Schild’s Ladder

Veins and bladders and sheets composed of thousands of different vendek populations defined the structure, separated by an intricate warren of tunnels through which the free vendeks of the Bright continued to pass. The probes identified changes in the winds as they flowed through the colony; specialized vendeks were diffusing out of a multitude of reservoirs and modifying the raw weather, killing off some species, supplanting them directly, or interacting with them to create new variants. To Tchicaya, this looked exactly like air-conditioning for physics: the Colonists could probably cope with all but the most extreme natural changes in their environment, but it made sense that they’d find it less stressful to delegate some of their homeostatic efforts to their technology.

Hundreds of vendek currents snaked out of the colony, presumably waste products from both the thing itself and its inhabitants. A few were so stable that they completely resisted the passage of both probes and sprites, and they appeared in the scape as gnarled black roots twisting away into the distance.

Tchicaya saw nothing to dissuade him from his earlier conclusion, though everything was open to alternative interpretations. Termite mounds had air-conditioning, ants had mastered agriculture, and the Colonists might not have needed to expend even as much effort as social insects to bring their home into existence; it was possible that they were mere symbionts, mindlessly tending some giant natural organism. Mariama remained cautious, but she did not choose to play devil’s advocate. They both had the same hopes now, and they both knew how easily they could be dashed.

They spent half a day debating the level of caution they needed to exercise. Whether these xennobes were the Signalers or not, they were likely to have far more potent defenses than the rabbit. It would be difficult to supervise any kind of complex interaction from too great a distance, though; if they hung back in their present orbit and sent down a drone, it would need to be largely autonomous.

The plan they finally settled upon was to send in a mobile form of their signaling banner, as large and obvious as they could make it, while following behind at a prudent distance. If the reception was violent, the tiny sprite-shadow of the Sarumpaet would be the less likely target.

If their mimicry of the signaling layer produced a promising reaction, they would move on to more complex exchanges, playing it by ear, hoping that the banner itself would prompt their hosts to respond in kind. Nothing the probes had revealed had offered any clues about the Colonists' preferred mode of interpersonal communication; sprites and other potential information-carriers flooded the colony, but plucking messages in an unknown language from all the influences modulating these carriers was beyond the standard Mediator software they’d brought through the border. Given time, Tchicaya would have happily observed the Colonists from a distance until everything about them, right down to the subtlest cultural nuance, was absolutely clear. He and Mariama could have descended from the sky expecting compliments on their perfect local accents and unprecedented good manners, like a pair of conscientious travelers.

It was not going to happen that way. The coming of the Planck worms would be unheralded, but the five percent error bars of the toolkit’s best statistical guess had already been crossed. If the sky rained poison right now, as they rushed through their rudimentary preparations, they would not even have the bitter consolation of knowing that they’d been ambushed by unforeseeable events.

They’d reached the end game, ready or not. They’d have to walk a knife edge between recklessness and caution, but they could not afford to take a single step back.

The signaling banner spiraled down toward the colony, twisting and fluttering like an airborne tent in a hurricane, but pulsing steadily from translucent to opaque. The Sarumpaet followed, close enough to maintain a probe image of the banner that was only a fraction of a ship-second out of date. The probes could also ferry instructions from the ship to the banner, enabling the signal to be modified on a similar time scale as soon as the need arose.

From the deck of the Sarumpaet, Tchicaya formed a rapid series of impressions of the crowded world below, none of which he believed was worth trusting. The density and animation of the creatures made him think of the bustle of markets of festivals, of riots. Of the crew of some ancient, oceangoing vessel battling a storm. In fact, all this violent swaying in the wind was probably about as exciting for the Colonists as a terrestrial animal’s endlessly beating heart. For all he knew, this was what they looked like at their most indolent.