David Brin - Uplift SS 1 - Temptation.pdf

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David Brin - Uplift 7- Temptati
Temptation
by
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 the 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 planets 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 set 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 chimpanzees, 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
starts 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 shock 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 dozen. I 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 with the new Uplift Storm trilogy, consisting of three
connected novels, Brightness Reef, Infinity's Shore, and 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 law, 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 is 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
In this new story, "Temptation," I peel back yet another layer in the
unfolding saga, and show a small group of fugitive dolphins learning how
perilous it can be to be offered exactly what you always wished 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 in years.
With gentle beats of their powerful flukes, she and her companion kept easy pace
beside a tremendous throng of fishlike creatures-red-finned, with violet gills and long
translucent tails that glittered in the slanted sunlight like plasma sparks behind a
starship. The school seemed to stretch forever, grazing on drifting clouds of plankton,
moving in unison through coastal 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, lunging to snatch one from the teeming mass, provoking only
a slight ripple from its nearest neighbors. Her casual style of predation must be 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 to a 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 fish for himself.
"Why guilty?" Brookida asked, while the victim writhed between his narrow jaws.
Its soft struggle did not interfere with his train of word-glyphs, since a dolphin's
mouth plays no role in generating sound. Instead a rapid series of ratcheting sonar
impulses emanated from his brow. "Are you ashamed because you live? Because it
feels good to be outside again, with a warm sea rubbing your skin and the crash of
waves singing in your dreams? Do you miss the stale water and moldy air aboard
ship? 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, Makanee had felt as cramped as an overdue fetus, straining at
the womb. Release from that purgatory was like being born anew.
off.
 
"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. Yes, I know."
Brookida let out an expressive sigh. The elderly geophysicist switched languages,
to one more suited for poignant irony.
* 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 physician's diagnosis. She found her old friend's sonic
patterns rife with undertones of Primal- the natural cetacean demi-language used by
wild Tursiops truncatus dolphins back on Earth-a dialect that members of the modern
amicus breed were supposed to 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 other dolphins on Jijo suffered to some degree from
stress-atavism. Having lost the cognitive focus needed by engineers and starfarers,
they could no longer help Streaker in its desperate flight across five galaxies. Planting
this small colony on Jijo had seemed a logical solution, leaving the regressed ones for
Makanee to care for in this gentle place, while their shipmates sped on to new crises
elsewhere.
She could hear them now, browsing along the same fishy swarm just a hundred
meters off. Thirty neo-dolphins who had once graduated from prestigious universities.
Specialists chosen for an elite expedition-now reduced to splashing and squalling,
with little on their minds but food, sex, and music. Their primitive calls no longer
embarrassed Makanee. After everything her colleagues had gone through since
departing Terra-on a routine one-year survey voyage that instead stretched into a
hellish 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 settled this isolated world, a creed centered on the
Path of Redemption- a belief that salvation could be found in blissful ignorance and
nonsapience.
It was harder than it sounded. Among the "sooner" races who had come to this
world illegally, seeking refuge in simplicity, only one had succeeded so far, and
Makanee doubted that the human settlers would ever reclaim true animal innocence,
no matter how hard they tried. Unlike species who were uplifted, humans had earned
their intelligence the hard way on Old Earth, seizing each new talent or insight at
frightful cost over the course of a thousand harsh millennia. They might 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 patrons that we never sought. It's simple to give up
something you received without struggle. Especially when the alternative-the Whale
Dream- 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 reverted ones, making sure the group stayed
together. Things seemed pleasant here, but no one knew for sure what dangers lurked
in Jijo's wide sea.
We already have three wanderers out there somewhere. Poor little Peepoe and
 
her two wretched kidnappers. I promised Kaa we'd 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. But 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 and get
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 resonance, 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, none of our descendants will be using Anglic,
or any Galactic language. We'll be guileless innocents once more, ripe for readoption
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 seemed made for cetaceans. A world whose comfort
was the surest way to clinch a rapid devolution of their disciplined minds. Without
constant challenges, the Whale Dream would surely reclaim them. Brookida seemed
to accept the notion with an ease that 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 sled.
"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 breath 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 shoals, 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 needed in Streaker's continuing desperate flight
across the known universe. In compensation for that bitter exile, he had grown
obsessed with studying the Great Midden, that deep underwater trash heap where
Jijo's ancient occupants had dumped nearly every sapient-made object when this
planet was abandoned by starfaring culture, half a million years ago. "I'll have a
wonderful report to submit when we get back to Earth," he rationalized, in apparent
confidence that all their troubles would pass, and eventually he would make it home
to publish his results. It was a special kind of derangement, without featuring any sign
of stress-atavism or reversion. Tkett still spoke Anglic perfectly. His work was
flawless 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 the 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 gray flanks. The permanent dolphin-smile presented twin
 
rows of perfectly white, conical teeth. While still nestled on the 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. But it 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 planet 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," Tkett 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, abandoning Makanee and her charges on this world, the
earthship fled concealed in a swarm of ancient relics that dolphin engineers had
resurrected from trash heaps on the ocean floor. Though Jijo's surface now was a
fallow realm of savage tribes, the deep underwater canyons still held thousands of
battered, abandoned spacecraft and other debris from when this section of Galaxy
Four had been a center of civilization and commerce. Several dozen of those derelicts
had been reactivated in order to confuse Streaker's foe- a fearsome Jophur battleship-
but some of the hulks must have failed to haul their bulk out of the sea when the time
came. Those failures were doomed to drift aimlessly 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 away 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 noise, I thought I could detect at least three of the hulks,
bumping around out there almost randomly. It seems kind of sad, when you think
about it. Ancient ships, not worth salvaging when the Buyur abandoned Jijo, waiting
in an icy, watery tomb for just 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 fertile female from the rest of the pod, herding her
away for private copulation-especially if she was about to enter heat. By working
together, they might monopolize her matings and guarantee their own reproductive
success, even if she clearly preferred a local alpha-ranked male instead. That ancient
behavior pattern persisted in the wild because, while native Tursiops had both
 

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