Chapter 4

The bony ones had picked up the radio signals. They couldn't decode "Let's Polka!" to save their souls. They debated whether or not "Klezmer Madness" was a dirge for the dead or the output from a bad transmitter. The jazz and blues left them wanting more. The mathematical models were works of art.

It was strange walking out upon the plain. Trade talk had changed down the millenia but they had made themselves understood to the builder-folk. after the agreed-upon biological preparation a large team found themselves exiting the elevator from the port atop the ring wall. Vessels upon the water had been prepared to take them to the cities and return vessels would be prepared. They were anxious, worried and anticipatory all at once. They had never traded in this area before, yet the technology demanded in the construction of a ring-world was not trivial. They came with crystals filled with patterns, computers and sensors--things developed recently while in transit as well as stable well-known trading goods that had been exchanged for many, many generations. They were a trading mission and were going in with eyes open and a sense of exploration.

I was sitting back, enjoying life in an andirondack-style chair, wondering what would happen if we could scale sheep up to the size of oxen, when the little portable computer started caterwauling like a hungry baby. I poked the enter button and started reading. It seemed that we were due for visitors. This was a momentous occasion from their viewpoint--the first traders in 1,800 years. I wondered what they wanted to trade, and trade for. What would a starship trade for? Foodstuffs, biologicals, information? We couldn't even guess until they arrived, so I decided to hang out and be easy.

I woke up in the middle of the night with the answer. Space travel worked over incredible distances. What would a traveller want? Diversion from boredom. Entertainment. I smiled and went back to sleep.

Two weeks later, a group of 19 environmentally shell-shocked aliens motored into the city. We put them up in apartments and let them come out to us when they wished.

I have never eaten so many disgusting things in my life. Little living things infested my clothing and crawled over me. I had come to the firm conclusion that I never wanted to step forth on anything resembling a planetary surface ever again. Despite my exoskeleton, things had tried to eat me. I hardly noticed as we reached a city and were offered a clean place to sleep. Our hosts showed me what the water tanks were for--personal cleanliness! It made sense with such an intrusive environment. After a thorough cleansing sleep was a blessed relief.

They were filthy and their clothes harbored every insect I've ever seen on the ring and more. We got them cleaned up and settled down for the night. I asked of the portable computer what foods they would be most comfortable with. A neutral, enriched pablum was perscribed. The closest thing we had was corn meal pudding with butter and honey. We could see them relax as we fed them the hasty pudding. We offered them various glasses of drinks, from orange juice to beer to megelethin to water to whiskey. The orange juice and megelethin were the big hits of the day.

We were feasted with the closest I have seen to birthing day custard this side of the creche. They made us feel welcome. The variety of drinks was staggering--an astringent fruit drink was wonderful, and a sweetened fermented drink was marvellous. the other fermented drinks were much too strong for us--I had trouble focussing my eyes and my ears buzzed. It was pleasant, however.

We'd put together a display in the longhouse of various samples of finished goods, backed by a periodic table. We had musical instruments, ceramics, metal art pieces and samples of various metals that we could refine from the getter plants. At the advise of the hidden ones we also had samples of seeds and grown samples of various plants. At the last minute I put out two black seeds on a white cloth.

We were led to what must have been a trading house. Many samples were laid out of formed goods and plant material. A table of elements laid out by atomic number and orbial family was upon the wall. Many small devices were laid out of odd shape and unkown function.

I greeted them with a hello. There was no reaction. I waved and received a wave in return. Were they deaf? I pulled out my portable computer and started furiously typing. "Are they deaf?" "They do not normally percieve information transmitted by air." "Do they use sign language? Written word? Can you translate?" "Yes, yes and yes." "Great. Please greet them and ask what brings them."

An electronic device was shown to us with a dynamic written screen. It asked our mission and why we came. I hesitantly pushed upon the switches with word patterns etched into their skins to reply. It had been over two centuries since I had employed such a device as a young one, being educated on the ancestral systems.

"We heard your calls. We could not understand some, some appeared as mourning for the deaths of close ones, and some appeared as art--the mathematical patterns were exquisite and many expressed appreciation. We come to find more."

What the hell? the only thing we broadcast was radio shows... Oh shit. Oh, double shit. They interpreted music as mathematics. We never got into bluegrass, Bach, Beethoven, Spanish guitar or boogie-woogie. These boys were in for a surprise.

"We by nature send and recieve much information as compresson waves in atmosphere, called sound. We percieve patterns of sound, varying in side-tones, timing and frequency as 'music' and some does have perfect mathematical relationships, and it is percieved as an art form to us. Allow us to demonstrate. Can you record?"

"Yes"

I called out the massed bands. We were about to be auditioned.

"First, we will address what you heard and did not understand. We call this 'polka' and it is meant to accompany another art form--dancing--where the body is gyrated about at will to match the patterns of the sounds."

The Max Planck Polka Band took over. They wailed, thumped growled and howled out their rhythms. Several groups danced to the impromptu concert. Our bony-skinned guests sat enthralled, feeling the tuba and bass drum thru their exoskeletons for the first time. They were tapping their feet.

Next, I hauled out the deck guns and blew them away. We went for full blown bass Klesmer. We almost put them into shock. We had Klesmer fans!

We played everything. Old recordings of the Moody Blues and King Crimson, Freddy Mercury and Fats Domino, Johnny Cash, Tangerine Dream, Leon Redbone, Thelonius Monk, Rolling Stones and Dick Dale beach jam.

We held a Bach concert. They were ecstatic. We went full tilt boogie with John Lee Hooker. We hit 'em with our Grateful Dead tribute band, Broken Roses. We had dead-heads. It was amazing--any genre, any artist, if we played it they loved it. They recorded all of it. Finally we punked out with blistered fingers and blown out lips from our instruments. We broke for dinner and got down to real arbitration.

They had not experienced such an art form before and it struck a nerve with them. They would show off their trade goods the next day.

We woke to find them sitting silent before our plant samples, all looking at one exhibit. My two little black seeds.

The computer came out and they started furiously typing.

"You are bad. Very bad. You tease us with beauty then offer us a thing that we can never afford. Planets, systems have been offered for this genome and refused. Your honor is suspect at best."

I had to think quick.

"We had no idea of your perception of its worth. We have found it beneficial to our life span and that of a transitional species on the ring that had been inflicted with massive genome transcription from long term toxins. We were given it from another species as a gift for re-spawning their culture. We offer it honestly for an honest bid. We need orbital manufacturing technology. We need payloads of oxygen and water. This is an eight million year old ring and is in dire need of ecological tuning. Tell all-- what once was old is now new again. We have much opportunity for ecological sanctuary for worlds and races."

He stared at us in shock. He percieved that this, the goal of his culture to posess, was within his reach. It was time to trot out what he had to trade.

We have much to trade, in the form of mathematics, algorithms and genomes. Many of these have been traded for centuries. We have recently discovered the principle behind several sensors that may interest you. We have worked with ceramics for many thousands of years and have developed some micro-factories that yield construction fiber unequalled anywhere. For such a prize we are willing to leave a manufacturing ship in dock to act as a resource for your economy."

The hidden ones spoke up through their computers. This was a magnificent trade, costing us little.

I replied "Sold. We have an agreement." You could see him physically relax. "Now for the details. After all, the devil's in the details." "What is the devil?" "The unwanted one. Him without compassion, without justice, without redeeming character. the part of us all that we attempt to strangle and never let free."

"Yes. The part that allows us to win during combat no matter the cost."

"You understand. We will work together well, despite our differences in appearance." I wrapped the two black seeds in parchment and placed them into his hand. "Tomorrow, we shall plant these and water them. You shall reap their reward and gather their seed for others."

I sent a message to our ship. We had reached our final goal. The final testing would proceed immediately. Send mesage home. It caused much furor on the ships, as well it should.

We taught them about infection, opportunistic environments and how to live within them and what daily washing did for them. We taught them about ecological niches at all ranges, microscopic, macroscopic and in fusion. They would never be farmers. They were too far from the land and the feeling for it. They were city folk, born and bred.

When I showed them our chip lithographs several got real busy with pointers and gate speed questions. We had thought of things they never did, and vice versa. They never had hit on the idea of interrupts, interrupt controllers and jump tables. This is the core concept to allow real-time functioning as well as multi-processor computers. they had clockless processors down pat. They had naturally come up with a high-speed, high-bandwidth wireless network topology, but discovering anything Really fast, like Tera-bit, was a religious experiece for them. Deterministic token-passing networking solved some critical problems that had them frozen in some technologies. They had high-pressure nano-scale manufacturing down to a known science for gross structures. they took lithography and fused the technologies. They came up with micro-pantographs. Want a steak? Here's a steak. Want a pistol? Here's a pistol. Here it is again. Again. Again. Again. Get the idea?

The hidden folk damned near went numb with the new ideas. They were a bacterial intelligence. They had never pursued nano-manufacturing, much less under pressure or electric charge. their entire culture threatened to blossom. Deterministic networking protocols and high-speed QOS parallel data transmission algorithms boosted their communal intelligences by magnitudes. Oxygenation became a problem

I was awakened out of a sound sleep by the computer going off again. Oh shit, not more visitors? "We have a problem. we require more oxygen. We are strangling. What can we do?" I wasn't awake yet. It was a good thing, too. I think better half-awake. "Collid chemistry gives near-electronic speed transport to ions. Look at human teeth. They're filled with collids that transport calcium ions and more for emergency structural reinforcement. build collid transport--mass transport paths, work from there, use transition beds. That'll work until you convert over to full collid structure. Run multiple pipes in parallell to remove waste product for full system management."

I passed out again. I didn't remember what the hell I talked about that night. It was all a strange dream of still pools, enormous silvery highways and feathery fronds growing green near the pools.

We grew silverweed. I decided, what the hell--if we were going to get traders interested in it, we may as well build up the supply. if anyone got greedy it would be in our best interest to spread the seed supply around. We planted 75 seeds, all widely separated. I had an idea that forced monoculture would screw things up. This was an old, old genome from what I had figured out, and it had a few tricks. It had to be constantly watered until harvest, it needed sparse bedding in sandy soil and would not tolerate fertilizer. Something was its antagonist, too but we hadn't run into it yet.

We carefully harvested the root balls and expressed their liquor. the smell of the hydrated plant mass affected the way it changed neural tissue. That was over half the effect. neural degredation was reversed and eliminated for centuries with one application. Teleomeres were replenished to near-birth conditions. Tissues were checked and replaced against genome templates. Genomes were re-transcripted from brainstem proto-masters. Prions were expressed out. Cancers were poisoned and digested. Tissues got the full protocell regeneration treatment. The stuff was a masterpiece of genetic engineering. Who could do this could re-write entire genetic codes.

Baal-Baan ate well at the banquet and inhaled in appreciation over the flowering masses. When we drank tea we saluted our friendships. He slept for a long time. After all, he was over 300 years old and there were a lot of teleomeres to re-script. He arose as a youth of his race, dynamic and potent. He arose as a leader. He left with five carefully-preserved silverweed plant tops, two gallons of the liquor and almost a thousand seeds. Just in case, he also carried a carefully sealed ten-gallon container of our soil. We agreed that it would only be used by his race and he would keep explicit control of all seeds.

A few days later the encyclopedia burped. The ecologists were leaving. They had reached a mini-max for their input in this environment. They were going elsewhere. The encyclopedia were being taken over by the hidden ones. The index changed, adding a section for new data. I quickly turned to it, finding a precis of what the crystals we'd traded for contained. Much of it was incomprehensible to me, even in a digested form. The chemical feedstock library was large, going on for pages. Some things did make sense, such as a regenerating light-bearing fiber. The active cladding was the secret. The stuff could be grown in place. Their micro-scale LEDs and LDDs were very fast and could easily be incorporated into chips. No more metal leads except for power and ground. Using carbon as a substrate the whole chip industry could be converted to bio-degradable products. The lifespan could be controlled with encapsulation in a neutral atmosphere. They had chip masks for chemical micro-sensors, micro-radar chips and much better CCD camera chips than we ever had.

What followed gave me pause. They had transcriptions of the genomes for yeasts, algae and plankton, rotifers and what would pass for shrimp that could terraform a planet or keep a starship livable for centuries. Upon adding our getter plant technology anything but a planet destroyed by a nuclear war could be recovered. We had the secret to converting an anerobic atmosphere to an aerobic one.

The math and physics sections were beyond me. I could comprehend the graphs but that's about it. I needed a good program like MAPLE to handle this stuff.

We built better transmitters and sent out Bach concerts. The parallel fugue parts should drive 'em nuts. We also sent out local beacons with our base ecology notations and guest requirements, trade goods list and requested goods, near the 21-cm water hydroxyl water line in trade tongue I learned it by sleep teaching. It was a pidgin that made esperanto look complicated.