The Greatship (34 page)

Full, unedited maps were only available to captains—in principle—but Samara claimed to know how to find their meeting place.  The Ship had been mapped by robots, tiny and self-replicating; set free inside tunnels, they doubled their numbers with each branching, employing sound and radiation to peer into the chilled metal and stone surrounding them.  One robot had walked into Pamir’s selected chamber, but finding no other exits, it turned and retreated.  No human hand had ever touched that space, which was its chief attraction.  Anything organic, down to the smallest, most desiccated spore had to be linked to the captain, or more likely, to Samara.

As clean as medicine and persistence could make him, Pamir arrived early for the encounter.  Robot tracks showed the way, nothing else marring a thin coating of gray-white dust.  No contamination, claimed his scanner.  He brightened his torch’s beam.  And of all things, he clearly remembered the first time that he had stepped inside his apartment, billions of years of peaceful darkness shattered and a weak, self-important part of the man grieving because of it.

There was a sound.

From out there?

“Welcome,” said a voice.  It was familiar and not, neither warm nor cold.  Then a diffuse orange glow silhouetted a human figure, both of them tiny to begin with and apparently distant.

Pamir took another bioscan, unable to find the slightest hint of anything that didn’t belong to him.

The chamber was a cube, precisely fashioned and intended for no known purpose.  A little more than a kilometer on a side, it seemed both vast and relentlessly claustrophobic; Pamir had to concentrate to make his legs walk, the sound of his boots crisp and steady, each footfall swallowed by the darkness.

“Welcome,” said the voice once more.  Louder, nearer.

Pamir hesitated, took a ragged breath, and asking, “What do you want?”

Said the Monster, “I want what you expect me to want.  I intend to kill your friend.”

There.  At least it was said.

Again he was walking, halfway across the square floor, and then farther, still nothing organic but his own throng of tailored microbes and wayward cells.  Yet there was a vivid glowing mass of something, presumably alive, and Pamir could only guess where his opponent had stolen the materials and energy to construct it.

No, “construct” was the wrong word.

He straightened his cap, extinguished the torch, and stepped at a faster clip.  Everything was Samara—the luring orange light and human shape were extensions of the hidden genetics, the mammoth potentials.  And still, the damned machine refused to show any trace of it.

“You’re kind to see me,” said Samara.  Its body was the same as when it stepped onboard, except nude and blatantly sexless, empty hands offered and the face seemingly amused when Pamir stopped short, refusing to touch it.  “I promised not to hurt you.  I meant my words.”

“Leave us alone,” said Pamir, his voice not quiet, not at all, but still far softer than the other voice.

“You call it the Child.”

“What I call it is my business.”

“But I have certain knowledge, and I understand the creature’s preferences, its tendencies.”  The body took a small step forward.  Dangling between it and the radiant orange mass was a tendril, neural impulses flowing in both directions.  The Samara body was no more than a finger to the whole.  “Answer this, if you can:  Whose child is it?”

“Aeon,” said Pamir.

Samara repeated that name several times, wrapping the word inside a questioning tone.  “And what else do you know?”

“Everything.”

“Indeed.”  A jovial smile lingered for a long moment.  “You are a captain and a rather good captain, as I understand these matters.  Unlike most of your peers, you nourish skepticisms about every part of your job, your duties, and perhaps the entire human mission.  But sorry as it is to admit, you are small.  You have a small, streamlined mind that cannot hold more than a sliver of ‘everything’, and despite the well-practiced stubbornness, your precious cynicism is marred with weaknesses and looming gaps.”

“You murdered Aeon.”  Pamir was panting and weak, a piece of him wishing Samara would murder him here, drawing the wrath of the captains.  “The Child told me where it came from and what you are and that you murdered its parent.”

“Well,” the body said, “in those stark terms, I am guilty.”

Pamir took a half-step forward.  If he died, nexuses would release files to certain trusted captains, including Washen.  Maybe they wouldn’t defend the Child, but a captain’s killer would never escape the Ship.

“For my edification, and for my entertainment too,” Samara said.  “Slice off a piece of this ‘everything’.  Simplify.  Clarify.  And perhaps we can reach an accommodation.”  What might or might not be teeth shone inside the narrow mouth.  “And if you can, hurry.  This has been a long chase.  I’m eager to get to the end, please.”

* * *

The history had been told dozens of times, in a wondrous array of voices.  Hunched low, the original Child related it in careful words, and then later, a variety of bodies found new possibilities.  Flowing script grew on living wood, and the curled leaves read the epic poem aloud.  Tailored drugs brought on lucid dreams.  The Child’s nightmares were injected straight into Pamir’s nervous system.  Trillions of torchflies formed a dense cloud overhead, weaving a cold living picture, majestic and tragic, and then the story was finished and their desiccated bodies fell as snow over Pamir.  But his preferred form was the single voice, usually an angel’s voice, her wings and arms embracing him while the whispered words moved him to astonishment and awe, and rage, and something indistinguishable from love.

Aeon had been a Gaian in the truest, rarest form:  A vast, interlocking organism carpeting one rich world, the simplest algae and most sophisticated mock-animals linked in a glorious Whole.

Evolutionary accidents built the Gaian.  There was a steady climate, a devoted sun, and few if any asteroid impacts battering the status quo.  Runaway symbioses were the beginning.  Neural networks arose from a gently parasitic worm; it was the worm’s spores that the bioscans had found, each spore filled with the makings of an intellect.  Only one world in ten thousand ever showed Gaian properties.  Fewer than one in ten million generated worldwide consciousness.  And according to Pamir’s research, none were self-aware, and experts and sophisticated models doubted that any world in the galaxy wore an authentic soul.

But the Gaian wasn’t born alone.  Aeon had a sister complete with an atmosphere and two small, salty oceans.  The two worlds were in a tidal lock, the same faces staring at each other as they turned around their center of gravity, sixteen hours to the day.  With countless eyes, night and day, Aeon watched its companion, marking the changing of seasons, the advance and retreat of glaciers, and the eras of relative abundance when the land and swollen water became a golden sweet green.

The moon was alive, and knowing nothing else, Aeon assumed a Gaian entity.

From its first conscious day and for a very long while, Aeon tried speaking to its sister.  It groomed forests and bright grasslands, and it painted the clouds with flights of mock-birds and torchflies, and the ocean’s plankton fluoresced on command, the night washed away by the extravagant radiance.  Every display built symbols.  There were pictures of their two worlds, and crisp patterns linked to numbers and counting and time, images of favorite bodies, favorite shores, jungles and mountains and deep cold waters.  But there was no response—nothing clear and unambiguous—and Aeon was forced into more desperate means.

Wings could fly only so high, and living balloons might reach the ends of the atmosphere, but then their gases escaped and their bodies froze, descending like spent leaves to the forest floor.

New ideas were needed, plainly.

Specialized, oversized neural centers were grown and spoiled.  Silly ideas with a smidgen of genius were cataloged, and that’s where the simple idea of rockets was created.  Within days, the first wood-and-flesh bodies were born and launched, and found wanting.  Yet that direction became the focus of hope:  New materials; new fuels; radical fresh methods of growth.  Specialized bodies mined the crust, purifying and reshaping elements scarcely needed in the past.  The next rockets had metal guts, and a few of them achieved orbit; and then even better rockets landed on the moon’s surface, their mock-animal crews examining and deciphering, and then returning to disgorge memories of immeasurable worth, immeasurable gloom.

The sister world had a thin dry impoverished atmosphere and a climate subject to rapid, chaotic change.  The poles were brutally cold while the equator broiled until the land was baked dead, every wind carrying the dust away in choking clouds.  Life was scarce and divided.  It was split into units—bitter, independent species—and even within one species there was competition, each body fighting for water, for food, for homelands and mates and the poor opportunity of making offspring that were never the same as the parents.

There was nothing Gaian to find, nothing to relish.

In the most fundamental ways, Aeon was alone.

Looking at its neighbor now, it saw pain and waste and daily tragedies, and after careful consideration it saw no choice but to act.

Rockets were sent by the thousands.

The alien flesh was not too different from its own—the result of shared origins in the mysterious past, no doubt.  Aeon taught that flesh how to cooperate, sharing without hesitation or agendas.  Neural masses were grown from local tissues, scattered but linked, and they shared thoughts yet never quite joined together.  There was competition and tiny alliances that would last a day, if that long, and the little world remained splintered.  So every mass was killed, and Aeon repeated the pattern, the weave inside its own responsible minds, and that was when the collective intelligence was born.

Ages passed, productive beyond measure.

The Gaians spoke, faces to faces.  Aeon discovered radio waves and lasers, and working together, they fashioned a single network of mirrors and antennae, orbiting and landlocked, all watching the great emptiness engulfing tiny them.

Eventually they heard creatures speaking, star to star to star.  The universe was rich with thought, yes.  But the minds were strange, minuscule and swift, often cooperative but never in the Gaian sense, and abundant beyond all calculation.

The sister was first to suggest building a genuine link—a physical connection to make them One.

Aeon invented the means.  Why not a great bridge?  No wood or metal would be strong enough.  But ultrapure carbon, if properly cultivated and aligned, could be laid down like coral, a great strong perfect bridge accreting with the ages.

Aeon’s deepest water was directly beneath the other’s waist.  To support its end of the bridge, it grew a small continent—a mammoth hunk of living wood and hollow aluminum—and the bridge was one endless tree, then many trees growing in a ring, and finally one magnificent tube bigger around than most mountains.

The other world lacked the water and bodies, but a matching tube rose into space, and the two structures met, merged.

There was a ceremony.

A celebration.

A grand embrace.

Aeon allowed its fellow Gaian to build huge muscular pumps, and the pumps took in a modest quantity of ocean water, spilling it over the bitter plains.  But the gift was a symbol.  “No more than this,” Aeon warned.  Long-range rockets were returning with news of water.  A thin belt of comets waited in the dark, and they were made of water ice and rich organics.  Wasn’t it reasonable to work together, with patience, bringing the wealth home to both of them?

Yet the neighbor had no intention of waiting.  Without warning—without any declaration of intent—it stole the floating continent.  Neural pipelines and mock-animals arrived, the latter built to be warriors.  Bladders full of careful poisons burst open, killing Aeon’s helpless flesh.  It was that moment, recoiling in retreat, when it named its opponent the Monster, every other name stricken from its mind.

A slow, enormous war was waged.

The pumps roared, joined by still larger pumps.  Cubic kilometers of seawater flowed across the bridge, flooding deserts and filling new seas, the Monster’s face turning blue as a gemstone.

Aeon tried to fight back, and failed.

What did it know about competition?  How could it learn treachery and cruelty, and master them fast enough?  Obviously peaceful, selfless Gaians were scarce for a reason; and centuries and too much thought were wasted dwelling on the unfairness of the universe, the grossness of life.

The ocean dropped as the disaster’s pace accelerated.  The continental shelves lay exposed, and the once-verdant continents grew cold and dry.  The floating continent—an ancient, badly abused slave—was anchored several kilometers beneath its starting point.  Sunken volcanoes stood as tall mountains.  Aeon’s shores fell straight into deceptively tranquil seas.  The new poverty brought dust storms and rumbling glaciers and cold droughts without end, and no river lived for long, while outside sheltered valleys, life was more likely to die than live.

Meanwhile, the Monster prospered.  The smaller world was submerged beneath the stolen waters.  Floating continents of mock-kelp and sponges fed on sunlight and fusion power.  Aeon watched the transformation, wishing for some stopping point, some moment and mood where the first Gaian would be maimed yet alive.  Surrendering to hope, it called out for a meeting, sending diplomats across the front lines, a thousand mock-dragons escorting them to the cursed bridge.

A newer, even larger pumping facility was starting to work; the Monster happily showed off its machinery.  Now the atmosphere was being absorbed, pressurized and liquefied, then carried away.  A great chill wind was blowing up the new shaft.  One of the diplomats was thrown in for emphasis.  The survivors asked how much air would be enough air?  And the Monster responded with a great laugh, every mouth saying, “I will leave nothing here but bare stone and pure vacuum.”

“But why?” asked a single diplomat.