Orphans of Earth (11 page)
Authors: Sean Williams,Shane Dix
“Do you even know whether it’s going to work?”
“Of course not,” he said. “But I figure it’s worth a try. I didn’t know I could merge the AI lobes, either, until I tried it with you. It was just an idea I picked up from something in the library. It paid off, and this might, too. If it doesn’t work, then what’s the worst that can happen?”
Hatzis stared balefully at him. “They’ll know how to modify their hole ships, too,” she said. “They might also have weapons.”
“They do, but they’re not invincible.” Axford indicated the alien with a smirk. “Charlie is proof of that,” he said. “And anyway, they’ve shown a marked tendency to run when confronted. Unless we force them into a corner, as I did here, then I doubt they’ll even want to fight. Like I said, they’re nothing but scavengers.”
Axford glanced significantly at Alander, and Alander wondered what he was trying to tell him. There was a whole other level to the conversation, all of a sudden.
“Excuse me,” he said. “I need a break. The disorientation...”
Axford nodded. “Come back when you’re ready. Caryl and I will work out the finer points together.”
Hatzis looked annoyed but didn’t say anything. “What steps do you plan to take to guarantee the safety of the colony?” she asked Axford as Alander disconnected his presence from the virtual conference. There followed a small jolt of dislocation, then he was back in the smooth emptiness of
Pearl’s
cockpit, alone apart from Thor’s inert body.
“She’s a slippery character,” said a voice from behind him, startling him. “You’ll have to keep an eye on her. Or, I should say,
them
.”
Alander turned on the couch to see Frank the Ax near to the exit, leaning against the wall of the cockpit.
“Tell you the truth,” Alander said, standing, “I’m more concerned about you right now than I am about Caryl.”
Axford’s brow creased. “What do you mean?”
“I think you have your own long-term objectives,” said Alander. “Objectives that might not match ours.”
“And just what
are
your long-term objectives, Peter?” Axford straightened and took two steps toward him. ‘‘Where do
you
see yourself in a year from now? Or a decade, even? A
century
?”
Alander laughed dryly. “I have trouble seeing ahead a month.”
“That’s not true,” Axford replied curtly.
“Maybe not,” said Alander, “but it feels like it, sometimes.” He glanced at the android of Caryl Hatzis, sitting motionless on the couch. “Are you sure she’s not listening to us?”
He nodded. “Four-oh-six is keeping her occupied.”
“I thought his number was ten-twenty-two?”
“It was originally,” he said. “Then eight-ninety-two took over negotiations when you arrived in Hermes. Perfectly seamless. I’m three-fifty-eight,” he said. “The numbers are chronological, so I’m one of the older iterations. I can feel my algorithms getting a little creaky. When I start making mistakes, they’ll be replaced.”
“You mean
you’ll
be replaced, don’t you?”
“Not at all,” said Axford. “I am nothing but the sum of my memories and my personality. The personality is identical in its primary form, and the memories can be copied perfectly from engram to engram. There will be no loss of identity.”
“But it won’t be
you,
will it?”
Axford laughed at his confusion. “You’re grappling with philosophical questions that were of no concern to the original Francis T. Axford. Therefore, as you are well aware, they’re of no concern to me. I’m the ideal person to found a society like this, you know, because at no point am I bothered by such meaningless concepts as the soul. I am a product of what I do and what I remember. There is nothing else.”
Alander put aside the problem for a moment; perhaps, as Axford suggested, the distinction of who was who—
If not us..
.
?
—was irrelevant.
“Anyway,” said Alander, “I’m more interested in what it is you’re doing rather than who exactly it is doing it.”
“And so you should be.” Axford’s expression sobered as he came around the cockpit to face Alander.
Axford was a product of conSense, but he seemed perfectly real. And surprisingly short in person, Alander thought.
“What exactly is it that concerns you, Peter? You should tell me now, before we agree to work together, because I don’t want an ally turning on me in the middle of a tricky maneuver.”
Ally
, Alander noted.
There’s that word again.
“You said these Roaches are reluctant to fight unless cornered,” he said. “I’m assuming you must have trapped them in here when they came to steal the gifts.”
“That’s right,” Axford replied. “There are ways to impede a hole ship’s ability to relocate, you see. The exterior of this habitat bubble has been treated to prevent anyone escaping—”
“
Anyone?
” Alander cut in quickly.
Axford smiled casually. “I haven’t said that you’re prisoners, have I?”
Alander held his gaze steadily. “So
are
we?”
“Well, let’s see what happens when you try to leave,” said Axford, his smile widening. He was enjoying the game, splitting hairs with the precision of atomic force microscopy. “We have a very democratic process, here,” he continued. “We all come to the same decision because we’re all the same person; the votes are invariably unanimous. Could you say the same about your own ragtag collective?”
‘There’s strength in diversity,” Alander defended.
“I know,” said Axford. “Which is why I want your cooperation.”
“And if we don’t want yours?” asked Alander.
Axford smiled faintly. “Unless you seriously disagree with me on matters of policy and the implementation of the same, then you’ll leave here unimpeded.”
Alander snorted a derisive laugh. “Is that a threat? Agree or be incarcerated?”
“Not at all. I would never waste resources keeping you prisoner for long. It’d be much more sensible to kill you and use your hole ship myself.”
Alander could see that Axford wasn’t joking. There was no trace of humor in the man’s gray eyes.
“But I’m not intending to threaten you, Peter. I’m simply stating a strategic reality: if we can’t agree on the basic terms, then it simply wouldn’t be safe for me to let you leave. You know things about this establishment that I can’t afford to have disseminated—that it exists at all, for a start. If the Roaches or the Starfish ever learned what I have here—”
“They won’t even
talk
to us,” interrupted Alander. “How the hell are we supposed to pass on vital information about your base here?”
“You actually have to ask that?” He shook his head as if disappointed. “The way you people spray information around, I’d say being paranoid about it would be the most prudent response. Listen, Peter, you people give away tactical information on the location of your bases, your core population, your resources—everything! All you need is for someone with a communicator to crack your encryption, and you’re in deep shit, my friend. I have no intentions of being dragged down with you.”
As much as he didn’t want to admit it, Alander knew Axford had a point. He had once been a staunch supporter of daily broadcasts designed to alert new colonies to the dangers of using the Spinner communicators. But they had changed in content to become something completely different from what he’d originally envisaged. They were becoming bloated tracts of policy and—as Axford had rightly pointed out—tactical information. And if his earlier comments about the Congress of Orphans weren’t simply a cheap destabilizing tactic, then maybe there was something else in them, too.
“Why would you bring us here at all, then,” said Alander, “if you felt it could be such a risk? In fact, why are you even talking to me
now
?”
Axford smiled. “Your friend here...” He nodded to Hatzis on the couch. “She thinks I want to take over the galaxy—spread through it like a plague or something. And maybe she’s right: maybe one day I
would
like to do just that. But I know that strength of numbers isn’t everything. There could be a billion of me, swarming over your colonies, and all you’d have to do was devise a virus that targets a chink in my personality—and
bam,
you’ve taken me out overnight. So when you say there is strength in diversity, you’re absolutely right. There’s a balance, somewhere, where there’s more than enough of
me
and just the right amount of everyone else to make us all strong. At the moment, I’m simply trying to find the balance.”
“And who, exactly,” Alander asked, “is ‘everyone else’?”
“That’s the billion-dollar question, isn’t it?” said Axford, although he didn’t offer to elaborate.
Alander stared at him, furiously trying to work out what Frank the Ax could possibly want that he didn’t already have. It wouldn’t be something as general as safety or security, because Axford thought in terms of specifics. He must have some specific goal in mind, or else taking such risks as inviting Hatzis and Alander to his main base—regardless of what he said about them being unable to escape—made no sense. He needed them to help him do something. And if he was making Alander work out what it was on his own, and without Hatzis present, then the chances were it was something—
The truth hit him midthought and, when it came, he didn’t know whether to admire the man’s audacity or fear what he could bring down upon them all.
“When you talk about
allies
,” Alander said slowly, “you’re not just talking about us, are you?”
Axford smiled, clearly pleased Alander had worked it out.
“You’re talking about the Roaches,” Alander went on.
“You want them to help you do what you can’t do on your own.”
Alander hesitated on the brink, thinking:
Ultimately it
is
about security, and there’s really only one way to be totally secure
. But it could also be about revenge. “You want them to help you attack the Starfish.”
Axford’s expression became serious as he nodded and said, “Yes, I do. And if I get it right, it won’t be suicide.”
1.2.0
Robert Signh
EXCERPTS FROM THE PID (PERSONAL INFORMATION DIRECTORY) OF ROB SINGH, UNESSPRO MISSION 639,
TESS NELSON (PSICAPRICORNUS).
2160.9.4-11 Standard Mission Time
The gifts are amazing. Sol has researchers in every colony
poking into hundreds of different niches, but I doubt they’re even scratching the surface. I remember when I was a kid and people used to talk about the entire Earth’s knowledge compressed into a single SSDS unit the size of an apple. Well, I bet the Spinners use something a lot more sophisticated than that to store their data, and the Library is simply enormous. Even with our clunky old memory storage devices, there’s enough physical space to hold data from a billion Earths. We could tunnel through such a repository for centuries and not come out the other side.
Nevertheless, we continue to dig away. And at the same time we send robots through the Gallery and collate the images they send back (the layout of each Gallery is slightly different in each colony, for some as yet unknown reason). We chart the stars and planets in the Map Room and marvel at worlds we might one day visit. We poke our noses—gingerly—into dark and dangerous spaces in the Lab, scratching our heads at scientific theories we don’t even know how to read, let alone understand.
We are apes let out of our cages and set free to wander the streets of New York. Is it any wonder I feel lost?
The Gifts themselves don’t make it any easier, picking just one person from every colony to interact with and refusing to speak to anyone else. Is that evidence of a higher purpose or simply designed to frustrate us? I don’t know. But poor old Neil is swamped with requests. He longs to go back into deep time mode and sleep out all the fuss. This isn’t his thing at all, poor sod.
Would I feel any different if I were in his shoes? I don’t know that, either. All I can do is submit my questions with the others and wait as they inch their way to the top of the list. And then, when I get the answers, I’ll probably be as much in the dark as anyone. But it’s not as if I don’t have enough data to get on with. Everyone has access to the research pool. I can browse freely through Nalini’s astrophysical data or Owen’s report on the likely load-bearing properties of the orbital ring material. We didn’t bring an ethnologist, not expecting to find life anywhere near as advanced as us, but Jene, my fellow pilot, has a secondary specialization in that area. She’s making some interesting extrapolations on the races we’re finding in the Library. It doesn’t tell us much about the Spinners or the Starfish, but it does us good to learn something about
someone
out there.
My secondary specialization is in comparative religions. Right here and right now, it isn’t really much use. The gods of Earth are dead. We’re just going to have to make up some new ones.
* * *
Today I found my first error. The Library lists a culture
called the Esch’m (or something approximating that) originating around a type-G supergiant we call 22 Vulpecula, in the constellation of the Fox, about 4,075 light-years away from Sol. There are examples of the Esch’m’s art in the Gallery; it looks like someone blew up a beanbag full of multicolored Jell-O, caught the explosion on camera, then sculpted it upside down and hung it from the ceiling, many times over.
I don’t get it. The images Gallery Droid 9 brought back remind me of scuba diving under a floating mat of seaweed.
But this has nothing to do with the art, except for what the label attached to it says. It clearly states that the art is from 22 Vulpecula and is by the Esch’m. When you look up 22 Vulpecula and the Esch’m in the Map Room and Library respectively, you find they are recorded. The trouble is, the Map Room says that 22 Vulpecula has no solid worlds, just a close companion star, and the Library says that the Esch’m actually come from another G-type supergiant called Azmidiske, in a completely different part of the galaxy. So, a hole. That makes one. Perhaps it’s not surprising or even noteworthy. Think of all those billions of Earths’ worth of data those gifts must contain! I keep trying to imagine just how many cross-referencing errors would be in there if
we
had compiled it. But I don’t think the Spinners are the sort to make mistakes. Either someone’s fooled them, or the data is wrong for a reason.
Lies or honest mistakes? Either way, now that I know errors exist,
they
have become my reason for being.
* * *
Ali came to visit again. Neil had some answers for me;
nothing unexpected, unfortunately. On other fronts, though, the news is good. The boundary of stealth attacks moves ever forwards—
past
us. It seems we’ve been spared, after all. This is a huge relief. Caryl still hasn’t returned from Sothis, so we’ve had no means of escape, no matter how unlikely, for three days now.
“The burden of command getting you down?” I asked Ali. She looked tired.
“You want to swap places?”
“No, thanks.” There are other versions of me running missions in other colonies, but I am deciding that I like my spare time. “The slower I run, the longer I live.”
“Not subjectively. From your point of view, you’ll have just as many years all up. Outside, they’ll be smeared over more time, that’s all.”
“That’s good enough for me. I’m stockpiling, if you like, against the possibility that we don’t get blown to smithereens. Instead of trying to cram as much as possible into what few days we might have left, like you, I’m taking it easy. I’ll want them later, if we live.”
She found that amusing, I think.
“I thought you gave up gambling,” she said.
“I did, but only over trivialities. When my life is on the line, it’s a different story.”
“It changes everything, doesn’t it?” she asked seriously. “Senescence, I mean. Sometimes I wonder why we’re struggling so hard when in the end it won’t make any difference. We’ll still degrade and break down.”
“We’re programmed to keep fighting. It’s that simple.”
“You think so?”
“There’s always hope of fixing us, remember. The Hatzises will see us right—according to the propaganda, anyway.”
“Do you really believe that, Rob?”
“Why shouldn’t I?”
“They had engrams after we left, on Earth. They all died, even after the Spike. You’d think the Vincula, or whatever it was called, could have fixed them if it could.”
I opened my virtual mouth, but no words came out. She had a good point. She left me with it, and for once I was truly glad that I’ve been shunted aside, processing- wise, so that others can think faster than I. While they fall apart, I get to hang on a little longer. The Spinners notwithstanding, I tell myself, I’ll have the last laugh. Or sob, or gasp, or whatever.
* * *
Here’s something. It’s not an error, but it is interesting.
I
found it in the data Caryl Hatzis from Sol provided us with. It seems the equivalent of SETI in the early 2080s picked up a series of alien transmissions from the part of the sky containing the constellation Sculptor. Never translated or repeated, the transmissions ended as abruptly as they began. Their source was never determined.
My first thought was that they comprised evidence of the Spinners’ passage through space, toward us. As Sculptor is in roughly the same direction as Upsilon Aquarius and the other first-hit colonies, it seemed reasonable to assume that the mysterious transmissions could have been the last gasps of a civilization attacked by the Starfish. At last, I thought, we have clear evidence going back more than a few weeks of where the Spinners came from.
Sadly, it isn’t so simple. The math doesn’t work out. The Spinners are traveling through space much faster than the speed of light; they would have rapidly overtaken such a plea for help. The transmission must have left long before the Starfish arrived for us to have heard it so long ago—which, obviously, doesn’t make any sense.
Unless the transmission was intended for us, of course. It could have been broadcast by the far vanguard of the Spinners. If they’d known where they were headed, eighty years ahead, they could have been seeking responses from anyone in the area so they’d know what awaited them. Maybe they sent a probe ahead, like a beacon, to test the water. The trouble with that theory is this: my estimate of where the main Spinner migration must have been at the time those transmissions reached us, given the migration’s current rate of movement through surveyed space and assuming it traveled in a straight line, gives an outside guess of 160,000 light-years, almost twice as far across as the galaxy. That’s mind-boggling. Who thinks
that
far ahead?
* * *
Error number two. This one was so big I would have
missed it completely had Nalini not brought it to my attention.
One of the great things about the Map Room is that it shows us the far side of our galaxy, which is normally hidden from our view by dust. We have no way of checking if the stars the map shows us are actually there, but there are some things we
can
check—such as X-ray sources, for example. We’ve been mapping them for decades. They show up in the Map Room data as black holes, neutron stars, and so on. Most of our guesses were right, which is a relief. At least some of our theories check out.
The trouble is this: there are dozens of X-ray sources in the Milky Way, and all of the ones we knew about check out—except three. Those three don’t appear in the Map Room data at all. According to the Spinners, they don’t exist. As there is no mistaking an X-ray point source for something else, or missing it, this comprises another hole in the data. Nalini doesn’t concur that there has to be something sinister going on, though. Given a choice between blaming the Spinners for fudging the data or thinking we must somehow have cocked it up, she goes firmly for the latter. And I sympathize. I can’t imagine what the Spinners are doing out there that needs covering up (using black holes for wormholes? Spinning down neutron stars to generate power?) but I can’t let the thought go. Two mistakes could be coincidence. Or it
could
be just one step away from a conspiracy.
