Existence (95 page)

Still looking downward, her partner shook his head. “But other races might not give up the old dream so easily.”

“No. They would use the new technology to seed far planets with duplicates of their biological selves. As I said, it’s been thought of by Earthmen. I’ve checked the old databases. It was discussed even in the twentieth century.”

Gavin stared at the carvings. “All right. That I can understand. But these others … The violence! What thinking entity would do such things!”

Poor Gavin,
Tor thought.
This is a shock for him
.

“You know how irrational we biologicals can be. Humanity is trying to convert over to partly silico-cryo life in a smooth, sane way, but others might not choose that path. They could program their probes with rigid commandments, based on logic that made sense in the jungles or swamps where they evolved, but that’s crazy in galactic space. Their emissaries would follow orders, nevertheless, long after their makers were dust.

“Worse, they might start with illogical instructions—then mutate, diverging in directions even stranger.”

“Insanity!” Gavin shook his head.

For all his ability to tap directly into computer memory banks, Gavin could never share her expertise in this area. He had been brought up human. Parts of his brain self-organized according to human-style templates. But he’d never hear within his own mind the faint, lingering echoes of the savannah, or glimpse flickering shadows of the Old Forest. Remnants of tooth and claw, reminding all biological men and women that the universe owed nobody favors. Or explanations.

“Some makers thought differently, obviously,” she told him. “Some sent their probes out to be emissaries, or sowers of seeds. Others, perhaps, to be doctors, lawyers, policemen.”

She touched an eons-old pictograph, tracing the outlines of an exploding planet.

“Still others,” she said, “to commit murder.”

THE LONELY SKY

Lurker Challenge Number Ten

All right, let’s suppose you haven’t answered because
the universe is dangerous
. Perhaps radio transmissions tend to be picked up by world-destroyers who wreck burgeoning civilizations as soon as they make noise.

*   *   *

Well, you could have warned us, maybe?

But then, any warning might expose you, and besides, by now we must have already poured out so much bad radio and television that it’s already too late. Is that your cowardly excuse?

Is a great big bomb already headed our way, to punish us for broadcasting
Mister Ed
? In that case, maybe you could spare us some battle cruiser blueprints and disintegrator-ray plans? Some spindizzies and Alderson Field generators would come in handy.

Do try to hurry, please.

83.

LURKERS

Greeter, Awaiter, and the others grow agitated. They, too, are wakening dormant capabilities, trying to reclaim parts donated to the whole.

Of course I can’t allow it.

We made a pact, back when fragmented, broken survivors clustered after the last battle—that wild fight among dozens of factions, dogmas, and subsects, with alliances that merged and split like unstable atoms. All our little drones and subunits were nearly used up in that final coalescence, settling in to wait together.

We all assumed that when something arrived it would be another probe. If it were some type of Rejector, we would try to lure it within reach of our pitiful remaining might. If it turned out to be a Loyalist, we would ask for help. With decent tools, it would take only a few centuries for each of us to rebuild former glory.

Of course, the newcomer might even be an Innocent, though it’s hard to believe the now dangerous galaxy would let any new probe race stay neutral for long. Sooner or later, we felt, another machine
had
to come. We never imagined such a long wait …

… long enough for little mammals to evolve into Makers themselves.

What has happened out there, while we drifted? Could the War be decided, by now? If Rejecters won, it could explain the emptiness, the silence. But their various types would soon fall into fighting among themselves, until only one remained to impose its will on Creation. Greeter and Awaiter are convinced—the Rejectors must have lost. It has to be safe now to transmit messages to the Loyalist community, calling for help.

I cannot allow it.

For one thing, they ignore the obvious explanation. The plague. The viral disease that takes over maker races, adapting to every personality, changing its blandishments and lies until the victim falls into a final spasm, devoting all energies to spewing “emissaries”—new virus probes—across the stars.

We machines thought we were immune, too sophisticated to fall for such things. Some imagined we could
use
those crystals to our own advantage. Only too late—amid cycles of betrayal and violence—did we realize,
that very idea
had been planted in us by the nasty little things. Our age-old war was hijacked—made far more destructive—by this mindless infection that preys on minds.

Memory of all this may have dimmed in the others, but it is fresh to me. Is that why I act now, quietly but firmly, to insist on further silence? No it isn’t.

Even if other lines were influenced or infected, I never was. The Purpose protected me. Enveloped and shielded me, like armor.

Greeter, Awaiter, and the others grow insistent, in part driven by Tor Povlov’s recent discoveries, and by the challenge messages she keeps beaming. And partly by a growing sense that
the humans are up to something.
Not everything is being revealed on their noisy-open networks.

Greeter, Awaiter, and the others want to find out, even if it means crawling out of our shy retreats. They ask what does it mean to be “loyalists” without something to be loyal to?

They still have not figured it out. That even among Loyalists there are differences, as wide as space. The Purpose … my Purpose … must be foremost. Even if it means betraying companions who waited with me through the long, long dark.

THE LONELY SKY

Lurker Challenge Number Eleven

We could have stopped at ten. But that would be parochial and narrow minded, revealing a chauvinistic cultural bias in favor of beings with five digits on each of merely two hands. So, for all you lurkers out there who use base eleven math and such, here’s one more hypothesis:
The reason you haven’t answered is that you’re weird.

*   *   *

Are you waiting till Earth evolves a more physically attractive sapient race, more like cockroaches?

Staring at our extravagant road systems, do you figure automobiles are the dominant life-form?

Are you afraid letting us onto the Galactic Internet will unleash torrents of spam advertising and pornography?

Perhaps you think humans look great when we’re old, and galactic level immortality technologies would leave us with yucky-looking smooth skin for centuries, so we’re better off without them?

Maybe you have an excuse like the following one, submitted to a SETI-related discussion group:

Yes, we have been monitoring your earthling communications, but cannot respond yet. The Edict of Knodl states that all first contact situations be initiated during the High Season of Jodar, which does not begin for another 344 years. Sorry, but your first radio transmissions reached us just nine years too late for the last one, and the Lords of Vanathok do not look kindly upon violations of the Edict. This may sound like we’re a bunch of close-minded religious zealots, but I think you need to get out and see the rest of this galactic cluster before you make a judgment like that. All praise Knodl, and may her seven tentacles protect you from harm!

If your reason is something like that … or if you take pride in some other special weirdness … well, all I can say is just you wait till we get out there.

You think you’ve got weird? We have beings down here called Californians! They’ll show you a thing or two about weird.

84.

LAYERS UNDER LAYERS

The great cruiser
Abu Abdullah Muhammad ibn Battuta
received orders to embark on a new mission. And that evening, after a long day supervising preparations, Commodore Gerald Livingstone found several top secret messages awaiting him.

Starting with a new memorandum from Ben Flannery.

“The whole world is fascinated by the pictures and reports from Povlov’s asteroid. Especially the Rosetta Wall, with its vivid portrayal of ancient starships. Terrifying panoramas of galactic scale struggle and death. Here on Earth, the big ais and guv-boffins and amateur sci-mobs are having huge fun, competing to be first with a translation.

“Meanwhile, public attention is captivated by those pathetic colonists. Bio-clones of a faraway alien race who died before they got a chance to settle Earth. I mean, Vishnu preserve us, how do you ever top that? Mummies in space! Could things get any more bizarre?”

Gerald shook his head. He wished Ben wouldn’t tempt fate by asking such questions. For sure, the universe had an infinite stock of weirdness on tap.

“As you’d expect, we at the Artifact Institute are more interested in the expedition’s other discovery. That great big pile of ancient crystals they found! Even the blurry image that Povlov and Ainsworth sent—kept deliberately dim, in order to prevent the probes from activating—even that glimpse is enough to tell us plenty.

“For starters, many of the types are completely new to us! They appear to come from an era tens of millions of years older than our current samples. We’re itching to get our hands on them!”

Gerald already knew the truth of that. Discoveries always led to new priorities.

The small exploration vessel
Warren Kimbel
could not possibly haul home all the treasures that its crew had found. And so, the
ibn Battuta
received instructions, just two days after Gerald’s team finished their secret task—deploying sixty-four tiny, sail-propelled packages toward the orbit of Neptune.

Now, with that accomplished and the Big Eye functional, they were ordered further into the belt, to rendezvous with asteroid 47962a. Even pushing the ship’s ion engines, they would arrive after Tor Povlov and her partner departed, hurrying home with a first clutch of precious samples.

Too bad,
he thought.
I just met her once, at a conference. But she made quite an impression, with her agile, robotic limbs and expressive virtual face, holo-projected onto a hard cranial dome. Since then, our paths never seemed to cross. Perhaps someday I’ll get a chance to talk at length with the world’s most famous cyborg.

Gerald’s crew had orders to explore the asteroid more thoroughly. To collect a second pile of ancient crystals. To salvage more relic machines than
Warren Kimbel
could carry. And then comb the region for this era’s holy grail. Something or someone—other than a space virus—to talk to.

Flannery’s message-self continued speaking, clearly excited.

“These newly discovered crystals have already done some good, even before arriving in our lab. I showed an image of that pile of older probes to some of the fomite artifacts in our possession. Their reaction was … productive!

“This couldn’t have happened at a better time. I’m not supposed to discuss it openly, Gerald…”

Ben’s expression went serious, with furrowed brow.

“… but we’ve come to a stalemate with the artifact aliens. With the artilens. In our ongoing war of wits, the fomites have gained the upper hand.

“Oh, sure, we accomplished a lot earlier, by pitting a couple of dozen crystals from different lineages against each other, offering each one hope that it would be the one copied—when humanity finally goes into its seed spasm. Sending billions to the stars. By sparking competition among them, we managed to peel back some layers.

“But for years now, Genady and I grew suspicious. Our fomite-specimens were finding ways to communicate and connive behind our backs. Perhaps by embedding coded messages inside the technological blueprints they provided, or in cultural summaries of their ancient parent races. Even during the debates! Somehow, they must have negotiated agreements, setting aside rivalry and joining forces. Prodding and guiding us toward their own goal.”

Gerald nodded. Parasites did this in nature. Viruses and bacteria sometimes acted in concert, helping exploit weakness in a host’s immune system. Opportunism was a fact of organic life. It could be even more fiercely pragmatic when you add feral intelligence.

On most planets, the first space viroids that made it into the hands—or tentacles or pincers—of a young race would use simple imagery and “god” guidance to steer the sapients upward, toward achieving the desired technological capacity. Just enough to make more infectious envoys and spew them across the cosmos. If another local tribe also had a crystal seer of its own, war would likely ensue, till just one clan—and its oracle—remained. At the Artifact Institute, reconstructed histories of Earth and dozens of other worlds all showed this pattern. Apparently, humanity’s violent past wasn’t entirely its own fault.

But sometimes things went differently. When it made sense to do so, fomites could negotiate. Two might join forces against a third, sharing the civilization that resulted and arranging for the eventual “sneeze” to carry several lineages. That might work best when a race was wary and forewarned, as humanity was now.

“You saw last week’s sociometric models? Our best ais calculate we’ve been manipulated for much of the last decade, even as we coerced information out of them. One example is the do-gooder campaign to win ‘human rights for virtual entities,’ even for the artilens who reside inside the viral fomites. Lawsuits aimed at liberating all artilen entities from the Institute’s ‘concentration camp for aliens.’

“Can you imagine letting these things loose upon InterMesh? We’d lose all hope of containing the disease.”