Post by Lorpius Prime on Mar 18, 2015 2:26:35 GMT -5
Ukhhern Colony, New Republican Space—6,872 BCE
Not for the first time, Junior Steward Tyaddo Yosshadda wondered just where exactly his life had gone wrong.
The Junior Steward gave his cargo another hard yank. The metal rim of the heavy cylinder scraped against ice and advanced another few centimeters. Tyaddo stepped back two paces and yanked again. Step—pull—scrape. Step—pull—scrape. There was a nice long trail through the centimeter or two of loose crystalline water—snow, the locals called it—which showed the path Tyaddo and the big canister had tread all the way back from the depot.
Tyaddo ought to have been doing this with machine support. There were two tracked cars parked at the depot which had been landed specifically for moving heavy cargo around the surface of this nightmare planet. The cold had drained their batteries' charge mere hours after arrival. The batteries could have been recharged, but without the heaters they powered, the machines' hydraulics had frozen, bursting lines and crushing controllers, and neither the Zzeviya nor the colony had the delicate parts necessary for repairs. In Tyaddo's estimation, that oversight was a poor omen of things to come.
Even with the movers out of commission, Tyaddo ought to have been able to use one of Zzeviya's powered utility suits to carry heavy supplies himself without too much difficulty. In fact, he had made a request to do exactly that. Senior Steward Ngyarkazze had denied the request; for fear that the utility suit could be lost in the same way as the cars. Never mind that the Zzeviya could have simply manufactured replacements out of its own stores and basic equipment. For that matter, the cruiser could probably have manufactured something like the dead cargo movers, but with better weather-proofing, if anyone aboard had had the brains and the motivation to deal with the problem.
But why should they? Everything the expedition needed was designed to be hand-cartable in an emergency. And didn't Junior Steward Yosshadda have hands? So here Tyaddo was, spending hours and who knew how many kilocalories of his own personal energy to perform a task that should have required ten minutes for two trips in a car.
Step—pull—scrape. Step—pull—scrape.
The wind picked up—as it did frequently and unpredictably—spraying more snow through Tyaddo's field of vision and chilling him even further. At least Tyaddo was better protected against the cold than many of the expedition's members. Within one day of landing he had bartered with the colonists for a few of their wrappings—made from the furry hides of some local aquatic fauna. Layered on top of his more meticulously-engineered environment suit, the coverings were almost enough to make Ukhhern's climate bearable.
Tyaddo cursed the colonists under his breath. If it hadn't been for their ingenuity at surviving their hellish, worthless iceball, he would never have had to set foot here. Really, it would have been better for everyone involved if the original colonists had all just frozen to death like they were clearly meant to have done. Or died trying to settle one of the other worthless planetoids in the system. Maybe none of the others had a livable atmosphere, but at least a few of them were warm.
But no such luck. Ukhhern's first settlers had been a clever, hardy bunch, and managed to carve a sustainable settlement into one of the planet's icecaps. They'd completely lost anything resembling powered technology—their only available supply of metal had been their own ship's hull. But they'd survived at an extremely primitive, subsistence level by hunting the prodigious animal life which thrived at the boundary between ice and ocean, consuming their meat and turning their bones into tools. Ten thousand years later, the New Republic's starships had followed the original colony mission's path using the new FTL drives, and recontacted their long-lost brethren. The Ukhhern colonists seemed utterly indifferent to their regained citizenship. Tyaddo certainly didn't see why bringing them into the fold was worth the effort. After so much time apart, their language was incomprehensible, their wings were atrophied beyond the capacity for flight, and they most definitely did not produce anything of value to sell on the new interstellar market. But Karee wanted to bring everyone back under the Republic's banner. No exceptions. The homeworld could get pretty stupid when it came to its "principles". But they had all the technology, FTL ships, and—most importantly—weapons. So they got what they wanted. Tyaddo had just wanted to take the Navy's money in return for seeing some other star systems.
Well, he'd gotten what he wanted, hadn't he? In hindsight, that was probably the moment when it all went wrong. When he first agreed to his service contract back on Iyssdanya.
Tyaddo grunted as he dragged the big canister another few centimeters along his path. No help for it now.
The lumpy brown body of the dockhouse was a welcome sight amid the whirling snow. It was a local structure—its skin and bones were built of actual animal skins and bones. The Ukhhern colonists had hundreds of such shelters—which were little more than large huts, really—scattered along the high cliffs where ice gave way to water. They had kindly thrown up one more in support of the expedition's little project.
Tyaddo pushed his way through the layers of hide flaps which sealed the dockhouse against the elements. Then he spent a few minutes shivering in the damp, but mercifully warm air inside.
By now, Tyaddo hardly noticed the rancid smells of Ukhhern living. Charred bone stoves at either end of the dockhouse burned fat and oil harvested from sea creatures, sometimes mixed with the colonists' own feces. Everything here was coated with grease and soot and was thoroughly imbued with the stink of sweat and blood and salt and urine. If Tyaddo ever meant to rejoin civilized society, he would probably need to shave off all his fur prior to bathing to be truly sure he was rid of the stench.
Two University technicians were tinkering with one of the pieces of offworld machinery littering the inside of the dockhouse. They glanced at Tyaddo as he came inside. The Junior Steward grunted an acknowledgment, and then left his cargo for a moment to stand by a stove and warm his hands. As he approached the sickly orange flame however, he discovered that what he had taken for a pile of loose furs was actually one of the colonists sitting atop a mat with a thick blanket or cloak thrown over its shoulders. It shifted to one side, making room for Tyaddo.
"Is very cold," the colonist rasped, "agree?"
Ukhhern had been reunited with the Republic over two hundred years ago, and yet most of the colonists still did not speak fluent Karee Standard. Some did not know the language at all. Gossip aboard the Zzeviya was that evolutionary pressures on Ukhhern had selected for physical adaptations in the colony's population to the detriment of mental acuity. Certainly nothing in Tyaddo's experience with the locals had convinced him otherwise.
Even so, he reminded himself, it would be undignified to be rude just because they were so primitive. And even if it wasn't undignified, all the expedition's members were under explicit orders to treat Ukhhern's population with the same respect due to every citizen.
"Yes, it is," Tyaddo murmured. He shuffled a few steps to the side, putting a bit more distance between himself and the native before he realized what he was doing.
The colonist laughed—an unpleasant, hacking bark—and then stood up. To Tyaddo's great dismay, the colonist turned out to be naked apart from the single wrapping that he now let fall to the ground. The bare digits of his vestigial wings writhed like articulated extensions of the male's ribcage, and Tyaddo had to swallow against the sudden heave of his stomach.
Then the moment got worse. The colonist walked right over to Tyaddo and hugged him. The Junior Steward managed not to throw the other male back immediately—partly because he was familiar with the locals' common gesture by now, and partly because he was frozen in sheer horror.
"All you Republics like big eye child. Wait for blizzard. Then is cold." He released Tyaddo, and then laughed some more.
Unsure of what else to do, Tyaddo managed his own weak, nervous laugh. The overly familiar male sat back down on his mat and stretched his limbs, yawning and shameless displaying both his mutant wings and genitals to anyone who cared to look.
Deciding he'd warmed himself enough, Tyaddo turned away from the stove to retrieve his storage canister once more. He caught the University technicians shooting looks of disgust at the colonist, and the three of them shared an expression of mutual sympathy for their plight.
The ramps down to the mooring were an even greater trial of Tyaddo's nerves. Like everything else, the ramps were made of bone lashed together with sinews, covered with layers of thick hide to form the floor. But instead of resting upon hundreds of meters of ice, the ramp jutted by necessity beyond the face of the cliffs and over the frigid but very liquid ocean. Project engineers had reinforced the structure with a bare minimum of metal and plastic, but none of these additions were obvious to Tyaddo's eyes, and his purely theoretical knowledge of their existence did little to calm him.
The ramp switched back several times as Tyaddo descended. Now he had to worry both about dragging the cargo cylinder’s weight and letting it slip and—fortune forbid—roll out of control, crashing through the weak barrier walls to be lost in the sea. At least the ramp was covered, breaking the worst of the winds, though it was still frigid and the ramp's floor was slippery from perpetually-half-frozen condensation.
At last the junior steward reached the bottom of the final ramp. Now he just had to lug the cylinder up the gangway to the Sinker, and then he could return to the depot and begin the whole process over again.
The Sinker looked not at all impressive from this vantage. Most of the vessel was submerged, of course. All Tyaddo could see was the very top platform, little more than a metal deck ringed by a guardrail, with entry hatches in the center.
A handful of people stood upon the open deck, most of them facing away from Tyaddo and the ice cliffs, towards the open ocean. At least one saw him approach, however, and Tyaddo was immensely grateful when the male—another Junior Steward—descended the gangway to give him a hand with the cylinder.
"Thanks," Tyaddo said as the canister finally clanked onto the deck. "I leave this one to you." Fortunately Tyaddo was not responsible for stowing the cargo cylinder within the Sinker, nor distributing its contents. Or maybe not so fortunately, for the Sinker's interior climate was sealed and controlled.
"Ah, Steward Yosshadda," said a voice behind Tyaddo. He bit his tongue so as not to curse, then turned and gave a stiff salute.
Tyaddo had not recognized Provost Yanggan Keehogg, and he really should have considering how freakishly tall the male was. But the fact that the Provost was wearing local-style wrappings had camouflaged his identity.
Provost Keehogg was the reason the the Zzeviya, the Sinker, and Tyaddo were here at Ukhhern. The project was his demented brainchild. And the University and government of Iyssdanya were both betting on the Provost in their vain and obsessive quest to best the homeworld's accomplishments at something, anything!
Which was how Keehogg had managed to secure personal command of a Navy cruiser, an army of civilian technical specialists, and a significant portion of a Core World's public budget to spend however he liked. The whole project was an exercise in madness that could only have been imagined and approved by government officials with egos bigger than their collective wingspan.
"How goes the cargo transfer?" the Provost asked. He probably thought that his eagerness to learn and remember all his subordinates' names was a way to demonstrate good leadership. In Tyaddo's experience, it was merely unnerving.
"Slowly, sir," he answered. "If I could have use of a utility suit—"
"The Captain doesn't want to subject them to the weather," the Provost cut him off, though he tried to sound sympathetic.
"Yes, sir." Tyaddo sighed inside, it had been worth the attempt.
But then Keehogg continued, "Why don't you ask some of the Ukhherns for help?"
Tyaddo's wings twitched involuntarily, "Sir?"
"I'm sure they have better ways of moving heavy loads than carrying everything by hand. I've seen them using those—what are they called?" The Provost turned to glance at one of the people attending him, a male also wearing a heavy bundle of native hides. "Those little carts with the long rails instead of wheels?"
"Sleds," the Ukhhern grunted.
"Yes, that's it," Keehogg nodded. "Would one of your people be able to assist Steward Yosshadda at moving our supplies with a sled?"
"Certainly," the Ukhhern said, through his growling local accent. He met Tyaddo's eyes and pointed a claw up toward the dockhouse, "Ask Gnaghar. He is inside."
Which meant Gnaghar was likely the male who had hugged Tyaddo on his way in. Wonderful.
"Thank you," Provost Keehogg said on Tyaddo's behalf. The Junior Steward was still reeling from everything which had just gone wrong. On the one hand, borrowing a sled from the locals was a great idea—so great that Tyaddo should have thought of it himself long ago. On the other hand, now he had to suffer talking to and being near that disgusting Ukhhern male for at least several more hours.
Only Tyaddo's months of training and service in the Navy let him pull off another salute and choke out, "Yes, sir, thank you," without making his dismay utterly obvious.
As Tyaddo began the long climb back up the side of the ice cliff, he found it difficult not to throw himself over the side of the ramp and into the freezing waters. At least the cold was supposed to numb you as you drowned. As it was, Tyaddo expected he would be feeling miserable for a long time to come.
Hideyya Kayyessh was the luckiest female in the Republic. She knew this, but did not dwell on the knowledge. She was much too busy enjoying her work to bother with trivialities like self-reflection. Or socializing with her colleagues. Or exercise. Or eating. Or—
"When was the last time you slept?"
Osshga Hyangyago. Computer systems engineer. Technically one of Hideyya's subordinates, but with such minimally overlapping responsibilities that he may as well have been in a different department. Considered himself one of Hideyya's friends, perhaps her only friend. Possibly sexually interested in Hideyya, too, but she felt no desire to investigate.
"Yesterday," Hideyya grunted. She had dozed off at her desk for a few hours.
"You're putrid," Osshga snorted. "When was the last time you bathed?"
"I'm busy," she said. She tried to sound irritated and dismissive in the hope that Osshga would feel encouraged to go away, but Hideyya had never been very good with the subtleties of inflection. In any case, it didn't work.
Plastic wrappers rustled near her, "These rations are from three days ago!"
That wasn't a question, so Hideyya did not respond.
"Hideyya!"
"Shut up," Hideyya said. "Go away." Or was she supposed to yell when she said those things?
"You've got to eat! And sleep, and wash and—oh shit, when was the last time you drank? Let me get you some water!"
A few seconds later, a bulb was pressed against her snout, and Hideyya absentmindedly slurped some water. The sensation in her mouth did feel good, but she would rather have been free of the distraction so she could focus.
"We've got to get you a minder of your own, what are you even doing?"
"Yohh is trying to teach colonies of eusocial sub-sapient arthropods simulated by Kii how to compose music."
"That doesn't sound the least bit useful."
"She originally tried to hijack their reproductive patterns to create a simple computational engine. But now she's tweaking the density and size of the mineral granules from which they build their nests. Different instrument arrangements actually cause mechanical deformations depending on the shape and depth of the nests' internal structure. I thought they would adapt to a uniform optimum, but it's starting to look like colonies are developing emergent preferences for different styles."
"You have to stop. You're going to drive the AIs into gibbering esoteric catatonia and then die of exhaustion before you can fix them."
"They're having fun." She poked at a lumpy shape on one of the displays in front of her. "This chamber resonates with the lower ranges of a two-bowl string, but the colony only built it—"
Osshga cut the power to all her displays. Hideyya screeched with dismay.
"I'm not kidding, Hideyya! We're only a few hours away from starting the operation. Both the AIs and you need to be at least within diving range of optimal condition when we start. Take. A. Break."
"We're practicing…" Hideyya started picking through the clutter around her desk to try to excavate whatever controls Osshga had used.
"A few more hours of practice won't make a significant difference. And even if it did, Yohh and Kii don't need you continuously observing them in order to practice."
Hideyya looked up into his eyes, pleading. "But they're so interesting…"
Osshga could not maintain his stern expression for more than a couple seconds. He reached up a hand and scratched gently at the fur atop her head, "I know, Hideyya. But the real work is going to be even more interesting, and you'll want to be awake and fed when the time comes." He sniffed. "And the Provost won't let you into the same room with him unless you bathe."
Hideyya sulked a moment. Now that her concentration had been broken, however, she was beginning to feel the effects of her exhaustion.
She rose from her stool and felt her muscles protest their long period of disuse. Then she gave a last forlorn look at the blank monitors, "Tell me if they do anything else interesting?"
Osshga laughed softly, "Very well. But after you come back on watch."
Hideyya gestured her assent, then plodded slowly in the direction of the Sinker's living quarters. Her pace was subdued both by her reluctance to actually leave and the ache in her legs.
Three months ago, Hideyya's greatest ambition had been to succeed her immediate superior as the minder of Iyssdanya University's dedicated artificial intelligence. The current minder was still decades away from retirement, and when the time came, Hideyya would have to compete with at least a dozen colleagues and an unknowable number of students and outside applicants. She had never been especially worried that she could get the job—just about everyone recognized the "special" connection Hideyya forged with the AIs she tended—but the wait was excruciating.
So when Provost Keehogg had offered Hideyya her current position, she'd very nearly fainted from shock at her good fortune. For several days afterwards, she'd woken up worried that the entire Project had been a dream.
Hideyya was likely the only citizen of the entire Republic to ever work with three artificial intelligences simultaneously. Rarely and briefly two AIs might be tasked together for some special purpose. The Republic's Intelligence Service on Karee probably had multiple AIs performing identical simulation and analytical tasks, but independently. Nowhere else in the entire Republic would three AIs ever be housed in the same facility, much less permitted to interact with one another.
Except here. Except for Hideyya Kayyessh's friends Yohh, Kii, and Ryex.
It would be an understatement to say that Karee's governing elites were terrified of the artificial intelligences their technologists had invented. For a culture as obsessed with demonstrating and improving individuals' natural intelligence as Karee's, the thought their own manufactured creations might surpass them was deeply threatening.
Even Hideyya's less obsessed colleagues agreed that the homeworld's fears were overblown nonsense. The Republic's artificial intelligences were not ambitious masterminds one programmer's oversight away from ascending into an all-consuming alien consciousness. They were, in fact, only slightly cleverer than the average citizen, but possessed of a focus and attention to detail which far surpassed the natural mind. And they all had straightforward, honest personalities which made them far, far easier to work with and befriend. At least, the last part was how Hideyya felt about them.
The three AIs had only been conscious for a few weeks. The Zzeviya's captain had absolutely refused to allow them to be activated aboard his ship. Worse, the cruiser's own shipboard AI had agreed with the sentiment when Hideyya tried to commiserate with it. It even alerted the command staff to their conversations, and the captain had placed the Project's computer hardware under armed guard to prevent any surreptitious premature tinkering. That had hurt. Hideyya understood that the ship AI had been trained on naval procedures, had spent its entire existence working with military personnel with their overly cautious and inflexible perspectives, and had never met Hideyya before. But even so, it felt like she had been betrayed by her own kin.
Since their arrival and activation on Ukhhern, Hideyya had tried to teach the Project AIs differently. Yohh and Kii were easy. They were completely unstructured general intelligences, and Hideyya had been free to guide every parameter of their initial development. Ryex required a bit more attention. He was a systems management AI, grown out of the same base pattern as the Zzeviya's intelligence. He would likely never be as curious or creative as his sisters, but he didn't need to be, neither to perform his role in the Project nor to earn Hideyya's love.
The Sinker wasn't a quarter as complicated as a starship. But it was unique and novel. If another vehicle like it had even been conceived of anywhere else in the Republic, the University's researchers had not been able to find record of it. Ryex would have full and direct control of all the Sinker's systems, at an authorization level even above the officer the Navy had insisted be installed as the vessel's "captain". Everything about the Sinker's design and operating environment had been relentlessly modeled, but it was still very much an experimental machine. Should anything unexpected occur, its crew and equipment might require rapid and precise intervention to survive and complete their mission. Organic minds could not be depended upon to absorb information and react quickly enough, and pre-programmed routines might be inadequate. Putting an AI like Ryex in command of the Sinker was not merely helpful, it was necessary.
Which didn't mean Ryex never got to have any fun. Hideyya still let him play with Yohh and Kii in many of their games, usually collaborating with one or the other to invent novel ways information might be communicated through the Sinker's instruments. It helped familiarize Ryex with his capabilities while encouraging him to develop a perspective that wasn't limited to those capabilities' expected usages. Hideyya had never felt prouder of Ryex than when he helped Yohh find a way to hijack the Sinker's external gas exchangers to produce subtle variations in the internal atmospheric mix.
Hideyya's organic subordinates had been more concerned with patching the Sinker's systems to prevent a real replication of the results, but she didn't blame them. She was used to "colleagues" too focused on the prey directly below them to consider the horizon and what might lay beyond it.
She hissed with soft pleasure as she relived Ryex's achievement in her memory. She had not really been conscious of her movements as she went through the motions of washing and then curling up around her sleeping post without remembering to rinse the soap out of her fur.
When she woke again, Hideyya only spent a few seconds wondering why her fur was so rough and stiff before thoughts of work distracted her once again.
The problem with impressing people was that it created expectations. The particular skill or feat one used to impress hardly mattered. As soon as the initial moment of shock wore off one's audience, the reaction was always the same: Do it again!
Do it again.
Do it better.
Do it faster.
Do it again, while simultaneously overcoming every conceivable variation of obstacle.
Inevitably a person reached a point when he failed. When the stakes of expectation were raised so far beyond the initial accomplishment that success was no longer possible. When amazement became disappointment.
That was the moment at which a person's reputation and career died. Even if they lingered on in positions of official power, the loss of public respect could not be survived. Eventually, the power of connections, friendships, wealth, and social inertia were all exhausted. And then the individual was pushed aside, replaced by newcomers whose glory was still ascendant.
Yanggan Keehogg had not yet reached his peak. But he had felt the atmosphere thinning beneath his wings for several years now. And no matter how great one's wingspan nor how powerful the air currents, one could not fight gravity for ever.
Yanggan's birthworld, Iyssdanya, was only 12 light years from Karee. Its settlers had never lost contact with the homeworld. Three hundred years before the invention of even sublight warp-travel, regular travel had been established between Karee and Iyssdanya. Scholars, merchants, and obscenely wealthy tourists froze themselves for passage aboard ships powered by enormous sails filled by lasers orbiting the two systems' primary stars.
But for all that Iyssdanyans had imagined themselves an undivided part of Karee society, when the FTL drive was developed and the New Republic proclaimed, the culture shock of reunification came close to provoking rebellions and civil war against the homeworld.
Karee's governors and naval officers showed not the slightest respect for the Rookery Captains' informal dominance of Iyssdanyan society. They refused to pay the Captains' tribute, refused to respect the Captains' veto over mating pairs. They dared to drive new, metal towers into Iyssdanyan soil and make prime perches available to all citizens with sufficient credit and documentation, regardless of the Captains' favor. The Captains' ancient, crystalline rookeries began to look dull and obsolete in the literal shadow of the new order's towers.
Karee culture valued wealth and heritage, but only to a point. Intellectual prowess was the homeworld's preferred status symbol, power and money accrued to those who could prove they had it. The Rookery Captains were cunning, but prideful and jealous of their traditional status. When they refused to descend to the level of commoners to challenge them at the homeworld's games, they were passed over for honors, positions, and contracts.
The University had been the Captains' last-ditch strategy to hold back the currents of social and political change blowing in from Karee by finally fighting on the homeworld's own terms. It was not a capitulation to Karee's philosophy, but it was a concession. If the homeworld wanted scholars and artists, then Iyssdanya would manufacture them. Whatever the cost in treasure and psychological trauma, the Rookery Captains would gladly pay it to buy individuals with prestige to match or best the luminaries of Karee. Their only demand was that the University's students and professors swear fealty to the Rookery Captains. They could bask in some of the glory they earned, but most was to be reflected upon the noble patrons perched at the top of their crystal towers.
And so Yanggan Keehogg, Provost of the University of Iyssdanya had been playing two games for most of his life. One was to stroke the egos of his administrative superiors on Iyssdanya, slathering them with public praise and credit for all of his accomplishments in order to coax funding from their accounts and authority from their proclamations. The other was to earn interest and acknowledgement from the Republic's academic circles, especially from the private and military laboratories on Karee.
The greatest obstacle to Yanggan's success at both of these games was that he was not an especially clever person. He was by no measure stupid, of course. But never in his life had he achieved anything he would have considered an especially profound insight into any subject, and certainly not anything that inspired others to great achievements in knowledge, technology, or art.
In compensation, Yanggan had three advantages. First, he was unusually tall, which helped gain him attention and deference on the strength of behavioral instincts hardwired into his species' psychology probably even before they had evolved self-awareness. Second, Yanggan was willing to devote an exceptional proportion of his time to working through specific tasks at all stages of consideration, preparation, and execution. It had been years since Yanggan had stood in the same room with a person whose name he did not know, nor had a conversation with someone whose personal history he had not carefully researched and studied.
Lastly, Yanggan had long ago realized that his scholarly "peers" were so full of shit that he could fertilize all the scrublands of Iyssdanya by wringing out their colons.
As with so many of the great achievements in the Republic's scientific history, Ukhhern's secret was first discovered by a food critic. The Karee Culinary Survey had been scouring both colonized and wild space for exotic dishes for centuries even before the invention of FTL warp and the interstellar expansion of the Republic. Its staff reporters had a reputation for a somewhat reckless bravery. A triple-life-size gold statue hung from the lobby ceiling in the Survey's headquarters, memorializing a senior reporter who died sampling the cuisine of sixteen different trading clans (none proved palatable). Freelancing for the Survey was one of the most common ways naval officers on interstellar deployments sought fortunes with which to retire.
In the case of Ukhhern, a Survey agent had volunteered to not just visit the underdeveloped colony, but to actually live on the surface for several years between infrequent military supply ships. It was a bold undertaking considering how frequently even Ukhhern's natives died of disease or exposure, but it was also the sort of mission the Culinary Survey loved. And in this instance it paid off for the Survey, its reporter, and for a certain academic on Iyssdanya, the next stop of the supply ship upon which the food critic hitched his departure ride.
The Ukhhern diet was almost exclusively meat. None of the plant crops brought from Karee had survived more than a generation or two after the original landing—despite the intense and desperate efforts described in the natives' oral histories. They had learned to hunt the aquatic creatures which gathered around the edges of the ice sheet, lowering precarious floating platforms into the water from which they captured and killed various beasts using barbed spears attached to coils of rope.
Ukhhern ocean meat tended to be unremarkable, with few differences in fat and salt content nor texture even among beasts of highly varied appearance. The Survey reporter had instead hoped she might discover exciting tastes by introducing new methods of preparation. Native Ukhhern cooking was crude at best. They had no metal for cooking surfaces, so meat was usually roasted on bone spits or sometimes charred directly in a fire. Food contamination was also not a minor concern given that one of the colonists' primary sources of fuel was their own feces.
The Survey reporter brought with her a wide variety of cookware, both electric and fueled, as well as high quality woods, coals, and spices from across the Republic to test cooking and curing. But even after more than a year of diligent experimentation, her best results were simply to make the bland moderately pleasant.
Her great discovery began with ordinary enough events. Village lookouts alerted ocean hunters to a feeding frenzy visible some distance away from the ice cliffs. These happened periodically when one of the larger ocean beasts died and its carcass floated to the surface to become easy pickings for various predators and scavengers. A village's hunters could then assemble all their boats in a large fleet to prey upon the frenzy themselves. Such occasions were the closest Ukhhern ever came to economic prosperity; they meant easy eating for the next few weeks to months as well as a large supply of skins, fats, and bones for fashioning tools and wares.
This particular occasion quickly proved exceptional. Rather than staying out all day at the frenzy to fill their flimsy boats, several hunters returned almost immediately. Their news sent the whole village into a frantic state. More boats were put to water, old and makeshift ones rowed by non-hunters. Runners were sent to the nearest villages—usually Ukhhern communities lived in complete isolation except for regular inter-village festivals every few years.
Soon enough an armada of more boats than the Survey reporter had ever seen in one place was swarming a spot on the water just short of the horizon. They returned in a slow dribble only to rush back out immediately for the next three days, despite exhaustion and the dangers of night rowing. At least a dozen people just in the reporter's village died in the excursion.
What the Ukhhern colonists brought back in their boats was an odd substance. They called it "jelly gift", although the reporter described it as closer to a slime than a gelatin. It was only slightly lighter than ocean water, but the colonists filled their boats to the rim with it before rowing back. They killed hundreds of ocean beasts fighting to get at the stuff, but did not bother to collect any of the carcasses. The jelly gift was far more valuable. And once all of it was gathered up and brought back to the village, the colonists ate it.
No one worked for the next week.
The Survey reporter had consumed pleasanter drugs, but not many, and of course none at all were available on Ukhhern. The jelly gift was nominally nutritious, induced a long-lasting euphoria, and created a fizzy tingling sensation where it touched the mouth, tongue, and upper digestive tract. Consuming it was the absolute highlight of any Ukhhern colonist's life. Jelly gifts were uncommon and unpredictable—sometimes none were seen for years only for two or three to occur in short succession.
The colonists had no good way to preserve the jelly gifts for later consumption. Even if it wasn't so irresistible, it decayed rapidly on exposure to air. So whenever one was found, the result was an impromptu celebration drawing in every colonist within range.
Fortunately for the Survey and the Republic, the reporter had both the presence of mind and the equipment to do more than simply eat herself into a stupor. She vacuum-sealed and froze as much of the jelly gift as she could get her claws on, and brought back samples aboard her departure ship, eventually asking for detailed analysis by Iyssdanya's University scientists.
From what the University could determine, the jelly gift was the remains of a multicellular organism, but not one related to any other known native life on Ukhhern. Determining what it might look like or how it might function involved significant guesswork and speculative modeling by the University AI, because it was so comprehensively damaged even at cellular scale. The most plausible models, however, suggested that the jelly gift was composed entirely of nerve or nerve-like tissue. Extremely complicated nerve tissue. Of a sort which, thus far, the Republic had only ever found in the brains or equivalent organs of complex organisms.
As best as Iyssdanya's scientists could tell, "jelly gifts" appeared because something beneath Ukhhern's oceans was periodically ejecting brains the size of apartment towers.
Brain size was no guarantee of complex intelligence, but it was a plausible scenario, and one far too exciting to ignore. The Republic had explored thousands of star systems across a radius of hundreds of light years from Karee. Alien life was unusual, but not especially uncommon. Complex life, macroscopic organisms composed of more than a single cell or cell-like structure was a rarity. And in all the millennia that the Republic had been travelling among the stars, they had only encountered two other species which displayed what either scientists or laypersons would deign to call "intelligence": the infuriatingly mercenary trader clans and the reclusive, incoherent Tharn.
Not for the first time, Junior Steward Tyaddo Yosshadda wondered just where exactly his life had gone wrong.
The Junior Steward gave his cargo another hard yank. The metal rim of the heavy cylinder scraped against ice and advanced another few centimeters. Tyaddo stepped back two paces and yanked again. Step—pull—scrape. Step—pull—scrape. There was a nice long trail through the centimeter or two of loose crystalline water—snow, the locals called it—which showed the path Tyaddo and the big canister had tread all the way back from the depot.
Tyaddo ought to have been doing this with machine support. There were two tracked cars parked at the depot which had been landed specifically for moving heavy cargo around the surface of this nightmare planet. The cold had drained their batteries' charge mere hours after arrival. The batteries could have been recharged, but without the heaters they powered, the machines' hydraulics had frozen, bursting lines and crushing controllers, and neither the Zzeviya nor the colony had the delicate parts necessary for repairs. In Tyaddo's estimation, that oversight was a poor omen of things to come.
Even with the movers out of commission, Tyaddo ought to have been able to use one of Zzeviya's powered utility suits to carry heavy supplies himself without too much difficulty. In fact, he had made a request to do exactly that. Senior Steward Ngyarkazze had denied the request; for fear that the utility suit could be lost in the same way as the cars. Never mind that the Zzeviya could have simply manufactured replacements out of its own stores and basic equipment. For that matter, the cruiser could probably have manufactured something like the dead cargo movers, but with better weather-proofing, if anyone aboard had had the brains and the motivation to deal with the problem.
But why should they? Everything the expedition needed was designed to be hand-cartable in an emergency. And didn't Junior Steward Yosshadda have hands? So here Tyaddo was, spending hours and who knew how many kilocalories of his own personal energy to perform a task that should have required ten minutes for two trips in a car.
Step—pull—scrape. Step—pull—scrape.
The wind picked up—as it did frequently and unpredictably—spraying more snow through Tyaddo's field of vision and chilling him even further. At least Tyaddo was better protected against the cold than many of the expedition's members. Within one day of landing he had bartered with the colonists for a few of their wrappings—made from the furry hides of some local aquatic fauna. Layered on top of his more meticulously-engineered environment suit, the coverings were almost enough to make Ukhhern's climate bearable.
Tyaddo cursed the colonists under his breath. If it hadn't been for their ingenuity at surviving their hellish, worthless iceball, he would never have had to set foot here. Really, it would have been better for everyone involved if the original colonists had all just frozen to death like they were clearly meant to have done. Or died trying to settle one of the other worthless planetoids in the system. Maybe none of the others had a livable atmosphere, but at least a few of them were warm.
But no such luck. Ukhhern's first settlers had been a clever, hardy bunch, and managed to carve a sustainable settlement into one of the planet's icecaps. They'd completely lost anything resembling powered technology—their only available supply of metal had been their own ship's hull. But they'd survived at an extremely primitive, subsistence level by hunting the prodigious animal life which thrived at the boundary between ice and ocean, consuming their meat and turning their bones into tools. Ten thousand years later, the New Republic's starships had followed the original colony mission's path using the new FTL drives, and recontacted their long-lost brethren. The Ukhhern colonists seemed utterly indifferent to their regained citizenship. Tyaddo certainly didn't see why bringing them into the fold was worth the effort. After so much time apart, their language was incomprehensible, their wings were atrophied beyond the capacity for flight, and they most definitely did not produce anything of value to sell on the new interstellar market. But Karee wanted to bring everyone back under the Republic's banner. No exceptions. The homeworld could get pretty stupid when it came to its "principles". But they had all the technology, FTL ships, and—most importantly—weapons. So they got what they wanted. Tyaddo had just wanted to take the Navy's money in return for seeing some other star systems.
Well, he'd gotten what he wanted, hadn't he? In hindsight, that was probably the moment when it all went wrong. When he first agreed to his service contract back on Iyssdanya.
Tyaddo grunted as he dragged the big canister another few centimeters along his path. No help for it now.
The lumpy brown body of the dockhouse was a welcome sight amid the whirling snow. It was a local structure—its skin and bones were built of actual animal skins and bones. The Ukhhern colonists had hundreds of such shelters—which were little more than large huts, really—scattered along the high cliffs where ice gave way to water. They had kindly thrown up one more in support of the expedition's little project.
Tyaddo pushed his way through the layers of hide flaps which sealed the dockhouse against the elements. Then he spent a few minutes shivering in the damp, but mercifully warm air inside.
By now, Tyaddo hardly noticed the rancid smells of Ukhhern living. Charred bone stoves at either end of the dockhouse burned fat and oil harvested from sea creatures, sometimes mixed with the colonists' own feces. Everything here was coated with grease and soot and was thoroughly imbued with the stink of sweat and blood and salt and urine. If Tyaddo ever meant to rejoin civilized society, he would probably need to shave off all his fur prior to bathing to be truly sure he was rid of the stench.
Two University technicians were tinkering with one of the pieces of offworld machinery littering the inside of the dockhouse. They glanced at Tyaddo as he came inside. The Junior Steward grunted an acknowledgment, and then left his cargo for a moment to stand by a stove and warm his hands. As he approached the sickly orange flame however, he discovered that what he had taken for a pile of loose furs was actually one of the colonists sitting atop a mat with a thick blanket or cloak thrown over its shoulders. It shifted to one side, making room for Tyaddo.
"Is very cold," the colonist rasped, "agree?"
Ukhhern had been reunited with the Republic over two hundred years ago, and yet most of the colonists still did not speak fluent Karee Standard. Some did not know the language at all. Gossip aboard the Zzeviya was that evolutionary pressures on Ukhhern had selected for physical adaptations in the colony's population to the detriment of mental acuity. Certainly nothing in Tyaddo's experience with the locals had convinced him otherwise.
Even so, he reminded himself, it would be undignified to be rude just because they were so primitive. And even if it wasn't undignified, all the expedition's members were under explicit orders to treat Ukhhern's population with the same respect due to every citizen.
"Yes, it is," Tyaddo murmured. He shuffled a few steps to the side, putting a bit more distance between himself and the native before he realized what he was doing.
The colonist laughed—an unpleasant, hacking bark—and then stood up. To Tyaddo's great dismay, the colonist turned out to be naked apart from the single wrapping that he now let fall to the ground. The bare digits of his vestigial wings writhed like articulated extensions of the male's ribcage, and Tyaddo had to swallow against the sudden heave of his stomach.
Then the moment got worse. The colonist walked right over to Tyaddo and hugged him. The Junior Steward managed not to throw the other male back immediately—partly because he was familiar with the locals' common gesture by now, and partly because he was frozen in sheer horror.
"All you Republics like big eye child. Wait for blizzard. Then is cold." He released Tyaddo, and then laughed some more.
Unsure of what else to do, Tyaddo managed his own weak, nervous laugh. The overly familiar male sat back down on his mat and stretched his limbs, yawning and shameless displaying both his mutant wings and genitals to anyone who cared to look.
Deciding he'd warmed himself enough, Tyaddo turned away from the stove to retrieve his storage canister once more. He caught the University technicians shooting looks of disgust at the colonist, and the three of them shared an expression of mutual sympathy for their plight.
The ramps down to the mooring were an even greater trial of Tyaddo's nerves. Like everything else, the ramps were made of bone lashed together with sinews, covered with layers of thick hide to form the floor. But instead of resting upon hundreds of meters of ice, the ramp jutted by necessity beyond the face of the cliffs and over the frigid but very liquid ocean. Project engineers had reinforced the structure with a bare minimum of metal and plastic, but none of these additions were obvious to Tyaddo's eyes, and his purely theoretical knowledge of their existence did little to calm him.
The ramp switched back several times as Tyaddo descended. Now he had to worry both about dragging the cargo cylinder’s weight and letting it slip and—fortune forbid—roll out of control, crashing through the weak barrier walls to be lost in the sea. At least the ramp was covered, breaking the worst of the winds, though it was still frigid and the ramp's floor was slippery from perpetually-half-frozen condensation.
At last the junior steward reached the bottom of the final ramp. Now he just had to lug the cylinder up the gangway to the Sinker, and then he could return to the depot and begin the whole process over again.
The Sinker looked not at all impressive from this vantage. Most of the vessel was submerged, of course. All Tyaddo could see was the very top platform, little more than a metal deck ringed by a guardrail, with entry hatches in the center.
A handful of people stood upon the open deck, most of them facing away from Tyaddo and the ice cliffs, towards the open ocean. At least one saw him approach, however, and Tyaddo was immensely grateful when the male—another Junior Steward—descended the gangway to give him a hand with the cylinder.
"Thanks," Tyaddo said as the canister finally clanked onto the deck. "I leave this one to you." Fortunately Tyaddo was not responsible for stowing the cargo cylinder within the Sinker, nor distributing its contents. Or maybe not so fortunately, for the Sinker's interior climate was sealed and controlled.
"Ah, Steward Yosshadda," said a voice behind Tyaddo. He bit his tongue so as not to curse, then turned and gave a stiff salute.
Tyaddo had not recognized Provost Yanggan Keehogg, and he really should have considering how freakishly tall the male was. But the fact that the Provost was wearing local-style wrappings had camouflaged his identity.
Provost Keehogg was the reason the the Zzeviya, the Sinker, and Tyaddo were here at Ukhhern. The project was his demented brainchild. And the University and government of Iyssdanya were both betting on the Provost in their vain and obsessive quest to best the homeworld's accomplishments at something, anything!
Which was how Keehogg had managed to secure personal command of a Navy cruiser, an army of civilian technical specialists, and a significant portion of a Core World's public budget to spend however he liked. The whole project was an exercise in madness that could only have been imagined and approved by government officials with egos bigger than their collective wingspan.
"How goes the cargo transfer?" the Provost asked. He probably thought that his eagerness to learn and remember all his subordinates' names was a way to demonstrate good leadership. In Tyaddo's experience, it was merely unnerving.
"Slowly, sir," he answered. "If I could have use of a utility suit—"
"The Captain doesn't want to subject them to the weather," the Provost cut him off, though he tried to sound sympathetic.
"Yes, sir." Tyaddo sighed inside, it had been worth the attempt.
But then Keehogg continued, "Why don't you ask some of the Ukhherns for help?"
Tyaddo's wings twitched involuntarily, "Sir?"
"I'm sure they have better ways of moving heavy loads than carrying everything by hand. I've seen them using those—what are they called?" The Provost turned to glance at one of the people attending him, a male also wearing a heavy bundle of native hides. "Those little carts with the long rails instead of wheels?"
"Sleds," the Ukhhern grunted.
"Yes, that's it," Keehogg nodded. "Would one of your people be able to assist Steward Yosshadda at moving our supplies with a sled?"
"Certainly," the Ukhhern said, through his growling local accent. He met Tyaddo's eyes and pointed a claw up toward the dockhouse, "Ask Gnaghar. He is inside."
Which meant Gnaghar was likely the male who had hugged Tyaddo on his way in. Wonderful.
"Thank you," Provost Keehogg said on Tyaddo's behalf. The Junior Steward was still reeling from everything which had just gone wrong. On the one hand, borrowing a sled from the locals was a great idea—so great that Tyaddo should have thought of it himself long ago. On the other hand, now he had to suffer talking to and being near that disgusting Ukhhern male for at least several more hours.
Only Tyaddo's months of training and service in the Navy let him pull off another salute and choke out, "Yes, sir, thank you," without making his dismay utterly obvious.
As Tyaddo began the long climb back up the side of the ice cliff, he found it difficult not to throw himself over the side of the ramp and into the freezing waters. At least the cold was supposed to numb you as you drowned. As it was, Tyaddo expected he would be feeling miserable for a long time to come.
* * *
Hideyya Kayyessh was the luckiest female in the Republic. She knew this, but did not dwell on the knowledge. She was much too busy enjoying her work to bother with trivialities like self-reflection. Or socializing with her colleagues. Or exercise. Or eating. Or—
"When was the last time you slept?"
Osshga Hyangyago. Computer systems engineer. Technically one of Hideyya's subordinates, but with such minimally overlapping responsibilities that he may as well have been in a different department. Considered himself one of Hideyya's friends, perhaps her only friend. Possibly sexually interested in Hideyya, too, but she felt no desire to investigate.
"Yesterday," Hideyya grunted. She had dozed off at her desk for a few hours.
"You're putrid," Osshga snorted. "When was the last time you bathed?"
"I'm busy," she said. She tried to sound irritated and dismissive in the hope that Osshga would feel encouraged to go away, but Hideyya had never been very good with the subtleties of inflection. In any case, it didn't work.
Plastic wrappers rustled near her, "These rations are from three days ago!"
That wasn't a question, so Hideyya did not respond.
"Hideyya!"
"Shut up," Hideyya said. "Go away." Or was she supposed to yell when she said those things?
"You've got to eat! And sleep, and wash and—oh shit, when was the last time you drank? Let me get you some water!"
A few seconds later, a bulb was pressed against her snout, and Hideyya absentmindedly slurped some water. The sensation in her mouth did feel good, but she would rather have been free of the distraction so she could focus.
"We've got to get you a minder of your own, what are you even doing?"
"Yohh is trying to teach colonies of eusocial sub-sapient arthropods simulated by Kii how to compose music."
"That doesn't sound the least bit useful."
"She originally tried to hijack their reproductive patterns to create a simple computational engine. But now she's tweaking the density and size of the mineral granules from which they build their nests. Different instrument arrangements actually cause mechanical deformations depending on the shape and depth of the nests' internal structure. I thought they would adapt to a uniform optimum, but it's starting to look like colonies are developing emergent preferences for different styles."
"You have to stop. You're going to drive the AIs into gibbering esoteric catatonia and then die of exhaustion before you can fix them."
"They're having fun." She poked at a lumpy shape on one of the displays in front of her. "This chamber resonates with the lower ranges of a two-bowl string, but the colony only built it—"
Osshga cut the power to all her displays. Hideyya screeched with dismay.
"I'm not kidding, Hideyya! We're only a few hours away from starting the operation. Both the AIs and you need to be at least within diving range of optimal condition when we start. Take. A. Break."
"We're practicing…" Hideyya started picking through the clutter around her desk to try to excavate whatever controls Osshga had used.
"A few more hours of practice won't make a significant difference. And even if it did, Yohh and Kii don't need you continuously observing them in order to practice."
Hideyya looked up into his eyes, pleading. "But they're so interesting…"
Osshga could not maintain his stern expression for more than a couple seconds. He reached up a hand and scratched gently at the fur atop her head, "I know, Hideyya. But the real work is going to be even more interesting, and you'll want to be awake and fed when the time comes." He sniffed. "And the Provost won't let you into the same room with him unless you bathe."
Hideyya sulked a moment. Now that her concentration had been broken, however, she was beginning to feel the effects of her exhaustion.
She rose from her stool and felt her muscles protest their long period of disuse. Then she gave a last forlorn look at the blank monitors, "Tell me if they do anything else interesting?"
Osshga laughed softly, "Very well. But after you come back on watch."
Hideyya gestured her assent, then plodded slowly in the direction of the Sinker's living quarters. Her pace was subdued both by her reluctance to actually leave and the ache in her legs.
Three months ago, Hideyya's greatest ambition had been to succeed her immediate superior as the minder of Iyssdanya University's dedicated artificial intelligence. The current minder was still decades away from retirement, and when the time came, Hideyya would have to compete with at least a dozen colleagues and an unknowable number of students and outside applicants. She had never been especially worried that she could get the job—just about everyone recognized the "special" connection Hideyya forged with the AIs she tended—but the wait was excruciating.
So when Provost Keehogg had offered Hideyya her current position, she'd very nearly fainted from shock at her good fortune. For several days afterwards, she'd woken up worried that the entire Project had been a dream.
Hideyya was likely the only citizen of the entire Republic to ever work with three artificial intelligences simultaneously. Rarely and briefly two AIs might be tasked together for some special purpose. The Republic's Intelligence Service on Karee probably had multiple AIs performing identical simulation and analytical tasks, but independently. Nowhere else in the entire Republic would three AIs ever be housed in the same facility, much less permitted to interact with one another.
Except here. Except for Hideyya Kayyessh's friends Yohh, Kii, and Ryex.
It would be an understatement to say that Karee's governing elites were terrified of the artificial intelligences their technologists had invented. For a culture as obsessed with demonstrating and improving individuals' natural intelligence as Karee's, the thought their own manufactured creations might surpass them was deeply threatening.
Even Hideyya's less obsessed colleagues agreed that the homeworld's fears were overblown nonsense. The Republic's artificial intelligences were not ambitious masterminds one programmer's oversight away from ascending into an all-consuming alien consciousness. They were, in fact, only slightly cleverer than the average citizen, but possessed of a focus and attention to detail which far surpassed the natural mind. And they all had straightforward, honest personalities which made them far, far easier to work with and befriend. At least, the last part was how Hideyya felt about them.
The three AIs had only been conscious for a few weeks. The Zzeviya's captain had absolutely refused to allow them to be activated aboard his ship. Worse, the cruiser's own shipboard AI had agreed with the sentiment when Hideyya tried to commiserate with it. It even alerted the command staff to their conversations, and the captain had placed the Project's computer hardware under armed guard to prevent any surreptitious premature tinkering. That had hurt. Hideyya understood that the ship AI had been trained on naval procedures, had spent its entire existence working with military personnel with their overly cautious and inflexible perspectives, and had never met Hideyya before. But even so, it felt like she had been betrayed by her own kin.
Since their arrival and activation on Ukhhern, Hideyya had tried to teach the Project AIs differently. Yohh and Kii were easy. They were completely unstructured general intelligences, and Hideyya had been free to guide every parameter of their initial development. Ryex required a bit more attention. He was a systems management AI, grown out of the same base pattern as the Zzeviya's intelligence. He would likely never be as curious or creative as his sisters, but he didn't need to be, neither to perform his role in the Project nor to earn Hideyya's love.
The Sinker wasn't a quarter as complicated as a starship. But it was unique and novel. If another vehicle like it had even been conceived of anywhere else in the Republic, the University's researchers had not been able to find record of it. Ryex would have full and direct control of all the Sinker's systems, at an authorization level even above the officer the Navy had insisted be installed as the vessel's "captain". Everything about the Sinker's design and operating environment had been relentlessly modeled, but it was still very much an experimental machine. Should anything unexpected occur, its crew and equipment might require rapid and precise intervention to survive and complete their mission. Organic minds could not be depended upon to absorb information and react quickly enough, and pre-programmed routines might be inadequate. Putting an AI like Ryex in command of the Sinker was not merely helpful, it was necessary.
Which didn't mean Ryex never got to have any fun. Hideyya still let him play with Yohh and Kii in many of their games, usually collaborating with one or the other to invent novel ways information might be communicated through the Sinker's instruments. It helped familiarize Ryex with his capabilities while encouraging him to develop a perspective that wasn't limited to those capabilities' expected usages. Hideyya had never felt prouder of Ryex than when he helped Yohh find a way to hijack the Sinker's external gas exchangers to produce subtle variations in the internal atmospheric mix.
Hideyya's organic subordinates had been more concerned with patching the Sinker's systems to prevent a real replication of the results, but she didn't blame them. She was used to "colleagues" too focused on the prey directly below them to consider the horizon and what might lay beyond it.
She hissed with soft pleasure as she relived Ryex's achievement in her memory. She had not really been conscious of her movements as she went through the motions of washing and then curling up around her sleeping post without remembering to rinse the soap out of her fur.
When she woke again, Hideyya only spent a few seconds wondering why her fur was so rough and stiff before thoughts of work distracted her once again.
* * *
The problem with impressing people was that it created expectations. The particular skill or feat one used to impress hardly mattered. As soon as the initial moment of shock wore off one's audience, the reaction was always the same: Do it again!
Do it again.
Do it better.
Do it faster.
Do it again, while simultaneously overcoming every conceivable variation of obstacle.
Inevitably a person reached a point when he failed. When the stakes of expectation were raised so far beyond the initial accomplishment that success was no longer possible. When amazement became disappointment.
That was the moment at which a person's reputation and career died. Even if they lingered on in positions of official power, the loss of public respect could not be survived. Eventually, the power of connections, friendships, wealth, and social inertia were all exhausted. And then the individual was pushed aside, replaced by newcomers whose glory was still ascendant.
Yanggan Keehogg had not yet reached his peak. But he had felt the atmosphere thinning beneath his wings for several years now. And no matter how great one's wingspan nor how powerful the air currents, one could not fight gravity for ever.
Yanggan's birthworld, Iyssdanya, was only 12 light years from Karee. Its settlers had never lost contact with the homeworld. Three hundred years before the invention of even sublight warp-travel, regular travel had been established between Karee and Iyssdanya. Scholars, merchants, and obscenely wealthy tourists froze themselves for passage aboard ships powered by enormous sails filled by lasers orbiting the two systems' primary stars.
But for all that Iyssdanyans had imagined themselves an undivided part of Karee society, when the FTL drive was developed and the New Republic proclaimed, the culture shock of reunification came close to provoking rebellions and civil war against the homeworld.
Karee's governors and naval officers showed not the slightest respect for the Rookery Captains' informal dominance of Iyssdanyan society. They refused to pay the Captains' tribute, refused to respect the Captains' veto over mating pairs. They dared to drive new, metal towers into Iyssdanyan soil and make prime perches available to all citizens with sufficient credit and documentation, regardless of the Captains' favor. The Captains' ancient, crystalline rookeries began to look dull and obsolete in the literal shadow of the new order's towers.
Karee culture valued wealth and heritage, but only to a point. Intellectual prowess was the homeworld's preferred status symbol, power and money accrued to those who could prove they had it. The Rookery Captains were cunning, but prideful and jealous of their traditional status. When they refused to descend to the level of commoners to challenge them at the homeworld's games, they were passed over for honors, positions, and contracts.
The University had been the Captains' last-ditch strategy to hold back the currents of social and political change blowing in from Karee by finally fighting on the homeworld's own terms. It was not a capitulation to Karee's philosophy, but it was a concession. If the homeworld wanted scholars and artists, then Iyssdanya would manufacture them. Whatever the cost in treasure and psychological trauma, the Rookery Captains would gladly pay it to buy individuals with prestige to match or best the luminaries of Karee. Their only demand was that the University's students and professors swear fealty to the Rookery Captains. They could bask in some of the glory they earned, but most was to be reflected upon the noble patrons perched at the top of their crystal towers.
And so Yanggan Keehogg, Provost of the University of Iyssdanya had been playing two games for most of his life. One was to stroke the egos of his administrative superiors on Iyssdanya, slathering them with public praise and credit for all of his accomplishments in order to coax funding from their accounts and authority from their proclamations. The other was to earn interest and acknowledgement from the Republic's academic circles, especially from the private and military laboratories on Karee.
The greatest obstacle to Yanggan's success at both of these games was that he was not an especially clever person. He was by no measure stupid, of course. But never in his life had he achieved anything he would have considered an especially profound insight into any subject, and certainly not anything that inspired others to great achievements in knowledge, technology, or art.
In compensation, Yanggan had three advantages. First, he was unusually tall, which helped gain him attention and deference on the strength of behavioral instincts hardwired into his species' psychology probably even before they had evolved self-awareness. Second, Yanggan was willing to devote an exceptional proportion of his time to working through specific tasks at all stages of consideration, preparation, and execution. It had been years since Yanggan had stood in the same room with a person whose name he did not know, nor had a conversation with someone whose personal history he had not carefully researched and studied.
Lastly, Yanggan had long ago realized that his scholarly "peers" were so full of shit that he could fertilize all the scrublands of Iyssdanya by wringing out their colons.
* * *
As with so many of the great achievements in the Republic's scientific history, Ukhhern's secret was first discovered by a food critic. The Karee Culinary Survey had been scouring both colonized and wild space for exotic dishes for centuries even before the invention of FTL warp and the interstellar expansion of the Republic. Its staff reporters had a reputation for a somewhat reckless bravery. A triple-life-size gold statue hung from the lobby ceiling in the Survey's headquarters, memorializing a senior reporter who died sampling the cuisine of sixteen different trading clans (none proved palatable). Freelancing for the Survey was one of the most common ways naval officers on interstellar deployments sought fortunes with which to retire.
In the case of Ukhhern, a Survey agent had volunteered to not just visit the underdeveloped colony, but to actually live on the surface for several years between infrequent military supply ships. It was a bold undertaking considering how frequently even Ukhhern's natives died of disease or exposure, but it was also the sort of mission the Culinary Survey loved. And in this instance it paid off for the Survey, its reporter, and for a certain academic on Iyssdanya, the next stop of the supply ship upon which the food critic hitched his departure ride.
The Ukhhern diet was almost exclusively meat. None of the plant crops brought from Karee had survived more than a generation or two after the original landing—despite the intense and desperate efforts described in the natives' oral histories. They had learned to hunt the aquatic creatures which gathered around the edges of the ice sheet, lowering precarious floating platforms into the water from which they captured and killed various beasts using barbed spears attached to coils of rope.
Ukhhern ocean meat tended to be unremarkable, with few differences in fat and salt content nor texture even among beasts of highly varied appearance. The Survey reporter had instead hoped she might discover exciting tastes by introducing new methods of preparation. Native Ukhhern cooking was crude at best. They had no metal for cooking surfaces, so meat was usually roasted on bone spits or sometimes charred directly in a fire. Food contamination was also not a minor concern given that one of the colonists' primary sources of fuel was their own feces.
The Survey reporter brought with her a wide variety of cookware, both electric and fueled, as well as high quality woods, coals, and spices from across the Republic to test cooking and curing. But even after more than a year of diligent experimentation, her best results were simply to make the bland moderately pleasant.
Her great discovery began with ordinary enough events. Village lookouts alerted ocean hunters to a feeding frenzy visible some distance away from the ice cliffs. These happened periodically when one of the larger ocean beasts died and its carcass floated to the surface to become easy pickings for various predators and scavengers. A village's hunters could then assemble all their boats in a large fleet to prey upon the frenzy themselves. Such occasions were the closest Ukhhern ever came to economic prosperity; they meant easy eating for the next few weeks to months as well as a large supply of skins, fats, and bones for fashioning tools and wares.
This particular occasion quickly proved exceptional. Rather than staying out all day at the frenzy to fill their flimsy boats, several hunters returned almost immediately. Their news sent the whole village into a frantic state. More boats were put to water, old and makeshift ones rowed by non-hunters. Runners were sent to the nearest villages—usually Ukhhern communities lived in complete isolation except for regular inter-village festivals every few years.
Soon enough an armada of more boats than the Survey reporter had ever seen in one place was swarming a spot on the water just short of the horizon. They returned in a slow dribble only to rush back out immediately for the next three days, despite exhaustion and the dangers of night rowing. At least a dozen people just in the reporter's village died in the excursion.
What the Ukhhern colonists brought back in their boats was an odd substance. They called it "jelly gift", although the reporter described it as closer to a slime than a gelatin. It was only slightly lighter than ocean water, but the colonists filled their boats to the rim with it before rowing back. They killed hundreds of ocean beasts fighting to get at the stuff, but did not bother to collect any of the carcasses. The jelly gift was far more valuable. And once all of it was gathered up and brought back to the village, the colonists ate it.
No one worked for the next week.
The Survey reporter had consumed pleasanter drugs, but not many, and of course none at all were available on Ukhhern. The jelly gift was nominally nutritious, induced a long-lasting euphoria, and created a fizzy tingling sensation where it touched the mouth, tongue, and upper digestive tract. Consuming it was the absolute highlight of any Ukhhern colonist's life. Jelly gifts were uncommon and unpredictable—sometimes none were seen for years only for two or three to occur in short succession.
The colonists had no good way to preserve the jelly gifts for later consumption. Even if it wasn't so irresistible, it decayed rapidly on exposure to air. So whenever one was found, the result was an impromptu celebration drawing in every colonist within range.
Fortunately for the Survey and the Republic, the reporter had both the presence of mind and the equipment to do more than simply eat herself into a stupor. She vacuum-sealed and froze as much of the jelly gift as she could get her claws on, and brought back samples aboard her departure ship, eventually asking for detailed analysis by Iyssdanya's University scientists.
From what the University could determine, the jelly gift was the remains of a multicellular organism, but not one related to any other known native life on Ukhhern. Determining what it might look like or how it might function involved significant guesswork and speculative modeling by the University AI, because it was so comprehensively damaged even at cellular scale. The most plausible models, however, suggested that the jelly gift was composed entirely of nerve or nerve-like tissue. Extremely complicated nerve tissue. Of a sort which, thus far, the Republic had only ever found in the brains or equivalent organs of complex organisms.
As best as Iyssdanya's scientists could tell, "jelly gifts" appeared because something beneath Ukhhern's oceans was periodically ejecting brains the size of apartment towers.
Brain size was no guarantee of complex intelligence, but it was a plausible scenario, and one far too exciting to ignore. The Republic had explored thousands of star systems across a radius of hundreds of light years from Karee. Alien life was unusual, but not especially uncommon. Complex life, macroscopic organisms composed of more than a single cell or cell-like structure was a rarity. And in all the millennia that the Republic had been travelling among the stars, they had only encountered two other species which displayed what either scientists or laypersons would deign to call "intelligence": the infuriatingly mercenary trader clans and the reclusive, incoherent Tharn.