Stranger Suns

by George Zebrowski

  Magnus said softly, “The truth might be even more disturbing, perhaps incomprehensible.”

  “They might have sculpted new forms of life with such mental tools,” Lena said, “and seeded worlds with such life. Perhaps that was all that was left for them, to watch new intelligences climb up through the mysteries, in the hope of learning something new.”

  “And we might be what came of such a seeding,” Malachi cut in. “I would still prefer to think we came up the hard way, out of an unconscious process.”

  “It might have been quite routine,” Lena continued, “their setting up of initial conditions, knowing that intelligence would develop sooner or later. Perhaps all life developed as the guided panspermia of the first intelligence to spring up in the cosmos. And only that first appearance came about by chance, creating a biological chain reaction. It may be that each intelligent species, as it discovers this vast lineage, acquires a need to do the same wherever it sees a chance for sentience, if its civilization survives long enough.”

  Malachi waved a hand as he lay on his back. “But perhaps we're the only other species that came up out of the unconscious process, without parenting.”

  The builders would have nothing to learn from us, Juan thought. Human inroads into the enigmas were few—relativity, quantum theory, Gödel's proof, the scattered insights of novels and works of art. Still, he told himself, if any of these origins were possible, then there might be a chance for human progress. Traditions, training, education, even a creative bioengineering of the organism, might become more than a totalitarian imposition on the animal; it might be a common sequence of developments, following a course that had already succeeded elsewhere countless times. The star web might be only a toy left for offspring to play with and puzzle over. Suddenly Juan longed, and his feelings threatened to hurl him into blind faith. Humanity would only have to be patient with itself, ignore the flicker of short-lived generations—and soar!

  Nice, he told himself, bitterly. You'll grasp at anything. The variants they had seen were scattered around one set of historical outcomes, in a narrow range. Even if the builders of the web could be found, the encounter might be disastrous. The notion of hoisting humankind into a better state was perilous, linked to self-loathing and megalomania.

  Isak turned and waved his hands. “I dream of a repository of knowledge, in which is recorded how all this was accomplished, and why!”

  Magnus shrugged. “In a language we may never comprehend.”

  “Perhaps not,” Dita said, gesturing with her cigarette. “If we are related to the builders, then the underlying symbolic forms of their minds may not be unlike ours.”

  Juan felt sorrow for humankind's glimpsed infinities. Grow wings, make yourself worthy of dreams! But how? The stick always comes out with the same answer when it measures itself.

  “I'm tired of all this!” Ivan shouted suddenly. “You talk as if humanity still stood behind us. We're alone, and will die alone.”

  Earth is there, alive and whole, Juan thought in the silence.

  Somewhere.

  28. GRIEVED GHOSTS

  “Juan, wake up,” Lena said softly.

  He struggled to open his eyes, held back by a vision of the starcrossers in joyous congregation, climbing through ever-increasing states of knowledge and bliss to a critical mass of culture rich with laughter and incongruity, a universe opening inward, mocking the silence of infinite spaces. . .

  He sat up suddenly, confronted by a puzzle from his youth that seemed new again. Why should there be anything at all, rather than nothing? Did the starcrossers know the answer on their inward shore?

  As he prepared his pack for departure, he realized that sleep had given him only a physical renewal; curiosity was stronger in him than hope.

  “All set?” Malachi asked, looking around the chamber.

  The amber light seemed to promise a sunrise. Juan felt reluctant to leave the ship, which offered the security of clean air, food and shelter, and health care. What else could grieved ghosts from a failed species ask for?

  He turned and led the way up to the exit.

  * * *

  “We're all agreed?” Juan asked as their helmet lights wandered across the frames in the deep chamber.

  “No more delays,” Ivan said. “It's the only one we know leads directly home.”

  Juan took Lena's hand and faced the third frame from the left. As the others linked hands, he again imagined passages snaking in and out of a million suns, bypassing the interstellar quarantine of worlds. Ghostly material shot through the snakes and reassembled into solidity at ports of call.

  “Ready?” he asked, suddenly afraid that his mind would not bridge the worlds he had lost.

  “Push on,” Malachi said.

  He hurried through the darkness into the identical chamber, feeling that he was a whisper in some vast inner ear.

  “All through,” Lena said, letting go of his hand.

  He went to the large exit. It glowed and he stepped through—

  —into the familiar passage.

  The yellow-orange overheads were steady, their reflections clear in the black floor. He stood aside as his companions came through the glow, then turned off his helmet light and faced them, overcome by the fact that they were the last ties to the humanity he knew. Slowly, with a growing sense of apprehension, he turned and led the way up toward the distant lock.

  Their boots echoed on the hard floor as he quickened the pace.

  He stopped suddenly. “What was that?”

  “I didn't hear anything,” Lena replied.

  “A deep rumble.”

  “If the ship has taken off,” Isak said, “then we're trapped.”

  * * *

  Juan confronted the inner lock. It glowed open, revealing the blue-lit chamber. Their supply cases were still there.

  “Mal and I will go up and check,” Juan said as they entered and the door glowed shut behind them. They dropped their packs. He turned on his helmet light, lowered the faceplate, and stepped toward the outer door. It glowed open. He crawled up the earthen tunnel.

  “I'm almost at the sinkhole,” he shouted.

  “Right behind you,” Malachi answered.

  He got to his feet in the small space. Mal crawled up and stood beside him, peering at the glowing display of his radiation counter. “Well over normal,” he said, “even in here.”

  Juan took his own out and checked it. “Same here,” he said, then slipped it back in his pocket and looked up at the black opening. “Boost me up.”

  He stepped into Mal's joined hands and went up through the hole. The stars were bright over the sleeping jungle as he climbed out on the hillside and stood up in a moonless night. He took out his counter, and felt shame; it was well into the red.

  He reached down and hoisted Mal up, then looked up at the stars as his friend checked his counter. “High,” Malachi said, “approaching lethal.”

  “So's mine. Temperature seems lower. The wind hasn't had a chance to bring the dust yet.” He unclipped his handset. “If the cruiser's still on the highway, maybe I can patch into UN-ERS channels.” He swept the channels, hoping to lock on, but there was only white noise.

  Malachi said, “Seems no one made it to the ship.”

  “Obviously there wasn't time.” Juan imagined going down to the cruiser, driving up into North America, up the west coast to his home town, then walking down the street to his house to find his parents dead in their beds.

  “We'd better get back,” Malachi said. “These suits offer limited protection.”

  Where shall we seek our better selves, Juan thought, if we can't escape what's within us? No new start could avoid a fresh flowering of the same human nature given us by the evolving slaughterhouse. His throat tightened. He wanted to cry out the truth, as if that would be enough to unshackle him from the beast, then looked up at the stars he had loved since boyhood. How could his kind fail in the midst of so much bright beauty? The universe sings with light, but
we choose darkness.

  Malachi climbed down into the hole. Juan clipped the handset to his belt and followed him.

  * * *

  “We'll try again,” Juan said as they went back down the passage.

  “Do you think it can make a difference in how we go through?” Isak asked. “I mean from where to where. Perhaps we should vary our passages. It might affect the probabilities.”

  “Worth trying,” Juan replied. “We may have to go through quite a few times to get past a long run of terminal variants. We may never leave them behind.”

  “What are you saying?” Ivan demanded.

  “There may be thousands, or millions. If it's an infinity, then it means our kind is just no damn good.” He laughed. “Of course, we'll never know if it's an infinity.”

  “You're exaggerating,” Dita said.

  “I hope so.”

  “Let's not prejudge,” Magnus said. “We'll try, no matter how many it takes.”

  “It may be the very next one,” Yerik said anxiously. Juan glanced at Lena. She avoided his gaze.

  * * *

  Their helmet lights played over the frames in the deep chamber.

  “Which one?” Isak asked.

  “We'll go back and forth the way we came,” Juan said. “No point in exploring yet. Plenty of time for risks if we fail.” He took Lena's hand. “Ready?”

  He led them through into the identical chamber in Ship One. They turned around and came back, then one by one slipped out through the glow into the passage.

  As they returned to the drum-shaped chamber, Juan said, “Mal and I'll go take the first readings.”

  Dawn was filtering through the overcast sky when they crawled out onto the hillside. Juan stood up and took out his counter as Malachi rose next to him.

  “What's yours?” Malachi asked, peering at his own instrument.

  “Same as before, and climbing.” He looked out over the jungle. Its sounds seemed peaceful, oblivious to the death of humankind. In a billion years it might dream up another intelligent creature, who would flee when its mind lit up with the shame of self-awareness, and return to wreck vengeance on the forest. Was any mind born of nature protean enough to transcend its prison? All human societies had fallen. Totalitarian systems, both secular and religious, had failed at control; more representative systems had sought a stability that could assimilate change, and had still shackled the mind. Jehovah had warred with human nature and nearly wiped it out—but to no avail. The true myth of humanity was not the story of Sisyphus embracing the burden of his rock, but the tale of Jacob's night struggle with the angel.

  “Try your handset,” Malachi said. “I'm not getting anything.”

  Juan took his out and listened as it swept through the hissing of snakes.

  * * *

  Again they faced the black frames. Juan led the chain through and followed it back.

  “If you don't mind,” he said back in the drum-shaped chamber, “I'll take an extra turn.”

  “Same here,” Malachi added.

  The sun was near noon when they came out on the hillside. Juan checked his meter. Once again the Earth registered death. He stared at the digital readout, thinking of how many people might still be living if it had been only a few points lower. Opening his radio, he listened to the dead planet and thought of how he had lived his life, burying his chaotic feelings and impulses, along with his dismay at human failure, in the cellar of his mind as he struggled to keep his gaze fixed on his kind's finest examples. But now, in this series of failed worlds, humanity had lost control of itself.

  He looked toward the horizon, trying to glimpse some sign of the coming nuclear winter. It would come late to these latitudes, darkening the sky long enough to prevent the forest from drinking the sunlight. What was left of the great oxygen factory would live near death for years, and even if the vegetation came back, it might be too late for most animal life.

  He looked down, saw Malachi disappearing into the hillside, and followed him back into the hole.

  * * *

  “So, we do it again?” Ivan asked.

  “Scarcely a choice,” Malachi said as they sat in the pit. Dita was at his side, looking at him with her mournful brown eyes.

  Isak sat cross-legged on the floor. “Maybe we should wait before repeating our passage, or vary what we do.”

  “You may be right,” Juan said, shifting on his pack. “We'll try the first frame, then the fourth, fifth and sixth.”

  Ivan smiled. “It's a lottery.”

  “Just about,” Juan said.

  “And if they all fail?” Dita asked sadly, leaning against Malachi.

  “We'll keep at it. The ship will support us for the rest of our lives.”

  “As we seek the holy grail of an unsullied Earth,” Ivan said bitterly.

  Yerik asked, “Are we doing something wrong? I mean some physical action.”

  “What is a right action!” Isak shouted. “We go through and come back. What kind of mistake can there be in that?” His round face flushed with anger.

  “These variants flow from what we are,” Juan said, looking at Lena. She sat on her pack, leaning forward with her hands together. “The run of terminal worlds may be a locked infinity.”

  “But better outcomes are not impossible,” Dita protested. “They must exist somewhere!”

  “But not for us to find,” Ivan said with repressed anger. “Perhaps our unconscious is steering us into dead worlds.”

  “Let's face it,” Lena said. “We don't know what we're doing, and there's no way to find out.”

  “We must understand,” Magnus cut in, “that the universe branches continuously. Each variant tunnels off on its own and continues to split. We're part of the process. Ordinarily, junctures occur as normal developments in our experience, where one thing happens and not another, or when we make a choice. But the frames enable us to move across variants in a way that reveals what is normally hidden from us. We've learned that we can't have what we want, and that what is likely is also very limited.”

  “So what else is new?” Ivan asked. “Maybe we're not wishing hard enough.”

  * * *

  Lena and Dita came through the glow and walked slowly down into the pit. Juan sat up and saw from their faces that there was no change outside.

  “The readings are even worse,” Lena said, sitting down next to him.

  Dita knelt down next to Malachi. “The sky is darker,” she added, “and the temperature is falling.”

  Lena took a deep breath. “It's the same world over and over again.”

  They had all taken turns making the observations, but after a dozen passes through the frames it seemed that a thousand tries would not be enough.

  “Maybe we're reentering the same world,” Ivan said.

  “Possibly,” Juan replied, “but the readings change too quickly and the contours of the hill vary.”

  “It would be a discovery,” Magnus said, “to learn that we could enter the same variant repeatedly.”

  “It is the same world!” Ivan shouted bitterly. “Our world—because it always destroys itself.”

  29. BROKEN SYMMETRY

  Juan grasped Lena's hand and led the chain through the first frame. Warm, stale air pushed into his lungs as he stepped out into low gravity. While the others came through, he noticed three oval exits ahead, then cast his beam around the chamber. There were no additional frames.

  He faced the three exits. “Do we go back, or see where these lead?”

  “I'm willing,” Yerik said.

  “I don't care to be disappointed again right away,” Ivan added.

  “Middle exit, then,” Juan said. He stepped forward. It glowed—

  —and he emerged into a dark tunnel ramp. The others came out and stood on either side of him.

  “Something very hot cut these smooth walls,” Malachi said.

  “This air is not being renewed,” Dita said.

  Juan went slowly up the ramp, and came out in
to a large chamber. He looked upward, and glimpsed a distant ceiling in his beam. Slowly, they moved ahead, stirring up dust on the polished surface.

  “There, to the right!” Malachi shouted, fixing an exit with his beam. They hurried toward it. Juan went through the glow—

  —into another dark tunnel, and waited for his companions.

  “What now?” Yerik asked. Juan went forward and around a turn, which led them into another large chamber. Their beams caught three vehicles with UN-ERS insignia.

  “Moonbuses!” Malachi exclaimed. “We're on Luna.”

  Isak said, “So there's a variant in which an alien station was found on the Moon.”

  Juan cast his light beyond the three vehicles, revealing a large exit. “Can we drive one of these out of here?” Ivan asked.

  “Let's see,” Yerik replied as he went up to a vehicle and touched the entry plate. The bus lit up inside as the door slid open. “Well, what do we do?” he asked, looking at Juan.

  “Maybe we can learn something,” Juan said.

  He waited until the others were inside, then followed, closing the door behind him.

  The brightly lit cab held seats for a dozen people. Malachi went forward and checked the drive controls. Juan followed and sat down at his right, checking the pressurization display, which was counting up to normal. The vehicle's cozy interior was a relief after the alien designs.

  “I can do it,” his friend said. The engine came alive with a low whine, and the vehicle moved toward the exit. It glowed and Malachi gunned the bus through—

  —into a starry Lunar landscape. Juan peered up through the canopy and saw a full Earth hanging low in the sky to his right, looking like bruised flesh. Red-browns streaked the latitudes between icecaps, where oxygen-producing greenery was dying for lack of sunlight under the shroud of windborne debris. Farm animals were being slaughtered as their feed ran out. Wild animals were devouring each other and the cold human dead in the gathering gloom. New variants of his parents had died. He wondered what it was like in the underground Swiss city, in the official bunkers and caves.