Stranger Suns

by George Zebrowski

  “That might explain,” Juan said, “why we've run into so many visual operating manuals. Perhaps they wanted us to have what they outgrew.”

  “But if all this is true,” Lena continued, “then they're telling us that it's no good trying to adapt to a given nature. I wonder if they had to abandon our universe because they damaged it in some way. By opening up pathways between variants, they might have created an intolerable condition.”

  “Variants are probably a feature of all universes in super-space,” Magnus said. “Interesting to think it might have been some land of accident.”

  “How can we confirm any of this?” Malachi asked. “It isn't exactly obvious.”

  “Maybe we've had help and don't know it,” Juan replied.

  The red field disappeared from the viewspace, and was replaced by what seemed to be a grouping of flickering stars.

  “Those may not be stars, or distant galaxies,” Juan said. “If we're in superspace, they may be entire universes.”

  The view pulled in closer, revealing a circular area filled with a gossamer patchwork. “Our universe, perhaps,” Magnus said, “as seen from outside.”

  It flickered as they watched, and seemed to Juan that it might disappear. He felt a moment of agony, as if at any moment something would come from the darkness and devour this delicacy. “They know we're here,” he said calmly, “and we're being instructed. Once in a while, there had to have been other escapees from the natural creations. They must expect it if they left us the means.”

  “I wonder if we interest them at all?” Lena said.

  “Why not?” Tasarov replied. “We're probably their children, one way or another. Perhaps we're an offshoot of life they might have seeded, some colony which went off on its own and never developed sufficiently. We may be all that's left of those who have not gone into their exalted place.”

  “Their technology cared for them,” Magnus replied. “We've seen it do the same for us, as much as it was possible, given that we're probably very different from them. This ship responded as if it was bringing out more immigrants, from those who stayed behind, but now wanted to join the others.”

  “But they won't let us in,” Lena said.

  “Perhaps we don't know how to knock.”

  Tasarov, Juan noticed, was entranced by the flickering universe in the viewspace. “The mathematics of it,” he whispered, “the divine mathematics. . .”

  “How do they live in there?” Lena asked. “What could it be like?”

  Malachi said, “One thing worries me. Superspace, if it's a permanent, infinite plenum, must be the one thing that's beyond them. It can't be remade, and its laws may take precedence over what happens within the isolates. I wonder how they feel about that? It would worry me if there was even the possibility of a realm around my own that might intrude, however insulated my universe might be from its laws. Perhaps superspace isn't infinite, and comes to some kind of end, following a vast cycle of its own.”

  “I'll bet,” Juan said, “that the universe of the starcrossers can survive, if it comes to that.” He looked at the other patches of light around the flickering universe, and wondered how long they had existed.

  “Do any of you truly believe any of this is true?” Lena demanded.

  “We have the evidence of their abandoned works of cosmic engineering,” Tasarov replied, “and the fact that nowhere, not even in variants, have you found the starcrossers. Only their echoes remain in their empty works. I reason thus: After working to reshape the universe we know, after trying to bend it to their will, they gave up. We don't find them in our nature; therefore we must look outside it. And here we have an event horizon, in a place outside. We find ourselves in a preponderance of suspiciously systematic circumstances.”

  “So you admit,” Lena countered, “that this may still all be wrong?”

  Tasarov stood up and stretched. “That would be a great pity! Our universe is only a few steps beyond birth. It can't make up its mind, but splits endlessly, suggesting that it is a natural growth. It defines the very nature of choice, for us, its creatures. Every time we choose, we enter a new world. You have seen the naked stage works of its flow and branching. Do you think, Juan, that the builders have abolished variants inside their new cosmos? Have they escaped the sum over histories and now live in only one?”

  “We can't know,” Juan replied.

  “Economical chaps,” Malachi said, pointing to the viewspace, “in what little they choose to present us with. We spin a web of reasoning and remain uncertain. Lena is right. This could all have other explanations.”

  “Let's assume it's all true,” Lena said. “What can it mean? What's in it for us unless we can go back and be ofsome help to our own kind, most of whom can't start over somewhere else?”

  “We may not be able to return,” Juan said.

  “You may not mind for yourself,” she said gently. “But whatever happens to us, our kind will spread through the web, for better or worse. If we go back, we can influence how that happens. Maybe we need to run through our own mistakes. We'll change, socially and biologically, but I hope it won't happen out of self-hatred. I don't want to see humanity further divided against itself, into supposedly lesser and more advanced types. I'd rather we all went ahead together, to keep faith with all the billions who lived and died so that better times might come. Perhaps one day we'll come out here and make a new place for ourselves, but not yet. For now, it's people like Titus who are coming to grips with things, who are trying to work through the failure around them. We're out here because Titus gave us the chance. Bergson may have been right about universes being machines for making deities, but we're not those deities yet.” She paused. “So what do we do?”

  “It may not be up to us,” Magnus said softly. “We may be a sample, lured here to see if there was anything original in the seedlings. They may not let us go home.”

  45. NEVER COME HOME

  What was there to go back to? Juan asked himself as he lay awake. They'd wander again through the runs of human variants, seeking a haven, and find only the usual inner constraints producing unwanted outcomes. Future ages might bring Utopias, in which humankind would remake itself, but an infinite universe would always escape control. Its laws would always rule, ineradicable, hiding in the conscious craft of remade bodies and singing psyches. For his kind to soar, to escape its inner torments, a new nature was needed, not merely a new rapprochement with the old. To battle the weary variants would only yield the same comedy.

  So why did Lena want to go back? Out of pity? To reproduce and die? He imagined his colony of ever-changing trans-humanity, each generation reaching deeper into the beast to clear away evolution's stubborn residues, and himself wandering across the colony's variants, an estranged Moses crossing and recrossing the river Jordan, always hearing something different on a changing Sinai.

  He looked at the universes in the viewspace, and wondered if they were merely some odd optical effect. If this was superspace, then its different laws might even express the old Aristotelian notion of regions at absolute rest, with each fixed universe a dynamic creation within the rigid frame.

  He thought of what lay beyond the red wall, then imagined himself back home, in his boyhood bed, dreaming of the red limit, where the light of fleeing galaxies winked out as they approached light speed. He had wondered about the space into which they sped, still too unsophisticated to accept that space itself was expanding. The question of what lay beyond an expanding space had tantalized him, in the same way that superspace did now. Superspace made no sense unless one accepted it as eternal and infinite; it was incapable of not existing, unlike the things within the quantum fluctuations that were its universes, which existed contingently. There was no logical problem in imagining their nonexistence, but superspacehad to be infinite, or it could not serve as a proper basis for the existence of contingent universes. It existed necessarily, because genuine nothingness was impossible; a mere absence, a vacuum, could always be fille
d, and made sense only if surrounded by substance. The infinite universe of superspace, therefore, existed as God might have, not needing a beginning. There was no logical difference between an eternal universe and an omnipotent deity; they both served the same role in explaining existence. Religious mythologies simply rode piggyback on this truth. There was no way to avoid an infinite existence, but at the same time it was infuriating, and unimaginable. Or was it possible that another superspace enclosed this one, and another beyond it? Was it superspaces all the way up and down, with no final up or down, and fixed dynamic space-times in each? Was one kind of infinity preferable to another?

  He sat up suddenly, and wondered if the frames on this ship were still linked with the home universe. They would have to stretch across superspace to remain functional. He imagined a torn-away wormhole, trailing after the ship, leading nowhere, but he knew it could not happen. Passages were anchored at each frame, if this was in fact the model for how the frames worked.

  He turned his head and saw a dark shape rise up against the universes in the viewspace.

  “Magnus,” he whispered to the figure, “where are you going?”

  The dark shape beckoned for him to follow. He got up and followed it into the straight passage.

  “To try these frames,” the older man said. “I may not return.”

  “Why do you think that?” Juan asked.

  “I may not want to, more likely, than not be able to.”

  “What is it, Magnus?”

  “I think one of these frames now leads into the red sphere, It would explain why the shuttle didn't work.”

  “You think it's a new link, set up for us to use. Could it have existed before, when the ship was still in its dock?”

  “No, not if we've left our universe, but who knows what's true any more? I'll know, at any rate. Do you want to come?”

  “We should all go. I'll wake the others.”

  “I don't think we should all go,” Magnus said.

  “What more can we risk?”

  Magnus smiled and leaned closer. “I'm an old man, Juan, with nothing to lose. I look forward to being surprised by what I find—something more than the life that's given to us by an unfriendly universe. You should appreciate that. Take Lena back and be human, however small that may seem to you now. Promise me that's what you'll do that if I don't return.”

  “What about Yevgeny?”

  “Take him back with you. He's suffered more than he shows, and deserves a place where he can relax and do his mathematical dances.”

  He turned away and approached the oval entrance. It glowed and he slipped through. Juan hurried after him—

  —into the harshly lit chamber. The gray-haired man stood poised before the three frames.

  “Magnus—” Juan murmured as his friend hurried into the blackness, then took a deep breath and stepped back, feeling that he had just witnessed a suicide.

  Magnus suddenly stepped out of the frame, looking surprised. “What is it?” Juan asked, tensing.

  “It doesn't go through to anywhere, just turns back on itself.” He faced the next one.

  “Magnus, wait!”

  “Maybe it goes back to the dock.” He stepped through, and in a few moments emerged again. “Another circle.” He sighed. “At least it suggests that we're outside normal space-time.” He confronted the last frame.

  Juan grabbed his wrist. Magnus pulled free and said, “One of us has to play things out to the end. We've strained all the old limits of human life, Juan. You're selling a vision that would abandon most of our bodily history. I feel the weight of possibility, and at the same time it seems there's nothing left. Good-bye.”

  Juan grabbed at him, but Magnus pushed him aside with surprising strength and fled into the frame. Juan stood back and waited, hoping that there was no place for his friend to go.

  46. DANCING MINDS

  Blackness pressed in around Juan as he stepped into the frame, squeezing him forward through slippery textures. Deaf and blind, he was drawn forward.

  Gradually he saw that he was slipping through a red plenum of shapes—round, oval, long, and thin—all soft and transparent with other forms inside them. He slipped between them as if he knew where to go. Joy stirred within him, but it was not his own. He looked around in panic, saw a bright open area of yellow, around which the shapes circled, and swam into it.

  As he looked out from this storm's eye, he noticed that the organisms not only circled, but also danced in short, jagged fits—up, down, and sideways—and shook once in a while. He felt this motion within himself.

  The swirling mass around him parted, and he saw distant spaces, around which galaxies of orange, yellow, and green shapes also did their kaleidoscopic dance. Suddenly they entered each other, radiating a great sense of pleasure and satisfaction. Alien joy burgeoned within him.

  Magnus appeared next to him, looking gaunt and pale. Juan's anxiety banked the invading joy. He tried to speak, and failed; but Magnus seemed to understand.

  “They constantly reshape themselves,” he said, “to please each other, and find this satisfying. All that we surmised must be true.”

  Juan gazed at the alien creation around him, trying to grasp how it could be fulfilling.

  “Entropy is constant here,” Magnus said. “The gamelike, goal-oriented aspects of life are nonexistent. Only play exists, if we can call it that.”

  “Are they aware of us?” Juan asked.

  “They perceive our longings, I think, our unfilled states.”

  “And you want to stay?”

  “I will lose all that I am, all caring for what we have been. I'm not sure if it's right or desirable, if that means anything here.”

  “It's a heavenly host!” Juan cried out with sudden fear.

  Magnus turned in the bright space, smiled, and said, “We can't judge. We were made to be empty, then to be filled, emptied and filled. We don't know, then we do. We forget, and remember. We learn, and need more knowledge. We're a two-position switch, or a sieve which longs to be full. Satisfied, it would miss the longing.” He twisted and looked directly at Juan, his face contorted by pain. “We're not made for all this. If we resist, we'll suffer in the transition. . .”

  “Magnus!” Juan cried. “Don't let go!”

  The gaunt face seemed unafraid as it gave him a questioning look.

  “Magnus! If superspace contains both natural and deliberate universes, then you don't have to settle for this one. We can find others, see what they offer!”

  Magnus nodded as he turned end over end. “You want to go and find them?”

  “Yes,” Juan said, feeling a new passion kindling within himself.

  “You will always be going.”

  “Come with me!” he shouted, looking around at the vast merry-go-round. Their free space shrank as the shapes closed in. Were these what was left of the web builders? Was this their reward—nothing more than a deep pleasure? It had to be more than that.

  A black frame appeared in the distance behind Magnus. Lena, Malachi, and Tasarov shot out. As they drifted nearer, he realized that they might all be trapped here forever. The creative effort of the starcrossers was a failure. Even though they had escaped their origins, they had made what seemed a mindless heaven.

  “Go back!” Juan shouted, trying to swim toward the frame, willing himself to move, but it felt as if an invisible gelatinous mass were impeding him. The shapes seemed to be singing a silent song, a mix of ragged calliope and blissful Mozart. “Let us go!” he shouted, clawing his way past Magnus, who now seemed beyond reason as he closed his eyes and tumbled. Juan heard him say, “Hold up the shell / And hear the secret sound of childhood / The sea within! / Blood pouring through / Your heart and mind / As you contain / The salty mother / From whom you swam.”

  Juan turned and gazed back at him. Magnus's eyes opened wide and he said, “Our souls are small / But we know infinity / With every longing.” He smiled and added, “We must sit from time to time / And think about bei
ng / How life is lived / What might be / If we shaped it.” He nodded and closed his eyes, apparently satisfied.

  Juan turned away and motioned again for the others to go back. “Leave Tasarov!” Magnus whispered after him. “He will know what to do with this place.”

  Juan was moving faster now, even though he had no idea of how he was doing it.

  “What shall we do?” Malachi demanded as he reached him.

  “Go back!” Juan shouted, looking at Lena's sleepy expression. She seemed to be slipping away.

  “What about Magnus?” Tasarov demanded.

  They looked at the older man. He beckoned to them. “Tasarov!” he called out. “Come!”

  “Wait!” Juan shouted as the Russian moved off, laughing.

  “What can we do?” Malachi asked as Lena tumbled end over end next to him. He reached out and steadied her.

  “Leave,” Juan said, looking toward Magnus and Tasarov.

  “What about them?” Lena asked lazily.

  Juan replied, “We're losing them.”

  “Do we go get them or not?” Malachi asked.

  “I'll go,” Juan said. “Get Lena out.”

  “Right.”

  Juan swam toward the two men. It was slow going as he flailed his arms and kicked with his legs. After a moment, he was moving with no help from his limbs. He glanced over his shoulder. Lena and Malachi were nearing the frame.

  Magnus and Tasarov embraced and tumbled together as he reached them. He came up between their heads and grabbed their shoulders.

  “We must go back!” he shouted, turning with them.

  They looked at him sleepily. “You go back, my friend,” Tasarov said. “I'm beginning to see what they do here.”

  “What?” Juan asked.

  “Pure mathematical ecstasy. I have already solved all the insolubles I have known in my life.” He smiled. “But Magnus is far ahead of me.”

  Juan asked, “Are you serious?”

  “Of course he is,” Magnus answered. “Go spy on God in your own way.”