The Long Cosmos (13 page)

Jules called over, ‘They're more civilized than we are, Lee, remember. They don't need to avoid each other as much as we do.'

Roberta went on, ‘We'll have your luggage brought in . . . What else? Jules can show you how to use the galley. We generally eat fresh produce from the forest, but you may find it easier to use the food printer units.'

Dev frowned. ‘Food printer?'

Stella said, ‘Like your own matter printers, but rather more sophisticated. And based to some extent on silver-beetle technology – you know something about that. It's voice activated; you can ask for a wide variety of foodstuffs.'

‘Replicators,' Dev said. ‘They've got replicators.' He stepped forward to inspect the nondescript ceramic boxes. He could see no power connection; maybe there was some kind of energy-beam technology, invisible transmission.

Roberta said, ‘With such devices we have made a major step towards a true post-scarcity society. Hunger banished without labour, for ever.'

Dev couldn't resist it. ‘Can it give me Earl Grey tea?'

Lee grinned. ‘Hot!'

The two of them stayed in their guest house that evening.

That was basically on Jules's advice. They should keep themselves to themselves, and keep away from Next children in particular, he said. Even now, a quarter-century after the establishment of the Grange, many of the adults here had grown up in the human worlds and knew how to deal with regular people, respectfully or otherwise. But the kids born in the Grange were different. To them, humans were just exotic animals.

Jules had grinned nervously. ‘They aren't always – kind. Actually, some Next believe it's good for their children to be raised among humans. Because you exert a selection pressure. The truly smart, having discovered they are cleverer than the people around them, soon learn that the smartest thing of all for them to do is to prevent said people from ever finding this out. Roberta said she had a teacher who told her that she should have “Nobody Likes a Smart Alec” tattooed to her forehead in reverse, so she could be reminded of it every morning in the bathroom mirror . . .'

They erected a few partitions and assembled their cot beds.

‘So,' Dev said tentatively. ‘You want we should push these beds together?'

Lee glanced around at the partitions. ‘I can't see any lenses poking through the walls. But I doubt if our privacy has any real meaning for them. Any more than we'd think about a right to privacy for a hamster in a cage. If they thought it was useful or instructive, would they have any ethical qualms about observing the mating habits of this particular species of chimp? You can get your thrills some other way, assholes.' She raised her middle finger. ‘Quicktalk
that.'

17

I
N THE MORNING
, they breakfasted on eggs benedict and coffee from the replicators. Then Roberta Golding came to summon them to the first of the day's meetings.

The session was to be held in one of the bigger roundhouses. Maybe twenty people were already there when they arrived, sitting in rows on the floor or on heaps of cushions: mostly adults, one or two earnest-looking youngsters. They all wore idiosyncratic versions of the naked-with-pockets garments, though crotch and breasts were covered up, and they all carried tablets that looked like they had come fresh from some Low Earth industrial factory.

Stella Welch was already on her feet before an impressive-looking conference screen, speaking in rapid-fire quicktalk. Roberta led Dev and Lee to seats at the back of the room. One or two of the Next glanced around at them; the rest were incurious.

Roberta whispered, ‘This is just a preliminary presentation by Stella on what we've found in the Invitation so far. Hopefully this group will reach a consensus before presenting conclusions and recommendations to Ronald and Ruby later today.'

Lee frowned. ‘Who are they?'

‘You'll see. Of course the whole thing will be in quicktalk, but I'll try to keep you two informed. A literal translation would be impossible, of course; quicktalk contains many concepts which can't be rendered down into human language. It's quite possible that by the end of an intense session like this, the language itself will have evolved, with new vocabulary, even new grammatical structures—'

‘We get the idea,' Dev said, feeling weary. ‘Just give us the tabloid-headline summary.'

The screen lit up, and as Stella waved her hands a complex engineering diagram began to assemble itself, component after component dancing across the display in eye-baffling three-dimensional motions. Every so often Stella, with a grasping gesture, would pull some component out of the general layout to magnify it, rotate it, point out features, and the images swivelled in response. Every part looked alien to Dev; even what looked like structural components were intricately shaped, curved, knotted.

All this was presented at a bewildering pace.

Roberta said, ‘We're already halfway through Stella's presentation. There's so much to summarize.'

Lee asked, ‘This is to do with the Invitation? It looks like an engineering design.'

‘None of this was in the message itself,' Roberta said. ‘The information embedded in it, which we picked up with the Clarke, was indecipherable. Too complex—'

Lee evidently couldn't help herself. She grinned in triumph. ‘Even for you? Ha!'

Roberta was unperturbed. ‘We think, actually, that the apparent data content was a kind of lure, a distraction. The Invitation seems to work on a more primal level. On the mind itself. As if the signal content works indirectly –
hypnotically
is not the right word . . .'

As we knew, Dev thought. As observers of the trolls reported from across the Long Earth, for instance – if only these Next had listened. The radio transmission from space was only one element of the signal. The message had washed across all the stepwise worlds, in the form of – what? Dreams, visions, longings? And, accordingto the handlers of the troll workers at GapSpace, those deep-brained denizens of the Long Earth had picked up their own form of the Invitation too. This wasn't just about humans or even the Next; it was about everybody.

‘So it's a kind of – cosmic telepathy,' Lee said uncertainly.

Roberta raised neat eyebrows. ‘We prefer to avoid such imprecise terms. But there
is
no English word. Think of it as . . . a vision. A vision which can, perhaps, be fulfilled in engineering terms. And that is what our finest minds have attempted to do. The result is what you have seen today. A Next design in response to an alien vision. The surface level of the message was: JOIN US. The level further down is: HERE's HOW. But it is a target we have to reach ourselves.'

With the help of mankind, Dev thought, and the trolls, and others, who had all been made ready in some sense by versions of the message of their own.

‘I guess I see that,' Lee said. ‘A vision of a design. Like Leonardo sketching helicopters centuries ahead of their time; he could see them in his mind's eye. But a helicopter was for flying. What is this thing
for
?'

‘We may have to complete it to find out for sure,' Roberta said.

Lee asked, ‘Do you at least know where this signal is coming from?'

‘It's impossible to be sure, but the origin is somewhere in Sagittarius. We still believe it originates deep in the heart of the Galaxy. In fact, for some time – even before the silver beetle incident, long before the Invitation was detected – we've been monitoring anomalous gravitational waves coming from the black hole system at the Galaxy's very centre.'

‘Anomalous?' Dev asked.

‘Containing structure that we can't analyse.'

Lee grinned. ‘Satisfying to hear there's something you can't do.'

Dev said, ‘So anyhow you have super-advanced aliens trying to get in touch. We dim-bulbs thought all this through a century ago. An interstellar message? Upside,
Contact.
A glorious galactic future. Downside,
A for Andromeda.
Enslavement and extermination.'

Roberta seemed to consider. ‘These fictions may be useful input.'

Dev couldn't tell if she was sincere. ‘Glad to be of service.'

Now the scale changed, and in the virtual graphic on the screen the individual components melded into a kind of structure – sprawling, flat, intricate. It reminded Dev of a massive solar energy array, maybe, or an antenna farm, hundreds of dishes peering collectively at the sky. Or maybe it was more exotic than that, less orderly, like a rendering of some other-worldly city.

Roberta said, ‘The components come in two rough classes, though there is a significant overlap. The larger components are simpler, at least in information content, and are mostly structural. But you can see that even they are often complicated. The smaller components are still more intricate – and smarter. More complexity pound for pound than a human brain. Even a Next brain.'

‘Gosh,' Lee deadpanned, and Dev suppressed a smile.

‘We believe that – if it is decided to construct this device – our replicator technology here at the Grange will be able to print out many of the smaller, intricate components. But we do not yet have the capability to manufacture the larger elements. Especially given the sheer number of them that seems to be specified.'

‘Ah,' Lee said. ‘So you'd have to contract all that out to us low-brows. The industrial complexes in the Datum and the Low Earths.'

‘Yes.' Roberta listened a moment. ‘Some of the attendees note the practical difficulty of working with humans at all, in an age of dissolving central governments and a weakening corporate culture. And then there is the group known as the Humble, an ideological Next–human collectivist movement that has gained particular traction in the industrialized Low Earths where much of this work would need to be done. Perhaps you have heard of a spokesperson for that group – Marvin Lovelace – a former colleague of mine who now spends most of his time in the human worlds. Marvin is suspicious of the motives of those who sent the message – suspicious of their manipulation of our consciousness.'

Lee smiled. ‘Like Dev said.
A for Andromeda
.'

‘Actually it is useful to have an expression of opposing points of view. We Next are far less paranoid than humans.

‘But others raise the question of urgency. Time may be short, you see. If large-scale human industrialization collapses altogether, then it may not be possible to progress the Invitation project for some time – not until we Next have developed large-scale manufacturing facilities, presumably robotic, under our own direct control. A window of opportunity is closing. Others in this group are reminding us that because of the urgency, preliminary efforts have already been made to pre-prepare the human populations of the Long Earth for such a project.'

Dev asked, ‘“Pre-prepare”? What does that mean?'

Roberta said, ‘Our main tool to date has been viral narratives—'

‘Viral what?' Lee scowled.

‘Memes,' Dev said. ‘I think she's saying they're introducing ideas into our culture to control us.'

‘That's outrageous. What gives you the right to meddle with our minds?'

‘Well, that is a moral dilemma. In fact the debate about our relationship with the human world has been intense since the teachings of Stan Berg. As far as dealing with the signal is concerned,
should
we proceed with such a project without a full consultation with you? After all, the consequences are likely to impact humanity as well as the Next.'

‘Damn right,' Lee said sternly. ‘You mean you've seriously considered
not
consulting us at all?'

Roberta glanced at her. ‘In the course of your early mechanized wars, millions of horses were slain in the combat arenas. Before the conflict, did you give such animals a veto on participation?'

‘I'm no damn horse.'

Dev was distracted by the latest image in the screen, which expanded as the virtual camera pulled back; now individual components were lost in a sea of complexity. The viewpoint tipped up to a horizon crowded with technology – and Dev saw, to his amazement, that that horizon was
curved
.

‘Roberta, how big is this thing going to be?'

She shrugged. ‘We don't have all the specifications; we're still not sure. When it's fully assembled we suspect it will be larger in area than most states. Smaller than the continental USA.'

Lee stared at her. ‘Larger than a
state
?'

The group was stirring. The conversation was breaking up into small huddles, while Stella closed down her display. A couple of members hurried out, looking earnest.

Roberta said, ‘I think we have a consensus.'

‘We do?' Dev felt bewildered. ‘It would take a bunch of human scientists or engineers days, weeks, to come to a conclusion about this. If they ever did at all.'

Roberta said gently, ‘It is easier for us to talk things through. We are able to discard personality – pride, personal clashes, territoriality – more readily than you can. And our logic allows us to resolve many preliminary questions; we can all see the obvious answers immediately. We tend to find it easy to agree on tactics, you see. It is only at the strategic level where we have significant disagreements. In this case, of course, the debate is over whether to accept this Invitation – to fulfil the vision – or not. Which is where Ronald and Ruby come in.'

Lee tapped Dev's shoulder. ‘Take a look.'

Dev turned to face the door.

He saw that a kind of wooden litter was being carried into the room, on the shoulders of half a dozen Next. On the litter, sitting side by side on upright chairs with loose harnesses, were two more Next. They wore versions of the usual shorts and vests with pockets, and their bodies looked normal – human adult, maybe rather skinny, Dev saw, if not wasted. An attendant was supervising a drip that fed into the arm of the one on the left. Ronald or Ruby? He couldn't actually tell which was male and which female.