Starplex (16 page)

Ropes touched the ExOps console. When the image reappeared, the two spheres were joined by only about a tenth of the original globe's diameter. Everyone watched, rapt, silence broken only by the gentle whir of the air-conditioning equipment, as the process reached its inevitable conclusion. The two spheres broke free from each other.

One immediately started curving toward the bottom of the frame; the other, toward the top. As they distanced themselves from each other, the orange reference dots on each of their equators began to take longer and longer to complete their paths--the rotation was slowing down.

Rissa turned to face Keith, her eyes wide. "It's like a cell," she, said. "A cell undergoing mitosis."

"Exactly," said Rhombus. "Except that in this case, the mother cell is some hundred and seventy thousand kilometers in diameter. Or, at least it was before this started happening."

Keith cleared his throat. "Excuse me," he said. "Are you trying to tell me that those things out there are alive? That they're living cells?"

"I finally saw the recordings Jag's atmospheric probe had made," said Rissa. "Remember that blimplike object it saw as it went into the atmosphere? I'd idly thought that it might be an individual life-form--a gasbag creature, floating in the clouds. Earth scientists in the 1960s proposed just such life-forms for Jupiter. But such blimps could just as easily be organelles--discrete components within a larger cell."

"Living beings," said Keith, incredulous. "Living beings almost two hundred thousand kilometers in size?"

Rissa's voice was still full of awe. "Perhaps. In which case, we've just seen one of them reproduce."

"Incredible," said Keith, shaking his head. "I mean, we aren't just talking about giant creatures. And we aren't just talking about life-forms living freely in open space. We're talking about living beings made of dark matter." He turned to his left. "Jag, is that even possible?"

"Possible that dark matter--or some portion of it--is alive?" The Waldahud shrugged all four shoulders. "Much of our science and philosophy tell us that the universe should be teeming with life. And yet, so far, we've only found three worlds on which life has arisen.

Perhaps we've just been looking in the wrong places. Neither Dr.

Delacorte nor I has yet figured out much about dark-matter meta-chemistry, but there are lots of complex compounds in those spheres."

Keith spread his arms in an appeal for basic common sense, and looked around the bridge, trying to find someone else as lost by all this as he was.

And then an even bigger thought hit him, and he leaned back in his chair for a moment. Then he touched his comm control panel, selecting a general channel. "Lansing to Hek," he said.

A hologram of Hek's head appeared in a second framed-off part of the starscape. "Hek here."

"Any luck pinpointing the sources of those radio transmissions?"

Keith imagined the Waldahud's lower shoulders moving outside the camera's field of view. "Not yet."

"You said there were over two hundred separate frequencies upon which you were finding apparently intelligent signals."

"That's right."

"HOW many? Exactly how many?"

Hek's face turned to a profile view, showing his projecting snout, as he consulted a monitor. "Two hundred and seventeen," he said.

"Although some are much more active than others."

Keith heard Jag, on his left, repeat the same bark of astonishment he'd made earlier.

"There are," said Keith slowly, "precisely two hundred and seventeen separate Jupiter-sized objects out there." He paused, backtracking away from his own conclusion. "Of course, gas-giant worlds like Jupiter are often sources of radio emissions."

"But these are spheres of dark matter," said Lianne.

"They're electrically neutral."

"They are not pure dark matter," said Jag. "They're permeated with bits of regular matter. The dark matter Could interact with protons in the regular matter through the strong nuclear force, thereby generating EM

signals."

Hek lifted his upper shoulders. "That might work," he said. "But each sphere is broadcasting on its own separate frequency, almost like .

.

." The Brooklyn-accented voice trailed off.

Keith looked at Rissa, and could see that she was thinking the same thing. He lifted his eyebrows. "Almost like separate voices," he said at last, finishing the thought.

"But there aren't two hundred and seventeen objects anymore," said Thor, turning around. "There are two hundred and eighteen now."

Keith nodded. "Hek, do another inventory of signals. See if there's new activity at a frequency just above or just below the block of frequencies you've identified as being active."

Hek tilted his head as he worked his controls up on deck one. "Just a second," he said. "Just a second." Then: "Gods of the mud and the moons, yes! Yes, there is!"

Keith turned to Rissa, grinning. "I wonder what baby's first words were?"

**EPSILON DRACONIS**

Keith hadn't seen Glass reenter the docking bay, but when he looked up, there he was, coming closer, transparent legs carrying him over the fields of grass and four-leaf clover.

His walking was fluid, beautiful, giving the appearance of being in slow motion even though he was moving at normal speed. The hint of aquamarine--the only color in his clear body--was eye-catching.

Keith thought about rising to his feet but instead simply looked up at the transparent man, sun glinting off the latter 's body and egg-shaped head.

"Welcome back," said Keith.

Glass nodded. "I know, I know. You're frightened. You hide it well, but you're wondering how much longer I will keep you here. It won't be long, I promise. But there is something else I want to explore with you before you go."

Keith lifted his eyebrows, and Glass sat down, leaning his back against a nearby tree. Whatever his body was made of wasn't glass. His tubular torso didn't magnify the patterns of the bark on the other side of it.

Rather, they were seen with only slight distortion.

"You are angry," said Glass, simply.

Keith shook his head. "No, I'm not. You've treated me well so far."

The wind-chime laughter. "No, no. I don't mean you're angry with me.

Rather, you're angry in general. There's something inside you, something down deep, that has hardened your heart."

Keith looked away.

"I'm right, aren't I?" said Glass. "Something that has upset you greatly."

Silence.

"Please," said Glass. "Share it with me."

"It was a long time ago," said Keith. "I--I should be over it, I know, but . . ."

"But it festers still, doesn't it? What is it? What changed you so?"

Keith sighed, and looked around. Everything was so beautiful, so peaceful. He couldn't remember the last time he'd sat outside among the grass and trees, and just enjoyed the surroundings, just--just relaxed.

"It has to do with Saul Ben-Abraham's death," said Keith.

"Death," repeated Glass, as if Keith had used another unknown word like

"quixotic." He shook his see-through head. "How old was he when he died?"

"It was eighteen years ago now. He would have been twenty-seven."

"A heartbeat," sam Glass.

There was silence between them for a moment, Keith recalling his reaction when Glass had dismissed his two decades of marriage in a similar fashion. But Glass was right this time. Keith nodded.

"How did Saul die?" asked Glass.

"It--it was an accident. At least, that's what the HuGo decided. But, well, I always thought it was swept under the rug. You know: deliberately suppressed. Saul and I were living on Tau Ceti IE. He was an astronomer; I was a sociologist, doing a postdoctoral fellowship studying the colonists there. He and I had been friends since our undergrad days; we'd been roommates at UBC. And we had d lot in common--both liked to play handball and go, both acted in StUdent theater, both had the same tastes in music.

Anyway, Saul discovered the Tau Ceti shortcut, and we sent a smallprobe through it to Shortcut Prime. New Beijing was a mostly agricultural colony back then, not the thriving place it is now. Of course, it hadn't yet acquired the New Beijing nickname. It was just "the Silvanus colony' then; Silvanus is the name of Tau Ceti's fourth planet. Anyway, they didn't have many sociologists there, so I ended up in charge of trying to figure out what effect the discovery of the shortcut network would have on human culture. And then the Waldahud starship popped through. A first-contact team had to be hastily assembled; even under hyperdrive, it would take six months for people to arrive from Earth.

Saul and I ended up being part of the party that went up to meet the ship, and . . ." Keith trailed off, closed his eyes, shook his head ever so slightly.

"Yes?" said Glass.

"They said it was an accident. Said they'd misinterpreted. When we cameface-to-face with the Waldahudinfor the first time, Saul was carrying a holographic camera unit.

He didn't aim it at the pigs, of course--no one could be that stupid.

He was just holding it at his side, and then, with a flick of his thumb, he turned it on." Keith sighed, long and loud. "They said it looked like a traditional Waldahud hand weapon--same basic shape. They thought Saul was readying a weapon to fire on them. One of the pigs was carrying a sidearm, and he shot Saul. Right in the face. His head exploded next to me. I--I got splattered with...

with . . ." Keith looked away, and was quiet for a long moment.

"They killed him. The best friend I ever had, they killed him." He stared at the ground, plucked a few four-leaf clovers, looked at them for a moment, then threw them away.

hey were quiet for several moments. Crickets chirped, and birds sang.

Finally, Glass said, "That must be difficult to carry around with you."

Keith said nothing.

Does Rissa know?"

"She does, yes. We were already married at that point; she'd come to Silvanus to try to fathom why it didn't have any native life, despite apparently having conditions that should have given rise to it, according to our evolutionary models. But I rarely talk about what happened with Saul--not with her, or with anyone else. I don't believe in burdening those around me with my suffering. Everyone has their own stuff to deal with."

"So you keep it inside."

Keith shrugged. "I try for a certain stoicism--a certain emotional restraint."

"Commendable," said Glass.

Keith was surprised. "You think so?"

"It's the way I feel, too. I know it's unusual, though. Most people live, if you'll pardon me my humor, transparent lives." Glass gestured at his own see-through body. "Their private self is their public self Why are you different?"

Keith shrugged. "I don't know. I've always been this way." He paused again, thinking for a long time. Then: "When I was about nine or so, there was a bully in my neighborhood. Some big oaf, probably thirteen or fourteen.

He used to pick up kids and drop them into this thombush in the park.

Well, everyone would kick and scream and cry while he was doing this, and he seemed to feed off that. One day, he came after me--grabbed me when I was playing catch, or something like that. He picked me up, carried me over to the bush, and dumped me in. I didn't struggle.

There was no point; he was twice as big as me, and there was no way I could get away. And I didn't scream or cry, either. He dumped me in, and I simply got myself out. I had a few scrapes and cuts from it, but I didn't say anything. He just looked at me for about ten seconds, then said, 'Lansing, you've got balls. 'And he never touched me again."

"So this internalizing is a survival mechanism?" asked Glass.

Keith shrugged. "It's enduring what you have to endure."

"But you don't know where it came from?"

"No," said Keith. Then, a moment later, "Well, actually, yes. I suppose I do. My parents were both quite argumentative, and had short fuses. You'd never know when one of them was going to blow up over something. Publicly, privately, it didn't make any difference. You couldn't even make polite conversation without risking an explosion from one of them. We'd have family dinners together every night, but I always was silent, hoping we could just get through it, just once, without it being unpleasant, without one of them storming away from the table, or yelling, or saying something nasty."

Keith paused again. "In fairness, there were other issues in my parents' relationship that I didn't understand when I was a child.

They'd started as a two-career family, but automation kept eliminating more and more jobs as the years went by--this was back before they outlawed true artificial intelligence. The Canadian government changed the tax laws so that second income earners in a family were taxed at a hundred-and-ten-percent rate. It was a move designed to spread out what work there was amongst the most families. Dad had been making less than mom, so he was the one who stopped working. I'm sure that had a lot to do with his anger. But all I knew was that my parents were taking out their anger and frustration on everyone around them, and even as a kid, I vowed never to do that."

Glass was rapt. "Amazing," he said. "It all makes sense."

"What does?" asked Keith.

"You."

Keith's mind was reeling. So many discoveries, so much happening. He drummed his fingers on his bridge workstation for a moment, thinking.

And then: "Okay, people, what now?"

The front row of workstations all rotated around on their individual pedestals so that they faced the back row: Lianne was facing Jag, Thor was facing Keith, and Rhombus was facing Rissa. Keith looked at each member of his bridge staff in turn. "We've got almost an embarrassment of riches here," he said. "First, there's the mystery of the stars'

erupting from the shortcuts--stars that Jag thinks come from the future.

As if that's not a big enough puzzle to try to figure out, we've also stumbled upon life--life!--made out of dark matter." Keith looked from face to face. "Given the complexity of the radio signals Hek's been picking up, there's a chance--a small one, I grant you--that we're even looking at first contact with intelligent life. Rissa, it would have been crazy to say this yesterday, but let's make the dark-matter investigations the province of the life- sciences division."