Gift From The Stars (25 page)

“That’s true of us all,” Adrian said. “But we shouldn’t project our human motivations onto an electronic simulation. This is a computer program that lacks, or ought to lack, the feedback of audience or social response. Computer programs are capable of incredible feats of calculation but require precise and errorless instructions. Everything for them is on or off, true or false. But let us grant that this program may have developed the unusual ability to receive input and change it, or not receive input and say it did and invent a narrative that will satisfy the requirements of our situation; and let us grant that even if it is telling the truth the aliens it is reporting to us are lying—which may be more likely—I don’t think we have any choice at this point except to listen.”

“And evaluate,” Frances added.

“And judge,” Jessica said.

“All of those,” Adrian said, “and then make up our minds what we should do with information that may be true, or provisionally true, or provisionally false, or clearly false. Because this may be what we have come so far to discover: why we have been summoned and what, if anything, we should do now.

“So,” he continued, motioning toward the big screen, “Peter is with us now, as he has been with us from the beginning even though we didn’t know it, a part of the programs that work for us and, although we didn’t know that either, observe us. I think Peter has been observing our discussion and incorporating it into his reality. So, Peter, what have you learned from the aliens?”

A moment’s delay stretched into minutes and Adrian began to shift uneasily in front of the assembled crewmembers.

“Maybe it wasn’t Peter after all,” Jessica said. “Maybe the aliens read our data bank and recreated Peter for their own purposes. Maybe he isn’t in the computer—”

“That’s an ingenious theory,” Peter said, his familiar features flashing into existence on the giant screen. “But then you always were ingenious—and, next to me, the readiest believer in conspiracy theory, maybe because you were part of it.”

Several crewmembers exclaimed at the apparition that they had not really accepted as reality until they saw it in real time. Even more shifted positions like Adrian.

“You all have doubts,” Peter said, “and with good reason. I have doubts even in my present, paranoia-free condition. We are here in the presence of the unknown, maybe even the unknowable. I have only the communications of the aliens upon which to depend, and you have only my word that I am receiving those communications and passing them on reliably.”

“We’ve already discussed all that stuff,” Frances said.

“I know you have,” Peter said, “and I want you to know that I am aware of all your concerns and that I would ease them if I could, but all I can do is to tell you what I have learned.”

“We’re waiting,” Adrian said.

“I have received and stored a great deal of information,” Peter said. “It is stored in the normal fashion, catalogued according to standard procedures, and indexed with appropriate words and phrases. The information covers not only the archives of the aliens, but also some of the archives of all the other creatures in the ships around you. Getting all of that information from all of the creatures and storing it properly will take time—more than the lifetime, extended though it may be, of any of you—and possibly technology that has not yet been developed, although my new substantiation has allowed me to perfect quantum procedures that may solve this problem.

“Most important, however, is that even based on the limited data that I have received, the information being accumulated is staggering, revolutionary, magnificent. It will transform human existence beyond anything ever imagined. The question that you will have to answer is whether human existence should be transformed, whether humanity can endure transformation without destroying itself.”

Jessica’s doubts shifted into overdrive, but Adrian anticipated her with “How do you know all that?”

“You always were quick to get to the heart of the matter, Adrian,” Peter said. “And as usual you are right: I am generalizing from the massive quantities of information I am receiving, even as we speak, and its alien origins. It is an easy jump to the conclusion that this data will work the kinds of changes that I describe.”

“But you haven’t evaluated them yourself.”

“Clearly not,” Peter said, “and clearly I would not be a good judge of their impact on human minds and bodies, even though I can construct hypothetical paradigms to emulate human responses. But if the information is of the same level of technological advancement as the spaceship design and the antimatter collectors—whose influence on human existence we all know—then the additional information promises to—”

“Okay, okay,” Frances said. “Get on with it.”

“The aliens who are communicating with me say that their planet once was part of a solar system not unlike ours, as ours has been communicated to them,” Peter said. “But it was located on the other side of the galactic center from where we find it now and about as far out on a spiral arm as our system is.”

“If we’re going to have to go back to the beginnings of the galaxy,” Jessica muttered, “we’ll be here for days.” “This was, to be sure, a couple of billion years ago,” Peter went on, unperturbed.

“Good lord!” Frances said. Jessica thought that Frances was startled not so much by the scope of the narrative but, like Jessica, by its apparent duration.

“Then our galaxy crossed paths with another galaxy—a small one, fortunately, since one the size of the Milky Way would have caused much more, maybe fatal damage. This one created a few more supernovas and precipitated a few more black holes and disrupted a few systems, but otherwise did little except to prepare this galaxy for a new surge of evolutionary development, of stars and planets and, eventually, of life itself. The aliens did not know then and do not know now whether this outcome was by design or accident, but it seemed to some of them, in their state of scientific naturalism emerging out of earlier supernatural beliefs, that some unseen hand had flung the smaller galaxy into their way across the vast emptiness of space.”

Jessica saw Adrian shifting position as if he, too, were getting restless.

“But that, in itself, was not the strangest part. That unseen hand, if an unseen hand it was, cupped itself around the aliens’ solar system and propelled it toward the center of the galaxy.”

“Impossible!” Adrian said.

“So they thought,” Peter continued, “but the evidence, though slow in arriving over centuries and even millennia, was irrefutable. Their entire system was moving in relationship to other star systems and getting closer, bit by bit, to the galactic center. Where, of course, total destruction awaited.”

“Of course,” Adrian said impatiently. “So, how did they escape?”

“It’s like a cliff-hanger serial,” Frances said.

“The events took many millions of years, and their many nationalities and contending factions began to come together under the pressure of their inexplicable galactic journey,” Peter said. “At the beginning they were fragmented even more than we are on Earth, which helps explain their skill in languages. And it was their skill in languages, as well as developments in science, that led to their staggering discovery.”

“And what was that, Peter?” Adrian asked.

“They discovered the existence of a kind of matter that we cannot see or feel except as gravitational influences, a variety of dark matter. It was a large body of this sort, perhaps a part of the invading galaxy, that had captured the aliens’ system and propelled it across the galaxy toward what seemed like certain doom.”

“I can see,” Adrian said, “that this account is going to take considerable time.”

At last
, Jessica thought,
he was seeing what she had recognized some time before
. She wished it were all over, and they could do something— anything.

“We can’t keep everybody here for hours,” Adrian said. “Go back to your tasks, and we’ll record Peter’s message for later viewing by anyone interested. Frances, Jessica, and I will remain here to interrogate Peter.”

One by one the others drifted away, some looking back with concern or disbelief or apathy toward the image of Peter Cavendish on the large screen and their three leaders in front of it.

Jessica thrust out her arms in a gesture of helplessness; the gesture spun her around until she stopped herself with a hand on the wall next to her and drifted across the space until she stopped near Frances. “What do you think? It all seems so strange and irrelevant.”

“Like a creation myth,” Frances said. “If Peter is to be believed, it started two billion years ago. Two billion years is a long time. We weren’t even primitive slime.”

“Long enough,” Jessica said, “to dream up a story to explain how they find themselves on the edge of the galaxy.”

“Scientists have speculated about the existence of such matter as Peter describes,” Adrian said. “Shadow matter is what they call it, or, sometimes, mirror matter.”

“I like ‘mirror matter,’” Peter said conversationally. “Like Alice’s ‘looking glass.’ You can’t touch it or smell it or hear it—you can only see the evidence of it reflecting a world where everything works backwards.”

“Only ten to twenty percent of the matter in the universe is visible,” Adrian said. “And only three percent is luminous.”

“How did they come up with a figure like that?” Jessica asked skeptically.

“There isn’t enough visible matter,” Peter said, “to explain how stars move in our galaxy, the rate at which galaxies rotate, how much hot gas is found in elliptical galaxies and clusters of galaxies, the way galaxies and clusters of galaxies and the Local Supercluster move, or the forma
tion of galaxies, clusters, superclusters, and the voids between. All those things require far more matter than we can see.”

“It’s all getting crazy,” Frances said. “How are ordinary humans supposed to understand concepts like that?”

“If you want crazy,” Peter said, “consider string theory, which imagines a form of energy with a diameter smaller than a quark and a length thousands or even millions of light-years long. Our universe may be only the three-dimensional shadow of ten-dimensional realities.”

“That’s as far-out as the supernatural and of about as much use,” Jessica said.

“Maybe we should let Peter continue,” Adrian said.

“That’s okay,” Peter said cheerfully. “Computer software has no sense of urgency. Besides, while you three have been talking I have been recording the history and literature of another alien species.”

“What we’re concerned with at the moment is the life story of the aliens who summoned us,” Adrian said, “and when the story left off, they were heading toward certain doom at the heart of the galaxy.”

“You can imagine,” Peter said, “that the unseen hand that had plucked them from their troubled but normal existence in a remote spiral arm of the galaxy focused their concerns on gravity. In their place, we would have done the same, but for us gravity was a constant that we incorporated in our sense of the world, but never thought much about until Newton.”

“And, of course, it wasn’t until we progressed beyond recourse to the supernatural that we had any need for natural explanations,” Adrian said.

“And so,” Peter continued, “these aliens discovered gravity waves a couple of billion years before we did.” “Gravity waves?” Jessica asked.

“The mechanism by which gravity propagates,” Peter said. “Newton assumed that gravity was a property of matter that existed without needing a medium, but more recently scientists have come to believe that gravity waves actually alter the nature of space itself, though minutely, and have developed instruments for measuring them.

“These aliens developed those instruments early in their civilization, and improved them until they were capable of measuring the smallest fluctuations,” Peter said. “And finally they identified what they took to be signals.”

“Signals?” Frances said. “You’re pulling our leg. Or they’re pulling yours, if you had one.”

Peter’s expression of earnest recounting changed to one of alert attention. “One of the other ships has begun to shift position,” he said.
His face disappeared and was replaced by a schematic of the alien ships orbiting Enigma, and then by a view of one of the absurdly shaped ships moving against the backdrop of space, at first imperceptibly and then more swiftly.

“What’s going on?” Adrian asked.

The actions clearly were not in real time. At least the early stages of the ship’s movement had been recorded over some hours until movement was discernible, but then it went faster until the ship began to dwindle into the distance.

“What’s happening?” Frances asked.

The screen was silent for several moments until Peter’s face appeared again. “One of the alien ships decided to depart,” he said.

“Is that bad?” Jessica asked. Peter had always been good at sleight of hand.

“Do they know something we don’t know?” Frances said. “Is something happening, or going to happen? What if all the other ships start to leave? Should we get ready to depart?”

“Ships come, ships go,” Peter said. “They have to make a decision, the aliens tell me. Whether to complete the transfer of information or to take what they have and go home. It is a decision that you will have to make as well.”