“No!” Eve shouted. But it was too late.
The egg flew through the warm air and landed in the sea with a smack. Water splashed, and the egg quickly sank. Eve wanted to run, but Gronolf held her back.
“Now be reasonable!”
“You’re a murderer,” replied Eve.
“I gave him a chance to save himself,” said Gronolf. “It’s the best thing that could have happened to him.” This was probably true. There were no more jagged crests visible in the water, and the carrionteeth had presumably disappeared back into the deep. And his siblings had long since moved on.
“But how can you be sure?” asked Eve.
“I talked to him. You couldn’t hear it. The hatchling missed the start because the egg didn’t open. He really wanted to go into the sea.”
“But still...”
“No, Eve. If you had taken him with you, he could never have been a Grosnop. And can you honestly tell me he would have had any chance of becoming a human?”
* * *
Nobody spoke on the way back. This time Adam was sitting behind Gronolf on the beam. Eve leaned against him from behind and appeared to be sleeping. Then he remembered the unfinished conversation they’d had with Gronolf in the morning.
“Gronolf, what did the invitation mean?”
“That was my part of our initiative—I wanted to make it possible for you to understand my species better. But it looks like I wasn’t successful.”
“You shouldn’t be irritated with Eve.”
“I’m not irritated with either of you. I just think it’s a shame that we think so fundamentally differently in this regard. I hope this won’t create ongoing conflicts, because there’s no doubt that this tradition won’t change.”
Eve’s attitude wasn’t going to change, either, but there was no need to tell Gronolf. However far apart they may have been from one another in other respects, the alien had already noticed that fact.
“What do you mean by ‘our initiative,’ Gronolf?”
“Marchenko will explain it to you tomorrow.”
It was good that Eve was asleep, because otherwise she would have spent the whole rest of the ride milking Gronolf for more details.
Brightnight 4, 3882
There was a knock on their bungalow door. Eve was sitting on the sofa, and she crossed her arms pointedly. “If it’s Gronolf, I’m not available,” she said.
“Do you think he wants to talk?” Adam asked.
“Oh, what do I know? Tell him he’s dead to me.”
“Eve, you know he did the right thing. Don’t be such a baby.”
“No, I don’t know that. He refused to help a sentient being.”
“Gronolf helped him the best he could.”
“How can you be so heartless, Adam?”
There was another knock. Somebody said, “I know you’re in there.” The well-insulated door muffled the voice, so Adam couldn’t tell who it was.
“Just go on and open up the door,” said Eve.
“Do it yourself.”
The knocking now was louder. “If you don’t open up soon, I’ll come through the closed door!”
Adam jumped up. Their host was far more polite than that, and no Grosnop would make such a threat. That left only one possibility. Adam opened the door.
“Marchenko!” he cried.
He wanted to throw his arms around the visitor’s neck, but as soon as he saw him, he chose to stay right where he was. This couldn’t be the Marchenko who had taken them to Proxima b and then, from there, to this planet. But who was it then? Their visitor was a robot that looked like the caricature of a Grosnop. He had a compact body with a conical head and no neck, four arms, and a four-part chassis.
“Now don’t look at me like that,” the visitor said. “The Grosnop engineers designed me based on their own prototype.”
Adam laughed. It was nice to have him back, even if he was in this funny-looking body. Who knew what technological marvels it contained? “So it is you, Marchenko,” he said. “It’s Marchenko!” he called inside.
“So I’ve noticed,” replied Eve, who was suddenly standing beside him.
“Come on in,” said Adam. “Your new body isn’t so great. What happened to the old one?”
“Oh, the ladies here are enchanted by my steel muscles,” said Marchenko. “The capacity of my load-arms is twice that of a Grosnop’s.”
“Then best of luck in your search for a partner,” said Adam. “But please, spare us the details.”
“Would it be better if I were to just leave again?”
“No, we’re glad to have you back,” said Eve. “You were gone far too long.”
* * *
Marchenko sat down and told them about the Majestic Draght’s most recent voyage, a rescue mission for the Grosnops remaining on Proxima b. They’d managed to save two-thirds of the castaways frozen in the ice. The alien ship that had transported them here from Proxima Centauri b had been under his command ever since. The robot was just Marchenko’s outer shell, the container for the semi-artificial intelligence that his creator on Earth had extracted from an actual human at some point. The precise circumstances were not clear. Marchenko’s memory only went back as far as waking up aboard Messenger, humankind’s first interstellar spaceship.
“That was an important experience. Now I know what to expect from the Majestic Draght’s dark matter drive, and how it works to collaborate with a team. I also made an important discovery.” Marchenko paused, a typical ploy, since he wanted his listeners to ask.
Adam did him the favor. “What?”
“I found Messenger in the orbit of Proxima b, or at least what’s left of it.”
That’s a nice surprise, Adam mused, but nothing more than that. “You found my teddy bear?” he ventured.
“No.”
“You found it and brought it with you?”
“Not that either. I get the feeling you’re not taking me seriously, Adam.”
“Oh man, Marchenko, just tell us!” Eve begged.
“Man? Good one, Eve,” said Marchenko. “Right now, I’m probably as far away from being human as I ever have been. But since you meant well, I’ll let it slide.”
The robot stood up and the sofa creaked, as if it were happy to be relieved of his weight. On Marchenko’s stomach, a flap opened where the Grosnops’ stomach fold was located. He reached inside and pulled out a black cube with sides that were about 30 centimeters square. Each of its four side surfaces had a round, glassy lens.
“Like a Grosnop’s four eyes,” said Adam.
Marchenko set the cube down on the table in front of the sofa and tapped on the top. Suddenly he was standing in the middle of a forest made up of bluish rays of light. A holo-projector! He was surrounded by low conifers. Over the sofa floated a strong man, and over the table was a bear that had risen on its hind legs.
“Sorry,” Marchenko said, swiping one of the cube’s edges.
There was no change in the forest. The bear opened its mouth. Was it a combat scene?
“Govno, shit,” Marchenko cursed. “The holo-cube is broken. And I’d told Signar specifically to check it!”
“What are we looking at?” asked Eve.
“Memories. They weren’t meant for you.”
Adam stepped into the forest. The branches of the tree closest to him bent to the side on their own. This cube was one brilliant feat of engineering. Apparently it had sensors it could use to integrate the real outside world into the picture. He ran his finger over the same edge that Marchenko had touched and the 3D image collapsed, flickering.
“So that’s how it works,” he said.
Marchenko lifted his touch-hand in front of his front eye and moved his fingers.
“The touch-sensitive control probably can’t handle the conductivity of your metal fingers,” said Adam.
“That’s probably it,” said Marchenko. “Could you touch the opposite edge?”
Adam did as he asked, and suddenly they were in outer space. A fireball e
nveloped the cube, and everything glowed bright blue.
“Unfortunately, the projector can’t display any colors,” said Marchenko. “The star in the middle is the mother sun, Alpha Centauri B, which is a yellow dwarf like the sun in the Earth’s system.”
“So the smaller star there is the father sun?” asked Eve.
“Yes, but the father sun only appears smaller because of its distance. Alpha Centauri A is actually significantly brighter and heavier than B is. However, it never gets closer than eleven astronomical units to the Grosnops’ planet. In the solar system, this corresponds approximately to the distance between Earth and Saturn.”
“And where’s Proxima?” Adam asked.
Marchenko pointed out the window. “Proxima Centauri is located about twelve thousand nine hundred astronomical units away. At this scale, the red dwarf can’t be detected.”
“Why are you showing all this to us?” asked Eve.
“That’s a good question. Wait.”
Marchenko held his two touch-hands in front of one of the cube’s lenses and then slowly moved them apart from each other. The sun dwindled away in the middle, and Alpha Centauri A came closer and closer, then also melted down to the size of a speck of light. Adam looked around. There were 50, perhaps 100 dots of light at the most, floating freely in the room. These were probably different stars. Marchenko snapped his fingers, and colorful spheres appeared around some of the dots.
“It’s pretty,” said Adam. “Like a decorated Christmas tree, just without the tree.”
“The colors of the spheres must mean something,” said Eve.
“Of course.”
Marchenko stepped into the 3-D display, which caused some of the spheres to disappear. He went to the side and used his left touch-arm as a pointer.
“The colors stand for probabilities. A deep green shows star systems for which the likelihood is very high that Earth-like, livable worlds exist in the habitable zone of their star. The yellower the color is, the lower the likelihood. There can be various reasons for this. A very active central star perhaps, or a binary system that makes stable planetary orbits impossible.”
“How big is the scale?” asked Adam.
“The entire display covers fifty light-years.”
“That’s very exciting. I’d never thought there were so many habitable worlds nearby. But what does that have to do with us?”
“I’ve already mentioned that I found the Messenger orbital module. I was able to retrieve some of the memory. According to it, our ship’s registration number was twenty-seven.”
“That could just be a coincidence, of course,” said Adam. “Or a random number. Or a version name. We don’t know.”
“Our ship was tiny, given how huge the lasers were that were set up on every planet in our solar system to accelerate it to one-fifth of the speed of light. Why would someone design such a system to only be used once?”
“You always told us we were going to answer a distress call from Proxima Centauri.”
“I told you what I believed I knew, Adam. But now I think my knowledge was incomplete. Think of the other Marchenko on Proxima Centauri, and of the Adam and Eve we met here.”
“Their names are now Marcus and Kirsten,” said Eve.
“Oh. Well, at any rate, we weren’t the only ones the Creator sent on this long journey,” said Marchenko. “Absolutely not. Now I believe there were—or still are—ships headed for every theoretically habitable star system.”
“Still are? What do you mean?” asked Eve.
“Look at the intervals. Ross 154, one planet, 8.1 light-years away, Epsilon Eridani, two planets, 12.6 light-years. Lacaille 9352, three planets, 10.4 light-years away. It took about 25 years for us to get here. Since then, one year has passed. It will take the other ships a quarter of a century to reach their destinations.”
“What’s your point, Marchenko?” Adam asked.
Marchenko looked at him and lowered his arms to his sides. Yes, sure, it was possible to interpret his objection as heartless. But hadn’t they run into enough danger already? Nobody had asked him if he’d wanted to take this voyage. The man who boastfully referred to himself as the Creator had kept his genetic information safely protected in numerous tiny tardigrades. Later, a machine used it to create a germ cell from which the human Adam grew. Opportunities for him to return home had never been a part of the plan. What was there to connect him to other humans there?
“I understand that you’re angry with the Creator, Adam. The same thing happened to me. But it’s not about doing something for the humans on Earth, or even for the Creator who sent us on this journey without giving us any say in the matter. We could help those who, like us, are innocently traveling to an unknown and perhaps life-threatening destination. We barely survived our own trip, even though Proxima Centauri b’s conditions weren’t so horrible. But what if a ship arrives in a system and it has no inhabitable planet? The exact features of the alien star systems remain unknown until you actually reach them. I estimate that at least a hundred more ships are underway. Don’t we have an obligation to save at least some of them? When you see a child fall into a river, don’t you jump in after them? The Majestic Draght offers us the unique ability to accommodate at least a few of your siblings.”
Adam knew Marchenko was still a good guy, even in the body of a Grosnop robot. If only he’d gotten to know him on Earth. He was said to have been a doctor. They would have certainly become friends. Marchenko had always supported them, and would have given his life for them. So could he really refuse him, even if it meant risking certain danger again instead of enjoying himself here on Alpha Centauri Bb?
“We’ll come with you,” said Eve.
“Wait a minute, shouldn’t we at least sleep on it?” asked Adam.
“No, Adam, we’re going along. It’s what’s best for all of us. And Marchenko needs our help. But on one condition.”
“What condition?” Marchenko and Adam asked in unison.
“I want a saltwater aquarium, one by two by three meters, in my cabin.”
“You want what?” Again, Adam and Marchenko had spoken as one.
“You heard right, an aquarium. It will need a recycling system suitable for saltwater.”
Adam was sweating. Eve’s non-negotiable ‘condition’ must have had something to do with the excursion they’d taken the day before and the hatching ceremony. What had she done, and what hadn’t he noticed?
“You can’t do that... it’s impossible,” he said.
“What can’t she do?” Marchenko asked.
“You’re right, Adam, I can’t. I can’t stand by and watch somebody knowingly leave a sentient being to die. Even if it had been a young animal, I would’ve had to save it. But this is an intelligent life form!”
“You got the hatchling out of the sea? But how...?”
“What did she do?” asked Marchenko.
“Gronolf invited us to the hatching ceremony yesterday,” said Adam.
“That’s said to be an honor,” said Marchenko.
“It’s... brutal.”
“Brutal? Adam, they’re watching as their offspring kill one other!”
“They reproduce by laying eggs. If they were all to get through, the planet would have gotten overpopulated long ago,” said Adam.
“It’s a species that builds spaceships that run on dark matter!” Eve got up and gesticulated wildly. “They must be aware that their actions are not humane.”
“They’re not human, just in case you haven’t noticed,” said Adam. “Incidentally, in humans, there are millions of spermatozoa that die, and there’s only one that can fertilize the egg.”
“But there’s no comparison. You saw them! These aren’t stupid sperm cells. Or can you talk to your sperm like their mothers did with their offspring, before the ceremony? I can’t believe how indifferent you can be.”
“Now wait a minute,” said Marchenko. “You interfered in our hosts’ traditional ceremony and helped one of these
hatchlings. Right? You slipped him some food, killed a predator, something like that. But since you’re standing here in front of me, nobody noticed. So everything’s fine.”
“She wants an aquarium in her cabin,” said Adam.
“With fish. Tell me that you want it because of the fish. Haven’t you always loved fish? Before, in the underwater station on Proxima, didn’t you—”
“Yes, I’ll be needing fish as well, Marchenko. Small fish, for food. Or whatever else a young Grosnop needs. And the water must have the same composition as the oceans here do.”
“You’re crazy,” said Marchenko. “They helped us, took us in, went out of their way to make us feel at home here, and you went meddling in their most sacred ceremony?”
“It’s a gruesome ritual that they should have abolished long ago.”
“But that’s just how their biology works,” said Adam.
“It’s no use. Eve doesn’t understand it,” said Marchenko.
“What do I not understand? I understand it very well!”
“I’ve had almost a year now and have turned to the history of the Grosnop and studied their archives. Two hundred years ago, there was somebody who had the same idea as you.”
“Apparently he wasn’t successful,” said Eve.
“They filled all his stomachs with stones, sewed up his stomach folds, and let him sink into the sea to become food for the carrionteeth. And this is still just the short version that’s suitable for children. They don’t take any pleasure in this ritual.”
Eve sat back down again. She paled at Marchenko’s words.
“But how can they be so cruel? Gronolf is so nice and helpful. Without his assistance, we all would have died on Proxima b. If he hadn’t taken care of the fake Marchenko...”
“They don’t see it as cruelty,” Marchenko explained. “Up until about twelve hundred years ago there were famines on a regular basis because the population had gotten too high. This led to starvation, war, and violence until population and food supply balanced out and everybody had enough to eat again. But society has progressed. Today, murder and violence were outlawed. The price for this is that the hatchlings are left to fend for themselves, as was the case in the early days.”
Proxima Logfiles 1: Marchenko's Children: Hard Science Fiction Page 2