlikely kinds,

whistling and chattering, some carrying prey, others

spreading around a table loaded with elegant viands,

and above them a multicolored Egg, shining, as the

cylindrical sun of Hwiliria broke at last through a

slaty overcast and warmed the dark-green veldt. CHAPTER 12

Song of Sorrow

Ferrier of souls; regurgitator of souls. Sole agent of

the Metastasis, and pleased as punch with this First

Contact it had engineered, Charon watched and trans¬

lated with rare glee. What marvellous things are ani¬

mals, and how varied-how lively, vital, dangerous

and delightful!

But always it had a goal, the Metastasis, and the

dual-species conversation required nudging in that

hallowed direction. The attendant Egg therefore

dropped lower, hanging among them, fluting in the

measured and musical patriarchal mode. “Sing now,

First in the Chase, of the flight of Hwiliria and of

your meeting with me so long ago. And in so doing,

tell these humans the tale of the last days of your

kind.”

“Heard and understood, Regurgitator of Souls.”

The First in the Chase stood, lifting his head and

lowering his crest to brush his shoulders, contracting

it to a point that Jennifer now knew was the expres¬

sion of abject misery. The rest of the whileelin did

likewise, knowing the tale all too well. 193

194 John McLoughlin

Jennifer pointed a mike at the creatures, while

Pike held a linked vidcam. The story was brief; they’d

guessed its drift. Another variant of the Toolmaker

Koan. It was a mournful brassy voice, the whileelin patri¬

archal modality, like a slow medieval dance. The four

humans found themselves swept up in the sound,

hypnotized by the Koan’s unfolding. “Home was a kindly place, and bright with water,

flecked with islands large and small, oh, warm, oh,

rich with fodder for our beasts. In ancient times the

people sailed on ships, diverging, taking islands for

their creches and islands for their beasts, and the two

were separate, the pastoral islands and the creche-

islands, as is fit. And the creches thrived, their neu¬

ters waxing fat in the morning, for the neuters ate

well to learn. The neuters learned of the breeding of

food-beasts and the building of boats and the working

of medicine, good things, things bespeaking plenty. So the creches grew, many at first, on many islands. “In the kinder time the pastoral islands were loved

and preserved, inhabited only by food-animals. The

clever neuters, always hungry, bred wild predators

into tame, using them to herd and drive the food-

beasts. The time was good, and the world was fat;

good fortune was with us. “But as the neuters waxed fat and their numbers

grew, they demanded of their Patriarchates the rais¬

ing of more neuters, for the growth of knowledge

requires the presence of minds, more minds; and the

Patriarchates, seeing this as good, raised more neu¬

ters—converting food-islands to islands of neuters and

learning. “And the clever neuters, learning, required more

food of their Patriarchates; but whence the food?

It

must come at the expense of other creches, and the

Toolmaker Koan 195

neuters advocated the trade of food; but each creche

required food, and space, and so the neuters advo¬

cated the training of more neuters to commandeer

their food for them; and the fighting-neuter was bom,

a wonderful and terrifying thing, to collect resources

from other creches. “And the neuter armies grew, and learned, and the

pastoral islands grew few and disputed. The neuters,

questing, devised riding-mounts from food-beasts;

riding-mounts of great size and swiftness, that grew

their own shields behind which riders might hide. They trained their herding-predators, wild and hun¬

gry, to advance before them into battle, while on

their awesome mounts the fighting-neuters rode with

lances. And this tale, but moments in the telling, is

one of many thousand years’ passing, during which

whileelin grew powerful and took command of the

planetary food-chain of Home. But this was not sufficient; neuter numbers grew,

and lances gave way to projectile-launchers, machines

of vast efficiency that killed over distance. Forgotten

at last, save among the fertiles of the Patriarchates,

was the Order of Talons, the honorable dispute with

words and hands and feet, as was intended of whileelin

by the world that made them. The neuters found the

power of steam, and fuel for their steam, and built

fast ships, sailing among the pastoral islands and dis¬

puting them at sea, for the Patriarchates still had

wisdom to prevent the war on land that would de¬

stroy eggs and fodder. But whence the food, whence

the food?

“So it was discovered that the fertiles stood in the

way. Fat clever neuters struck at the eggs of the

patriarchs and matriarchs, preserving those of them

that agreed with their neuters, breaking those of

them that disagreed. Unopposed now, neuters de-

196 John McLoughlin

vised land-war, and with it the helmeted neuter, for

now the machine was with us, and those who oper¬

ated machines were neuter, their helmets of iridium

linking them intimately with machines of war, fire-

spouters, land-creepers, flying machines. “Hence then the rise of the Overcreches, the South¬

land Overcreche and the Northland Overcreche, each

astride a thousand islands, each wishing the world of

Home for its own genes. And the pastoral islands

diminished, and the creches grew; the beasts of the

seas were hunted to extinction, and wildlife disap¬

peared, and Home became a place only of whileelin,

and the beasts on which they fed. “And the clever neuters invented, tinkering, alter¬

ing the limits of the mind. “Came then the time of Space, when the neuters

of both Overcreches invented missiles that might

strike across vast distances; the missiles could also lift

mass into space, and in space, the neuters cried,

would be the proper place for weapons. And their

Patriarchates, now two mighty Overcreches in num¬

ber, agreed; and space was filled with machines of

war and clever helmeted neuters to direct them. “And in space the clever neuters tinkered more,

devising great ships that they built from the flying

stones so abundantly given; and, clever, they sought

to live there, hoping one day, each for its own

Overcreche, to reinhabit Home and thrive, and de¬

stroy the other Overcreche forever, its eggs, its genes,

its memory. They demanded of their Patriarchates

new eggs, to be hurled into space and hatched aboard

the great ships; they took eggs of the Patriarchates,

and eggs of food-beasts, and eggs of the modified

predators that herded those beasts, and sought to

create habitats, seizing and collecting spacerock to

build sufficient room for our kind. Toolmaker Koan 197

So it was that the North Overcreche was peti¬

tioned, and in turn petitioned the noble subcreche

Northrock Crossgene; and the eggs of my ancestors

left Home forever, punched into the void to dwell

aboard the Seeker Hwiliria to await the retaking of

Home for our people. And the South Overcreche also

built a Seeker, filling it with fierce neuters and a

nucleus of fertiles—to wait. “So in the Seekers ten generations dwelt, in each a

Patriarchate raising young and neuters to carry on

our kind; each was vast, but could support few for all

its vastness, for whileelin must roam, and breathe,

and hunt. “Eleven generations of Northrock Crossgene Fifty-

two, I and my fathers before me, held forth on

Hwiliria; and the limits of Hwiliria constrained us in

our numbers. “And when the endtime came, when over the cries

of the fertiles of Patriarchates North and South their

clever neuters came to grapple at last, the North, my

own, alas!

caused little stars, invented by neuters, to

blossom among the creches and manufactories of the

South, which responded in kind. And all was lost,

and dying, and in the space around Home the dark

blossomed with the neuters’ last hate—in the final

dying the spacefaring neuters of the South did seize a

great rock from space and direct it in their madness

upon Home, and it struck and flashed into nothing¬

ness, the oceans steaming in Home’s agony, the skies

convulsed in clouds of gray and yellow. A world-

storm came forth, and even we far away in Hwiliria

saw the lightning’s flickering among the poisoned

wrack. Home rejected us, and denied our return,

and the neuters of Hwiliria struck at the South Seeker,

causing her to crash into the world-storm of Home. “And then the Patriarch my father cried aloud in

198 John McLoughlin

his agony, and called upon me to direct Hwiliria

away from Home, outward into the void beyond the

planets; he clenched his own throat with his talons

then, and died, and in my own madness I obeyed

and we fled, pursued by the last of the raving space¬

sailing helmeted neuters and their insensate machines. “And as far away from our kindly sun the cold

crept on us, we found the Eggs of the Regurgitator of

Souls, waiting, and the Regurgitator spoke to us of

possible futures, and of a long sleep of the soul; and

we listened, and slept; and however long ago that

was, all this is but yesterday to us in the telling,

barely three suns’ passing since we came upon those

shining Eggs in the dark.”

“And now we mourn, we mourn for the passing of

my father, and of all our fathers and mothers, the

Patriarchates and Matriarchates of old, and for the mur¬

der of our kindly Home by the greed of our own kind,

we mourn, we mourn, ahrlooonm, we mourn...”

The cry was taken up by all the whileelin, a mourn¬

ful trumpeting, wolfish lamentation that chilled the

blood of the human listeners, even Corson blinking,

biting his lower lip in the horror of the tale. The eerie crying stopped, its echoes dying in the

vastness of Charon’s memory. “The Toolmaker Koan,” fluted the Egg. “You un¬

derstand my unwillingness to see this koan demon¬

strated again. Two of these Seekers they built, only

two. And, although each seems a little world to you

humans...” The Charon-voice quavered eerily. “Un¬

knowing, always living systems strive for the Metas¬

tasis; always, it seems, they fail ar the last instant. But I think we hold the key to transition. Perhaps I

do, at any rate. We shall see.”

CHAPTER 13

Egg and Meat

No sleep—no need. The whileelin had disappeared, at a run as they

seemed to do everything, no doubt to ponder in their

own way the survivors of Expediter and Dienbienphu,

leaving the human castaways to a marathon post-meal

post-mortem sharing experiences of their new ac¬

quaintances; each had had questions, and been ques¬

tioned, through hours of eating and talk with the

whileelin. They sat at the inevitable table and chairs—chairs,

they knew now, carved by Charon in the likeness of

whileelin. The talk centered, for the moment, on

origins. If whileelin came from an Earthlike world, as

obviously they did despite their outward differences,

couldn’t space be full of such worlds?

The possibility

of Earthlike planets in abundance seized the human

minds, and conversation fed itself merrily. “We re suited to this gravity. So, since whileelin

built Hwiliria, and Hwiliria closely duplicates Earth

gravity, they come from an Earth-sized planet.” Pike

shrugged. “I’m no astrophysical expert, but the light

199

200 John Mcloughlin

here more or less matches Sol’s, so this home star

was likely a yellow dwarf, right?

Maybe even G2.

Hell—with the close similiarities in body chemistry

that lets them eat all this Earthly game, I figure we’d

have to have predicted all that anyway. And a liquid-

water planet indicates that they’d have been near the

same distance from their sun, the temperate dis¬

tance. But what else can you say?

If Charon’s been in

Sol system at least four million years, long enough to

remember your ape-men, sir, I can’t imagine any

stars’ being close enough to their old positions for

either the whileelin or us to locate their homeplace.”

“Uh-huh.” Corson stood, paced slowly back and

forth. “The First said it was a temporary madness

made them try to run away. He thought he’d ‘find

another place,’ and just set off into the dark, where

Charon found them. They were all kind of crazed, I

guess. I would be, too—but I still don’t like anything

about them.’’

“You understood the implications of their numbers

aboard Hwiliria, didn’t you, gentlemen?” Oruna Benai

gritted his teeth, shook his head. “It carried—what

did he say?

‘More than thrice twelve-cubed walkers’,

I think, which translates to, uh...”

“Fifty-one hundred and eighty-four,“ said Pike “at

least, I guess. But that’s an awful lot of whileelin. And food, too, if they ate then like they eat now. This

is a serious ship.”

“I do believe I’m glad they’re extinct,” said Benai. “I wonder where the rest of the crew went...”

“Charon’ll awaken the rest as we proceed,” said

Jennifer. “Most of them are neuters; we’ve already

met the principals.”

Benai watched Corson’s pacing, back and forth, back

and forth. “These neuters concern me, Doctor. All the

First and his, ah, ‘juvenile sibs’ would discuss was

Toolmaker Koan 201

history, ancestry, that sort of thing—no mention of tech¬

nology, no interest in weaponry. Whe I asked, the First

said that 'Those are the provinces of neuters,’ and no

more. Citizen, you do recall a discussion we had some

time ago, about Captain Fitzroy and his naturalist?”

How could I forget,” laughed Jennifer. She’d spent

her own meal with the neuters, which communicated

with one another and with her in that radio-language

that only the surgeon could hear. "I’ve learned rather

more from the poor neuters than you did from the

First; he’s bound genetically into a limited role. The

two neuters are—well, ‘assigned’ to the First and the

Prime Matriarch; the word for the relationship trans¬

lates as ‘shadows.’ It’s a fascinating tale, the whole

thing. Their social organization, their two languages;

the fertiles, their whole culture’s bound up in repro¬

duction—like any, I guess. But the neuters them¬

selves are different, a marvelous pair of talkers: they’ve

a good knowledge of the evolution of their own spe¬

cies. They’re the academics of the lot, and terrifically

nimble in thinking. It’s a caste system. Nothing like

anything of our own—nothing like India, say, no

simple social constraint. It’s an artificial modification

of their maturation biology, an entirely strange thing. The fertiles don’t use tools; they live only to hunt and

reproduce, and they’re a tiny minority. The neuters

run things, like Hwiliria, in order that the fertiles

can do as they please—continue the race. ”

With eager patience, she explained as best she

could. Reproduction among the whileelin was sexual

and fertilization internal as among higher Earthly

animals; like many of these, whileelin females lay

eggs. The eggs were laid in an ancestrally-sanctioned

place translating as a “creche,” the creche also being

the prime unit of social grouping among whileelin. In

ancient times, wars were fought by fertiles over

202 John McLoughlin

favorable creche-places, not only as a place of egg-

laying; all hatched there were said to be of one creche. Later, creches divided into subcreches and were sub¬

sumed into overcreches as populations grew and

spread. A clutch of eggs was twelve in number, twelve

eggs each about ten centimeters long being laid in a

sitting by a fertile female; any variance from that

twelve was cause for dismay, and among some the

practice had been to destroy such unusual clutches

entirely. “But then,” she added, “in some human

groups it was customary to kill malformed infants—so

we re not so far off.”

The eggs were laid in soft brown sand of a special

sort highly valued and artificially duplicated by

whileelin technology. The laying was done in a spe¬

cific geometric pattern, each creche s or “family’s”

pattern varying from the others’.

The sun-warmed

sand heated the eggs during incubation, females turn¬

ing them periodically with their hands to ensure even

warming over a period that Charon translated as just

less than two Earthly months. “Which is all well and good,” said Jennifer. “There’re

birds that incubate their eggs belowground—the mal-

lee fowl of Australasia is a good example. In all this,

the whileelin parallel a number of Earthly reproduc¬

tive strategies. It’s when they hatch that the differ¬

ence begins.”

“How’s that?” Corson broke off his pacing, reset¬

tled himself in his chair and thoughtfully cut himself

a cooling slice of Charon’s excellent ham. “Well, they hatch more or less at the same time,

all the eggs in a creche, and the clutch of young are

miniatures of their parents—they have teeth, and can

run from the moment of hatching. Miniature brains,

too, of course; not much room for intelligence in

Toolmaker Koan 203

something emerging from a twelve-centimeter egg!

They re born to hunt. The infants can’t be educated. They just start out, at high speed, and in the old

days—before what we’d call civilization, I’d guess—

the entire clutch of youngsters began to fight among

themselves!

They hunted and they fought through

what’s called the Fifth Moult, when they were nearly

adult size. In what they call ‘primitive societies,’ by

Fifth Moult there were ordinarily only two young¬

sters remaining from a clutch—their having killed all

the others by the age of about ten of our years, you

see. “But that’s barbarous!

It’s an insult to—to their

own reproductive success...

isn’t it?” Benai’s eyes

widened in shock. “Not exactly. Among our own birds of prey the

same sort of thing often happens. A mother eagle

may lay two eggs, but the first to hatch often kills its

sibling on hatching. It’s then better-fed, growing to

greater size and strength than it would have had the

parents’ resources been split between two young.’’

“Ah. And the mother?

Doesn’t she try to save the

youngsters from one another?”

“Originally, no. Her resources, after all, were bet¬

ter spent seeking food and protecting the wild young

from other predators. She initially takes them on

short excursions from the nest, brings them the equiv¬

alent of large insects and other little animals much as

a cat does with growing kittens. As they grow, though,

they become wilder, going off on their own, fighting

and hunting...

and at that stage the females are

ready to lay another clutch. From the adult point of

view, it was deemed well and good that they should

eat one another that way—a ‘better product,’ you

know, resulted from the competition.” She chuckled. “A sort of Arabesque practicality.”

204 John McLoughlin

Another parallel,’’ said Pike. “The fertile sibs tell me

that adult males guard the creches and hunt big game. ”

‘Right,’’ said Jennifer. “Otherwise they never in¬

volve themselves with creche life except during the

mating season, which is once every year for any one

female. A prosperous patriarch might have many fe¬

males in his creche.’’

“Eagh,” Corson said. “They just let the kids kill

one another?

None of this mother-love stuff?”

I m no mother myself, Colonel—I can understand,

a bit. I rather gather that early during their evolution,

the period of sibling rivalry was an inborn population-

control system. One can’t have all twelve young from

each clutch maturing; think of the problem with a

twelve-fold population increase with each generation,

especially in an obligate top-of-the-food-chain carni-

vore!

Good God, said Benai. “And how did they edu¬

cate the little devils?”

“Well, ‘little devils’ seems as good a usage as any

in the case of whileelin babies; they’re born with the

full complement of hunting instincts only. As I said,

their brains are small. They’re ineducable, and they’re

not even named. They’re not toolmakers in the least;

they’d seem almost a second species to us. But they’re

born with a sort of language, a full grammatical appa¬

ratus and words that fill in the gaps automatically as

they grow. Not the language we hear the fertiles

using with us; it’s called ‘crechetalk, ’ because it’s

used in the creche, inborn. Crechetalk is the basis for

the faster, birdwhistle language of the neuters. They

retain it throughout their sequence of moults.”

“Moults?” Corson sat heavily in his chair. You

mean to tell me they moult, like birds—like chickens?”

“Oh, yes,” said Jennifer. “Intriguing, this moulting:

a shedding of the pelt during periods of astonishingly

Toolmaker Koan 205

fast growth. It s central to whileelin development,

governing all their neurological wiring.” Flustered,

excited, she spread her hands. “Fertiles of both sexes

reach reproductive age after Ninth Moult. The fasci¬

nating part is what happens between Fifth and Ninth

Moult, between about ten and twenty years. It’s a

time of—well, of what I guess I’d have to call almost

total metamoiphosis. Like in butterflies, perhaps, only

neurological.”

She shrugged, bit her lip. “It’s difficult, really, this

talk with neuters. They can’t—or don’t—answer

some questions, their response is something like that

military slang, DNC: ‘Does Not Compute.’ They’re

elements in a larger whole, a whole that isn’t here—

yet. Bothers me, that; couldn’t help but fear they’re

holding back. ”

“And this Fifth Moult,” Benai prompted. “Yes, until Fifth Moult the young are wild animals. Then they suddenly acquire a mental plasticity of a

sort we’d only find in small children. The brain be¬

gins to grow very quickly, and the crechetalk vocabu¬

lary suddenly becomes terrifically open-ended, expan¬

sive—yet it’s a wired-in language, remember, its gram¬

mar and verbal roots totally inborn. Just as we use a

sort of Latin-and-Greek bastard technological language,

their adult language is an artificial enlargement of the

inborn crechetalk. ” Enthusiasm lighted Jennifer’s eyes

again, and she waved her arms delightedly. “I can’t

quite compare it to anything we know. Fifth Moult s

like a rebirth!

A wild predatory thing with an auto¬

matic brain, the mind of a—of a hawk, suddenly

becomes a new thing, a creature like a human child!

Fifth Moult is when they get the first equivalent of a

name—but it’s a number.”

“All at once, they turn into toolmakers with cul¬

ture?

Just like that?” Boy, Pike thought, dissections

206 John McLoughlin

of those growing brains might show us something....

Twinge of guilt—he’d never dare suggest that aloud. “Just like that. I believe it’s hormonal, some change

accompanying that seminal Fifth Moult, which they

say actually occurs over a period of about six of our

months. The youngster begins to become very exper¬

imental, very exploratory, more social, cultural, and

tool-oriented. All of the cultural and technological

innovation among the whileelin—all of it—during that

intermediate period between Fifth and Ninth Moults. Whoever invented fire, whoever improved weapons,

whoever invented a new trap, writing, mathematics,

space travel, what have you, was someone undergo¬

ing that period of enhanced development. By the

time of Ninth Moult a whileelin’s a real ‘person,’

educated and social and all that, competent with a

sort of stone-age technology, mythological creche and

species history, everything that makes a primitive

culture...

it’s a sort of delayed neoteny!”

“Give a guy some space,” said Corson. “Neoteny?

What’s that?”

“Neoteny?

Childhood, held over. Some people say

that a human newborn is sort of an embryonic ape,

with far more mental flexibility than an ape’s—flexi¬

bility that remains with us, if we’re lucky, through

life. Charon calls us ‘dangerous playful animals,’ and

that’s what we are: perpetual children, in a way.”

“But the whileelin can’t be neotenous,” said Pike,

“if they’re born as miniature adults.”

“Right!

They couldn’t be born with huge brains,

because there’re limits to egg size, and therefore to

infant size. So they go through these moults, and

then, at Fifth Moult, the neoteny kicks in, delayed

until the individual’s big enough to carry and use a

big brain...

and the brain continues to grow until

that Ninth Moult, when they reach sexual maturity,

and another metamorphosis.”

Toolmaker Koan 207

She moved her hands jerkily, up over her head. They develop in steps, genetically ordained jumps. Ninth Moult makes another wiring overlay, just as

complete as in the Fifth, but in the form of a sort of

mental crystallization, a completion, in which the

individual becomes fixed in society: shunted by his or

her genes into competent stone-age adulthood. Like

the First in the Chase.” Jennifer shaped a box with

her hands. Cubbyholed. The males receive a name

and social position at Ninth Moult. And a new lan¬

guage, too. The language of the First and his fertile

sibs is called patriarchal, as Charon interprets it. Patriarchal is as inborn as crechetalk, but it only

appears at Ninth Moult, and only in fertiles. It’s a

language of the hunt, of territorial behavior, of proto¬

col and strategy; those are the precincts of fer¬

tiles only. They all leave the creche and enter the

Matriarchate and Patriarchate.”

A brief spasm of wry laughter. 'The patriarchal’s

restricted, in a way, ornamental and poetic and

sonorous—you know how the First acts. That’s part

of the language, part of his wiring—he’s kind of a

born warrior-bard, a superb diplomat. And he has to

be—evolution forces that kind of behavior on any

social animals well-armed enough to kill one another

with a single kick, or a good grip with one hand. Social predators with inborn weaponry are always

very ritualized in their disputes; they have to divert

aggression, dance it, rather than actually initiate it. So there you have the fertiles, the Matriarchate and

Patriarchate, the fierce and courteous rolled into one. To me, the First is at the same time a formidable and

a lovely thing. ”

“Yeah,” said Corson, “he does kind of give the

impression that his opinions aren’t too, uh, amenable

to change.”

208 John McLoughlin

“Oh, he can change, all right; part of the Patriarch¬

ate is diplomacy, as I’ve said. Why, if they’d seen us

before Charon explained us away...

Well, think of

the antelope!’’ She laughed again. “But they’ve adapted

to us quite well so far. The odd part is, that the

whileelin live almost like social insects, like ants or

bees, with neuter workers protecting them and gen¬

erally running things—technology, culture. The neu¬

ters are the important part. They permit the race

their technology, their civilization...

they’re like—

like agriculture!

Think about our agricultural revolu¬

tion, the time about twelve millennia ago when human

beings discovered how to grow stable crops of food—”

But these are, what did you call ’em?

Obligate

carnivores?

They wouldn’t have agriculture.” Corson

felt well out of his depth, for all that he’d been born

in an agricultural district. “Of course not. But they had a revolution of similar

impact. Think what agriculture meant to us!” Her

enthusiasm running away with her, Jennifer stuttered

for a moment. “Sss—cities!

Specialization!

First farm¬

ers and soldiers, then priest castes, craftsmen, metal¬

lurgists...

only with agriculture could we have

developed our technology, only with agriculture could

we have provided the wherewithal for the support of

people who live by experimentation and meditation. Agriculture permitted the liberation of much of the

human endeavor from what we could call ‘support

activity, ’ the finding of food and maintenance of life ...

didn’t it?”

“Sure. But agriculture...

they had no agricul¬

ture, like I said.” Corson wasn’t tracking. “Don’t you see?

Their counterpart revolution was

the creation of the neuters!” For hundreds of

thousands—millions—of years the whileelin were a

nomadic hunting folk, much as our ancestors were,

Toolmaker Koan 209

but more so. As a species they seem to’ve had a

longer, ah, prehistory; they were around as a language¬

using folk for more than six million years. And they

had an enormous impact on the life around them,

hunting a good many species into extinction. But

cultural evolution was slow. Wired-in language makes

for a conservative culture, and innovation only oc¬

curred among those between Fifth and Ninth Moults.”

Jennifer made a squeezing gesture with her hands:

constraint. So life began to get hard as the more easily-killed

prey disappeared. They remained bound by the in¬

born wiring of their languages and the initial limits

imposed by their inborn hunting-weapons, their claws

and teeth. Only a few young reached Fifth Moult in

each clutch, and it was those few who were responsi¬

ble, during their ten years of exploratory develop¬

ment, for any advances in hunting technique they

might ve had. They were pinned in a very conserva¬

tive rate of cultural turnover, then, for literally mil¬

lions of years.” She pursed her lips, pondering. Their only concession to a home base was the

creche—the place where eggs were laid. Their socie¬

ties might be regarded as cells, as nuclear creches

surrounded by roving bands of predatory and territo¬

rial males. The creche and the egg are central to

their lives, to their religion. With eggs, you have a

society very much involved with protection of a frag¬

ile and immobile stretch in the life-cycle, no?”

‘Yes—but we’re that way with infants, too.”

“Correct. But think about their infants, frightful

little animals, dangerous not only to one another but

also to eggs; the infants would, in fact, purposefully

dig up and destroy eggs of other clutches. It was part

of their wiring, a nasty little bit of genetic strategy. Small wonder that the mothers weren’t over-concerned

about the little buggers’ killing one another off. ”

210 John McLoughlin

“And the revolution?”

“Ah!

Someone, somewhere well back in their pre¬

history—probably through traumatic accident of some

sort—discovered that if the sexual organs were re¬

moved from youngsters at Fifth Moult, they never

underwent the mental crystallization at the Ninth]”

Benai felt his inner fears quite justified now. “You

mean, they made eunuchs, castrati, of their own

young?”

“Yes. And as castrati—and the female equivalent—

the young, both male and female, retain their terrific

intellectual expansiveness throughout life—which, I

gather, lasts about twice a human lifespan. The neu¬

ters continue learning at an unbelievable rate the

whole time, inventing and communicating and un¬

folding their culture, along with the flexible crechetalk

with which to implement it!” She stood, spread her

arms, sat again, eyes glittering. “Of course, you can

guess what happened: once the neuters discovered

this, they quickly saw the wastefulness of the infant

cannibalistic stage and separated the young from one

another at birth, permitting all twelve to grow to

Fifth Moult. The biggest and strongest of a clutch—

usually one male and two females—were left intact,

and the rest carried off and neutered. An instant

technological class. You can see the genetic wisdom;

those neuters proving most clever at invention and

innovation, of course, furthered the reproductive suc¬

cess of their fertile sibs, as the First calls them. Again, it’s like social insects—ants—where thousands

of sterile workers build and operate societies for the

maintenance of a few fertile relatives!

“So they started to build cities?” Pike wrinkled his

brow, trying to imagine a city of whileelin. Too much. “We don’t see much by way of structures here in

Hwiliria—were they underground, or what?

And no

Toolmaker Koan 211

roads...

it s all kind of rural, a wilderness, espe¬

cially when you consider thousands of them running

around.’’

Think, though, Pike.” She smiled. “We re pretty

short-legged and slow compared to whileelin; we keep

to well-defined paths because we must. Once we

learned to domesticate horses and beasts of burden,

we constructed paths for them, too; later we took up

wheeled vehicles requiring smoother, hardened paths. “But the whileelin were very swift, as you know;

they were among the fastest animals on their planet. They evolved as predators, efficient at running every

which way, destroying very little plant cover—which,

after all, was necessary fodder for the creatures on

which they lived. A scar in the landscape, a path, is a

painful sight to whileelin, a detriment to their prey. Therefore they never became road-builders; by the

time the neuters had constructed power-sources that

would have moved swift wheeled vehicles, they’d

also mastered the principles of atmospheric flight. Whileelin neuters became fliers before they became

drivers, if you will.” Feeling a humor in all this, she

laughed aloud. ““Another thing: the Patriarchate and Matriarchate,

the fertiles—they run for the sheer enjoyment of it. Throughout their technological history, foot-travel has

always marked the privileged fertile components of

whileelin society. Only neuters used machines on

Home, and while on Hwiliria you’ll only see neuters

using them. Or ‘inside’ anything, like the warrens

that make up the cylindrical walls of the ship. The

fertiles don’t even like roofs over their heads, and

those warrens—” suspicion crept again into her voice. “I—caught hints of surgery. For the warren-dwellers,

the machine-operators. ‘Walkers’ means unmodified

212 John McLoughlin

neuters; the others are—‘rendered incomplete.’ They

wouldn’t say any more.”

“Can’t say I like the idea of warrens full of neuter

whileelin underfoot,” muttered Corson, looking care¬

fully at his feet. “Rather have ’em up in the light, like

decent folk. ”

“They were, most of them—in the light. They’re

more outside-oriented than we are. They couldn’t

stand crowding, though, no cities as such. Remem¬

ber, they’re all at the top of the food-chain; they were

compulsory carnivores, and they needed vast spaces

in which to hunt. Their homeworld just couldn’t sup¬

port a lot of city-sized populations. As I understand

it, at most only a few hundred million whileelin—

mostly neuters, of course—inhabited their world at

their peak of population. As their culture became

more industrial, they produced huge isolated manu¬

factories, but only neuters went there. Living for

whileelin was always open-air. How do the Ameri¬

cans say it?

‘Rig sky.’ ”

A note of sadness, now. “They even seem to have a

word for big sky, and all these fertile spacefarers

keep making up songs about it. They miss it. I gather

that all their habitats in space were something like

Hwiliria: huge compared to ours, with far smaller

populations...”

“Rut what about the population?” Pike shook his

head. There you are, with twelvefold increments of

these gourmandizing things each generation...”

“Alas, Pike, there you are. Toolmaker Koan. As I

said, the Neuter Revolution, as I’d call it, was to the

whileelin what our Agricultural Revolution was to us. A great beginning, but the beginning of an end. Theirs was rather slower, though, because even after

that Revolution they continued with less regard for

their infants than we have. In times of stress, small

Toolmaker Koan 213

creches would permit some of the hatchlings to kill

one another. Not too different, as I said: human

societies in times of stress show a tendency toward

neglect of the young, too; family dissolution—you

know, all of you. ”

A stony silence. Close to home, too close, this—

and the surgeon went on. “Toolmaker Koan. As al¬

ways in any ecological system, some creches had

more success than others. These overran the lesser

creches, killing adult males, breaking eggs and de¬

stroying infants, refertilizing females and using cap¬

tured neuters to further their own ends. The creches

encouraged their neuters in the invention of weapons

technologies, as you can imagine, and the civiliza¬

tions that resulted were rather warlike in substance

—like ours.”

“Okay, now,” said Pike, unease growing, “you’re

painting this picture, Jennifer, this portrait of an

animal—”

“You’re talking like Charon,” she laughed. “A peo¬

ple, Pike, a people just as much as we are, only

different.”

“A people, then. All right. A people, a people

whose individuals require a great deal of space, more

than we do, and if they don’t get that space, what do

they do?”

“As nearly as I understand it they’re pretty much

insane claustrophobes. They don’t like roofs over their

heads, they like to run in straight lines when they

can. They need space, each of them, as much as we

need—water, or exercise.”

“Yeah, exercise,” said Corson. “And even though I

gather they have domesticated food animals, they

seem to need to hunt, right?”

“Surely. We have atavistic needs too. We need a

214 John McLoughlin

bit of a hunt ourselves—sports, you know. Don’t fault

them for that.”

“Faulting?” Pike’s eyes rounded. “Jennifer, don’t

you see?

Charon’s setting up this—this Metastasis,

and it’s supposed to involve a sort of friendly coexist¬

ence between us and a species that eats only meat,

that requires huge spaces, that reproduces cannibal¬

istic young twelve at a time, that operates on, neu¬

ters its own offspring and keeps them around like

worker ants. You tell me that the entire caste of adult

males is devoted to acquiring territory, posturing and

threatening and—”

“Pike, you’re getting—”

“Listen. Two species in one solar system. They

both require asteroids, volatiles, air, water, space...”

“Of which, you know, there’re plenty.”

“Dammit, Jennifer, for how long?”

“Come on, Pike, it takes light some hours to cross

the system!

The Oort cloud, why, we haven’t even

begun to—”

“Muir,” interrupted Corson, “you’re right. Charon’s

got no soul, no emotions, nothing, and it’s setting up

this thing like a game of chess, this Metastasis, based >>

on—

“On competition between our species,” Benai fin¬

ished. “Citizen Doctor, you understand what this

means for the future of our kind. These things have

the attitudes of—of lions, prides of lions. The moral¬

ity of ants, perhaps, of insects, and the appetites of

shrews, endlessly eating, endlessly hunting.”

Yeah, Pike added. And this ship. The way I

understand it, their requirements for resources are

immense, far more than we’ve invested in High Co¬

lumbia or Engels. They 11 want more, and more, and

more.”

“And us?” Anger rising, Jennifer clenched her fists. Toolmaker Koan 215

We re the holy innocents, kindly, generous, always

thoughtful of the little babies, the helpless animals,

the—the Earth?

Why, you bastards, we re about to

singe the life off our own planet like the bristles off a

pig!

Whileelin already did it: they burned their own

world. They’ll know, they’ll help us past it all. They

have—they have things we’ve never seen, they can

build worlds, like this—” she spread her arms—“in

space. Charon’s right: it’ll take two species to beat

the Toolmaker Koan!

They know about it—they’ll

help us—

Pike stood, turned his back on her and the rest. “Like I said, Jennifer, for how long?

I don’t yet have

the feeling that Charon has just our long-term inter¬

ests at heart.’’

“Charon’s got no more heart than a stone,” Corson

muttered. “It’s a—a machine, like it says. It says it

wants to see the spread of life, but it doesn’t say what

kind of life. It’s watching us now, waiting. It’s playing

a long-term game. We re cultures of molds, we re

fighting-cocks to Charon. We re toys.”

Benai stepped away, turned briefly. “Fighting cocks. I see that. We and the whileelin, playing out a long

strut in the solar pit for Charon, until one of us

emerges—” He stalked away, disappeared into the

nearby dark-green piney foliage to urinate. “Fighting cocks.” Pike shuddered. “They do have

that look about ’em. Fighting cocks, or—cross a fight¬

ing cock with a dragon, a dinosaur or something. Basilisks. All those goddamned claws and teeth!

Those

eyes, those yellow fucking eyes, always staring and

staring, and the way they bob their heads...” He

stared at his hands, closed his eyes. “Basilisks,” said Corson. “Maybe that’s what they

are, basilisks hatched out to run amok among us

dummies. Look at their hands, and their big old

216 John McLoughlin

feet—I wonder about their weapons a lot, the ones

they make. You know one thing those neuters make?

They make an organic monomolecular semiconductor—

they grow it. Charon told me—knows how to catch

my interest.”

“You see, then?” Jennifer’s turn to stand, tears in

her eyes, clutching at the sides of her coveralls. “They can teach us, we can teach them, we can—we

can make a greater whole. We can do it, this Metas¬

tasis. Together we can beat the Koan!

We’re not in

competition, we’re not after their food, they’re not

after ours!

We ll not be—we won’t rape and pillage

one another, the way we do our own. There’s room

out here. You’re racists, all of you, calling them dino¬

saurs, gamecocks, dragons!

They’re people, as much

as you or I, and Charon’s offered us the chance as

people to persist, to live, to go on...” Her turn,

then, to head for the brush, her rage hanging palpa¬

bly in the air behind her. “Among my people in the long ago,” said Benai

speculatively, “lions were also people. Yet we some¬

times came to blows, we and the lion people.”

“Now the lions are gone, too,” said Pike. “Now, there’s a thought,” drawled Corson, “The

lions are gone, aren’t they?

Maybe we better remem¬

ber that, get our shit together.” He looked up at

Charon’s crystalline “sky,” spoke more loudly than

before: “I know you’re listening, Charon boy. We

aren’t just animals. We’re human beings. We can still

surprise you.” He winked, at nothing. There was no response from Charon; no Egg ap¬

peared, hanging magically in the air. A chill breeze

sprang up, however, and somewhere in the distance

something hooted long and lonely...

a Pleistocene

bird?

Or some amber-eyed basilisk from long ago and

far away?

CHAPTER 14

Hive and Crain

Of the thrice-plus twelves-cubed of neuters aboard

the Seeker Hwiliria, only two—the shadows to the

First and his Prime Matriarch—had initially been

remembered into existence. They were highly spe¬

cialized beings, serving as interface between the adult

fertiles and the rest of the Creche: a Creche that

slept on, yet unrecalled by the Regurgitator of Souls. The shadows now lay helmeted before the Prime

Matriarch and the First in the Chase, the others

resting on their haunches around them, gizzards slowly

discussing fragments of a large animal that had been

surprised by the pack a few hours before. The thing

was of the human world, but excellent; when they

returned to the humans, the First would ask about

the creature. Comfortable in the vast beringed enclosure of Prime

Creche, the First and his relatives bathed in their

artificial hot spring, a steaming stone-rimmed pool of

cloudy mineral-rich water in which they remained

immersed to the necks, soaking and singing and mak¬

ing their great enclosure ring to their exuberance. 217

218 John McLoughlin

They groomed as they sang, the talons of the First

working their way through the pelt on the Prime

Matriarch’s neck, her secondary matriarch combing

the First’s crest with her own long knobby fingers. To human ears the singing would have approxi¬

mated an otherworldly wind ensemble, brass and

bassoon of the Patriarchate syncopated with the flutes,

oboes and clarinets of the matriarchs, interspersed

here and there with runs of a pianolike sound or even

the cutting tones of strings, violin to bass. In this case

it was a septet, a melodic loading into whileelin mem¬

ories of their meeting with humanity. A ballad in a

bath, committing to the crechemind its new experi¬

ence; a rare exchange of information between fertiles

and neuters. The Prime Creche was as before their Long Sleep,

and the reproductives were pleased; perhaps the hu¬

mans should see it and be awed. Certainly, once in

the hot spring no one wished to leave it; and the

familiar plants and landforms carried with them a

breath of lost Home. So, all soaked, and talked. Crest erect, the Prime Matriarch stared at her

neuter shadow. “And did the female explain to you

anything of their manner of managing food supplies?”

“Indeed she did, Prime Matriarch, although this

one experienced some unbelief in the hearing.” The

shadow, helmet glittering, stammered a bit in the

highly limited tense of the deferential once-removed,

the crechetalk employed before adult fertiles. Rarely

had it spoken before them; rarely did it speak aloud

at all, used as it was to the silent helmet-talk of

neuters. And here it was less than two suns’ passing

since they’d been recalled from their long sleep in

the Regurgitator’s memory. Only yesterday, it seemed,

they had fled the End of the Kind and encountered

the Regurgitator; from one among thousands, the

Toolmaker Koan 219

shadow was now one among a tiny hunting pack, like

those of the ancients. It was frightened, out of the

worker creche, finding little comfort in the solitary

helmet link with the shadow of the First. “She told

this one that the humans who call themselves peo¬

ple’ eat meat when they can get it, but that they

more often subsist on plants, special plants with which

they have achieved a symbiosis.”

“They are indeed omnivores, then. What a disgust¬

ing thought.”

“This one was revolted at the idea, Prime Matri¬

arch.”

“That is immaterial,” said the Prime Matriarch. “Was there any indication,” rumbled the First, “of

the planetary numbers of these humans?”

Again the neuter fluted doubtfully, “The female

assured this one that considerably more than twelve-

to-the-ninth humans inhabit their homeworld.”

Insanity, said the Prime Matriarch. “I suppose

such numbers could be supported only if nearly all of

their species dropped back down the food chain to

primary-consumer status. Imagine the sheer packing

they must have undergone...”

“It is so, Prime Matriarch, ” said her shadow. “Many

of them live in supercreches that, while containing

literally millions of humans, cover very little ground. They are hive dwellers; they live atop one another in

vast structures of their own make, much as do some

social insects. The female explained that in such a

situation very few humans are able to obtain meat. Those who are able to do so are members of eco¬

nomic overcastes; oddly, though, it is those who can¬

not obtain sufficient meat that reproduce the most

rapidly. Hence their world is overrun by plant-eaters

of subordinate status maintained in uneasy thrall by

220 John McLoughlin

small overcastes—as nearly as this one is able to

discern.”

“But do they not yearn for meat?” The First ceased

grooming the Prime Matriarch, drew away from the

secondary and presented her his tail fan for cleaning. “Indeed they do, First in the Chase, or so this one

understands. Some have evolved belief-structures to

discourage themselves from the yearning, but the

female, who is also a physician, informs this one that

humans generally grow larger and remain more vig¬

orous if they are able to eat some animals. They

evolved, she said, as a hunting species. It was only

after the destruction of most of the prey animals on

their homeworld that they developed symbiotic plants,

and this only after a period of near-starvation.”

“And how might this be done?” asked the Prime

Matriarch. “How could a hunter drop to eating plants?

How could their digestive systems accommodate such

a change?”

“Prime Matriarch, as this one understands it, hu¬

man ancestors were hunters for only a brief time, in

evolutionary reckoning. Their ancestors lived in trees,

and ate as much fruit as they did meat. The hunting

stage came after some of these tree-dwellers dropped

to the ground and learned the benefits of meat. None¬

theless, they remained omnivores: they ate fruits and

roots as well as meat. Yet humans are not physiologi¬

cally well-adapted to consume plants; as the First in

the Chase doubtless saw during our shared meal, they

consume plants that have been changed—ground,

boiled or otherwise sharply altered—from their living

state. The female explains that only certain fruits,

tubers, and a very few leaves are eaten by humans in

an unaltered state. The rest must be artificially pro¬

cessed to a state of digestibility before actual con¬

sumption.”

Toolmaker Koan 221

The First’s crest dropped, wide in disgust. “And

they also burn their meat before they eat it!

But if

they’ve killed off their prey, what is their meat?

Do

they eat their dead?

It must be plentiful.”

No, First in the Chase. This one was astonished

to learn that the biomass represented by human dead

is wasted. The female was emphatic on this point;

although human crests are short and immovable, and

thus her emotions difficult to read, her choice of

wording indicated to this one disgust at the idea of

consumption of the dead. ”

“Extraordinary,” the First in the Chase huffed. “A

horrible thought, not to eat the dead. Are they sim¬

ply discarded, then, to rot?”

“Perhaps,” said the Prime Matriarch, “we might,

through some suitable mode of exchange, acquire these

dead for ourselves. They would be very numerous, if

the shadows’ information on human numbers is cor¬

rect, and our sampling of the dissected specimen indi¬

cates them to be highly comestible.”

Her shadow spoke unbidden: “Prime Matriarch,

humans are rather unreasonable about their dead. Possessive, I believe would be the word. They do

indeed discard them to rot, but amidst highly convo¬

luted religious rites quite dear to the souls of the

living. They bury their dead, or even burn them, but

always with great ceremony and attention to detail.”

The Prime Matriarch was horrified, her crest spread¬

ing low and wide. “But—but either burying or burn¬

ing would at least temporarily remove them from the

biomass!

If this female is correct, their world is al¬

ready starved for biomass—and they persist in this

barbarous activity?”

“Oddly, Prime Matriarch, there is a strong connec¬

tion in the human mind between the soul and the

dead.” Had the neuter a crest rather than a helmet,

it would have been spread downcurved in confusion. 222 John McLoughlin

“It has always been so since they first discovered the

concept of soul.’ Before that time, human ancestors

did eat their dead, a much more sensible idea

ecologically. ”

As well as retaining the biomass of the beloved

dead within the creche, where it belongs, of course. ”

The Prime Matriarch pondered this for a moment. “I

shall require further investigation of this; the dead of

plant-fed humans would be an outstanding initial trade

item.”

The First in the Chase continued to stare unwink¬

ing at the shadows. “Precisely how do humans main¬

tain cultural evolution without a neuter caste?

I did

understand properly that there is no neuter caste

among them?”

“That is so, First in the Chase, as this one under¬

stands it. Human offspring are born alive, like those

of bristlecreepers. But only one at a time. They actu¬

ally hatch within the mother—if ‘hatch’ is the word,

there being no integument to their internally-incubated

eggs—and are expelled when large enough to ham¬

per her movement. They are large and underdevel¬

oped, quite helpless at birth, unable to move about

unless carried by adults; hence an infant demands

total maternal attention. Too, being devoid of insulative

pelts, they undergo no moults, nor are there signifi¬

cant distinct metamorphoses in development as in us.”

“But how does the mother feed her infant, if she

must carry it about?”

Oh, First in the Chase, said his shadow, “with

specialized glands situated on the frontal region of

her ribcage. The infant, as this one understands it,

affixes its mouth to appendages on these glands, rather

in the manner of a bristlecreeper’s clutch. The female

human explained the glands as secreting a nutritious

fluid whose composition resembles a liquid meat,

with fat, usable sugars, and a goodly component of

Toolmaker Koan 223

calcium for strengthening of the infant’s bones. It

would seem to this one a rather convenient arrange¬

ment in a creature whose young are born helpless

and immobile—a circumstance that in itself must cre¬

ate great difficulties for the adults. The females them¬

selves were traditionally fed by males when caring for

infants in this bizarre manner, but in the great hu¬

man hives currently characteristic of the species they

are often fed by hive economic infrastructures if no

male will tend them.”

“A liquid meat,” murmured the First. “So: most

humans get this stuff when immature, and are forced

to eat plants as they mature. And what of those who

do get meat?

I did understand you to say that their

overcastes eat meat?”

‘Another parallel between our worlds, First in the

Chase, as this one understands it. After having killed

off most available prey animals, primitive humans

entered into symbioses with certain of those herbi¬

vores that, through belligerence and social organiza¬

tion, had successfully resisted their crude weapons. As on Home, those were large social herbivores with

horns and an inclination to run down or impale pred¬

ators; they survived overhunting long enough for the

symbiosis to become established, so that by the time

humanity had evolved weapons to destroy the wild

forms, domesticated strains lived on under the pro¬

tection of the overcastes. The rest of humanity eats

plants except in times of great celebration, as this one

undertands it.”

The shadow paused, his lonely overwrought mind

trying to overcome his impatience in the communica¬

tion with the stupid fertiles. “The oddest thing is

that, while the overcastes own the meat, the under¬

castes breed by far the fastest—but on a diet largely

composed of vegetable starches and sugars. Human

224 John McLoughlin

young are conceived at rather long intervals; any

female can at most conceive a clutch of about ten

young during her lifetime, at intervals of several or¬

bits of their world about its primary. But the overcastes

tend to mate in pairs, the males rarely maintaining a

creche of more than one female; only the undercastes

seem to reproduce to full potential. Overcaste fe¬

males, in fact, are often not even linked with a male

and a creche; they leave the gene-pool, not reproduc¬

ing but living like neuters or sometimes even enter¬

ing the Patriarchate!

Or, rather, their equivalent of

the Patriarchate, First in the Chase, which this one

finds a bit watered down in the telling.”

The neuter struggled momentarily with the con¬

cept, settled deeper into the steaming water. “Our

female human, incidentally, seems of the overcastes

and has not reproduced at all except, as she put it,

‘accidentally,’ and in that case her offspring died when

she expelled it. She seemed reluctant to discuss her

own reproductive history in detail, but we estab¬

lished that she is not linked with any of the males

accompanying her, nor is she linked with any male

elsewhere. Yet she remains fertile, and has been so

for some eighteen of the orbits of their planet about

its primary.”

“Hnnnnn, rumbled the First. “And we are much

interested in that planet. It is no doubt rather like

Home, no?

What were you able to determine about

the human world and its primary?”

“First in the Chase, this one only confirmed that

which we are led to believe by the similarities of

chemistry between ourselves and the humans, our

comparative comfort in eating prey of their world:

that humans arose on a temperate waterworld with

approximately twenty-one percent molecular oxygen

in a molecular nitrogen atmosphere, in orbit about a

Toolmaker Koan 225

yellow-dwarf star. The Regurgitator of Souls indi¬

cated in translation that one orbit of their world

about its star is only slightly longer than our own

year, a circumstance predictable in light of the fact

that its gravity and the mass of its star are similar to

those of Home and our Sun. Hence—reasoning cir¬

cularly, of course—the similarities between our or¬

ganic chemistries and the tastiness and nutritiousness

of the dissected human specimen and their animal

relatives.”

“Of course,” said the First. “A pity that they’re

due to burn such a congenial place. Devoid of hu¬

mans, it would do well as a surrogate Home.”

“With permission,” said his shadow, “this one was

able to learn from speaking with the female that their

technological development is somewhat akin to our

own, more advanced in some respects, less so in

others. For instance, they are inept as yet at main¬

taining offworld habitats—they have but two of signif¬

icant size in place—and are poor at propulsive systems,

moving only tiny ships with ease. On the other hand,

they are excellent at cybernesis and have produced

certain, ah, reasoning machines; but this is a result of

necessity, since their lifespans are short and they

have no neuter caste to function in that capacity.”

“Mmmm,” rumbled the First. “One wonders what

might happen were we to temporarily combine re¬

sources...

but I understand little of technology. ”

“I wonder the same,” said the Prime Matriarch. “So the Regurgitator of Souls intends. We can under¬

stand how such a combination of resource between

our two species might further the Metastasis of which

the Regurgitator speaks. With their reasoning ma¬

chines and our neuters, I predict an excellent chance

for the Metastasis—once our own goals are accommo¬

dated in the symbiosis.”

226 John McLoughlin

“Properly managed,” said her shadow, unbidden,

“the Metastasis can take the form of a spaceborne

whileelin overcreche.”

Ah, there are only those of us who travelled aboard

Hwiliria.” The First pondered for a moment, crest

lowered. “One wonders how we might fare among

these twelve-to-the-ninth, or whatever, hive-dwellers;

how soon we might anticipate suitable expansion of

the creche to control the food chain in this system.”

His shadow spoke again. “Our only present con¬

cern, First in the Chase, is with the space-faring arm

of the species, of which there are fewer than twelve-

to-the-fourth. The Regurgitator of Souls avers that

there is nothing to be done for the planet-bound hive

dwellers, except to delay their last spasm long enough

so they do not take their space-dwelling brethren

along into extinction. So were told by the Regurgitator

of Souls, about which this one’s doubts remain, lis¬

tening though it no doubt is to this conversation. If

we take the fragile oflworld ecosystems, though, we’ll

have raw material for initiating a whileelin Metastasis—

this one guesses. As this one can but advise, how¬

ever, we can only wait and see.”

“Wait and see,” whistled the First. “Yes. My own

inclination would be to try to understand these crea¬

tures better.”

“Indeed, First in the Chase,” said his shadow. “And when the time comes for the final hunt, when

the spaceborne rock and ice is become living ships,

we and these humans will reckon our futures with

one another. Or perhaps sooner, much sooner. One

of our kinds will be found wanting, perhaps—unless

the Metastasis takes an entirely unexpected turn!”

The elder of the First’s juvenile sibs, Olorromorro,

raised his crest to seek recognition. The First spread

his own in affirmation, and Olorromorro fanned his

Toolmaker Koan 227

dripping tailtip. His high-pitched patriarchal modal¬

ity carried well, pleasing his brother. “My own fear

lies with the Regurgitator of Souls; it’s an emotionless

being, and appears to lack the proper honor of our

creche. Surely, considering their level of weapons

development, these humans might strike at us?

They’ll

have small ships, numerous and fast; Hwiliria will be

as a cripple against them.”

“No,” hummed the First’s shadow, “the Regurgitator

of Souls assures us that the human space presence

will be impeded during our meeting, its talons blunted;

the thing’s compulsive, after all, in its urge for a

solution to the Toolmaker Conundrum. It won’t per¬

mit the humans to injure Hwiliria. And they’re few

in number, these spacefaring humans, like ourselves.”

“For a time,” said the Prime Matriarch. “We’re to

exchange capability with them—offer them worlds,

like Hwiliria, and propulsive nets—and they’re to

offer us thinking machines and what have you. We

breed in twelves, but they are low on the food chain

and tolerant of crowding. How long can this last,

before our young devour one another?”

“Years,” said her shadow, “possibly many twelves

of twelves. A stellar system’s large, its resources abun¬

dant. A full complement of neuters will aid in assess¬

ing the situation. We ll raise neuters at speed, and

those neuters will be programmed with the future of

the creche and the nature of humanity always at the

forefront. We ll initiate Accretion of the Creche mea¬

sures; sufficient helmets acting in tandem will solve

the problem. On these humans one day, your hatch¬

lings may dine.”

“Dine,” whistled Wilirriwirra, youngest of the males. “Already my blood feels depleted; I propose a Hunt.”

“A good thing,” clicked the Prime Matriarch. “An¬

other good thing would be to visit the humans in

their current bivouac, observe them some more, talk

228 John McLoughlin

with them, perhaps bring them here. Awe of our

creche will be beneficial for them. The run to their

bivouac is long, and our appetites will sharpen further. “Haiyar,” agreed the First. He rose, hooking his

long middle talons into the turf as he straightened his

legs. “First to spot game calls the dance, no?”

“I’ll be first,” fluted Wilirriwirra. “My myoglobin’s

dropped; my eyes are sharpened.” The young fellow

sprang onto the stone curb of the hot spring, leaped

into the air and somersaulted lightly, his spring-steel

legs rebounding and sending him off on an easy trot,

the rest of the creche fanning out beside him. “Haiyar,

ahlooo, but the Regurgitator of Souls has filled this

land well with game!

Along the ridge, there?

All

follow!” He swept away, his brother the First whis¬

tling in indulgent creche pride as he banked into his

own turn. And yes, it was a luscious land, this strange altered

memory of the Regurgitator of Souls. After a long run

in silence they reached the grassy ridgetop marking

the vague boundary of the humanified end of Hwiliria. Here Wilirriwirra hooted the gamecall; as was his

due, then, he trumpeted a Javelin’s Parabola, for the

land was open and rolling. Following his gaze, the

creche locked onto a small flock of the Regurgitator’s

otherworldly fauna, characteristically bristly animals

of small size but almost twice-twelve in number. Two apiece?

Two apiece, for the prey were small,

and not swift; perhaps the humans would share, no

doubt burning the proffered meat in their nauseating

fashion, but at least taking the gift of meat with the

good grace intended. Humans were, after all, people

of a sort. CHAPTER 75

Immunity Disorders

“Adaptable beings you are,” said the voice of

Charon, “most flexible for glandular creatures. To

think: you’ve arrived at an alien place, by means

most unorthodox to you; you’ve met alien tool-

makers with customs most disturbing to you; yet

you maintain a level of personal integrity that I’d

imagined to be far more fragile. You’re learning,

my castaways, learning fast. And haste is of the

first import now; the Koan unfolds rapidly on your

homeworld. ”

‘“Damn right, ‘haste.’ ” Corson was pacing again, as

was his wont, trapped; his duty neglected, he thought,

as his nation went to war. And Oruna Benai, another warrior, likewise trapped ...

“If we re to return, will we be able to communi¬

cate first, to offer a warning?

Surely, with conditions

the way they are near Earth, you cannot expect us

simply to appear among them...”

“It’ll be a greater effort than I’ve made in a long

time, but it’ll be worth it—more than worth it. I’m

entirely pleased with the idea. You’d perhaps like to

229

230 John McLoughlin

speak to your superiors at your respective homes in

orbit?”

“Damn right. They must think we re all—

‘They do, Colonel Corson. It’ll be an agreeable

surprise to them, your return from the dead. Shortly

I’ll open a realtime communications window...

this

I shall do by the tricks of Nothing’s bending that I’ve

learned in my long solitude. But see—Colonel Corson

grows agitated!”

“Hold it!” Corson held up a hand, his sturdy face

paling under his new tan. “Listen!”

A sound, a faint singing heard faintly, rhythmical

ululation on the breeze. “It’s those goddamn monkey

men, I’d know that sound anywhere!” Corson leaped

to his feet, and with agility and speed surprising in so

short-legged a man, he scaled the nearby ridge, stared

intently into the distance, then scrambled back down,

bounding back among his fellow humans. “They’re

just beyond that stand of trees off there. I think some

of ’em saw me—the point men. They’re running this

way, more or less, about a klick to go.” He grinned

ruefully. “I’m sorry, Doc, but those things bug the

hell out of me. I ll leave ’em alone this time.”

He was breathless, his eyes seeming to protrude. Jennifer understood: the creatures must have fright¬

ened him badly out there, more even than whileelin

had. The normally tough little man showed all the

signs of ill-reined terror. Pike and Jennifer clambered up the ridge, one of

those odd rises that marked great rings around

Hwilirias interior. A sound, a faint singsong, rhythmic, sweet, oddly

evocative, reaching them across the distance, a modal

singsong of simple syllables, wheeeop, oooh, oooh,

oooh, repeated over and over. The sound plucking

within her mind a compelling and eerily melodic

Toolmaker Koan 231

sense of deja vu, Jennifer craned her neck, her hands

clasping and unclasping the vidcam before her. Among the palmlike flat-topped trees of Hwiliria s

cylindrical plain she discerned a file of running folk,

size indistinguishable at this distance, but obviously

approaching, the leader pausing sometimes to exam¬

ine the ground, the rest running in step. Perhaps

eight of the little creatures, light golden-brown, car¬

rying sticks, veered among the trees and across the

plain, all in step, heads turning this way and that,

searching. The sound—so strange. Jennifer might have ex¬

pected guttural grunts, chimpanzee-wise, for the

australopiths were regarded by science as a form of

ape-man at once bipedal and mentally simian...

and here instead was this eldritch singing, a spare

and lovely canticle of distance-eating motion. The

cohort of runners disappeared behind a hillock, ap¬

peared again, closer, running with a smooth grace

that belied the shuffling apeman image taught in

schools. They were part of the savanna, far more part

of it than any modern human, even the African races,

had ever seemed to her. They ran with confidence,

broad-shouldered, bigchested, not stalking, not fear¬

ful, integral with the golden African landscape, the

vast ecosystem that lived on only here in Hwiliria. Golden. It seemed to Jennifer that everything was

golden now, the light glinting from Hwiliria s spine-

covered land, the little folk singing their way, seem¬

ingly almost floating in their running grace, through

the dappling of strange foliage in this splendid mem¬

ory of Charon’s. Why is it that people crave gold?

Why, Eden itself was golden, a dazzling parkland of

shifting sun and sweeping space that sent shining

tendrils down, down unbidden to awaken ancient

sleeping fragments of her mind...

232 John McLoughlin

Pike was suddenly next to her. He looked out at

the approaching figures, then at Jennifer. ‘ Somehow

I thought that they’d be more—well, clumsy or

something. ”

“I know. Midway, hybrid things, not apes or men,

experiments, people in the rough. But they aren t,

are they?’’

“People in the rough?” The softened whistling voice

of Charon was touched with more than its usual

amusement. “Certainly not. They are highly accom¬

plished creatures, perfect savanna-dwellers. They per¬

sisted, after all, for some three million years. Your

own species is but two hundred thousand years old,

in its modern form only forty thousand. And, as I

suspect you know, far less adequately adapted to its

environment. Australopiths were extremely well

adapted to their world; you are specialists in mal-

adaption to Earth.”

The advancing troupe stopped perhaps two hun¬

dred meters away, spread laterally, froze, silent. “I want to go to them.” Jennifer scanned the troupe

with her vidcam, its zoom on maximag. “Me too,” Pike scrabbled in his pack for an extra

battery. “Can you take some company?”

“I’d love it. Need some help. We ll need to film

them closely—no one’ll ever believe us!”

“Go, my little friends,” said the Egg. “You’re a

credit to your species, brave and playful, but not

entirely destructive. The child lives on in you both.”

The voice paused, then: “I offer you a hint, which I

won’t, for amusement’s sake, share with your conspe-

cifics.”

“What is it?”

“The australopiths won’t throw those spears at you. Were one to throw his spear, it might be lost, and he

defenseless; they’re all they have, those spears, and

Toolmaker Koan 233

they use them hand-held on predators and prey. They’re uncannily accurate with stones, but there are

no stones where they stand.”

Thanks, Charon.” Jennifer lowered her vidcam,

brushed the shock of hair from her eyes, and she and

Pike began walking slowly across the sharp-tipped

undergrowth toward the motionless troupe of austral-

opiths. As one, they slung the little vidcams around

their necks and spread their hands open-palmed in

the universal instinctive human gesture of weapon¬

lessness. “Muir?

What the hail you think you’re doing?”

Corson’s hoarse shout broke the primordial silence,

and Pike gritted his teeth. “I’m going to look at them, sir.”

“Get back here!

Those little gooks’ll kill your ass!”

“I think not, sir. I’m going to see them.”

“Citizen Doctor?” Benai’s voice was oddly shrill. “You will stop this foolishness. Colonel Corson tells

me they’re homicidal—cannibalsl”

“That they are, Citizen Benai, that they are.” The

cheerful voice of Charon, as the Egg moved over

Benai’s head. “But cannibalism: why, they’d have to

eat another of their own kind to indulge that taste. You aren’t of their kind, exactly—are you?” The wry

rebuke embarrassed the two commanders; they fid¬

geted, watching Pike and Jennifer walking slowly

toward the waiting rank of tawny bipeds. Silence, save the swishing of their slippered feet in

the long grass. The rest already forgotten, Pike and

Jennifer advanced carefully on the statuelike figures

of their distant cousins. The biggest of the australopiths,

stirring, made a sound—“Fatchoof!” He moved his

spear from side to side, signing with his left hand to

his cohort. They remained in place, crouching a bit,

spears held toward the advancing humans. Their

234 John McLoughlin

manes were standing up, and they looked even broader-

shouldered, bigger-chested than before. At fifty meters

from them, Jennifer stopped, touching Pike’s arm as

she did so. Both froze. Staring at one another across fifty meters and per¬

haps four million years, they made a hominid tab¬

leau. Wind soughed through the spines. Pike watched

the australopith leader, obvious in size and com¬

mand. The leader watched back. Pike reached care¬

fully for the SLR vidcam; through its zoom, he visually

traced the crest of glossy yellow mane on the top of

the head, the leathery brown bulge of brow-ridges,

the oddly compelling deep-set dark eyes, no whites,

staring unwinking back, the slits of nostrils, the thin

lips pursed in a wrinkled arch of jaw. Strange: Pike

felt a feeling of longing; he saw the little being as an

expression of the wind, of distant Earth, as much a

part of her as her grass, the fathomless blue of her

longed-for sky...

Could he join them, unfettered,

unencumbered by knowledge of the dying Earth’s

weight, to glide so gracefully across their brilliant

golden world?

“Skch!” Breaking the spell, the lead australopith

jumped high in the air. As one, his fellows did the

same, falling lightly where they’d stood, a test. Pike glanced at Jennifer. She was smiling, now,

white teeth bright against the pale pink-tan of her

face, and her eyes seemed brimming. He felt the

spell again, and his own face wreathed itself in a

smile so broad that it hurt his cheeks. And caught the

leader’s eye once more, feeling echoing in his mind

the sort of frank and bottomless curiosity one might

sense in a cat...

And that worthy, furry flight-ready posture un¬

changing, himself bared a set of broad yellow teeth in

an unmistakable smile!

Toolmaker Koan 235

“Hah!” The yellow smile broadened, and the leader

looked side to side at his brethren. “Hah!” again, and

he poked the australopith on his right with his spear. The second glanced, surprised, at his leader, then

himself grinned prodigiously at Pike and Jennifer,

adding, as an afterthought, a loud “Hah!” of his own. Instantly, their stillness gone, all ten of the creatures

broke out in “Hah!” sounds, grinning; one turned a

spectacular cartwheel, still holding his spear; several

jumped up and down. The leader took a step for¬

ward, then another. His cronies followed suit, the lot

of them cautiously advancing, grinning, their heads

bobbing, spearpoints held low, voices chattering, “Hah!

Ooooyak!” The leader signed at them, left-handed,

then at Pike and Jennifer, hand to mouth and away

around the savanna, then to mouth again, and some

archaic place in Pike’s mind translated for him: Have

you eaten?

Is the hunting good?

Pike chuckled, rubbed his belly, licked his lips: I

have eaten. The hunting is good. He spread his hands

wider, drew them to his chest. I am glad to see you,

my friend and equal. I am filled with your presence. Ten meters between them, now, and as if in slowed

time Pike searched their forms, the short glossy tawny

fur bulging over powerfully knotted forearms and

calves, the bellies tight and well-fed, the feet firm,

toes splayed in the Hwilirian soil. The creatures didn’t

merely walk toward him, they cavorted toward him,

showing off in muscular acrobatics that would have

done justice to an Olympiad. Only the leader contin¬

ued walking, faster, searchingly examining Pike and

Jennifer, their clothes, the cameras they held, the

packs on their backs, the fastenings and emblems of

their separate occupations and polities. The creature stopped but a couple of meters away,

holding his left palm flat above his head: You are very

236 John McLoughlin

large, the gesture said. His brown eyes, oddly hawklike

beneath the shading of heavy brows, searched their

faces minutely. He ran his fingers over his own face,

reached, fingers spread, toward theirs: We are of one

kind, more or less, are we not?

He spread his arms,

his broad yellow grin returning, cupped and extended

the left hand, then withdrawing it to his mouth...

and Pike understood. We must eat together. We will

share—

Jennifer gripped his arm, irontight. “Pike, look

there—the whileelin!”

“Jesus!” The aliens were in a stalking mode, heads

low and bobbing, tails high; their dark pelts blended

elegantly with the landscape, their landscape, a land¬

scape into which the little hominids should never

have been remembered. Five of them: the First and

his four fertile associates spread in a semicircular

cordon, like nightmare birds they came, hunting. They did not recognize the australopiths as human. G wan, G/7T’ It was Corson, rushing his small

cousins—the cousins he’d so feared but moments be¬

fore. “Git, those fuckers’ll kill your little asses!”

And at once: the australopiths scattered before

Corson, Benai fired his pistol into the air; the little

runners saw their pursuers just as Jennifer screamed

and the aliens’ fan-formation contracted into a single

file, a spearlike, projectile running formation of awe¬

some unity. With shouts of very human tone, the

australopiths broke like frightened flies across the

suns wept grasses. To no avail. Even at this distance, the thumping of

taloned whileelin feet came plainly, windborne; Jen¬

nifer screamed again, No, Nooo, Pike, Benai and

Corson joining in. To no avail. Leaping, somersaulting, cavorting in

the delight of a hunt’s reward, the five whileelin

Toolmaker Koan 237

closed on their prey; dust and sods mercifully ob¬

scured the kills, and in an instant it was over. The

creatures rejoined one another, each carrying two

broken little figures while the remaining australopiths

disappeared in the distance. No one watched the gutting; all looked at the Egg,

hanging still in the air. ‘‘Murder,’’ Jennifer hissed,

“you let them murder those little...”

“No murder, my dear, not to the whileelin. They’re

instructed not to hunt cultural toolmakers—you—but

these aren’t quite yet—”

“They’re peoplel Just as much as I, as I—more

than those horrible beasts—”

But the whileelin approached now, fluting and whis¬

tling, carrying their burdens, and when it became

plain that each intended half his prey for a human

fellow-adventurer, Jennifer scrambled off the rocks

and was gone, sprinting across the grass of her de¬

filed Eden. Pike overtook her in the shelter of a second kopje. Her breathing ragged, she hunched in the angle be¬

tween two boulders, turning her face away as he

approached. “Say it, go ahead. You told me so.”

“I’m not saying it. I think it was a mistake, an

honest error.”

“They love hunting. ”

“We do, too, some of us.”

“We’re animals.”

“We’re animals. Are we all going to die, though,

give up, because we don’t understand each other

yet?

Let’s go, please.” He held out his hand, trying

to smile. “Our minds are changing. Charon’s changing our

minds, stealing our, our humanity...”

“We re learning. The whileelin are learning.” False

238 John McLoughlin

hope colored his words, and he flushed with embar¬

rassment. “Pike, the things are wired-in. How much can they

learn?

Can you teach a cat not to chase birds?” But

she smiled nonetheless, and stood, and walked with

him back to Benai and Corson. “Those murdering fuckers,” grated Corson, “I’m

never going to deal with ’em—”

“Odd how your feelings about the little ‘spearchuck-

ers’ have changed, eh, Colonel,” said the Egg. “And

think carefully about that ‘murdering fuckers’ remark;

awfully narrow-minded, you know. I’m windowing to

your home communications networks now—you’ll all

have a chance at them. Please, take care with your

prejudices; don’t frighten your people unnecessarily. Wait; let them evaluate on their own.”

“I’m not hiding a thing. I’m warning them.” Corson

backed slowly away from the Egg, his head turning

spasmodically this way and that as he sought an im¬

possible escape. He slipped on the rock, fell, crawled

sideways until he cornered himself against a boulder. Indeed you are, if I must render you unconscious

to take you there. The future of your kind, Colonel,

is at stake.”

“My kind and these alien monsters of yours. ”

“Your kind, brilliant ape, and these alien monsters. Animals in general: life. You’re in command here; act

it. You’ll soon be in communication with your superi¬

ors at High Columbia.”

“I—I’ll warn ’em.”

“Perhaps. They’ve other things to think about,

though; come down from your high horse now, and

meet your allies.”

Corson stood, shaking as the whileelin stared. Un¬

heard by him, they conversed among themselves:

Toolmaker Koan 239

Oh, First in the Chase, the humans are frightened. They do not approach.”

They show disgust, as nearly as I can read them. And why?”

Permit me a surmise, noble sib, said Olorromorro. This Hunt—we ve killed prey that somewhat resem¬

bles them.” He lifted the meat, a bipedal, tailless

bristly thing. “Remember their dislike of eating their dead. Per¬

haps their disgust reflects that?

These animals carried

sticks you saw that. Perhaps they re a human sub¬

species.”

The First in the Chase spoke in command: “We

will carry this prey away, and forgo the meal—for

now. We’ll return without.” In instant unison the five

turned, pounding away across the grass, prey dan¬

gling from their talons. They disappeared across the

ridge over which they’d approached, heads bobbing,

crests narrowed. Jennifer, watching, bit her lip. She’d resisted the

original fearful prejudice, but now she understood

the soldiers’ suspicion of these graceful aliens. While-

elin were obligate predators who needed vast space. Mad Charon had frozen them in stasis for uncounted

eons while it searched out Sol and found Earth. Them and their little world, Hwiliria: a word nearly

unpronounceable by any human being but one accus¬

tomed to singing, its spelling in her mind only the

roughest approximation to the four-toned burst of

music its makers used. They’d told her its meaning,

after a fashion; untranslatable as one word, the name

seemed to express an emotion, “The Seeing of New

Prey.”

New prey...

As the whileelin approached again,

Jennifer settled crosslegged to the ground. The things

had a singular beauty, true; but underlying that beauty,

240 John McLoughlin

as Charon had warned, was horror—a horror that she

intended to isolate and make plain to humanity. Most

horrible of all, she was finally convinced that Charon

itself was not playing with a full deck; the ancient

overmind was mad, and had half-maddened her by

tampering with her mind. A mind now noisy with a faint sussuration, a vast

meaningless sealike whispering. Somewhere, thou¬

sands of neuters were being recalled from their long

sleep in Charon’s memory. Without, a million sen¬

sors and effectors, plant-formed, animal-formed, grew

from the vast ship’s integument. They scanned the

twin orbs of Charon, incuriously registering these for

future analysis. Hwiliria came slowly alive. From without, in hu¬

man eyes, she’d have seemed an elongated bullet, a

convex bow echoed aft by a concave stern; the human

eye is poor at judging dimensions in space, so such

an observer would have been hard pressed to guess

the ship’s true dimensions. In internal length alone,

she was three hundred and eight-seven point eight

two five kilometers; her diameter was thirty-six point

one eight five kilometers, offering her makers an

interior living surface of some forty-four thousand

square kilometers not including the ship’s ends. The hull itself was a froth of warrens in which

neuters and other organisms commenced to move

and work. Far away in one of these endless neuter-

warrens, a limbless environmental immunity-specialist

awoke to the bleating of its helmet monitor. Much of

the forward end of Hwiliria, it seemed, was covered

with an alien vegetation, no doubt a product of the

long sleep of which they’d been advised. The neuter

checked its nets and linked with the reviving envi¬

ronmental bank—which quickly advised it that alien

animals, too, had moved in. Thus, to maximize useful

Toolmaker Koan 241

biomass and food-producing space, these alien ele¬

ments must be eliminated; first, of course, any fer-

tiles abroad must be located and sequestered. One

had to be careful of fertiles; they were skittish, wild,

inefficient. It would all take time, much time, but

time there was aplenty. And once the stupid fertiles

were rounded up....

Withdrawing into the world of its helmet, the neu¬

ter checked the banks for awakening armigerents to

send out into the invasive flora and fauna. Other neuters, navigation-linked forms, dispassion¬

ately checked the tales of Home’s demise and the

arrival of these bristly little humans. Hwilirias sen¬

sors awoke and probed Sunward, seeking out the

human planetary home, mapping it in the minds of

visualization-neuters, mapping-neuters, modeling-

neuters. The planet would be a congenial place one

day, scoured of humanity and permitted to clean

itself. Curiosity was not a large part of these neuters’

function; they awaited with relaxed alertness the im¬

pending sudden move toward the system’s primary. Perhaps the Regurgitator of Souls could transport

things faster than the speed of light; but this did not

concern the neuters preparing Hwiliria for her arrival

beside their new Home. CHAPTER 76

Earthmoon System

Colonel Jaime Ulibarri, CLI, reached for the next

sheaf of bad-news hardcopy. His elbow, bending,

tipped his mug of coffee to the right, spilling it across

the desk and onto the mess of papers. Capillary action. The flimsy hardcopy soaked up

the brown liquid, wrinkling. He felt the warm drops

in his lap for a full five seconds before jerking back,

pushing the soggy mess to the side and wiping his lap

frantically with his fingers. Madre de dios!

The caf¬

feine itself didn’t do much now, but the hot liquid in

his lap did...

Yah!

He toggled his console. “Specialist Alleby?”

“Sir?” The young face on the screen was lined with

fatigue, but the eyes were bright, brows lifted

inquiringly. 111 need copies of the last three transmissions

from TRANSCOMSAT, plus both of those new tables

on heavy-platform movements in LEO.” Gingerly,

he picked up some browning papers between thumb

and forefinger. Thin as they were, their fabric tore by

its own soggy mass in the whirling of CLI Command. 242

Toolmaker Koan 243

“Oh, and details on current deployment of the Net

motiles here.”

“Yessir ”

“And Specialist?”

“Sir?”

“A glass of cold milk, a cup of hot black coffee, hot

black coffee, and a unit of speed. ”

“Speed?

But sir, you—”

“Specialist Alleby?

That is an order.”

“Yessir.” The screen faded. We’re all tired. Can’t sleep, though; seems as if

everyone else is asleep. We’re going to have to redo

the scheduling here...

and damn this comm black¬

out with Engels, orders both sides; what are they

doing, these Earthbound idiots, when we have the

best look at what’s goinq on?

Unless we’re given

permission to exchange information, there’s no hope. Whatever happened to hotlines?

Everyone’s too pure

now...

even the Social Justice people are scream¬

ing for blood, they who claimed to be the Voice of

Reason a few months ago. The port hissed and slid back, Alleby entering with

a new sheaf of papers. He was followed by another

specialist carrying a tray with milk, coffee, and a

saucer with the foul pill rolling around its circumfer¬

ence. And a sponge. “Good man. Specialist, ah—”

“Montoya, sir.”

“Montoya. Good. Let’s have that.” Ulibarri took

the sponge, holding it poised while Montoya placed

the cup, glass and saucer on the printer cabinet, held

the tray at the edge of the desk and scooped the

moist mess onto it. Ulibarri wiped the sponge care¬

fully across the desk, seized some tissues, dried the

surface. Alleby wordlessly slid the new copy onto the

desk. 244 John McLoughlin

“That will do, gentlemen.’’

‘Yessir.” The specialists ducked out, wary of their

commanding officer’s tension—a tension they shared,

but dared not mention in his presence. All aboard

CLI—indeed, every citizen of High Columbia, every

human being in space, and anyone on Earth with

access to a television, had watched the visuals trans¬

mitted from a multitude of satellite eyes, visuals show¬

ing the bright pinpoints blooming over Brazil and

Nigeria. Now those visuals were old hat, almost

twenty-four hours old, and the human billions waited

for the next and last lurch toward Armageddon. Captive billions—now they knew. The Earth was

seeded, a patient nuclear sowing, years of malevolent

planning having saturated the prime cities of both

Great Powers and a good many of their subservient

nations with buried warheads. And plenty of war¬

heads were still ready to fly, too, some flying already

in LEO, Low Earth Orbit, “weather satellites” and

“transportation-monitoring satellites” and “communi¬

cations satellites” having proliferated in the past few

days. Hundreds of them, all set to hurtle out of orbit

in an instant when their masters so ordered. Ulibarri scanned the printouts of the orbits of all

these new satellites; their crisscrossing enfolded the

globe in a fine net. The orbital missile-defense systems

were mice in an anthill now. Everything that was out¬

lawed in the Treaty of St. Helena: all that was now the

only law. The pyre was oiled, the match lit. Waiting. And we, here, knew nothing. Ulibarri picked up

the new copy. Hidden Treasure, the American pro¬

ject s name had been. Its Sov moniker was as yet

unpublicized, a project known only to the core of the

Cloak-and-Dagger set, the fanatic few...

and their

underworld minions, the multitudes of contrabandistas

who worked for pay rather than politics. The contra-

Toolmaker Koan 245

bandistas ran the world now, with buttons in their

pockets. Humankind was outlawed in its own world,

a world now dominated by thugs—if it had not always

been so. Thank the good Lord that smuggling had

not yet been introduced in space, not on such a scale. Yah!

No smuggling, perhaps, but High Columbia

and Engels were fragile things, functionally defenseless. The ten thousand or so people sharing those two

islands of humanity were as much captive as their

milling brethren at home. And the President of the United States was in the

air. High in the stratosphere, the Aerial Command

Post, one of twin modified BoCon Elite 828 superlin¬

ers dubbed Air Force One, hung like the Sword of

Damocles over its own nation. Like some medieval

potentate, the President rode his flying white charger

surrounded by an escort of black ATFs, RPV sensor

drones and tankers in constant rotation with ground-

refuelled brethren; even on the ground, the basso

profundo rumbling of that stupendous cavalcade was

audible, and the eyes of nervous Americans turned

upward to the clouds, wondering. Madness. All madness. And here in the vast deep

of space, Jaime Ulibarri helplessly monitored reams

of hardcopy. Jaime Ulibarri, who would never return

home, never again see his beloved pampas, an aging

exile waiting, waiting, listening occasionally as his

MIDAS unit collected and digested a bit more infor¬

mation concerning deployment of its sensors and de¬

fense units, a fine electromagnetic reticulation of

information seething back and forth across the vacuum. MIDAS. “Colonel Ulibarri.” The bland voice of MIDAS,

unsleeping, imperturbable, bearer of bad news. “Here, MIDAS.”

“I have a tightbeam on Closed MILTRAN, your

code, Priority Top, face-to-face.”

246 John McLoughlin

‘MIDAS, identify sender.”

“Colonel Ulibarri, the sender is identified with the

code of USRS Expediter.”

The milquetoast voice of MIDAS never varied; it

took Ulibarri’s fatigued mind an instant to penetrate

the flavorless sound and grasp its meaning. “EXPEDITERl” Expediter was a dead ship!

They

had all the necessary proof, down to the last trans¬

mission by its own MIDAS unit indicating the final

blows delivered far out in the dark...

the blows

from the Sovs that...

Unaddressed by name, MIDAS waited. “MIDAS!

Determine the origin of that tightbeam,