by Gunn, James
“The shadow creatures were trying to alter the direction in which the Enigma system was moving by ejecting mass,” Adrian said.
As he spoke, another gas giant detached itself from orbit and was thrown aside, and then a third, and then, one by one the smaller worlds followed until only Enigma remained.
“These views must have been taken over a period of years,” Adrian said.
“Actually more than a thousand years,” Peter said.
The raging cataclysm in the background began to move slowly off center. “Another five thousand years passed, and the Enigmatics realized that their direction had been altered. The difference was only a fraction of a degree, but it was enough over the long millennia that yet remained to raise the hope that they would skirt the galactic center rather than plunge into the heart of it.”
On the screen the central fury increased in size and frightening intensity until Enigma’s sun faded by contrast. Slowly the maelstrom slid to the side. A sound like a discordant symphony emerged from the speakers and grew slowly until, when the galactic fury was at its closest, it screamed like creation itself. They had to cover their ears while they watched, on the screen, the Enigma world change appearance from blue to yellow and then to dull gray. The Enigma sun grew brighter and then slowly faded into orange, prematurely aged but not destroyed. The discordant symphony ebbed, and the viewers could once more speak.
“What was that?” Frances gasped.
“Chaos given voice,” Peter said.
“You’re trying to intimidate us!” Jessica said. It was more of Peter’s sleight of hand.
“What he’s trying to do,” Adrian said, “is to make us feel what the Enigmatics endured.”
“That’s right,” Peter said, “although it’s all there in the Enigmatic records.”
“I can’t believe the center of the galaxy made that kind of noise,” Frances said.
“Noise, yes,” Peter said. “That kind of noise? Who can say? There are no ears to hear or minds to interpret, and no medium to transmit sound. And if there had been ears to hear, they would not have lasted long enough to register any sound. But there were instruments in space and on the surface as the sleet of radiation blew away the atmosphere, and not long after that the oceans and everything on the surface except rock. The noise you heard was the sound of radiation and of planetary catastrophe.”
“Peter has become a poet,” Jessica said.
“Epic events can bring out the poet even in a computer program,” Peter said. “Compared with this, Paradise Lost was a family dispute.”
“We didn’t detect any radiation at Enigma’s surface,” Frances said.
“That was more than a billion years ago,” Peter said. “In a billion years all but the longest-lived radioactives decay.”
“And since then the Enigmatics have huddled in their tunnels?”
“And tried to survive,” Peter said. “And tried to reconcile their experience with their faith in the Shadows. They had been saved, but they had also been nearly destroyed by the same hand. And they had lost almost everything. But finally they found peace in the realization that all this had been for a purpose.”
“Like any other believer,” Frances said.
“And what was the purpose?” Jessica asked.
“They had to pass through the fire, so to speak, so that they could continue their mission,” Peter said. “They had seeded with life one spiral arm of the galaxy, and their next task was to seed another.”
Frances, who had been staring down at her hands, looked up at the screen, which now showed a view of a jet-black sky loaded with stars.
“Our solar system is in this arm, right?” Adrian said.
“That’s right,” Peter said. “The reason for the Enigmatics’ ordeal was so that they could foster us—and some tens of thousands of other creatures on thousands of other worlds.”
“I don’t know how much more of this I can stand,” Frances said.
“There’s only a little more,” Peter said.
“Only another billion years or so,” Jessica said.
“It is difficult to believe that one sapient species could endure for two billion years,” Peter said, “but they had the Shadows and, for the first billion years, the threat of the approaching galactic center to focus their thoughts, and then they had their manifest destiny.”
“That isn’t the only thing that’s difficult to believe,” Jessica said, but Adrian placed a hand on her arm and stilled her angry motion.
“Surely they didn’t use the phrase ‘manifest destiny’?” Adrian said.
“Like everything else I have told you, it is a translation, and a shaky one at that,” Peter said. “John O’Sullivan used the phrase in the middle of the nineteenth century to rationalize the American expansion to settle the continent. The Enigmatics used something like it to describe their obligation to spread life throughout the galaxy.”
The view on the screen receded to reveal a spiral galaxy, its hub burning with massed stars, its bright, spiral arms turning majestically. It could not have been the Local Galaxy, Jessica thought, but the Local Galaxy might have looked like that if there had been a camera in some other galaxy aimed this way.
“The Shadows,” Peter said, “instructed them how to create wormholes and how to harness dark energy to keep them from collapsing, so they didn’t have to wait for ships to traverse the light years between the stars.”
“Dark energy?” Frances said.
“Something is pushing space apart,” Adrian said.
“Einstein called it ‘the cosmological constant,’” Peter said. “He used it to explain a stable universe, and then abandoned it when astronomers discovered that the universe was expanding. Recent cosmologists have discovered that the rate of expansion is increasing and speculated about a ‘dark energy’ that makes up maybe seventy percent of the cosmos and repels matter rather than attracting it.”
“Sounds like more of the supernatural,” Jessica said.
“The more we learn about the universe,” Adrian said, “the more supernatural it seems.”
“Without dark energy the wormholes would not have lasted,” Peter said. “With the wormholes, contact with almost every star capable of nurturing life became possible, and they seeded them and watched them develop, each in a different way. It was a demonstration of the power of the animate.”
“As opposed to the power of the inanimate?” Frances said.
“Those are the two great powers in the universe, not the natural and the supernatural but the animate and the inanimate,” Peter said. “The inanimate seems to dominate, to proceed down its inexorable, predestined path between primal birth and final extinction. The inanimate doesn’t care whether stars explode and new elements are created, whether planets are formed, whether they are large or small, poisonous or nurturing. All that was laid down in the laws that prevailed when the universe was budded from the great potential for creation. But the animate has the power to intervene, to change the essential nature of the planets and the atmospheres that surround them, even the stars themselves. Always and forever it is the struggle of the animate’s will against the inertia of the inanimate.”
“That’s all very pretty,” Frances said, “but what does it mean?”
“And why are we here?” Jessica said.
“Why are we all here?” Adrian said, sweeping his arm to indicate the other ships surrounding Enigma. “Why did the Enigmatics send spaceship plans to us, and, presumably, to all the others?”
“Indeed,” Peter said. “That is the question that drove my programmer into a mental institution and kept him from seeking the answer that he needed so desperately. And the answer is simple: the Enigmatics were asked to bring us here—those of us who were sufficiently advanced to intercept and decipher the message—for one last meeting, to share the data that each has accumulated in the long struggle between animate and inanimate matter, each in its own way.”
“A gigantic information booth,” Frances sai
d. “A vast encyclopedia.”
“But why do you say it is the last meeting?” Adrian asked.
“The Shadows can do much,” Peter said, “but they cannot alter the path this system must pursue, and it is headed out of the galaxy into the emptiness of intergalactic space. The ability of the Enigmatics to maintain the wormholes is diminishing.”
The view on the screen showed a darkness unrelieved by stars.
“What does that mean?” Jessica demanded. “That we can’t get back?”
“It hasn’t happened yet, and it won’t happen tomorrow, or maybe next year,” Peter said, “but within a few years they certainly will begin to fail, and perhaps sooner.”
“And that’s why one of the alien ships left?” Frances said.
“And why others will leave,” Peter said, “but not all.”
“Why not all?” Adrian asked.
“Those who continue into intergalactic space will inherit the full encyclopedia, and maybe the relationship with the Shadows when the last Enigmatic dies,” Peter said.
“And when will that be?” Jessica asked.
“Those who remain are very old,” Peter said. “And they are not well. The storm of radiation from the galactic center did not leave them untouched. Their ability to reproduce suffered, and those that were born were damaged. That is one reason you never met them.”
“How many?” Frances said.
“Only a handful.”
“How horrible!”
“Sharing data is not enough,” Adrian said. “The Encyclopedia of all knowledge in the galaxy is a noble enterprise and a powerful tool, but—”
“You are right, as usual,” Peter said. “There is a Purpose: to the conflict between the animate and the inanimate has been added the struggle between intelligence and the universe. The universe began in violence when no life was possible and will end in eternal darkness when no life is possible; between these two extremes, life emerges and develops intelligence. Intelligence has the power to contemplate, to understand, to imagine, to plan, and to act, and to frustrate the inexorable processes of matter. The Shadows created us as an alternative to chaos.”
Adrian was silent. Frances was silent. Jessica was silent. Even Peter was silent. The end of their long journey had arrived and the answers to their questions, and they could not look at one another.
“So,” Jessica said, “we finally have answers. If they are answers.” They were not answers she could appreciate.
“This is our choice, then?” Adrian said. “To stay and continue to gather information? Maybe the critical piece around which everything else pivots? The secret of life? The secret of the universe? Maybe how to manipulate dark energy, how to create and maintain our own wormholes and become masters of the universe? Or to return home while we can, with what we have?”
“Or to continue with the Enigmatics on into the Great Dark,” Frances said, “learning how to talk with the Shadows, learning their vast secrets in ways the superstitious Enigmatics could not?”
“If we can believe any of this fantastic story,” Jessica said. Incredibly, the others were acting as if Peter’s incredible tale was true.
“It is fantastic,” Frances said, “but maybe believable because it is fantastic. Could Peter have invented something like this?”
“Maybe the Enigmatics invented it,” Jessica said. “Oh, it doesn’t matter. There’s nothing to validate any of this. It’s all airy nothing.”
“That’s my line,” Frances said. “‘. . . imagination bodies forth the forms of things unknown and gives to airy nothing a local habitation and a name.’”
“We do have validation: the scenes from parts of the galaxy that could only be viewed by something passing through them—” Adrian said.
“Easily faked,” Jessica said. “Especially by someone as clever as Peter or the Enigmatics.”
“The spaceship plans weren’t faked, nor the wormhole, nor this world, nor the alien ships in orbit around it, nor the ruins and the caverns we explored, or the pictures we saw there,” Adrian said.
“And yet there is no proof of the Shadows,” Jessica said. “And no proof possible. Even if we determined the existence here of dark matter, or shadow matter, we can never prove that it harbored living creatures and that they communicated with the Enigmatics. We have to take the word of an unreliable narrator.”
“Just like any kind of scientific hypothesis,” Adrian said. “The explanation may be fanciful but it answers all the questions. As scientists, we place our faith in things unseen as long as they explain the data and predict the future without refutation.”
“There is this great mystery,” Frances mused, “and maybe we can hang around and solve it. Wouldn’t that be something?”
“And maybe we hang around and spend the rest of our lives pursuing shadows,” Jessica said.
“I understand that you want to go home, Jessie,” Adrian said. “You have Bobby, and you and all the other mothers want a place to bring up children. That’s natural, and I understand it.”
“No you don’t,” Jessica said. “Being a mother doesn’t mean you’re any less a scientist or an explorer.” She was a mother, yes, and she would protect her child against any threat, and struggle to make it a home, but that didn’t mean that she would reject adventure.
“Yes it does,” Frances said.
“Well, neither of you are mothers,” Jessica said.
“But those feelings have to be part of our calculations,” Adrian said. “You, Frances, want to solve the mystery of the Shadows—”
“No I don’t,” Frances said. “I just don’t want to go home. If we went home we’d have to cope with all those people who didn’t want us to go in the first place, and the people who aren’t going to believe what we bring to them. And the people who called me fat and ugly all my life.”
“You’re not fat and ugly,” Jessica said, putting her arm around Frances.
“I was,” Frances said, “until I acquired character. But there’s a third way. We could keep exploring on our own, maybe find a habitable planet and settle down to build our own world.”
“That’s true,” Jessica said. “Going home has all sorts of drawbacks. Do you realize what kinds of people are waiting back there, the dolts, the stick-in-the-muds, the stay-at-homes, the let’s-not-change-anythings, the Makepeaces.”
The view on the screen changed to one of a blue planet fringed with white clouds, and nearby an oversized satellite.
“That’s Earth,” Frances said. “Are you trying to influence us, Peter.”
“Presenting the alternatives,” Peter said.
“And what about you, Peter?” Adrian asked.
“I’m staying, of course,” Peter said. “This is what I came here to find, the puzzle, the greatness. I wouldn’t miss this for anything. I’m going to download myself to the memory of the Enigmatics and share in the mystery of the ages, maybe even inherit the intermediary role.”
“So, whether we stay or go, we’ll miss you,” Adrian said.
“Not at all,” Peter said. “The advantage I have over you material creatures is that I can go and remain behind. I’ll leave a perfect copy of myself.”
“You’re right,” Adrian said. “We can’t both stay and go. But, Peter, it may surprise you to learn that we are glad you will be with us, wherever we are.”
“If I were capable of being glad, I would be,” Peter said.
“If we leave,” Adrian said, “we’ll never know the truth of anything we’ve been told.”
Frances looked hopeful. Jessica felt upset and defiant.
“But if we stay, the chances are we won’t know either,” Adrian continued. “It is a mystery that took a billion years for the Enigmatics to accept, and even then it may have been a creation myth propagated by isolation, impending peril, and priests.”
Frances looked quizzical. Jessica felt relieved.
“Our downloaded data is incomplete,” Adrian continued, “but it contains marvels such as the data o
n the galactic center—”
“And longevity and inexhaustible power sources and insights into the condition of existence from a thousand perspectives,” Peter added. “The wisdom not just of the ages but of a thousand ages.”
“Do we have the right to deprive humanity of that?” Adrian asked.
“What has humanity done for us?” Frances asked.
“We are part of it,” Adrian said. “And although it may be only a pretty story, the concept of intelligence struggling against blind matter captures my imagination. We must offer humanity a chance to be part of it, to make a difference.”
“It’s only a story,” Frances said.
“It’s by stories we define ourselves,” Adrian said. “Humanity is a story, science is a story, all of us are stories, and we write new ones for ourselves every day. How will this story end?”
Jessica looked from Adrian to Frances and back again. Frances, she thought, whatever she said, wanted to return, and Adrian, whatever he said, wanted to stay. She loved him, and loved Frances, too; he was capable of drifting away into silent space, pursuing his own thoughts, but they were generous thoughts, great thoughts maybe, and capable, also, of being with her more than any man she had ever known, only occasionally, but they were special occasions. “Maybe there will be celebration when we return,” she said.
“And resentment and hatred and disbelief in anything we say,” Frances added.
“All of that,” Adrian agreed. “If we return, we will have to proceed cautiously, releasing our information slowly as humanity is capable of receiving it.”
“That might take millennia,” Frances said.
“If Peter is right and we can apply the Enigmatics’ longevity processes to ourselves, we may have that long,” Adrian said. “The struggle may be endless, true, but maybe we can prevail. Maybe intelligence can reshape the universe, can stop its long slide into oblivion. Or if not us, then maybe our descendants will succeed. Or if not our descendants, then the intelligences they might create.”
“Then you are determined to return?” Frances said.