Oracle Database Discussions

I just don't understand this. Why would Oracle create a new database that doesn't have the ability to make a simple table query to an older version? Oracle salespeople -- this absolutely kills more purchases or upgrades to future products if this is what happens.
I'm a contractor for a company. I was asked to create a set of backup servers on a redhat-5 box. The day I went to install the database, I found an email about a new Linux Oracle 11g database being available. The latest and greatest. I installed it, I imported a ton of data from exports and backups. This morning I got the sysadmin to open up the firewall so I could connect to the 8/8i databases and set the system up to grab table updates since the last sync-up, and put the burden of this pseudo-replication on the linux box. Then I get this error 03134. I can TNSPING and it says OK, but I cannot use SQLPLUS and any database links I create do not work.
I cannot arbitrarily tell this company that they need to update to newer db versions on the 3 databases involved. That might force operating system updates, which force hardware updates, etc. Why would ANYONE want to upgrade from 10g to 11g if that will cause them to never communicate with any of their 8i databases ever again? I didn't see this as a big HEY, WATCHOUT when I downloaded and installed the database.

I could write the code to push the data from the 8i dbs to the 11g instance, but that puts the CPU burden on that side and can wreck the throughput on that side. I could write an export script for every single table in the system to export daily updates and then get them over to the other system and import them. All these type of workarounds are BAD.

I've seen other posts that mention setting up a 9i instance in between, but then what happens when 9i isn't supported?
I guess that leaves me with three choices:
1) uninstall 11g and put in 10.0.3 and hope that it can talk to all three 8i instances. This eats a lot of crow and wastes many hours already invested in this system.
2) Write all the fetch/update scripts into java and hope I can access both dbs still.
3) Hope that someone out there has already create a java SQLplus passthrough stored procedure that they are willing to post for download.

Does anyone have a good answer to this problem yet?

Thanks
rob