Echoes of Earth (4 page)

By the time he had wrenched the door open, the compound was slowly coming alive. Lights flickered in empty rooms; air generators whirred into life; various software agents tried to connect with the conSense terminal in his skull. He resisted their approach automatically.

“We weren’t expecting you, Dr. Alander,” said a voice. “We had no time to prepare—”

“That’s all right.” He found his way to what looked like a control room. It was cramped but uncluttered, designed for humans in physical form but obviously rarely used. “You weren’t to know I was coming.”

“How can we assist you?”

He stood in the doorway for a moment, disoriented. The AI had distracted him; he’d lost his train of thought. There
had
been a reason for him being here, he was sure of it. And then another disquieting thought: Where the hell was
here
?

“Goddamn it,” he said aloud. Such breaks in concentration might have become less frequent, but they were no less disconcerting for that. Stress wasn’t helping.

“Dr. Alander?”

“Quiet,” he commanded. He closed his eyes and concentrated.
The AI, Drop Point One, the shuttle, leaving the shelter, Cleo Samson’s voice, the spindles...

The spindles.

“I need access to the maser relay,” he said quickly, desperate not to lose the thought that had eluded him only moments before.

“Yes, Dr. Alander. It is tracking and ready for use.”

He eased himself into the seat. “How do I work it?”

“That would depend on what you wish to do.”

“I want a secure link with the
Frank Tipler,
as broad a bandwidth as you can manage.”

“Just one moment.” The voice was silent for a moment, then returned with: “I am exchanging protocols now, Dr. Alander. Do you wish full immersion or audiovisual access? The audiovisual will—”

“AV only,” he said without hesitation, not needing to hear that such a choice would reduce the number of options available to him.

A stereoscopic wide screen lit up before him, giving him a similar display to the one he had accessed via conSense, but one he felt he could control more easily. He tapped an image with his fingertip, and it ballooned into the foreground. This image, unlike the others, was moving. It seemed to be coming from a probe in orbit around Adrasteia; telemetry data appended to the image showed that its source was decelerating at high g. The image showed the upper tip of one of the spindles in close-up. From this vantage point, the extrusion of the counterweight was more apparent: a black fluid of some kind was issuing from several holes around the tip and spinning into a seamless, dense thread that seemed to absorb the light falling upon it. The spindle’s golden halo was almost blinding at such close range, with electrical discharges dancing constantly across its surface. As the probe’s sensors tracked lower along the spindle, Alander couldn’t begin to guess what it was made of. It gleamed like metal yet seemed as translucent as amber. Through the glare, he sensed shifting machinery within, like the stirring of an embryonic wasp in its cocoon. There was nothing upon which he could anchor his perceptions. His gaze slid across suggestive surfaces and shadows; his mind grasped at understanding but missed. He felt like he did in his worst nightmares: lost, in danger, and so very, very small.

There was an audio cue accompanying the visuals. He selected it via the infrared mods in the palm of one hand and heard the broadcast persona of the ship speaking on all the available frequencies:

“This is United Near-Earth Stellar Survey Program Mission 842,
Frank Tipler.
Please respond. Our mission here is a peaceful one, and we mean you no harm. I repeat: This is United Near-Earth Stellar Survey Program Mission 842...”

What if they don’t respond?
he wondered. Then something even more chilling occurred to him:
What if they haven’t even noticed that we’re here?

The probe angled closer for a better view of the bottom tip of the spindle. There was a bright flash of light from the screen, and the feed from the probe went dead. All telemetry data instantly ceased.

He winced. “That puts an end to
that
,” he muttered.

“Peter?” Jayme Sivio’s voice cut across the identification broadcast from the
Tipler.

“Jayme? What’s going on? Why have—?”

“I can’t talk long,” Sivio cut him short. “We’re ramping up to maximum and cutting everyone nonessential out of the loop. You’ll be okay, given your internal capacity. Just stay put and keep your eye on the feeds. We’re relaying everything to you as it comes in. Store it all in case something happens to us and the backup.”

“I saw what happened to the probe—”

“I know. We haven’t been approached, and we’re keeping our orbit well away from theirs. Until we know who they are and what they want, we can’t afford to take anything for granted. But for now we think you’re safe on the ground. Just take care, though, okay? You’re our
backup
backup, if you like.”

Alander swallowed. “I understand.”

“Good luck, Peter,” said Sivio. “And whatever you do, don’t try to call us. Keep a low profile, and we’ll contact you as soon as we can.”

Alander nodded, but Sivio had already cut the line. The room fell silent. On the screen, there were images of the spindles going about their enigmatic work, seemingly oblivious to the humans watching from a distance. For the first time, he was struck by how alone he was on Adrasteia. There was nothing else but him and a handful of mundane AIs on the surface of the entire planet. If something did happen to the
Tipler,
he would be the only human left for dozens of light-years.

What’s left of a human, anyway,
he thought solemnly as he settled back to watch the show.

1.1.4

Caryl Hatzis felt fatigue in every cell of her body, from the
ache in her spine to the hot swelling of her eyes. Her skin was greasy, her armpits smelled bad, and her brain simply couldn’t stay focused on one thing longer than a minute or two without sliding off into random thoughts.

Too real,
she thought.
Too goddamn real by half.

When the engram designers had copied her original’s thought processes and molded them into an electronic simulation, they had deliberately chosen to keep metabolic and hormonal traits like hunger, desire, and fatigue, acting on the sound belief that every component of a biological system contributes to its final state. Without fatigue, it was arguable that the engram of Caryl Hatzis would be fundamentally different from the original and might therefore malfunction under crisis.

She wished they’d been just a little more carefree with her melatonin and
cortisol levels. A little extra alertness in exchange for a little less
her
seemed like an excellent deal at the moment.

“Can’t I declare martial law?”

Jayme Sivio smiled at the suggestion. “And put me in charge?” he said. “That’s not the way it’s usually done, Caryl.”

“But there is nothing
usual
about any of this: not the circumstances, not the Spinners themselves.” The term had been coined by Cleo Samson earlier and had been taken up readily by the rest of the crew. “Surely that in itself suggests we should completely rethink our procedures. I mean, wouldn’t
you
call this a military threat?”

She indicated the ten golden spindles that had finished weaving their orbital towers and counterweights and were now busy at work joining the spindles along a giant ring encircling the planet. Strange lights arced between the ends of unconnected threads as they—whatever they were made of—interfered with the planet’s magnetic field. Two of the spindles had themselves begun to change, dimming in brightness and growing alarming spines at apparently random directions.

She had also noted from the solar north data that the glitch that had preceded the arrival of the Spinners was still pulsing. There was no real reason to think that the phenomena were connected, but she couldn’t shake off her suspicions that they were.

“Technically, yes, they are a threat.” Sivio’s tone was placating. “But the only hostility they have demonstrated has been when
we
have come too close to
them.
Losing two probes in ten hours does not warrant a change in procedure, Caryl. All they have done is indicate a desire to be left alone,
and
they have extended that same courtesy toward us.”

“For now.”

“Yes, for now. Until they change their behavior, we have no reason to change ours. Besides, what else
can
we do but wait and watch?”

She resisted the impulse to lash out at him.
You could at least give me a fucking break.
But she knew that would be unfair. She could leave the bridge at any time; fast-tracking could see her back in an hour or two, fully rested. But the thought of even that break galled her. She couldn’t leave, not when she was responsible for the lives of everyone on the
Frank Tipler
and off.

Ten hours. At quadruple speed—the maximum the
Tipler
could maintain while simulating enough crew to run the ship—that equaled forty hours. They had turned over shifts eight times since the Spinners had come, but still she was there. Even Sivio had rested.

She wondered what they called her behind her back. Then she wondered if paranoia was a symptom of exhaustion. It was certainly a symptom of command.

“We’ve got something new here.” The announcement came from Nalini Kovistra, one of her two astrophysicists, who had been working almost as hard as she had. “We’re picking up gravitational waves from one of the towers.”

“Can they hurt us?” Hatzis was a systems administrator, not a physicist.

“No, but what’s making them might.”

“I don’t understand.”

“Gravitational waves occur as a result of sudden movements or changes of shape of massive objects, like neutron stars or black holes. If there’s something like that in one of those spindles—”

“Could this be an attempt to communicate with us?” Sivio cut in.

Nalini Kovistra’s reply was confident, but her shoulders lifted in a shrug. “As an alternative to electromagnetic radiation, it would be pretty poor. I mean, why juggle neutron material when you can simply point an antenna and talk?”

“Well, if it’s not a weapon and not a communicator, what else could it be?” said Hatzis.

“Impossible to say,” said Kovistra.

“Maybe we should adopt a higher orbit as a precaution,” mused Hatzis.

“I’m not sure it would make any difference, Caryl.”

“But it couldn’t hurt, either.” Hatzis glanced at the roster to see who was on pilot duty. “Jene, give us a perigee kick to put the
Tipler
into an elliptical orbit, staying as far away as possible from the spindle—which one was it, Jayme? Did you notice?”

“Spindle Six.”

“Shall do.” Avery’s voice was crisp and efficient.

“Is that enough, Jayme? Should we break orbit entirely, do you think?” Uncertainty gripped Hatzis in her imaginary stomach.

“It’s your decision, Caryl. With so little information, all we can do is follow your instincts.”

Great.
She hadn’t slept for over two whole days. What did that say about her instincts?

The
Tipler
indicated that its secondary thrusters were firing. Hatzis didn’t check, knowing she could leave the job in Jene Avery’s capable hands. She knew as little about the drive systems as she did about gravitational waves, but at least she wasn’t alone there. The genetic algorithms that had fast-tracked the survey program’s engineering had left many of its human designers behind; she had a niggling feeling that no one really knew how the drives did what they did. That they did it well—and had reached the required efficiencies in order to make the 2050 launch date—was all that had mattered.

But that was a worry for another day. The ship’s orbit slowly changed shape in the main plot, giving the source of the gravitational waves a wide berth. She could rest easy on that score, at least. Perhaps—

“I have a result from the projections team,” said Sivio over her thoughts.

“Good. What have they come up with?” “Nothing conclusive, I’m afraid,” he said. “But they are tending toward the nonhuman end of the argument”

She hated the sinking feeling in her stomach, the way it betrayed her hopes. She’d been pinning Ira: hopes squarely on the original Peter Alander’s theory that complex alien life wasn’t likely. “Why?”

“We can only guess at what sort of technology is driving these things, but we do know some things for certain. You don’t build on this scale without cheap matter transmutation
and
easy conversion of matter to energy. We don’t have either—or rather, we didn’t”

“Is it possible that Earth would have achieved such technology by now?”

“Assuming that technology kept advancing at the rate it was when we left,” he said, “then yes, it is very possible. But I’d just as soon not assume anything.”

Hatzis nodded in agreement. “Go on.”

“Well, we’ve picked up no sign that the spindles are communicating with each other, and we have no way to guess how they’re powered. The way they appeared out of nowhere suggests a highly advanced method of transportation, the principles of which we can only guess at.”

“They could be experts in camouflage, of course.”

“Not a likely possibility. The spindles are being observed from a hundred different instruments. How do you fool everything at once? The only surefire way would be to infiltrate our networks and corrupt the data. Again, it’s a possibility, although the team sees it as a remote one at best.”

“Wishful thinking, perhaps.”

“Perhaps.” Jayme nodded. “The use of gravitational waves suggests a highly advanced materials technology, capable of manufacturing and handling ultradense substances. It also suggests an advanced knowledge and manipulation of space-time. This, combined with the way they arrived, leads the team to believe that the Spinners are capable of faster-than-light travel.”

She nodded, unsurprised. The spindles had already demonstrated such incredible prowess that she could believe almost anything of them.