The Evolutionary Void (70 page)

“Yes.”

“There are stories of our ancestors who transferred their thoughts into
machines so they might continue after their biological bodies failed.”

“Yes, humans do that, but that’s not quite what I mean. It would be an
existence without physical form.”

“That is where they went after the separation. This is the method which
you seek.”

“No. Not quite. This is something from our legends, stories that may be
fiction. It is nonsense, but it persists.”

“We have no stories of such a thing.”

“I see. Thank you.”

Tyzak continued along the street in his long, fast bobbing motion, not
even turning to focus on the Delivery Man. “But the city does speak to me with
the smallest stories.”

“It does?”

“Not a sound. But a voice nonetheless.”

“That’s interesting. What story is it telling you?”

“Where my ancestors left this place. This is how we will find it.”

The Delivery Man wanted to say:
But you don’t use
machines
. He knew that was what the communication must be, a download
into the Anomine equivalent of human macrocellular clusters, a little genetic
modification that the remaining Anomine hadn’t purged from themselves, after
all.

“We made assumptions again,” Gore said. “We thought Tyzak was familiar
with the elevation mechanism. But he’s got to ask the surviving AIs.”

“No,” the Delivery Man said. “That’s not what he’d do; I know him well
enough by now. He’d rather risk getting torn apart by wild animals at night
than use a decent weapon to defend himself with. This is something else.” He
ran a more comprehensive field scan. “Nothing is being transmitted, at least
that I can detect. Yet I’m still getting the creeps about this place. You’ve
been here two days. Has it bothered you?”

“Ghosts and goblins? No.”

Typical
, the Delivery Man thought. But he was
still disquieted by the city, and Tyzak was receiving information of some kind,
which was impacting in a fashion his biononics couldn’t detect. He ran another
scan. Sonic. Chemical. Electromagnetic. Visual/subliminal. Microbial. Surface
vibration. Anything known to discomfort a human body.

The city wasn’t active in any way. Yet when he’d walked through previous
Anomine cities without Tyzak, he’d felt none of this.
So if
the effect isn’t impacting from the outside
… The Delivery Man opened
his gaiamotes fully and searched amid his own thoughts.

It was there, hovering out of reach like a foreign dream on the fringes
of the gaiafield generated by the nests they’d left orbiting above. A mind, but
woven from notions very different from those human sentience was composed of.
Colors, smells, sounds, emotions—they were all amiss, out of phase with what he
perceived as correct.

“Hello?” he said to it.

There was a reaction, he was sure of that. A tiny stratum of the strange
thoughts twisted and turned. There was even a weak sensation, not a thought or
memory but an impression: an animal curled up sleeping, contracting further as
something poked its skin.

So we can understand each other
. Except the
city didn’t want to, because he was not part of the city, not part of the
world. He didn’t belong, didn’t connect. He was alien. There was no regret or
even hostility within the somnolent mind. The city didn’t hold opinions on him;
it simply knew he wasn’t a part of itself or its purpose.

“The AI is neural-based,” he told Gore. “I can sense it within the
gaiafield. It’s semiactive but only responds to an Anomine’s mind. We’re never
going to get any information out of it.”

“Shit.”

“How ironic is that? One wish, one thought from a native, and the whole
city will revive itself to provide them a life they can’t even imagine anymore.
Yet they’re happy with the whole been-there-done-that philosophy.”

They were trotting down a long boulevard that led up a steepening slope.
Slim arches linked the buildings on either side, each one glowing with a
uniform color, as if the bands of a rainbow had been split apart and then
twisted around. His exovision was displaying a map. “You know, we’re heading
your way.”

“Yeah, I see that.”

“Actually, we’re heading directly for you. That can’t be coincidence.”

“Sonny, I’ve given up on being surprised by anything this planet pitches
at us.”

It took them another hour to navigate the city’s broad streets. Tyzak
walked on unhesitatingly, though toward the end the big alien did seem to be laboring
to bounce forward with the vitality he’d possessed that morning. Even the
Delivery Man’s biononic-aided muscles were starting to feel the strain. They’d
been walking for fifteen hours with only a few short breaks.

But with the stars barely visible through the cloying light haze cast by
the buildings, they finally came out into the open plaza. It was a broad empty
circle seven hundred meters in diameter, with long garden segments of dense
green-gray shrub trees ringing the outside. Towers and elongated globes over a
kilometer high stood around the edge, something about their height and
proximity giving the impression that they were leaning in protectively.

It was a slightly incongruous setting for the
Last
Throw
, but Gore had brought the starship down on one side of the plaza,
close to a swollen cylindrical tower with a blunt dark apex. The gold man was
already striding over the plaza to greet them, casting a range of pale
harlequin shadows in all directions that shifted like petals as he approached. He
stopped in the middle of the plaza and bowed gracefully to the old Anomine.

“Tyzak, I am honored that you should spend time telling us the story of
your ancestors’ departure.”

The Delivery Man raised his eyebrow as he realized that the sharp
chittering sounds of Anomine language were coming directly from Gore’s throat.

“It is a joy to do so,” Tyzak replied. “Your coloration is different. Are
you more advanced than your species colleague?”

“In this form, I am not, no. My body is from a time long past. Circumstances
required me to adopt it once more.”

“I am glad you have. You are interesting.”

“Thank you. Can you tell us where your most sophisticated ancestors
departed this world from?”

The Delivery Man almost winced at the bluntness.

“Right here,” Tyzak said.

Gore pointed a golden forefinger at the matte glass surface of the plaza.
“Here?”

“Yes.”

Gore turned full circle, almost glaring at the shiny surface of the broad
plaza. “So we’re actually standing on the machine which changed them into their
final form?”

“Yes.”

The Delivery Man’s biononics performed a deep field function scan on the
substance below his feet. Gore was doing exactly the same thing. The plaza was
actually a solid cylinder extending nearly five hundred meters down into the
city’s bedrock. Its nuclear structure was strange, with strands and sheets of
enhanced long-chain molecules twisting and coiling around and through one
another like smoke tormented by a hurricane. They were all cold and inert. But
they did seem to be affecting the underlying quantum fields to a minute degree,
an effect so small that it barely registered.

He’d never seen anything like it before. The smartcore certainly couldn’t
identify it or any of the functions the weird molecular arrangements would
produce if they went active. When he opened his gaiamotes, he could just sense
the elevation mechanism’s soft thoughts, even more abstract than those of the
city’s mind. With a despondent curse he knew there was never going to be any
possible connection between it and a human. It would take Tyzak or his kind to
coax it back to awareness and functionality.

“They really didn’t want anyone to follow them, did they?” Gore said
pensively.

“Looks that way.”

“Huh. Then along came me. Right, then.” His hands went onto his hips as
he looked up at Tyzak. “Will you ask the machine to switch on for me, please.”

“The machine which separated our ancestors from us is not a part of my
life. It has discharged its purpose. The planet has destined us for something
different.”

“That’s it? That’s your last word on this?”

“How could it be other?”

“The galaxy may be destroyed if we don’t establish how your ancestors
left this universe.”

“That is a story which I would not repeat at any gathering. It lacks
foundation in our world.”

“And if I could prove it was true?”

“If that is what awaits this planet, then it is what awaits us also. The
planet carries us.”

“Goddamn fatalists,” Gore muttered.

“Now what?” the Delivery Man asked. It was hard to keep a tone of defeat
from his voice.

“Stop complaining, start thinking. We’ll just have to hack into it, is
all.”

“
Hack
into it?”

“The control net, not the actual machine. Once you’ve got control of the
power switch, you’re in charge, period.”

“But we’re hardly talking about a management processor. This thing is a
cross between a confluence nest and metacube network. You can’t subvert it. The
bloody thing’s sentient, half-alive.”

“Then we physically chop the connections and insert our own command
circuitry into the mechanism itself. Now shut up. Have you run a comparison
review of the other fifty-three zero-width wormholes we found?”

“What? I—No.”

“Stay current. Every one of them is right next to an open space like this
plaza. In other words, there are at least fifty-four elevation mechanisms on
the planet. Makes sense, really. There were too many high-level Anomine for a
single gathering point, especially if they really did all come back from their
colony worlds. The upgrade to postphysical must have gone on for a long time.”

“Yes, I’m sure it must.”

“Good. So how did they power it? If you’re bootstrapping yourself up to
archangel status, that’s going to take a lot of energy, especially when you’re
using a machine that’s nearly half a cubic kilometer of solid-state systems.”
He turned to stare at the bulging tower that backdropped the
Last Throw
and wagged an accusatory gold finger at it.
“But if you’ve got a cable that plugs directly into the nearest star, power is
the least of your worries.”

“Ah, the wormhole doesn’t carry information …”

“No way. They’ve got some kind of energy siphon swimming about in the
photosphere or maybe deeper. It sends all the power they need back along the
zero-width wormhole. Okay, that works for me. We’d best go see if the siphon’s
still there.”

For a moment, words refused to come out of the Delivery Man’s mouth.
“Why?”

“What part of ‘I don’t give up easy’ is hard for you?”

“The wormhole isn’t extended. Everything is managed by machines that have
their own
psychology
, and it’s anti-us psychology.”

“One step at a time. First we check it all out. If everything is still
there in standby mode just like they left it, then we start an infiltration
strategy. Human-derived software is the most devious in the galaxy. Our e-head
nerds have had a thousand years to perfect their glorious trade, God bless ’em,
and I’d stack them up against
anyone
. Certainly a
race as sweet and noble as this lot.”

“But we don’t have any with—” The Delivery Man caught the expression on
Gore’s golden face and groaned as comprehension kicked in.

“And if I can’t reestablish something as fucking simple as a de-energized
wormhole, then I’m already dead and this is hell taunting me. Now come on.”
Gore started marching across the plaza to the
Last Throw
.

“Are you leaving?” Tyzak asked.

“For a short while only,” the Delivery Man assured the old Anomine. “We
have to fly to check on something. It should take less than a day. Will you
stay here?”

“I wish to hear the end of your story. I will remain for a while.”

The Delivery Man resisted the urge to spill out an apology and hurried after
Gore.

In the time it took to dive into hyperspace and reemerge three million
kilometers out from the star’s photosphere the culinary unit had produced a
batch of lemon risotto with diced and fried vegetables. Lizzie used to make it,
standing over a big pan on the cooker, sipping wine and stirring in stock for
half an hour while the two of them chatted away at the end of the day. The
Delivery Man instructed the unit to produce a side plate of garlic bread and
started grating extra Parmesan cheese over the streaming rice. Lizzie always
objected to that, saying it dulled the flavor of the vegetables. Gore shook his
head at the offer of a bowl.

“You’re still worrying about Justine, aren’t you?” the Delivery Man said.

“No, I am not worried about Justine,” Gore growled out. “We’re still well
inside the time effect it should take her to reach Querencia.”

“Okay, then.”

“Even if something has happened, it’s not as if we can launch a rescue
mission.”

“Unless that witch Araminta persuades the Skylord to abandon the
Silverbird
, I don’t see anything which could interrupt her
flight.”

“That wouldn’t stop my Justine. Maybe slow her down some but nothing
worse. You have no idea how stubborn she can be.”

“Where does she get that from? I wonder.”

Gore gave him a small grin. “Her mother.”

“Really?”

“No idea. That is one memory I made sure I junked a thousand years ago.”

The Delivery Man put a slice of the garlic bread into his mouth and ended
up sucking down air to cool it. “I don’t believe that.”

“Son, I’m not a fucking soap opera. I can’t afford to be; my emotional
baggage level is zero. I haven’t had anything to do with that woman since Nigel
watched Dylan Lewis take his epic step.”

“What?”

“Kids today! The Mars landing.”