Stranger Suns

by George Zebrowski

  “We're grasping at straws,” Juan replied.

  Malachi sighed. “Come on, Juan, what if skimpy data is all we can get?”

  “Be honest,” Lena said. “How many of us have had the feeling that this ship is sentient, that maybe it's watching us and waiting for us to do something?”

  “I have,” Magnus admitted.

  Malachi nodded. “It's there, but don't ask me to say what.”

  “So we all have feelings and suspicions,” Juan said.

  “Most animals know when they're being watched,” Lena answered. “Subtle information slips between subject and observer—”

  “You're just spooking yourself,” Juan said.

  “You may be right,” she shot back, “but we must consider even the smallest possibilities, with our lives at stake.”

  Juan was silent. “Okay,” he said at last, “we're not in our labs, but that's no reason to abandon all that we've learned and trained for.”

  Lena touched his hand, “Juan—”

  He drew back, as if she had reached inside him. He saw her try to hide her surprise at his rejection, then looked away. A two-bit biologist and one crank engineer, he thought. Titus had sent them along because they were nobodies and could be spared. No, Lena didn't deserve that—how could he think it? He felt as if he were being assaulted, forcing him to raise the mental walls that had always kept him apart from others.

  “What is it, Juan?” Malachi asked with concern. “You don't look well.”

  “It's nothing.” He forced himself to smile, then touched Lena's hand lightly. “Nerves, I guess—don't mind me.” I'm losing my mind, he thought. He felt a rushing in his ears, as if voices were struggling to gain his attention. “Sorry,” he managed to say.

  “You need rest,” Lena said. Her voice seemed distant. His greatest fear had always been that he might one day lose his reason. Fatigue, he told himself, clinging to the word, forcing himself to believe it.

  * * *

  The child of the starcrossers sought to enter the colloidal minds within its field. Chaotic images threw it back.

  It scanned, seeking a common biogrammer, but found only divergent developments, nearly opaque and easily damaged.

  * * *

  The ship tunneled through an infinity of coal, and finally burst into a huge vault, where the stars were black cinders suspended from wires. . .

  Juan opened his eyes and saw blue-shifted stars. Stupid, he thought, how the sleeping mind rearranges things as if they were furniture, to please or terrify. . .

  His eyes teared, and he felt suddenly that something was interfering with his thoughts, triggering involuntary emotional responses. I've cracked up, he thought, and sat up shouting as pain stabbed through his head.

  11. THE BECKONING BEYOND

  Lena knelt at his side. “Juan—what's wrong?”

  The pain hunted through his brain, rifling hidden places. Magnus and Malachi stood at his feet, looking down at him as if from a great height.

  “I don't know!” he shouted. “There's. . . too much of me!” Lena grabbed his shoulders as he sat up. He shook his head. “I'm becoming. . . someone else!” Her head seemed to float near him. “I've got to get up!” He pushed her away, and it seemed that her head would roll away from him across the floor. He staggered to his feet and scrambled up the incline as Magnus and Malachi reached for him.

  “Juan!” Lena called to a stranger.

  The oval glowed. He went through and ran up the winding passage, struggling with his limbs, terrified by their movement.

  The memory of warm water calmed him. His mother smiled at him, and he felt the mystery of their separation, the growing loneliness of becoming himself. His legs slowed their furious pace. He stopped and faced a portal. It glowed and he went through—

  —into a dark chamber.

  Below him, starfields were a sprinkle of snow on black ground. He reached out with his right hand; its silhouette seemed alien to him.

  The space around him went black. Longing and loss seized him, but he was suddenly surrounded by the fiery moths of fleeing, red-shifted galaxies.

  The view flashed blue six times. The reddening edge of space pulled closer. One galaxy became a massive hot coal as he rushed toward it. Expectation filled him, as if he were coming home.

  * * *

  Lena stood in the passage, aware that she had forgotten to do something. Juan came around the turn and they slipped back through the glow. She felt as if she were sleepwalking as they went down the incline and joined the two others at the center of the pit.

  The sky began to flash blue. A reddened galaxy grew to cover half the viewspace. Its center was blackened, like a burnt pot. Lena felt urgency, as if at any moment the stars would fade away, leaving the ship far beyond the bright spaces of the cosmic ballroom.

  The intervals between jumps quickened, as if the ship were anxious to reach the crimson wheel. The red-shifted island universe brightened, flashing into more vivid colors as the ship overtook it. She felt relieved.

  * * *

  Magnus stood simultaneously on Earth and on the crystalline edge of the universe, trying to read the time on his watch by bursts of blue light. Dark shapes hurried across his brain; a throng of questions cried for the justice of answers. His lost ambitions grieved as he wondered at the precise symmetry of ignorance and knowledge; his son's face reproached him.

  Suddenly he was free of himself, washed clean by the alien light that flowed through him. Old mental graves were emptied. He sensed unvisited interiors within himself, waiting to be inhabited. The space of each ignorance would be filled exactly by the same amount of knowledge.

  * * *

  Malachi was at peace as the ship glided above the disk of the galaxy. Ancient halo stars hung below, dying cinders scattered on a plain where stars were still being born. Swirls of black dust laced the spiral of suns, draining into the hub. Globular clusters were bright buoys riding above the maelstrom, marking the titanic black hole that crouched inside the veiled center.

  He had never been sure of who he was, so it would be easy to discard everything he had adopted. Except for the friends he had made among scientists, engineers, and UN workers, his true identity seemed to be that of a professional stranger. Shapes danced under an African sky, but they did not know him either. A giant had placed him inside a soccer ball and kicked it across the cosmos. Soon he would become someone else.

  * * *

  The ship dipped into the galaxy and the flashing stopped. A white dwarf appeared in the viewspace. Juan tensed, expecting the shift into otherspace.

  The dwarf winked out with a blue flash, and the ship drifted toward the pulse of a suncore station.

  “I was expecting to be told something,” Magnus said, rubbing his forehead.

  Lena drew a deep breath. “Something was very interested in us. Maybe we didn't measure up.”

  Juan said, “I felt as if I was coming home.”

  “So did I,” Malachi added.

  “Old systems. . .” Magnus said, “trying to deal with us.”

  “We can't reach out to them,” Lena said. “We're locked too tightly in our skulls.”

  It surprised Juan that he was not more upset. Something had probed at things he had hidden even from himself. He wondered if they were now recorded somewhere, waiting to be deciphered. Aliens might one day know more about him than he did. “If they come from stars like our own,” he said, “we'll eventually communicate with them, or with their systems.”

  Lena said, “A trueother would be beyond us.”

  “Yes, yes,” Malachi said impatiently, “yellow suns are the grass of the universe. Our builders seem to be oxygen breathers, and humanoid species might be able to break through to each other. But who or what were we in contact with, besides ourselves?”

  “A first step,” Juan heard himself say as the black globe of a station appeared in the gray space. The entrance opened like the door to a furnace, and the ship slipped inside.

  As the a
mber glow returned to the drum-shaped chamber, Juan felt a nervous prompting in his limbs. “Take two packs and our gloves,” he said as he stood up.

  “Where are we going?” Lena asked.

  She was a stranger as he looked at her. “I don't know.” He hoisted his pack and slipped it on. Malachi put on the other one.

  “Are we all going?” Magnus asked.

  “Follow me,” Juan said.

  * * *

  When they came to the well in the passage, Juan stepped in and floated downward. He glanced up and saw the others descending after him. He was calm and uncaring as he fell faster. After a few moments he slowed, positioned his legs, and alighted on a catwalk. An exit oval glowed as he stepped toward it. He passed through—into a dark passage. Amber light glowed ahead. He went through into a large chamber. A globe sat in its docking cradle. “In here!” he called to the others. They came out beside him and gazed at the hemisphere that towered some twenty-five meters into the vault.

  “A small version of this ship,” Malachi said.

  Juan led the way through the open airlock. The passage curved right, leading them into a small drum-shaped, amber-lit chamber.

  “Same kind of pit,” Magnus said as they stepped into the center circle. The viewspace glowed as he and Lena sat down on the floor.

  “We're moving,” she said as Juan and Malachi dropped their packs next to her.

  Juan looked up and saw the station disappear into the gray. A distant self tensed within him as he sat down on his pack. The view switched to normal space, revealing a nearby globular cluster as the ship oriented itself toward a white dwarf.

  “It's very close in,” Juan said as the red-brown disk of a planet became visible.

  Lena clutched at her hair. “My head. . .”

  Juan felt a rushing in his ears. Magnus was rubbing his temples. Malachi slumped forward.

  “It's worse,” Lena said, leaning back against one of the packs.

  The brown planet grew until it filled the viewspace. Flashes of light shot across its dark surface. Pain ripped through Juan's forehead.

  “We're falling,” Lena murmured, raising her hand to push back the descending weight of the alien world.

  * * *

  Juan rushed upward through cold water and surfaced, gasping, then opened his eyes and saw Lena holding the canteen for him. He took a swallow and pushed it away.

  “Pain gone?” she asked.

  He nodded and looked past her to where Magnus and Malachi stood with drooping shoulders.

  He sat up. “Have we landed?”

  “Apparently,” Magnus said tiredly.

  Juan stood up, massaging his temples. Lena touched his shoulder. “Are you all right?” she asked. He straightened up, still feeling dizzy.

  “Let's go,” he said, reaching for his pack, but Magnus picked it up.

  “Mal and I will manage,” the older man said.

  Juan looked at his companions anxiously, then searched for signs of compulsion within himself. The urge to leave the shuttle was growing stronger. He hurried out into the passage and led the way to the lock.

  “I feel a breeze,” Lena said as she caught up with him.

  Juan stopped. “The lock may be open.” He took a cautious breath and went on.

  The open lock revealed a rusty brown desert. The large, pale disk of the white dwarf hung low over the horizon, unable to wash out the stars with its feeble daylight.

  “It's half the apparent size of our sun,” Malachi said, “so we must be very close in.”

  A warm wind gusted into the lock. Juan took a step outside and felt the gritty soil under his boots. “That way.” He pointed straight ahead. “Do you feel it?” he asked, facing his companions. They all nodded. He led them away from the shuttle, stopped, and looked back.

  The small globe sat on a plain. Overhead, the globular cluster was a fragmented sun, adding little to the dwarf's light.

  “Why are we here?” Lena demanded. “Who are they? What are they doing to us?”

  A dust storm crept across the horizon like some black beast.

  “They're not persons,” Magnus said, “but artificial intelligences trying to reach out to us.”

  “Maybe this was a special place to them once,” Lena said, looking around. “Let's go that way.” She pointed away from the storm. Juan noticed that she seemed stockier in her pants and shirt. He brushed a few grains of sand from his face and followed her.

  The odors of the desert were musky. Small plants with large red leaves and a faint glow around their roots dotted the ground; mushroomlike knobs clustered around the plants. He looked up as Lena neared a shallow rise. Malachi and Magnus came up to him.

  “She seems to know where she's going,” Magnus said, catching his breath. He gazed after her speculatively. “She likes you, Juan,” he said as they continued after her.

  Juan felt embarrassed. Magnus walked on as Juan and Malachi dropped back. “She's a good biologist,” the Kenyan said.

  Juan glanced at his friend.

  Malachi said, “I'd heard about her before, and from what Magnus told me. She very much wanted to do immunology and genome detailing before Titus turned her into a brewer of elixirs for our leaders.”

  Juan nodded. “I wonder how many politicians Titus keeps on a leash with medical favors.”

  “I wouldn't offend her by asking. I don't expect your reserve with women to disappear overnight, but I think she's affected you.”

  “I hardly know her.” In place of love he'd demanded both physical beauty and accomplishment, but he had yet to think of Lena in those terms.

  They slowed their pace and Malachi said, “Magnus tells me she reminds him of someone he once knew.”

  Juan watched as she went over the top of the rise. Magnus reached it and motioned for them to hurry. They quickened their pace and came up beside him.

  Below, a dozen or more domes stood on the sandy ground, in what seemed a random arrangement. The ones at the center were the largest. Lena slipped into the shadows between the first two structures.

  “A tree!” she shouted, echoing.

  They scrambled down and hurried after her. Juan saw a short, heavy trunk covered by a smooth white bark, standing alone in the open. Lena stooped under it, and was partly hidden by the large, low-hanging branches. Patches of white light wandered across her face as a breeze turned the large red leaves. She seemed a stranger, examining him from cover.

  Her eyes watched him warily as he stepped under the branches, as if he might be a threat. He noticed the green glow at the base of the trunk as he breathed in the sharp, acidic scent of the leaves.

  “Red chlorophyll in the vegetation,” she said, examining one of the round, irregularly bordered leaves. “I don't know,” she whispered strangely, “but I can almost remember.”

  “What?” he asked, taking her by the shoulders.

  “Don't you feel it?”

  He almost knew, but the thought fled like a shy child.

  “Juan!” she said in surprise. “They knew the universe when it was young, and they tried to unite it with their web. They couldn't have perished through disease or war, being able to do what they did.”

  Home now lay in the past, he realized. Light from Earth's galaxy would be millions of years old here. The ship's jumps had taken them into the future; they would return to the past—to this world's future—by again outrunning the light. For an instant he was appalled by the futility of common sense struggling doggedly within him to imagine, in defiance of relativistic reasoning, a simultaneous moment here and on Earth.

  Lena took his hand and they came out from under the tree as Malachi and Magnus caught up with them.

  “Do you still feel compelled?” Magnus asked her.

  “Nothing now,” she replied, looking around at the domes. “We're probably the first in a long time to come by and wonder what happened here.”

  Juan looked down at the grainy sand, then up at the stars, and imagined what might be entombed within the
domes. Perhaps the builders had simply died, fulfilling a death wish common to all species. Clearly, there was little they could not have done. They might have changed themselves into beings who no longer needed the ships and the web, and that might have precipitated a fatal identity crisis. The fear of such a break existed on Earth, among those who saw the end of the human form through the wedding of bioengineering and nanotech.

  “What now?” Malachi asked.

  Juan walked toward the nearest dome. “There's a portal.”

  “Do you feel we have to enter?” Magnus asked.

  “No, not particularly.”

  He turned to Lena. “How about you?”

  “No, it's gone now,” she said.

  “Perhaps they no longer have to push us,” Malachi said. “Our own curiosity can be trusted.”

  Juan came up to the portal in the dome. It glowed and he passed into a yellow-lit space.

  12. SUPERCIVILIZATIONS

  The others came in behind him. His eyes adjusted, and he went forward across the smooth ebony surface, feeling as if he were late for something.

  “Why are we here?” Lena asked.

  Malachi laughed. “Maybe the program's becoming incoherent.”

  Juan felt a twinge of pain in his head, but it faded. They stopped as the dome darkened. The black mirror of the floor became transparent, revealing the swirl of a galaxy. The view pulled in to a dense region near the center. A bright sun grew larger. Suddenly they were rushing past a pearl-string of worlds. One ring of habitats after another appeared, enclosing the star in a shell of life. Time was passing, Juan realized, as other stars appeared, each surrounded by countless habitats shaped from the raw materials of natural worlds. Double and triple suns were enclosed. The view pulled back to show a spiral arm crisscrossed by red lines.

  “There's your power web,” Magnus said.

  Red beams reached from the spiral arm, striking deep into other quadrants, penetrating the galactic center, thrusting out to the globular clusters. The view pulled back to reveal a cluster of galaxies; red lines lanced out and joined them.