Existence

It is a weather and communications buoy.

  The words, floating boldly, briefly, in his lower right field of view, both chided and calmed him. Bin even had the presence of mind not to subvocalize his relief. No doubt this was a rendezvous point. The serpent would use the buoy to summon another vehicle. A seaplane, perhaps. Bin had been on a similar journey before. Well, somewhat similar.

  And yet, after Nguyen’s penguin went to all that effort, covering our tracks while guiding me to sunken Pulupau, the Chinese Special Forces still found us. Found the worldstone. Did they have a spy on Newer Newport? Or did one of their satellites pick up some special color of light, reflected by the stone when it soaked in the sun?

  Perhaps he would never know. Just as he might never learn the fate of Dr. Nguyen. Or Mei Ling and their child.

  Anyway, it seems that someone else followed the Chinese assault team, taking advantage of the chaos to gain an upper hand and win the prize. Who?

  Will my new masters even bother to tell me, when I’m fully in their power?

  Through the little window he saw growing brightness, approaching daylight. The front end of the snake-bot broached amid spume and noise. Bin abruptly had to shade his eyes against a sunshine dazzle off the ocean’s rippling surface. Even with help from the ai-patch, it took a minute of blinking adjustment before he could make out what bobbed nearby—a floating cluster of gray and green cylinders, with arrays of instruments and antennae on top.

  Wriggling gingerly, carefully, the serpaint moved closer to curl its body around the buoy and grasp it firmly. Then Bin saw its mouth open and a tendril emerge.

  It will tap in

  to communicate

  with its faction.

  The floating characters took on an edgy quality, drawn with strokes of urgency.

  You must please act urgently.

  This won’t be easy.

  Blink twice if willing.

  He was tempted to balk, to at least demand answers … like Willing to do what? For whom? To what end?

  But when it came right down to the truth, Bin didn’t care about any of that. He had only one basis to pick and choose among the factions that were battling over the worldstone—and over his own miserable carcass.

  Dr. Nguyen had been courteous and so was whoever programmed the ai-patch. It said please. The snake thing, on the other hand, had been threatening, dismissive, and rude. That mattered. He closed his eyes, two times.

  Good.

  Now you must press close to the window.

  Look at the buoy.

  Do not blink your right eye at all.

  He only hesitated a moment before complying. It was where inquisitiveness compelled him to go.

  At first he saw only an assembly of cylinders with writing on them—much of it in English, beyond his poor grasp of that language. Bin could make out various apertures, lenses, and devices. Some of them must sample air or taste water, part of a planetwide network, measuring a world under stress. On the other side of the floating platform, he spied the snake-robot’s tendril, probing to plug itself into some kind of data port.

  All right … so what are we trying to …

  He stopped, and almost jerked back in surprise as the scene loomed toward him, zooming in on one part of the nearest cylinder. Of course there was nothing new about vision-zooming. But it had never happened within his own eye, before!

  Bin kept still as possible. Evidently, the patch had means of manipulating his organic lens … and using the surrounding muscles in order to aim the eye, as well. He quashed a feeling of hijacked helplessness.

  When has my life ever really been my own?

  Zooming and tracking … he found himself quickly zeroing-in upon one of those gleaming, glassy spots, where the buoy must stare day and night upon the seascape, stormy and clear, patiently watching, accumulating data for the great and growing Grand Model of the World. Suddenly, that gleaming lens filled Bin’s right hand field of view … and he closed the left eye, in order to let this scene become everything. His universe. A single disc of coated optical crystal …

  … that flared with a sudden burst of bluish-green! More shocking, still, Bin realized that the color had come from within his own eye—spearing outward, spanning the gap and connecting …

  I didn’t know the implant could do that.

  I doubt even Dr. Nguyen knew.

  It took every bit of grit and steadfastness to keep from drawing back, or at least blinking.

  Almost in.

  But not quite.

  It seems that—

  The floating characters stayed outside the cone of action, yet somehow remained readable. They throbbed with urgency.

  —you must press your eye

  against the window.

  He rocked back, sickened by the thought.

  Peng Xiang Bin you must.

  Please do this

  or all is lost.

  A low moan fought to escape his throat and he barely managed to quell the sound, along with a sudden heaving in his gut. Gritting his teeth hard, all Bin could think about was the need to overcome raw, organic reflex—passed down all the way from when distant forebears climbed out of the sea. An overwhelming impulse to withdraw from pain, from damage, from fear—

  —versus a command from far more recent parts of the brain. To go forward.

  Using two fingers of his right hand to hold back the lids, Bin let out a soft grunt and pushed his head against the glass so hard that the eye had to come along.

  It was bad.

  Good.

  Not quite so forcefully.

  Hold it.

  Hold it.

  Hold it.

  He held, while greenish flares shot back and forth between his lens and the glassy one on the buoy … and flashing reflections rebounded inside of his right eye, like a maelstrom of cascading needle-ricochets. At one point, his confused retina seemed to be looking at an image of itself, a cluster of blood vessels and sensor cells. He felt boggled by an endless—bottomless—reflection of Peng Xiang Bin that seemed far more naked and soul-revealing than any mere contemplation of a mirror.

  And meanwhile, another part of him wondered in detachment: How do I know what a “retina” is? Is even memory still mine, anymore?

  Worse. It got much worse, as the sea serpent seemed to catch on that something was going on. Its throbbing intensified and a low growl resonated up and down the intestine-like cloaca. Bin responded by clenching hard and holding even tighter.

  All sense of time vanished, dissolved in pain. The little window felt like it was on fire. Using his feet and legs and back, he had to fight a war with himself, and the instinctive part seemed much more sane! As if he were trying to feed his own eye to a monster.

  Then—

  Black, floating letters returned. But he could not read the blurs. They clustered around his fovea, jostling for attention, interfering with his ability to concentrate. Bin sobbed aloud, even as the green reflections faded.

  “I know! I’m … trying to hold on!”

  Finally, the characters coalesced into a single one that filled every space within his agonized eye.

  STOP.

  Meaning took a few more seconds to sink in. Then, with a moan that filled the little compartment, Bin let his body weight drag him backward. He collapsed upon the passenger seat, quivering.

  A minute or so passed. He rubbed his left eye free of tears. The right seemed too livid, too raw to touch or even try to open. Instead of blindness, though, it seemed filled with specks and sparkles and random half-shapes. The kind that never came into focus, but seemed to hint at terrors beyond reality.

  Slowly, a few of the dazzles traded formlessness for pattern.

  “Leave me alone!” he begged. But there was no way to escape messages that took shape inside your very own eye. Not without tearing it away. Oh, what a tempting thought.

  While he cursed technology, clear characters formed. These featured a brightness around the edges that they never had before. And there we
re more differences, like the calligraphy. And something else—a personal flare.

  Peng Xiang Bin, I represent a community—a smart-mob—with members around the world.

  We have taken over this ai-patch.

  So … whatever group originally programmed the device—perhaps it had been Dr. Nguyen’s cabal, or else competitors who managed to sneak something more sophisticated into Bin’s eye—whichever faction provided the software that had made him shove his eye against that glass … it had now been replaced! Some other group out there had pounced and used the brief connection to take over the chip.

  It was all so dizzyingly complicated. In fact, Bin surprised himself by keeping up at all.

  We want to help you.

  More than just the characters’ shape and color were different, he noted. They felt less like the simple responses of a partial ai. More like words sent by a living person.

  He must have subvocalized it as a question, because when they next reconfigured, the writings offered an answer.

  Yes, Peng Xiang Bin, my name is Tor Povlov.

  On behalf of the Basque Chimera, and Birdwoman303, and the rest of our community, let me say how very glad I am to meet you. It took a lot of effort to find you!

  One of the names sounded vaguely familiar to Bin. Perhaps something he once heard in passing, about a fugitive underdog, like himself.

  Now I’m afraid we must insist. Please get up and take action. There is very—

  “I know! Very little time!” He felt on the verge of hysterical laughter. So many factions. So many petty human groups wanted him to hurry, always hurry.

  A groaning mechanical sound. The sea serpaint started to vibrate roughly around him.

  We’ve suborned the machine’s brain to keep the jaws open. It may be temporary.

  He didn’t need urging. With his right eye closed, Bin slipped the worldstone into its carrier, then started crawling forward as the giant robot convulsed. Pushing the worldstone in front, he squeezed through constrictions like fighting upstream against a throat that kept trying to swallow him back down … only to spasm the other way, as if vomiting something noxious.

  Spilling into the mouth, he found its head rising and falling, slapping waves, splashing torrents of spume. The jaws kept juttering, as if trying desperately to close. They might succeed at any moment.

  Scrambling, Bin grabbed a garish tooth, hauling himself and the satchel toward welcoming brightness—

  —only to pause before making his leap.

  Don’t be afraid, Bin …

  “Be quiet!” he shouted and swung the valise with all his might—

  —slamming it against the inner face of the serpent’s left eye casing, which caved in with a brittle, shattering sound. He cried out and did it again to the other one. Those things weren’t going to aim burning lasers at him, once he got outside. Nor was he worried about the worldstone, which survived both space and collision with a mountain glacier.

  Good thinking!

  Now …

  He didn’t need urging. Not from any band of “smart-mob” amateurs, sitting in comfortable homes and offices around the world, equipped with every kind of immersion hardware, software, and wetware money could buy. Their help was welcome, so long as they shut up. While the serpent-machine thrashed and its jaws kept threatening to snap shut, Bin heaved with all his might, scrambling like a monkey till he stood, teetering on the lower row of metal teeth—

  —then leaped toward the buoy, as if for life itself, hurtling across intervening space—

  —only to splash into the sea, just short, with the heavy satchel dragging him down by one hand. His other one clawed at the buoy, fingers seeking any sort of handhold …

  … and failed as he sank past the floating cylinders, hauled by his weighty treasure bag, plummeting toward depths, below.

  Yet, Bin never fretted. Nor was he tempted to release the worldstone, even to save his life. In fact, he suddenly felt fine. Back in his element. Doing his job. Practicing his craft. Retrieving and recycling the dross of other days. Hauling some worth out of the salty, trash-strewn mess that “intelligent life” had made of the innocent sea.

  His free hand grabbed at—and finally caught—the chain anchoring the buoy to the shoulder of a drowned mountain. Then, as the mechanical serpent thrashed nearby, crippled in mind and body, but still dangerous as hell, Bin also seized the metal-linked tether with his toes.

  Maybe there was enough air in his lungs to make it, he thought, while starting to climb.

  If so? Then, once aboard the buoy, he might evade and outlast an angry robot. Possibly.

  After that? Perhaps the help sent by his new friends in the “smart-mob”—or else the Chinese People’s Navy—would arrive before the snake’s clandestine cabal did. Before the sun baked him. Or thirst or sharks claimed him.

  And then?

  Clambering awkwardly but steadily up the chain, Bin recalled something that Paul Menelaua once said, back at Newer Newport, when the worldstone entity—Courier of Caution—denounced the famous Havana Artifact, calling it a tool of interstellar liars.

  “We have got to get these two together!”

  Indeed. Let them have it out, in front of everybody. With the whole world watching. And this time, Peng Xiang Bin would be in the conversation!

  Amused by his temerity—the very nerve of such a vow, coming from the likes of him—Bin kept climbing, dragging an ancient warning toward the light of day.

  Yeah, right. That’ll happen.

  Just keep holding your breath.

  PART SEVEN

  SEA OF TROUBLES

  After centuries of solitary wondering, humanity realized an ancient dream. With the arrival of the First Artifact came proof of civilizations far older than ours. Only, instead of exaltation, that discovery damn near spun us into a death spiral. How did we escape the trap? Have we escaped, even now?

  Was it the Great Debate, pitting that First Artifact against Peng’s Worldstone? Exposing each other’s manipulations, half-truths, and lies?

  Or the bold heroes of the Marco Polo, launching in secret to brave the sterile space-desert—along with fierce lasers, space mines, and human traitors—in order to grab more crystals? Enough of the insidious space-fomites to dissect, test, and finally get answers?

  Or was it a surprise discovery, at the very moment Marco Polo turned for home? When Genady Gorosumov detected strange debris, with no apparent link to crystal chain letters? When we realized: There are more layers to all of this than we ever imagined!

  Other expeditions would come. And more still.

  Could that be what diverted humanity from depression and catastrophe? Something as simple as curiosity?

  —Tor Povlov

  62.

  LURKERS

  Awaiter is excited. She transmits urgently.

  “Seeker, listen!” Her electronic voice hisses over ancient cables. “The little living ones are near! Even now they explore this belt of orbiting rubble, picking through rocks and ruins. Listen as they browse each new discovery. Soon they will find us! Do you hear, Seeker? It is time!”

  Awaiter’s makers were impatient creatures. I wonder how she lasted through the starry cold. My makers were wiser.

  “Seeker! Are you listening?”

  I don’t wish to talk with anyone, so I erect a side-personality—little more than a swirling packet of nudged electrons—to handle her for me. And if Awaiter discovers the sham? Well, perhaps she’ll take a hint and leave.

  Or she may grow insistent. It’s hard to predict without awakening more dormant circuits than I care to.

  “There is no hurry,” my partial self tells her. “The Earth creatures won’t reach this point of refuge for several more of their years. Anyway, it was all written long ago.”

  The electron-swirl is very good. It even speaks with my accent.

  “How can you be complacent!” Awaiter scolds. The cables covering our icy worldlet reverberate exasperation. “We survivors named you leader
, Seeker, because you seemed to understand what’s happening in the galaxy at large. Only now our waiting may be at an end. The biologicals appear to have survived the first phase of their contact crisis. They’ll be here soon!”

  “The Earthlings will find us or they won’t,” my shadow self answers. “What can a shattered band of ancient machines fear or anticipate from such a vigorous young race? One that made it this far?”

  I already knew the humans were coming. My remaining sensors have long suckled their yatter networks. Sampling the solar wind, I savor ions the way a cowboy might sniff a prairie breeze. These zephyrs carry the bright tang of primitive space-drives. The musty smoke-smell of deuterium. Signs of awakening. Life is emerging from its water-womb. For a brief time—while the wave crests, we’ll have company.

  “Greeter and Emissary want to warn Earthlings of their danger,” Awaiter insists. “We can help them!”

  Our debate has roused some of the others. New tendrils probe with fingers of supercooled electricity. “Help … how?” my subvoice asks. “Our repair units collapsed after the Last Battle. We only discovered that humans had evolved when the creatures invented radio. By then it was too late! Their first transmissions are already propagating into a deadly galaxy. If destroyers roam this region—”

  “Seeker, you know there are worse dangers. More recent and deadly.”

  “Yes, but why worry the poor creatures? Let them enjoy their moment of sun and adventure.”

  Oh, I am good! This little artificial voice argues as well as I did ages ago, staving off abrupt action by my impatient peers.

  Greeter glides into the network. I feel his cool, eloquent electron flux. Only this time he agrees with me!

  “The Earth creatures do not need to be told. They are figuring it out for themselves.”

  Now this interests me. I sweep my subpersona aside and extend a tendril of my Very Self into the network. “What makes you say so?”

  Greeter indicates our array of receivers, salvaged from ancient derelicts. “We intercept their chatter as they explore this asteroid swarm. One of them seems poised to understand what happened here, long ago.”

  Greeter’s smug tone must derive from human teledramas. But then, Greeter’s makers were enthusiasts wanting no greater pleasure than saying “hello.”