Bruce Sterling - Crystal Express

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CRYSTAL EXPRESS

by BRUCE STERLING (1989)

[VERSION 1.1 (Jan 23 04). If you find and correct errors in the text, please update the version

number by 0.1 and redistribute.]

CONTENTS

SHAPER/MECHANIST

SWARM [The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, April 1982]

SPIDER ROSE [The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, August 1982]

CICADA QUEEN [Universe 13, edited by Terry Carr, Doubleday, 1983]

SUNKEN GARDENS [Omni, June 1984]

TWENTY EVOCATIONS [Interzone #7, 1984]

SCIENCE FICTION

GREEN DAYS IN BRUNEI [Isaac Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine, October 1985]

SPOOK [The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, April 1983]

THE BEAUTIFUL AND THE SUBLIME [Isaac Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine, June

1986]

FANTASY STORIES

TELLIAMED [The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, September 1984]

THE LITTLE MAGIC SHOP [Isaac Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine, October 1987]

FLOWERS OF EDO [Isaac Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine, May 1987]

DINNER IN AUDOGHAST [Isaac Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine, May 1985]

We cannot separate the historic accidents of the society in which we were born from the

axiomatic bases of the universe.

--J. D. Bernal, 1925

The deadliest bullshit is odorless and transparent.

--Wm. Gibson, 1988

SWARM

First published in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, April 1982.

"I will miss your conversation during the rest of the voyage," the alien said.

Captain-Doctor Simon Afriel folded his jeweled hands over his gold-embroidered waistcoat.

"I regret it also, ensign," he said in the alien's own hissing language. "Our talks together have

been very useful to me, I would have paid to learn so much, but you gave it freely."

"But that was only information," the alien said. He shrouded his bead-bright eyes behind thick

nictitating membranes. "We Investors deal in energy, and precious metals. To prize and pursue

mere knowledge is an immature racial trait." The alien lifted the long ribbed frill behind his

pinhole-sized ears.

"No doubt you are right," Afriel said, despising him. "We humans are as children to other

races, however; so a certain immaturity seems natural to us." Afriel pulled off his sunglasses to

rub the bridge of his nose. The starship cabin was drenched in searing blue light, heavily

ultraviolet. It was the light the Investors preferred, and they were not about to change it for one

human passenger.

"You have not done badly," the alien said magnanimously. "You are the kind of race we like

to do business with: young, eager, plastic, ready for a wide variety of goods and experiences. We

would have contacted you much earlier, but your technology was still too feeble to afford us a

profit."

"Things are different now," Afriel said. "We'll make you rich."

"Indeed," the Investor said. The frill behind his scaly head flickered rapidly, a sign of

amusement. "Within two hundred years you will be wealthy enough to buy from us the secret of

our starflight. Or perhaps your Mechanist faction will discover the secret through research."

Afriel was annoyed. As a member of the Reshaped faction, he did not appreciate the reference

to the rival Mechanists. "Don't put too much stock in mere technical expertise," he said.

"Consider the aptitude for languages we Shapers have. It makes our faction a much better trading

partner. To a Mechanist, all Investors look alike."

The alien hesitated. Afriel smiled. He had appealed to the alien's personal ambition with his

last statement, and the hint had been taken. That was where the Mechanists always erred. They

tried to treat all Investors consistently, using the same programmed routines each time. They

lacked imagination.

Something would have to be done about the Mechanists, Afriel thought. Something more

permanent than the small but deadly confrontations between isolated ships in the Asteroid Belt

and the ice-rich Rings of Saturn. Both factions maneuvered constantly, looking for a decisive

stroke, bribing away each other's best talent, practicing ambush, assassination, and industrial

espionage.

Captain-Doctor Simon Afriel was a past master of these pursuits. That was why the Reshaped

faction had paid the millions of kilowatts necessary to buy his passage. Afriel held doctorates in

biochemistry and alien linguistics, and a master's degree in magnetic weapons engineering. He

was thirty-eight years old and had been Reshaped according to the state of the art at the time of

his conception. His hormonal balance had been altered slightly to compensate for long periods

spent in free-fall. He had no appendix. The structure of his heart had been redesigned for greater

efficiency, and his large intestine had been altered to produce the vitamins normally made by

intestinal bacteria. Genetic engineering and rigorous training in childhood had given him an

intelligence quotient of one hundred and eighty. He was not the brightest of the agents of the

Ring Council, but he was one of the most mentally stable and the best trusted.

"It seems a shame," the alien said, "that a human of your accomplishments should have to rot

for two years in this miserable, profitless outpost."

"The years won't be wasted," Afriel said.

"But why have you chosen to study the Swarm? They can teach you nothing, since they

cannot speak. They have no wish to trade, having no tools or technology. They are the only

spacefaring race that is essentially without intelligence."

"That alone should make them worthy of study."

"Do you seek to imitate them, then? You would make monsters of yourselves." Again the

ensign hesitated. "Perhaps you could do it. It would be bad for business, however."

There came a fluting burst of alien music over the ship's speakers, then a screeching fragment

of Investor language. Most of it was too high-pitched for Afriel's ears to follow.

The alien stood, his jeweled skirt brushing the tips of his clawed birdlike feet. "The Swarm's

symbiote has arrived," he said.

"Thank you," Afriel said. When the ensign opened the cabin door, Afriel could smell the

Swarm's representative; the creature's warm yeasty scent had spread rapidly through the starship's

recycled air.

Afriel quickly checked his appearance in a pocket mirror. He touched powder to his face and

straightened the round velvet hat on his shoulder-length reddish-blond hair. His earlobes glittered

with red impact-rubies, thick as his thumbs' ends, mined from the Asteroid Belt. His knee-length

coat and waistcoat were of gold brocade; the shirt beneath was of dazzling fineness, woven with

red-gold thread. He had dressed to impress the Investors, who expected and appreciated a

prosperous look from their customers. How could he impress this new alien? Smell, perhaps. He

freshened his perfume.

Beside the starship's secondary airlock, the Swarm's symbiote was chittering rapidly at the

ship's commander. The commander was an old and sleepy Investor, twice the size of most of her

crewmen. Her massive head was encrusted in a jeweled helmet. From within the helmet her

clouded eyes glittered like cameras.

The symbiote lifted on its six posterior legs and gestured feebly with its four clawed

forelimbs. The ship's artificial gravity, a third again as strong as Earth's, seemed to bother it. Its

rudimentary eyes, dangling on stalks, were shut tight against the glare. It must be used to

darkness, Afriel thought.

The commander answered the creature in its own language. Afriel grimaced, for he had hoped

that the creature spoke Investor. Now he would have to learn another language, a language

designed for a being without a tongue.

After another brief interchange the commander turned to Afriel. "The symbiote is not pleased

with your arrival," she told Afriel in the Investor language. "There has apparently been some

disturbance here involving humans, in the recent past. However, I have prevailed upon it to admit

you to the Nest. The episode has been recorded. Payment for my diplomatic services will be

arranged with your faction when I return to your native star system."

"I thank Your Authority," Afriel said. "Please convey to the symbiote my best personal

wishes, and the harmlessness and humility of my intentions...." He broke off short as the

symbiote lunged toward him, biting him savagely in the calf of his left leg. Afriel jerked free and

leapt backward in the heavy artificial gravity, going into a defensive position. The symbiote had

ripped away a long shred of his pants leg; it now crouched quietly, eating it.

"It will convey your scent and composition to its nestmates," said the commander. "This is

necessary. Otherwise you would be classed as an invader, and the Swarm's warrior caste would

kill you at once."

Afriel relaxed quickly and pressed his hand against the puncture wound to stop the bleeding.

He hoped that none of the Investors had noticed his reflexive action. It would not mesh well with

his story of being a harmless researcher.

"We will reopen the airlock soon," the commander said phlegmatically, leaning back on her

thick reptilian tail. The symbiote continued to munch the shred of cloth. Afriel studied the

creature's neckless segmented head. It had a mouth and nostrils; it had bulbous atrophied eyes on

stalks; there were hinged slats that might be radio receivers, and two parallel ridges of clumped

wriggling antennae, sprouting among three chitinous plates. Their function was unknown to him.

The airlock door opened. A rush of dense, smoky aroma entered the departure cabin. It

seemed to bother the half-dozen Investors, who left rapidly. "We will return in six hundred and

twelve of your days, as by our agreement," the commander said.

"I thank Your Authority," Afriel said.

"Good luck," the commander said in English. Afriel smiled.

The symbiote, with a sinuous wriggle of its segmented body, crept into the airlock. Afriel

followed it. The airlock shut behind them. The creature said nothing to him but continued

munching loudly. The second door opened, and the symbiote sprang through it, into a wide,

round stone tunnel. It disappeared at once into the gloom.

Afriel put his sunglasses into a pocket of his jacket and pulled out a pair of infrared goggles.

He strapped them to his head and stepped out of the airlock. The artificial gravity vanished,

replaced by the almost imperceptible gravity of the Swarm's asteroid nest. Afriel smiled,

comfortable for the first time in weeks. Most of his adult life had been spent in free-fall, in the

Shapers' colonies in the Rings of Saturn.

Squatting in a dark cavity in the side of the tunnel was a disk-headed furred animal the size of

an elephant. It was clearly visible in the infrared of its own body heat. Afriel could hear it

breathing. It waited patiently until Afriel had launched himself past it, deeper into the tunnel.

Then it took its place in the end of the tunnel, puffing itself up with air until its swollen head

securely plugged the exit into space. lts multiple legs sank firmly into sockets in the walls.

The Investors' ship had left. Afriel remained here, inside one of the millions of planetoids that

circled the giant star Betelgeuse in a girdling ring with almost five times the mass of Jupiter. As a

source of potential wealth it dwarfed the entire solar system, and it belonged, more or less, to the

Swarm. At least, no other race had challenged them for it within the memory of the Investors.

Afriel peered up the corridor. It seemed deserted, and without other bodies to cast infrared

heat, he could not see very far. Kicking against the wall, he floated hesitantly down the corridor.

He heard a human voice. "Dr. Afriel!"

"Dr. Mirny!" he called out. "This way!"

He first saw a pair of young symbiotes scuttling toward him, the tips of their clawed feet

barely touching the walls. Behind them came a woman wearing goggles like his own. She was

young, and attractive in the trim, anonymous way of the genetically reshaped.

She screeched something at the symbiotes in their own language, and they halted, waiting. She

coasted forward, and Afriel caught her arm, expertly stopping their momentum.

"You didn't bring any luggage?" she said anxiously.

He shook his head. "We got your warning before I was sent out. I have only the clothes I'm

wearing and a few items in my pockets."

She looked at him critically. "Is that what people are wearing in the Rings these days? Things

have changed more than I thought."

Afriel glanced at his brocaded coat and laughed. "It's a matter of policy. The Investors are

always readier to talk to a human who looks ready to do business on a large scale. All the

Shapers' representatives dress like this these days. We've stolen a jump on the Mechanists; they

still dress in those coveralls."

He hesitated, not wanting to offend her. Galina Mirny's intelligence was rated at almost two

hundred. Men and women that bright were sometimes flighty and unstable, likely to retreat into

private fantasy worlds or become enmeshed in strange and inpenetrable webs of plotting and

rationalization. High intelligence was the strategy the Shapers had chosen in the struggle for

cultural dominance, and they were obliged to stick to it, despite its occasional disadvantages.

They had tried breeding the Superbright -- those with quotients over two hundred -- but so many

had defected from the Shapers' colonies that the faction had stopped producing them.

"You wonder about my own clothing," Mirny said.

"It certainly has the appeal of novelty," Afriel said with a smile.

"It was woven from the fibers of a pupa's cocoon," she said. "My original wardrobe was eaten

by a scavenger symbiote during the troubles last year. I usually go nude, but I didn't want to

offend you by too great a show of intimacy."

Afriel shrugged. "I often go nude myself, I never had much use for clothes except for pockets.

I have a few tools on my person, but most are of little importance. We're Shapers, our tools are

here." He tapped his head. "If you can show me a safe place to put my clothes...."

She shook her head. It was impossible to see her eyes for the goggles, which made her

expression hard to read. "You've made your first mistake, Doctor. There are no places of our own

here. It was the same mistake the Mechanist agents made, the same one that almost killed me as

well. There is no concept of privacy or property here. This is the Nest. If you seize any part of it

for yourself -- to store equipment, to sleep in, whatever -- then you become an intruder, an

enemy. The two Mechanists -- a man and a woman -- tried to secure an empty chamber for their

computer lab. Warriors broke down their door and devoured them. Scavengers ate their

equipment, glass, metal, and all."

Afriel smiled coldly. "It must have cost them a fortune to ship all that material here."

Mirny shrugged. "They're wealthier than we are. Their machines, their mining. They meant to

kill me, I think. Surreptitiously, so the warriors wouldn't be upset by a show of violence. They

had a computer that was learning the language of the springtails faster than I could."

"But you survived," Afriel pointed out. "And your tapes and reports -- especially the early

ones, when you still had most of your equipment -- were of tremendous interest. The Council is

behind you all the way. You've become quite a celebrity in the Rings, during your absence."

"Yes, I expected as much," she said.

Afriel was nonplused. "If I found any deficiency in them," he said carefully, "it was in my

own field, alien linguistics." He waved vaguely at the two symbiotes who accompanied her. "I

assume you've made great progress in communicating with the symbiotes, since they seem to do

all the talking for the Nest."

She looked at him with an unreadable expression and shrugged. "There are at least fifteen

different kinds of symbiotes here. Those that accompany me are called the springtails, and they

speak only for themselves. They are savages, Doctor, who received attention from the Investors

only because they can still talk. They were a spacefaring race once, but they've forgotten it. They

discovered the Nest and they were absorbed, they became parasites." She tapped one of them on

the head. "I tamed these two because I learned to steal and beg food better than they can. They

stay with me now and protect me from the larger ones. They are jealous, you know. They have

only been with the Nest for perhaps ten thousand years and are still uncertain of their position.

They still think, and wonder sometimes. After ten thousand years there is still a little of that left

to them."

"Savages," Afriel said. "I can well believe that. One of them bit me while I was still aboard the

starship. He left a lot to be desired as an ambassador."

"Yes, I warned him you were coming," said Mirny. "He didn't much like the idea, but I was

able to bribe him with food.... I hope he didn't hurt you badly."

"A scratch," Afriel said. "I assume there's no chance of infection."

"I doubt it very much. Unless you brought your own bacteria with you."

"Hardly likely," Afriel said, offended. "I have no bacteria. And I wouldn't have brought

microorganisms to an alien culture anyway."

Mirny looked away. "I thought you might have some of the special genetically altered ones....

I think we can go now. The springtail will have spread your scent by mouth-touching in the

subsidiary chamber, ahead of us. It will be spread throughout the Nest in a few hours. Once it

reaches the Queen, it will spread very quickly."

She jammed her feet against the hard shell of one of the young springtails and launched

herself down the hall. Afriel followed her. The air was warm and he was beginning to sweat

under his elaborate clothing, but his antiseptic sweat was odorless.

They exited into a vast chamber dug from the living rock. It was arched and oblong, eighty

meters long and about twenty in diameter. It swarmed with members of the Nest.

There were hundreds of them. Most of them were workers, eight-legged and furred, the size of

Great Danes. Here and there were members of the warrior caste, horse-sized furry monsters with

heavy fanged heads the size and shape of overstuffed chairs.

A few meters away, two workers were carrying a member of the sensor caste, a being whose

immense flattened head was attached to an atrophied body that was mostly lungs. The sensor had

great platelike eyes, and its furred chitin sprouted long coiled antennae that twitched feebly as the

workers bore it along. The workers clung to the hollowed rock of the chamber walls with hooked

and suckered feet.

A paddle-limbed monster with a hairless, faceless head came sculling past them, through the

warm reeking air. The front of its head was a nightmare of sharp grinding jaws and blunt armored

acid spouts. "A tunneler," Mirny said. "It can take us deeper into the Nest -- come with me." She

launched herself toward it and took a handhold on its furry, segmented back. Afriel followed her,

joined by the two immature springtails, who clung to the thing's hide with their fore-limbs. Afriel

shuddered at the warm, greasy feel of its rank, damp fur. It continued to scull through the air, its

eight fringed paddle feet catching the air like wings.

"There must be thousands of them," Afriel said.

"I said a hundred thousand in my last report, but that was before I had fully explored the Nest.

Even now there are long stretches I haven't seen. They must number close to a quarter of a

million. This asteroid is about the size of the Mechanists' biggest base -- Ceres. It still has rich

veins of carbonaceous material. It's far from mined out."

Afriel closed his eyes. If he was to lose his goggles, he would have to feel his way, blind,

through these teeming, twitching, wriggling thousands. "The population's still expanding, then?"

"Definitely," she said. "In fact, the colony will launch a mating swarm soon. There are three

dozen male and female alates in the chambers near the Queen. Once they're launched, they'll

mate and start new Nests. I'll take you to see them presently." She hesitated. "We're entering one

of the fungal gardens now."

One of the young springtails quietly shifted position. Grabbing the tunneler's fur with its

forelimbs, it began to gnaw on the cuff of Afriel's pants. Afriel kicked it soundly, and it jerked

back, retracting its eyestalks.

When he looked up again, he saw that they had entered a second chamber, much larger than

the first. The walls around, overhead, and below were buried under an explosive profusion of

fungus. The most common types were swollen barrellike domes, multibranched massed thickets,

and spaghettilike tangled extrusions that moved very slightly in the faint and odorous breeze.

Some of the barrels were surrounded by dim mists of exhaled spores.

"You see those caked-up piles beneath the fungus, its growth medium?" Mirny said.

"Yes."

"I'm not sure whether it is a plant form or just some kind of complex biochemical sludge," she

said. "The point is that it grows in sunlight, on the outside of the asteroid. A food source that

grows in naked space! Imagine what that would be worth, back in the Rings."

"There aren't words for its value," Afriel said.

"It's inedible by itself," she said. "I tried to eat a very small piece of it once. It was like trying

to eat plastic."

"Have you eaten well, generally speaking?"

"Yes. Our biochemistry is quite similar to the Swarm's. The fungus itself is perfectly edible.

The regurgitate is more nourishing, though. Internal fermentation in the worker hindgut adds to

its nutritional value."

Afriel stared. "You grow used to it," Mirny said. "Later I'll teach you how to solicit food from

the workers. It's a simple matter of reflex tapping -- it's not controlled by pheromones, like most

of their behavior." She brushed a long lock of clumped and dirty hair from the side of her face. "I

hope the pheromonal samples I sent back were worth the cost of transportation."

"Oh, yes," said Afriel. "The chemistry of them was fascinating. We managed to synthesize

most of the compounds. I was part of the research team myself." He hesitated. How far did he

dare trust her? She had not been told about the experiment he and his superiors had planned. As

far as Mirny knew, he was a simple, peaceful researcher, like herself. The Shapers' scientific

community was suspicious of the minority involved in military work and espionage.

As an investment in the future, the Shapers had sent researchers to each of the nineteen alien

races described to them by the Investors. This had cost the Shaper economy many gigawatts of

precious energy and tons of rare metals and isotopes. In most cases, only two or three researchers

could be sent; in seven cases, only one. For the Swarm, Galina Mirny had been chosen. She had

gone peacefully, trusting in her intelligence and her good intentions to keep her alive and sane.

Those who had sent her had not known whether her findings would be of any use or importance.

They had only known that it was imperative that she be sent, even alone, even ill-equipped,

before some other faction sent their own people and possibly discovered some technique or fact

of overwhelming importance. And Dr. Mirny had indeed discovered such a situation. It had made

her mission into a matter of Ring security. That was why Afriel had come.

"You synthesized the compounds?" she said. "Why?"

Afriel smiled disarmingly. "Just to prove to ourselves that we could do it, perhaps."

She shook her head. "No mind-games, Dr. Afriel, please. I came this far partly to escape from

such things. Tell me the truth."

Afriel stared at her, regretting that the goggles meant he could not meet her eyes. "Very well,"

he said. "You should know then, that I have been ordered by the Ring Council to carry out an

experiment that may endanger both our lives."

Mirny was silent for a moment. "You're from Security, then?"

"My rank is captain."

"I knew it.... I knew it when those two Mechanists arrived. They were so polite, and so

suspicious -- I think they would have killed me at once if they hadn't hoped to bribe or torture

some secret out of me. They scared the life out of me, Captain Afriel.... You scare me, too."

"We live in a frightening world, Doctor. It's a matter of faction security."

"Everything's a matter of faction security with your lot," she said. "I shouldn't take you any

farther, or show you anything more. This Nest, these creatures -- they're not intelligent, Captain.

They can't think, they can't learn. They're innocent, primordially innocent. They have no

knowledge of good and evil. They had no knowledge of anything. The last thing they need is to

become pawns in a power struggle within some other race, light-years away."

The tunneler had turned into an exit from the fungal chambers and was paddling slowly along

in the warm darkness. A group of creatures like gray, flattened basketballs floated by from the

opposite direction. One of them settled on Afriel's sleeve, clinging with frail whiplike tentacles.

Afriel brushed it gently away, and it broke loose, emitting a stream of foul reddish droplets.

"Naturally I agree with you in principle, Doctor," Afriel said smoothly. "But consider these

Mechanists. Some of their extreme factions are already more than half machine. Do you expect

humanitarian motives from them? They're cold, Doctor -- cold and soulless creatures who can cut

a living man or woman to bits and never feel their pain. Most of the other factions hate us. They

call us racist supermen. Would you rather that one of these cults do what we must do, and use the

results against us?"

"This is double-talk." She looked away. All around them workers laden down with fungus,

their jaws full and guts stuffed with it, were spreading out into the Nest, scuttling alongside them

or disappearing into branch tunnels departing in every direction, including straight up and straight

down. Afriel saw a creature much like a worker, but with only six legs, scuttle past in the

opposite direction, overhead. It was a parasite mimic. How long, he wondered, did it take a

creature to evolve to look like that?"

"It's no wonder that we've had so many defectors, back in the Rings," she said sadly. "If

humanity is so stupid as to work itself into a corner like you describe, then it's better to have

nothing to do with them. Better to live alone. Better not to help the madness spread."

"That kind of talk will only get us killed," Afriel said. "We owe an allegiance to the faction

that produced us."

"Tell me truly, Captain," she said. "Haven't you ever felt the urge to leave everything --

everyone -- all your duties and constraints, and just go somewhere to think it all out? Your whole

world, and your part in it? We're trained so hard, from childhood, and so much is demanded from

us. Don't you think it's made us lose sight of our goals, somehow?"

"We live in space," Afriel said flatly. "Space is an unnatural environment, and it takes an

unnatural effort from unnatural people to prosper there. Our minds are our tools, and philosophy

has to come second. Naturally I've felt those urges you mention. They're just another threat to

guard against. I believe in an ordered society. Technology has unleashed tremendous forces that

are ripping society apart. Some one faction must arise from the struggle and integrate things. We

Shapers have the wisdom and restraint to do it humanely. That's why I do the work I do." He

hesitated. "I don't expect to see our day of triumph. I expect to die in some brush-fire conflict, or

through assassination. It's enough that I can foresee that day."

"But the arrogance of it, Captain!" she said suddenly. "The arrogance of your little life and its

little sacrifice! Consider the Swarm, if you really want your humane and perfect order. Here it is!

Where it's always warm and dark, and it smells good, and food is easy to get, and everything is

endlessly and perfectly recycled. The only resources that are ever lost are the bodies of the

mating swarms, and a little air. A Nest like this one could last unchanged for hundreds of

thousands of years. Hundreds... of thousands... of years. Who, or what, will remember us and our

stupid faction in even a thousand years?"

Afriel shook his head. "That's not a valid comparison. There is no such long view for us. In

another thousand years we'll be machines, or gods." He felt the top of his head; his velvet cap was

gone. No doubt something was eating it by now.

The tunneler took them deeper into the asteroid's honeycombed free-fall maze. They saw the

pupal chambers, where pallid larvae twitched in swaddled silk; the main fungal gardens; the

graveyard pits, where winged workers beat ceaselessly at the soupy air, feverishly hot from the

heat of decomposition. Corrosive black fungus ate the bodies of the dead into coarse black

powder, carried off by blackened workers themselves three-quarters dead.

Later they left the tunneler and floated on by themselves. The woman moved with the ease of

long habit; Afriel followed her, colliding bruisingly with squeaking workers. There were

thousands of them, clinging to ceiling, walls, and floor, clustering and scurrying at every

conceivable angle.

Later still they visited the chamber of the winged princes and princesses, an echoing round

vault where creatures forty meters long hung crooked-legged in midair. Their bodies were

segmented and metallic, with organic rocket nozzles on their thoraxes, where wings might have

been. Folded along their sleek backs were radar antennae on long sweeping booms. They looked

more like interplanetary probes under construction than anything biological. Workers fed them

ceaselessly. Their bulging spiracled abdomens were full of compressed oxygen.

Mirny begged a large chunk of fungus from a passing worker, deftly tapping its antennae and

provoking a reflex action. She handed most of the fungus to the two springtails, which devoured

it greedily and looked expectantly for more.

Afriel tucked his legs into a free-fall lotus position and began chewing with determination on

the leathery fungus. It was tough, but tasted good, like smoked meat -- a delicacy he had tasted

only once. The smell of smoke meant disaster in a Shaper's colony.

Mirny maintained a stony silence. "Food's no problem," Afriel said. "Where do we sleep?"

She shrugged. "Anywhere... there are unused niches and tunnels here and there. I suppose

you'll want to see the Queen's chamber next."

"By all means."

"I'll have to get more fungus. The warriors are on guard there and have to be bribed with

food."

She gathered an armful of fungus from another worker in the endless stream, and they moved

on. Afriel, already totally lost, was further confused in the maze of chambers and tunnels. At last

they exited into an immense lightless cavern, bright with infrared heat from the Queen's

monstrous body. It was the colony's central factory. The fact that it was made of warm and pulpy

flesh did not conceal its essentially industrial nature. Tons of predigested fungal pap went into the

slick blind jaws at one end. The rounded billows of soft flesh digested and processed it,

squirming, sucking, and undulating, with loud machinelike churnings and gurglings. Out of the

other end came an endless conveyorlike blobbed stream of eggs, each one packed in a thick

hormonal paste of lubrication. The workers avidly licked the eggs clean and bore them off to

nurseries. Each egg was the size of a man's torso.

The process went on and on. There was no day or night here in the lightless center of the

asteroid. There was no remnant of a diurnal rhythm in the genes of these creatures. The flow of

production was as constant and even as the working of an automated mine.

"This is why I'm here," Afriel murmured in awe. "Just look at this, Doctor. The Mechanists

have cybernetic mining machinery that is generations ahead of ours. But here -- in the bowels of

this nameless little world, is a genetic technology that feeds itself, maintains itself, runs itself,

efficiently, endlessly, mindlessly. It's the perfect organic tool. The faction that could use these

tireless workers could make itself an industrial titan. And our knowledge of biochemistry is

unsurpassed. We Shapers are just the ones to do it."

"How do you propose to do that?" Mirny asked with open skepticism. "You would have to

ship a fertilized queen all the way to the solar system. We could scarcely afford that, even if the

Investors would let us, which they wouldn't."

"I don't need an entire Nest," Afriel said patiently. "I only need the genetic information from

one egg. Our laboratories back in the Rings could clone endless numbers of workers."

"But the workers are useless without the Nest's pheromones. They need chemical cues to

trigger their behavior modes."

"Exactly," Afriel said. "As it so happens, I possess those pheromones, synthesized and

concentrated. What I must do now is test them. I must prove that I can use them to make the

workers do what I choose. Once I've proven it's possible, I'm authorized to smuggle the genetic

information necessary back to the Rings. The Investors won't approve. There are, of course,

moral questions involved, and the Investors are not genetically advanced. But we can win their

approval back with the profits we make. Best of all, we can beat the Mechanists at their own

game."

"You've carried the pheromones here?" Mirny said. "Didn't the Investors suspect something

when they found them?"

"Now it's you who has made an error," Afriel said calmly. "You assume that the Investors are

infallible. You are wrong. A race without curiosity will never explore every possibility, the way

we Shapers did." Afriel pulled up his pants cuff and extended his right leg. "Consider this

varicose vein along my shin. Circulatory problems of this sort are common among those who

spend a lot of time in free-fall. This vein, however, has been blocked artificially and treated to

reduce osmosis. Within the vein are ten separate colonies of genetically altered bacteria, each one

specially bred to produce a different Swarm pheromone."

He smiled. "The Investors searched me very thoroughly, including X-rays. But the vein

appears normal to X-rays, and the bacteria are trapped within compartments in the vein. They are

indetectable. I have a small medical kit on my person. It includes a syringe. We can use it to

extract the pheromones and test them. When the tests are finished -- and I feel sure they will be

successful, in fact I've staked my career on it -- we can empty the vein and all its compartments.

The bacteria will die on contact with air. We can refill the vein with the yolk from a developing

embryo. The cells may survive during the trip back, but even if they die, they can't rot inside my

body. They'll never come in contact with any agent of decay. Back in the Rings, we can learn to

activate and suppress different genes to produce the different castes, just as is done in nature.

We'll have millions of workers, armies of warriors if need be, perhaps even organic rocketships,

grown from altered alates. If this works, who do you think will remember me then, eh? Me and

my arrogant little life and little sacrifice?"

She stared at him; even the bulky goggles could not hide her new respect and even fear. "You

really mean to do it, then."

"I made the sacrifice of my time and energy. I expect results, Doctor."

"But it's kidnapping. You're talking about breeding a slave race."

Afriel shrugged, with contempt. "You're juggling words, Doctor. I'll cause this colony no

harm. I may steal some of its workers' labor while they obey my own chemical orders, but that

tiny theft won't be missed. I admit to the murder of one egg, but that is no more a crime than a

human abortion. Can the theft of one strand of genetic material be called 'kidnapping'? I think

not. As for the scandalous idea of a slave race -- I reject it out of hand. These creatures are

genetic robots. They will no more be slaves than are laser drills or cargo tankers. At the very

worst, they will be our domestic animals."

Mirny considered the issue. It did not take her long. "It's true. It's not as if a common worker

will be staring at the stars, pining for its freedom. They're just brainless neuters."

"Exactly, Doctor."

"They simply work. Whether they work for us or the Swarm makes no difference to them."

"I see that you've seized on the beauty of the idea."

"And if it worked," Mirny said, "if it worked, our faction would profit astronomically."

Afriel smiled genuinely, unaware of the chilling sarcasm of his expression. "And the personal

profit, Doctor... the valuable expertise of the first to exploit the technique." He spoke gently,

quietly. "Ever see a nitrogen snowfall on Titan? I think a habitat of one's own there -- larger,

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CRYSTALEXPRESSbyBRUCESTERLING(1989)[VERSION1.1(Jan2304).Ifyoufindandcorrecterrorsinthetext,pleaseupdatetheversionnumberby0.1andredistribute.]CONTENTSSHAPER/MECHANISTSWARM[TheMagazineofFantasy&ScienceFiction,April1982]SPIDERROSE[TheMagazineofFantasy&ScienceFiction,August1982]CICADAQUEEN[Universe13,e...

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Bruce Sterling - Crystal Express

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