Memor had the Serfs interrogate the primate’s innate mind-time scales. They scampered about, using their instruments. The result was desperately plain.
The creature had a summing time of a few of its own eye-blinks, a trifling interval. It used that scale to integrate information. That meant that it could not delegate to its lesser parts the usual boring business of keeping itself alive. It had to keep incessant watch.
This was difficult to believe. The Folk had abandoned the drumming rhythm of short cycles long ago. That was the informing idea behind their pursuit of constancy—of freedom from the ticktock of early origins. Instead, the Folk dwelled on the eternal Quest through the Voyage.
This small, intense being was forced to worry about its housekeeping, such as digestion, excretion, even the intake and outblow of oxygen. Could it be so pointlessly busy? Difficult to know, but depressing to contemplate.
Such a short processing time meant that it could seldom spare computational power on issues beyond its own heart rate. It lived a poor, distracted life. Yet it had built a starship!
Did it even sense the gyre of evolution? Or of the World?
Memor pondered. Her Undermind worked, fretful and persistent as always, yet came forth with nothing. She inspected her Undermind workings, peeled back layers—yes, nothing. The Undermind was justly perplexed. So many questions remained!
Could these hairy bipeds fathom why their slavery to oscillations in dark and day made them primitive? Once even the Folk had submitted to such endless toils. But they had learned otherwise, had in the Deep Times built the World to escape such bondage to primitive cycles. In its way, this small thing represented the ancient past, brought forward by circumstance for Memor’s instruction.
When the alien came out of the scanning, Memor tried to get the female to speak. It was staggering a little, waving its small arms for balance. “I see you find our insightful machines a trial,” Memor said.
“You trying to pick my brains?” it—no, she; hard to remember; how could one tell?—shot back.
“I have analyzed your capabilities,” Memor said, which in a way was true.
“You goddamn smelly elephant-bird! You have no right—!”
Its noise carried little information. Hot-eyed fervor marked it, and even more its limbs whirled entertainingly, as if they were beset by breezes. The effect was comic. She had noticed this one was darker in hue than the others, which might mean it had spent more time in starglow, and so was older, and thus wiser. That was why Memor had selected her—hoping for a faint trace of wisdom in it. Futile, perhaps. But Memor did not know enough yet.
So Memor had the Serfs return it—her—to the scan. It squalled, of course.
Ah. Revelation dawned up from the Undermind. New data flowed into Memor, and she could see it working amid the low minions of her own mind. She could flick back and forth between her own mental understory and that of this Late Invader primate. A unique experience, laced with shadowy strangeness.
So … could she question the female while she was in the scan? She had never known this to be done, in all Astronomer history. Yet her Undermind pushed this concept up from its ripe swamps, and Memor saw the value of the idea. Onward, then.
The Serfs stood in awe as she called up the image-data, learning from it in quick bursts. She let the Undermind hold sway. Serfs could not of course understand, as they—indeed, nearly all of Creation—were all linear minds. Unified minds, yes—but with little Undermind. Serfs used a variant of linear thinking, just as did these Late Invaders, but apparently the Late Invaders had strengths Serfs did not. Certainly no Serf could have escaped from the traps laid for generic Invaders.
She scrutinized the alien brainscan with care. Hereditary neural equipment governed them. Primitive, indeed. Their minds were divided! Straight down the middle, a clear cleft. Most of Creation was so configured. Evolution had apparently used this often as an early, rudimentary precaution. The Folk shared this property as well, and it was common in this explored region of the galaxy, at least.
But there were new features here, as well. Simple forms of animals divided functions so that they could not interfere with basics, and so interrupt the fundamentals. Later, further up the evolutionary pyramid, various utilities like digestion, heartbeat, the underlying housekeeping—all became walled off in the mind, their work uninterrupted except in emergencies.
But some fundamental features of advanced minds were beyond these Late Invaders. Higher intelligence needed not mere utilitarian modes, but rather the creative ones. The source of cross-association, and thus ideas, had to be accessible. The Undermind was common to all sentient creatures—yet these primates could not see theirs! Only a mind unified at the upper levels, above the shop floor of bodily business, could have deep ideas, surely? Then a mind could manipulate them, force them on the twin forges of reason and intuition, into great leaps.
These aliens had no such ability. Their greatest drives, intuitions, associations—all lay concealed from their foreminds, the running agents and authorities of the immediate, thinking persona. They were primitives.
Yet they had built a starship.
Memor was shocked. In a while, she got control of herself and pondered. Interrogated her Undermind. Found no lurking answers. Perhaps the Undermind needed a rest. Often, sleep brought ideas.
TWENTY-THREE
Beth listened to Tananareve’s summary intently, brows furrowed. Better to hear it first and hash matters over, well before calling a group meeting.
“Incredible! They put you into some kind of device and then asked you to think about things?”
Tananareve shrugged. “A sort of CT device, I suppose. So I thought on command about astronomy, about SunSeeker, about what my left hand was doing while they put my right hand in cold water. Memor found it interesting, I guess.”
“Um. We have to use this.…”
Beth realized that she was acting instinctively like a leader now. Think, judge, act. That was what irked Lau Pin, she knew. But she intuited that the others didn’t want the sometimes impulsive, emotional, very young Lau Pin to take over. Too bad Lau Pin didn’t know that.
“It didn’t bother with the rest of your body?” Abduss asked intently. “No medical exam?”
“No, just that suffocating box with its foul scent. We had some of that in our physicals, remember?” Tananareve shuddered. “But this time—creepy, like snakes swarming over my skull.”
Mayra put an arm around Tananareve. “Maybe it was trying to improve translation?”
Tananareve snorted derisively. “I doubt it.”
“What did it feel like?”
Tananareve gazed off into the distance. “Like fingers in my head. I’d think something, then feel it slip away, as if something was … feeling it.”
“Um. Creepy.”
“You bet. Next time, if Memor does it again, I’ll deliberately think of something lurid. Just to poke at her.”
Beth started diplomatically, “I know how you feel, but that might provoke—”
“Hey!” Lau Pin shouted, and came trotting over to the bower where the women sat, using the leafy enclosure to muffle their voices. His eyes danced. “I got a beamer signal—a message!”
“From Eros?” Tananareve asked.
“No, that’s what’s amazing. It carries SunSeeker’s bitcode. Message is loading now.”
Beth felt her pulse quicken. Lau Pin’s little beamer beeped and he put it to his ear. And scowled. Lips pressed into white lines, he handed it to Beth. “Captain Redwing. For. You.”
Redwing spoke rapidly in his usual growl, as if afraid the connection would drop out. She restarted the recorded message. “We saw the big electrical discharges up near the top of the Bowl. Filtered out the noise and found this beamer flag frequency. So if this works, here’s our situation: We can’t get much out of signaling the aliens. They acknowledged us, but they take their own sweet time about getting back to us when we transmit. We demanded your return. They say they’re learning our language ‘in person,’ so it’s more efficient to keep you. It’s just you, too, Beth. They won’t tell us anything about Cliff. So for now, try to transmit back. Beamers don’t have any real focus, but we’re now to the right of their star, as you see it, maybe thirty degrees. I’m focusing all our high-gigahertz-range antennas on that spot where the big electricals went off. We’re seeing flares, lightning the size of continents. Hope that didn’t fry you! Over and out.”