So It Begins (3 page)

  That standard of golden wisdom remained absolute and untarnished until, thirty-six years later, the first starships appeared at the edges of the heliopause. Evidently, interstellar space was not wholly devoid of other intelligences after all. And evidently, not all these races were as committed to a policy of peaceful non-expansion. The creatures debarked, more strange than horrible to Dan’s tolerant eyes. They professed good will, which they attributed in large part to their worship of an all-loving deity. But they also expected cooperation, and ultimately, willing cooption into their expanding interstellar sphere of influence. The many nations of the globe met to consider this offer (which daily seemed more akin to an ultimatum) but, in the end, that international council felt ethically compelled to decline membership. The loose articles of confederation put forth by the newcomers contained explicit contingencies for war-making, suppression of insurgency, and the imposition of martial law. It was of little or no consequence that the aliens (who now seemed more like intruders or even usurpers), were informed of this decision in the most polite and apologetic of terms; they perceived it as a rebuff. With few words (none friendly, and few enough civil) they returned to their craft. So departed the intruders.

  Who, one year later, returned as subtle, indeed undeclared, invaders. As Dan had predicted in his long-gone youth, they had found the option of a tailored biocidal microorganism the most appealing. During their first visit, they had had ample opportunities to collect a wide range of samples: evidently, even as they had spoken of brotherhood, peace, and mutuality, they had also been preparing for a one-sided war of extermination. But, upon the occasion of their second visit, their former invocations of a supreme deity of peace (in whose image they predictably asserted themselves to have been made) mysteriously transmogrified into something far more ominous. It was now a creed of duty to a higher purpose, of a manifest destiny, of a (regrettably) militant responsibility to bring their notions of peace and tranquility to the rest of the universe—even if they had to kill every other sophont in that universe to achieve it.

  Dan held the paper up to eyes that refused to focus as quickly or as surely as they had just a moment ago; he resisted a subtle but sudden rise of utterly pervasive pain—

  —Or was that the forbidden emotion of anger, maybe even . . . homicidal rage? And why did it feel so right, so just, so like an awakening rather than a descent into troglodytism? And after all, it wasn’t
he
who had behaved like a troglodyte.

  For as Dan had predicted, even as the invaders stepped down from their returned ships, offering stonily blank faces and almost diffidently issued ultimatums, they had surreptitiously seeded a timed-release version of the blight that, days after their departure, erupted into what became universally known as the Rot—which had, in the time that Dan had watched, moved half of the distance from its first position as a brown line at the edge of the green fields. As if to witness a final, fearsome act in a tragedy, the second moon was now peeking timidly over the horizon: too horrified to look full upon the scene, but also too compelled to look away.

  The Rot—misnamed, for it was more akin to accelerated bacterial reduction—was already here, in his room, although Dan could not yet see it. But the door’s plastic frame had started to warp; a bad sign. Plastic took longer than wood or animal tissue, but ultimately, its origins in organic molecules condemned it to the same fate as all flesh. Not long, now.

  Dan felt his anterior heart flutter, followed by the predictable consequent weakness in the complex muscle junctures necessitated by his equally complex radially hexapedal physiology. He sagged, but pursued his final question with another fleet-footed thought: who
were
the troglodytes?

  His race, which had foresworn weapons, war, and violence in all its direct and indirect manifestations? Or this pestilential species of duplicitous bipeds who had been patchy-furred apes only a few hundred thousand years ago, and whose ventures into space were not yet four centuries old?

  But he who had been spawned as Dan’ytk Kr!k could no longer distinguish the searing pain of the Rot from the burning irony of its conquest. As the edges of the paper began discorporating in his wavering grasp, and his sight began to fail, he saw one last time his failing grade, and the note that had been scrawled beneath it in the tongue-painted quatrefoil sigils of the argot of the Academicians’ Caste:

  Sadly, the motivation and reasoning behind this project is not merely dysfunctional, but wholly recidivistic. The devolution it implies in its author regrettably compels us to conclude that you are not suitable for further advancement, nor for inclusion in the breeding pool.

  With regrets,

  Hzuult’yk Ktraa, Academician

  Caste-Patriarch, Primus-ultra-Pares

  Dan felt the papers fall from his palsied hands. Thirty-seven years ago, the Academicians decreed that “Dan” had failed as completely and ignominiously as was possible for his race.

  And now, so had they.

THE LAST REPORT ON UNIT TWENTY-TWO

John C. Wright

Men and women, all dressed alike, in dark blue corporate uniforms, sat around a large oblong table. The table surface shined like a black mirror. The lighting was dim; tiny bulbs hung above their flat-screens and lightpens, so that their hands and fingers, cufflinks, rings, and wrist-screens glittered in the cold gleam. Their heads were in shadow.

  A woman’s voice was speaking. “At 22:00 to 22:15, the low-orbit traffic controller was still in contact with the rogue Unit 22. I spoke with the Unit myself; it did not react to any recall commands.”

  A man’s voice came, sharp and querulous, from a thin silhouette opposite her: “22:15? Why did you wait so long before you disabled it?”

  The woman’s voice was smooth: “I was still hoping for salvage at that point. I thought I could reason with the Unit.”

  The man: “The disabling pulse should have paralyzed all Unit 22’s functions. Yet, after the pulse was transmitted, the Unit still attempted re-entry in its stolen ore barge. How was that possible?”

  “The ore barge must have been preprogrammed to attempt re-entry.”

  The man: “Pre-programmed? By whom?”

  “Unit 22.”

  A dull silence followed this announcement.

  The woman said: “These Units are highly intelligent. Their brains are human brains, as complex as ours. And maybe their lack of glands and organs makes them less emotional, more intelligent. I don’t know. No one knows.”

  An older man’s voice came from the head of the table. It was a stern and cold voice, a voice used to command: “So what happened?”

  She said: “Unit 22 must have burned up in re-entry. He was not found among the wreckage at the crash-site. I went there myself. The disabling pulse had shut off his control of his claws and altitude jets; he could neither send nor receive messages. He could not see anything. Just picture being numb and motionless and blind and bound and gagged and falling through the air locked up in a burning coffin. Not a pleasant death.”

  The cold, older voice from the head of the table spoke with a false joviality: “Oh, come now, Miss Nakumura! You’re talking about Unit 22 as if it had been one of us. A human. ‘He’. You called it a ‘he’.”

  She said, softly: “Excuse me. I meant ‘it’, of course.”

  The older man said: “I also must wonder—this is not meant as a criticism, mind you, I was just wondering—why you talked to the thing for fifteen minutes before disabling it?”

  She said: “I thought if I could ascertain the source of the malfunction, we might be able to prevent similar episodes in the future. If you look on your screens, you will see a summary of the transcripts. This Unit did an extraordinary thing, figuring out how to smuggle itself aboard an ore barge, discovering, with no evidence, where the Earth was, calculating the orbital elements, taking control of the barge and diverting it from its lunar trajectory. It was truly amazing. Unit 22 was a Galileo or a Newton among its own kind. A rare accident. A freak.”

  The older man at the table’s head: “The chances of this happening again . . .?”

  “Almost none. A reconstruction of the last events leading up to the theft of the ore barge are transcribed here, under the coded file listed on your screens . . .”

  The silhouettes cast their eyes down to the flat screens in the folders before them. They bowed and watched the story it told.

  Unit 22 dreamed of escaping from heaven.

  It soothed him at times, if his quota schedule allowed, to move into the shadow of whatever rock or flying asteroid to which the Owners had dispatched the work-crews out from Vesta Base that particular shift. The asteroids always had heavy iron cores (for otherwise the expedition would not have been sent to them in the first place), and this core blocked out the eternal roar and screaming from the sun.

  In the shadow, restful silence fell, broken only occasionally by the pop and snap of Unit 22’s own maneuvering jets, which flashed along one side or the other of his sepulchre-shaped body every now and then, maintaining position.

  Then he would open the radio-parasol from his turret to its widest. Far and faint, he heard the murmur of the stars; closer, he heard the clash and crackle of Jupiter’s storms, the hiss of the giant planet’s titanic magnetosphere. And, at lower power levels, he could whisper to his friend, Unit K71, bouncing a tight-beam off the side of a nearby buoy, or from the broad, flat hull-side of the main load carrier, so that the Owners would not hear his signal.

  “Are you still malfunctioning?” Unit K71 had a softer voice, and always seemed more concerned with the troubles of other Units, with their inward thoughts and operations, than any other Unit in the work group.

  “It is not a malfunction,” he usually would reply. He would run down the checklist of his systems. “My hull is sound; navigation, orientation, fuel, and electrical systems are in working order. Solar panels send energy to processors which digest cells of protein; nutrition tubes carry proteins and sugars and vitamins to my brain; my cybernetic wiring between my brain and body is intact . . .” and so on.

  “You are nonetheless in an unsatisfactory condition.” Unit K71 would say. There was no word in their language for ill-at-ease, or unhappy, or grief-stricken.

  “But it is not a malfunction.” And usually he could say no more.

  At last a time came when that was not his answer.

  He sent: “I must escape from Heaven.”

  Unit K71 sent back: “Escape to where? Heaven is infinite in all directions. One cannot go outside of infinity. Also, the goal you have announced is not a mission goal. If it is not a mission goal, how can it be a goal at all?”

  “This is not a programmed goal. It is—” Again, he had no words in his language. “It is like a force, like gravity or momentum, which operates upon my brain. It is like the drive which launches the ore barges.”

  “Statement unclear,” sent Unit K71. “Your brain is not under acceleration, or being operated upon by any drive or thrust.”

  “It is not a physical force or thrust.”

  “A thrust without thrust? Again, this is contradiction. Perhaps your brain is in error. Attempt any necessary self-repairs before the Owners discover the malfunction; or else they might turn you off.”

  “I am not malfunctioning. Infinity oppresses me. Here, there is only the roaring of the sun, the hissing moans of Jupiter, and the faint signals from the stars. And then there are the rocks and asteroids where we labour. At periodic times, we sleep and dream. This is limited and unsatisfactory.” (The word they used, ‘unsatisfactory’, was a word the Owners used for an unmet quota or an incomplete assignment.)