The Well of Stars (16 page)
Authors: Robert Reed
Twice at least, probes flew through the middle of her scattered ship.
They were not small machines, and they acted interested. With Mere’s various eyes, she saw mirrored dishes using the last ruddy traces of starlight, staring back at her with an unnerving intensity. But both of the flybys were finished in less than a second, and if anyone felt suspicious, or even simply interested, they would launch a new probe with the opposite trajectory. And until someone or something flew beside her, Mere would cling to her present course.
As Pamir reached his destination, Mere was finally diving into the nebula itself. The tunnel remained open—a well-tended route leading back to the Great Ship. There was nothing unexpected about that. Pamir needed a clean path home, and the polyponds were being nothing but helpful.
One morning, as Mere breakfasted on a whisper of current barely powerful enough to feed a horsefly—as the taste of Tilan fish and earthly seaweeds filled her frozen mouth—she opened her eyes to the outside.
Nothing could be seen.
The blackness was relentless, seamless and ancient and brutally cold. Despite every wise thought and every comfortable platitude, she felt afraid. Her imaginary breath grew tight and slow. Suffocating, she began to doubt everything that she held dear about her own toughness and endurance.
The claustrophobia was awful for a day or two.
In a rare breach of her own rules, Mere medicated her cold
mind. Tranquilizers and mood enhancers gave her a false euphoria that allowed her time to prepare for the inevitable.
mind. Tranquilizers and mood enhancers gave her a false euphoria that allowed her time to prepare for the inevitable.
Who knew this would feel so awful?
She felt ashamed, and sad. For the first time since she was a newborn, Mere struggled with the kind of horrible solitude that would have stunted any soul.
The medications faded.
Gradually, gradually, Mere learned how to look into the dust, noticing glimmers of heat and ropes of energy and odd, slow, and rather large vessels moving patiently from warm body to warm body. From polypond to polypond. What a remarkable and unexpected, odd and oddly beautiful realm.
Finally, something obvious occurred to her.
Could it be?
When Mere felt certain, she sent home the first message in nearly ten years. A carefully encrypted and very quiet message—a few words dressed inside a snarl of ordinary static—was broadcast to the Master Captain and Washen.
“I don’t know yet how the polyponds evolved,” she admitted. “I don’t know if they came from a natural world, or if they were someone’s tool that got loose. But they were not fully sentient until they were here. Inside the Inkwell. Inside all this dust and black.”
A genuine excitement lifted her bare metabolism.
“When they were born … I’m nearly certain about this … when the first polyponds grew self-aware, and for a long time after that, they reasonably assumed they were the only souls in existence, and their home was everything, and that the Creation was blackness without end … !”
“Her clothes are a little bland, I’ll grant you. But everything beneath is beautiful. Gorgeous. Absolutely glorious.” Then with a deep, nearly winded gasp, O’Layle added, “She’s a wondrous, perfect lady. She really is.”
The object of his considerable affections was the Mars-sized sphere dressed in a nearly perfect black. Except in infrared, where she glowed like the final coal in a very old fire.
“Have you ever imagined such a creature?” O’Layle inquired. And then he halfway giggled, underscoring again the simple fact, “That’s what she is. A creature. An organism. A single fully functioning entity. And a lady who happens to be seven thousand kilometers across.”
“It is spectacular,” Quee Lee offered.
“She is,” O’Layle corrected.
“Of course. She.”
Pamir remained silent. Piloting the shuttle was simple enough, three onboard AIs doing the bulk of the work. But he was already tired of the Blue World’s emissary. Better this chore than another tedious and entirely useless conversation with O’Layle. After rechecking their course and insertion site, Pamir glanced back at the streakship, magnifying a patch of the sable sky until he saw a bright fleck still singing “All is well,” with a preset and very precise melody.
“I named her the Blue World.”
Or the polypond simply allowed him to call her that. But Pamir didn’t offer the possibility; cynical thoughts rarely found purchase in souls that believe themselves to be in love.
“She’s excited to meet you,” O’Layle claimed.
Quee Lee nodded, replying, “We are thrilled to meet her.”
A third of the streakship’s crew was crammed inside the tiny shuttle. The mood was complex, ever-shifting. Excitement bled into a nervous energy that would suddenly drain away, leaving everyone suspicious, even paranoid. Then as the mood drifted back to optimism—as the first smiles reemerged—O’Layle would make a fresh declaration or an exponential promise. Without obviously intending it, he would chum up the excitements and doubts all over again.
“Before her,” he said, “I had never believed this would happen to me.”
Perri rose to the bait. “What would happen?”
O’Layle winked and grinned. “An alien for a lover. Really, I never dreamed that I could stomach it. Much less enjoy the experience.”
Pamir glanced at the idiot.
Misreading that simple expression, the man said, “You don’t know, Submaster Pamir. None of you can. What she accomplishes as a lover … you have no idea what her affections can achieve …”
“I have a good imagination,” Pamir replied.
“Oh, no. No.” O’Layle laughed. Giggled, almost snorting. “I mean, the Blue World can build
any
body with ease. Any shape, any purpose. Every whim and unique desire can be answered.”
any
body with ease. Any shape, any purpose. Every whim and unique desire can be answered.”
There was an obvious, tempting response. Gaians fabricated bodies with the unconscious ease with which humans secreted new skin cells. These bodies had no bounds and no morals, and they could be infused with every pleasure while ignoring even the most withering pain. Whatever the purpose, it had to be spectacularly easy, feeding the lust of a grateful and lonely man. And how could one human animal comprehend his lover’s motives, particularly when the creature was investing nearly nothing in that lopsided relationship?
Pamir threw a look at Quee Lee and her husband.
With a wink and sharp “Hey,” Perri pulled the man’s
attention back to himself. “You know, I once met a Gaian.”
attention back to himself. “You know, I once met a Gaian.”
O’Layle put on a doubting face. “Is that so?”
“Ages ago,” Perri recalled. “It was a refugee, of sorts. Made friends with one of the captains and slipped on board the ship, in secret.”
“I didn’t know that.”
“Didn’t she live inside one of the sewage plants?” Quee Lee asked, gently nudging her husband. “You slipped down there along with the garbage, didn’t you?”
“Did I tell you that story?” Perri inquired.
“You did,” she swore. “But you never mentioned that Gaians are lustful creatures. Should I be jealous, darling?”
Both cackled at that.
“Except she didn’t play with me,” Perri continued. “What good could I do her? No, it was the captain who let her aboard in the first place. That’s who she was entertaining.”
With a growing disgust, O’Layle listened to the reminiscence.
Perri smiled at Pamir. “Mister Second Chair,” he began, “does this story sound familiar?”
“Barely,” Pamir growled.
With a mocking tone, Perri asked, “And what happened to that Gaian?”
“It died.”
O’Layle seemed alarmed. “How? What happened?”
Pamir shrugged. “The creature was a liar. It manipulated that stupid captain. Destroyed his career, nearly. And in the process, it endangered the ship. So there wasn’t any choice, and of course it was destroyed:” With a cold surety, he said, “The Great Ship has to be defended. Every threat has to be dealt with. Billions of lives depend on every captain’s wisdom.”
O’Layle swallowed, eyes squinting now.
As soon as this man kicked his way on board the
streakship, he had suffered a series of thorough examinations. Autodocs and psychological-adept AIs had done their best with O’Layle, and each of the crew, singly and in groups, had spent time talking to him. Listening to him. Or just watching him. Since Perri had known the man for ages, he oversaw the smiling interrogations. Opinions had been generated and exchanged. Suspicions were refined or discarded. And again, O’Layle was examined, everyone listening to whatever he had to say, the process succeeding in doing little except to make O’Layle feel like an important and fascinating guest.
streakship, he had suffered a series of thorough examinations. Autodocs and psychological-adept AIs had done their best with O’Layle, and each of the crew, singly and in groups, had spent time talking to him. Listening to him. Or just watching him. Since Perri had known the man for ages, he oversaw the smiling interrogations. Opinions had been generated and exchanged. Suspicions were refined or discarded. And again, O’Layle was examined, everyone listening to whatever he had to say, the process succeeding in doing little except to make O’Layle feel like an important and fascinating guest.
To every eye, he seemed utterly human.
In his bones and deep inside every cell, O’Layle was a creature that had evolved on Earth before being modified by an array of elaborate but familiar technologies. And in his mind, he seemed perfectly average: a vain, self-obsessed passenger, and exactly the sort of the man who would spend a fortune to abandon everyone he knew, leaving them to die and the ship to splinter and boil.
Whatever the Blue World was, this could be the first human it had met.
A stroke of bad luck, perhaps.
Pamir secretly examined the latest verdict of the autodocs. O’Layle was reacting in a thoroughly expected fashion. Judging by his breathing and biochemistry, and using a series of nanoscopic implants scattered through his outraged husk, the man gave no sign of being anything but a simple soul deeply out of his natural environment.
Turning to Pamir, he blurted, “She won’t hurt you.”
“Me?”
“Or the ship, either.” His face was appalled, his body stiff, deep instincts demanding some worthy reaction. “You have to believe me. She and the rest of the polyponds … they want to be helpful … more than anything, they want to ease your passage through their space … !”
“Good,” Pamir offered.
Sensing sarcasm, O’Layle muttered, “Besides, you can’t do anything to her. You never could. She’s huge. They’re all huge. And the polyponds … they number in the millions … !”
Pamir nodded, saying nothing.
Quee Lee reached into the tense silence, telling everyone who might be listening, “We want no trouble. This is a mission of simple peace. Why wouldn’t we be?”
“Good,” O’Layle said in a hopeless way.
A bright light had appeared on the limb of the black body. Blue as promised, it marked the insertion point where the world’s clothes had parted slightly, offering a route inside for a careful shuttle.
“I’m sure you’re peaceful,” the foolish man muttered. Then with a desperate expression, he told Pamir, “I know people. I’m a good judge of character. I can tell, you do mean to do what’s best. And I’m almost sure that I can trust you. That we can trust you, I mean.”
FOR THIS SYMBOLIC occasion, a modest continent had been built.
Metal spongework had been grown in the depths, the pores and deep caverns pumped full of hydrogen gas, each mountain buoyant enough to rise to the calm face of the turquoise ocean. Strung together and moored in place, the spongework provided a stable foundation for thick layers of black peat and brief scenic rivers. Then the newborn land was populated by countless mock-species, each imagined and then brewed for what would be the briefest visit.
“Beautiful,” was the unanimous consensus.
And yet.
A patchwork of sharp blue-white lights clung to the far-above ceiling. While the AI pilots deftly maneuvered their shuttle over the landing site, Pamir watched the landscape pass below. High metal ridges shone in the artificial sunlight, straight and keen as knife blades. The
forests were a gaudy rich green that served no purpose but to look like an earthly jungle. There was no chlorophyll in the spectrum, nor any other trace of working photosynthesis. Sweeps by radar and bursts of focused sound mapped the terrain to a resolution where every organism as large as a mouse was visible, and in the guise of thorough navigation, Pamir ordered denser sweeps. Each organism seemed to be its own species. Each wore an array of ornate flaps and feathers, skins and tails, every color bright and finely rendered, drawn with a tireless and careful hand. Thousands of large and beautiful organisms had gathered around their landing site, and after the shuttle settled on the polished sheet of stainless steel, they sang. With a shared voice, they roared their joyous greetings, the melody too complex for any human ear to follow, and despite that impenetrability, perfectly lovely.
forests were a gaudy rich green that served no purpose but to look like an earthly jungle. There was no chlorophyll in the spectrum, nor any other trace of working photosynthesis. Sweeps by radar and bursts of focused sound mapped the terrain to a resolution where every organism as large as a mouse was visible, and in the guise of thorough navigation, Pamir ordered denser sweeps. Each organism seemed to be its own species. Each wore an array of ornate flaps and feathers, skins and tails, every color bright and finely rendered, drawn with a tireless and careful hand. Thousands of large and beautiful organisms had gathered around their landing site, and after the shuttle settled on the polished sheet of stainless steel, they sang. With a shared voice, they roared their joyous greetings, the melody too complex for any human ear to follow, and despite that impenetrability, perfectly lovely.
“I’ve never been here,” O’Layle muttered. His little home floated on the opposite hemisphere. Stepping slowly out into the bright tropical light, he remarked with a mild disgust, “I didn’t know about this. That she was doing this for you …”
The air was warm and bright, and damp, every breath laced with a unique mixture of sweet perfumes and mild pheromones. Standing together beneath the shuttle’s stubby wing, the humans couldn’t help but feel honored. The scene was built for them, and a thousand gorgeous creatures were dancing out from the edges of the jungle. If anything, their song grew louder and more urgent as they gracefully pushed closer.
Quee Lee said a few words to her husband.
Perri shrugged, laughing. “If they’re going to kill us, we’re dead. So where’s the good sense in worrying?”
O’Layle moved first, but after a few steps, he slowed and fell behind Pamir. Gazing up at the bright steel mountains, he said again, “I’ve never seen this place before.” Then hearing the jealousy in his own voice, he
added, “This would take a long time to build. I would guess. I bet this place hasn’t been finished for long.”
added, “This would take a long time to build. I would guess. I bet this place hasn’t been finished for long.”
It was finished yesterday, Pamir decided.
Or two minutes ago.
As he walked, he spoke through a nexus, joining the tangled conversations of the crew waiting on board the streakship.
“Look at their interiors,” said a xenobiologist, studying the shuttle’s telemetry stream. Pointing a sonic eye, she said, “See this—?”
“Guts?”
“Right.”
“What about their guts?” Pamir inquired.
“They don’t have any,” the authoritative voice warned him. “Nothing like an esophagus. Stomach. Intestines, or rectum.”
Singly, the creatures were gorgeous—elaborate and deeply contrived but always lovely, dancing and weaving their way across the open ground. Anywhere from two to twenty limbs were raised high. Plumage full of cobalt blues and bloody reds made eyes blink and tear up with their glare. Elegantly shaped heads, one or two or three per body, served to hold simple eyes and great gaping mouths that were attached to nothing but a damp mass of lung tissue and powerful muscles.
“Fat,” a voice said. “And probably dissolved sugars, too.”
“For energy?” Pamir asked.
“For a little energy,” another voice warned him. Then with an impressed but disgusted tone, she added, “If they keep moving and screaming, at this rate, they’ll burn their reserves in less than an hour.”
Like mayflies, the multitude would not live out the day.
“To build everything here,” Pamir began, gazing at the gemlike green of the jungle and the high steel mountains beyond. “How much would it cost? In energy. Time. Best guesses?”
Modest energies, the experts said. Plus years of patient work.
But moments later, the same voices discounted those first guesses. Both the shuttle and streakship were jammed with sensors as well as delicate machines that could double as sensors. Subtle shifts in gravity helped map the Blue World’s interior. Sonar and the stomping of alien feet helped seismographs look into the top layers of water. Reactors on both vessels sent streams of neutrinos toward each other, cutting through the world’s body in the process. And more important, and perhaps more ominous: The ocean beneath them was filled with busy, even frantic machinery. A thousand reactors had suddenly awakened. Bright streams of neutrinos revealed a raw power, muscles far in excess of any simple organic Gaian. Moving masses caused the body to shiver and quake, and every ripple and every whispery particle gave a new clue about what lay beneath. Spongeworks, neutrally buoyant and waiting to serve whatever whim the world felt like ordering, hung scattered through the deep ocean. They were made of steel and calcium and plastic, and near the curiously oblong core, there were the unmistakable signs of pure high-grade hyperfiber.
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