Starbound (29 page)
Authors: Joe Haldeman
Namir bit into it and shrugged. “Won’t kill us. How long?”
“That partly depends on the message, and your reaction to it.” It sat on the couch nearest to the Martians. “Sit down if you want.”
I ate a couple of the cubes. They had the texture of tofu but less flavor. I wished for salt. And wine. Maybe a whole bottle of wine, and a big steak.
Spy waited until everyone was seated. “As you may have deduced, this planet is where the Others came from, and the people, or creatures, you saw in the displays are their ancestors, in a manner of speaking.”
“The Others didn’t evolve from them,” I said. You didn’t have to be a xenobiologist to see that.
“Not in any biological sense. About thirty thousand years ago there was a profound disagreement, what you might call a philosophical schism. It was about the fundamental nature of life, and the necessity for, or desirability of . . . its ending. Whether thinking creatures should die.”
“They had a way around it?” Namir said. “Not just longevity, but immortality?”
Spy nodded, but said, “No. Not exactly.
“It’s difficult to put this into terms that have universal meaning. That would mean the same thing, for instance, to humans and Martians.”
“But we can agree about what life is,” I said, “and that death is the cessation of life.”
“I don’t think so,” Snowbird said. “That has always been a problem.”
“Don’t get all spiritual,” Elza said. “As a doctor, I can assure you that dead people are much less responsive than living ones. They also start to smell.”
Snowbird held her head with both large hands, a laughter expression. “But the individual was alive in the genetic material of its ancestors, and also will be alive in the ones that follow after the organism dies.”
“Not me. I don’t have any children and don’t expect any.”
“But it’s not limited to that,” Snowbird said. “Before the individual was born, it was alive in the teachings that would eventually form it. Everyone you meet changes you, at least a little, and so becomes a kind of parent. As you yourself become a parent to anybody’s life you touch. It’s the only way, for instance, that humans and Martians can be related. Many of us feel closely related to some of you. Fly-in-Amber and I are closer to you humans here than we are to many Martians.” And I had been closer to Red, I realized, than I’d ever been to my own father.
“I’ll grant that’s true in a certain sense,” Elza said, “but it’s not as physically real as a genetic connection.”
“You claim your brain is not physically changed by accepting new information? I think that it is.”
“This is good,” Spy said. “It’s one aspect of the disagreement between the Others and you people. But only one aspect.
“Over the centuries, the ones who would become the Others physically isolated themselves, first on an island, then in an orbiting settlement, which grew by accretion. The separation became more complete as the ones on the planet encouraged belief systems that were inward-looking, antagonistic to space travel.
“The Others also pursued research into longevity, which most of the ones on the planet came to consider blasphemous.”
“Let me guess,” Namir said. “There was a war.”
“Several, in fact. Or you could see it as one ongoing war with phases that were decades apart. Centuries.
“The Others moved farther and farther out, for their own protection. Meanwhile, their individual life spans increased, up to what seemed to be a natural limit. They couldn’t push it far beyond about eight hundred years, with half of that life span in reduced circumstances . . . basically, alive and alert, but maintained by machines. You see where this would lead?”
It was asking the question of me. “They would . . . devalue what we would call ‘normal’ life? In favor of life partnered with machines? There’s something like that going on on Earth, even now.”
“Really? The Others might want to get in touch with them.”
“That would be fun,” Elza said. “Some of them are halfway aliens already.”
Spy looked at her with an unreadable expression. “Most of this I knew from Other-prime. But Fly-in-Amber added a turning point, a missing link.
“The final separation between the two groups came about when the Others discovered free power, the ability to bleed energy from an adjacent universe.”
“The same as our source of power,” Fly-in-Amber said.
“That’s right. You got it from them, though I take it that neither Martians nor humans really understand how it works.”
“Only how to use it,” Paul said.
Spy nodded. “This discovery allowed the Others to put a safe distance between themselves and the enemy, to move out to Wolf 25’s dark companion.
“They thought that this would make their physical separation complete. At almost the same time, they took total control of their life processes and abandoned their carbon-based form in favor of the virtually immortal bodies they have now.”
“So they downloaded their minds,” Paul said, “into artificial creatures with low-temperature body chemistry.” The Others had told us that their version of organic chemistry was cryogenic, based on silicon and liquid nitrogen.
“It wasn’t as simple as transferring information. Each individual had to die, and hope to be literally reborn in its new body.”
“They had no choice?” I said.
“Apparently they did. But the ones who didn’t change died out long ago.”
“Probably helped along by their successors,” Namir said.
“That could be. I don’t know.
“What I do know is that the ones left behind on
this
planet grew fearful. So they began building this huge invasion fleet.”
this
planet grew fearful. So they began building this huge invasion fleet.”
“Why on the ground, I wonder,” Paul said. “If they’d put them together in orbit, the ships wouldn’t have to be streamlined. And the net energy saving would be huge.”
Namir laughed. “They wouldn’t have to worry about that. They couldn’t have done this if they didn’t also have the free-energy thing.”
“And that was really what doomed them,” Spy said. “Even without the huge fleet, their discovery of the power source put them essentially next door to the Others.”
Unlike us, I hoped to think.
“Maybe if they’d remained in friendly contact, there might have been some accommodation. But there was no commerce or even communication between the races. So the Others hit them with one overwhelming blow.”
“As they attempted to do with us,” Paul said.
“No, not at all.” Spy shook its head slowly back and forth. “You have to stop thinking that way. The Others posed a problem for you, and you successfully solved it. This Home planet was too close for them to risk that.”
“If there were no survivors.” Fly- in-Amber said, “where did we come from?”
“There’s no direct line of succession. You were modeled after these Home creatures but independently manufactured. There are various anatomical differences.”
“I’m glad we have the extra hands,” Snowbird said, wiggling fingers.
“And you’re organized differently,” Spy said. “Each one of you is born into a specialty, born with its appropriate language and vocabulary. These Home ones were born dumb, like humans, and had to learn language.”
“But they had freedom to do whatever they wanted?” I asked.
“That isn’t known,” Spy said. “The Others left Home before you humans parted company with the Neanderthals.” There was a barely audible scraping sound. “We’re back.”
“Back where?” There hadn’t been any sensation of movement.
“In orbit, on your iceberg.” I moved to where I could see the ports by the air-lock lips. They showed our lander with the transfer cable.
Namir stepped over and looked out. “So. We go on now? To meet the Others?”
The expression on its face was close to embarrassment. “Actually, not all of you. We discussed this, Other-prime and I, with the Others. All of them.”
“Just now?” Meryl said.
“No, we had time to talk with the Others for about a month before we left to meet you here. They discussed various possible courses of action.
“This one is best. Of course, they can’t have a conversation with you in any sense. So they worked out every probable combination of relevant factors and allowed me, with Other-prime, to make the final evaluation and speak for them. Other-prime gave me a final piece of input a few minutes ago.”
“Telepathy?” Dustin said.
It tapped its ear. “More like radio. We won’t kill you all, which was an option much discussed, and still favored by a minority.”
“But you will kill some of us,” Namir said, almost a whisper.
“No, not killing, not like murder. We must take two of you, a human and a Martian, back to the planet of the Others.”
“For how long?” I asked.
It paused, I think not for drama. “It would be forever. You would be joining the Others, physically.”
“Frozen
solid
?” Elza said.
solid
?” Elza said.
“You would have nitrogen, a liquid, in your veins.”
“The Martian would have to be me,” Fly-in-Amber said.
“That’s right,” Spy said. “The human . . .”
There was a lengthy silence. Paul half raised his hand. “I—”
“You’re the pilot,” Namir said, “and not expendable. I’m the oldest”—he looked at his spouses—“and, among the military people, I have the highest rank. The honor will be mine.”
“No!” I said. “Namir, be practical.”
“It can’t be Moonboy,” he said. “He’s not competent. Did you want to volunteer?” He was smiling, rueful rather than mocking.
“With all respect,” Dustin said, “this is not a job for an espionage specialist. You want a philosopher.”
“A doctor,” Elza said. “I know more about human beings than both of you combined.”
“We should do it by lot,” I said. “Excluding Paul and Moonboy.” When I said it, my stomach dropped. I looked at Meryl, and she nodded, looking grim.
“This is fascinating,” Spy said, “and I’m tempted to let you keep fighting it out. But what makes you think the choice is yours to make?
“The fact that Moonboy has been unconscious since arriving here makes him the most attractive of you, to the Others.”
“What?” Namir said. “He’s mentally incompetent.”
“Your mental competence is not an issue. The most intelligent of you, which would be Dustin, is still only human. What’s more interesting about Moonboy is that he’s immune to any consensus the rest of you might have arrived at since coming here. He is a tabula rasa with regard to the Others, and therefore will be easier to work with.”
“What makes you think you can wake him up?” Elza said.
“He won’t be awake when he joins the Others. He won’t even be alive, technically.”
“So the human race is going to be represented by a somewhat dead lunatic,” Namir said.
Spy paused, as if deciding whether to make a joke of that. “His individual characteristics and experiences are not particularly important. His recent experiences are, though; the less he knows about the Others, the better.”
“I think I understand,” Fly- in-Amber said. “Like positive feedback in a circuit. Interfering with the signal because of its similarity.”
That was the most science I’d ever heard from Fly-in-Amber. “You aren’t upset about this, yourself? Being kidnapped and killed and stored in a deep freeze?”
He clasped his head in appreciation of humor, a gesture he rarely used. “Another way of saying it is that it’s a chance at literal immortality, representing my race among the Others. How many foreign races would I be joining, Spy?”
“Two hundred forty-eight. Though more than half of them would be so different from you that communication would be unlikely.”
“You see, Carmen? As Namir said, it’s an honor.”
“I was not being literal, Fly- in-Amber. My feelings are more like Carmen’s.”
“I think Moonboy’s would be, too,” Meryl said, her voice thick and shaking. “We should try to revive him.”
“Shock him out of it?” Elza said. “And tell him ‘Prepare to die’?”
“That is what it would be,” Spy said. “If his comfort or happiness is at issue, I think your course is clear.”
Meryl crossed her arms over her chest, holding herself. “My course is not clear. It’s euthanasia to treat mental illness. For my husband of twenty-three years.”
“One of you is headed there.” Spy stepped toward her, and his voice lowered. “An objective observer would see that he is giving up the least. You can’t say that’s not true.”
“You’re not going to be able to care for him. He needs constant medical attention.”
Not if he’s going to die, I thought.
“In terms of duration,” Spy said, “he will spend less time going there than you will spend returning to
ad Astra
from here. Minutes.”
ad Astra
from here. Minutes.”
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