ellimist-chronicles

Prolog
Das Menschenkind rief mich. Das Menschenkind lag im sterben, und nichts, das
ich innerhalb der Regeln des Spieles tun konnte, würde das ändern.
Das Menschenkind, eines derjeningen, die sich selbst Animorphs nannten, bat
mich, zu erklären. In dem finalen Augenblick wollte der Mensch wissen: war es
das alles wert? Der Schmerz, die Verzweiflung, die Angst. Der Schreckenvon
erfahrener Gewalt, und der verderbende Schrecken von ausgeteilter Gewalt, war
es das alles wert?
Ich sagte, ich könne dies nicht beantworten. Ich sagte, das der Kampf noch
nicht vorbei sei.
"Wer bist du?" tobte das Kind. "Wer bist du um mit uns Spiele zu spielen? Du
erscheinst, du verschwindest, du spieltst mit uns, du benutzt uns, wer bist
du du, WAS bist du? Ich verdiene eine Antwort."
"Ja," sagte ich. "Tust du. Auf diese Frage werde ich alle Anwtorten geben,
die ich kenne. Und wenn du mich kennst, wirst du eine andere Frage stellen.
Und ich werde diese Frage auch beantworten. Und dann . . ."

Chapter One
My full name is Azure Level, Seven Spar, Extension Two, Down Messenger,
Forty-One. My chosen name is Toomin. I like the sound of the word which is all
the reason you need for a chosen name.
My ‘game’ name is Ellimist. Like Toomin it doesen’t mean anything in
particular. I just thought it sounded breezy. Never occurred to me when I chose the
name that it would follow me for so long, and so far.
The Pangabens were an interesting race well adapted to their unusual world.
They livde beneath an eternally grey, clouded sky. They had never seen their
sun clearly, had no notion of stars or other planets. This was particularly
ironic because their own planet was in fact a moon that orbeted a much larger
planet well suited to live.
Had they been blessed with an occasional break in the clouds they might
haave become a very different race. It’s hard to imagine that any species could
have lived beneath that sky-filling arc of the main planet, with all its
obvious lushness, and not become obsessed with a desire to learn space travel.
But the Pangabans knew nothing of this, nothing at all of anything beyond
their own damp and gloomy world.
The Pangabans were six legged, which is a common enough configutarion. They
carried their heads high above the slender, muscular body that was little
more than the junction of the six long legs.
They were skimmers. Their feet were large, webbed, and concave, which
allowed them to welk on the water that covered most of the planet aside from a few
soggy islands. They fed by lowering a sort of net from their body down into
the water and trolling for microscopic plants and animals of which there was
an ambundance.
They were intelligent. Not Ketran intelligent, maybe, but self-aware. They
knew who they were. Knew that they exsisted. Had a language. A culture. Mostly
involving amazing water dances, feeding rituals and a religion that centered
on belief in under-water spiretsthat either gave them food or witheld food.
DNA analysis indicated a potentian for development. The Pangaban worls
recived a decent dose of radiation, nothing deadly, just enough to cause a
respectable rate of mutation. And despite their awkward physiques and the limitations
of their planet’s natural resurces, I belived they could be brought to a
level of technology equal to, say, the Illamam Confederation.
There was only one possible problem: The main planet arouund which the
Pangabans revolved was populated by an aggressive species of four-legged,
two-handed rodents called the Gunja Wave. The Gunja Wave were primitive creatures,
only dimly self-aware. But theit DNA held a promise, too. And their
agressiveness might give them an edge if the two races ever collided.
Still, I had an instinct. I *memmed* my friend Azure Level, Nine Spar, Mast
Three, Right-Messenger, Twelve. His chosen name is Redfar. His ‘game’ name is
Inidar.
“I’ll take the Pangabans, if you choose to accept.”
“Gladly,” he *memmed* back. “ You underestimate the value of sheer
agression. You’re an idealist, Ellimist.”
“Oh? Well, Step into my lair said the *dreth* to the *chorkant*.“
Inidar laughed. The laugh worried me a bit. He seemed very confident. But I
wasn’t going to show him my own doubts. “Shall we immerse?” It was the ritual
challenge of the game.
“On the other side,” Inidar agreed, accepting the challenge.
I checked my real world position, checked to see wheter there were any
pending *memms* for me to deal with. I didn’t want to be interrupted. Then I
opened the shunt and was all at once inside the game.
I floated bodyless above the Pangaban world. Drifted above and endless
gray-green soup choked with seaweeds and algae and gliding eels that could reach
lengths of three miles. I skimmed above one of the mossy islands, brushed one
of the squat, stunted, unlovely treey and found a colony of Pangabans.
The Pangabans were trolling as always, but also playing at something. A game
that involved in slow, ever tigther circles around one central individual.
Not a complex game, certainly not in comparison with the game I played.
Still, I was heartened. Surely the ability to conceive and execute games was
a good sign in any species. It was a gentle, slow, and nearly pointless
game, but ine that could envolve. Gamed had envolved on other planets, among
other peoples, my own people, the Ketrans, perhaps beeing the preeminent example.
I wondered what Inidar would do with the Gunjar Wave. The essence of the
game was minimalism: Do the least thing needed to accomplish a goal.
I knew the least thing. I knew what I would do. A single, simple movement: I
would part the clouds and cause the skies to become ten percent clear on any
given day. If I had understodd fully, if my instincts were correct, that
single change in the parameters would launch a revolution among the Pangabans.
I slowed, floated, righted, deployed my wings, and settled down to stand
upon the water, invisible to the solemn, slow-moving Pangabans.
I like to feel the texture of the game. I like to be inside it. Only there,
only with the alien wind in your wings and the ground beneath your pods (or
water in this case), can you fully know this place. And the place is integral
to the species
I looked at the unbroken blanket of gray clouds. I couldn’t let in to much
light or the entire ecosystem would collapse. Just a glimpse.
I felt a thrill of anticipation. The Pangabans were on the verge of an
experience they could not even guess at. Their eyes would be opened for the first
Time. Their universe would expand by a factor of a billion percent.
I smiled. I *memmed* the game core: Tart the clouds.
And the clouds parted. It was night. The clouds tore apart, a slow, silent
rip. And above the Pangabans the stars appeared. And into that swatch of
speckled blackness rolled the planet, all green and blue and orange-scarred.
Slowly, one by one, fearful, the Pangabans did what none of their species
haad ever done before: They looked up.
They looked up and moande ther gurgling cries. I heard Inidar’s *memm* in my
mind. “Shall we accelerate?
“Fire it up,” I answeredand *memmed* the game core.
A hurricane! A hurricane of wind and water and earth and time itself. A
swirling madness of change. This was the ultimate moment in the game. We had made
our changes and now watched the time reel forward.
I broke out the displays: DNA mutation, climate changes, technology index,
population. For the first two hundred thousand years there was very little
change. Then I began to spot the DNA differences in sight and body shape. The
Pangabans were selecting for longer range vision, for color vision, for neck
length.
And then, all at once, trouble. The algae count was dropping like a stone.
It couldn’t be! Increased sunlight almost inevitabls means an increase in
flora. But it was true, the seas were dying.
And then, as I stood untouched amidst the hurrican of change, the first of
the carnivore eels emerged to attack the Pangabans. The Pangaban population
was decimated in a flash of time.
DNA evolution begun to come to the rescue of the Pangabans. They selected
for size, downtrending. The smaller were faster, able to evade the eels.
Smaller and smaller till the once-towering Pangabans were scarcely larger than one
of us Ketrans.
The eel threat diminished. And now at last came the first fluctuation in the
technology index. The Pangabans had learned to make a tool. A weapon, of
course. A simple spear that could be used to turn the tables on the eels. In
short order Pangabans were hunting and eationg the eels. Primitive seine-fishers
had become true predators.
A million years passed and a very different species now crossed the planet’s
seas armed with spears and bows. They formed hirarchies dominated
bywarriors. Their culture shifted ground, favoring a sky god who brought the gift of
weapons.
Yes, yes, it was working well enough. Another million years. Perhaps two,
and they would learn to move beyond weapons to…
And then, in a flash so sudden it was barely a blip of time, every index
went flat. The Pangabans had disappeared. Extinct.
I cursed and heard Inidar’s *memmed* laughter.
I reeled back and slowed the playback speed. There it was: The Gunja Wave,
still rodentine, but now walking erect, arrived on the Pangaban world in
astoundingly primitive spacecraft and promtly killed and ate the Pangabans. They
hunted them to extinction and left the planet devoid of its only intelligent
species.
“Shall we call the Game?” Inidar offered.
I sighed. “What was your move?“
“Oh, a very small one,” Inidar said. “I increased their rate of reproduction
by a very small percentage. This heightened their natural agression. And I
guessed that your move would be to open the Pangaban skies. Population growth
pressures, a limited food supply, and the ability to see the Pangaban surface
very clearly … my Gunja Wave wanted to eat your species.”
“Yes, and they did,” I said. “I call the game.”
“You have to learn to avoid naìveté, Ellimist. It’s not the good and worthy
who prosper. It’s just the motivated.”
“Yes, and you can go surface,” I muttered. “See you at the perches for free
flight?”
“I’m there, Ellimist.”
I shut down the game and opened my eyes to the real world around me.

Chapter 2
I am a Ketran. My planet is called Ket. I mention this fairly self-vident
fact only because of the plans to open our uninet to visiting off-worlders. The
time is coming when a uninet publication may be read by an Illaman or a
Generational, not necessarely by Ketrans alone. I don’t want to seem
chauvinistic.
Off-worlders are usually astounded by the facts of life on my planet. It’s
fascinating to speak with them because they can give you such a new
perspective on what seemes normal to us. The earliest Generation 9561s who arrived to
investigate Ket failed even to notice us at first. Oh, they noticed the
crystals of course, they weren’t blind, but it never occurred to them to look for
intelligent life anywhere other than on the planet suface.
The surface of Ket is quite unhospitable to most life-forms, covered as it
is by acid seas, lava flows, and strangle-vines. But Generation 9561 (actually
they were Generation 9559 then) were gamely wandering around in
environmental suits taking sampled when one of their air-skimmers accidentally ran smack
into a mast of the Great Southern Polar Crystal and a first contact was made
that surprised everyone.
Life? On a vast crystal floating three hundred miles above the planet
surface? Impossible! But then we’d have thought the same if we’d been the first to
arrive on their world and found then down amidst the trees and rivers and so
on.
The evolution of my people is obscure. (Interesting how it is often easy to
understand the evoultion of an entirely different species, and yet to be
confused by one’s own.) Our scientists are confident that at one time we did
inhabit the surface of our world, or at least its less sulphurous seas, but at
some point the symbiosis of Ketran and crystal was formed and we simply grew
together.
Now of course, and for at least the last two millin years, we have
maintained our symbiosis with the crystals. The age of my own home crystal – the
Equtorial High Crystal – has been convincingly established as .4 million years. Of
course that’s half the age of the Seed Crystal, making EHC one of the newer
fully formed crystals.
The word ‘symbiosis’ isn’t exactly accurate. We are living and the crystal
is not, though it’s hard not to fall into a certain romanticism and immagine
that it does have something very much like live. What is sure is that we
cannot survive without tho crystal. From which we derive our substance. And it’s
just as sure that though the crystals can grow without our help, they cannot
survive intact long enough to become as vast as they are.The estimates are
that a crystal above half a mile in average circumference will crash. The
atmospheric pressuresand internal buouyancies will lose the battle to gravity at
that point. Certainly the seventy-nine-mile circumference of the Seed Crystal
is a result of Ketran symbiosis. How would the great crystals continue to
float if not for the lift supplied by hunderds of thousands of Ketran wings?
There was all sorts of talk on the uninet about using artificial angines to
supply the lift needed for our home. These engines would free us from much if
not all dock time. Visionaries talk of how we could go from our current
one-tenth free-flight time to as much as one-half free flight. In fact, we would
no longer need to maintain stations and fly to provide lift at all. We would
only need dockage the eat and rest, while the engines would supply all the
necessary lift to keep the crystals afloat in the atmosphere.
But I doubt such an idea will take hold. Deep in our memories we still carry
the images, passed down through millenia, of the terrible crash of the North
Tropic Low Crystal. Three hunderd thousand years are not enough to erase
that memory!
The mere thought made me nervous. I opened my eyes and turned to look
downward. Yes, we still floated high above the Eenos lava swamp. No, the ground was
no closer that it had been when I immersed in the game. My docking talons
were still firmly attatched to my niche and my wings still beat their steady
rhythm.
Azure Level enveloped me, the sharp, jagged structure of protrusions as
familiar to me as the lines of my own hands. Through the smoothed and polished
masts, spars, and yards I could see the distant frontier of opaque white spars
– the new growth area. I was young, I might be chosen th move into the new
growthonce it had reached its expected violet hue. Then my name would change.
That would be strange. And my ups and downs, my neighbours would all change,
too.
I glanced at Azure Level, Seven Spar, Extension two, Down-Messenger,
Forty-Two, my closest ‘up’.He was a taciturn person, always had been. I’d tried many
times to engage him in the games, but he was a serious scientist, one of
those visonaries I mentioned. I thought of him as ‘Old Fourty-Two’, though I
doubt he was much older than me. His chosen name was Lakofa. He pronounced ti
‘LACK-uv-uh’. I think it was supposed to be droll.
“Hey, Lakofa,” I called up, using my spoken voice rather than a uninet
*memm*.
His head jerked, causing hos rather long and artfully unkempt quills to
quiver. He blinked unadorned eyes. He peered around the sky, as though unsure
where the sound could have come from. Finally, slowly, reluctantly, he lowered
his magenta gaze to me. “Toomin. What is it?”
“I lost another game.”
“Ah. Well, I can certainly understand why you would feel the need to inform
me personally of a fact that, were I remotely interestad, I could learn from
the net.”
I wasn’t put off by his attitude. Neither of us hat ever requested
reassignment; that was the proof that we got on well enough as neighbours.
I waited, knowing his couriosity would get better of him. “ All right, why
did you lose?”
“Redfar tells me, that I am to much of an idealist.”
“Mmm. I don’t share the fascination with games,” Lakofa said. “Any game that
can be played can be deconstructed. You can always deduce the laws –
assuming you pay attention. And once you know the rules that ensure victory, what’s
the interest? It’s all software. Software is software is software. Boring.“
I was peeved at this. It seemed to imply that I wasn’t bright enough to
understand the game. “Alien civilisation isn’t just ‘software’. It’s the most
sophisticated game ever released. It has more that a million scenarios.”
All of which reflect the thought patterns of the games creators. The
scenarios are limited because the assumptions are limited.”
He was right, of course, but I wasn’t in the mood to accept his smug
judgemet. I was in the mood to chenge the subject. “Are you coming to the
announcement?”
“What announcement?”
“What announcement? What do you mean ‘What announcement?’ The announcement.
Even you know which announcement. They’re announcing the nonessential crew
for Mapping Crystal Quadrant Three. The EmCee.
“Oh, that. Well, first I can’t imagine why you would feel the need to fly
all the way up to the perch when you can know the results almost as quickly on
the net. And anyway, I know I’m going.”
It took a few seconds for me to register that last statement, spoken as it
was in a carefully offhand way.
“You’re going? You mean … you’re going as essential crew?”
“Third biologist,” he said, trying out a casual, dimissive wave of his
mid-hands that didn’t fool me for a second. There was no hiding the pink glow that
begun at the tips of his quills and spread toward his head.
I was happy for Lakofa. I really was. Except for the part of me that was
screamingly jealous. I had a one in five hundred chance of going abord the
Zero-space ship as nonessential. He had a guaranteed berth as essential crew. We
were almost the same age. But somehow he had accomplished a great deal more
than I had.
*There’s a wake-up* memm, *Toomin,* I told myself. *Can you read the time
cue?*
I was an idiot. I was wasting my time in game playing, free flying, and
face-face. Meanwhile Lakofa was on his way into the deepest space to see
firsthand the things I would see only later, and only on some net sim(ulation).
I fell silent. Lakofa didn’t seem to notice. Or maybe he just didn’t care.
“Well, congratulations, Lakofa,” I said, doing a very weak job of ginning up
enthusiasm. “That’s really an honor.”
“Is it? Yes, I guess it is.”
I shut up after that. It was wrong to be bitter, but I was. Bitter at
myself. I’d steadfastly refused any intellectual specialisation. I’d told myself I
didn’t want to limit my mind by picking up one particular discipline.
Laziness, that’s what it was. I was lazy. I was a daydreamer. I was a juvie at an
age when I could easily be taken seriously as an adult. The only thing I cared
about was the game, and I wasn’t even good at that.
I resolved then and there to change my life. To turn it around in
mid-flight. No more nonsense, I had to bear down, I had to grapple, I had to
dock-and-hold. I was going to do it: My shunt was going to burn out from the the load
of educational *memms* I would download. I could do it. I had the brains, I
just hadn’t decided to get serious.
*Okay, well, time’s up, Toomin. Make some choices. Make some commitment.
Right now. Do it!*
Only it was free-flight time. The others would be expecting me. I’d told
Inidar I’d be there. Wasn’t right to just abandon all my friends just because
I’d decided to chenge.
Free flight first, then I’d explain to my friends that they might not be
seeing all that much of me anymore.

Chapter 3
The time-cue *memm* popped up and I released my docking talons and
disconnected. I felt the blessed silence in my head. No *memms*. No time cues, no
updates, no alerts, no ‘items of interest,’ no nagging about jobs not done, no
urging to examine this or that of the other uninet publication, no
guilt-inducing “why don’t you perch with us” *memms* from the dam and sire.
Free flight! I drifted down and away from the spar that was my home.
Wings folded back and up, I dead-dived through the masts and spars and
rough-hewn new growth protrusions, shot past a swirl-quilled femals who cast a
languid, unimpressed but wonderfully quoise glance my way.
Down and out of the matrix, out into the bare air beyond the reaches of the
crystal, out into bare air where I could look down and see the surface
clearly. Or as clearly as anyone could, given the yellow, slowly twisting swamp gas
clouds down there.
I opened my wings, canceled my momentumequalized bouyancy, straining my
dorsal intakers bit as I sucked air.
From here I could get a fuller picture of my home crystal. It’s terrebly
cliché to find it beautiful, but beatiful it was. It filled most of the sky, of
course, but even from the distance I could see the generally sperical shape,
the ball of brilliant, reflective masts, spars, and yards.
The sun was up and shining bright, and as the crystal moved in a slow
rotation the sunbeams blazed, reflected, from a million facets. Ice-blue, palest
green, yellow, violet and pink: It was a lovely sight.
The population was just over half a million now, and at any given time
ninety percent of that number would be docked, wings weaving the eternal pattern,
providing the endless, tireless lift that kept the crystal form setting
slowly to the ground below. The remaining ten percent could be free flight, if
they chose, but in reality it was mostly the younger Ketrans who indulged. Older
folks only flew if they had to cummute to some specialised work.
Standing off from the crystal itself, looking like a small moon in thight
orbit, the ship: Mapping Crystal Quadrant Three. MCQ3. The EmCee.
It was an omen, perhaps, of our own future, for it looked at the first
glance like a miniaturized version of the Equatorial High Crystal, except the
masts and spars were clearly not formed to form a spheroid, but rather to form an
elongated oval with a definite top and bottom. At the bottom the MCQ3 had
four massive stems, twice the thickness of a late-grown mast or spar. And
attached to each of the four stems was an ugly, thoroughly opaque metal cylinder.
These were the Zero-space engines. And they were nothing subversive. The
thing that disturbed many people was the much smaller disk located at the
junction where the stems met the core crystal. For there, at that stratigic point,
the MCQ3’s had installed an anti-grav gererator.
The MCQ3 floated efortlessy, kept station perfectly, defied the planet’s
relentless pull, all without the beat of so much as a single set of wings.
It made perfect sense, the ship was destined for planet-fall on unknown
worlds. We oviously could not predict atmospheric makeup, pressures, updrafts,
and so on, in advance. It was entirely impractical to imagine a wing-supported
crsytal criusing the atmosphere of some unforseen alien world. The anti-grav
made perfect sense.
But the problem was that it made sense for our own home crystals as well.
The anti-gravs were easy enough to build. If they were installed on the home
crystals it would free people for other things than the main task of lifting.
Life would be nothing but free flight!
As a gamer I found it fascinating. It was exactly a game scenatrio: Make a
single vital change in a society, and watch what happenes. What would happen
if we Ketrans were freed from this cooperative need to keep home afloat in
the atmosphere? No one knew.
I gazed up at the MCQ3. There was no avoiding the emotions that accompanied
that sight. I’d have sold my sire and dam into surface mining to go aboard.
Deep worms, I wanted to go.
Wasn’t happening. “What?” I mocked myself savagely. “No need for a game
playing adolescent aboard the greatest interplanetary expedition ever?”
*Let it pass. Let it breeze on by, Toomin. Not on the past but on the future
fix your range finder.*
“That’s right,” I muttered darkly, “take refuge in platitudes.”
I flapped wing and headed up. Not toward the MCQ3. No, not that way, but
vectoring away from it, up toward the viaolet perches where I was to meet my
friends to listen to the announcement. The last place where I wanted to be in
this frame of mind, but thes, poor fools, still held out hope.
We all had applied to be accepted as nonessential crew. Why not? There’s a
natural affinity between gamers and planetary explorers. Or so we told
ourselves.
I caught a lovely baffle breeze and soared effortlessy upward, up and up
past all of Azure Level, up to violet level and the scooped-out hollow of the
perches.
Redfar/Inidar was there waiting, zooming lazily with Escobat (whose game
name was Wormer), and Doffnal, a rare female gamer, who used the game name
Aguella.
“Hey, Ellimist,” Aguella called out when she saw me. “I *memmed* you that
you managed to exterminate the Pangabans in record time.”
Among ourselves we tended to use our game names. It was a silly affectation,
another sign of the immaturity I was now able to see so clearly in all of
us.
“I was playing a hunch,” I said a little to gloomily to match her bantering
tone. Then, trying to lighten the mod, I added “I demand a rematch. Next time
I’ll manage to exterminate my side in even less time.”
My friends laughed at that. We competed in the game, but there was also a
sense that we four competed against the game, as though it was a common enemy
we had to learn to subdue.
I recalled what Lakofa had said about the game being necessarily limited. No
doubt he was right. No doubt over the time the patterns would become all to
obvious and the game would thus become boring. But then, by that point the
game makers would have a new and improved game. They always did.
Wormer started talking about a scenario involving a three-way competition
among a parasitic species, a predator species and a symbiotic species. He was
the only one who had played it so we listened closely. We quickly slipped into
the game speak as we free flew around the perches, checking out others of
interest and being checked in return. The violet perches were a great hangout
for free-flying youths.
No one brought up the annoncement, not at first anyway. No one wanted to
seem unduly interested. We were breezy. Way to breezy to be obsessed over some
slim chance at a true live adventure. Anyway, we were gamers. The game was the
thing.
And yet I noticed each of us in turn glancing at the pulpit where a Speaker
would soon appear to deliver the news.
I wasn’t nervous. I’d given up hope. There’s nothing like a surrender to
despair to settle your nerves. But the others were twitchy and it was hard not
to catch a little of their turbulence.
I said, “You know, the truth is that underneath it all, the game has a set
of assumptions. If we could codify these assumptions we could win every game.”
I was quoting Lakofa and passing it off as my own insight.
“Of course we could,” Inidar said. “If. Very big ‘if’. Huge ‘if’. In fact it
is so…”
He fell silent. He stared hard: *Four globes, no clouds, as the old saying
goes.* Wormer and Aguella rotated without even a pretense of desinterest.
What was I going to do? Pretend to fly away and tease some face-face with
some strange female? I had to stay and wait. It was only polite.
I watched, waited along with them, as the Speaker drifted at a fuzzball’s
pace to the pulpit.
He was an oldster, his long quills and more rust-red than clear. Speaker was
a job for oldsters. They had the voices for it.
I didn’t want to be nervous. I was. My intire brand-new edifice of
indifference was washed away by an zpdraft of desire. Get over with! Get over with,
oldster, and let me go on with my newly serious life.
“Here are the announcements,” the Speaker said in a loud, carrying,
professipnal voice.
“Violet and Pink Levels will begin the cultivation of new spars. Each new
spar will eventually grow eight yards radially.”
We didn’t care. I didn’t anyway. Maybe Aguessa or Wormer did, they’re both
violets.
The Speaker went on, “There are seven days left before the Dance By of our
own beloved home with Polar Orbit High Crystal. As most of you know this is an
event that takes place only once in every nineteen years. Free flights will
be schuduled in half-intervals to allow the largest number of people to meet
and mingle with our brothers and sisters of the Polar Orbit High.
I shrugged. Well, that was something different, at least. A change of
routine. A chance to meet srangers and make cross-connections. I wasn’t ready to
propagate fortunately. So at least there would be none of that pressure. None
of us were old enough. Except maybe for Aguella.
I glanced at her, watching to see her reaction to the announcemetn. Was she
blushing? What a strange thought to imgine Aguella becoming a dam. Disturbing
somehow. She looked nothing at all like my dam. Far younger, for one thing.
Prettier.
Aguella had a seriousness that Inidar and Wormer and I lacked. She had mere
than the game going on in her life. She was very into passive sensor
theory.In fact none of the other designs had been incorporated (in modified form)
into the sensor array of the EmCee.
“Finally,” the Speaker said portentously.
“Here it comes,” Wormer muttered.
“I will announce the names of the nonessential crew chosen for the upcoming
trip of the Mapping Crystal Quadrant Three. The names will be announced by
level. Form Pink Level: Pink Level, Seventy Spar, Yard One, Down-Messenger,
Nine. Pink Level…”
“We could run a game before he gets to any of us,” Inidar grumbled.
The moment of high drama was undercut by the realisation that we had a long
wait ahead of us. And yet, we did not budge. There was some desultory
conversation, but with always an ear cocked.
And then, “Violet Level, Two Spar, Main Branch, Left-Messenger, One hundred
twenty-nine.”
Aguella gasped. For a long moment I had no Idea why.
“Is that you?” I asked stupidly. I’m sure I’d known her formal name at some
point but I had long since forgotten it.
She nodded. She started to speak, then just nodded some more. She looked
troubled more than elated. Almost worried.
I had no more time to be concerned with her strange reaction to good news.
The Speaker had at long last reached Azure Level. Wormer sagged. Violet Level
was done, and his name had not been called.
There were just seven names from Azure Level. My name was the fifth name
spoken.
For a frozen moment of time my brain stopped synapsing. I stopped breathing.
My wings faltered and I did a droop. “Did he say my name?” I wispered.
“Fourty-one, right? Not Thirty one?“
Wormer did his best to be nice about it. He tried to breeze it. Maybe Inidar
did his best, too, but his best wasn’t great. He looked like a crasher, and
I knew that anything I said to try and take away the hurt would just hurt him
worse. Pity is never very comforting to the pitied.
But at some level their reaction were already irrellivant. I knew it, and so
did they, sadly.
The four of us were now two and two. Wormer and Inidar would stay behind.
Aguella and I would go.

Chapter 4
I returned to my dock, barely making it in time. I clamped on and yelled to
Lakofa.
“Hey! Hey! Lakofa!”
He opened his eyers and favored me with his usual disapproving scrowl.
“What now?”
“I made it! I’m nonessential!“
„As nonessential as it is possible to be,“ he said dryly.
“Very funny, Lakofa, but you don’t even have a faint chance of annoying me.
Not today. I’m on the EmCee! We’ll be crew together. I’m going!”
“Oh that. Yes, I know.”
“How do you know that? It can’t be on the uninet yet. There’s a mandated
quarter-hour lag time for official announcements.”
The uninet was a relatively recent development, barely a hundred years old,
and no one wanted to absolete the Speakers and their traditions.
Lakofa closed his eyes. I accessed the uninet. No, the announcement wasn’t
on yet. Wait, here it was, just coming up. I pnuuced in and read my own name,
my lovely, lovely name. I highlighted it in crimson letters and read it
again.
A very fine name that lookend very, very fine placed, neatly near the bottom
of the list. The sight of it filled me with profound satisfaction.
Then, I realized. “Hey, Lakofa. How did you know if it’s just coming on the
net?”
No answer.
“You did it,” I accused. „You sponsored me!”
“Why would I do that?” he growled.
“Why would you do that?” I echoed with a different emphasis. “You don’t even
like me. I’m a gamer. A losing gamer. I’m a hundred and seventy-nineth in
the rankings, out of nine hundred and nine registered gamers in my set. Why
me?”
Lakofa didn’t answer at first, but I guess he realized I wasn’t going to let
him of the hook. He sighed again, grumbled inaudibly to himself for a
moment, then, sounding like a person who is being forced to confess a grime, said,
“I have developed a morbid curiosity about your failures, Toomin. I’m a
biologist so I have access to youd DNA map. You are in fact one hundred and
ninety-fourth in the rankings – your loss earlier has bumped you fifteen slots.”
“Ouch.”
“But in terms of pure analytical intelligence you are very near the peak.”
“I am?”
“Yes, and don’t play coy with me. You know you’re smarter than the gamers
yho beat you regularly. You lose games you should win, not deliberately, but
stubbornly. You’re playing the game at a different level. Not trying to win,
trying to win with kindness. Altruism.”
I was embarrassed. Amazed that Lakofa had been paying attention to me at a
level that I never suspected.
“Anyway,” Lakofa said. “We have any number of brillant scientists, brilliant
analysts, brilliant communicators, brilliant theorists, brilliant
physicists, brilliant techs, and brilliand astronomers on boars the MCQ3. I asked
myself what we didn’t have, and the answer came to me: We had no brilliant losers.
So, yes, I sponsored you. No please shut up, I have work to do.”
He closed his eyes and shut me out, this time for real.
Brilliant loser? Was it possible to be simultaneously flattered and
insulted?
Evidently.
A *memm* popped up, an invitation to a game from a gamer named Dryhad. This
was not the time for a game. I had deep thoughts to think: plans to make:
arrangements to arrange.
Didn’t I? Yes, absolutely. It was definitely not time for a game. First and
foremost, I had to learn everything there was to learn about MCQ3, about
Zero-space engines, about Quadrant Three and its major star systems.
I accessed the data on MCQ3. The summary alone would take me a year to
digest. No time for all that. Besides, I didn’t need the technecal stuff, I just
needed … well, for now I just needed the pictures.
Yes, yes there she was. A true deep-space ship. My deep-space ship. My own
personal MCQ3, I loved her already.
Brilliant loser?
At least I wouldn’t go aboard her unprepared, looking like some fool who
could’t tell inner from outer. I was going to memorize every square inch of her.

So little time. Nineteen days. So much to do and no time at all. Practically
no time at all. Nineteen days!
Deep worms, it was going to seem like forever.


Chapter 5
My mind was focused sharply, even obsessively, on the MCQ3 and its launch,
but everyone else was more interested in the Dance By of Polar Orbit High. The
Polars wree Ketran of course, just like us, but with a possibly different
society. I say possibly because we only encountered them every nineteen years.
Naturally we had secondhand reports from the other crystals who’d
encountered them and gone on to do a Dance By with us. Just last year we had done the
Dance with the Equatorial High Crystal Two, our sister crstal, and they’d had
an encounter with Polar just three years before that.
Still, getting secondhand reports from three years before is not the way to
understand a civialtion. And in any case, some of what the Two’s had told us
about the Polars was a bit strange.
For one thing the Polars supposedly were very involved in quill coloring.
Not of itself a bad thing, I guess, but weird. I mean, you have the quills
you’re born with, why would you want them to be green or whatever?
But more profound the Polars were said to be making great strides in
atmorpheric communications. Thes, of course, would be a breakthrough of
world-shattering proportions. If anyone yould figure out how to punch a wave signal
through the background radiation they’d be able to communicate crystal to crystal.
We yould no longer be a planet of thirty-two independent crystals; we’d have
all thirty’two hooked up to a planetary uninet. I’d be able to play against
gamers from entirely different crystals!
I’d be able to lose to people I might never actually see.
But maybe it was all just rumors. It’s one thing firing electrons through a
crystal, it’s a very much harder thing to do it through air.
The Dance By of the Polar Orbit High Crystal would not last long, only a few
hours. Neither of us was willing to undergo the terrific exertions necessary
to slow our momentum and then restart. So we’d have at best three hours
where we could free fly across the divide. And individually we’d fave far less.
I was scheduled early when the distance was greatest. I was youg. You
wouldn’t expect the oldsters to want to free fly for half an hour only to have a
ten-minute encounter.
The whole of society was excited. Me? Not so much. I had other things on my
mind.
I was docked, gliding through a uninet sim of the MCQ3 for the twentieth
time, when I heard a voice calling me from very close by. I opened my eyes and
there was Aguella. She had come right to my spar.
“Ellimist. What are you doing?”
I blinked. “What?”
“It’s time. What, are you ignoring the time cues? It’s time! The Dance By.“
“Oh. Right.” I released my docking talons and peered southward. Polar had
been in sight for most of a day now, but it had grown quite a bit larger in the
last few hours. In fact my first thought was that we were going to
intersect.
Aguella was grinning expectantly, waiting for something. Waiting for me to
notice something. I frowned and returned my attention to Polar. Then I yelled.
“Hey!”
Aguella nodded. “Yeah.“
“They’ve gone asymetrical. Look at the new growth.“ The sphere, or what
should have been a sphere, had a definite lump. The lump was only a tenth of the
diameter, but way to large to be simply new growth awaiting a trim.
“Not asymetrical,” Aguella said. “Or at least that’s not the end goal, I
think. I may be wrong but I suspect a pattern. You can’t see it from here, but
I think they’re trying to flatten the sphere in all directions. I think this
lump has a matching lump opposite.”
“Why would they…”
“Airfoil,” she said triumphantly. “The Polars are making an airfoil.”
For the first time in seven days I completely forgot about MCQ3. An airfoil!
It was something out of fiction. It was no surprise that a sphere was harder
to keep lifted than an airfoil. The airfoil could fly into the prevailing
breeze and actually derive lift.
It was the utopian’s answer to engines. Attaching engines to a crystal might
destroy social cohesion, but an airfoil desingn would still require the
people to lift. They would just have to lift a lot less. I once read that an
efficient airfoil would allow for half the people to be in free flight at any
given time.
“That would be so breezy if they did it,” Aguella said jealously. “I wonder
if we’ll ever try.”
“Maybe,” I said doubtfully. I recalled to mind images of the Wise Ones in
council. Half of them were so old they were more drag than lift. I was willing
to bet some of them had dropped dead on the spot when they saw the Polar’s
airfoil.
“Come on, let’s get going,” she urged.
We Four-Effed: flew free, fast and furious. Not a moment to be lost. Aguella
being female was fester than me, of course, but she restrained her
impatience to allow me to keep up. I rode her wind, staying just behind her. This had
the advantage of offering me a view that included both the amazing soon-to-be
airfoil and Aguella herself. She had lovely pods.
*Not the point, Toomin,* I thought. *Not really what you need to be thinking
about right now.*
*Mones!* She was spreading the *mones* for me!
For me? No, surely not. Aguella could have any mald she wanted. She was
beautiful, well formed, intelligent, funny, beautiful, very beautiful.
*That was several too many ‘beautifuls,’* I said to myself. It was true
then. SAguella was spreading *mones*. And I was helpless in her slipstream.
I cut left, clear of her backwash. I slowed me down a bit but it was good.
Anything to bring me clear air.
I sucked fresh air but it was almost to late. My quills were ticklish for
sure. How could she do this? She was a fellow gamer! It was an outrage, and
with the trip coming up and the Dance By and … it was a low trick, that was for
sure.
She had to have noticed my sudden, graceless exit. She had to know why I#d
done it. Great, now she’d be angry with me, and I was so completely not in the
frame of mind to be diplomatic and polite and play it breezy. My brain had
crashed.
“Almost there,” she said. “Look!”
“What? Look at what?” I yelped.
“There are the first Polars, just ahead. They look to be about our age.”
“Yeah, well, we’re not exactly the same age, you know,Aguella.”
She laughed. It was a disturbing laugh. “We’re almost the same age, Toomin –
physically. Now, psychologically …” She laughed again, a mocking,
condescending, yet frighteningly intimate laugh.
I gulped and tried not to read anything into the fact that she had used my
chosen name, not my game name. She always called me Ellimist. Never Toomin.
Oh, this was great. Oh, this was just great.
I ignored her joke, her laughter, and, as well as I could, the lingering
*mones*. I focused on the Polars.
There were tow or three hundred of them in the air, spread around in an
irregular two-mile space. Much as we Equatorials were. Like two sparkling clouds
of veiner pests.
I looked back and saw my own home crystal. It looked very old-fashoned now,
dull, compared with the radical Polar design that was now undeniable visible
as an eventual airfoil. It made me a little defensive, I guess. Our home was
larger, older, and I thought, more beautiful colored. But the Polar was the
future and that crunched.
I searched the Polars themselves, looking for the artificially colored
quills I’d heard about, but they seemed no different tham us. They each had “2
plus 4 equals 4 plus 2 and no one better” as my presire used to say: two pods,
four wings, four eyes, and two arms.
Aguella and I picked out a pair of Polars who seemed willing to encounter
us. They were about our age, both male. One hat nice bur natural yellow quills
and ochre eyes. The other was more notable for his awkwardly large wings. We
and they flew to intersection and floated at a polite distance.
“This is my friend Doffnall,” I said, introducing Aguella by her chosen
name. “I am Toomin.”
“This is my friend Oxagast and I am Menno,” said the large-winged one.
“Well encountered,” we all said simultaneously.
“You have a deep-space probe ready to launch!” Menno blurted.
He spoke at the very instand that I said, “You’re configuring an airfoil!”
We all four laughed and I at least felt more comfortable. Their curiousity
matched ours, and we had something to boast of after all.
“Yes, it’s the Mapping Crystal Quadrant Three,” I said, then, without even a
pretense of modesty added, “Doffnall and I are crey.”
“Essential crew?” Oxagast demanded.
Aguella laughed. “No, sorry, neither of us is a scientist. We’re just a
couple of gamers who got lucky.”
We chatted about gaming and about the possibility of developing a
crystal-to-crystal uninet.
Menno seemed about to say something, had his mouth open, then closed it and
forced a smile. Oxagast’s open gaze went opaque.
“That would be great,” Oxagast said blandly.
Then Aguella brought up the airfoil design. “Didn’t your Wise Ones resist
the idea?” Aguella asked.
The two Polars exchanged a glance. „They did. So we took a vote.“
„A what?“
„We voted. Each of us was allowed to decide our position, yes or no, then we
added up the totals. The airfoil design was approved by sixty-one percent of
the votes cast.”
Agualla and I must have looked fairly shocked.
Menno smirked, knowingly at our disturbed expressions. “We’ve made some
changes in our society.”
“Some changes? Why?”
Menno waved his had toward his home. “Because it was necessary. We can’t let
the Wise Ones stop progress. Change is coming. Big changes. The people
decide now. We’re just two years away from completing the airfoil. Our lives will
never be the same.”
“No, I guess they won’t be,” I said. Was I upset or jealous or both? I was
definitely disturbed. That much I knew.
Oxagast seemed less enthusiastic that his friend Menno. “The idea is that
people will have so much more free flight time once the airfoil is operational,
we’ll make huge leaps forward. That’s the idea anyway.”
“of course we will,” Menno said. “That MCQ3 of yours? No offense, but it
will be a toy compared to what we will build. Polar Orbit High will lead the
way, and the others will follow. By the time you return from Three Quadrant,
things will be very different.”
“Different isn’t always better,” I muttered. I was thinking of the
Pangabans.
But Menno shot back. “You’re a gamer and you’re afraid of change? What games
do you Equatorials play? Any game worth playing is about control. With
voting and with the other changes that are coming we stop being the playing
pieces, moved here and there by the Wise Ones. We become the players instead of the
played.”
“In any game scenario there’s a balance between change and stability,” I
argued. “The game – at least the way we play it – is to make the slightest, most
unbstrusive change – and archive the desired result.”
“Much of the same with us,” Oxagast agreed. “Only lately some gamers,” he
inclined his head toward Menno, “some gamers are looking to change the rules.”
“We call ourselves Intruders,” Menno said with a self-concious laugh. “We’re
getting a little more radical. Why minimalism? Why marginal changes? Why not
get inside the game, stick ourselfes right into the action, and take over?
See what I mean? Why shoud the gamer be invisible in the game? Intrude!”
I got a time cue. Time to head beack. To little time, and yet I was
relieved.
“Well encountered,” I said a little to hastily.
Aguella and Oxagast echoed the farewell. But Menno ruedly met my gaze and
said, “Don’t be afraid of change, Equatorial. It’s coming, wether you like it
or not.” Then, to my utter amazement, he clapped his hands together tightly
and yelled the single word, “Intrude!” It wasn’t a greeting or a farewell, it
was a statement of belief. It was a challenge.
Aguella had said very little during the encounter, but on the way back she
would scarcely shut up.
“He is right,” she said. “Look what they’ve done! Airfoil! Why? They changed
the rules, didn’t they? Same thing in the game, they changed the rules.”
“Yeah, well, he didn’t exactly mention whether he won a lot of games,” I
pointed out.
“Maybe some day we’ll be able to lay against them,” Aguella said.
“Maybe sooner than you think,” I said, remembering the Polars’ strange,
constrained looks when I mentioned crystal-to-crystal communication.
Had the Polars solved that problem? That would be a true revolution, far
more profound even than replacing the government of the Wise Ones.
Of course their transmission would be pretty pointless until other crystals
had receivers. Otherwise they’d be a voice crying in the wind, unheard.
So I thought, and comforted myself with that illusion