Joe Haldeman SF Gateway Omnibus: Marsbound, Starbound, Earthbound (54 page)

They looked very much like us, with four legs, but only two arms, which at first made them uncomfortable to look at. They also had tails, which made them morphologically similar to the Other-prime, and presumably all the Others.

The first display was kinetic, disassembling a model of the creature, then reassembling it one organ group at a time, which was also uncomfortable to watch but no doubt educational. Likewise, the next display showed mating and budding, processes almost exactly like ours, but strange to watch.

Then it moved from the strictly biological into social, showing a thing like a playground, or the humans’ creche on Mars. Lots of immature ones living together under the supervision of two adults.

This was followed by six similar play scenes, with different details, like the background scenery or the level of technology in the rooms. In two of them the creatures were colored reddish or blue, rather than black.

Carmen figured it out. “They’re different cultures,” she said. “They’re showing the different ways their young are handled, around the planet.” That interpretation was reinforced by the next seven displays, which showed the same different cultures, or races, having meals. Then there were seven showing what appeared to be social gatherings, or perhaps religious meetings. Then seven that appeared to be athletic competitions. This brought us back around to the door.

“Seven different cultures,” I said, “but one species. They’re Martians, aren’t they? Despite having only two arms.”

There was no doubt in my mind that these creatures were our ancestors. And the Others killed them all.

Spy did not respond directly. “Be ready,” he said. “One of you is about to learn a lot.”

I was suddenly overwhelmed, overloaded with information. My legs buckled, and I collapsed, knowing that this was what I was here for, and not liking it.

I first met Fly-in-Amber back when I was “The Mars Girl,” before we knew, or thought we knew, what the different colors of Martians did. I just observed that they wore different colors and seemed to group together by color.

Five years later, we thought it was all sorted out, and his yellow family seemed to be the one that had the most obvious and easy-to-understand function. Absolute memory freaks, who never forgot anything they saw or heard.

Then, in 2079, we found out they had another job—in fact, the primary job of the entire manufactured Martian race: to serve as intermediaries between the Others and Earth’s human race. The Others couldn’t predict with any certainty when, if ever, the humans would develop spaceflight, so they created the Martians and put them on the planet that came closest to the Earth. When a member of the yellow family was taken to Earth orbit, he went into a trance and recited a complex message in a language he couldn’t understand; a language only comprehensible to the Martians’ leader, whom we called Red. He had been studying the language since childhood, knowing, like all his predecessors, that it might be extremely important but not knowing why.

The Others’ message to Red was ambiguous and disturbing. They had the ability to destroy life on Earth but might not do it. Depending on various factors.

Red was supposed to keep this threat to himself, but wound up passing it on to me, and I told Paul. We were overheard, and everything unraveled.

So here we were again, with Fly-in-Amber speaking in a mysterious tongue, but instead of Red, we had Spy to decipher it for us.

Fly-in-Amber had babbled on for about ten minutes, Spy paying close attention. Then the Martian shook himself all over and groggily got to his feet.

“Did I do it again?” he said. “Talk in the leader language?”

Spy confirmed that he had. It was all recorded, and he could hear it back in the relative comfort of the starfish, whenever Fly-in-Amber felt strong enough to move. “Two minutes,” he said, and did some kind of breathing ritual or exercise routine. Then we made our way across the uneven ground, Snowbird shuffling alongside Fly-in-Amber, supporting him.

The interior of the starfish had been reconfigured. There were enough comfortable couches for all of us and, amazingly, a deep pool of water for the Martians. They stripped with comical haste and slid into it. We helped one another out of our suits, too.

There was a table with pitchers of water and plates of what looked like cubes of cheese. Namir picked one up and sniffed it.

“It is food,” Spy said. “Rather bland, I suppose.”

Namir bit into it and shrugged. “Won’t kill us. How long?”

“That partly depends on the message, and your reaction to it.” It sat on the couch nearest to the Martians. “Sit down if you want.”

I ate a couple of the cubes. They had the texture of tofu but less flavor. I wished for salt. And wine. Maybe a whole bottle of wine, and a big steak.

Spy waited until everyone was seated. “As you may have deduced, this planet is where the Others came from, and the people, or creatures, you saw in the displays are their ancestors, in a manner of speaking.”

“The Others didn’t evolve from them,” I said. You didn’t have to be a xenobiologist to see that.

“Not in any biological sense. About thirty thousand years ago there was a profound disagreement, what you might call a philosophical schism. It was about the fundamental nature of life, and the necessity for, or desirability of . . . its ending. Whether thinking creatures should die.”

“They had a way around it?” Namir said. “Not just longevity, but immortality?”

Spy nodded, but said, “No. Not exactly.

“It’s difficult to put this into terms that have universal meaning. That would mean the same thing, for instance, to humans and Martians.”

“But we can agree about what life is,” I said, “and that death is the cessation of life.”

“I don’t think so,” Snowbird said. “That has always been a problem.”

“Don’t get all spiritual,” Elza said. “As a doctor, I can assure you that dead people are much less responsive than living ones. They also start to smell.”

Snowbird held her head with both large hands, a laughter expression. “But the individual was alive in the genetic material of its ancestors, and also will be alive in the ones that follow after the organism dies.”

“Not me. I don’t have any children and don’t expect any.”

“But it’s not limited to that,” Snowbird said. “Before the individual was born, it was alive in the teachings that would eventually form it. Everyone you meet changes you, at least a little, and so becomes a kind of parent. As you yourself become a parent to anybody’s life you touch. It’s the only way, for instance, that humans and Martians can be related. Many of us feel closely related to some of you. Fly-in-Amber and I are closer to you humans here than we are to many Martians.” And I had been closer to Red, I realized, than I’d ever been to my own father.

“I’ll grant that’s true in a certain sense,” Elza said, “but it’s not as physically real as a genetic connection.”

“You claim your brain is not physically changed by accepting new information? I think that it is.”

“This is good,” Spy said. “It’s one aspect of the disagreement between the Others and you people. But only one aspect.

“Over the centuries, the ones who would become the Others physically isolated themselves, first on an island, then in an orbiting settlement, which grew by accretion. The separation became more complete as the ones on the planet encouraged belief systems that were inward-looking, antagonistic to space travel.

“The Others also pursued research into longevity, which most of the ones on the planet came to consider blasphemous.”

“Let me guess,” Namir said. “There was a war.”

“Several, in fact. Or you could see it as one ongoing war with phases that were decades apart. Centuries.

“The Others moved farther and farther out, for their own protection. Meanwhile, their individual life spans increased, up to what seemed to be a natural limit. They couldn’t push it far beyond about eight hundred years, with half of that life span in reduced circumstances . . . basically, alive and alert, but maintained by machines. You see where this would lead?”

It was asking the question of me. “They would . . . devalue what we would call ‘normal’ life? In favor of life partnered with machines? There’s something like that going on on Earth, even now.”

“Really? The Others might want to get in touch with them.”

“That would be fun,” Elza said. “Some of them are halfway aliens already.”

Spy looked at her with an unreadable expression. “Most of this I knew from Other-prime. But Fly-in-Amber added a turning point, a missing link.

“The final separation between the two groups came about when the Others discovered free power, the ability to bleed energy from an adjacent universe.”

“The same as our source of power,” Fly-in-Amber said.

“That’s right. You got it from them, though I take it that neither Martians nor humans really understand how it works.”

“Only how to use it,” Paul said.

Spy nodded. “This discovery allowed the Others to put a safe distance between themselves and the enemy, to move out to Wolf 25’s dark companion.

“They thought that this would make their physical separation complete. At almost the same time, they took total control of their life processes and abandoned their carbon-based form in favor of the virtually immortal bodies they have now.”

“So they downloaded their minds,” Paul said, “into artificial creatures with low-temperature body chemistry.” The Others had told us that their version of organic chemistry was cryogenic, based on silicon and liquid nitrogen.

“It wasn’t as simple as transferring information. Each individual had to die, and hope to be literally reborn in its new body.”

“They had no choice?” I said.

“Apparently they did. But the ones who didn’t change died out long ago.”

“Probably helped along by their successors,” Namir said.

“That could be. I don’t know.

“What I do know is that the ones left behind on
this
planet grew fearful. So they began building this huge invasion fleet.”

“Why on the ground, I wonder,” Paul said. “If they’d put them together in orbit, the ships wouldn’t have to be streamlined. And the net energy saving would be huge.”

Namir laughed. “They wouldn’t have to worry about that. They couldn’t have done this if they didn’t also have the free-energy thing.”

“And that was really what doomed them,” Spy said. “Even without the huge fleet, their discovery of the power source put them essentially next door to the Others.”

Unlike us, I hoped to think.

“Maybe if they’d remained in friendly contact, there might have been some accommodation. But there was no commerce or even communication between the races. So the Others hit them with one overwhelming blow.”

“As they attempted to do with us,” Paul said.

“No, not at all.” Spy shook its head slowly back and forth. “You have to stop thinking that way. The Others posed a problem for you, and you successfully solved it. This Home planet was too close for them to risk that.”

“If there were no survivors.” Fly- in-Amber said, “where did we come from?”

“There’s no direct line of succession. You were modeled after these Home creatures but independently manufactured. There are various anatomical differences.”

“I’m glad we have the extra hands,” Snowbird said, wiggling fingers.

“And you’re organized differently,” Spy said. “Each one of you is born into a specialty, born with its appropriate language and vocabulary. These Home ones were born dumb, like humans, and had to learn language.”

“But they had freedom to do whatever they wanted?” I asked.

“That isn’t known,” Spy said. “The Others left Home before you humans parted company with the Neanderthals.” There was a barely audible scraping sound. “We’re back.”

“Back where?” There hadn’t been any sensation of movement.

“In orbit, on your iceberg.” I moved to where I could see the ports by the air-lock lips. They showed our lander with the transfer cable.

Namir stepped over and looked out. “So. We go on now? To meet the Others?”

The expression on its face was close to embarrassment. “Actually, not all of you. We discussed this, Other-prime and I, with the Others. All of them.”

“Just now?” Meryl said.

“No, we had time to talk with the Others for about a month before we left to meet you here. They discussed various possible courses of action.

“This one is best. Of course, they can’t have a conversation with you in any sense. So they worked out every probable combination of relevant factors and allowed me, with Other-prime, to make the final evaluation and speak for them. Other-prime gave me a final piece of input a few minutes ago.”

“Telepathy?” Dustin said.

It tapped its ear. “More like radio. We won’t kill you all, which was an option much discussed, and still favored by a minority.”

“But you will kill some of us,” Namir said, almost a whisper.

“No, not killing, not like murder. We must take two of you, a human and a Martian, back to the planet of the Others.”

“For how long?” I asked.

It paused, I think not for drama. “It would be forever. You would be joining the Others, physically.”

“Frozen
solid
?” Elza said.

“You would have nitrogen, a liquid, in your veins.”

“The Martian would have to be me,” Fly-in-Amber said.

“That’s right,” Spy said. “The human . . .”

There was a lengthy silence. Paul half raised his hand. “I—”

“You’re the pilot,” Namir said, “and not expendable. I’m the oldest”—he looked at his spouses—“and, among the military people, I have the highest rank. The honor will be mine.”

“No!” I said. “Namir, be practical.”

“It can’t be Moonboy,” he said. “He’s not competent. Did you want to volunteer?” He was smiling, rueful rather than mocking.

“With all respect,” Dustin said, “this is not a job for an espionage specialist. You want a philosopher.”

“A doctor,” Elza said. “I know more about human beings than both of you combined.”

“We should do it by lot,” I said. “Excluding Paul and Moonboy.” When I said it, my stomach dropped. I looked at Meryl, and she nodded, looking grim.