Beyond the Farthest Suns

by Greg Bear

  Aryz looked at the instrument, stretched a pod into it, and willed. Vocal human language came out the other end, thin and squeaky in the helium atmosphere. The sound disgusted and thrilled him. He re­moved the instrument from the gelatinous strands of the engineering wall and pushed it into his interior through a stretched permeum. He took a thick draft of ammonia and slid to the human shapes chamber again, then pushed through the narrow port into the observation room. Adjusting his eyes to the heat and bright light beyond the transparent wall, he saw the round mutated shape first—the result of their un­successful experiments. He swung his sphere around and looked at the others.

  For a time he couldn’t decide which was uglier—the mutated shape or the normals. Then he thought of what it would be like to have humans tamper with Senexi and try to make them into human forms … He looked at the round human and shrunk as if from sudden heat. Aryz had had nothing to do with the experiments. For that, at least, he was grateful.

  Apparently, even before fertilization, human buds—eggs—were adapted for specific roles. The healthy human shapes appeared suf­ficiently different, discounting sexual characteristics, to indicate some variation in function. They were four-podded, two-opticked, with auditory apparatus and olfactory organs mounted on the head, along with one permeum, the mouth. At least, he thought, they were hairless, unlike some of the other Population I species Aryz had learned about in the mandate.

  Aryz placed the tip of the vocalizer against a sound-transmitting plate and spoke.

  “Zello,” came the sound within the chamber. The mutated shape looked up. It lay on the floor, great bloated stomach backed by four almost useless pods. It usually made high-pitched sounds contin­uously. Now it stopped and listened, straining on the tube that con­nected it to the breed-supervising device.

  “Hello,” replied the male. It sat on a ledge across the chamber, having unhooked itself.

  The machine that served as surrogate parent and instructor stood in one corner, an awkward parody of a human, with limbs too long and head too small. Aryz could intuit the unwillingness of the design­ing engineers to examine human anatomy too closely.

  “I am called—” Aryz said, his name emerging as a meaningless stretch of white noise. He would have to do better than that. He compressed and adapted the frequencies. “I am called Aryz.”

  “Hello,” the young female said.

  “What are your names?” He knew that well enough, having lis­tened many times to their conversations.

  “Prufrax,” the female said. “I’m a glover.”

  The human shapes contained very little genetic memory. As a kind of brood marker, Aryz supposed, they had been equipped with their name, occupation, and the rudiments of environmental knowledge. This seemed to have been artificially imposed; in their natural state, very likely, they were born almost blank. He could not, however, be certain, since human reproductive chemistry was extraordinarily subtle and complicated.

  “I’m a teacher, Prufrax,” Aryz said. The logic structure of the lan­guage continued to be painful to him.

  “I don’t understand you,” the female replied.

  “You teach me, I teach you.”

  “We have the Mam,” the male said, pointing to the machine. “She teaches us.” The Mam, as they called it, was hooked into the man­date. Withholding that from the humans—the only equivalent, in es­sence, to the Senexi sac of memory—would have been unthinkable. It was bad enough that humans didn’t come naturally equipped with their own share of knowledge.

  “Do you know where you are?” Aryz asked.

  “Where we live,” Prufrax said. “Eyes-open.”

  Aryz opened a port to show them the stars and a portion of the nebula. “Can you tell where you are by looking out the window?”

  “Among the lights,” Prufrax said.

  Humans, then, did not instinctively know their positions by star patterns as other Population I species did.

  “Don’t talk to it,” the male said. “Mam talks to us.” Aryz consulted the mandate for some understanding of the name they had given to the breed-supervising machine. Mam, it explained, was probably a natural expression for womb-carrying parent.

  Aryz severed the ma­chine’s power. “Mam is no longer functional,” he said. He would have the engineering wall put together another less identifiable machine to link them to the mandate and to their nutrition. He wanted them to asso­ciate comfort and completeness with nothing but himself.

  The machine slumped, and the female shape pulled herself free of the hookup. She started to cry, a reaction quite mysterious to Aryz. His link with the mandate had not been intimate enough to answer questions about the wailing and moisture from the eyes. After a time the male and female lay down and became dormant.

  The bloated, mutated shape made more soft sounds and tried to approach the transparent wall. It held up its thin arms as if beseeching. The others would have nothing to do with it; now it wished to go with him. Perhaps the biologists had partially succeeded in their attempt at transformation; perhaps it was more Senexi than human.

  Aryz quickly backed out through the port, into the cool and se­curity of the corridor beyond.

  It was an endless orbital dance, this detection and matching of course, moving away and swinging back, deceiving and revealing, between the Mellangee and the Senexi seedship. It was inevitable that the human ship should close in; human ships were faster, knew better the higher geometries.

  Filled with her skill and knowledge, Prufrax waited, feeling like a ripe fruit about to fall from the tree. At this point in their training, just before the application, elfstates were very receptive. She was al­lowed to take a lover, and they were assigned small separate quarters near the outer greenroads.

  The contact was satisfactory, as far as it went. Her mate was an older glover named Kumnax, and as they lay back in the cubicle, soothed by air-dance fibs, he told her stories about past battles, spe­cial tactics, how to survive.

  “Survive?” she asked, puzzled.

  “Of course.” His long brown face was intent on the view of the greenroads through the cubicle’s small window.

  “I don’t understand,” she said.

  “Most glovers don’t make it,” he said patiently.

  “I will.”

  He turned to her. “You’re six,” he said. “You’re very young. I’m ten. I’ve seen. You’re about to be applied for the first time, you’re full of confidence. But most glovers won’t make it. They breed thousands of us. We’re expendable. We’re based on the best glovers of the past, but even the best don’t survive.”

  “I will,” Prufrax repeated, her jaw set.

  “You always say that,” he murmured.

  Prufrax stared at him for a moment.

  “Last time I knew you,” he said, “you kept saying that. And here you are, fresh again.”

  “What last time?”

  “Master Kumnax,” a mechanical voice interrupted.

  He stood, looking down at her. “We glovers always have big mouths. They don’t like us knowing, but once we know, what can they do about it?”

  “You are in violation,” the voice said. “Please report to S.”

  “But now, if you last, you’ll know more than the tellman tells.”

  “I don’t understand,” Prufrax said slowly, precisely, looking him straight in the eye.

  “I’ve paid my debt,” Kumnax said. “We glovers stick. Now I’m going to go get my punishment.” He left the cubicle. Prufrax didn’t see him again before her first application.

  The seedship buried itself in a heating protostar, raising shields against the infalling ice and stone. The nebula had congealed out of a particularly rich cluster of exploded fourth- and fifth-generation­ stars, thick with planets, the detritus of which now fell on Aryz’s ship like hail.

  Aryz had never been so isolat
ed. No other branch ind addressed him; he never even saw them now. He made his reports to the brood mind, but even there the reception was warmer and warmer, until he could barely endure to communicate. Consequently—and he real­ized this was part of the plan—he came closer to his charges, the human shapes. He felt more sympathy for them. He discovered that even between human and Senexi there could be a bridge of need—the need to be useful.

  The brood mind was interested in one question: how successfully could they be planted aboard a human ship? Would they be accepted until they could carry out their sabotage, or would they be detected? Already Senexi instructions were being coded into their teachings.

  “I think they will be accepted in the confusion of an engagement,” Aryz answered. He had long since guessed the general outlines of the brood mind’s plans. Communication with the human shapes was for one purpose only; to use them as decoys, insurgents. They were weapons. Knowledge of human activity and behavior was not an end in itself; seeing what was happening to him, Aryz fully understood why the brood mind wanted such study to proceed no further.

  He would lose them soon, he thought, and his work would be over. He would be much too human-tainted. He would end, and his replacement would start a new existence, very little different from Aryz—but, he reasoned, adjusted. The replacement would not have Aryz’s peculiarity.

  He approached his last meeting with the brood mind, preparing himself for his final work, for the ending. In the cold liquid-­filled chamber, the great red-and-white sac waited, the center of his team, his existence. He adored it. There was no way he could criticize its action.

  Yet—

  “We are being sought,” the brood mind radiated. “Are the shapes ready?”

  “Yes,” Aryz said. “The new teaching is firm. They believe they are fully human.” And, except for the new teaching, they were. “They defy sometimes.” He said nothing about the mutated shape. It would not be used. If they won this encounter, it would probably be placed with Aryz’s body in a fusion torch for complete purging.

  “Then prepare them,” the brood mind said. “They will be deliv­ered to the vector for positioning and transfer.”

  Darkness and waiting. Prufrax nested in her delivery tube like a freshly chambered round. Through her gloves she caught distant communications, murmurs that resembled voices down hollow pipes. The Mellangee was coming to full readiness.

  Huge as her ship was, Prufrax knew that it would be dwarfed by the seedship. She could recall some hazy details about the seedship’s structure, but most of that information was stored securely away from interference by her conscious mind. She wasn’t even positive what the tactic would be. In the mocks, that at least had been clear. Now such information either had not been delivered or had waited in inaccessible memory, to be brought forward by the appropriate triggers.

  More information would be fed to her just before the launch, but she knew the general procedure. The seedship was deep in a proto­star, hiding behind the distortion of geometry and the complete hash of electromagnetic energy. The Mellangee would approach, collide if need be. Penetrate. Release. Find. Zap. Her fingers ached. Some­time before the launch she would also be fed her final moans—the tempers—and she would be primed to leave elfstate. She would be a mature glover. She would be a woman.

  If she returned

  will return

  she could become part of the breed, her receptivity would end in ecstasy rather than mild warmth, she would contribute second state, naturally born glovers. For a moment she was content with the thought. That was a high honor.

  Her fingers ached worse.

  The tempers came, moans tiding in, then the battle data. As it passed into her subconscious, she caught a flash of—

  Rocks and ice, a thick cloud of dust and gas glowing red but seem­ing dark, no stars, no constellation guides this time. The beacon came on. That would be her only way to orient once the gloves stopped inertial and locked onto the target—

  The seedship, twenty-two kilometers across yet carrying only six teams,

  shadow within shadow

  LAUNCH She flies!

  Data: the Mellangee has buried herself in the seedship, ploughed deep into the interior like a carnivore’s muzzle looking for vitals.

  Instruction: a swarm of seeks is dashing through the seedship, looking for the brood minds, for the brood chambers, for branch inds. The glovers will follow.

  Prufrax sees herself clearly now. She is the great avenging comet, bringer of omen and doom, like a knife moving through the glass and ice and thin, cold helium as if they weren’t there, the chambered round fired and tearing at hundreds of kilometers an hour through the Senexi vessel, following the seeks.

  The seedship cannot withdraw into higher geometries now. It is pinned by the Mellangee.

  It is Prufrax’s—it is hers.

  Information floods her, pleases her immensely. She swoops down orange-and-gray corridors, buffeting against the walls like a ricochet­ing bullet. Almost immediately she comes across a branch ind, sliding through the ammonia film against the outrushing wind, trying to reach an armored cubicle. Her first Zap is too easy, not satisfying, nothing like what she thought. In her wake the branch ind becomes scattered globules of plasma. She plunges deeper.

  Aryz delivers his human charges to the vectors that will launch them. They are equipped with simulations of the human weapons, their hands encased in the hideous gray gloves.

  The seedship is in deadly peril; the battle has almost been lost at one stroke. The seedship cannot remain whole. It must self-destruct, taking the human ship with it, leaving only a fragment with as many teams as can escape.

  The vectors launch the human shapes. Aryz tries to determine which part of the ship will be elected to survive; he must not be there. His job is over, and he must die.

  The glovers fan out through the seedship’s central hollow, demol­ishing the great cold drive engines, bypassing the shielded fusion flare and the reprocessing plant, destroying machinery built before their Earth was formed.

  The special-projects sisters take the lead. Suddenly they are con­fused. They have found a brood mind, but it is not heavily protected. They surround it, prepare for the Zap—

  It is sacrificing itself, drawing them in to an easy kill and away from another portion of the seedship. Power is concentrating elsewhere. Sensing that, they kill quickly and move on.

  Aryz’s brood mind prepares for escape. It begins to wrap itself in flux bind as it moves through the ship toward the frozen fragment. Already three of its five branch inds are dead; it can feel other brood minds dying. Aryz’s bud replacement has been killed as well.

  Following Aryz’s training, the human shapes rush into corridors away from the main action. The special-projects sisters encounter the decoy male, allow it to fly with them … until it aims its weapons. One Zap almost takes out Trice. The others fire on the shape imme­diately. He goes to his death weeping, confused from the very moment of his launch.

  The fragment in which the brood mind will take refuge encom­passes the chamber where the humans had been nurtured, where the mandate is still stored. All the other brood minds are dead, Aryz realizes; the humans have swept down on them so quickly. What shall he do?

  Somewhere, far off, he feels the distressed pulse of another branch ind dying. He probes the remains of the seedship. He is the last. He cannot dissipate now; he must ensure the brood mind’s survival.

  Prufrax, darting through the crumbling seedship, searching for more opportunities, comes across an injured glover. She calls for a mediseek and pushes on.

  The brood mind settles into the fragment. Its support system is damaged; it is entering the time-isolated state, the flux bind, more rapidly than it should. The seals of foamed electric ice cannot quite close off the fragment before Ya, Trice, and Damu slip in. They fran­tically call for bind-cutters and preservers; th
ey have instructions to capture the last brood mind, if possible.

  But a trap falls upon Ya, and snarling fields tear her from her gloves. She is flung down a dark disintegrating shaft, red cracks open­ing all around as the seedship’s integrity fails. She trails silver dust and freezes, hits a barricade, shatters.

  The ice seals continue to close. Trice is caught between them and pushes out frantically, blundering into the region of the intensifying flux bind. Her gloves break into hard bits, and she is melded into an ice wall like an insect trapped on the surface of a winter lake.

  Damu sees that the brood mind is entering the final phase of flux bind. After that they will not be able to touch it. She begins a des­perate Zap

  and is too late.

  Aryz directs the subsidiary energy of the flux against her. Her Zap deflects from the bind region, she is caught in an interference pattern and vibrates until her tiniest particles stop their knotted whirlpool spins and she simply becomes

  space and searing light.

  The brood mind, however, has been damaged. It is losing informa­tion from one portion of its anatomy. Desperate for storage, it looks for places to hold the information before the flux bind’s last wave.

  Aryz directs an interface onto the brood mind’s surface. The sil­very pools of time-binding flicker around them both. The brood mind’s damaged sections transfer their data into the last available storage device—the human mandate.

  Now it contains both human and Senexi information.

  The silvery pools unite, and Aryz backs away. No longer can he sense the brood mind. It is out of reach but not yet safe. He must propel the fragment from the remains of the seedship. Then he must wrap the fragment in its own flux bind, cocoon it in physics to protect it from the last ravages of the humans.

  Aryz carefully navigates his way through the few remaining corri­dors. The helium atmosphere has almost completely dissipated, even there. He strains to remember all the procedures. Soon the seedship will explode, destroying the human ship. By then they must be gone.