Waiting for the Galactic Bus (35 page)

Doom at the top

If Sorlij and Maj were appalled at Topside, Below Stairs was sheer trauma. A rapid but thorough survey of Earthside records only darkened their findings. With each new aspect, the problem grew more complex. They weighed observations, consulted law precedents in their library banks and finally summoned the errant brothers to a meeting in the matter-phased ship poised to streak home across the universe.

Sorlij broached the inevitable. “I don’t quite know how to begin.”

Maj knew very well how. “A crime has been committed: of error or gross assumption, call it what you will. The only question is: which of you is guilty of what?”

Coyul pondered the deck under his feet and wished he was Below Stairs drinking with Dylan Thomas.

“The magnitude of your presumption,” Sorlij accused Barion. “The rampant disregard for law or ethics. That emotional rain forest you call Topside
 
—”

“That chaos you call Below Stairs,” Maj added. “And Earth itself.”

“And Earth,” Sorlij echoed. “That garden of lethal delights, churning out art, morals and murder. Never... never in all my experience.” Sorlij paced the deck, lower lip jutted out in deliberation. “The greatest crimes. The gravest charges.”

“Sorlij,” Coyul interjected casually, “did I ever tell you that you render pomposity into art?”

“I have no love for either of you, never did,” Sorlij snapped. “What Maj and I had to work for, the little darlings of the gods had handed to them. I’m not blameless, I left you here. This will reflect on my career.”

“And mine,” said Maj. “We had attained some prominence.”

“What a shame.” Barion shrugged. “A bad day for the Kelp King.”

“And his wife, the cosmic yuppie. Can you believe this, Barion? We’re getting class struggle.
A bas les aristos.”

“Go ahead, laugh,” Sorlij warned. “There’ll be charges and conviction. I need not enlarge the consequences.”

“And there are further complications,” Maj took up the indictment. “If your post-life playpens are beyond description, Earth is not. In the midst of all that mess, there appears to be a great deal of healthy good. Admirable aspects. Some grasp, however inept, of real significance.”

Sorlij agreed wearily. “An anomalous mutant.”

“Transient is a better term, dear: halfway between what it was and whatever Barion wanted it to become. Quite unique.”

“As anthropoids go,” Sorlij qualified. “What you have is a weird neurotic balance. On the bottom end, this primitive dualism; on the high end, something I can only call sublime. If only they could
grow up!”

“And that is our point.” Maj’s exquisite brows furrowed in a deep frown. “As one of their major languages puts it, you’ve painted yourself into a coroner.”

“I think you mean corner,” Coyul assisted delicately. “That’s English, very metaphorical tongue. Yes, hoist by our own petard.”

“Out on a limb with a power saw,” said Barion, already seeing the barren vistas of the Rock.

A no-need-to-prolong-it glance passed between Sorlij and Maj. “The point is,” Sorlij plunged into the thick, “these anthros are too good to waste but far too unstable to be left unattended. However traumatic, they must be reeducated very quickly. Barion, I’m sorry” — Sorlij even managed to look it — “Coyul will be allowed some time at home before sentencing. You’ll have to be left here. I doubt if anyone will be returning for you.”

Barion expected to do time, but — “Never?”

“I doubt it,” Sorlij judged. “The balance here is too delicate. They’re not just a lab culture but humans with obvious and unexpected potential. We can’t just leave them.”

“No, we can’t,” Barion admitted, glancing at Coyul. He already missed his brother.

“You must finish what you started. Though honestly” — Sorlij gestured vaguely — “I would have thought it not only illegal but impossible. I don’t know how you managed it.”

“He didn’t.” Coyul rose, adjusting his tie. “I did. We needn’t go on with this. I confess. Oh, Barion was tempted, but...”

Sorlij and Maj were not minded to parse degrees of guilt; Coyul was in enough trouble already and Barion, they reminded him, had already confessed.

“Of course he would.” Coyul grew more supercilious by the moment. “That mountainous ego won’t share guilt any more than glory. Regarding humans, Barion was always more romantic than competent. He simply didn’t realize the errors in our own technology.”

“Didn’t real —” Barion shot to his feet, stung and confused. “Look, I cleared you. I confessed.”

“An egotist to the end. I did it, Sorlij. I had to do
something
until you paragons of responsibility came back for us.”

Barion began to heat up. “He’s lying through his teeth. Why are you doing this, Coyul?” He appealed to the inquisitors. “You remember him in school. Carbon-cycle life classes were his nap time. He couldn’t augment a respectable paramecium without a crib sheet.”

“Ha! Couldn’t I?”

“The point is valid, Coyul. We have serious doubts, easily resolved.” Sorlij activated a keyboard, fingers dancing over inductance pads that sprayed formulae over a large screen behind him. “The simple chemistry of primitive apse-to-synapse combination, with one minute error. Barion, find the error and restate.”

Barion scanned the formulae, obvious as a child’s cartoon, found the error in the amino-protein elements. He corrected and restated. “First-year stuff.”

Sorlij wiped the screen. “Quite correct. Now —”

Coyul contradicted him. “Quite wrong.”

“Coyul, don’t be an ass,” Barion beseeched. “Not now.”

“You were wrong because the whole theory is wrong.”

“Really?” Sorlij smiled at Coyul like a spider about to lunch. “Well find a different set of errors for you. Something simpler.”

“Don’t bother. These will do.” Coyul flexed his fingers like a pianist warming up. On each hand the five fingers divided in two. Twenty slender digits stabbed at the keyboard in a swift toccata of statement, foresting the screen with symbols. “Stated. And here —”

The screen wiped to one subformula in the amino-protein group from which Coyul generated a whole family tree of results.

“You’ve only restated the error,” Maj said.

“No. Science is only exact when experimentation proves it so. We should begin by assuming we’re wrong. Unfortunately, we have certain failings in common with humans.”

Prominent among which, Coyul noted, was not liking to be wrong even in regard to a remote study like carbon-cycle life in which none of their own electron-cycle kind had much prolonged empirical experience. Formal academics had generated plausible theory which worked in enough cases to be complacently accepted as law.

“What you call error is the actual propensity of protein enzyme acting as catalyst in evolving the anthropoid cortex — as you can see at a far greater rate than theory conceived. What theory fails to take into account is protein variation in a creature whose survival lies in its intelligence and ability to adapt. Barion was as hidebound as the rest of you in this.”

“That’s an assumption, not a factor,” Sorlij challenged. “Show me the numbers.”

“The precise variable,” Maj specified. “What accelerated the protein?”

“Excuse me, I did forget.” Rapidly, Coyul stated the oxygen components in the accepted theory. Underneath, the actual, richer oxygen content of Earth’s Pliocene atmosphere and its more rapid effect on protein enzyme action, neatly stated in percentage. “There we are, children: how Daddy did the guilty work of the Sixth Day. Accept no substitutes.”

A silent but sufficing bombshell. Staring at the formulae, Barion tried to find some point for refutation and saw none. Out of their own field, Sorlij and Maj could still see the obvious on the screen. These figures made Cultural Threshold at 900 cc not only possible but predictable.

Maj spoke first. “Would it be tedious to ask
why,
Coyul?”

“There was nothing else to pass the time.” His silly titter nailed the lid on Coyul. “It amused me.”

“But he
didn’t,”
Barion sputtered. “His figures are right, I admit, but
I
did it. I can recreate my process step by step.”

Sorlij just shook his head. “Barion, please. We admire your loyalty, but...”

Shielded from them, Barion’s mind leaped at Coyul’s —

YOU
IDIOT
,
WHAT
ARE
YOU
DOING
?
YOU
KNOW
I
DID
IT
.

NO
, Coyul thought back with a ripple of humor,
WE
DID
IT
.

HARDLY
WORTH
MENTIONING
AT
THE
TIME
,
LIKE
ONE
BUTTON
LEFT
UNDONE
.
I
JUST
DID
YOU
UP
.
WE
WERE
YOUNG
THEN
.
LIKE
THE
YOUNG
ANYWHERE
,
YOU
ADORED
DABBLING
WITH
THE
RADICAL
,
BUT
INEVITABLY
WENT
HOME
TO
DINNER
WITH
THE
ORTHODOX
.
CHECK
MY
FIGURES
.
Q
.
E
.
D
.

Barion raged:
MARGINAL
VARIATION
.
THEY
WOULDN
’
T
MAKE
THAT
MUCH
DIFFERENCE
.

BUT
THEY
DID
.
AND
WHEN
IT
COMES
TO
ANTHROS
,
THESE
TURKEYS
DON
’
T
KNOW
ENOUGH
BEYOND
BASICS
TO
ARGUE
THE
POINT
.

Apparently they did not. “Coyul, you’ll have to leave the ship now. Maj, prepare for energy phase.”

“It’s still a good question,” Barion pressed, no longer caring if the others heard him. “Why?”

“You’ll do time as an accessory, of course, but wherever they put you, brother, you’ll go on doing what you do.”

“And what about you?” Barion urged, concerned. “You can’t run Topside like a demented B movie. What will you do?”

“What Sorlij ordered,” Coyul said simply. “Make them grow up. Always wanted to. Now I’ve got to, haven’t I?”

In truth, Coyul’s motives were not entirely fraternal. Five million years had left a considerable human residue in his personality. He thought in human languages, spent more time than not in their form, understood them better by now than his own arid kind. He found it difficult, even deprivation to imagine existence without a Jake, a Wilksey, or an Elvira Grubb. Not to mention half a dozen musical compositions in various stages of completion that would find no audience on the Rock.

“I have a knack and I’ve really grown to like them,” Coyul summed it up. “Go goose an amoeba.” The rest of the sentiment was for Barion’s mind alone —

DROP
BACK
WHEN
THEY
LET
YOU
OUT
.
I
’
LL
SHOW
YOU
WHAT
A
PIANO
PLAYER
CAN
DO
.

Coyul blew a kiss to his brother, presented an expressive middle finger to Sorlij — which blossomed on afterthought into an American Beauty rose for Maj. “Here: stick it” — blazed into pure energy and was gone.

    38