by David Brin
One glyph looks like the emblem worn by every Library unit in known space — a great spiral wheel. Only, instead of five swirling arms rotating around a common center, this one has nine! And eight concentric ovals overlie the stylized galactic helix, making it resemble a bull’s-eye target.
I never saw anything like it before.
When I press for answers, our purloined archive says the symbol “… is very old …” and that its use is “… memetically discouraged.”
Whatever that means.
At risk of humanizing a machine, the unit seems to get grumpy, as if it dislikes being confused. I’ve seen this before.
Terragens researchers find that certain subject areas make Libraries touchy, as if they hate having to work hard by digging in older files.… Or maybe that’s an excuse to avoid admitting there are things they don’t know.
It reminds me of discussions Tom and I used to have with Jake Demwa, when we’d all sit up late trying to make sense of the universe.
Jake had a theory — that Galactic history, which purports to go back more than a billion years, is actually only accurate to about one hundred and fifty million.
“With each eon you go further back than that,” he said, “what we’re told has an ever-increasing flavor of a carefully concocted fable.”
Oh, there’s evidence that oxygen-breathing starfarers have been around ten times as long. Surely some of the ancient events recorded in official annals must be authentic. But much has also been painted over.
It’s a chilling notion. The great Institutes are supposed to he dedicated to truth and continuity. How, then, can valid information be memetically discouraged?
Yes, this seems a rather abstract obsession, at a time when Streaker—and now Jijo — faces dire and immediate threats. Yet I can’t help thinking it all comes together here at the bottom of a planetary graveyard, where tectonic plates melt history into ore.
We are caught in the slowly grinding gears of a machine more vast than we imagined.
Streakers
Hannes
AT TIMES HANNES SUESSI ACUTELY MISSED HIS young friend Emerson, whose uncanny skills helped make Streaker purr like a compact leopard, prowling the trails of space.
Of course Hannes admired the able fins of his engineroom gang — amiable, hardworking crew mates without a hint of regression in the bunch. But dolphins tend to visualize objects as sonic shapes, and often set their calibrations intuitively, based on the way motor vibrations sounded. A helpful technique, but not always reliable.
Emerson D’Anite, on the other hand—
Hannes never knew anyone with a better gut understanding of quantum probability shunts. Not the arcane hyperdimensional theory, but the practical nuts and bolts of wresting movement from contortions of wrinkled spacetime. Emerson was also fluent in Tursiops Trinary … better than Hannes at conveying complex ideas in neodolphins’ own hybrid language. A useful knack on this tub.
Alas, just one human now remained belowdecks, to help tend abused motors long past due for overhaul.
That is — if one could even call Hannes Suessi human anymore.
Am I more than I was? Or less?
He now had “eyes” all over the engine room — remote pickups linked directly to his ceramic-encased brain. Using portable drones, Hannes could supervise Karkaett and Chuchki far across the wide chamber … or even small crews working on alien vessels elsewhere in the great underwater scrap yard. In this way he could offer advice and comfort when they grew nervous, or when their bodies screamed with cetacean claustrophobia.
Unfortunately, cyborg abilities did nothing to prevent loneliness.
You should never have left me here alone, Hannes chided Emerson’s absent spirit. You were an engineer, not a secret agent or star pilot! You had no business traipsing off, doing heroic deeds.
There were specialists for such tasks. Streaker had been assigned several “heroes” when she first set out — individuals with the right training and personalities, equipping them to face dangerous challenges and improvise their way through any situation.
Unfortunately, those qualified ones were gone — Captain Creideiki, Tom Orley, Lieutenant Hikahi, and even the young midshipman Toshio — all used up in that costly escape from Kithrup.
I guess someone had to fill in after that, Hannes conceded.
In fact, Emerson pulled off one daring coup on Oakka, the green world, when the Obeyer Alliance sprang a trap while Gillian tried to negotiate a peaceful surrender to officials of the Navigation Institute.
Not even the suspicious Niss Machine reckoned that neutral Galactic bureaucrats might betray their oaths and violate Streaker’s truce pennant. It wasn’t supposed to be possible. If not for Emerson’s daring trek across Oakka’s jungle, taking out a Jophur field-emitter station, Streaker would have fallen into the clutches of a single fanatic clan — the one thing the Terragens Council said must not occur, at any cost.
But you let one success go to your head, eh? What were you thinking? That you were another Tom Orley?
A few months later you pulled that crazy stunt, veering a jury-rigged Thennanin fighter through the Fractal System, firing recklessly to “cover” our escape. What did that accomplish, except getting yourself killed?
He recalled the view from Streaker’s bridge, looking across the inner cavity of a vast, frosty structure the size of a solar system, built of condensed primal matter. A jagged, frothy structure with a pale star in its heart. Emerson’s fighter swerved amid the spiky reaches of that enormous artifact, spraying bright but useless rays while claws of hydrogen ice converged around it.
Foolish heroism. The Old Ones could have stopped Streaker just as easily as they stopped you, if they really wanted to.
They meant to let us get away.
He winced, recalling how Emerson’s brave, futile “diversion” ended in a burst of painful light, a flicker against the immense, luminous fractal dome. Then Streaker fled down a tunnel between dimensions, thread-gliding all the way to forbidden Galaxy Four. Once there, her twisty path skirted the trade winds of a hydrogen-breathing civilization, then plunged past a sooty supergiant whose eruption might at last cover the Earthship’s trail.
Others came to Jijo in secret before us, letting Izmunuti erase their tracks.
It should have worked for us, too.
But Hannes knew what was different, this time.
Those others didn’t already have a huge price on their heads. You could buy half a spiral arm with the bounty that’s been offered for Streaker, by several rich, terrified patron lines.
Hannes sighed. The recent depth-charge attack had been imprecise, so the hunters only suspected a general area of sea bottom. But the chase was on again. And Hannes had work to do.
At least I have an excuse to avoid another damned meeting of the ship’s council. It’s a farce, anyway, since we always wind up doing whatever Gillian decides. We’d be crazy not to.
Karkaett signaled that the motivator array was aligned. Hannes used a cyborg arm to adjust calibration dials on the master control, trying to imitate Emerson’s deft touch. The biomechanical extensions that replaced his hands were marvelous gifts, extending both ability and life span — though he still missed the tactile pleasure of fingertips.
The Old Ones were generous … then they robbed us and drove us out. They gave life and took it. They might have betrayed us for the reward … or else sheltered us in their measureless world. Yet they did neither.
Their agenda ran deeper than mere humans could fathom. Perhaps everything that happened afterward was part of some enigmatic plan.
Sometimes I think humanity would’ve been better off just staying in bed.
Tsh’t
SHE TOLD GILLIAN BASKIN WHAT SHE THOUGHT OF the decision.
“I still do not agree with bringing those young sooners back here.”
The blond woman looked back at Tsh’t with tired eyes. Soft lines at the corners had not been there when Streaker started this voyage. It
was easy to age during a mission like this.
“Exile did seem best, for their own good. But they may be more useful here.”
“Yesss … assuming they’re telling the truth about hoons and Jophur sitting around with humans and urs, reading paper books and quoting Mark Twain!”
Gillian nodded. “Farfetched, I know. But—”
“Think of the coincidence! No sooner does our scout sub find an old urrish cache than these so-called kids and their toy bathysphere drop in.”
“They would have died, if the Hikahi didn’t snatch them up,” pointed out the ship’s physician, Makanee.
“Perhaps. But consider, not long after they arrived here, we sensed gravitic motors headed straight for this rift canyon. Then someone started bombing the abyssss! Was that a fluke? Or did spies lead them here?”
“Calling bombs down on their own heads?” The dolphin surgeon blew a raspberry. “A simpler explanation is that one of our explorer robots got caught, and was traced to this general area.”
In fact, Tsh’t knew the four sooner children hadn’t brought Galactics to the Rift. They had nothing to do with it. She was herself responsible.
Back when Streaker was preparing to flee the Fractal System, heading off on another of Gillian’s brilliant, desperate ploys, Tsh’t had impulsively sent a secret message. A plea for help from the one source she felt sure of, revealing the ship’s destination and arranging a rendezvous at Jijo.
Gillian will thank me later, she had thought at the time. When our Rothen lords come to take care of us.
Only now, images from shore made clear how badly things went wrong.
Two small sky ships, crashed in a swamp … the larger revealing fierce, implacable Jophur.
Tsh’t wondered how her well-meant plan could go so badly. Did the Rothen allow themselves to be followed? Or was my message intercepted?
Worry and guilt gnawed her gut.
Another voice entered the discussion. Mellifluous. Emanating from a spiral of rotating lines that glowed at one end of the conference table.
“So Alvin’s bluff played no role in your decision, Dr. Baskin?”
“Is he bluffing? These kids grew up reading Melville and Bickerton. Maybe he recognized dolphin shapes under those bulky exo-suits. Or we may have let hints slip, during conversation.”
“Only the Niss spoke to them directly,” Tsh’t pointed out, thrusting her jaw toward the whirling hologram.
It replied with unusual contrition.
“Going over recordings, I concede having used terms such as kilometer and hour… out of shipboard habit. Alvin and his friends might have correlated this with their extensive knowledge of Anglic, since Galactics would not use wolfling measurements.”
“You mean a Tymbrimi computer ccan make mistakesss?” Tsh’t asked, tauntingly.
The spinning motif emitted a low humm they all now recognized as the philosophical umbling sound of a reflective hoon.
“Flexible beings exhibit an ability to learn new ways,” the Niss explained. “My creators donated me to serve aboard this ship for that reason. It is why the Tymbrimi befriended you Earthling rapscallions, in the first place.”
The remark was relatively gentle teasing, compared with the machine’s normal, biting wit.
“Anyway,” Gillian continued, “it wasn’t Alvin’s bluff that swayed me.”
“Then what-t?” Makanee asked.
The Niss hologram whirled with flashing speckles, and answered for Gillian.
“It is the small matter of the tytlal … the noor beast who speaks. It has proved uncooperative and uninformative, despite our urgent need to understand its presence here.
“Dr. Baskin and I now agree.
“We need the children for that reason. Alvin, above all.
“To help persuade it to talk to us.”
Sooners
Emerson
HE BLAMES HIMSELF. HIS MIND HAD BEEN ON FARAWAY places and times. Distracted, he was slow reacting when Sara fell.
Till that moment, Emerson was making progress in the struggle to put his past in order, one piece at a time. No easy task with part of his brain missing — the part that once offered words to lubricate any thought or need.
Hard-planted inhibitions fight his effort to remember, punishing every attempt with savagery that makes him grunt and sweat. But the peculiar panoramas help for a while. Ricocheting colors and half-liquid landscapes jar some of the niches where chained memories lie.
One recollection erupts whole. An old one, from childhood. Some neighbors had a big German shepherd who loved to hunt bees.
The dog used to stalk his quarry in a very uncanine manner, crouching and twitching like some ridiculous ungainly cat, pursuing the unsuspecting insect through flower beds and tall grass. Then he pounced, snapping powerful jaws around the outmatched prey.
As a boy, Emerson would stare in amazed delight while outraged buzzing echoed behind the shepherd’s bared teeth, followed by a vivid instant when the bee gave up protesting and lashed with its stinger. The dog would snort, grimace, and sneeze. Yet, brief pain came mixed with evident triumph. Bee hunting gave meaning to his gelded suburban life.
Emerson wonders, why does this metaphor resonate so strongly? Is he the dog, overriding agony to snatch one defiant memory after another?
Or is he the bee?
Emerson recalls just fragments about the haughty entities who reamed his mind, then sent his body plummeting to Jijo in fiery ruin. But he knows how they regarded his kind — like insects.
He pictures himself with a sharp stinger, wishing for a chance to make the Old Ones sneeze. He dreams of teaching them to hate the taste of bees.
Emerson lays hard-won memories in a chain. A necklace with far more gaps than pearls. Easiest come events from childhood, adolescence, and years of training for the Terragens Survey Service.…
Even when the horse caravan departs the land of stabbing colors to climb a steep mountain trail, he has other tools to work with — music, math, and hand signs that he trades with Prity, sharing jokes of ultimate crudity. During rest breaks, his sketchpad helps tap the subconscious, using impatient slashes and curves to draw free-form images from the dark time.
Streaker…
The ship takes form, almost drawing itself — a lovingly rendered cylinder with hornlike flanges arrayed in circuits along its length. He draws her underwater—surrounded by drifting seaweed — abnormal for a vessel of deep space, but it makes sense as other memories fill in.
Kithrup…
That awful world where the Streaker came seeking shelter after barely escaping a surprise ambush, learning that a hundred fleets were at war over the right to capture her.
Kithrup. A planet whose oceans were poison … but a useful place to make repairs, since just half a dozen crew members had legs to stand on. The rest — bright, temperamental dolphins — needed a watery realm to work in. Besides, it seemed a good place to hide after the disaster at …
Morgran …
A transfer point. Safest of the fifteen ways to travel from star to star. Simply dive toward one at the right slope and distance, and you’d exit at some other point, far across the stellar wheel. Even the Earthling slowboat Vesarius had managed it, though quite by accident, before humanity acquired the techniques of Galactic science.
Thinking of Morgran brings Keepiru to mind, the finest pilot Emerson ever knew — the show-off! — steering Streaker out of danger with flamboyance that shocked the ambushers, plunging her back into the maelstrom, away from the brewing space battle…
… like the other battle that developed weeks later, over Kithrup. Fine, glistening fleets, the wealth of noble clans, tearing at each other, destroying in moments the pride of many worlds. Emerson’s hand flies as he draws exploding arcs across a sheet of native paper, ripping it as he jabs, frustrated by inability to render the gorgeous savagery he once witnessed with his own eyes.…
Emerson folds the drawings away when the party remounts, glad that his flowin
g tears are concealed by the rewq.
Later, when they face a steaming volcano caldera, he abruptly recalls another basin, this one made of folded space … the Shallow Cluster … Streaker’s last survey site before heading for Morgran — a place empty of anything worth noting, said the Galactic Library.
Then what intelligence or premonition provoked Captain Creideiki to head for such an unpromising site?
Surely, in all the eons, someone else must have stumbled on the armada of derelict ships Streaker discovered there — cause of all her troubles. He can envision those silent arks now, vast as moons but almost transparent, as if they could not quite decide to be.
This memory hurts in a different way. Claw marks lie across it, as if some outside force once pored over it in detail — perhaps seeking to read patterns in the background stars. Retracing Streaker’s path to a single point in space.
Emerson figures they probably failed. Constellations were never his specialty.
“Emerson, you don’t have to go.”
His head jerks as those words peel from a memory more recent than Morgran or Kithrup, by many months.
Emerson pans the land of fevered colors, now seen from high above. At last he finds her face in rippling glimmers. A worried face, burdened with a hundred lives and vital secrets to preserve. Again she speaks, and the words come whole, because he never stored them in parts of the brain meant for mundane conversation.
Because everything she said to him had always seemed like music.
“We need you here. Let’s find another way.”
But there was no other way. Not even Gillian’s sarcastic Tymbrimi computer could suggest one before Emerson climbed aboard a salvaged Thennanin fighter, embarking on a desperate gamble.
Looking back in time, he hopes to see in Gillian’s eyes the same expression she used to have when bidding Tom farewell on some perilous venture.