But the shaft extended endlessly into the depths. He couldn’t even begin to imagine how it had been made. The answer would be beyond his understanding. He looked for something to throw into the shaft. He found a metal key in his back pocket. He had no idea how it got there. Maybe it was the recipe the nanofabricators had used to make his pants—a copy of a real pair of ancient pants, with a key. That would explain it.
He let the key fall and listened. He didn’t hear anything. The shaft was obviously perfectly vertical. That meant it would probably reach the core of the planet at some point. He ignored how impossible this idea was. The core was most likely very hot—although the planet was at least three times as old as Terra had ever been. Maybe it had cooled all the way through long ago.
Who could have dug out its interior like this? Perhaps a human architect? Walter Gropius might be capable of a project like this, or Le Corbusier, for that matter. That information could also have been deleted when the planet disappeared from the database. Kepler didn’t know about all of humanity’s large projects. When building a Dyson sphere around a star, most of the inner, Earth-like planets bit the dust. But surely no one would have wanted to build a sphere around a red dwarf.
What about the Big Eye? He had heard of a project to build a telescope the size of a planet, to inspect the neighboring galaxies more easily. That was before they had even sent the reconnaissance flights. The shaft could have something to do with that. Then again, it seemed too narrow.
Strangely, these thoughts calmed him. The existence of the shaft was no longer frightening. There was an explanation—he even knew its architects, although they were now far away. Gropius, for example, had supposedly been testing the feeding of black holes at IRS 13 for however many thousands of years. That wasn’t really so far away. Maybe this system was where he had previously been stationed? Anyway, it wasn’t impossible.
Gropius was a sensible man who knew what he was doing. And that was also reassuring, if he was about to jump into the shaft. Oddly, he was no longer afraid. Everything must have a reason.
A chunk of soil landed on his forehead. He understood. It was time.
Kepler took a run up, three steps, then leapt and became weightless. He closed his eyes.
The wind rushed in his ears. He found himself in free-fall, slowed only by the friction of the air. The power with which the planet pulled him in seemed to weaken the further he fell. Kepler calculated the possibilities, which would have been much simpler without the friction of the air. In an hour at the most—because the planet was larger than Terra—he would race at high speed through the core and then fly in the opposite direction. Or be crushed to a pulp if the shaft somehow ended.
But what would really happen to him depended on many other factors he didn’t know—the density of the planet, air pressure, the height of the entry point, its cross-section. It probably wouldn’t hurt to not be moving quite so fast, so he spread-eagled himself like a skydiver. Falling actually didn’t feel that bad. Maybe it was because he couldn’t tell how fast he was falling. The shaft had no features to help him orient himself. He could feel the airflow, but he had no experience with that. At any rate, he was approaching the target, whether he wanted to or not. And it couldn’t take too much longer—physics guaranteed that.
After half an hour, a very faint light was visible at the bottom of the shaft. Kepler turned off the holo emitter, which he had been using to light the wall of the shaft. The light below became brighter by the minute. He could soon make out the source more clearly. It consisted of numerous points of light on a dark surface. As he approached, the points became brighter but not bigger. They reminded him of stars in the night sky, although they were spaced at regular intervals.
Then the airflow decreased. That could only mean he was falling more slowly. Something was breaking his fall. Was the air pressure higher here? He had no instruments with which to measure air pressure. It was too soon to say, so he banished the thought, but then it crept in anyway. He wasn’t going to die. Maybe.
The brightness of the stars wasn’t increasing as quickly now, and he knew he was falling much more slowly. Something had braked his fall near the core of the planet, and he was floating down in reduced gravity. But that also meant he’d have to stay here forever. Climbing thousands of kilometers up the shaft was something he would never manage, even with the utmost determination. But okay, the chance that he might be allowed to survive was growing, and with it the chance of meeting Zhenyi. At least the journey here wouldn’t have been a total waste. And he was always up for something new.
The starry sky extended immeasurably. Kepler’s heart was beating fast. The shaft was at an end. He floated into an enormous dome lit by the stars. No, it wasn’t a dome, it was a sphere. The starlight was coming from below him, from the dark base of the sphere, and the roof above him was also part of the same sphere. The architect, whomever it had been, must have completely hollowed out the core of the planet. Billions of lights greeted him. It felt like a large church erected for an alien god. It was now so bright that he could see the dirt on his hands again. His face was probably covered in dirt, too. He bit his teeth together and they crunched. He wouldn’t say no to a shower right about now!
Kepler looked around. Soon his fate would be decided. He couldn’t do anything anyway. A gust of air shunted him across the giant radiant sphere and he came closer and closer to the surface. Suddenly confident, he directed the holo emitter down and then he saw them. The ground was covered entirely in stems. They were obviously living off the light coming from the artificial stars. But did that mean the sphere down here was made of soil? It must at least have a layer of it on the surface.
Only about thirty more meters to go. He drew circles on the ground with the holo emitter. No structures were recognizable. The stems swayed in the wind. Then he saw a bare patch and his gaze fell on Zhenyi.
She was waiting down there for him. With arms crossed, she stood there like a statue. Perhaps she was a statue? Or... had she just raised an eyebrow? The wind let him down gently right in front of her. The gravity was maybe a twentieth of that on the surface. They couldn’t be very far from the planet’s core.
Zhenyi didn’t move. She was as tall as he remembered her, and a whole lot more beautiful. He went toward her, a little fearful that she might turn out to be an illusion. But then a smile formed at the corners of her mouth. She opened her arms. Kepler stopped in front of her. She smelled human. He had found her! They embraced.
“Thank you for coming,” said Zhenyi.
“It wasn’t easy,” He furrowed his brow.
“I couldn’t make it too easy,” she replied. They ended the embrace.
Zhenyi put her hands on his shoulders and looked at him. “You look good,” she said.
“So do you.”
“You probably have a lot of questions.”
He nodded vigorously.
“Unfortunately they’ll have to wait. It’s complicated.”
“How long have you been waiting here?”
“Maybe 50,000 cycles?” she replied. “I’m not sure.”
That wasn’t a long time, but Kepler knew how it could be. He sometimes lost all sense of time after only five hundred years.
“I assumed it was urgent,” he said, “so we came as quickly as possible.”
“Good,” said Zhenyi. “It is urgent. We have a million cycles at the most. Probably not even that.”
A million years. Kepler lowered his head. He preferred the old expression, even though the terrestrial year had lost its meaning since the explosion of the sun. You can achieve a lot in a million years. And, according to the Convention, the Rescue Project should be ready by then to provide humanity with the necessary energy for its final years.
“Wait,” he said. “A million cycles? Is that a coincidence?”
“No, you’re on the right track. It has to do with the Rescue Project.”
“But that’s a done deal. All of humanity is implementing it together.”
“Well, except for the thousands that have ensconced themselves with sex slaves on tropical planets, or are lying around gorging themselves in some space station.”
“But that’s not the majority, Zhenyi. The majority is participating. They’ve all donated three-quarters of their personal energy reserves. And luminaries like Gropius and Galileo are involved in implementing it.”
“Galileo a luminary? Please.”
Oops, he had touched on this topic unintentionally. Zhenyi herself was a well-known astronomer and thought very little of Galileo’s work.
“After all, he calculated the merger quite well,” he said.
“Are you trying to annoy me? My simulations were much more precise.”
“But they weren’t finished until long after the Milky Way and Andromeda were already one.”
“That’s true, but does it change anything? I delivered better work, just a little too late. I wouldn’t be surprised if this Galileo is in on it with the conspirators.”
“The Curies?” he asked intuitively.
“How did you know that?”
He told her about the couple’s strange visit.
“I hope they didn’t follow you.”
“That wouldn’t be possible. They didn’t have the coordinates.”
“I’m not so sure about that. Someone deleted this system on Terra. Whoever that was could have downloaded all the information.”
“I can’t believe the database is so easily manipulated,” said Kepler.
“It isn’t easy. And then there’s still the Guardian.”
“But why such an effort? A planet with a bit of grass—who would need that out of the way so urgently?” He was understating things. He knew that as soon as he’d formulated the sentence. What existed here in the interior was unparalleled. But that probably had nothing to do with the grass.
“Haven’t you noticed?” asked Zhenyi.
“You mean the collective intelligence of the stems that retreat from me?”
“No, Kepler, you are wrong about that. It’s about far more than a collective intelligence. Although you’re not wrong in using that term. Who do you think built all this here?” Zhenyi indicated the sphere with a sweeping gesture.
“I suspected Gropius. The shaft, this simple, unpretentiously beautiful construction is his signature. But now that you’re asking—”
“It was them!” Zhenyi interrupted, pointing to the ground. “I call them Herbae, Latin for ‘grass.’”
“The stems? You’re trying to say that they have the ability to build all this? How long did it take them? And how did they do it?”
“You haven’t seen everything they do. Far from it. The vast portion of their life happens under the surface. They cultivate moveable roots. Earlier, when the planet wasn’t yet in its bound rotation, they had chased after the sun in huge colonies. Then, once the planet was only showing one side to the sun, they suddenly had excess energy. They didn’t need to migrate anymore. Those strong roots were free. Their collective intelligence—you were right about that—looked for new fields of activity.”
“That sounds exciting, but evolutionarily it makes no sense. Why should they invest their energy in this sphere?”
“They think ahead, Kepler. Their star has longevity, but it will die one day. Then the surface will become cold and inhospitable. Down here they have a better chance of survival.”
“But they’ll run out of fuel down here, too.”
“Not as fast as the humans. Their consumption isn’t as exorbitant as ours. They can survive with less energy. The main thing is that it will be available for a long time. And their energy source is perfect for that.”
“And where do they get their energy?”
“From a black hole, Kepler. We’re walking around on it.”
That was impossible. Kepler stamped hard with his boot. There was soil, nothing else.
“You should see the look on your face!” said Zhenyi. “But I couldn’t believe it at first either, until they showed it to me.”
“They showed you their black hole? Are you messing with me?”
“They did. It’s inside a spherical cavern right here beneath us. The cavern is just past the event horizon. It sucks up virtual particles that are formed there, but whose counterparts fall into the black hole.”
“But that would cause the black hole to evaporate over time.”
“That would take more time than the universe has left to live, and they could easily prevent it by feeding the black hole with normal matter from the planet.”
“That’s a clever plan.”
“I’ve calculated that they would be able to survive in this frugal manner until there wasn’t a star left in the sky. Our great Rescue Project, by comparison, will have already burned out after only twenty gigacycles.”
It gradually dawned on Kepler why Zhenyi needed him. For the first time in its existence, humanity had found another intelligent life form. Everyone should know about this! Hadn’t they searched for intellectual partners for long enough to establish that intelligence in the universe was absolutely rare and had only existed once in the local group?
“I understand. You called me here because you want everyone to find out about the existence of the Herbae,” he said.
Zhenyi laid her arm across his shoulders. “No,” she said. “You’re here because you can help me protect this unique civilization from extermination.”
“Someone wants to destroy the planet?”
“No, it’s about much more than that. But I’ll explain it to you tomorrow. First you need to shower. You smell like a skunk. Then I’ll have a meal prepared for us.”
Kepler sighed and nodded. Actually, he wanted to know everything immediately, but he desperately needed to use the bathroom, and his stomach was growling again.
Cycle ZB3.0, unknown system
“Don’t tell me the Herbae made our breakfast too.”
Zhenyi smiled, pulled her hand away, and stood up. Kepler was happy, because his hand had been on hers for a good minute.
“No,” she said. “I brought nanofabricators with me from the ship. Our hosts don’t even know what we need. I tried to describe it to them, but they couldn’t comprehend that we have to convert valuable organic matter instead of harvesting energy from sunlight.”
“And our breathable air?” he asked.
“The stems breathe out oxygen.”
“We must seem like parasites to them,” said Kepler.
“They wouldn’t be wrong.”
“How do you communicate with them?” he asked.
“You’ll have to have a little more patience. There’s quite a lot I have to tell you.”
Yes, ‘the story behind the story,’ he thought. Kepler had lain awake for a long time during the night. Everything Zhenyi had reported sounded so unbelievable. A world covered by a lawn demonstrating ant-like intelligence—that was sensational enough. The last planets humanity had discovered with any signs of life on them had been half an eternity ago, when the universe was half as old. But having overlooked a species capable of reasoning, and for so long? He still needed Zhenyi to answer a lot of questions before he’d be convinced of this.
“When are you going to show it to me?” he asked, setting down his fork.
He hadn’t been paying attention. The cutlery floated away and sailed to the ground. It was an unreal feeling. They were breakfasting near the core of a planet. And there were scrambled eggs and bacon. The nanomachines had done their work perfectly. Where did Zhenyi even get the recipe?
She came in with a pot, stood next to him, and poured coffee into his cup. The liquid moved in slow motion. Luckily the cup had indentations inside the rim, which stopped the coffee sloshing back over the sides.
“Very clever,” said Kepler, pointing at the cup.
“Oh, I learned that very quickly. It’s not so complicated, compensating for the low gravity.”
“Better than in a spaceship,” he said.
�
��Yes, everything falls down eventually. That is a bonus. I’m going to the bathroom, Johannes, to get ready. After that you’ll get your induction.”
Kepler nodded. At first he thought she had said ‘seduction,’ but quickly realized what she meant. She was still calling him by his first name. Was that a good or a bad sign? He felt a bit confused. It had been more straightforward with the butler, and even the sneaky rabbit hadn’t distracted him too much.
He got up. There was no butler here to clear away the dishes. He took them to the washstand, an old-fashioned piece of furniture. You could make hot or cold water flow from a pipe into a basin. Zhenyi had shown him the previous evening how to wash up. He placed the plates and cups upside-down next to the basin. A stream of water trickled slowly from the crockery toward the edge of the countertop. He watched it indecisively. How quickly would it fall to the floor? But he soaked it up with a towel just before it reached the edge.
Maybe he should prepare himself for the induction too. He hadn’t combed his hair today. He drew his fingers through it several times. Without a mirror, Kepler couldn’t check how successful this was, but it would undoubtedly be better than nothing.
He went to the edge of the platform on which Zhenyi had built her lodgings. Stilts raised the platform roughly one meter, and four steps led down to the ground on which the stems grew. They still recoiled from him. They had also spread out under the platform. Most of the light came from below, so the platform didn’t cast a shadow on the plants.
Kepler crouched down and stretched out his hand. But the stems didn’t react. An animal might have come closer out of curiosity and sniffed his fingers. The grass wasn’t interested in him, except to get out of the way of his feet. The vegetation had redesigned the planet like this? And it had installed a black hole in the core to harvest energy? It was hard to believe. Wasn’t it more likely that some architect had pulled off an elaborate prank? Genetically modifying the grass to behave like this would probably have been the most difficult part. But hollowing out a planet and equipping it with a black hole, that wasn’t magic. That was just damned expensive. If the system wasn’t recorded in any database, then someone could have managed all this without anyone noticing. There was no chance of accidental visitors, and the next star was three light-years away, so there wouldn’t have been any observers.
The Death of the Universe: Hard Science Fiction (Big Rip Book 1) Page 11