by James Gunn
“And yet you’re here,” Jak said.
Riley nodded. “Me and one other.”
“And who is that?”
“Maybe I’ll tell you if we can reach an agreement.”
“About what? You’ve already told me the Transcendental Machine is worthless.”
“The Machine, maybe, but not what it implies: It works,” Riley said. “You can make your own.”
“My own Transcendental Machine?” Jak said.
“Your own matter transmitter,” Riley said, “which is the same thing, if you can do it. The Transcendental Machine destroys the material as it is analyzed and sends that information to a receiver where it is reconstituted. But it leaves behind all the imperfections, so what is reconstituted is the ideal state of what went into it.”
Jak sat up straight. “That might mean a cure for diseases, even fatal diseases, deformities, lost limbs!”
“Even aging,” Riley said. “But more important, it means improved versions of what went into it, smarter, better qualified to function in today’s galaxy, maybe even compete on equal terms with the most powerful species in the galaxy. And their Pedias.”
“Immortality,” Jak said.
“Maybe,” Riley said. “Better, anyway, than your cloning experiment—and the symbiotes. They were why Jon and Jan signed on to the Geoffrey. Not just because you sent them, as Jon told us, but because they hoped the Transcendental Machine would rid them of their controlling symbiotes.”
“Nonsense,” Jak said. “They were better than a pedia. Jer, tell the man.”
“I’ve told you about them many times, Jak,” Jer said. “And you always tell me to forget it. I’ve learned how to segregate them—to keep them out of my head when I really focus on it—but if I didn’t have to fight that battle all the time I could do something better with my life.”
“It would be really difficult to build a device for destructive analysis, not to mention preserving the result and using it to reconstitute the original, without the device to study,” Jak mused. “But you have seen it work?”
“I’m proof that it works,” Riley said.
“It would mean a lot of experiments,” Jak mused, “first with materials, then with living subjects, and many failures. But, after all, what are we but information? It is likely I would not see the end of it.” His sagging features firmed. “But it would be a great memorial. A final triumph. A blow in the face of my enemies. And I have Jer. Jer will continue my work, for her own love of success as well as my reputation. She is, after all, a younger me.”
It looked as if he and Asha had found the right mad scientist, Riley thought. He looked at Jer, who seemed to be torn by conflicting emotions—wanting to reject Jak’s comparison while excited about the possibilities of the project. Perhaps she was not just a copy of Jak but an improved version.
“There’s one other thing,” Riley said. “I want to tell you about an ancient artifact that I acquired after I was transported.”
“How ancient?” Jak said.
“Older than anything ever discovered before,” Riley said. “Probably a million long-cycles ago—I mean ‘years.’”
“How can that be? There aren’t any galactic civilizations half that old,” Jak said.
“Not in this spiral arm. But in the next one, in the spiral arm of the creatures who built the Transcendental Machine, where intelligent life and technology must have gotten started earlier.”
“Well?” Jak said.
“It’s a million-year-old spaceship,” Riley said.
“Miracle after miracle,” Jak said. “Of course your account of the Transcendental Machine is just a story. An unlikely story, at that, and your presenting yourself as proof of its existence can hardly be verified. But a spaceship is a different matter. You must have one.”
“It brought me here,” Riley said. “I recognize that my description of the Transcendental Machine and what it does is hard to believe and harder still to prove. No amount of physical and mental tricks is going to convince you that I’m not inventing the whole thing. But the alien spaceship is solid and real, and I’m willing to offer it to you not only as validation of my story, but as an artifact for study.”
“And what kind of artifact survives a million years? Even a spaceship,” Jak said.
“Something truly remarkable.” Riley told them how he had entered the Transcendental Machine and found himself in a pyramid on the dinosaur planet, how he had discovered the red sphere, why he thought it had been left there, how he had gained entrance to it, and how he had used it to get back to Earth. He did not tell them about Rory, which would have made his story even less believable, or about his stop at Dante, which would only distract them, or about Asha, which would only confuse them and perhaps put Asha in danger. As it was, Jak and Jer were unconvinced.
“That sounds like some ancient space romance,” Jer said. “Full of incredible adventures and near-death escapes.”
“And how was it possible,” Jak said, “that a million-year-old spaceship would still function, or that you could figure out how to make it work?”
“I could attribute it to the improvements of the Transcendental Machine process, but the ancient creatures who built the Transcendental Machine also built the spaceship, and they built things to last,” Riley said. “They thought in millennia, not in years, and whatever their plans were for our spiral arm, they knew it would take many generations to accomplish.”
“And so—?” Jak said.
“Their machines were not only built to last, they were built to be self-maintaining. Maybe because the material they were built from was in itself intelligent, able to adapt to changing conditions. And that was why I was able to make it work.”
“How?” Jak said.
“Because it adapted to me. It analyzed me when I entered. I don’t know how. But it shaped itself to my needs and fashioned furnishings to fit me, food to sustain me, and controls that I could learn how to use. Which was a blessing for me but a loss for human science.”
“What kind of loss?” Jer said.
“We can’t learn from the ship what the aliens were like,” Riley said. “If it had retained its original shape, we could have learned something about what they were like physically, and maybe even something about their psychology and philosophy, maybe even their science from the tools and other equipment they used. Though, if that were the case, I would be sitting back on that alien planet where I found it, and I would be sitting dead inside it. Assuming that all of this is real.”
“A big assumption,” Jak said, “but here you are, and you must have the spaceship as proof.”
“Indeed,” Riley said. “And this.” He pulled a glob of rosy material from his pocket, and held it out in his palm as the material shaped itself into a drinking cup with a handle. He gave it to Jer, who studied it for a moment and handed it to Jak.
“That’s a good trick,” Jak said.
“Maybe,” Riley said, “but it’s not my trick. It’s the trick of the Transcendental Machine people. And maybe something you can learn how to do.”
“I want to see this ship,” Jak said.
“You will—or Jer, if you’re not able to make the trip. One of you will have to get recognized by the ship, or you won’t be allowed to enter, much less to work with it.”
“Why do you offer it to me?” Jak said. “This would bring billions of credits on the open market. You could buy your own planet.”
“If I took it into the jurisdiction of any world, it would be confiscated by Pedia-governed bureaucrats who would bury it under generations of committee discussions and protocols until it was forgotten. Or buried by a Pedia who would consider it a threat to the meat creatures under its protection. And I would be killed.”
“Or become a hero,” Jer said, “to go down the centuries as the man who discovered the greatest artifact in the history of the galaxy.”
“The same thing,” Riley said.
“Bureaucrats!” Jak said.
�
��The technology of the spaceship is revolutionary,” Riley said. “If you folks can figure it out, it could elevate humanity to the equal of any species in the Federation, and, eventually, a new galactic order.”
“Galactic orders!” Jak said. He was clearly no more interested in improving political systems than he was in dealing with bureaucrats.
“But more important than that,” Riley said, “is the intelligence that is imbedded in every molecule of the ship, and if you can figure out how to contact it, how to talk to it, how to understand it, how to get it to reveal its magic and the magicians who created it, you may be able to find out who the magicians were and what they were doing.”
“Maybe they just liked to travel,” Jer said.
“Or they wanted to explore the rest of the galaxy,” Jak said. “Maybe they were just curious, like true scientists.”
“Maybe. They went to a great deal of effort, possibly focusing most of the resources of a star empire on a project that might never pay off. Their system was not even set up for their emissaries to return or to send back information. Either they were benign benefactors, or they were more like us. They expected it to pay off eventually.”
“In what way?” Jak said.
“Maybe these were advance scouts for a project to colonize this arm of the galaxy,” Riley said. “Or to seize its resources. Or to guide our evolution. Or … who knows? But the process ended up destroying them. Unless…”
“Unless what?” Jer asked.
“Unless they’re still among us, influencing us in ways that we don’t recognize or understand,” Riley said. “We don’t know what they looked like, and we don’t have any proof that they died, just the arachnoids who are ravaging the planet of the Transcendental Machine. They could be any of the species who make up the Federation. They could even look like humans.”
“They could even be humans,” Jer said.
“Humans!” Jak said.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
Asha considered Latha’s statement that the Anons intended to destroy the Pedia. Since they had first met, she had alternated between a belief that Latha was an agent of the Pedia who was attempting to trap Asha into a revelation of her own anti-Pedia feelings and a belief that Latha was the guileless, competent person she presented herself as being. Such uncertainty was unfamiliar to Asha, and she didn’t like it.
“And how do you propose to do that?” she asked.
“We must use the weapons the Pedia depends upon,” Latha said. “It lives on data. We will feed it data that contains poison.”
“And how can you do that, cut off here from the rest of the world? Your independence is also your weakness.”
Latha nodded. “We find ways of coping. Anons are scattered all over the world. Location doesn’t matter anymore. My friends and colleagues record what is happening and send it to us by courier. We analyze it here and use it as a basis for my comments and send them back to be broadcast to the world on the Pedia’s own networks.”
“And you expect your comments to destroy the Pedia?” Asha asked.
“Of course not,” Latha said. She smiled at Asha as if acknowledging Asha’s lack of seriousness. “The comments have enough embedded criticism to raise questions in people’s minds, but, far more important, they contain what used to be called ‘viruses’ to slow down the Pedia and interfere with its services and thus stir up opposition.”
Asha took a sip from her fruit drink and thought about how much she had missed by her long separation from her home world. “Has it stirred up opposition?”
“Not as much as we had hoped,” Latha said. “The poisons performed as we planned—our Anons are an ingenious group—but people didn’t react as we expected. They just grew accustomed to occasional interruptions in service. At first they complained, and then they stopped noticing.”
“You thought they would rise up against the Pedia?”
“The slowdowns were just an irritant, to prepare the people for the big event yet to come. It didn’t work, but then it was only the first step toward weaning people from their dependence on the Pedia.”
Asha looked at the way the tropical sunlight came through the windows opposite her and spilled across the stone floor, accenting some of its component pieces and leaving others in shadow, like truth and deception in the world. “And what is the big event?”
Latha smiled at Asha, as if she were about to share with a daughter the secret of sex, babies, and a happy life. “What we’ve been working on is the Grand Poison, the pill of information that will get past all of the Pedia’s defenses and shut it down completely. The turn-off switch that was somehow lost over the millennium since the Pedia got control of things. Or maybe the Pedia hid it from us, or persuaded us to forget it, or even destroyed it. But we are determined to find it and turn it off.”
“And how close are you to creating the Grand Poison?”
“If we only knew,” Latha said, “we would be joyful.”
“Your young people seem joyful already.”
“They are joyful by their nature,” Latha said. “That is because the joy is in the struggle, and it doesn’t matter that the struggle has gone on for generations and may go on for generations yet to come. The promise of success is there, like the prize at the end of the race, and that is the joy of freedom from the tyranny of the Pedia.”
“The tyranny of freedom from hunger, deprivation, and despair?”
“From all of those,” Latha said. “We want them all. Freedom is worth any price.”
“You’re welcome to them,” Asha said.
One of the brown young men who had surrounded Asha and Latha at the station entered the room to refresh their drinks from a cut-glass pitcher. He was clad in colorful silks like Latha, though they left his legs bare. He moved swiftly and lithely like a panther, he smelled good like an oriental spice, and he was remarkably attractive while being at the same time unimaginable as a romantic partner.
“What do you think of Latha’s plans against the Pedia?” Asha asked the young man.
Latha smiled.
“We are all committed to the great struggle,” the young man said, but he glanced at Asha as if he would have more to say if given the opportunity. He returned to the doorway from which he had come.
“You have a good-looking group of servants,” Asha said.
“They’re not servants,” Latha said, frowning as if annoyed with Asha for the first time since they had met. “They’re my sons and daughters.”
“All of them?” Asha asked.
“All of them,” Latha said.
“You gave birth to all of them?” Aska asked.
“Birth? No, that would be ridiculous and impossible.” Latha leaned forward. “But I will tell you a secret that I have told no one. Two of them—a boy and a girl—I gave birth to when I was very young. But they are no different from the others I have gathered here.”
“They don’t know?”
Latha shook her head. “They are all my sons and daughters.”
Asha considered the enormity of the effort that would sustain that kind of illusion. “And their father?”
“An unknown donor selected scientifically for the traits I wanted, including not only the physical and mental skills necessary to the task I accepted from my own parents when I was very young, but the independence of thought and spirit it required.”
“And have you thought how difficult that would have been without the Pedia?” Asha asked.
Latha looked at Asha for the first time as if she didn’t understand the question.
* * *
Asha thought for a moment before she challenged Latha’s plans. It might not be politic or cautious, but Latha seemed so completely certain of her goals that Asha decided to take the risk. “I understand that the Anons would not find life much different if the Pedia were destroyed, at least at first. But have you thought about what would happen to everybody else?”
“What do you mean?”
“Most of humanity has gro
wn accustomed to being taken care of,” Asha said, “to not paying attention to the way things work, not watching when they cross the street, not worrying about whether their appliances and their transportation will function the way they are supposed to, not concerning themselves about where their next meal will come from or whether the food is safe to eat.”
“They’ll get used to it,” Latha said. “They always have.”
“For a millennium they haven’t had to concern themselves with the problems of survival, the primary occupation of humanity since its beginnings. Millions, maybe billions, will die. Strong, ruthless leaders will emerge to gather the survivors into gangs to seize what resources remain, banditry and war will return, and it will bring back the dehumanization of everyone not a member of the tribe along with slavery, starvation, disease, and death.”
“People aren’t savages anymore,” Latha said serenely. “They will adjust. They have learned how to get along with each other.”
“And have you thought about what would happen to Earth and its human settlements on other worlds?” Asha asked. “Pedias are the indispensable foundation for interstellar travel and galactic civilization. Even if human civilization somehow survived and people could be trained to perform the difficult tasks of calculating orbits and the transition through nexus points, the loss of the Pedia would make humanity an easy conquest for any predatory species in the galaxy.”
“The Federation would protect us,” Latha said.
“The Federation doesn’t like humans. It started a war because it didn’t like us, and after we fought them to an uneasy truce, it likes us even less. It might not officially approve of any invasion, but it wouldn’t punish anybody who did it.”
“There’s no point in speculating about actions and motives so far removed,” Latha said. “If we did that, we would never do anything. What is far more likely is that the destruction of the Pedia would release the now-dormant creativity of the human species, and we would soon find ourselves the wonders of the galaxy.”