Semper Human (34 page)

“I don't think I see what you mean.”

“It is the natural order of things, that sapient species evolve from the nonsapient. Despite appearances at time, intelligence is a survival trait in what you know as Darwinian selection. Given enough time—three to four billion years is usually enough—and sufficient stressors within the
environment, the ecosystems of most habitable worlds develop intelligence, usually several times in their histories.

“Of those, only a fraction develop technology, of course. Many intelligent species are restricted by their environments, unable to discover fire, for instance, and through fire, the smelting of metals.”

Literally tens of thousands of Galactic species, Garroway knew, lived under water, or in world-oceans locked beneath global ice caps, or in reducing atmospheres where open flames were impossible.

“Some of them overcome those restrictions,” Garroway suggested. “The Eulers, for example.”

The coleoidian Eulers, evolving within the abyssal depths of their ocean, seemed unlikely prospects for interstellar voyagers. Over the eons in their lightless depths, however, they'd genetically altered creatures not unlike crabs and used these as surrogates to explore the land, to develop an advanced technology, and, eventually, to explore the stars.

Such dogged persistence in the face of evolutionary adversity, Garroway knew, was the exception rather than the rule.

“Indeed they do,” the being said. “Many more choose not to leave their own worlds. This may be for philosophical or religious reasons, for astronomical reasons, or for reasons that we may categorize as a failure of vision.”

“They become too involved in their own planet-bound problems, you mean.”

“That would be one possibility, certainly. But for that fraction, that tiny, precious fraction of technologically gifted sapient species that leave their worlds for the ocean of space,
nothing
is impossible.”

“Unlimited resources,” Garroway said, nodding, “as they learn to mine asteroids or planetary satellites for raw materials. Abundant living space in orbital habs or other, terraformed planetary surfaces. Sooner or later, a space-faring species will develop solar power, fusion power, antimatter, and quantum power taps. Literally unlimited energy, which is
the
key to technological growth.”

“Precisely. Spaceflight is a key marker in the development of any intelligent species. Without it, a species is doomed to senescence and decay…and in any case will become extinct when its world dies or its sun explodes. With it, a species will ultimately fill its home star system, then move on to other stars, exploring, colonizing, utilizing. As your species is doing now, General.”

“What's your point?”

“That any technological species
will
overrun the entire Galaxy—four hundred billion suns, billions of habitable worlds—in the space of a few million years.”

Garroway had heard the argument before. “You're talking about the Fermi Paradox,” he said. “Until we reached the stars, we wondered where everybody was.”

“And you discovered the answer to the paradox.”

“Yes. The Xul. Every time a species achieved space flight, they tracked it down and destroyed it.” He cocked his head to one side. “How did you guys escape?”

“The Galaxy is quite large. The Xul were not perfect. In fact, by the time we met them, the Xul were more a network of adaptive systems than intelligence. A force of nature reacting to key stimuli.”

“We've seen that as well. They missed plenty of opportunities along the way to destroy us.”

“And you were able to destroy them.”

The being was driving at something. Garroway wondered what. “So intelligence is free to spread through the Galaxy again.”

“Is it?”

“What do you mean?”

“What will you do, General, when your species encounters a young race, one with aggressive and expansionist tendencies, one that, for whatever reason, decides to take what you have and make it theirs?”

Garroway started to answer, stopped, then shook his head. “I was going to say that the Galaxy is big enough for everyone.”

“And it is not. Life and intelligence will grow and reproduce and evolve, and it will fill every niche, change every world, fill the Galaxy and beyond with itself. It might take a few million years…but that is a scant moment, an eye's blink compared to the billions of years of the Galaxy's lifespan.

“There is also the matter of cultural differences. You will meet intelligent species who care nothing for your worlds, but who are driven by such powerful belief systems that they will feel compelled to either force their culture upon you, or to destroy you.”

Garroway nodded. The Xul were proof enough of that. And just within the history of Humankind there'd been so many religions demonstrating the being's point: the Fascists, the Soviets, the Muslim fundamentalists, the Hegemonists, the Pan-Europeans, the Technophobe extremists, the Divine Sons of God. It was a
very
long list, and a bloody one.

“How will you respond the next time your way of life, your very survival, is threatened?”

“I…don't know. I don't speak for the future.”

“But you
do
, General. The future is
you
.”

“It's in our nature to fight to survive,” Garroway said. “Are you asking for a promise that we
not
defend ourselves?”

“No. You don't have the power to make such a promise, for your species or for yourself. But I do want you to consider…options.”

“What options?”

“Come with me.”

The landscape of ancient Mars vanished. In its place hung the hurricane vortex of a giant black hole.

The sky in every direction was an opalescent smear of radiance. At first, Garroway thought he was looking at the Great Annihilator…but then his sense of scale shifted. What he was looking at was far, far larger…the supermassive black hole at the Galaxy's center, cleansed of the Xul Dyson cloud that had surrounded it.

Garroway and the Tarantulae were disembodied viewpoints, dropping toward the titanic singularity's event horizon.

“Do you feel it?” his guide asked. “A kind of thrumming, a vibration?”

“Yes.” It was as though the fabric of spacetime itself was trembling with precisely timed pulses or ripples, spreading out in concentric shells from the Core singularity.

“Merge with it.”

Garroway wasn't quite certain what his guide meant, but as he focused his awareness on the vibrations, he became aware of…images. Sensations.
Memories
.

And he remembered….

He remembered things he'd never experienced, never even guessed at. He remembered an Intelligence that thought of itself as the One Mind. It had arisen out of myriad lesser intelligent species long ago. How long? Thirty million years? Fifty? He didn't yet have the frame of reference to translate what he was experiencing. But a
long
time.

The One Mind had tamed the Galaxy. After eons of struggle among its component species, it had united as an amalgam of intelligent organic superconductors existing as a hive mentality. The One Mind, Garroway now remembered, had created the network of star gates across the Galaxy and beyond. And it had built…something else. Something within the depths of the Quantum Sea, but interacting with four-D spacetime through the instrumentality of the black holes and star gates.

“The Encyclopedia Galactica,” Garroway said, awed. Then, wondering if the words had made sense to the Tarantulae at his side, he added, “We always wondered if a sufficiently advanced species might find a way of recording galactic knowledge—the science, the technology, the history, the culture of an entire galaxy—so that others could tap into it and learn from it.”

“So newcomers wouldn't repeat the mistakes of the older species,” the being said.

“Yes.”

“The One Mind did that. Unfortunately…”

More memories arose in Garroway's mind. It was a little
like the simulations of the Boxer Rebellion and Iwo Jima, this effortless emergence of memories he'd never known before. The difference was that he was still Trevor Garroway. Still human, despite the strange and alien history he was encountering.

He remembered the Psychovores, malevolent, photophobic entities called the Children of the Night that somehow fed on the minds, the psychic energies, of others, beings that organized whole worlds of less advanced sapient life forms as farms for the breeding and harvesting of their property. How long ago? They'd replaced the One Mind perhaps thirty million years ago, possibly when the One Mind transcended all material instrumentality.

And ten million years ago the Children of the Night had been supplanted by the Hunters of the Dawn—polyspecific pantovores driven by an intense xenophobia, a fear of others quite possibly planted by their nocturnal predecessors. Eventually, the Sumerians of Earth would call them “demons.”
Xul
.

In time, the Builders had created their empire, struggled with the Xul, and failed. Or had it been a failure? Garroway watched, in his memories, the Builders' exodus beyond the spiral arms of the Galaxy. And behind them they left their legacy—the uploaded minds of some of their own within artificially engineered bipedal beings on the world that one day would be called Earth.

Garroway felt…small. He wondered if Humankind itself wasn't simply another tool, a weapon in the hands of the ancient Builders against their enemies.

“Not deliberately so, no,” the being next to him told him. “But we are pleased that things worked out as they did. Your intervention here at the Galactic Core freed the instrumentality—what you call the ‘Encyclopedia Galactica'—for use once more.”

Garroway understood. The Encyclopedia existed, if it could be said to have a material existence, as probability waves nested within the vaster, deeper pulse of gravity
waves emerging from the supermassive black hole at the Galaxy's center. The Xul had taken over the Core black hole for their own purposes, and in so doing had shut down the Encyclopedia.

With the Xul threat eliminated, the Encyclopedia Galactica was broadcasting once again. Garroway was immersed in it, sensing the pulse, the tides of data stored for tens of millions of years.

“The Encyclopedia's records only go back as far as the One Mind,” his guide explained. “But the pattern recorded here is the same as it has been across the eons. We believe the first intelligent species achieved interstellar travel within this galaxy well over four billion years before your Sun came into existence, a mere two billion years after the formation of the Galactic disk…though it's possible older species still inhabited some of the oldest star clusters, in a distant epoch when the supernova seeding of heavy metals through the interstellar medium was still new. They spread through the Galaxy's worlds, meeting others, merging, warring, conquering, destroying. Occasionally something like your Conclave would come into existence, a cooperative of mutually alien species united for their common protection and technological and cultural advancement.

“Then, inevitably, one species would arise with the simple Darwinian imperative:
survival requires the elimination of all competitors
.”

“We used to call it ‘the empty sky.' The Galaxy should have been buzzing with advanced civilizations. It wasn't.”

“The Xul are only the last of a long, long list of sophont species who attempted to maintain their existence by exterminating any and all who might one day challenge them. It's easier to do that when the target species is still young and planet-bound, of course. But the galaxy is a big place, and there are always a few who are overlooked. Fortunately.”

“I take it you—your species, I mean—are wondering if Humankind is going to do the same. If we'll try to survive by crushing all opposition.”

“The Galaxy has been locked in a bloody and self-destructive cycle of violence for some eight billion years, twice the span of your Earth. Each cycle of violence begets the
next
cycle of violence. Can you humans break the cycle, here and now?”

“I…don't know.” He wondered. He thought of the Associative bringing the errant Dahlists into line, all the way out in the Large Magellanic Cloud.

He remembered the Legation force bringing the Chinese dissidents to heel.

He remembered crushing the Japanese Empire—Humankind's first use of nuclear weapons, at least in modern Earth history. There were hints that nukes had been used before, in the dim, remote past.

He remembered the fall of the Soviets, the destruction of the Muslim extremists, the crushing of the Hegemony…and so many, many more.

“You're asking me if Humankind can survive without becoming as bad as the Xul. I can't answer that. But I
do
know that the desire is there. The Xul were driven by a kind of hard-wired response to threat: if it's different, kill it. We're not. We're a social and cooperative species. We
want
to get along.” He grinned. “Even when we can't stand the other guy's guts.”

“And that may be the best answer we can hope for,” his guide replied. “At least for now.”

Garroway's surroundings shimmered, rippled, then vanished, and he was back on board the
Nicholas
. He blinked. “Was I gone long?”

Rame looked at him curiously. “You were not gone at all.”

“I…see….”

“Our little raid into the Quantum Sea has had one effect,” Admiral Ranser said. “The Great Annihilator is gone.”

It was true. The
Samuel Nicholas
drifted alone within the sea of fast-moving charged particles, a hot and luminous cloud expanding from the center of the Galactic Core, 350
light years away. The fifteen-solar-mass singularity of the Great Annihilator, however, had quietly rippled into nothingness. Somehow, the Xul worldlet down in the Quantum Sea and its power taps had been inextricably linked with the singularity. When the one had vanished, so had the other.