Brin, David - Uplift 7- Temptation

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Temptation

David Brin

Introduction

Some people say you can't have everything. For instance, if a story offers action, it must lack

philosophy. If it involves science, character must suffer. This has especially been said about one of th

core types of science fiction, the genre sometimes called space opera. Is it possible to depict grand

adventures and heroic struggles cascading across lavish future settings-complete with exploding plan

and vivid special effects-while still coming up with something worth calling a novel?

I'm one of those who believe it's worth a try-and have attempted it in the Uplift novels, which are se

several hundred years into a dangerous future, in a cosmos that poor humans barely comprehend.

I begin with the plausible notion that people may start genetically altering dolphins and chimpanze

giving those bright animals the final boost they need to become our peers and partners. In my debut

work, Sundiver, \ depicted all three of Earth's sapient races discovering that an ancient and powerful

interstellar civilization has been doing the same thing for a very long time. Following an ancient

prescription, each starfaring clan in the Civilization of Five Galaxies looks for promising newcomers to

"uplift." In return for this favor, the new client species owes its patrons an interval of service, then start

looking for someone else to receive the gift of intelligence.

This benign pattern conceals a series of ominous secrets which get peeled away in subsequent

stories. Startide Rising and The Uplift War-both winners of the Hugo Award for best novel-depict shoc

waves rocking Galactic society when a humble earthship, Streaker, staffed by a hundred neo-dolphins

and a few humans-uncovers clues to a billion-year-old conspiracy.

My goal has been to stock the series with elements that science-fiction lovers enjoy-for instance,

there's not just one way to surpass the Einsteinian limitation on faster-than-light travel, but half a doze

use five galaxies as the stage for the series, with more waiting in the wings. The cast of characters-

dolphins, chimps, and aliens-has been chosen to offer a wide range of sympathetic moments and, I

hope, memorable ideas.

After a hiatus of several years while I worked on other projects, I returned to this broad canvas wit

the new Uplift Storm trilogy, consisting of three connected novels, Brightness Reef, Infinity's Shore, an

Heaven's Reach. These works continue exploring the adventures and trials of the Streaker crew, but

also delve into a unique, multiracial society on Jijo, a world in isolated Galaxy Four that was declared

"fallow," or off-limits to sapient beings in order to let its biosphere recover. Despite this well-intended l

a series of sneakships have come to the forbidden world, bringing illegal colonists from half a dozen

races, each with desperate reasons to flee growing danger back home. After initial struggles and

misunderstandings, the Six Races of Jijo-including exiled humans-made peace, joining to create a

decent shared culture, sharing their beloved world while hiding from the cosmos . . . until one day all

their troubles came crashing from the sky.

A Time of Changes has commenced, rocking the complacent Civilization of Five Galaxies. Nobody

safe, and nothing is certain anymore. Not history, law, biology, or even trusty physics.

Something is happening to the universe, and all bets about our destiny are off.

In this new story, "Temptation," I peel back yet another layer in the unfolding saga, and show a sm

group of fugitive dolphins learning how perilous it can be to be offered exactly what you always wishe

for.

MAKANEE

Jijo's ocean stroked her flank like a mother's nuzzling touch, or a lover's caress. Though it seemed a bit disloyal,

Makanee felt this alien ocean had a silkier texture and finer taste than the waters of Earth, the homeworld she had not seen i

years.

With gentle beats of their powerful flukes, she and her companion kept easy pace beside a tremendous throng of fis

creatures-red-finned, with violet gills and long translucent tails that glittered in the slanted sunlight like plasma sparks behi

starship. The school seemed to stretch forever, grazing on drifting clouds of plankton, moving in unison through co

shallows like the undulating body of a vast complacent serpent.

The creatures were beautiful . . . and delicious. Makanee performed an agile twist of her sleek gray body, lungi

snatch one from the teeming mass, provoking only a slight ripple from its nearest neighbors. Her casual style of predation mu

new to Jijo, for the beasts seemed quite oblivious to the dolphins. The rubbery flesh tasted like exotic mackerel.

"I can't help feeling guilty," she commented in Underwater Anglic, a language of clicks and squeals that was well-suited

liquid realm where sound ruled over light.

Her companion rolled alongside the school, belly up, with ventral fins waving languidly as he grabbed one of the local fis

himself.

"Why guilty?" Brookida asked, while the victim writhed between his narrow jaws. Its soft struggle did not interfere wit

train of word-glyphs, since a dolphin's mouth plays no role in generating sound. Instead a rapid series of ratcheting s

impulses emanated from his brow. "Are you ashamed because you live? Because it feels good to be outside again, with a

sea rubbing your skin and the crash of waves singing in your dreams? Do you miss the stale water and moldy air aboard s

Or the dead echoes of your cramped stateroom?"

"Don't be absurd," she snapped back. After three years confined aboard the Terran survey vessel, Streaker, Mak

had felt as cramped as an overdue fetus, straining at the womb. Release from that purgatory was like being born anew.

"It's just that we're enjoying a tropical paradise while our crew-mates-"

"-must continue tearing across the cosmos in foul discomfort, chased by vile enemies, facing death at every turn.

know."

Brookida let out an expressive sigh. The elderly geophysicist switched languages, to one more suited for poignant iro

* Winter's tempest spends

* All its force against the reef,

* Sparing the lagoon.*

The Trinary haiku was expressive and wry. At the same time though, Makanee could not help making a physi

diagnosis. She found her old friend's sonic patterns rife with undertones of Primal- the natural cetacean demi-language use

wild Tursiops truncatus dolphins back on Earth-a dialect that members of the modern amicus breed were suppos

avoid, lest their minds succumb to tempting ancient ways. Mental styles that lured with rhythms of animal-like purity.

She found it worrisome to hear Primal from Brookida, one of her few companions with an intact psyche. Most of the

dolphins on Jijo suffered to some degree from stress-atavism. Having lost the cognitive focus needed by engineers and starf

they could no longer help Streaker in its desperate flight across five galaxies. Planting this small colony on Jijo had see

logical solution, leaving the regressed ones for Makanee to care for in this gentle place, while their shipmates sped on to

crises elsewhere.

She could hear them now, browsing along the same fishy swarm just a hundred meters off. Thirty neo-dolphins who had

graduated from prestigious universities. Specialists chosen for an elite expedition-now reduced to splashing and squalling,

little on their minds but food, sex, and music. Their primitive calls no longer embarrassed Makanee. After everything

colleagues had gone through since departing Terra-on a routine one-year survey voyage that instead stretched into a h

three-it was surprising they had any sanity left at all.

Such suffering would wear down a human, or even a tymbrimi. But our race is just a few centuries old. Neo-dolphins have

barely started the long Road of Uplift. Our grip on sapience is still slippery. And now another trail beckons us.

After debarking with her patients, Makanee had learned about the local religion of the Six Races who already secretly settle

isolated world, a creed centered on the Path of Redemption-a belief that salvation could be found in blissful ignoranc

nonsapience.

It was harder than it sounded. Among the "sooner" races who had come to this world illegally, seeking refu

simplicity, only one had succeeded so far, and Makanee doubted that the human settlers would ever reclaim true a

innocence, no matter how hard they tried. Unlike species who were uplifted, humans had earned their intelligence the hard

on Old Earth, seizing each new talent or insight at frightful cost over the course of a thousand harsh millennia. They

become ignorant and primitive-but never simple. Never innocent.

We neo-dolphins will find it easy, however. We've only been tool-users for such a short time-a boon from our human patron

we never sought. It's simple to give up something you received without struggle. Especially when the alternative-the Whale Dr

calls seductively, each time you sleep.

An alluring sanctuary. The sweet trap of timelessness.

From clackety sonar emanations, she sensed her assistants-a pair of fully conscious volunteers-keeping herd on the rev

ones, making sure the group stayed together. Things seemed pleasant here, but no one knew for sure what dangers lurked in

wide sea.

We already have three wanderers out there somewhere. Poor little Peepoe and her two wretched kidnappers. I promised Kaa

send out search parties to rescue her. But how? Zhaki and Mopol have a huge head start, and half a planet to hide in.

Tkett's out there looking for her right now, and we'll start expanding the search as soon as the patients are settled and safe

they could be on the other side of Jijo by now. Our only real hope is for Peepoe to escape that pair of dolts somehow an

close enough to call for help.

It was time for Makanee and Brookida to head back and take their own turn shepherding the happy-innocent patients

Yet, she felt reluctant. Nervous.

Something in the water rolled through her mouth with a faint metallic tang, tasting like expectancy.

Makanee swung her sound-sensitive jaw around, seeking clues. At last she found a distant tremor. A faintly familiar reson

coming from the west.

Brookida hadn't noticed yet.

"Well," he commented, "it won't be long till we are truly part of this world, I suppose. A few generations from now, no

our descendants will be using Anglic, or any Galactic language. We'll be guileless innocents once more, ripe for reado

and a second chance at uplift. I wonder what our new patrons will be like."

Makanee's friend was goading her gently with the bittersweet destiny anticipated for this colony, on a world that see

made for cetaceans. A world whose comfort was the surest way to clinch a rapid devolution of their disciplined minds. Wit

constant challenges, the Whale Dream would surely reclaim them. Brookida seemed to accept the notion with an ease

disturbed Makanee.

"We still have patrons," she pointed out. "There are humans living right here on Jijo."

"Humans, yes. But uneducated, lacking the scientific skills to continue guiding us. So our only remaining option must be-"

He stopped, having at last picked up that rising sound from the west. Makanee recognized the unique hum of a speed sl

"It is Tkett," she said. "Returning from his scouting trip. Let's go hear what he found out."

Thrashing her flukes, Makanee jetted to the surface, spuming the moist, stale air from her lungs and drawing in a deep b

of sweet oxygen. Then she spun about and kicked off toward the engine noise, with Brookida following close behind.

In their wake, the school of grazing fishoids barely rippled in its endless, sinuous dance, darting in and out of luminous s

feeding on whatever the good sea pressed toward them.

The archaeologist had his own form of mental illness-wishful thinking.

Tkett had been ordered to stay behind and help Makanee with the reverted ones, partly because his skills weren't need

Streaker's continuing desperate flight across the known universe. In compensation for that bitter exile, he had grown obse

with studying the Great Midden, that deep underwater trash heap where Jijo's ancient occupants had dumped nearly e

sapient-made object when this planet was abandoned by starfaring culture, half a million years ago. "I'll ha

wonderful report to submit when we get back to Earth," he rationalized, in apparent confidence that all their trou

would pass, and eventually he would make it home to publish his results. It was a special kind of derange

without featuring any sign of stress-atavism or reversion. Tkett still spoke Anglic perfectly. His work was fla

and his demeanor cheerful. He was pleasant, functional, and mad as a hatter.

Makanee met the sled a kilometer west of the pod, where Tkett pulled up short in order not to disturb

patients. "Did you find any traces of Peepoe?" she asked when he cut the engine.

Tkett was a wonderfully handsome specimen of Tursiops amicus, with speckled mottling along his sleek

flanks. The permanent dolphin-smile presented twin rows of perfectly white, conical teeth. While still nestled o

sled's control platform, Tkett shook his sleek gray head left and right.

"Alas, no. I went about two hundred klicks, following those faint traces we picked up on deep-range sonar. B

grew clear that the source wasn't Zhaki's sled."

Makanee grunted disappointment. "Then what was it?" Unlike the clamorous sea of Earth, this fallow pl

wasn't supposed to have motor noises permeating its thermal-acoustic layers.

"At first I started imagining all sorts of unlikely things, like sea monsters, or Jophur submarines,"

answered. "Then the truth hit me."

Brookida nodded nervously, venting bubbles from his blowhole. "Yessssss?"

"It must be a starship. An ancient, piece-of-trash wreck, barely puttering along-"

"Of course!" Makanee thrashed her tail. "Some of the decoys didn't make it into space."

Tkett murmured ruefully over how obvious it now seemed. When Streaker made its getaway attempt, abando

Makanee and her charges on this world, the earthship fled concealed in a swarm of ancient relics that dol

engineers had resurrected from trash heaps on the ocean floor. Though Jijo's surface now was a fallow real

savage tribes, the deep underwater canyons still held thousands of battered, abandoned spacecraft and other d

from when this section of Galaxy Four had been a center of civilization and commerce. Several dozen of t

derelicts had been reactivated in order to confuse Streaker's foe-a fearsome Jophur battleship-but some of the h

must have failed to haul their bulk out of the sea when the time came. Those failures were doomed to drift aiml

underwater until their engines gave out and they tumbled once more to the murky depths.

As for the rest, there had been no word whether Streaker'?, ploy succeeded beyond luring the awful dreadnought

toward deep space. At least Jijo seemed a friendlier place without it. For now.

"We should have expected this," the archaeologist continued. "When I got away from the shoreline surf noi

thought I could detect at least three of the hulks, bumping around out there almost randomly. It seems kind of sad,

you think about it. Ancient ships, not worth salvaging when the Buyur abandoned Jijo, waiting in an icy, watery tomb fo

one last chance to climb back out to space. Only these couldn't make it. They're stranded here."

"Like us," Makanee murmured.

Tkett seemed not to hear.

"In fact, I'd like to go back out there and try to catch up with one of the derelicts."

"Whatever for?"

Tkett's smile was still charming and infectious . . . which made it seem even crazier, under these circumstances.

"I'd like to use it as a scientific instrument," the big neo-dolphin said.

Makanee felt utterly confirmed in her diagnosis.

PEEPOE

Captivity wasn't as bad as she had feared.

It was worse.

Among natural, presapient dolphins on Earth, small groups of young males would sometimes conspire to isolate a

female from the rest of the pod, herding her away for private copulation-especially if she was about to enter heat. By wo

together, they might monopolize her matings and guarantee their own reproductive success, even if she clearly preferred a

alpha-ranked male instead. That ancient behavior pattern persisted in the wild because, while native Tursiops had

traditions and a kind of feral honor, they could not quite grasp or carry out the concept of law-a code that all must liv

because the entire community has a memory transcending any individual.

But modern, uplifted amicus dolphins did have law! And when young hoodlums occasionally let instinct prevail and t

that sort of thing back home, the word for it was rape. Punishment was harsh. As with human sexual predators, just one of the

likely outcomes was permanent sterilization.

Such penalties worked. After three centuries, some of the less desirable primal behaviors were becoming rare. Yet, uplifte

dolphins were still a young race. Great stress could yank old ways back to the fore, from time to time.

And we Streakers have sure been under stress.

Unlike some devolved crewmates, whose grip on modernity and rational thought had snapped under relentless pres

Zhaki and Mopol suffered only partial atavism. They could still talk and run complex equipment, but they were no longe

polite, almost shy junior ratings she had met when Streaker first set out from Earth under Captain Creideiki, before the

cosmos seemed to implode all around the dolphin crew.

In abstract, she understood the terrible strain that had put them in this state. Perhaps, if she were offered a chance t

Zhaki and Mopol, Peepoe might call that punishment a bit too severe.

On the other fin, sterilization was much too good for them.

Despite sharing the same culture, and a common ancestry as Earth mammals, dolphins and humans looked at

things differently. Peepoe felt more annoyed at being kidnapped than violated. More pissed off than traumatized. She

able to stymie their lust completely, but with various tricks-playing on their mutual jealousy and feigning illness as often a

could-Peepoe staved off unwelcome attentions for long stretches.

But if I find out they murdered Kaa, I'll have their entrails for lunch.

Days passed and her impatience grew. Peepoe's real time limit was fast approaching. My contraception implant

expire. Zhaki and his pal have fantasies about populating Jijo with their descendants, but I like this planet far too mu

curse it that way.

She vowed to make a break for it. But how?

Sometimes she would swim to a channel between the two remote islands where her kidnappers had brought

and drift languidly, listening. Once, Peepoe thought she made out something faintly familiar-a clicking murmur,

a distant crowd of dolphins. But it passed, and she dismissed it as wishful thinking. Zhaki and Mopol had drive

sled at top speed for days on end with her strapped to the back, before they halted by this strange archipelago

removed her sonar-proof blindfold. She had no idea how to find her way back to the old coastline where Makanee's grou

settled.

When I do escape these two idiots, I may be consigning myself to a solitary existence for the rest of my days.

Oh well, you wanted the life of an explorer. There could be worse fates than swimming all the way around this bea

world, eating exotic fish when you're hungry, riding strange tides and listening to rhythms no dolphin ever heard before.

The fantasy had a poignant beauty-though ultimately, it made her lonely and sad.

The ocean echoed with anger, engines, and strange noise.

Of course it was all a matter of perspective. On noisy Earth, this would have seemed eerily quiet. Terran seas buzzed

cacophony of traffic, much of it caused by her own kind as neo-dolphins gradually took over managing seventy percent of the

planet's surface. In mining the depths, or tending fisheries, or caring for those sacredly complex simpletons called whales,

and more responsibilities fell to uplifted 'fins using boats, subs, and other equipment. Despite continuing efforts to reduc

racket, home was still a raucous place.

In comparison, Jijo appeared as silent as a nursery. Natural sound-carrying thermal layers reported waves crashing on di

shorelines and intermittent groaning as minor quakes rattled the ocean floor. A myriad buzzes, clicks, and whistles came

Jijo's own subsurface fauna-fishy creatures that evolved here, or were introduced by colonizing leaseholders like the Buyur,

ago. Some distant rumbles even hinted at large entities, moving slowly, languidly across the deep . . . perhaps pond

long, slow thoughts.

As days stretched to weeks, Peepoe learned to distinguish Jijo's organic rhythms . . . punctuated by a grating

whenever one of the boys took the sled for a joy ride, stampeding schools of fish, or careening along with the load indi

showing red. At this rate the machine wouldn't stand up much longer, though Peepoe kept hoping one of them would brea

fool neck first.

With or without the sled, Zhaki and Mopol could track her down if she just swam away. Even when they left pil

dead fish to ferment atop some floating reeds, and got drunk on the foul carcasses, the two never let their guard down

enough to let her steal the sled. It seemed that one or the other was always sprawled across the saddle. Since dolphins

sleep one brain hemisphere at a time, it was impossible to take them completely by surprise.

Then, after two months of captivity, she detected signs of something drawing near.

Peepoe had been diving in deeper water for a tasty kind of local soft-shell crab when she first heard it. Her two captors

having fun a kilometer away, driving their speedster in tightening circles around a panicked school of bright sil

fishoids. But when she dived through a thermal boundary layer, separating warm water above from cool saltier liquid belo

sled's racket abruptly diminished.

Blessed silence was one added benefit of this culinary exploit. Peepoe had been doing a lot of diving lately.

This time, however, the transition did more than spare her the sled's noise for a brief time. It also brought forth a

sound. A distant rumble, channeled by the shilly stratum. With growing excitement, Peepoe recognized the murmur of an en

Yet the rhythms struck her as unlike any she had heard on Earth or elsewhere.

Puzzled, she kicked swiftly to the surface, filled her lungs with fresh air, and dived back down to listen again.

This deep current offers an excellent sonic grove, she realized, focusing sound rather than diffusing it. Keepin

vibrations well confined. Even the sled's sensors may not pick it up for quite a while.

Unfortunately, that also meant she couldn't tell how far away the source was.

If I had a breather unit. . . if it weren't necessary to keep surfacing for air. . . I could swim a great distance masked b

thermal barrier. Otherwise, it seems hopeless. They can use the sled's monitors on long-range scan to detect me when I br

and exhale.

Peepoe listened for a while longer, and decided.

/ think it's getting closer . . . but slowly. The source must still be far away. If I made a dash now, I won't ge

before they catch me.

And yet, she daren't risk Mopol and Zhaki picking up the new sound. If she must wait, it meant keeping t

distracted till the time was right.

There was just one way to accomplish that.

Peepoe grimaced. Rising toward the surface, she expressed disgust with a vulgar Trinary demi-haiku.

* May sun roast your backs,

* And hard sand scrape your bottoms,

* Til you itch madly. . . .

* ... as if with a good case of the clap! *

MAKANEE

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TemptationbyDavidBrinIntroductionSomepeoplesayyoucan'thaveeverything.Forinstance,ifastoryoffersaction,itmustlackphilosophy.Ifitinvolvesscience,charactermustsuffer.Thishasespeciallybeensaidaboutoneofthecoretypesofsciencefiction,thegenresometimescalledspaceopera.Isitpossibletodepictgrandadventuresandh...

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