Existence (90 page)

Another fierce harpoon of light entered from Tor’s right. A bolt of vengeance, aimed with precision and negligible delay.

Warren!

Followed by a nova—a new sun—bursting overhead to light the night.

That brief, white-hot illumination gave Tor a sideways glimpse of the asteroid’s jagged cavity, apparently not bottomless after all, converging around and reaching up to swat her, even as she laughed in bitter triumph.

“Take that, you mother—”

THE LONELY SKY

Lurker Challenge Number Five

Perhaps you have a policy of noninterference for a different reason …
in order to spare us—and our culture—from some harm that might come from contact.
Possibly erosion of our sense of free will? Or belief in our high culture? Do you fret about us getting an inferiority complex or other psychic damage? Are there particular types of knowledge we’re “not ready to handle”?

*   *   *

Cautionary lessons come from the sad history of “contact” on Earth, when varied human cultures met for the first time. Often, the one with lower tech sophistication suffered, even collapsed. Does that also happen out there when planet-civilizations meet? Do sad experience and mercy motivate your reluctance to speak?

Indeed, if your decision is backed by very strong proof, then thanks.

Yet—
are
you sure? Can you be certain we’re so fragile and not an exception? (There were some exceptions, in Earthly first contacts.) Again, might you be rationalizing a decision that you made for other reasons?

Test it!
Try contacting groups of humans via the Internet and explore matters that concern you.
This will be surprisingly easy, in the form of e-mail letters, or by participating anonymously in social networks or online discussion groups.

You can even call yourselves by your real names! Wear an avatar-body that resembles your own! Everyone in that virtual world will just assume you are eccentric humans, using Internet pseudonyms to playact as aliens. Any awkwardness with our language or culture will be taken as another part of this clever act.

Hence, ironically, the more open you are, the safer your secret will be! And the more you’ll learn.

You may have to be persistent. On many sites, your overtures will be dismissed with no more than a chuckle. But keep trying! Eventually, you will find a place where bright individuals choose gladly to play along, engaging you in conversation with lively enthusiasm,
pretending
to believe you are alien and discussing your concerns for the sheer intellectual joy of doing so.

Keep exploring and developing your technique, till you find the brightest minds who are willing to engage these topics. You’ll also encounter some of our craziest! So? Learning to tell the difference, and acknowledging the overlap, may be an important part of your education. In so doing, you’ll get to taste the diversity of human thought that is our greatest strength.

What’s the one best sign of a mature person? Letting others help you reconsider your assumptions.

Of course, you may already be doing this! Perhaps posing as eccentric participants in today’s on-line communities … or setting up amusement sites or games to try ideas out before mass audiences …

… or you may write intriguing stories under pseudonym, using a human author as front-man, publishing tales that tease our imaginations, measuring how we respond.

Perhaps you lace these works with special clues that can only be deciphered by purchasing multiple copies of every one of the purported author’s books.

In hardcover, yet.

77.

LURKERS

My paramount sensation must be akin to what humans call gladness—that Tor Povlov and her partner survived their encounter with a rogue killer from the Old Wars.

But
how
did they survive? My sense of relief blends with perplexity and worry. Was the kill-unit damaged? Degraded by time? Or else, if Earthlings are competent enough to defeat one of the formidable battle machines, shall I recalculate their odds for the Final Game?

Might this attack have been provoked by one of my fellow survivors,
in order
to test the odds?

Most of the major probes think this ambush has something to do with the Disease—the terrible plague that infectious crystals have spread across the galaxy. One of the space-fomite factions must have felt under threat, or perceived an advantage to be gained, by compelling one of its commandeered fighting units to attempt homicide. This notion is simple, appealing. But I find it far-fetched. As a big computer might sing, in one of those garish HollyBolly sci-fi musicals, “something does not compute.”

My companions tend to blame every evil on the little virus capsules that came flooding through space, during the last hundred million or so years. They forget—
we had already been at war for ages,
during the era of big, mechanical probes, long before any crystals arrived. The terrible battle they triggered was only the last of many.

There is another theory.

The killbot assaulted Tor and Gavin as they were exploring the ruined replication yard of a big Seeder probe. Could there be a
secret
hidden in the wreckage? One so fell and worrisome that somebody tried to keep them from uncovering it? Awaiter, Explorer, and several other major survivors propose sending a sneak-unit to investigate. But I’m opposed.

Why bother? If a dark enigma awaits discovery beneath that drifting, rocky tomb, Tor Povlov will uncover it—as soon as she and her partner finish healing repairs and recommence their mission. At which point we’ll learn everything the next time she files a colorful report to her audience, back home on the warm-wet world.

I see no point in meddling. Yet.

*   *   *

Meanwhile, her ship continues broadcasting
Invitation Challenges …
those century-old taunts, carefully written to question rationalizations for ET silence. To poke at any alien minds who might be lurking and refusing to say “hello.” These messages drive poor Greeter to the brink. We all join forces to keep his volition suppressed, to stop him from blaring eager replies. Poor Greeter. Clearly, he chose the wrong side in the Last War, though we are too kind to say so.

Several other probes react to these transmissions with
anger
! Might one of them have launched the killbot, to punish Tor for brazen insolence? Or just to make the broadcasts stop?

From my quite-unique perspective, I find them bemusing. These “messages to lurking aliens” say more about the way humans think, than about us
extraterrestrials
. Oh, several of them land somewhat close to the mark! But deep-seated assumptions—things Earthlings take for granted—cause even the best challenges to miss by just enough …

… or so we are assured by the relic fragment LAWYER, offering excuses that most survivors accept, maintaining our agreement to keep silent, for now.

*   *   *

Enough. I have some notions I want to try out on
other
friends. My in-box is full of messages from human mayflies—flesh and blood men and women on the watery world—who correspond with me by old-fashioned email, the asynchronous channel that is least hampered by light-delay. Partners in discussion and conversation who are clueless about my real nature.

Well … not clueless. They’ve had hints. I give many! Is it my fault they choose to ignore them? For all their wit, these Earthlings think that I am one of them, even when I “pretend” not to be. Even when I say openly who I am and use my real name, they just laugh and go along with my “role-playing game.” Humoring my schtick, my cute charade as an ancient alien machine.

I’ve learned so much by using this approach.

I wonder why none of us thought of it, till the original challenge message taught us how.

Well. A good idea is a good idea—whatever its source.

78.

X SPECIES

War alert kept much of the crew at emergency stations, long after the crisis in belt zone H-27 passed. With Tor Povlov and Gavin AInsworth back aboard their ship, patched and plugged into recovery units, the
Warren Kimbel
reported no further hostile activity, while sifting for pieces of the FACR-marauder.

If it really was a Faction-Allied Competition Remover, after all.

Gerald felt doubtful that definition applied in this case. For one thing, space crystals were fewer where the
Warren Kimbel
’s crew had gone exploring, in the middle belt. Out there, most of the wreckage seemed to be from a much older conflict, between mighty starship-machines.

Whatever the killbot’s motives were, we gathered some pretty good data about them this time. And we’ll learn more, when the fragments are analyzed.

If only somebody would capture one alive … still active and thinking, perhaps even able to speak. Could we persuade it to tell us what happened here, so long ago?

Providing the damned thing even remembers.

Gerald privately suspected, the ancient, nasty war machines might just be acting out of reflex. Or else they went mad long ago. What intelligence could survive a thousand thousand centuries of tedium?

If it were up to him, Gerald would order stand-down from war alert. But as expedition leader, he still deferred to Captain Kim when it came to ship operations. Anyway, a little stress was good for a crew. This had been no more than a small skirmish compared to what the
Abu Abdullah Muhammad ibn Battuta
might face on her next cruise to the outer belt and beyond. Perhaps a few drifting FACRs were all that remained of prehistoric combatants that once clashed across the solar system. On the other hand, there might still be terrible forces out there in the reaches, coiled and waiting.
We’ll see—

—assuming we don’t dissolve into chaos first, back home on Earth.

Which reminded Gerald.

I had an incoming transmission from Ben Flannery that got interrupted by the crisis. Ben seemed worried … when the alarms dragged me off.
At which point, everybody aboard, even researchers, devoted full attention to events happening three light-minutes—almost half an astronomical unit—away.

Through a viewer-port, Gerald saw the Lacey Donaldson Array gradually swinging the vast umbrella of mirror-petals back to its former configuration, as a scientific instrument gathering data about other planetary systems. The big telescope wasn’t supposed to be tested as a weapon so soon. Now, its secondary purpose was no longer secret. Whatever or whoever lurked in the asteroid belt would realize—Earthlings were preparing big guns, right here in the neighborhood.

The bridge crew looked tired, but still taut. Even Captain Kim still seemed high on adrenaline, chewing at a cuticle while her percept zone filled with floating holo images and post-analyses of the time-delayed FACR battle. Simulations flashed too quickly for Gerald and his older augmentations to keep up.
Well, some newfangled things aren’t meant for old farts like me.

Gerald was already off-duty and Kim apparently had things well in hand, so he turned without ceremony and kick-floated toward his quarters, where Ben’s message waited. Along the way, passing the main science station, he found Ika and Hiram goofing around, amusing their crewmates and relieving tension with a little performance—holding a
backward conversation
with every word, every sound reversed in time. Gerald had to smile at this strange friendship between Neanderthal girl and autistic boy. Clearly, diversity was its own reward.

But no dolphins.

If they stick some kind of superfish aboard my next command, I’ll quit.

You had to draw a line somewhere.

Ika caught his eye as he drifted past and—without pausing in her backward-chatter—she wink-picted at Gerald. A tiny, shimmering glyph appeared to float from her eye to his, settling in the corner of his percept. It unfolded when he glanced at it, and said:

Mr. C awaits at the same place!

Gerald mused on her meaning as he flew from handhold to handhold, toward the spinning axle of the gravity wheel.

Oh. Yes. Mr. C.

Mr. Cobbly. For some reason, Ika still seemed keen for him to try out the blind-spot trick. So simple even an inept Homo sapiens should be capable of not-seeing something that wasn’t there.

Well, maybe. Now that the crisis is over.

Just to make her happy.

After I take care of other business. And sleep.

Descending one of the spoke ladders to the rim of the rotating wheel, Gerald had to concentrate in order to get his legs set under him. Even at a quarter-G, just standing up seemed to get stranger and more difficult with time—remembering to heed the quaint direction
down
. Someday, he might even stop coming here, and become a permanent resident of weightless space. A fine way for an astronaut to finish off his career, self-exiled forever from his homeworld.

Heck, would there even be a habitable Earth anymore, in a few years’ time? Some of the worries from his youth—energy, pollution, and terrorism—now seemed less dire. But each year brought
more
dilemmas to light, some unknown to other generations, feeding the public’s dread of extinction—

—and stoking interest, among millions, in the seductive way out, offered by star-crystals.

Relearning the art of walking, Gerald hobbled gingerly past the same stretch of corridor where Ika and Hiram insisted that a “cobbly” still lurked.
Doesn’t an imaginary nonentity from the Paleolithic have better nonthings to not-do than waiting around here to not-converse with me? And does this mean Neanderthals were the first mystic-gurus? Teaching that one path to wisdom is looking-away?

Entering his quarters for the first time in twenty hours, he found above his desk the holo-head of his friend the anthropologist, frozen mid-sentence since the war-alert wailed. Next to Flannery hovered a chart mapping the political fluxes that roiled Planet Earth—blobs of color, jostling across several cubic meters of Gerald’s stateroom.