Sense of Wonder: A Century of Science Fiction (628 page)

* * * *

Arlbeni’s Vision, Planet Cadrys, 2678: In the proof of God lies its corollary. The Great Intent has left the universe empty, except for us. It is our mission to fill it.

Look around you, look at what we’ve become. At the pointless destruction, the aimless boredom, the spiritual despair. The human race cannot exist without purpose, without vision, without faith. Filling the emptiness of the universe will rescue us from our own.

* * * *

Our mother says, “Do you play any games?”

We examine the data carefully. There is no match.

Our mother speaks again. “That was our new replicant speaking, Seeding 140. Hirs is only half-created as yet, and hirs program language is not fully functional. Hirs means, of the new programs you have you created for yourselves since the original seeding, which ones are in response to the environment are expressions of rejoicing? Like dancing?”

“Yes!” we say. “We dance in rejoicing. And we also throw pebbles in rejoicing and catch pebbles in rejoicing. But not for many years since.”

“Do it now!” our mother says.

This is our mother. We are not rejoicing. But this is our mother. We pick up some pebbles.

“No,” our mother says quickly, “you don’t need to throw pebbles. That was the new replicant again. Hirs does not yet understand that seedings do what they wish, and only what they wish. Your…your mother does not command you. Anything you do, anything you have learned, is as necessary as what we do.”

“I’m sorry again,” our mother says, and there is physical movement registered in the field of transmission.

We do not understand. But our mother has spoken of new programs, of programs created since the seeding, in response to the environment. This we understand, and now is the time to tell our mother of our need. Our mother has asked. Sorrow floods us, rejoicing disappears, but now is the time to tell what is necessary.

Our mother will make all functional once more.

* * * *

“Don’t scold hirs like that, hirs is just a child,” Kabil said. “Harrah, stop crying, we know you didn’t mean to impute to them any inferiority.”

Micah, hirs back turned to the tiny parental drama, said to Cal, “Seismic survey complete. No quakes, only the most minor geologic disturbances…really, the local history shows remarkable stability.”

“Then what accounts for the difference between their count of themselves and the replication rate?”

“It can’t be a real difference.”

“But…oh!. Listen. Did they just say—”

Hirs turned slowly toward the holocube.

Harrah said at the same moment, through hirs tears, “They stopped dancing.”

Cal said, “Repeat that,” remembered hirself, and moved into the transmission field, replacing Harrah. “Repeat that, please, Seeding 140. Repeat your last transmission.”

The motionless metal oysters said, “We have created a new program in response to the Others in the environment. The Others who destroy us.”

Cal said, very pleasantly, “‘Others’? What Others?”

“The new ones. The mindless ones. The destroyers.”

“There are no others in your environment,” Micah said. “What are you trying to say?”

Ling, across the deck in a cloud of pink bakterons, said, “Oh, oh…no…they must have divided into factions. Invented warfare among themselves! Oh…”

Harrah stopped sobbing and stood, wide-eyed, on hirs sturdy short legs.

Cal said, still very pleasant, “Seeding 140, show us these Others. Transmit visuals.”

“But if we get close enough to the Others to do that, we will be destroyed!”

Ling said sadly, “It is warfare.”

Deb compressed hirs beautiful lips. Kabil turned away, to gaze out at the stars. Micah said, “Seeding…do you have any historical transmissions of the Others, in your databanks? Send those.”

“Scanning…sending.”

Ling said softly, “We always knew warfare was a possibility for any creations. After all, they have our unrefined DNA, and for millennia…” Hirs fell silent.

“The data is only partial,” Seeding 140 said. “We were nearly destroyed when it was sent to us. But there is one data packet until the last few minutes of life.”

The cheerful, dancing oysters had vanished from the holocube. In their place appeared the fronds of a tall, thin plant, waving slightly in the thick air. It was stark, unadorned, elemental. A multicellular organism rooted in the rocky ground, doing nothing.

No one on the ship spoke.

The holocube changed perspective, to a wide scan. Now there were whole stands of fronds, acres of them, filling huge sections of the rift. Plant after plant, drab olive green, blowing in the unseen wind.

After the long silence, Seeding 140 said, “Our mother? The Others were not there for ninety-two years. Then they came. They replicate much faster than we do, and we die. Our mother, can you do what is necessary?”

Still no one spoke, until Harrah, frightened, said, “What is it?”

Micah answered, hirs voice clipped and precise. “According to the data packet, it is an aerobic organism, using a process analogous to photosynthesis to create energy, giving off oxygen as a by-product. The data includes a specimen analysis, broken off very abruptly as if the AI failed. The specimen is non-carbon-based, non-DNA. The energy sources sealed in Seeding 140 are anaerobic.”

Ling said sharply, “Present oxygen content of the rift atmosphere?”

Cal said, “Seven point six two percent.” Hirs paused. “The oxygen created by these…these ‘Others’ is poisoning the seeding.”

“But,” Deb said, bewildered, “why did the original drop include such a thing?”

“It didn’t,” Micah said. “There is no match for this structure in the gene banks. It is not from Earth.”

“Our mother?” Seeding 140 said, over the motionless fronds in the holocube. “Are you still there?”

* * * *

Disciple Arlbeni, Grid 743.9, 2999: As we approach this millennium marker, rejoice that humanity has passed beyond both spiritual superstition and spiritual denial. We have a faith built on physical truth, on living genetics, on human need. We have, at long last, given our souls not to a formless Deity but to the science of life itself. We are safe, and we are blessed.

Micah said suddenly, “It’s a trick.”

The other adults stared at hirs. Harrah had been hastily reconfigured for sleep. Someone—Ling, most likely—had dissolved the floating baktons and blanked the wall displays, and only the empty transmission field added color to the room. That, and the cold stars beyond.

“Yes,” Micah continued, “a trick. Not malicious, of course. But we programmed them to learn, and they did. They had some seismic event, or some interwarfare, and it made them wary of anything unusual. They learned that the unusual can be deadly. And the most unusual thing they know of is us, set to return at 3,000. So they created a transmission program designed to repel us. Xenophobia, in a stimulus-response learning program suited to this environment. You said it yourself, Ling, the learning components are built on human genes. And we have xenophobia as an evolved survival response!”

Cal jack-knifed across the room. Tension turned hirs ungraceful. “No. That sounds appealing, but nothing we gave Seeding 140 would let them evolve defenses that sophisticated. And there was no seismic event for the initial stimulus.”

Micah said eagerly, “We’re the stimulus! Our anticipated return! Don’t you see… we’re the ‘Others’!”

Kabil said, “But they call us ‘mother’…They were thrilled to see us. They’re not xenophobic to us.”

Deb spoke so softly the others could barely hear. “Then it’s a computer malfunction. Cosmic bombardment of their sensory equipment. Or at least, of the unit that was ‘dying.’ Malfunctioning before the end. All that sensory data about oxygen poisoning is compromised.”

“Of course!” Ling said. But hirs was always honest. “At least…no, compromised data isn’t that coherent, the pieces don’t fit together so well biochemically…”

“And so non-terrestrially,” Cal said, and at the jagged edge in his voice, Micah exploded.

“California, these are not native life! There is no native life in the galaxy except on Earth!”

“I know that, Micah,” Cal said, with dignity. “But I also know this data does not match anything in the d-bees.”

“Then the d-bees are incomplete!”

“Possibly.”

Ling put hirs hands together. They were long, slender hands, with very long nails, created just yesterday.
I want to grab the new millennium with both hands
, Ling had laughed before the party,
and hold it firm
. “Spores. Panspermia.”

“I won’t listen to this!” Micah said.

“An old theory,” Ling went on, gasping a little. “Seeding 140 said the Others weren’t there for their first hundred years. But if spores blew in from space on the solar wind, and the environment was right for them to germinate—”

Deb said quickly, “Spores aren’t really life. Wherever they came from, they’re not alive.”

“Yes, they are,” Kabil said. “Don’t quibble. They’re alive.”

Micah said loudly, “I’ve given my entire life to the Great Mission. I was on the original drop for this very planet.”

“They’re alive,” Ling said, “and they’re not ours.”

“My entire life!” Micah said. Hirs looked at each of them in turn, hirs face stony, and something terrible glinted behind the beautiful deep-green eyes.

* * * *

Our mother does not answer. Has our mother gone away?

Our mother would not go away without helping us. It must be they are still dancing.

We can wait.

* * * *

“The main thing is Harrah, after all,” Kabil said. Hirs sat slumped on the floor. They had been talking so long.

“A child needs secure knowledge. Purpose. Faith,”

Cal said.

Ling said wearily, “A child needs truth.”

“Harrah,” Deb crooned softly. “Harrah, made of all of us, future of our genes, small heart Harrah…”

“Stop it, Debaron,” Cal said. “Please.”

Micah said, “Those things down there are not real. They are not. Test it, Micah. I’ve said so already. Test it. Send down a probe, and try to bring back samples. There’s nothing there.”

“You don’t know that, Micah.”

“I know,” Micah said, and was subtly revitalized. Hirs sprang up. “Test it!”

Ling said, “A probe isn’t necessary. We have the transmitted data and—”

“Not reliable!” Micah said.

“—and the rising oxygen content. Data from our own sensors.”

“Outgassing!”

“Micah, that’s ridiculous. And a probe—”

“A probe might come back contaminated,” Cal said.

“Don’t risk contamination,” Kabil said suddenly, urgently. “Not with Harrah here.”

“Harrah, made of us all…” Deb had turned hirs back on the rest now, and lay almost curled into a ball, lost in hirs powerful imagination. Deb!

Kabil said, almost pleadingly, to Ling, “Harrah’s safety should come first.”

“Harrah’s safety lies in facing truth,” Ling said. But hirs was not strong enough to sustain it alone. They were all so close, so knotted together, a family. Knotted by Harrah and by the Great Mission, to which Ling, no less than the others, had given his life.

“Harrah, small heart,” sang Deb.

Kabil said, “It isn’t as if we have proof about these ‘Others.’ Not real proof. We don’t actually know.”

“I know,” Micah said.

Cal looked bleakly at Kabil. “No. And it is wrong to sacrifice a child to a supposition, to a packet of compromised data, to a…a superstition of creations so much less than we are. You know that’s true, even though we none of us never admit it. But I’m a biologist. The creations are limited DNA, with no ability to self-modify. Also strictly regulated nano, and AI only within careful parameters. Yes, of course they’re life forms deserving respect on their own terms, of course of course I would never deny that—”

“None of us would,” Kabil said.

“—but they’re not us. Not ever us.”

A long silence, broken only by Deb’s singing.

“Leave orbit, Micah,” Cal finally said, “before Harrah wakes up.”

* * * *

Disciple Arlbeni, Grid 743.9, 2999: We are not gods, never gods, no matter what the powers evolution and technology have given us, and we do not delude ourselves that we are gods, as other cultures have done at other millennia. We are human. Our salvation is that we know it, and do not pretend otherwise.

* * * *

Our mother? Are you there? We need you to save us from the Others, to do what is necessary. Are you there?

Are you still dancing?

* * * *

Copyright © 2004 by Dell Magazines.

(1964– )

I only met Jonathan Lethem once, just before his first novel came out. I was in New York City visiting poet and short story writer Lawrence Schimel, who introduced us. He’s written a mystery with talking kangaroos and you need to review it, Schimel told me; I was reviewing for a couple of magazines at the time. Naturally, I couldn’t resist a mystery with talking kangaroos. His story-crafting skills have improved since then, but Lethem hasn’t lost any of the surreal magic that underlies the worlds his characters live in.

Born and raised in a commune in Brooklyn in 1949, Jonathan Lethem attended the High School of Music and Art in New York City, where he wrote his first novel,
Heroes
, in 1979. The novel would later become the beginning of his 2003 novel
Fortress of Solitude
, but at the time it served more as a sign of what Lethem’s career could, and would, become.

Lethem went on to Bennington College in Vermont in 1982, but dropped out his sophomore year to pursue his writing instead of his art. After hitchhiking to California, he settled down to write and work at booksellers like Pegasus Books and Moe’s Books, both in Berkeley. Lethem’s hitchhiking experiences would later inspire his novel
Amnesia Moon
(1995).

“The Cave Beneath the Falls,” Lethem’s first published story, came out in 1989, and his first novel, Gun, With Occasional Music, a hard-to-categorize noirish novel with surreal genre elements, was published in 1994. During the five years in between the two, Lethem came out with about forty short stories. (He won a World Fantasy Award for his 1997 short story collection, The Wall of the Sky, the Wall of the Eye.) In 1999 he published Motherless Brooklyn, a detective story combined with SF elements, which led to Lethem’s reputation as a “genre-bender.”

Lethem lives in California with his third wife, Amy Barrett, and their son. He teaches in the English Department at Pomona College.