Existence (104 page)

“If we discuss it first…,” Lacy suggested. “Maybe reach a consensus on a single metaphor, we four might then—”

Hamish shook his head, hating to agree with Profnoo.

“Wanna know what I think? I would bet my next cash advance and media options that we don’t have anything else to do, right now. Our job is done. We four had only to remember, all of us at the same time, and say the word together, for it to—”

Birdwoman shrieked!

Hamish swiveled to see her hopping and using both iridescent wing-arms to point downward, over the edge of the plate. Next to her, M’m por’lock crouched on all fours, thrashing a beaverlike tale and hissing.

“I think you had all better look at this!”

Hamish and the others bent or knelt to peer into the depths. And there they saw, far below, refracted by multiple foldings of fractal scale, something that appeared to be rising fast, drawing near with tremendous momentum. A patch of light. A glow. A spot of brilliance that seemed too intense to be merely virtual.

Probably, it would be visible even from outside the probe itself, if anyone happened to be looking.

It must have started in the very most depths
, Hamish thought.
And it’s been rising ever since we all said the key word. Key … word. Of all the stupid codes! I would never have stooped to using that in a novel.

Staring, unable to move, Hamish watched as the glow brightened, swerved … then plunged straight at the aft-most end of the ship, casting sharp light even past the crystal barrier, to briefly pulse a complex rhythm against the great, brown container-box …

… which then

quietly

opened.

95.

REFLECTIONS

Cracks and seams propagated across the great brown surface of the aft cargo container as it started unfolding.

“Come on!” Lacey shouted. “Let’s get up top for a better view.”

She stepped off the glassy plate and started grow-walking skyward, becoming a giant, striding ever-higher and turning translucent as she climbed. Others quickly followed, leaving Hamish—assisted by the Oldest Member—hurrying to catch up, struggling to master that queer trick of envisioning changes in both position and scale, pushing upward against increasing weight and resistance.

Glancing back, he saw the flat plain where they had been meeting, along with all the instruments and tools that their minds had built, now looking like tiny toys and already starting to dissolve.

“Focus ahead of you, Hamish my friend,” Om insisted. “Think up and out. Think big.”

The others had pulled ahead. Their ankles were gigantic as Hamish fought to keep up. But he had always been a quick study, and soon had the knack, forging ahead and expanding his own scale to match that of Emily, then the otter-alien, then Singh and the Birdwoman—whose personal augmentations were starting to soften, molting her glorious feathers, leaving a much more human-mundane appearance. Professor Noozone, however, was still up ahead. Still huge. Striving hard into a headwind, maintaining his lead.

The mists shredded and parted as stars came out, stark and bright beyond the great ceiling-barrier.

Om was right. This seems a bit easier, accompanied by others.

But the group had not come up here for stars. They gathered where the aft-end curvature of the rounded cylinder was most pronounced, giving them their best view of the cargo box. Its deployment had already progressed.

Rather than just unfolding, the brown sides of the box unraveled, supplying meter after meter of ropy strands. Five of these cables connected to five different blocky objects that now tumbled out of the container, until each of them trailed behind the crystal ship, as if dragged by its own tow-line.

“There!” Emily pointed. “I see it. The sun!”

Indeed, as hundreds of meters of cable spun out from the sides of the box, a great star was revealed, mightier (apparently) than all the rest. Far bigger and brighter, and closer than it should have been, at this point in their mission. And somewhere buried within its glare would be a tiny, blue-green twinkle. Homeworld.

As they watched, each of the five blocks broke in half … then divided again … with each smaller chunk separated by more rope that got increasingly slender, with every division, till five long
chains
trailed behind the vessel. Each of them consisted of a long strand, with small lumps knotted along its length. Through some kind of magnification or refraction, Hamish could tell that the tethers stretched back kilometers now, perhaps much more.

“Whatever it is, it doesn’t look like a weapon,” Professor Noozone pointed out, still in his tweedy, university-teacher mode, almost accent free, like when he had been just a regular associate instructor at Caltech. “Nor does it seem like a way to hasten contact with some planet-born, primitive race.”

Lacey had an observation.

“Notice how one of the strands has deployed to trail directly behind us … while the others fan out above, below, left, and right. It must use an electrostatic charge—

“And see now! How all five of them have branched? Each of them splitting into several sub chains? A total of … a hundred strands! Each terminating in a
pair
of thicker lumps, one after the other? I believe it has to be
antenna array—
a detector of some sort—meant to cover as large a volume of space behind us as possible.”

Hamish was still getting used to how strange everything felt, up here near the real universe, where the slender crystal’s curved limitations could be felt by those within. No longer capacious and immense, the impression now seemed cramped, confined. His body—when he pressed closer to the barrier—felt warped. Distended and rounded. Confined.

“Lacey you tend to view everything in terms of telescopes,” commented Jovindra Singh, with evident amusement. “It could just as likely—”

The Sikh biophysicist stopped abruptly and they all stared as the lumps—strung out along the many strands—started to
open,
expanding like very broad, many-petaled flowers, each of them aiming their concave faces away from the sun.

“Well all right,” Singh admitted.
“That
looks like some kind of detector array. But it’s aimed ahead of us! Aren’t we most-curious about what is going on behind us, on Earth? Whether civilization survived? Whether the big laser is still being used?”

M’m por’lock commented:

“This device was never meant for us to use in that way, checking on our point of origin. It may have been intended to look ahead, during our final approach toward the destination system. To help perfect our ideal trajectory, optimizing arrival at the target planet.”

Courier of Caution disagreed.

“Upon approaching the destination, our type of light-craft always turns around to enter the new solar system aft-end first, with the sail using sunlight to help decelerate. Hence, these mirrors would be aimed away—”

Hamish interrupted.

“Aren’t you all forgetting something? None of those flower mirrors can see a damned thing that’s in
front
of our ship. There’s something blocking the way!”

He gestured toward the bow of their crystal vessel and Birdwoman squawked, now in spoken English.

“The sail! Sail. Big light-pail!”

It covered a whole third of the sky, warping the starscape with reflections, cutting off any view ahead.

“But … then … if the sail is in the way…” Lacey mused, staring at the curved boundary of the gigantic, reflective surface. “What could all those smaller mirrors be looking at…”

Her eyes widened.

Then Lacey Donaldson let out a cry of realization and joy.

“It’s all …

“… we’re all part of ONE big telescope!”

96.

FOCUS

The group drifted “down” to a nearby fractal layer where it was just barely possible to forge instrumentalities with their minds, yet still have a clear view outside. By concentrating together, they managed to create some image magnifiers to peer beyond the artifact-ship at the two hundred or so flower-mirrors that lay strung behind it, along five trees of branching tethers. Many of the kilometer-wide diaphanous blossoms were still unfolding.

How did all of that fit in a one-meter box?
They reminded Hamish of filmy jellyfish—swarms of which had conquered Earth’s great ocean.

Courier of Caution presented a schematic, adding—“Of course, nothing is to scale.”

“So the big sail acts as a giant telescope mirror,” Jovindra pondered, “collecting and reflecting light upon two hundred smaller mirrors, spread around the maximum possible volume … smaller mirrors which then focus on our crystal craft … which can then analyze the images…”

“… since we can also draw
power
from that concentrated energy,” added Courier, clearly excited.

“So then, can we use this array to look at Earth?” asked a nervous Emily.

Hamish nodded. “With such an instrument, at this small distance, we’d detect even the slightest sign of civilization. Or its destruction.”

“Maybe I don’t want to know.” Emily dropped her gaze.

Hamish turned. “What d’you think, Lacey? Can this big scope gaze Earthward and—”

Looking around, he finally spotted Lacey, Profnoo, and Birdwoman. Each of them now about as tall as his ankle, perched on a miniature platform just a little below this one, surrounded by more sophisticated machinery and computer-like displays. Tornadoes of numbers swirled around Birdwoman—again feathered—who squawked, danced, and pecked at the maelstrom. A data processing task worthy of her savant talents.

Hamish crouched down. Peering at the other miniature woman, whose expression now seemed more perplexed than jubilant as she argued with Professor Noozone, fists provocatively planted on her hips, casually tossing back lustrous brown hair with a single gray streak. For some reason, this perspective made Lacey seem not just “cute” but even more alluring-sexy to Hamish, rousing another flare of curiosity in some primitive corner of his mind.

The tru-vus replied with an answer he never consciously asked for.

L. Donaldson’s body image: 95 percent accurate re-creation of her true self at age forty-two.

Hamish blinked.

Damn, she was a babe!

And why must I be saddled with realistic, male, scatterbrained visual reactions? I thought we’d be above all that, in here.

Shaking his head for focus, Hamish bent closer and repeated his question louder, interrupting Lacey’s intense labor with the autistic savant and the Jamaican science-maestro.

“Things aren’t so simple,” she answered in a diminuated voice, looking up at Hamish. “Remember, the big sail’s main job was to reflect photons for propulsion, like on old-time sea ship. A telescope mirror needs a different curvature.”

“But its shape is adjustable to many purposes.” Courier joined Hamish kneeling at the boundary. “And it can reconfigure later for propulsion, when they send another laser boost.”

When? Don’t you mean if?
But Hamish kept it to himself.

“That may be,” commented the Oldest Member without stooping or bending. “But of what use is such a device? To stare
back
at the solar system you came from? How could news from home affect your chance of a successful mission? Especially a mission that will fail without more laser pushes.” Clearly, Om didn’t think much of all this fancy, expensive hardware, whatever its purpose.

“I know the sail can reconfigure to be a primary mirror, Courier. In fact, we can tell that it has already started doing so.” Lacey’s voice seemed tinny from size and scale effects. “What confuses me is the design of the array behind us! An imaging telescope would need just
one
secondary mirror back there, not hundreds!”

Professor Noozone, now dressed oddly in formal white evening wear, looked up from an instrument. “I-mon can now tell you some-t’ing just plain obeah weird … dat just
half
of de many-petaled flowers dat are opening behind us are concave reflecting mirrors.

“De
other
hundred are flat
discs.
Opaque-mon. Not shiny at-all.”

“Flat disc? But to what purpose?” Lacey scratched her head, as if it were made of real flesh. “The only use I can think of would be to block or occult the sun. But why do that?”

She waved her hand at the schematic.

“What the heck
is
all this? And how is it supposed to help us spread the Cure?”

Hamish had nothing to contribute. And if there was one thing he hated in the universe, it was having nothing to say.

So … it came with distinctly-dramatic pleasure when he noticed something to comment on. Something happening far below in the magic-laden mists of the probe’s interior.

“Hold on everybody,” he announced, staring past Lacy into the depths. “I think we’re about to have a visitor.”

*   *   *

They all made out a humanoid figure climbing from the inner reaches, starting minuscule but growing rapidly. At first, Hamish reckoned it to be a downloaded person, one of the other AUP passengers. Only this shape appeared simpler, almost two dimensional. It swept higher, rising without effort or any pretense at “walking.”