“Brother of my flesh, please, just a little longer and we shall be there.” Shamu cajoled the taka. Stroking the grey-green hexapedal workbeast’s flanks with one hand, he coaxed the tired creature back into a lumbering trot, the cart making a good pace yet again.
Shamu took his work seriously, as all his people did. The Shapers had raised them from the humble taka to serve them in their Great Work. All Workers knew that they had their place in that Great Work – Shamu may have just been transporting taka dung and night soil to the plantation, but other workers relied on his contribution.
Soon enough the plantation came into sight – the majestic trees dominating the skyline, fruit ripening soon for the harvest. Ancient trees and new saplings nourished alike from the manure he brought! It was good for Shamu to see the concrete rewards of his labours. Although the Shapers had kept the docile and placid nature of the taka when they had shaped the Worker race; quite separate from biological and metabolic constraints, the Workers were happy with their lot. They relished physical labour and group activity, making them perfectly suited for low-tech construction and agriculture. The Worker – still inherently a herd-based herbivore – appreciated the security of the Shaper suzerain. And the Shapers in turn valued their creations.
Shamu stopped his taka with a gentle nudge – they had reached the depot. Two young Workers ran up to the exhausted taka and removed the cart’s yoke from its shoulders. With their lower arms they gestured welcome to Shamu, accompanied with a friendly hoot.
Shamu gestured back and grinned at the two boys, his large flat teeth showing. The freed taka ambled off to a nearby meadow that contained many of its kind already drowsily grazing and luxuriating in the sun.
He entered the depot to receive his next work order from the depot-leader. She was clearly agitated, panting loudly as her small eyes darted across towards him.
“Brother Shamu, you have arrived, good.”
“What is the matter, Sister?” Shamu inquired respectfully of his elder.
“Brother Shamu, a Flyer needs a personal messenger, it is urgent!”
“Why does not the Flyer use the air-talking-magic instead?” Far be it that a Worker was recalcitrant for any duty but Shamu did not understand.
The depot-leader shrugged, all four hands expressing gestures of confusion and anxiety.
He was led to the Flyer’s tree, allowing Shamu to climb the ancient forest giant to where the saucer rested. Walking along the broad branch, the ship sensed his presence and opened a passageway inside.
As he walked within the pulsing, moist confines of the living spacecraft, Shamu was aware of the nutrients of the tree being greedily absorbed by the ship as it recovered from its flight; the pulsing veins carrying life giving sap to the entire ship. The Flyer clearly was recovering as well; its diminutive light grey form slouched back in the pilot’s chair.
The creature, markedly dissimilar to the Worker, had been derived from a solo predator rather than a peaceful herdbeast like the taka. Originally aquatic, their ability to deal with three-dimensional movement translated well into space travel and navigation – their predatory nature made them excellent hunters for their masters, the Shapers.
Shamu approached and the Flyer’s large, dark eyes flicked open, turning its bulbous head towards the worker – the Flyer aware of Shamu through its communion with the ship.
“Message: you take to Shapers. Urgent. Understand?” queried the Flyer in clipped tones.
“Why do you not use air-talking, Flyer?” asked Shamu meekly.
“Stupid Worker! Shaper-enemy listen to air-talking! Communicator unsecured. Message from my mouth to your ear to Shaper. Understand?”
Shamu couldn’t think what enemies the great Shapers could have, but said nothing. Perhaps he had already asked too many questions. It was not his place to ask why.
“Here is message: come at once. Class seven live sample found. Understood, stupid Worker?” barked the irritated Flyer.
“Class seven live sample found.” repeated Shamu.
“Good. Go: say to Shaper, no other. Now.”
Reacting to the Flyer’s will, the ship opened once again to eject Shamu and the confused Worker concentrated only on his order for focus. Taking a taka he rode it back to the city, where there would be a resident Shaper.
As he traveled the long trek back, Shamu could not stop ruminating over the events of the past few hours. Why was this message so important? Why was it so secret? Workers as he barely understood the concept, Workers were open enough with themselves and others – but Shamu supposed that the Shaper’s great knowledge had to remain the province of the Shapers alone.
He tried to silence his mind of these persistent questions. They were far beyond him – he was a simple hauler. He was not a Shaper. He was a Worker. It was enough that he fulfilled his role in society.
Arriving at the city, his first words for the depot-leader there were “I bring a message for the Shaper.” No questions as he was quickly ushered into the Breeding Chamber.
It was so known since Workers were raised communally but born only to the finest genetic stock available. Each newborn Worker had its genetic purity assessed by the Shaper – a high purity Worker was considered a breeder, bred with other similarly pure individuals. If considered impure, the attendant Shaper altered the genetic expression to make the Worker infertile. Occasionally Workers were inducted back into becoming breeders due to unforeseen evolution, strengthening the strain yet again with the new genetic material.
Shamu had never seen a Shaper before. He supposed he must have seen one as an infant, but the visage of the mighty Shapers still came as a shock.
Held carefully in two splayed hands of a servant Worker, the Shaper was a sickening pink ovoid of jellied protoplasm. Eyes sprouted on the uneven surface of the Shaper to look at Shamu, forcing the overwhelmed Worker to start visibly. Sensing his awe, the Shaper formed a mouth from its biomass and spoke soothingly. “Be calm, Worker. What is your name?”
“I am called Shamu, Master.” Shamu stammered.
“Please, good Shamu – your message?” Although strictly a command from a superior most high, the Shaper’s wet, gurgling voice was gentle.
“A Flyer says: class seven life sample found.”
The Shaper inhaled sharply, expanding its size to almost double, new eyes of different shapes and colour erupting all over its flesh, “Class SEVEN? Remarkable! This requires my immediate, personal attention. Shamu – hold out two hands together in front of you.”
Shamu instantly obeyed to receive the blubbery mass of the Shaper in his outstretched hands. It had shrivelled back to its normal size but the myriad eyes that festooned its form continued to look around and blink out of sync in obvious excitement. The feel of it was unpleasant, the slimy texture of rotting meat.
Through his flesh, the Shaper spoke to Shamu. “There we go – now, good Shamu, if we could travel to meet this Flyer with this most fortunate news?”
Speaking aloud, Shamu intoned, “Yes, Master.”
“Good Shamu. You can tuck me under an arm if you like – us Shapers aren’t delicate – we’re big, squishy blobs. Just don’t drop me somewhere along the ride!” The Shaper gave a burbling laugh as Shamu took the suggestion as an order.
Workers cannot become bored with their work as other races could – but in any case, Shamu couldn’t have been bored on his third long journey between the city and the plantation – due to the fascinating and incessant chatter of the Shaper.
It spoke half to itself as the time passed, often to Shamu. It had analyzed the amazed Worker’s genetic code as a matter of course and had been most impressed. “Evolutionary mutation, Shamu! Somehow you have gained intelligence far beyond your fellows – not that it’s much still overall, comparatively speaking.” The Shaper chuckled. “We’re always limited by the original genetic material, more’s the pity. But I will be changing your status to Breeder when we return – you’re now fertile again.” An abrupt internal wrench, a touch of nausea and an all-over tingle announced the change.
“But what about my cart-runs? The work needs to be done!” wailed Shamu plaintively.
“Dear Shamu! We all do the tasks we are best suited to – another will take your duties – you will have different work – work improving your people as a whole! Very important work, yes indeed, Shamu!” explained the Shaper.
He was uncomfortable with the change but mollified by the Shaper’s soothing words – he’d still be working for the Great Work and his people, just in a different way.
The Shaper’s other talk related to all the wondrous creations they had shaped – the massive trees that bore the living ships as fruit, the turret-flowers that spat high-velocity projectiles that guarded the Worker’s settlements, the hollow, hard shelled, half buried creatures that served as protective bunkers, the star-shaped creatures that instantly healed a worker’s wounds and disease. Not to mention the extreme pride the Shaper expressed in speaking of the Workers themselves. “With your kind and the Flyers, we created true intelligence from nothing! Low, granted, but a great evolutionary step for both species. But if only we had graftable intelligent material to work with – our status in the Galactic Milieu would rise meteorically! Which brings me to our errand, dear Shamu – Class Seven – tool-using intelligent life.”
The Shaper quivered and wobbled in anticipation. “The other member races have taken steps against us in this area – their genes are now incompatible with our programmes – they altered their structure with a distinct lack of finesse – crude butchers of chromosomes! That is why we sent Flyers hunting to bring back new examples of life for us to study – and a compatible tool-using intelligence of any grade will accelerate the Great Work.”
Shamu could not understand much of what the Shaper spoke of but he could feel its pleasure and excitement and they neared the plantation and henceforth the awaiting Flyer. The fruit-ship pulsed open to admit the Shaper and the attendant Shamu. Unlike Shamu’s previous visit, the Flyer was out of the pilot’s chair, abandoning its habitual communion with the vessel. Reverentially greeting the Shaper with deep bows, it led them both deeper into the humid confines of the craft.
Trapped in a cage formed of the morphic flesh of the ship was a form of life never seen before by any Shaper – definitely not even a creature witnessed by any of the Galactic Milieu.
The Shaper commanded Shamu closer to inspect the thing. “Yes, definitely tool-using – advanced metallurgy-” The Shaper uttered the word somewhat distastefully, “and evidence of inorganic chemistry.”
The creature was clothed in woven garments of curious manufacture, some of its artefacts lay strewn around the base of the cage bars, where the bars had been abraded and scratched. It was bipedal as the Workers and Flyers were – two arms like the Flyers but much bigger – a similar frame to the Workers. It shrank away from the approaching Shaper, screaming and making mouth noises with agitation.
“Move it closer!” commanded the Shaper and the Flyer ran back to its chair – the ship responding by suddenly squeezing in the exterior wall to slam the hapless creature against the bars and pin it there.
In contact with the creature now, the Shaper continued its inspection. “Leaks saline solution from two eyes – curious response to stimuli – red liquid from wounds clearly circulatory in nature – but details, details! The brain is what’s important here. Marvelous! Crude, but a working model which we can improve for our own purposes.”
The creature ceased its whimpering and closed its eyes as the Shaper withdrew. “Flyer, your orders are now as follows. Broadcast the co-ordinates of this planet to your fellows surreptitiously – do not use your communicators. Bring more specimens back, but after a Shaper has harvested their genetic information, the creatures are to be returned from whence they came – we cannot have any evidence that they were here! This one has been brainscrubbed to forget the events of its journey – return it before it wakes.”
“Yes, Master – I hear and I obey.” groveled the Flyer and Shamu and the Shaper left the ship rapidly so the Flyer could follow its orders.
As they watched the vessel rise and phase to hyperspace, the Shaper was finally silent – exultant in its victory. Not for long, as the chattering creature exuberantly gushed to Shamu once again.
“With enough specimens, Shamu – we can create a synthesis biological algorithm for intelligence. But such a discovery is wasted upon you – unless, with this tentative information, I test it on you.”
Burbling in concentration, the Shaper expanded and contracted, advanced biochemical compounds invading Shamu’s grey-green flesh via osmosis. Endlessly replicating, the substance warped and mutated the surprised Worker by the Shaper’s genetic imperative.
It was like eyes opening from darkness to light, colour to a monochrome world. An awakening, an expanding of consciousness from base awareness to true sapience.
Shamu had no idea how long it had taken; one moment he had been virtually an animal that walked on two legs – now he could think as the Shapers could – a greater understanding of life; rather than just the simple processes of food, sex and death. Beyond the concrete, the tangible, infinity whispers of the abstracts of thought and although he was aware of his catapulted intelligence, he was also aware of what he still lacked.
“Master,” Shamu addressed the Shaper softly, his new understanding adding depth and gravity to his reverence – “you have upraised me to think as you do – it is a gift I can never repay. But Master, I still lack – I am ignorant – teach me so I may be a better Worker.”
“Most wise, dear Shamu – our creations are our children and you have grown up. We are well pleased with you.” The Shaper’s tone was gleeful, eyes sprouting and disappearing rapidly in happiness. “A simple Worker? No! You are now the father of a new species – your genetic code shall spread until the Workers are reborn. All hail King Shamu the First!”
Shamu smiled. “I like the sound of that.”
“No less than you deserve, faithful Shamu.” The Shaper declared. “It gives us Shapers o end of happiness to see our children grow and stand with us against those who would threaten us all.”
Galactic historians place this as seminal formation to the later Shaper Imperium that in further decades dominated Known Space. While the Worker slave race ascended through the bloodline of Shamu I to the race known as Shamu-ri, or the Children of Shamu, the other slave races attained intelligence through the introduction of refined genetic information obtained from a heretofore undiscovered and obscure primitive species known only as ‘human.’ The next seminal point in Shaper history is clearly and obviously
Zolton
I am going to read this again when it is not a quarter past midnight! Intriguing and I’m sure I missed a lot of symbolism because I’m a bit groggy.
Cailean replied
I am going to translate that as “I cannot brain today, I have the dumb” but that’s alright :) Sleep sleep! Get well perhaps, if you’re groggy from something besides actual grog?
There may not be any symbolism to actually look for, however, so don’t strain yourself looking for something that may not exist, hehe :)
Time for me to serve out this wonderfully aromatic tortellini and y’know, EAT IT. If you were close I’d offer you a bowl. Definitely something that would ungrog you!
Sarai
You have an amazing way with words and a “other-worldly” imagination. When I use to have time to read books I read stories like this one. Great stuff.
S