by Ian Douglas
“You say this Deep thing is immortal?” Ortega said.
“Except for the fact that its environment is going to go away soon, yes, sir.”
“Does it reproduce?” Montgomery asked. “Can it reproduce?”
“Where? It makes up three-quarters of the volume of this planet!”
“I don’t know. I was wondering about being able to transfer germ cells to a new home, somehow.”
“As far as I could tell, ma’am, no. It . . . developed awareness, sentience, a long time ago as a result of various ebbs and flows of heat, minerals, and so on deep inside its substance, its body, if you will. I imagine parts of that body replace themselves over the centuries . . . although, really, there doesn’t appear to be anything like a genome with a built-in timer or destruct sequence, like human DNA.”
“We should probably think of it,” Lieutenant Ishihara said, “not as a life form, but as a kind of natural AI . . . an enormous computer, in fact.”
“It takes in nutrients and energy, sir,” I told the engineering officer, “and it generates order out of chaos. I would say it’s alive.”
“So does a computer, young man,” Ishihara told me, “if by order you mean accumulating and storing useful information. Oh, I’m not saying this thing isn’t worth saving! The mathematical information it has stored within its matrix alone must be staggering!”
I didn’t reply to that. Ishihara hadn’t been there, hadn’t felt himself wired in to the Deep’s emotional processes. It was alive . . . and it was self-aware. Computer AIs were neither. They could simply act as though they were self-aware with the appropriate programming, and we humans were too slow to tell the difference.
Or . . . did he have a point? Was that what was going on in the Deep, a system that mimicked what we thought of as sentient self-awareness?
Well for that matter, what proof did we have for human self-awareness? We thought we were, sure, but there was no way to prove that it wasn’t a kind of all-embracing illusion, like the old philosophical chestnut that said we only thought we had free will in a fixed, predestined timeline.
“Well, whether it’s alive or not, how the hell are we supposed to rescue it?” Chief Garner asked.
“That,” I told them, “is the easy part. The hard part will be waiting it out.”
I’d given the problem a lot of thought, and checked in with the Walsh’s AI during our ascent to the surface. Haldane’s larger and more powerful AI agreed with me. We could save the Deep.
It would just take some time.
The concept of the “gravity tractor” has been with us for a long time. Back in the early twenty-first century, as humans became aware of the terrifying threat posed to civilization, even to all life on Earth, by asteroids like the one that wiped out the dinosaurs 65 million years ago, we examined a lot of schemes for changing the orbit of an incoming cosmic missile. You couldn’t just blow the thing up with nukes; the individual fragments would continue on the original trajectory, and might even end up doing more damage than the original intact flying mountain.
One promising mechanism was the idea of parking a spacecraft near the asteroid and keeping it there, possibly with solar sails, possibly with a steady, low-thrust ion drive, and letting the gravity of the spacecraft deflect, ever so slightly, the path of the asteroid.
Oh, it would take a long time, of course . . . centuries, perhaps. The thrust provided by that tiny gravitational impulse would be microscopic, but over year upon year upon year, the effect would add up. Catch the killer asteroid early enough, and you would be able, eventually, to deflect its course just enough to miss Target Earth.
We also, back then, were beginning to learn just how chaotic early solar systems were. As accreting worlds formed around their parent star, planetary bodies interfered with one another, collided with one another, nudged one another gravitationally into entirely new orbits. We now know that in our own Solar System, four and a half billion years ago, Jupiter and Saturn had developed a one to two resonance with each other, Jupiter circling the sun once for every two orbits of Saturn. As a result, Jupiter had been nudged closer to the sun while Saturn had been pushed farther out, and that dual migration had generated the cascade of orbital changes leading to the late heavy bombardment of the inner system 600 million years after its birth.
Orbital resonance could remake or destroy a planetary system, could move gas giants from the remote outer portions of the star system in to tight, close orbits—the “hot Jupiters” discovered in such numbers in the early days of exoplanet discoveries a couple of centuries ago, because they were so massive and had such short periods.
And in the same manner, worlds could be summarily ejected from their home star systems entirely. The Gykr Steppenwolf homeworld, a rogue and sunless planet adrift in interstellar space, was an example.
So what did that have to do with saving the Deep?
Everything, really.
There were several outer gas giants orbiting GJ 1214, together with GJ 1214 II, a Mars-sized world 10 million kilometers out from the star, and with an orbital period of just over sixteen days. What if we could change Planet II’s orbit, actually nudge it into a period of, say, precisely half that of Abyssworld—to nineteen hours or so? Properly calculated and executed, the two-to-one resonance would bump Planet II in closer to the star, and shove Abyssworld farther out. By working out the numbers to enough decimal places, we could plop Abyssworld down in just about any orbit we pleased . . . one where the dayside was pleasantly habitable . . . or even one far enough out that the entire world-ocean froze over. That wouldn’t bother the Deep one bit.
It would take a hell of a long time of course, but so what? A million years? Ten million? Hell, even if readjusting Abyssworld’s orbit took a hundred million years, the Deep had time. A million centuries is a mere 10 percent of the billion years it would take the planet’s ocean to finally boil away.
And there was the additional promise that human technology would rapidly advance to the point where slinging planets around a star system was child’s play. What would we be capable of in just a few thousand years? Generating artificial black holes, perhaps, and using directed gravitational singularities to change planetary orbits? Or perhaps we would command even more advanced and magical technologies as yet undreamed of.
A billion years was plenty of time. . . .
The downside was that we humans have a pathetically brief attention span, and a political will that rarely extended past the next elections. What if we simply never got around to doing something about it? After all, there was lots of time left. I reflected that what constituted lots of time for humans was something else entirely for an all-but-immortal being that had been a couple of hundreds of millions of years old back when sex had first been invented on Earth.
“An . . . audacious idea, Carlyle,” Ortega said. “Moving planets around to order . . .”
“We’ve known as a species that we were going to have to do stuff like that someday,” I replied. “In another few hundred million or a billion years, our own sun will be getting hotter and brighter. Unless we decide to abandon Earth entirely, we’ll need to figure out how to move the planet to a cooler orbit.”
Of course, a few billion years after that, the sun would expand into a red giant, engulfing the inner planets of the Solar System, then dwindle to a white dwarf barely larger than Earth herself. Unless we were real quick on the uptake, able to move Earth farther out on short notice, then move her much closer in, our homeworld would likely die.
By then, of course, if Humankind still existed in anything like a recognizable organic form, we would be firmly out among the stars, reshaping the entire Galaxy to order. Perhaps we would by that time be independent of planetary surfaces entirely.
“But you question . . . what did you say?” Kemmerer said. “Our political will?”
“Compare
d to the Deep,” I said, “humans are mayflies. Ephemera. While we’re waiting for the technology to move whole planets to come along, we could forget all about this place.”
I wasn’t claiming that humans were either callous or forgetful, or anything like that. But civilizations do not last forever, no more than do worlds, and each time a civilization falls, so much information is lost. That might be less of a problem now that we had colonies on other worlds, but humanity wasn’t solidly established as a multiworld species yet. A bad interplanetary war with the Gykr or the Qesh, and Humankind could easily find itself back to chipping flints among the crumbling ruins of New York or Singapore or, looking out-system, Hope, out on Tau Ceti IV.
“Well, our problem at the moment,” Summerlee said, “is these folks. Mr. Walthers, if you please?”
A vid image came up on the viewall behind her, called up by her exec. A squat, angular, flat-topped structure, startlingly black against the surrounding icescape, appeared in the middle distance. A Gykr ship hovered above the building—ugly, complicated, looking something like a tailless stingray with the wings cocked downward at a sharp angle. A column of air beneath the ship shimmered with unknown energies as the vessel held its position against gusting westerly winds.
“The Gykr commander has given us one local year to pack up and move out,” Summerlee said. “Any agreement we have with HM2 Carlyle’s Deep will be entirely contingent on whether we can maintain a presence on this world . . . or whether the Gykr will be taking over from us completely.”
“That may be a problem for the Deep,” Montgomery pointed out. “The Gykr aren’t exactly on good terms with the locals.”
“Carlyle?” Summerlee said. “Do you have any observations on that?”
“From the Deep’s perspective? Nothing hard and fast. I did have the impression that the cuttlewhales have a lot of trouble telling the difference between humans and Gykr. And . . . I gathered that the first Gykr to land opened fire on some cuttlewhales more or less without provocation. That’s why the cuttlewhales attacked us, later.”
“They can’t tell the difference?” Lieutenant Walthers said, chuckling. “Humans, two legs, Guckers, eight or ten or twelve, depending. Can’t the damned cuttlewhales count?”
“If you saw something this big,” I said, holding up my thumb and forefinger a few millimeters apart, “wiggling and multilegged and squishy looking . . . would you stop to count the legs?”
“Well, I wouldn’t just step on it.”
“Some people would,” Kemmerer said. “And if it was shooting lasers or plasma bolts at you, you might not want to stop and try to have a conversation.”
“We know the Gykr have a . . . a tendency to shoot first if they feel threatened,” Montgomery observed. “But what do they think about the cuttlewhales now?”
“Right,” Ortega said. “Maybe we could pass the Deep and its problems off to them.”
“I don’t think that would be a good idea,” I said. “At least, not from the Deep’s point of view.”
“Surely a species that evolved in a similar environment—in an under-ice ocean—would be best for dealing with something like the Deep,” Ortega said.
“Would the Gykr do anything to help?” Montgomery asked.
“That may not be our problem,” Walthers said.
“Well if it’s not our problem,” I asked, “whose problem is it?” I looked at the skipper. “Ma’am . . . it’s in our best interests to help the Deep. Whether it’s a life form or some kind of planet-sized organic computer, it has information that spans a billion years! It may have mathematical insights that we can’t even dream of, yet! We can’t just . . . just turn it over to the Gucks!”
It was a dirty trick, I know, throwing in the human self-interest angle, but it felt like I was losing the group. Some of them were perfectly okay with abandoning the Deep to the tender mercies of the Gucks, and I didn’t want to do that. I hadn’t exactly promised the Deep that we would help it—at the time, I’d not seen how we could—but now that I knew it was possible, I wanted to see it through.
And there were advantages for the Commonwealth and for Humankind as a whole. I have to admit that in at least a small way I was thinking about my father—a senior vice president of research and development for General Nanodynamics. He’d encouraged me to join the Navy Hospital Corps in the first place because of the chance of my stumbling across something a civilian corporation like General Nan could use . . . something, as he liked to say, that would make us all rich.
I wasn’t particularly proud of that thought, though, and I pushed it to the back of my mind. Truthfully, I wanted to help the Deep because doing so was right.
“You had the impression, you said, that the Gykr were afraid of the cuttlewhales?” Summerlee asked.
“They seemed to be associating them with something they called the ‘Akr,’ ” I replied. “I don’t know what that is, though. I haven’t had time to track that down. But it sounded like the Akr might be something the Gucks really didn’t like . . . or something they feared.”
“Which was it?” Summerlee asked.
“I’m not sure, ma’am. Maybe both.” I frowned. “It’s tough reading non-human emotions, y’know?”
“So what the hell is an Akr, anyway?” Ortega wanted to know.
WE HAVE BEEN IN COMMUNICATION WITH THE GYKR ON A MORE OR LESS CONTINUOUS BASIS SINCE THEY ARRIVED, D’deen told us, the words writing themselves across our in-heads. I glanced at the skipper; Walthers had coded the tabletop to repeat his own in-head, so that she could read the M’nangat’s words there. APPARENTLY, THEY THINK OF THE AKR IN MUCH THE SAME WAY THAT YOU HUMANS THINK OF ‘GOD.’
“Akr is the Guck god?” I said. “Yeah, that makes sense. It sounded like that when we got blasted by the static down there!”
BUT WITH A SINGULAR DIFFERENCE, a different M’nangat, D’dnah, added.
“What difference?” Montgomery wanted to know.
ALTHOUGH WE HAVE ONLY HEARSAY TO GO ON, D’dnah continued, AND ALIEN HEARSAY AT THAT, IT IS LIKELY THAT THE ORIGINAL AKR WAS A VERY LARGE, VERY DANGEROUS SEA CREATURE THAT THREATENED THE GYKR EARLY IN THEIR EVOLUTIONARY HISTORY. IT IS POSSIBLE THAT THEY LEFT THE WATERS OF THEIR PRIMORDIAL SEA, AND TOOK UP RESIDENCE ON LAND—IN DEEP, SUBSURFACE CAVERNS WITHIN THEIR WORLD—IN ORDER TO ESCAPE AKR PREDATIONS.
“They got chased out of the ocean by a fish?” Ortega said.
“If the fish was anything like a cuttlewhale?” I said, grinning. “Two hundred meters long, for a baby one, and hungry? Yeah, I could see that happening.”
“These Akr must have made one hell of an impression on the Guckers,” Hancock said.
FOR THE GYKR, D’dnah said, THE AKR IS AN ADVERSARIAL GOD . . . A SUPREME BEING TO BE FEARED, A DEITY THAT MADE THEM EVOLVE INTO WHAT THEY ARE BY SEEKING TO DEVOUR THEM.
“Sounds like the vengeful God of some human religions I know,” Hancock said. “All fire, brimstone, and holy judgment.”
IT IS SIMPLY A DIFFERENT WAY FOR . . . DIFFERENCE FOR . . . DIFF . . .
I waited for D’dnah to complete the thought.
YGHA JSI GDEHG VTFITYFVERT . . .
Word salad, as served by the M’nangat.
“D’dnah?” Summerlee said, looking toward the small group of M’nangat in the far corner, concern on her face. “Are you okay?”
One of the Brocs swayed, suddenly, and collapsed to the deck.
I was already out of my chair and pushing past the other people at the table. The standing Brocs were agitated, their tentacles probing and caressing their fallen compatriot. IT IS HERM’S TIME, D’drevah said. PLEASE! HELP HERM!
I glanced up at the skipper. “You might want to let the Gucks know we have a medical emergency over here,” I told her.
“What’s wrong?”
“D’dnah is having a baby.”
Chapter Twenty-Four
So why do things like this always happen at the worst possible time?
The hours were trickling away, and in another thirty or so hours we would have to leave Abyssworld . . . or fight for the privilege of staying. At odds of eight to one, this last did not sound like a particularly good choice.
But the alternative—abandoning a billion-year-old super-intelligence to the Gykr—didn’t sound all that hot either.
We got D’dnah onto a floater pallet and got herm down to sick bay. On the scanner table, I could see herm’s buds . . . three miniature M’nangat that until recently had been growing from the inside wall of the body cavity—literal buds. Apparently, among the M’nangat, the male fertilized the female, and the female passed the zygotes, usually three of them, one of each sex, on to the life carrier, in this case D’dnah. The zygotes attach themselves to the body cavity wall and begin growing, and the life carrier carries the fetus-buds to term.
D’dnah was bleeding internally. I suspect that the emotional stress of the meeting had caused a bud to break free, and maybe that explained why it was happening now, of all possible moments.
Chief Garner had joined me in the sick bay to assist, but I was the doc of the hour, since the M’nangat had requested me, personally, as the attending medic. It was still an honor I would like to have avoided. You see, all the male and female are concerned about is the survival of the newborns. The life carrier is expected to die.
“Does she have to die?” Garner asked.
“Herm,” I said, correcting him. “Not she.”
I double-checked to make sure that D’dnah had been taken off-line. I didn’t want herm hearing the discussion.
A REQUIREMENT? D’deen replied. NO, NOT AS SUCH. THERE ARE LIFE CARRIERS WHO SURVIVE. BUT . . . WHAT WOULD BE THE POINT? THEY CAN NEVER CARRY ANOTHER CLUTCH OF BUDS.
“The point?” I said, angry. “How about the fact that D’dnah is a smart, interesting, rational, intelligent being with a right to life?”