Stranger Suns

by George Zebrowski

  He counted five white columns as he walked. Each seemed to have an opening like the one from which they had emerged. “I wonder where they all lead,” Lena said.

  She still seemed distant, her mood mirroring Ivan's uncertainty about what they were doing here, the same uneasiness and lack of conviction he felt himself. He looked into her eyes, thirsting for those moments when he was not wary of his own kind. His disappointment with humanity had deepened, but he had to include himself in his fears, because there was no innocent ground on which he could stand. He felt again the rush of growing up, the loss of imagined independence as the floods of sexuality and the struggle for position killed lucidity and the simple love of being. Lost were those moments when sunlight had quieted his will and made him believe in angelic ways outside the deeply cut canyons of biological time, before adulthood came like a black river to carry him into the deep beyond the world. . .

  Lena glanced at him, then grimaced. “You know. Dr. Obrion, I thought I was a loner, but you've got me beat. I guess that's what attracts me to you. Your citadel is stronger than mine.” She smiled at him, and his bitterness drained away.

  He looked ahead. The thin, cablelike connection with the asteroid cluster thickened as they neared the place where it was anchored to the inner surface. Juan heard a distant rushing sound.

  “Airflow,” Isak said. “It must be a conduit of some kind.”

  Juan saw the structure clearly as Lena and he caught up with the others. It rose like a flying buttress toward the asteroid center. Malachi leaned into an oval opening at the base.

  “It seems to be a drop tube arrangement,” he said, peering upward.

  “But will it carry us both ways?” Isak asked.

  Malachi took out a chocolate wrapper, tossed it into the tube, and watched it whisk upward. “That doesn't prove anything,” he said, turning around. “The only way we'll find out if we can return is by stepping in at the other end.”

  Ivan looked at Juan. “What's the point of going through that thing?”

  “We came to explore,” Isak answered. “We do so or go back.”

  Malachi shifted his broad shoulders to adjust his pack. “Who's first?”

  “I'll go,” Juan said, “and send something back as soon as I'm through.”

  No one objected. Ivan seemed a bit relieved suddenly, Juan noticed, and knew why because he felt the same. They would put off trying to regain their world for a while longer, postponing the possibility that they might never find it.

  He adjusted his pack, stepped into the opening, and was drawn upward, accelerating slowly. He looked down and saw Lena peering after him, her upturned face tense with concern. He waved and looked away, lowering his faceplate. In a moment he lost all sense of up or down. Ahead, the tube seemed endless, glowing bright blue. He lifted his faceplate and felt only a slight motion of air against his face, evidence of a gravitational control that could hurl him through a hundred kilometers of tubeway in a matter of minutes.

  Yet the motion was gentle, and lulled him. For a moment he imagined that he was rushing downward, but the perception quickly reversed itself, and it seemed he was rushing upward; finally, his mind decided that he was traveling horizontally.

  The blue glow around him brightened. He looked at his watch and saw that fifteen minutes had elapsed. He seemed to be slowing, but couldn't be sure. An oval opening came up in front of his eyes as he drifted to a stop. He grasped the rim, turned himself around, and came down on his feet in light gravity.

  He stepped out cautiously and looked up. The tube thrust up from the asteroid, spanned the blue space, and narrowed to a faint black line before it touched the far surface. He took a few steps, surprised that such a small body would have even this much gravity. Looking around, he noticed skeletal structures clinging to the rocky surface a few hundred meters away. Squares, pyramids, and various irregular shapes were strewn about the asteroid.

  He turned back to the oval opening, picked up a rock, and tossed it in. It went up, and he breathed a sigh of relief.

  * * *

  Isak came through first, looking like a giant beetle with his pack as he turned himself around. Lena landed gracefully behind him. Malachi twisted his body through the opening and drifted down. A strand of Dita's hair flew up from under her helmet as she emerged, followed by Yerik. Magnus and Ivan came through last.

  “What do you think?” Juan asked Isak, pointing to the spidery structures.

  The astrophysicist wrinkled his brow and rubbed his chin. “I would say some kind of propulsion device, or what's left of one, used to bring the asteriod into this construction shell, as part of an unfinished macroengineering project. But what stopped it?”

  “Perhaps there was a strike,” Ivan said. Isak approached one of the alien structures and rapped it with his knuckles, producing a dull, nonmetallic sound.

  “Ah,” Malachi said, “an alien speaks.”

  Lena reached down and pulled something from the rocky ground. “Juan, look at this,” she said. “Grass, and weeds.”

  “As common as yellow stars,” he replied.

  They all gathered around her as she examined her find, and Juan realized that it had reminded them of Earth. He looked up at the nearby asteroid fragments. Two hung in the sky just above the skeletal structures. A third was off to the right, sitting on the close horizon. Across the blue space, the smooth inner surface of the sphere seemed to be an unfinished stage for a drama that would never be played out. He closed his eyes for a moment, feeling tired; but the inevitability of sleep seemed suddenly intolerable. The hours of human sleep had always been a risky voyage, a passage through the implicit and fearful, to be resisted by the engine of awareness. Only those who were deeply resolved within themselves would receive safe rest.

  The need to attempt a return to Earth, he knew, could not be ignored for long. He hoped that every passage through the frames would carry them farther from the variant in which Earth had died.

  Lena touched his hand. “Juan, are you all right?”

  “Yes,” he said, looking into her eyes and feeling deeply grateful for her existence.

  * * *

  The ship was still there when they stepped out from the half circle of frames in the suncore.

  “Shall we try a fourth?” Isak asked.

  No one objected. Juan led the chain through into an identical tunnel.

  “So methodical a people!” Ivan called out. “I don't think they had much of a sense of humor.”

  They came out into another shell and looked up. Starships hung like bunched grapes in the open space.

  “They look like our ship,” Juan said, intrigued by the possibility that the vessels were not yet operational. “We might learn something.”

  “So they built them in places like this,” Magnus said, “then sent them out to string their web.”

  Ivan laughed. “Little realizing that ignoramuses like us would wander through and gape!”

  “Ignorance is a map.” Isak answered firmly. “Obviously incomplete, but the only one possible if one is to learn. We're finite creatures, for whom each ignorance is an infinite series of uniquely shaped holes that will accept only one piece of knowledge of the same shape—the positive to the negative space, to use a geometrical analogy. What we have seen shows us how much can be done, and that it has been done. The ship, the web, the replicator, the medical facilities—all flow from the same principles that make possible an elegant control of energies at the quantum level. That tells us that the builders had a profound grasp of the universe—a unified field theory accounting for all the forces as they are now, after they separated. The practical technology we see here must flow from such knowledge.”

  “That's fine,” Ivan replied, “but what can we do with it ourselves besides appreciate it?”

  “Be fair, old chap,” Malachi said. “We can't expect to find technical manuals lying about. All the tech we've seen appears to have been designed so it wouldn't have to be serviced or tampered with by users.
”

  “There must be manuals of some sort somewhere,” Ivan insisted. “Not that we could read them.”

  Yerik said, “The ship is what we should start with. On Earth we can bring all our resources to bear in studying it, and leave the web for later.”

  Juan turned away. “We'd better get back.”

  * * *

  They emerged into the brightness of the suncore station and started toward the ship.

  “It's not there,” Lena said with dismay, letting go of Juan's hand. They hurried forward and came to the edge of the empty cradle. Juan's throat tightened; his companions were silent, their eyes wide from shock.

  They dropped their packs. “Maybe it'll return,” Dita said as they sat down on their gear.

  “I knew I should have stayed,” Ivan said.

  “It's not your fault,” Magnus answered. “We've entered a variant where it was never here.”

  Ivan asked, “Does the station have replicators?”

  “Probably,” Malachi said, “but we might starve before we found one.”

  Juan felt exhausted as he looked around at his companions, and felt lost. A lifetime of fears and doubts were eating their way out of the restraints he had built within himself.

  Yerik grimaced. “We should never have left it.” The red-haired man sat limply on his pack.

  “We'll find other replicators,” Isak said, “and another way home.” He looked at Juan. “It's a large connected system, isn't it?”

  Juan nodded. “We'll pass back and forth through a frame, which might put us into a variant where the ship is still here.”

  “Of course!” Isak exclaimed.

  “If we're lucky,” Juan added. “A million tries might not be enough.”

  27. ACROSS THE PROBABILITIES

  They put on their packs and returned to the half circle of frames. Silently, they linked hands. Juan led the way into the fourth entrance. They passed through the tunnel into an empty, blue-lit sphere.

  Isak said, “It seems the work was completed in this one, or never started.”

  They gazed into the vast space, then went back through the tunnel, with Juan bringing up the rear.

  “It's not here,” Magnus said as Juan emerged.

  “We'll go again,” he said.

  They joined hands, and he went ahead, straining to see the exit. Finally, he stumbled through it—into darkness.

  “Back!” he shouted. A children's game, he thought, as they reversed direction and led him back.

  “It's here!” Isak shouted as Juan came out.

  The ship loomed out of the brightness as they rushed to it. Juan felt relief, and the urgency to regain a living Earth before chance exiled them forever. The emotional ties with home, whatever there was of it, knotted up inside him, and he knew that every other aim had to arrange itself around that goal, for better or worse. His critical mind did not love humanity, even though he hoped for useful work that would survive him, and needed to belong. The war within him would have to play itself out, even if he suffered a loss of value and identity from which he would not recover. He felt unfinished as they approached the ship.

  * * *

  Malachi and Dita sat in the back of the drum-shaped chamber, near the exit, smoking cigarettes. The others rested on their sleeping bags. The warm amber glow was soothing; Juan felt suspended in a false peace.

  Malachi murmured a few words to Dita; she laughed softly. The sound made Juan imagine small victories, and he wondered about the character of physical laws which made possible the rise of intelligence and crushed it at the same time. Inevitably, intelligence warred with such a universe, and struggled to work miracles. The early ones took the form of awkward technologies; later ones were more elegant, modifying the gross biological inheritance. But what had the web done for its builders? They had either destroyed themselves, or abandoned their works for something else.

  Lena's hand touched his. “What is it?” she asked.

  “Even with all this the builders failed, so what hope is there for us, or for what's left of us?”

  She said, “Somewhere, humanity is alive. We've got to believe that, Juan.”

  He looked around the chamber. The resting shapes of his companions suggested dark creatures on a strange shore. “I suspect,” he continued, “that even if we find a living variant, it won't last. Nothing human can last. Our only hope is to stop being human. Training, tradition, and ideals aren't enough to free us of what we are. The shining examples we've had have been freaks, wonderful only because they stood apart from the wretched norm. Scientific and cultural renaissance was declared whenever things were not obviously going backwards. A near standstill was progress. We're a failed species, unable to transcend its reptilian brain core, with every good motive tainted by hidden impulses.”

  “But we don't know how to stop being human,” Lena said softly.

  “Maybe it's time to start over, somewhere else. I fear finding our world again, afraid of what it'll do, or is already doing with the web.”

  “Think a moment, Juan.” Her mouth twisted. “First you claim that nothing human lasts, then you suggest starting over somewhere else. Well, if what you say is true, then we wouldn't do any better.” Her eyes seemed to stare past him. “Anyway, we can't start over. Too small a gene pool, for one thing, and neither Dita nor I would care to be brood mares in a hopeless effort.”

  He looked into her eyes. “I'm not being very clear,” he said, taking her hand.

  “I know how you feel,” she answered. “Maybe we won't find our world again, but if we do its problems will still be there. I think you're feeling guilty that you're still alive.” Her fingers gripped his hand tightly. “Misanthropy is easy. Making solutions work is hard, and never perfect.”

  “Yes,” he said, “but there are degrees of imperfection and failure. Our kind wasn't content with killing itself off. Even if the destroyed variant had survived, the planet was dying.”

  “You're wrong about humanity,” she said.

  “I hope so—but what if I'm right?”

  * * *

  “What else can we call it,” Magnus was saying as Juan awakened. “They were building an empire.”

  “Why did they bother,” Ivan said, “if they were going to abandon it?”

  Juan lay still and listened.

  “Empires start out for many reasons,” Magnus continued, “among them economics and exploration. But unexpected developments modify original goals. Their technology progressed rapidly to materials synthesis, which obviated the need for agriculture and basic resources.” It seemed to Juan that Magnus was struggling with himself as he spoke, to keep himself going.

  Ivan said, “Except they still needed the power of stars.”

  “But they were left free to explore,” Magnus continued, “and to give free reign to religious and aesthetic impulses. They could go anywhere and create any kind of environment they wanted, for whatever reason.”

  “How about power and pride?” Ivan asked.

  “If they achieved practical life-extension,” Magnus went on, ignoring the question, “then that might have reduced their numbers. Why reproduce when you can become your own posterity? Long life would also select out those who lost interest.”

  “So they're somewhere,” Ivan said, “but why did they abandon the things we've seen?” He sounded affronted.

  Magnus sighed. “Social systems lag behind the growth of knowledge and vision. For example, under the pressure of advances in biology and artificial intelligence, a species may become physically fluid, while still engaged in projects like this empire. Suddenly, intelligence is able to break the biological limits in which it developed, to cease being the organism that it was and quantum-jump into a new state. Social visions fail because a species is hobbled by inward structures, which evolved to meet the needs of survival in earlier environments. The old biology brakes aspiration. On Earth, utopian communities failed because a human being could not stop behaving according to what evolution and human histo
ry had made of him.”

  Juan turned his head and saw Magnus's silhouette standing in the amber glow. “We've always glimpsed better things,” the older man said, “but lacked the inner means to achieve them. The organism, measuring itself by itself, cannot equal its dreams. The conduct of science with the help of artificial intelligence and mathematics—a cognitive activity that stands outside the older human nature—is a transcendent activity, a check on opinion, custom, and self-interest. A species makes this transition to relative objectivity or destroys itself.”

  “But the process you're describing,” Lena said suddenly, “may lead to profound stresses, as an elite part of the species develops contempt for its own kind.”

  Magnus scratched his head. “Yes, that may be a fatal conflict. But my point is that each rapid development outstrips the needs it was meant to remedy, by opening up new paths. That's what we may be seeing in this vast system of ships and frames. The builders may have achieved another kind of existence. Earth may have been one of their last outposts, just before a great change of some kind occurred.”

  Yerik sat up. “Perhaps the continued use of the web simply emptied out the variants we've visited. Elsewhere the empire continues. If we pass through the frames often enough, we might chance on it.”

  Juan turned on his side and said, “I don't understand how that could happen. It suggests broken symmetries and skipped variants.”

  “Well, why not?” Yerik objected. “Perhaps errors occur, and emptying can happen.”

  “I don't understand it either,” Magnus said.

  “What I'd like to know,” Isak said, “is how they built things. We've seen only finished things, machines without moving parts. What we've seen suggests that they built things from the inside.”

  “Maybe they built with mental tools,” Magnus replied, “and that put them on the road to another kind of existence, as ethereal beings, patterned energies, moving like ghosts through our universe.”

  Isak's stocky shape rose and leaned toward the wiry one of Magnus. “Do you realize what that implies?” he demanded, as if Magnus had just made some childish error. “Such close contact with the basic structure of reality might eliminate quantum-observer interference in physical observation. The status of observers would change fundamentally.”