Brin, David - Uplift 6 - Heaven's Reach

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PART ONE

THE FIVE GALAXIES

WHAT EMBLEMS grace the fine

'• prows or our last ships-

' How many spirals swirl on the bow

'. of each yeat vessel/ turning round and

Ri round/ symbolising our connections'^ How

many are the links that form our union'

' ONE, spiral represents the {allow worlds/

i slowly brewing, steeping/ stewing——where

| we starts its long/ hard climb.

: Struggling out of that lecundity/

new races emerge/ ripe for Uplift.

. TvvO is for stanaring culture/ streaking

| madly in our last ships/ first as clients/

\ then as patrons/ vigorously chasing our

i young interests——trading/ hghting/ and

i debating——

| Straining upward/ till we near the

'- call or becKoning tides.

i [HKEE portrays the dd Ones/ graceful

and serene/ who forsake starships to

I embrace a life of contemplation, fired of

'. manic rushing, (cloistering for seli-

• improvement.

I hey prepare to race tne C^reat narrower.

FOUR depicts the High Transcendents/ too majestic lor us to

perceive. But they exist!

/Vlaking plans that encompass all levels of spacer and alt

times.

77VE is for the galaxies—great whirls of shining light——our

Islands in a sterile cosmos/ surrounded by enigmatic silence. L/n

ana on they spin/ nurturing all liles many orders/ linked

perpetually/ everlasting.

C-T so we are assured. . . .

Harry

ALARMS SING A VARIETY OF MELODIES.

Some shriek for attention, yanking you awake

from deathlike repose. Others send your veins

throbbing with adrenaline. Aboard any space vessel

there are sirens and wails that portend collision,

vacuum leaks, or myriad other kinds of impending

death.

But the alarm tugging at Harry Harms wasn't like that.

Its creepy ratchet scraped lightly along the nerves.

"No rush," the soft buzzer seemed to murmur. "I can

wait.

"But don't even think about going back to sleep."

Harry rolled over to squint blearily at the console next

to his pillow. Glowing symbols beckoned meaningfully.

But the parts of his brain that handled reading weren't

perfectly designed. They took a while to warm up.

"Guh . . . ," he commented, '"wuh?"

Drowsiness clung to his body, still exhausted after

another long, solitary watch. How many duras had

4 David Brin

passed since he had tumbled into the bunk, vowing to

quit his commission when this tour of duty ended?

Sleep had come swiftly, but not restfully. Dreams al-

ways filled Harry's slumber, here in E Space.

In fact, dreaming was part of the job.

In REM state. Harry often revisited the steppes of Horst,

where a dusty horizon had been his constant back-

ground in childhood. A forlorn world, where ponderous

dark clouds loomed and flickered, yet held tightly to

their moisture, sharing little with the parched ground.

He usually woke from such visions with a desiccated

mouth, desperate for water.

Other dreams featured Earth—jangling city-planet,

brimming with tall humans—its skyscrapers and lush

greenery stamped in memory by one brief visit, ages

ago, in another life.

Then there were nightmares about ships—great bat-

tlecraft and moonlike invasion arks—glistening by star-

light or cloaked in the dark glow of their terrible fields.

Wraithlike frigates, looming more eerie and terrifying

than real life.

Those were the more normal dream images to come

creeping in, whenever his mind had room between far

stranger apparitions. For the most part, Harry's night

thoughts were filled with spinning, dizzying allaphors,

which billowed and muttered in the queer half-logic of

E Space. Even his shielded quarters weren't impervious

to tendrils of counterreality, penetrating the bulkheads,

groping through his sleep. No wonder he woke disori-

ented, shaken by the grating alarm.

Harry stared at the glowing letters—each twisting like

some manic, living hieroglyph, gesticulating in the ideo-

grammatic syntax of Galactic Language Number Seven.

Concentrating, he translated the message into the Anglic

of his inner thoughts.

"Great," Harry commented in a dry voice.

Apparently, the patrol vessel had come aground

again.

"Oh, that's just fine."

Heaven's ReacH 5

The buzzer increased its tempo. Pushing out of bed,

Harry landed barefoot on the chill deck plates, shiver-

ing.

"And to think . . . they tell me I got an aptitude for

this kind of work."

In other words, you had to be at least partway crazy

to be suited for his job.

Shaking lethargy, he clambered up a ladder to the

observing platform just above his quarters—a hexagonal

chamber, ten meters across, with a control panel in the

center. Groping toward the alarm cutoff, Harry some-

how managed not to trigger any armaments, or purge

the station's atmosphere into E Space, before slapping

the right switch. The maddening noise abruptly ceased.

"Ah . . . ," he sighed, and almost fell asleep again

right there, standing behind the padded command chair.

But then ... if sleep did come, he might start

dreaming again.

I never understood Hamlet till they assigned me here.

Now I figure, Shakespeare must've glimpsed E Space be-

fore writing that "to be or not to be" stuff.

. . . perchance to dream . . .

Yup, ol' Willie must've known there's worse things

than death.

Scratching his belly, Harry scanned the status board.

No red lights burned. The station appeared functional.

No major reality leaks were evident. With a sigh, he

moved around to perch on the seat.

"Monitor mode. Report station status."

The holo display lit up, projecting a floating blue M,

sans serif. A melodious voice emanated from the slowly

revolving letter.

"Monitor mode. Station integrity is nominal. An

alarm has been acknowledged by station superinten-

dent Harry Harms at 4:48:52 internal subjective esti-

mate time. .. . ."

"I'm Harry Harms. Why don't you tell me something I

don't know, like what the alarm's for, you shaggy ex-

cuse for a baldie's toup ... ah ... ah ..."

A sneeze tore through Harry's curse. He wiped his

eyes with the back of a hirsute wrist.

6 Hand Brin Heaven's Reach 7

"7%e alarm denoted an interruption in our patrol cir-

cuit ofE Level hyperspace, " the monitor continued, un-

perturbed. "The station has apparently become mired in

an anomaly region."

"You mean we're grounded on a reef. I already knew

that much. But what kind of . . ." he muttered. "Oh,

never mind. I'll go see for myself."

Harry ambled over to a set of vertical louvered blinds

—one of six banks that rimmed the hexagonal chamber

—and slipped a fingertip between two of the slats, pry-

ing them apart to make a narrow slit opening. He hesi-

tated, then brought one eye forward to peer outside.

The station appeared to be shaped in its standard for-

mat, at least. Not like a whale, or jellyfish, or amorphous

blob, thank Ifni. Sometimes this continuum had effects

on physical objects that were gruesomely bizarre, or

even fatal.

On this occasion the control chamber still perched

like a glass cupola atop an oblate white spheroid, com-

manding a 360-degree view of a vast metaphorical realm

—a dubious, dangerous, but seldom monotonous do-

main.

Jagged black mountains bobbed in the distance, like

ebony icebergs, majestically traversing what resembled

an endless sea of purple grass. The "sky" was a red-blue

shade that could only be seen on E Level. It had holes

in it.

So far so good.

Harry spread the slats wider to take in the foreground,

and blinked in surprise at what he saw. The station

rested on a glistening, slick brown surface. Spread

across this expanse, for what might be a kilometer in all

directions, lay a thick scattering of giant yellow starfish!

At least that was his first impression. Harry rushed to

another bank of curtains and peeked again. More "star-

fish" lay on that side as well, dispersed randomly, but

thickly enough to show no easy route past.

"Damn." From experience he knew it would be use-

less to try flying over the things. If they represented

two-dimensional obstacles, they must be overcome in a

two-dimensional way. That was how allaphorical logic

worked in this zone of E Space.

Harry went back to the control board and touched a

button. All the blinds retracted, revealing an abrupt pan-

oramic view. Mountains and purple grass in the dis-

tance. Brown slickness closer in.

And yes, the station was completely surrounded by

starfish. Yellow starfish everywhere.

"Pfeh." Harry shivered. Most of the jaundiced mon-

sters had six arms, though some had five or seven. They

didn't appear to be moving. That, at least, was a relief.

Harry hated ambulatory allaphors.

"Pilot mode!" he commanded.

With a faint crackling, the floating helvetica M was

replaced by a jaunty, cursive P.

"Aye aye, o' Person-Commander. Where to now,

Henry?"

"Name's Harry," he grunted. The perky tones used by

pilot mode might have been cheery and friendly in An-

glic, but they came across as just plain silly in Galactic

Seven. Yet the only available alternative meant substitut-

ing a voice chip programmed in whistle-clicking

GalTwo. A Gubru dialect, even. He wasn't desperate

enough to try that yet.

"Prepare to ease us along a perceived-flat course tra-

jectory of two forty degrees, ship centered," he told the

program. "Dead slow."

"Whatever you say, Boss-Sentient. Adapting interface

parameters now."

Harry went back to the window, watching the station

grow four huge wheels, bearing giant balloon tires with

thick treads. Soon they began to turn. A squeaky whine,

like rubbing your hand on a soapy countertop, pene-

trated the thick crystal panes.

As he had feared, the tires found little traction on the

slick brown surface. Still, he held back from overruling

the pilot's choice of countermeasures. Better see what

happened first.

Momentum built gradually. The station approached

the nearest yellow starfish.

Doubt spread in Harry's mind.

8 David Brin

"Maybe I should try looking this up first. They might

have the image listed somewhere."

Once upon a time, back when he was inducted as

Earth's first volunteer-recruit in the Navigation Institute

survey department—full of tape-training and idealism—

he used to consult the records every time E Space threw

another weird symbolism at him. After all, the Galactic

civilization of oxygen-breathing races had been explor-

ing, cataloging, and surveying this bizarre continuum for

half a billion years. The amount of information con-

tained in even his own tiny shipboard Library unit ex-

ceeded the sum of all human knowledge before contact

was made with extraterrestrials.

An impressive store . . . and as it turned out, nearly

useless. Maybe he wasn't very good at negotiating with

the Library's reference persona. Or perhaps the problem

came from being born of Earth-simian stock. Anyway,

he soon took to trusting his own instincts during mis-

sions to E Space.

Alas, that approach had one drawback. You have only

yourself to blame when things blow up in your face.

Harry noticed he was slouching. He straightened and

brought his hands together to prevent scratching. But

nervous energy had to express itself, so he tugged on

his thumbs, instead. A Tymbrimi he knew had once re-

marked that many of Harry's species had that habit, per-

haps a symptom from the long, hard process of Uplift.

The forward tires reached the first starfish. There was

no way around the things. No choice but to try climbing

over them.

Harry held his breath as contact was made. But touch-

ing drew no reaction. The obstacle just lay there, six

long, flat strips of brown-flecked yellow, splayed from a

nubby central hump. The first set of tires skidded, and

the station rode up the yellow strip, pushed by the back

wheels.

The station canted slightly. Harry rumbled anxiously

in his chest, trying to tease loose a tickling thread of

recognition. Maybe "starfish" wasn't the best analogy for

these things. They looked familiar though.

Heaven's Beach 9

The angle increased. A troubled whine came from the

spinning rear wheels until they, too, reached the yellow.

In a shock of recognition. Harry shouted-—"No! Re-

verse! They're ban—"

Too late. The back tires whined as slippery yellow

strips flew out from under the platform, sending it flip-

ping in a sudden release of traction. Harry tumbled,

struck the ceiling, then slid across the far wall, shouting

as the scout platform rolled, skidded, and rolled

again . . . until it dropped with a final, bone-jarring

thud. Fetching up against a bulkhead, Harry clutched a

wall rail with his toes until the jouncing finally stopped.

"Oh . . . my head . . . ," he moaned, picking him-

self up.

At least things had settled right side up. He shuffled

back to the console in a crouch and read the main dis-

play. The station had suffered little damage, thank Ifni.

But Harry must have put off housecleaning chores too

long, for dust balls now coated his fur from head to toe.

He slapped them off, raising clouds and triggering vio-

lent sneezes.

The shutters had closed automatically the instant

things went crazy, protecting his eyes against potentially

dangerous allaphors.

He commanded gruffly, "Open blinds!" Perhaps the

violent action had triggered a local phase change, caus-

ing all the nasty obstacles to vanish. It had happened

before.

No such luck, he realized as the louvers slid into pil-

lars between the wide viewing panes. Outside, the gen-

eral scenery had not altered noticeably. The same

reddish blue, Swiss cheese sky rolled over a mauve

pampas, with black mountains bobbing biliously in the

distance. And a slick mesa still had his scoutship mired,

hemmed on all sides by yellow, multiarmed shapes.

"Banana peels," he muttered. "Goddamn banana

peels."

One reason why these stations were manned by only

one observer . . . allaphors tended to get even weirder

with more than one mind perceiving them at the same

time. The "objects" he saw were images his own mind

10 David Brio

pasted over a reality that no living brain could readily

fathom. A reality that mutated and transformed under

influence by his thoughts and perceptions.

All that was fine, in theory. He ought to be used to it

by now. But what bothered Harry in particular about the

banana allaphor was that it seemed gratuitously per-

sonal. Like others of his kind, Harry hated being trapped

by stereotypes.

He sighed, scratching his side. "Are all systems sta-

ble?"

"Everything is stable, Taskmaster-Commander Har-

old, " the pilot replied. "We are stuck for the moment,

but we appear to be safe."

He considered the vast open expanse beyond the pla-

teau. Actually, visibility was excellent from here. The

holes in the sky, especially, were all clear and unob-

structed. A thought occurred to him.

"Say, do we really have to move on right away? We

can observe all the assigned transit routes from this very

spot, until our cruise clock runs out, no?"

"That appears to be correct. For the moment, no illicit

traffic can get by our watch area undetected."

"Hmmph. Well then . . ." He yawned. "I guess I'll

just go back to bed! I have a feelin' I'm gonna need my

wits to get outta this one."

''Very well. Good night, Employer-Observer Harms.

Pleasant dreams."

"Fat chance o' that," he muttered in Anglic as he left

the observation deck. "And close the friggin' blinds! Do

I have to think of everything around here? Don't answer

that! Just . . . never mind."

Even closed, the louvers would not prevent all leak-

age. Flickering archetypes slipped between the slats, as

if eager to latch into his mind during REM state, tapping

his dreams like little parasites.

It could not be helped. When Harry got his first pro-

motion to E Space, the local head of patrollers for the

Navigation Institute told him that susceptibility to al-

laphoric images was a vital part of the job. Waving a

slender, multijointed arm, that Galactic official con-

Heuen's Rilch ll

fessed his surprise, in Nahalli-accented GalSix, at Harry's

qualifications.

"Skeptical we were, when first told that your race

might have traits useful to us.

"Repudiating our doubts, this you have since

achieved, Observer Harms.

"To full status, we now advance you. First of your

kind to be so honored."

Harry sighed as he threw himself under the covers

again, tempted by the sweet stupidity of self-pity.

Some honor! He snorted dubiously.

Still, he couldn't honestly complain. He had been

warned. And this wasn't Horst. At least he had escaped

the dry, monotonous wastes.

Anyway, only the mad lived for long under illusions

that the cosmos was meant for their convenience.

There were a multitude of conflicting stories about

whoever designed this crazy universe, so many billions

of years ago. But even before he ever considered dedi-

cating his life to Institute work—or heard of E Space—

Harry had reached one conclusion about metatheology.

For all His power and glory, the Creator must not

have been a very sensible person.

At least, not as sensible as a neo-chimpanzee.

ara

THERE IS A WORD-GLYPH.

It names a locale where three states of matter co-

incide—two that are fluid, swirling past a third that

is adamant as coral.

A kind of froth conform in such a place. Danger-

ous, deceptive foam, beaten to a head by fate-filled tides.

No one enters such a turmoil voluntarily.

But sometimes a force called desperation drives pru-

dent sailors to set course for ripping shoals.

12 David Brin

A slender shape plummets through the outer fringes of a

mammoth star. Caterpillar-ribbed, with rows of talon-

like protrusions that bite into spacetime, the vessel claws

its way urgently against a bitter gale.

Diffuse flames lick the scarred hull of ancient cera-

metal, adding new layers to a strange soot coating. Ten-

drils of plasma fire seek entry, thwarted (so far) by

wavering fields.

In time, though, the heat will find its way through.

Midway along the vessel's girth, a narrow wheel

turns, like a wedding band that twists around a ner-

vous finger. Rows of windows pass by as the slim ring

rotates. Unlit from within, most of the dim panes only

reflect stellar fire.

Then, rolling into view, a single rectangle shines with

artificial color.

A pane for viewing in two directions. A universe with-

out, and within.

Contemplating the maelstrom, Sara mused aloud.

"My criminal ancestors took their sneakship through

this same inferno on their way to Jijo . . . covering

their tracks under the breath of Great Izmunuti."

Pondering the forces at work just a handbreadth

away, she brushed her fingertips against a crystal sur-

face that kept actinic heat from crossing the narrow gap.

One part of her—book-weaned and tutored in mathe-

matics—could grasp the physics of a star whose radius

was bigger than her homeworld's yearly orbit. A red

giant, in its turgid final stage, boiling a stew of nuclear-

cooked atoms toward black space.

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PARTONETHEFIVEGALAXIESWHATEMBLEMSgracethefine'•prowsorourlastships-'Howmanyspiralsswirlonthebow'.ofeachyeatvessel/turningroundandRiround/symbolisingourconnections'^Howmanyarethelinksthatformourunion''ONE,spiralrepresentsthe{allowworlds/islowlybrewing,steeping/stewing——where|westartsitslong/hardclimb...

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