Vernor Vinge - Original Sin.txt

 

When two cultures meet, one eventually dominates the other. There are all sorts of ways to attain domination…superior intelligence, military strength, even religious ideology.

 

VERNOR VINGE

 

Original Sin

 

First twilight glowed diffusely through the fog. On the landscaped terrace. that fell away from the hilltop, long rows of tiny crosses slowly materi­alized. Low trees dripped almost silently upon the sodden grass.

The officer in charge was young. This was his first assignment. And it was art assignment more important than most. He shifted his weight from one foot to the other. There must be something to do with his time—some­thing to check, something to worry over: the machine guns. Yes. He could check those again. He moved rapidly up the narrow, concrete walk to where his gun crews manned their weapons. But the magazine feeds were all set, the muzzle chokes screwed down. Ev­erything was just as proper as the last time he had checked, ten minutes ear­lier. The crews watched him silently, but resumed their whispered conversa­tions as he walked away.

Nothing to do. Nothing to do. The officer stopped for a moment and stood trembling in the cool dampness. Christ, he was hungry.

Behind the troops, and even farther from the field of crosses, the morning twilight defined the silhouettes of the doctors and priests attendant. Their voices couldn't carry through the soggy air, but he could see their move­ments were jerky, aimless. They had time on their hands, and that is always the greatest burden.

The officer tapped his heavy boot on the concrete walk in a rapid tattoo of frustration. It was so quiet here.

The mists hid the city that spread across the lowlands. If he listened carefully he could hear auto traffic be­low: Occasionally, a ship in the river would sound its whistle, or a string of railway freight cars would faintly crash and rattle as it moved along the wharves. Except for these links with the everyday world, he might as well be at the end of time here on the hill­top with its grasses, its trees. Even the air seemed different here—it didn't burn into his eyes, and there was only a hint of creosote and kerosene in its smell.

It was brighter now. The ground be­came green, the fog a cherry brown. With a sigh of anguished relief the of­ficer glanced at his watch. It was time to inspect the cross-covered hillside. He nearly ran out onto the grass.

Low hedges curved back and forth between the white crosses to form an intricate topiary maze. He must check that pattern one last time. It was a dangerous job, but hardly a difficult one. There were less than a thousand critical points and he had memorized the scheme the evening before. Every so often he broke stride to cock a deadfall, or arm a claymore mine. Many of the crosses rose from freshly turned earth, and he gave these an es­pecially wide berth. The air was even cleaner here above the grass than it had been back by the machine-guns, and the deep wet sod sucked at his feet. He gulped back saliva and tried to concentrate on his job. So hungry. Why must he be tempted so?

Time seemed to move faster, and the ground brightened steadily be­neath his running feet. Twenty min­ute's passed. He was almost done. The ground was visible for nearly fifty me­ters through the brownish mists. The city sounds were louder, more numer­ous. He must hurry. The officer ran along the last row of crosses, back toward friendly lines—the cool sooty concrete, the machine-guns, the trap­pings of civilization. Then his boots were clicking on the walkway, and he paused for three seconds to catch his breath.

He looked at the cemetery. All was still peaceful. The preliminaries were completed He turned to run to his gun crews.

Five more minutes. Five more min­utes, and the sun would rise behind the fog bank to the east. Its light would seep down through the mists, and warm the grass on the hillside. Five more minutes and a child would be born.

 

What a glorious dump! They had me hidden in one of the better parts of town, on a slight rise about three kilometers east of the brackish river that split the downtown area in two. I stood at the tiny window of my "lab" and looked out across the city. The westering sun was a smudged reddish disk shining through the multiple layers of crap that city traf­fic pumped into the air. I could ac­tually see bits of ash sift down from the high spaces above.

It was the rush hour. The seven-lane freeways that netted the city were a study in still life, with idling cars backed up thousands of meters at the interchanges. I could imagine the shark-faced drivers shaking their clawed fists at each other, frothing murderous threats. Even here on the rise, it was so hot and humid that the soot stuck to my sweating skin. Down in the city basin it must have been infernal.

Further across town was a cluster of skyscrapers, seventy and eighty stories high. Every fifteen seconds a five-prop airplane would cruise in from the east, make a one-eighty just above the rooftops, and attempt a landing at the airport between the skyscrapers and the river.

And beyond the river, misty in the depths of the smog, was the high ridgeline that blocked the ocean from view. The grayish-green ex­panse of the metropolitan cemetery ran across the whole northern end of the ridge.

Sounds like something out of a historical novel, doesn't it? I mean, I hadn't seen an aircraft in nearly sev­enty years. And as for cemeteries . . . This side of the millennium, such things just didn't exist—or so I had thought. But it was all here on Shima, and less than ten parsecs from mother Earth. It's not surpris­ing if you don't recognize the name. Earthgov lists the planet's star as +56°2966. You can tell the Empire is trying to hide something when the only designation they have for a nearby K-star is a centuries-old cata­log number. If you're old enough, though, you remember the name.

Two centuries back, "Shima" was a household word. Not counting Earth, Shima was the second planet where man discovered intelligent life.

A lot has happened in two hun­dred years: the Not-Wars, the seces­sion of the Free Human Worlds from Earthgov. Somewhere along the line, Earth casually rammed Shima under the rug. Why? Well, if nothing else, Earthgov is cautious (read: chicken). When humans first landed (remember spaceships?) on Shima, the native culture was Pa­leolithic. Two centuries later, their technology resembled Earth's in the late Twentieth Century. Of course, that was no great shakes, but remem­ber it took us thousands of years to get from stone ax to steam engine. It's really hard to imagine how the Shimans did it.

You can bet Earthgov didn't give 'em any help. Earth has always been scared witless by competition, while at the same time they don't have the stomach for genocide. So they pre­tend competition doesn't exist. The Free Worlds aren't like that. Over the last one hundred and fifty years, dozens of companies have tried to land entrepreneurs on the planet. The Earth Police managed to rub out every one of them.

Except for me (so far). But then, the people who hired me had had a lucky break. Earthgov occasionally imports Shimans to work as trouble­shooters. (The Empire would import a lot more—Shimans are incredibly quick at solving problems that don't require background work—except that Earthpol can't risk letting the aliens return with what they learn.) Somehow one such contacted the spy system that Samuelson Enterprises maintains throughout the Empire. Samuelson got in touch with me.

Together, S.E. and the Shimans bribed an Earthman to look the other way when I made my appear­ance on Shima. Yes, some Earthcops do have a price—in this case it was the annual gross product of an entire continent. But the bribe was worth it. I stood to gain one hundred times as much, and Samuelson Enterprises had—in a sense—been offered one of the biggest prizes of all time by the Shimans. But that, as they say, is an­other story. Right now I had to come across with what the Shimans wanted, or we'd all have empty pockets—or worse.

You see, the Shimans wanted im­mortality. S.E. has impaled many a hick world on that particular gaff, but never like this. The creatures were really desperate: no Shiman had ever lived longer than twenty-five Earth months.

I leaned out to look at the patterns of soot on the window sill, trying at the same time to ignore the labora­tory behind me. It was filled with equipment the Shimans thought I might need: microtomes, ultracentri­fuges, electron micropscopes—a real antique shop. The screwy thing was that I did need some of those gad­gets. For instance, if I had used my mam'ri at the prime integers, Earth-Poi would be there before I could count to three. I'd been on Shima four weeks, and considering the working conditions, I thought progress had been pretty good. But the Shimans were getting suspicious and very, very impatient. Samuelson had negotiated with them through third parties on Earth, and so hadn't been able to teach me the Shiman language. Sometime you try explain­ing biological chemistry with sign language and grunts. And these damn fidget brains seemed to think that a project was overdue if it hadn't been finished last week. I mean, the or Protestant Ethic stood like a naked invitation to hedonism next to what these underweight kan­garoos practiced.

 

Three days earlier, they had posted armed guards inside my lab. As I stood glooming at the window­sill I could hear my three pals shuf­fling endlessly about the room, stop­ping every so often to poke into the equipment. Nothing short of physi­cal violence could make them stay in one spot.

Sometimes I would look up from my bench to see one of them staring back at me. His gaze was not un­frie...