Existence

by David Brin

  Even its method of propulsion seemed designed for stealth. Most of the world’s sub-sea detection systems were tuned to listen for propellers, not wriggling giant serpents.

  Of course signs of humanity lay everywhere. The ocean floor was an immense junkyard, even in desert zones where no fish or plants or any kind of resource could be seen. Shipwrecks offered occasional sights worth noting. Far more often, Bin saw mundane types of trash, like torn commercial fishing nets, resembling vast, diffuse, deadly clouds that drifted with the current, clogged with fish skeletons and empty turtle shells. Or swarms of plastic bags that drifted alongside jelly hordes in creepy mimicry. Once, he spotted a dozen huge cargo containers that must have toppled from a mighty freighter long ago, spilling what appeared to be bulky, old-fashioned computers and television panels across forty hectares.

  I’m used to living amid garbage. But I always figured the open sea was better off … more pure … than the Huangpu.

  Losing track of time, he dozed while the slithering robot hurried across a vast, empty plain, seeming as lifeless as the moon …

  … then jerked awake, to look out through the tiny window and find himself being carried along a craggy underwater mountain range, an apparently endless series of stark ridges that speared upward, reaching almost to the glistening surface, but even more eerie, because the rippling promontories vanished into bottomless gloom, below. Clearly, the mechanical creature that had swallowed him meant to shake off any pursuers. Weaving its way through this labyrinth should help.

  Feeling a bit recovered, Bin peeled open some ration bars that he found in a small compartment by his left arm. A little tap offered trickles of fresh water. There was a washcloth, which he used to dab and clean his cuts. A simple suction tube—for waste—was self-explanatory, if awkward to use. After which, the voyage became a battle against both tedium and claustrophobia—the frustration of limited movement plus abiding worry over what his future held.

  No clues came from the serpent, which spoke sparingly and answered no questions, not even when Bin asked about some roiling funnels of black water that he spotted, rising from fissures in a nearby jagged ridgeline, like columns of smoke from a fierce fire.

  It occurred to Bin that—perhaps—he shouldn’t be so glad that the owners of this sophisticated device included a window. In stories and teledramas, kidnappers insist on a blindfold, if they plan to let you go.

  The time to worry is when they don’t seem to care. If they let you watch the route to their lair, it means they feel sure you’ll never talk.

  On the other hand, who could possibly tell, by memory, one hazy sea ridge from another? That reassured him for a while … till he remembered the visual helper unit that Dr. Nguyen installed in his right eye. Bin had come to take for granted the way the tiny aissistant augmented whatever he looked at, enhancing the dim scene beyond the window. Now he realized; without it, he wouldn’t be seeing much at all!

  Are they assuming that a poor man, like me, is unaugmented?

  He wondered about the implant. Might it even be recording whatever he saw? In which case, was he like the kidnap victim who kept daring fate, by peeking under his blindfold?

  Or am I headed for someplace that is so perfectly escape-proof that they don’t care how much I know?

  Or someplace that I’d never want to escape from?

  That was preferable to other possibilities.

  Or am I to be altered, in ways that will make me placid?

  Or do they figure that I’ll only be needed for a little while—till a replacement can be arranged, someone else qualified to speak with the worldstone? Must I try as hard to win over my next masters, as I did Anna and Paul and Dr. Nguyen?

  Each scenario came accompanied by vivid fantasies. And Bin tried not to subvocalize any of them—there were modern devices that could track the impulses in a human throat and parse words you never spoke aloud.

  On the other hand, why would anyone bother doing that, with a mere shoresteader trashman? Ultimately, each fantasy ended in one thought. That he might never see his family again.

  But the soldier … the woman in that drowned attic room … she will get the sheet recording that Yang Shenxiu made. She will know that I cooperated. The government will protect and reward Mei Ling and Xiao En. Surely?

  It was all too worrisome and perplexing. To help divert his thoughts, Bin put the worldstone on his lap and tried talking to Courier of Caution.

  True, without immersion in sunlight, the entity had to preserve energy, subduing its vivid animations—the images were dim and limited to a small surface. Still, if he could learn some new things, that might prove his worth.

  It wasn’t easy. Without sound induction, he was limited to tracing characters on the ovoid’s surface. Courier at first tried responding with ancient ideograms. But Bin knew few of those, so they resumed the process of updating its knowledge of written Chinese. The entity within offered pictures or pantomimed actions. Bin sketched the associated modern words—often helped by the ai-patch. Never having to repeat, it went remarkably quickly. Within half a day, they were communicating.

  At last, Bin felt ready to ask a question that had been foremost in his mind. Why did Courier hate the aliens inside the Havana Artifact?

  Why did he call them “liars”?

  In a stream of characters, accompanied by low-resolution images, the entity explained.

  Our world is farther from its sun than yours. Larger but less dense. Our gravity slighter. Our atmosphere thicker and rich with snow. It is a planet much easier to land upon than your Earth. If a solar sail is built especially sturdy in the middle, it can be used as a parachute, to cushion the fall.

  And so, when they came to our world, many of the messenger stones did not shy away, lurking at a safe distance to await technological civilization. Instead some chose a direct approach, raining down upon—

  There appeared a new symbol, unlike anything Chinese, made up of elegant, curling, and looping lines that suggested waves churning a beach. The emblem reminded Bin of Turbulence and so that became his word for the planet.

  —from many sources.

  My species rose up to intelligence already knowing these sky-crystals, finding them occasionally in mud or ice. Even embedded on stone. Foraging packs of our pre-sapient ancestors cherished them. Early tribes fought over them, worshipped them, looked to them as oracles, seeking advice about the next hunt, about crude agriculture, about diplomacy. And marriage.

  The alien made a gesture that Bin could not interpret—a writhing of both hands. And yet, he felt somehow sure that it expressed irony.

  Thus, our evolution was guided. Accelerated.

  Painting characters with a finger, Bin wrote bitterly that humanity never had such help. That is, unless you counted a few, vague strictures from Heaven. And, perhaps, some nudges from the rare messenger fragments that made it to Earth.

  Do not envy too readily, Courier chided. It might have gone smoothly, if there were only one kind of stone, with one inhabitant each! But there were scores, perhaps even hundreds of crystal seers, scattered across many island continents! Only much later did we learn—they had come across space from several directions. At least eighteen different alien points of origin. Turbulence-planet sits at a meeting of galactic currents.

  Then add this irksome fact. That each stone held multitudes! Communities, accumulations, whole zoos of “gods,” in many shapes, who bickered, even when they agreed.

  We had the blessing—and curse—of highly varied counsel. Except, of course, when they all wanted the same thing.

  But still, Bin wrote. They helped you rise up quickly.

  Courier nodded. Though whether the gesture was native to it, or learned from other humans, Bin couldn’t tell.

  One tribe—following advice from its shaman stone—practiced fierce eugenics upon itself, in mountain isolation, for fifty generations. When they burst forth, all other clans on that land mass were awed into submission, and local females wanted only
to mate with their males.

  The worldstone depicted a mob of naked primitives, bowing before another group that stood taller, more erect, wearing fur clothing, with wide noses and thick manes—more like Courier himself.

  Meanwhile, on other continents and archipelagoes, different oracle stones offered guidance to groups near them, advising and rewarding compliance with counsel about hunting methods, the weather, taming wild beasts, or domesticating plants. Any tribe that had a god-crystal was tutored to breed itself smarter, tougher, better able to take over its neighbors.

  Eventually, these spreading zones of modified people encountered each other. Conflict ensued! At first waged with stones and spears, then cannon and poisons. Urged to fight for total conquest, our ancestors studied the arts of genocide.

  We soon learned a hard lesson. The only way to make peace between two tribes was to choose one set of jealous gods—a single oracle—and dispose of the other. Or hide it from sight. Only then would the surviving crystal allow both clans to meet in peace and interbreed, molding robust hybrids for the next confrontation.

  Bin read the story while, behind the glowing ideograms, simulations showed members of Courier’s race growing stronger, quicker, taller, and more impressive, armed with tools of ever-increasing sophistication. From Courier’s choice of words, Bin sensed resentment over how these ancestors were manipulated into fighting one another. But honestly? This history seemed no more violent than humanity’s.

  Less so! Because each war actually accomplished something. Resolution in a firm direction. Unification under one stone’s guidance. One set of “gods.”

  And rapid progress. The simulated aliens—or heavenly advisers—had practical knowledge to impart. Useful methods gathered by dozens of races, under faraway suns. Helped by such hints, Courier’s people skipped countless centuries of rough trial and error.

  Bin thought back to those arguments between Paul Menelaua and Anna Arroyo. He wished they were here. Not because they were ever friendly to him. But their back-and-forth tussles shed more light than either could manage alone. Bin recalled one extended debate over the role of religion in human development.

  There had been so many cults on every continent. From Europe and Asia to the Americas, creeds varied widely in details of ritual and belief, yet were largely similar in one respect … the way all jealously demanded obedience, ritualistic repetition, the firm teaching of children, and fierce resistance to the lure of other sects—like the one followed by those filthy folks across the valley.

  What was the term that Paul had used? For ideas that take root in human minds and force those minds to spread them farther?

  Infectious memes, wrote the ai helper chip that floated in Bin’s right eyeball. Mental constructs that pass from human to human, like viruses, with the trait of making each host want to believe. And making him want to persuade others.

  It wasn’t an easy concept for Bin to wrap his head around. As for the legend of Planet Turbulence, Bin could not suppress his jealousy. At least Courier’s people had gods who spoke clearly and taught practical things, making each generation healthier and stronger. Most human cultures had to sit still for long periods, while priests and aristocrats insisted that nothing should change. In the face of steady, conservative resistance, how many centuries did it take human beings to develop farms and roads, then advanced tools and schools, then universities and such, let alone actual science?

  His aiware took that as a literal question.

  Homo sapiens endured 2,000 generations, from the Neolithic renaissance until achieving civilization.

  Before that, Homo neanderthalensis lasted 15,000 generations.

  Homo erectus 50,000 generations.

  Bin resisted a temptation to turn off the device, yet again. Though irritating, the implant might give him a small edge, when he finally met the owners of the mechanical sea serpent.

  But … two thousand generations? Bin’s mind recoiled, unable to contemplate the vast span that humanity languished in dim ignorance, doomed to countless false starts and futile sidetracks. By comparison, Courier’s people took a shortcut stairway. An escalator! Bin wrote as much, with his fingertip.

  The simulated alien replied,

  Progress may have been slower for your race. Harder. Less continuous. But you get the pride of knowing that you lifted up yourselves, through your own efforts.

  And there were costs for our rapid development. Under guidance by crystal-encased “gods,” marriage and reproduction became tightly managed on Planet Turbulence. Mating required permission. Half the males in any generation could not breed at all. Our ancestral forebears had been monogamous, gregarious, friendly, easy-going creatures. Under guidance, we became harshly competitive, performing every trick in order to be noticed—to gain approval — from those domineering immortals in the oracle stones.

  Continuing to unfold its tale, the Courier entity arrived at a pivotal phase of history when a single mega-tribe—guided by one especially effective sky emissary—triumphed, becoming dominant across most of the planet.

  A generation later, we had cities.

  Within five, we were in space.

  Whereupon … only then … did we learn what the gods wanted from us.

  Bin felt tension, even though he knew the answer already. Everyone on Earth knew, thanks to the Havana Artifact. Bin painted a summary with his finger.

  They asked you to build more emissary stones—billions of duplicate bottles … And messengers to put inside them—and then spend every resource to cast them forth toward new planets beyond.

  Again, Courier nodded.

  That is the deal they presented to us, back on Turbulence.

  And we agreed! After all, these were the deities who had vexed and confused and guided and tormented and loved and taught us, as far back as our collective race memory could penetrate the misty past. Even when we knew what they truly were—mere puppets sent by beings who once dwelled by faraway suns—we felt obliged to move forward. To grant their wish.

  Slowly, of course, while building a society of knowledge and serenity.…

  But no! They hectored that it should be our top—our only—priority! They badgered us. Cajoled and manipulated. Until, at last, they confided a reason for haste.

  And so came the great lie.…

  Black characters continued scrolling under the surface of the stone, but their already-dim contrast was fading fast. All background images vanished and Bin realized, the artifact must be nearly drained. Moreover, his eyes hurt.

  He painted a symbol on the ovoid—WAIT—and rubbed them. Time also for some water. And the last protein bar, which he munched quietly, pondering more clearly than ever how small and unimportant his life was. All individual lives, for that matter, on the grand and tragic scale of many worlds. Many tragic destinies.

  Yet, his mind’s wanderings kept returning to what mattered most. His mate. His child. Somehow, there must be a way to help them … to ensure their lives and comfort and liberty … while salvaging something worthwhile out of his own tangled loyalties. To China. To Dr. Nguyen. To Courier. Humanity. Himself.

  To the truth.

  Without realizing it, Bin had been finger-writing while thinking. He realized this because the worldstone glimmered with an answer. One that throbbed briefly, faintly, before drowning in dull mist.

  Truth?

  Just get me to where I can …

  He missed the last part as the robot-sub began vibrating suddenly, jouncing the scarred crystal on his lap. But for the padded walls, it might have been deafening. As the cramped compartment twisted and flexed, Bin voiced questions for the mechanical serpent, getting no answers.

  Paying close heed though, he noted an apparent change in the sea-leviathan’s rippling motion. And perhaps the angle of his seat. Then the ai-patch intervened again, diagnosing with a single word, floating in the lower right corner of vision.

  Ascent.

  DEBATING DESTINY

  Welcome to Povlovian Response.
I’m Nolan Brill, sitting in for your regular inciter Miss Tor Povlov, who’s following a major story. Or so I’m told. There she is, in that corner of the studio. Hasn’t moved a tread or gripper in days. The lights on her robomobile canister are green and there’s tons of encrypted link activity, so we assume Tor is roaming out there now, following a scent with her award-winning smart-mob. Good hunting, Tor!

  Meanwhile, we have quite a lineup for today’s gladi-oratorial tiff. First, Dr. Clothilde Potter-Ferrier, the EU’s Deputy Minister of Possibilities. She joins us from Earth Union’s equatorial capital, in Suriname. Good of you to spare time, Minister.

  DR. POTTER-FERRIER: Thank you, Nolan. Anything for Tor’s vraudience.

  NOLAN BRILL: Terrific. But get ready for hard questions about the EU’s new policy on tech controls. Some liken it to the “War on Science” that raged in the U.S., a generation ago.

  DR. POTTER-FERRIER: An unfair comparison, Nolan. That campaign was driven by a few conniving billionaires. Whereas this new endeavor—

  NOLAN BRILL: —is propelled by several dozen trillionaires? Using “species salvation” as an excuse to eliminate competition from other estates?

  DR. POTTER-FERRIER: Nonsense. Populist momentum has built for some time, as we saw “progress” wreak terrible harms. Then came the terrifying fact taught by those alien refugees—that all planets wind up damned by one arrogant overreach or another. If we’re to have any hope—

  PROFESSOR NOOZONE: Fact? You call dat story fact? Jus’ because some obeah space-puppets say? Oh, mon, what quattie foolish—

  NOLAN BRILL: Coo-yah now, don’ you be nuh-easy, Profnoo. You’ll get chance in a minim. Firs lemme inner-duce our guests.

  PROFESSOR NOOZONE: So sorry, Nolan brudder. Fit ’n’ frock.

  NOLAN BRILL: Bashy. Also on the mat is Mr. Hamish Brookeman, who wrote the shit-disturbers Cult of Science and Progress-Hubris, here to pop another entertaining rationale for why any intelligent person should listen to his story that “It’s all a hoax I wrote.”