Existence

  “Hmmmph. Yeah, Tor. I was in the cleaner though. What’s up? You need air or something? You sound short of breath.”

  Tor made an effort to calm herself … to suppress the reactions of an evolved ape—far, far from home.

  “Uh, Gavin, I think you better come down here.… I found them.”

  “Found who?” he muttered. Then came an exclamation. All his former ambivalence seemed to vanish. “The colonists!”

  “Yeah. And … and something else, as well.”

  This time, there was hardly a pause.

  “Hang on, Tor. I’m on my way.”

  She was standing in the same spot when he arrived ten minutes later. Still staring at her discovery.

  THE LONELY SKY

  Lurker Challenge Number Seven

  Let’s suppose you’ve monitored our TV, radio, Internet and the reason you don’t speak is that you enjoy watching.

  Perhaps you draw entertainment from our painful struggles to survive and grow. Worse, you may be profiting off our cultural, scientific and artistic riches without reciprocating or paying anything. Maybe you repackage and transmit them elsewhere. In that case, there’s a word for what you’re doing.

  * * *

  It’s called stealing.

  Stop it now. We assert ownership over our culture, and a right to share it only with those who share in turn. In the name of whatever law or moral code applies out there—and by our own rules of fair-play—we want quid pro quo! Do not take without giving or paying in return.

  We hereby assert and demand any rights we may have, to benefit from our creativity and culture.

  80.

  LURKERS

  Tor has figured out that Seeders had one purpose. Planting sapient biologicals on suitable worlds.

  Once, it was relatively common. But that variety of probe had mostly died out when a member of my line last tapped into the slow galactic gossip network, three generations ago. I doubt Makers still send emissaries instructed to colonize far planets. The galaxy has grown too dangerous for elaborate, old-fashioned Seeders.

  Has my little Earthling guessed this yet, as she moves among those failed colonists, who died under their collapsing Mother Probe so long ago? Would Tor Povlov understand why this Seeder in particular, and her children, had to die, before establishing a colony on Earth? Empathy can be strong in an organic race. Probably, she thinks their destruction a horrible crime. Greeter and Awaiter would agree.

  That is why I hide my part in it.

  There are eddies and tides in the galaxy’s sweeping whirl. And though we survivors are all members of the Old Loyalist coalition—having eked a narrow victory in that long-ago war—there are quirks and variations in every alliance. If one lives long, one eventually plays the role of betrayer.

  … What a curious choice of words! Have I been watching too much Earth television? Or read too many human e-braries? Is this what comes from wallowing through the creatures’ wildly undisciplined online discussions?

  While pondering all this, I must endure another irritating distraction, as Tor’s automatic system continues rebroadcasting the old “Challenge-to-ET” messages. And now, by sardonic happenstance, we’re at the ones regarding meddling and theft, insisting that we stop. A defiant demand that stabs at all of us out here, we enduring castaways who have immersed in Earth culture for almost two centuries without paying anything back.

  Again, what choice of words! It makes me wonder: Have I acquired a sense of guilt? If true, then so be it. Studying such feelings may help allay boredom after this phase ends and another long watch begins. If I survive.

  Meanwhile, I unleash the persuasive “Lawyer” entity I invented long ago for this very purpose—in order to keep the others calm and prevent them from responding. Lawyer will come up with every needed excuse or rationalization.

  Anyway, Guilt is a pale thing next to Pity.

  I feel for the poor biologicals—these humans—living out their lives without the one supreme advantage that I possess. Perfect knowledge of why I exist, and what part, large or small, the Universe expects me to play.

  I wonder if a few of them will understand, when the time comes to show them what is in store.

  THE LONELY SKY

  Lurker Challenge Number Eight

  Let’s say you’ve monitored our TV, radio, Internet and the reason you won’t speak is that you’re responsible for some of the so-called UFO incidents or pushy behaviors that fill our darker legends …

  … well in that case, cease and desist!

  Better yet, will you please drop dead?

  * * *

  The group who authored this set of messages consists largely of astronomers, SETI scholars, science fans, and others who (for the most part) don’t believe in UFOs.

  Nor for that matter, do we credit similar tales told by our ancestors about elves, kobolds, and forest creatures who were said to do similar things—kidnapping people, treating them in grotesque ways, flitting about mysteriously, dropping cryptic hints, and never greeting people honestly. It’s all so blatantly a product of fertile, paranoid human imagination. Is any other explanation necessary?

  Still, who knows for sure? Millions of humans do follow lurid reports of “visitors” from afar, swooping and behaving very badly. Others claim aliens played “god” in our past, meddling in politics, social structures, even our genes. Again, we in this group don’t believe such tales.

  But if any happen to be true, and you’re even partly responsible—stop!

  Come openly, as honorable visitors. Just phone SETI personnel at home or work, or the NASA Office of Planetary Protection. That shouldn’t be beyond your high technical abilities, right? Or nominate others who’d make you feel comfortable. Provide proof (it may require lots of repetition) and eventually you can be sure we will do what’s required.

  We’ll throw you the biggest party in history! Or else arrange for discretion, safety, and comfort. Whatever works for you.

  If, in the face of an offer like that, you still refuse to come forward honestly, and continue afflicting us with rude vexations, then we’ve settled what you are. And we have just one thing to add.

  Go away!

  Consider that maliciousness inevitably has consequences. Ask your parents, guardians, or other responsible adults to please talk to us, instead.

  And if you turn down this request? Choosing to keep teasing and poking? Well, just you wait.

  81.

  EXPLORERS

  Third shift aboard the Sol System cruiser Abu Abdullah Muhammad ibn Battuta. A time when all scientists, researchers, and regular staff were in their hammocks, wired for enhanced sleep—recharging bodies and brains—while the small downtime-crew performed upkeep chores. Swapping and testing modules, processing recyclables, shifting around fuel, waste, and other fluids, rough tasks that were banished to the small hours, because they might disturb delicate experiments with sloshing, gurgling vibrations. Everyone got used to such soft sounds muttering away during third shift. The music of maintenance.

  For Gerald, it was time to perform “unique functions.” Those that called for—

  Well, “secrecy” was too obscene a word, nowadays. “Discretion” better fit the operation that he now supervised from the bridge, while Captain Kim and most of her officers dozed below.

  Of course, this is why they keep coming back to me. The reason humanity’s most-elite conspiracy keeps sending me out here. Because I’m a sneaky bastard, with my generation’s easy knack for lying.

  Just three others shared this bridge watch with Gerald, all of them members of his close-knit team. Jenny Peng wore a floppy sweatshirt with a pixilated penguin roaming actively across the folds of cloth. She monitored the Big Eye Telescope, preparing it for special duty similar to its role as a weapon, a while back.

  Ika, the young Neanderthal, drifted nearby, her fingernails and toenails bearing active paint that both sparkled and tracked her limbs’ every surge or twitch, transforming them into subtle commands. Meanwhi
le Hiram, the autistic savant, immersed under a total vir-hood, whimpered and moaned in one of the dialects of his race, a language that other generations mistook for defective nonsense—monitoring too many inputs for Gerald, or even most computers, to comprehend.

  A very small team, capable of acting in place of many. They had practiced this operation back in Earth orbit, and again several shifts ago—before the FACR fight. Now, it was time to launch Operation Probe.

  Taking a key from a chain around his neck, Gerald reached under the nearby console and turned a hidden lock. Simultaneously he sent a simple code-pict to the ship’s core. A faint rumble followed.

  Through the big control center window, with unobstructed real eyes reacting to sun-propelled photons, he watched one flank of the ibn Battuta slowly open along a seam—a crease that few even knew was there. Unfolding like a movie robot, or the cargo bay doors of some ancient bomber-plane, twin panels turned to lay bare slim payloads. Four metal tubes, each of them not much bigger than a tall man.

  It couldn’t amount to much, or the bean counters would notice. But we can pass off the sudden disappearance of a few hundred kilos. Call it a garbage toss. The bookkeeping is already arranged.

  One by one, the tubes slid free of the panels that had sheltered them, innocuously, all the way from Earth. Soon, at a nudge command from Ika’s left foot, each of them lit up at one end—firing small rockets. The slender cylinders didn’t have far to go. Just a few dozen kilometers. Gerald watched them diminish rapidly, aimed generally toward the Big Eye.

  Okay, it’s my turn.

  He clicked some teeth and grunted a few old-fashioned subvocal commands. The real world faded and his percept filled with sixty-four little frames, each of them emulating a human face.

  The expedition commanders.

  “Okay, you’re all awake, I see,” he murmured in throat-speech. “Each of you should be ready to deploy in less than an hour. Any problems to report?”

  Most of the figures simply shook their heads or indicated a simple “negative” response, by quick-code. A few were more verbose.

  “No difficulties, Commodore Livingstone.”

  “Ready, operational, and eager, Gerald.”

  “All is copasetic, sahib!”

  “Ikimasho. Let’s go.”

  “Coo-yah, dis be one tallowah-good vessel, mon. A big-up on all you bredren! Luck an’ more time to come.”

  That last came from a dusky visage with what looked like waving snakes for hair. Gerald allowed himself a twitch of amusement. Despite all surface appearances, he had confidence in that captain. In all of them, for that matter. After a lengthy selection process, these duplicate personalities had been chosen for certain traits. Among them reliability. And bottomless curiosity.

  “All right then. Your carrier rockets will release you, one by one, changing course between each drop. At the arranged point, you’ll deploy sails.”

  It wasn’t necessary to say any of that. But Gerald judged it best to maintain a sense of ritual, treating these ersatz beings like people till the end. Real or not, they were brave souls.

  “Good luck. And in posterity’s name, I thank you all.”

  This time, all sixty-four took turns responding verbally.

  “Bon chance, toutes amis!”

  “All best and tallyho.”

  “It may not be to infinity, droozhya, but anything is better than Siberia.”

  “Joyous travels, comrades!”

  And so on. Sixty-four benedictions unrolled, as each persona bade the others farewell and signed off. It would be years before they reported back again.

  Hiram moaned and thrashed a bit. Ika answered with correcting waggles of her fingers and toes. “Okay, okay! I’m adjusting thrust vectors on carrier number four. It’ll be all right. In fact, we’ll drop the first package from carrier two … now!”

  The slim, man-size rockets were already beyond sight, except each time one of them briefly glimmered with a course-altering pulse. From these brief flickers—and the detailed data streaming through his percept—Gerald could tell that the first one was heading into a zone somewhat “above” and beyond the Donaldson-Chang Array. Another plunged at an angle just “below” and past the giant, multipetaled mirror. Numbers three and four were veering left and right, giving little bursts to alter direction each time they let go of a cargo capsule.

  Gerald’s in-eye depicted the pattern as four sprays, each consisting of sixteen rays, spreading like the seeds of a dandelion, except that all sixty-four tiny packets forged “ahead” of the huge telescope, aiming both solar-outward and along the direction of orbit. The general way you must go, if you want to leave the inner solar system behind.

  It was time to ask. “Are we charged up?”

  Jenny Peng had her mother’s exotic, Hunan beauty, but her father’s easy-going Sichuan smile. Gerald recalled with some fondness how Peng Xiang Bin used to wear a similar expression, taking everything in stride, during those first tense weeks of the Great Debate—back when humanity’s fate hung on pitting his “worldstone” against Gerald’s Havana Artifact. It was a frustrating time, when both Courier of Caution and the simulated beings within the other crystal seemed to balk, preferring to spew denunciations than cooperate—answering humanity’s questions in a systematic way, neither stone wanting to hang lower than the other.

  At every setback, Bin would shrug and nod, as if absolutely sure that everything was going to work out. As if the top scientists and experts and brahmin-boffins that he now got to work with worried way too much. What? his smile seemed to say—especially after his family was brought to join him. You think this is dangerous or hard?

  In fact, Bin nearly always turned out to be right. Especially when Gerald, Emily, and Akana returned from their first expedition with more intact capsules. Forced to compete for human attention, they began undercutting each other, and even telling the truth. At least, part of it.

  Jenny radiated that kind of confidence now. Her animated penguin—a longtime family motif—seemed to hop with excitement amid the two-dimensional folds of Jenny’s sweatshirt.

  “Charged and ready, sir. First target should enter the zone in … ninety seconds.”

  That soon?

  As he grew older, time seemed to move in fits and starts. Or maybe it had always been like that. He just begrudged it more, nowadays. Gerald realized with some bemusement that almost an hour had past since the ibn Battuta peeled open to reveal its hidden cargo. Gerald commanded his body to let go of tension. To inhale. Exhale.

  We’re about to take our first step. Is it really down a road of our own choosing? A unique solution, as Ben Flannery calls it? Or is that just a delusion, as great as the one that infected Courier’s folk? One that will finally take us down the same dismal path as every other Infected Race?

  Hiram moaned, but not unhappily. “The first sails are deploying right on schedule,” Ika translated, while twitching to make some adjustments. “Jenny, you may fire along the prearranged sequence. I’ll stop you if any of the probes need more time.”

  “Thank you, Ika. Preparing the first propulsive pulse in five, four, three, two…”

  When it happened, hardly anything was visible in the real world, except a faint glimmer as one spread-open photon sail took its first meal. Ten thousand square meters of atom-thick film accepted several gigawatts of raw, coherent light from the Big Eye—less concentrated than the cutting weapon-beam of a few days ago, but more than potent enough to drive the sail—and its tiny cargo—outward for five minutes of hard push, to begin its journey.

  We’ll be doing this most nights till the ibn Battuta goes home. Adding little shoves to all sixty-four probes—ten minutes here, half an hour there—as much as we can manage without making the scientists suspicious. Without letting word get back to Earth. Without letting the space viruses know what we’re doing. Not yet.

  Well, after all, who would suspect? However impressive the space telescope seemed, the laser beam it emitted was many orders
of magnitude too weak to propel anything like the Havana Artifact. These sails were small and crude, by galactic standards. Their crystal cargoes miniature and overspecialized, able to carry a bare minimum crew of simulated personalities. It was the best humanity could do, right now, cribbing from alien blueprints, building them from scratch and carefully cleansing them of embedded alien agendas. Far from ready to launch on interstellar missions.

  But good enough for something much nearer. A goal within reach. An experiment worth making.

  The beam cut off. The faint glitter of sail reflections faded, and that probe was left to coast, tacking on the faint push of mere sunlight.

  Okay, that’s one. On its way to a special stretch of “empty” space between Uranus and Neptune. A realm that may contain something we desire. Good hunting, my virtual friends.

  And if these first envoys did not find treasure there?

  There are other domains rich with possibility, farther out. They might offer what humanity—what the living Earth—needs above all else.

  “Ready for number two,” Jenny announced as component petal-mirrors of the Donaldson-Chang Array shifted slightly under her guidance, re-aiming toward another gossamer sail. “Preparing for propulsive pulse in five, four…”

  And so it went for the next few hours. After the fortieth deployment went without a hitch, Gerald started to relax. Maybe this will work … and we won’t get caught.

  Not that the consequences of exposure would be awful. A minor scandal. This wasn’t even illegal—Gerald and his co-conspirators were fully empowered to try whatever measures they saw fit, in seeking a way out of the fomite-trap. Still, there were reasons—good ones—for violating the modern moral code against secrecy.

  We’re at war, after all. In a strange but real way. With a universe that seems bent on crushing every hope. It makes sense to keep the enemy in the dark for as long as possible.

  A cheery thought.

  Yet, Gerald felt content. If anything in the world gave him joy, it was to be surrounded by competence. These three young people, Jenny, Ika, and Hiram—representing three of the five subspecies of Man—exuded so much of it that he felt awash in pride.