by Ian Stewart
"Now let me peel off another layer. We are still thinking about these matters in too specialized a way. We know of a variety of life-forms and pseudo-life-forms. Humans. Blimps. Wheelers. Magnetotori. Plasmoids. So: what do they have in common?"
Charles was the first to admit defeat. "Nothing. Each is unique."
"Not so. They are alive."
"Yes, but—"
"They exploit a universal principle. You might call it the cracks in the second law of thermodynamics, but that would be to dignify a serious misconception. The true principle is much simpler. Biology corrupts physics."
"I know what you mean. 'Life turns up everywhere it can. Life turns up everywhere it can't.'"
"Neatly put, Prudence. We must not think of life as some exotic form of matter that requires extremely improbable events to come into being. Life is a universal process—reproducing, self-organizing, self-complicating ... It is in the nature of that process that however 'difficult' it may be to get going, once it does get going it takes over completely. And in fact it is not especially difficult—it is just that humans have difficulty understanding it. On Earth, you find bacteria miles beneath the surface, in cracks in the rock, living off chemical energy—iron-sulfur metabolism, quite unlike you and me. But that is the same kind of life, because it runs on the same chemical ingredients—"
"You mean we're all part of the same big system, and it's penetrated to every part of the planet. Rocks are made from the shells of dead creatures . . . organic chemicals lubricate the drift of the continents . . . forests affect the weather ..." Prudence wasn't able to keep the excitement out of her voice.
The Cuckoo applauded. "Well done! That is exactly my meaning. We believe that we exist in a universe that runs by the laws of physics—endless tiny quantum wavelets rippling through multidimensional quantum fields. Physicists have worked out the rules, and they have derived a wonderful picture of how quantum wavelets behave. But now it gets philosophically difficult: biology corrupts physics. More accurately: mathematics is corrupted by physics is corrupted by chemistry is corrupted by biology is corrupted by intelligence is corrupted by culture is corrupted by extelligence, which corrupts itself recursively."
Prudence—and Moses—were quickly convinced, but Charles continued to raise objections. "Do you mean that life doesn't obey the laws of physics? Isn't that a rather mystical position?"
"You have put your finger upon the philosophically tricky aspect. I am not saying that life disobeys the laws of physics. It is how it obeys those laws that matters. We can follow the link from the laws of quantum physics to the hydrogen atom, so the hydrogen atom is excellent physics. But a quantum-mechanical explanation of a lioness chasing a zebra simply does not work as physics. You cannot even express the problem in terms of quantum wave functions—lionesses and zebras are far too complicated. There is no way to go from the laws of quantum physics to a honess hunting a zebra except by leaving enormous logical gaps. The universe may be doing it that way, but the human mind cannot possibly follow such a convoluted chain of causality Yet the mind of a lioness knows it wants to hunt the zebra, and the mind of a zebra impels it to outrun the Honess."
"Ant Country," Prudence realized. "Mind is an emergent phenomenon."
"Exactly. The universe may be navigating its way through the intricacies of Ant Country, quantum rule by quantum rule, an unimaginably huge game of cosmic chess . . . but if it is, we cannot understand it that way. The mathematics of 'hungry' is not derivable from quantum physics in any manner that the human mind can grasp. That is what I mean by 'corrupts.' Biology does not disobey physics: it just works in a way that makes our normal understanding of physics inoperative. Ask the lioness and the zebra."
The Cuckoo waited patiently while the others argued among themselves. He knew that they had received his message: it would sink in when they were ready for it. Moses was already prepared. Finally Charles spoke. "You're saying the Big Bang never happened?"
"Not at all. I am saying that calculations based on the assumption that the period between the Big Bang and now consists entirely of uncorrupted physics will misjudge the age of the universe. Just as calculations of the speed of terrestrial continental drift, based on pure geology, give the wrong answer, because they ignore the lubricating effect of organic matter. And calculations of the oxygen turnover in Earth's atmosphere that ignore plant life are simply nonsense."
"But what about the cosmic background radiation? Black-body radiation at three degrees Kelvin, echoes of the Big Bang from fifteen billion years ago?"
"Echoes from something, surely," said the Cuckoo. "The Big Bang? Charles: how can we know that?"
"Oh. Moore's Theorem. The communications of advanced civilizations look exactly like—"
"Black-body radiation," Prudence finished for him. "Oh, my God."
"We're picking up the encrypted communications of/i/teen-hillion-year-old civilizcLtionsl Not echoes of the Big Bang?"
"History," the Cuckoo told them, "is unknowable. You could be right, Charles. No doubt the Big Bang happened, but much further in the past than we have computed. Certainly the question of 'missing neutrinos' in solar nuclear reactions is easily solved: not neutrino mass or oscillations, but plasmoid society managing the nuclear reactions for its own benefit. Other mysteries may have similar solutions. What physicists call the era of inflation may be the effect of quantum-gravity creatures that eat curvature. The anomalous spin of galaxies may not be evidence for cold dark matter, but for the ability of a living galaxy to swim at will through the cosmic void.
"The universe is a playground of life, but—as we have seen— even a race as ancient as the Jovians can fail to understand just how diverse living systems can be. Our own species nearly became extinct as a consequence. Diverse they may be, but they are also unihed. We and the Jovians—even the plasmoids—are not so dissimilar. Our phylogeny and the Jovians' diverged from that of the plasmoids when the universe was composed solely of hydrogen and helium."
"You're saying we all have a common ancestorl"
"Yes, but it was not a life-form. It was a common ancestral corruption. The quantum wave functions diverged, some to plasma and high temperatures, others to complex atoms, molecular matter, and low temperatures. Later, chemical divergences separated our ancestors, inhabitants of aqueous worlds, from those of the Jovians—creatures suited to gas giants.
"The Tree of Life is All One.
"And that. . . brings me to my final conclusion. Not an abstract observation about the nature of life, but a moral imperative. Between us, humans and Jovians, we have understood a deep truth. Out in the universe there may be creatures who are repeating the same mistakes that were made on Firsthome and in our own Solar System. We and the Jovians have been placed in a unique position: we possess the understanding, and together we possess the means to propagate it."
There had been a long silence.
"Shit." The Cuckoo's intentions had finally dawned on Prudence. "You want us to turn into missionaries. Spreading the gospel of unity and diversity of pangalactic life. Cosmic green-ies."
The Cuckoo had said nothing.
Sometimes all you had to do was wait.
Charity and Angle sat on the veranda of the Moses Odingo Zoodiversity Center, Gooma. A dose of Carver money had transformed the place beyond all recognition. A gibbous moon hung in the sky, its reflections gleaming off the artificial lake that the landscape architects had created. Ripples turned specks of moonlight into elegant curves, evanescent Islamic cartography.
The Moon dust kicked up by the comet had settled, and the Buddhist bases were back in business. Two months ago, the Moon's face appeared entirely normal—dark maria surrounded by brighter uplands. Tonight, it was unrecognizable—there were no large dark patches, and when seen through a low-powered lens its softly lit disk was dominated by the concentric rings of the Mare Orientale and the brilliant radiating circle of Nagarjuna Crater, where a fragment of comet had hit. In another two months, the familiar Man in the Mo
on would beam down once more. The comet's passage had altered the Moon's rotation. No longer in synch with its orbital revolution, to earthly eyes it was slowly spinning. It was a permanent reminder that the human race teetered on a celestial knife edge.
Along with virtually everyone else on Earth, Angle and Charity were watching the W Bailey Barnum had really hit the big time with this show: the Lumley ratings broke all previous records put together. His now-massive communications corporation the Greatest Show Off Earth was vidivising nonstop live images (forty-eight minutes late) from Jupiter.
Metis, Adrastea, and Thebe were not needed for this voyage; it was to be an exploration, not another exodus. Only the ungainly pockmarked lump known as Amalthea, which had been cast off from parking orbit two weeks earlier, was taking its place in the assembly zone. The errant Innermost Moon was swarming with wheeler gadgetry, making final inspections of the new oxygen-atmosphere installations and the intricate nets of thick cable that enveloped it.
Days before, all blimp and human passengers had disappeared into the moonlet's cavernous interior. Among them were Prudence and Charles, Moses and Halfholder. The Cuckoo had been right—he knew that none of them could resist the challenge. So he sowed the suggestion and waited, and in time they came to the same opinion.
Satisfied with their preparations, the wheelers scutded be-lowdecks, too.
Cashew Tintoretto, celebrity presenter, was going berserk as Jonas cleverly built up the excitement with recorded footage of Prudence, Charles, Moses, and Halfholder. Then the images switched to the string of tame magnetotori, waiting patiently at the edge of the assembly zone.
Brushed by repulsor beams, the moonlet began to revolve. In its interior, centrifugal forces created the illusion of gravity. Electricity flowed through the network of cables, and the moonlet acquired a magnetic field. Lines of magnetic force, invisible but no less real for that, linked the spinning moonlet to the waiting train of magnetotori.
Angle chuckled. "Hitch your wagon to a star." All that was missing was a bearded old drunk in a ten-gallon hat to ride shotgun.
Charity's mind was elsewhere. The stocky Nyamwezian was surprisingly unemotional, but her eyes shone with an inner gleam of pride.
"Penny for them?"
"I'm thinking of Moses . . . but you know that. His childhood was stolen from me, the Buddhists changed his mind about coming home, and now he's going off to the stars and I'll never see him again."
"He'll be back—one day."
"But I won't be here to greet him, Angela. Time will pass more slowly for him than for us."
The older woman nodded knowingly. The Centauri system, Barnard's Star, Wolf 359, Lalande 21185, Sirius, Epsilon Eridani, 61 Cygni, Procyon, Sigma 2398 . . . Not much farther apart, in rela-tivistically dilated journey time, than a return trip from Earth to fupiter. . . Why would any red-hlooded human being ever want to come home?
"He's a good boy. Makes his mother proud." Charity lapsed into silence, staring at the W screen. Then she stood up. "Show's over for now, they won't be ready to leave for weeks. I'll just go and . . . and make sure that ... the new cheetah cubs are settled. You—you coming?"
"Sure, honey. I need to stretch my legs." Angle pulled open the screen door and the two women stepped back Into the house.
Life goes on.
Everywhere.