Heaven (28 page)

He had assumed that the fatfly larvae, as he now discovered they were called, were effectively parasites on the pond. He hadn’t
asked himself why an intelligent pond would tolerate the existence of parasites, though. If he had, he would probably have
concluded that the pond had little choice.
He
didn’t have much choice about sucker flukes, did he?

On the edge of the patch of larvae, the wriggling became less sinuous and more erratic. The tiny, glutinous organisms jerked
and twitched. The black spots within them began to develop form—segments, tiny legs folded against the burgeoning bodies.
Silvery winglets glistened in the sunlight.

The newly hatched fatflies crawled out of the water on the broad back of an amphibian. It ignored them even though they were
its favorite food. The wings began to dry in the sun.

Second-Best Sailor watched, mesmerized, as one by one the tiny flies dried out. Rigid winglets sprouted from their bulbous
little bodies. The wings buzzed experimentally. Singly at first, then in a mob, the flies took off.

“You can choose when the flies hatch,” the mariner said. “They ain’t parasites at all.”

ONE OF THEIR ROLES IS PARASITISM. BUT I TOLERATE THEM FOR THEIR OTHER ROLE.

“Which is?”

MESSENGER
. EVEN NOW A SUMMARY OF OUR DISCUSSION IS WINGING ITS WAY TOWARDS A HUNDRED PONDS . . . PONDS WITH WHOM I REGULARLY CORRESPOND.

“How can a fly be a message?”

IT IS NOT THE FLY, BUT SPECIAL MOLECULES THAT I HAVE PLACED IN ITS GUT. WHEN IT LOCATES ITS RECIPIENT, IT WILL EXCRETE THE
CHEMICALS INTO THE POND, AND THE MESSAGE WILL BE DECODED.

“Sounds complicated to me,” said Second-Best Sailor.

NO MORE SO THAN YOUR OWN METHODS OF COMMUNICATION. IN FACT, IT IS CLOSELY ANALOGOUS. DID YOU NOT TELL ME THAT YOU USE JELLYFISH
IN A SIMILAR MANNER?

“Yeah, but that’s . . . different,” he finished lamely. “Jellyfish are
technology,
they became available long after we evolved speech. We
talk
to each other by siphon-speech; jellyfish are for long-distance messages.” But reluctantly he was forced to admit that it
wasn’t different at all. Like most things the pond had told him, everything made perfect sense. But it also sounded completely
mad, coming from a flouncing
pond
.

“So what let you ponds evolve intelligence,” he said, “was fly shit?”

WE WOULD NOT PUT IT QUITE THAT WAY, BUT I WOULD NOT CONTRADICT YOUR ANALYSIS.

Second-Best Sailor awoke from a fitful sleep, filled with tantalizing dreams of food. His body fluids were pulsing with newfound
energy.

The pond’s crazy explanations didn’t matter. What did matter was that the ponds could communicate with each other.

So they could be
organized
.

And if their fatflies could be made to coordinate their actions . . . then there might be a way out of here.

If the ponds could be persuaded to cooperate.

Talitha
had switched orbit again, back to an acutely inclined one that passed close to Aquifer’s poles. As the planet revolved beneath
it, the ship could observe every square foot of its surface. They’d had an early breakthrough when Ship noticed temperature
anomalies near the north pole. From their shape, there was some kind of building complex under the ice. As they watched, a
high-speed cruiser lifted from the installation and slammed into hydrive the moment it left the lower atmosphere.

Presumably, the buildings and the attackers were connected. Had the attackers fled? Or did some remain, under the ice? The
Neanderthals kept watching but saw no further movement.

Long hours passed. Will was of two minds. Should they send down transpods to the buildings? That could be dangerous . . .

“You have found nothing new.”

Will looked up from his screens to acknowledge May’s presence. Stun was with her. They were all feeling the strain. In all
Will’s time as captain of a generation ship, he had never felt so vulnerable. The unfamiliar feeling transmitted itself to
the two women.

“No,” he said. “The installation at the North Pole and the wreckage of our own equipment in the Bay are the only signs of
nonindigenous life.”

“And the indigenes?”

Those, at least, he could rule out as attackers—they were not intelligent. “The most complex is a segmented snakelike creature
that crawls out of drying ponds, makes its way for miles across the desert, falls into newly formed ponds, and is dissolved.”

“Well, that makes a
lot
of sense,” said Stun.

Will privately felt the same but disapproved of her attitude. “I merely report what we have observed. I do not speculate about
reasons.”

“When do we next come within sight of these strange creatures?” May asked.

“A few minutes. A pond field is coming across the horizon at this moment.”

“Let me have a look,” said May. The peculiar creatures intrigued her, and for the moment there was nothing better to do.

Will passed control of the sensors to her and busied himself with other tasks. She quickly found the pond field, and a motion-sensing
program allowed her to zoom in on a walker, tracking its stolid way across the hot sand. She followed it for several minutes,
fascinated.

As it passed by a pond, a flicker of light caught her eye.

“Will? What is
that
?”

He looked up. “What is what?”

“That pond is
flickering
.”

He leaned over and looked at where her finger pointed. “Looks like sunlight reflected off its surface. Must be an effect of
the wind.” Then, before she could contradict him, he checked himself. “No. It cannot be wind. The light comes and goes too
regularly.”

“And it switches on and off,” said May. “The wind would cause more rapid changes.”

Stun joined them.

“Zoom out, Will! We may understand it better if we observe the surrounding . . .”

Her voice trailed off.

“Well,” said Will. “That
is
unusual. I see it, but I cannot understand what is causing it. Could it be a trap?”

“Even if it is, we have to investigate,” said Stun. “But be careful!”

Will hurried off to put together a transpod crew. May and Stun kept staring at the screen.

It showed a broad field of ponds, perhaps a thousand of them. The change in Ship’s position was reducing the amount of light
that reflected back in its direction, so the effect was dimmer than it had first been. Even so, there was no mistaking what
they were seeing.

Every few seconds, some of the ponds were flashing reflected light their way, holding it there for a moment, then darkening
again.

The pattern of the bright spots
had
to be artificial. You had only to look to see that. The resolution was coarse, but the shape formed by the spots was still
very clear. The pattern read:

2BS—2BS—2BS—2BS—2BS

Second-Best Sailor?

Be careful what you wish for. You might get it.

Worse, you might be happy with it.

The Little Book of Prudence

S
ervant of Unity XIV Samuel Godwin’sson Travers, novice lifesoul-healer, had never seen anywhere remotely as beautiful. The
architecture, though he did not realize it, was a careful blend of Egyptian, classical Greek, Mayan, and Argyran—racial images
from the original human homeworld and its first planetary colony, tailored to esthetic preferences that the designers of Heaven
had isolated from endless stacks of psychological data.

The climate was idyllic. The sun warmed his skin without threatening to burn it; the humidity of the air was balanced for
his greatest comfort. In Heaven, no one perspired unless they wanted to.

He stood in a huge open space, a perfectly circular plaza. Everywhere he looked there were exquisite works of art. The polished
marble flagstones under his feet were inlaid with decorative emblems in rich metals. Gigantic sculptures lined the plaza’s
sweeping walls, leading the eye to the splendors of the city beyond.

Elegant vines curled up the pillars, laden with perfect blossoms, grouped in tasteful colors. Everything was understated,
subtle, brilliantly effective. Trees as shapely as the best efforts of a bonsai master offered shade where it was needed,
contrast where it was most effective. They seemed to grow directly from the marble of the plaza, and every leaf, every twig
was unblemished.

Butterflies a yard across floated past in great flocks, playing games with the breezes. There were birds, too, with gorgeous
plumage: some small and simple, some huge and elaborate. It was utterly breathtaking.

And for the moment, he had it all to himself.

Whatever his pleasure, the plaza would provide it. At this moment he wanted peace, so the plaza provided peace. But he knew
that when he craved excitement, it would instantly become a riot of movement and life. And when he wanted company . . .

The girl appeared from nowhere. One moment the plaza was empty; the next, she stood demurely at his side.

She was tall but not quite as tall as he. Only now did he realize how perfectly formed his own body had become: lithe and
muscular. She smiled; her teeth were perfect. She was slender, shapely, and an absolute beauty. In idle moments Sam would
sometimes try to work out what his ideal of womanhood was; now he knew. The girl had been drawn from his subconscious, and
every glance, every motion spoke directly to his soul.

She was dressed in a simple crimson robe. He knew that however he wished her to be dressed, Heaven would answer his wishes.
As he watched, her robe became feather-light, translucent—and vanished. He opened his arms, and she melted into them, pressing
against him. . . .

Plaza and girl vanished abruptly. They were replaced by a small office with utilitarian furnishings, and a Hytth technician.
Sam was sitting on a couch made from some kind of simulated animal skin.

“You found that feature surprisingly fast,” said the Hytth. “Most initiates take several sessions to discover how much control
they have. Eventually they learn—”

“That in Heaven they can have
anything
,” said Sam. “Whatever they desire.” He brushed off an irritating feeling of disappointment that the session had been ended
just when it was showing promise, only to discover a deeper disappointment. “It’s not
real,
though,” he said. “Is it?”

The technician didn’t miss a beat. “What is reality? Did your taste of Heaven seem in any way unreal to you?”

“Uh—no, not while I was experiencing it. But now, when I look back, I realize that it had to be virtual. Everything was too
perfect.”
Especially the girl . . . damn
. “Those butterflies could never have gotten off the ground, either.”

“There can be no gravity control in Heaven?”

“Not as selective as that, not in a real Heaven. This one is an illusion.”

In an instant he was back in the plaza. It was raining. The flagstones were awash with dirty water; his clothing was soaked.
It was cold. The statues were old and broken; they lay in piles of rubble at his feet. The flowers had withered; the vines
were tangles of dead wood. A skeleton, slim-boned, with perfect teeth, grinned up at him.

Then,
discontinuity
. He was back with the technician.

“Did
that
seem unreal? You do not answer; you are still catching your breath, trying to recover from shock. It must have seemed very
real to you to evoke that reaction.”

“It was a very powerful illusion,” Sam conceded.

“It was a
perfect
illusion,” said the technician. “And if something is indistinguishable from reality, it
becomes
reality. How do you know that what you are now experiencing is not also an illusion? That what you now remember as your previous
life was not an illusion? What is reality, Fourteen Samuel?”

“This is reality,” said Sam. “That was an illusion.”

“Are you sure?”

“This room is solid.” He rapped on the desk, hard, and it hurt his knuckles. “This desk has an existence, independent of mine.
Whereas the plaza is nothing more than an electronic construct, a pattern of neural bursts in my brain.”

The technician was amused. “
All
of your perceptions are patterns of neural bursts in your brain, Fourteen Samuel. What makes the bursts that represent the
plaza different from those that represent your perceptions of this room, or me?”

“The bursts that represent the plaza,” said Sam, “are generated directly in my brain by machinery. They are generated with
the intention of fooling my perceptions into thinking that the plaza exists. Whereas this room generates my perceptions naturally,
without mechanical intervention. As do you.”

The Hytth found this distinction flawed. “But since everything you know comes to your mind through your perceptions, how can
you distinguish the truly real—if such exists—from the illusory? Does what we think of as ‘reality’ exist at all? Or is it
all in our minds?”

Sam
knew
there had to be a distinction. “How can it be ‘in our minds’ if our minds do not exist? There must be a
real
brain in which the perceptions can be formed.”

The Hytth conceded the point. “I agree. Reality cannot be purely a figment of imagination, for without some kind of underlying
reality, imagination cannot operate. But that does not equip any individual to recognize reality. Reality is quite distinct
from any mind’s perceptions, is it not? Or do you think that you and I see the same colors? Feel the same sensations? Does
the Hytth sense of hierarchical impropriety, which I assure you is as vivid and indescribable as your own sense of smell and
guides our every action, have an exact match in the human mind?”

“No,” said Sam. “That would be ridiculous. Different species evolve different senses, because they occupy different environments.
But . . .” But he
knew
what was real, when nobody was messing with his mind. Reality was more than his perceptions, and his perceptions were imperfect—after
all, he couldn’t see in ultraviolet, though a bee could. “Are you trying to tell me that this room isn’t real? That
you’re
not real?”