Guthrie bit his lip. "No," he admitted slowly. "But I remember assorted governments when I was alive on Earth. And I've studied some history." After a moment in which the music sounded remote, out of place, as if it leaked in from another universe: "You've got a point. In fact, it's often occurred to me. It's one of the reasons I came back to Sol, to find out if it's true. But it isn't necessarily, you know, no matter how you personally feel."
"Nor is what the Star Net says necessarily true," Fenn barked.
"Maybe."
Fenn's throat tightened. "I want to make certain. Whatever we find, it should be us who do. Then—then—" He couldn't go on.
Guthrie's voice went gentle. "Then Kinna won't have died for nothing. That's your real mission, isn't it?"
Fenn snapped after air. "I, I, I have no more to give her."
He bowed his face in his hands, and again he wept.
But that had become seldom for him, and in the course of a few more daycycles, it ceased altogether.
In Dagny's big display tank, majesty and mystery unrolled. Fenn knotted his fists, clenched his teeth, and fought to stay unwhelmed. Guthrie stood motionless, turret blanked out, wholly machine. Great lightninglike flashes out of the visions shimmered across his armor.
The Centaurians had given this ship the most powerful data processors they could fit aboard. Nonetheless, much time had gone by while the system labored to decipher the record. It was from a scientific frontier, where new concepts and techniques evoked new symbols and manipulations; it was encrypted, to protect transmissions across the Star Net, and breaking that code required operations in numbers whose exponents had exponents. Only the fact that quantum encryption had not been practical for material such as this made decoding possible at all, and only parallel quantum computations could have accomplished it this soon.
It was available here and there on the inner planets. With a general knowledge of what the content actually was, Dagny's laboratory had a head start.
Its vocalizer and a textscreen explained the spectra,x wave forms, mathematical distributions, stochastics, and analyses, insofar as explanations had been findable. To Fenn, that was mere background, a droned running commentary on the images that passed before him, over him, through him—
—images formed by the sun from across light-years in the tens of thousands, from the heart of the galaxy, where the stars clustered thickly and ancient, walled by huge dust clouds, around the black hole monstrosity at the core.
As pictures, they were fleeting, mostly blurred, mostly glimpsed with radio sight, like fragments of dream. A lens moved in its orbit, however slowly. An object afar also moved, often.fast. The tremendous magnification narrowed the field and dimmed the sight. Something swept by and was gone, irretrievable. Something else appeared and was gone in its turn. The distance between them was usually immense. While a lens gathered what quanta it could, its computers struggled to calculate locations and meanings for that which it had seen. No wonder that the earlier generation of instruments had failed to come on any identifiable hint of all this.
Examined singly, at leisure and in detail, the images remained enigmas.
But enough of them were clear enough.
Stars and stars and stars, aswarm in their billions—yet space was hardly more illuminated than here, for these were faint red dwarfs that could have been burning well-nigh from the beginning of the universe. Some few were younger, brighter, lonely. Most of the more massive .had gone to white dwarf embers or pulsar clinkers or black holes where gases whirled X-ray-blazing inward to destruction.
Planets, cratered airless rocks, deserts seared like Venus or bleak and dusty like Mars, gas giants, frozen ice-balls—never a mark of life.
But other planets radiant with energies, crowned and covered with spires, arches, rainbow-opalescent domes, silvery webs, works for which no human tongue had a name. Moons that were three-dimensional arabesques, circling Jovianlike worlds in whose atmospheres firefly-like sparkles danced. A web englobing a sun, larger than the Solar System and shining, shining.
Something that traveled between stars on the heels of light, a vortex of brilliance with a shape at the center that seemed to have long, outcurving arms and many eyes.
Constructs—they must be constructs—in orbit close around a black hole, perhaps drinking power from it to send onward—perhaps making use of its distortions in the metric of space-time?
What might be the black hole at galactic center, massing millions of Sols, and something silhouetted against that lightlessness and the flaring accretion disk, a gleam of intricacy, and then sudden blinding luminance as its beacon crossed the visual field.
Still more briefly, flickers of works and workings that reached out through the spiral arms toward the rim and the cosmos beyond.
Measurements of forces and radiations that no organic being could have survived long enough to be aware of.
Snatches of modulated neutrino beams. Analyses that showed they could not be natural, they must be messages; but the basic principles of their code, their language, would not emerge from any analysis; they transcended comprehension.
The cosmic cybercosm.
Dagny made turnover and commenced the long braking down to destination.
At that point she was already in the marches of the Solar System, the domain of the comets. None showed to the eye or the ranging instruments. Millionfold though they were, the Kuiper Belt spread too vastly. Sol itself was no more than the brightest in the horde of stars, at the cold river of the Milky Way.
Nevertheless, her voyagers heard news from astern. Guthrie had been in touch with Proserpina. "No ship of theirs can get anywhere close to the lens before we arrive," he explained to Fenn. "And we can't wait for them, or the opposition will too likely have guessed our aim and sent more stuff out ahead of us than anybody could cope with. But they are mighty interested. They want in on this. I think I've talked them into dispatching vessels that can meet us afterward. However that works out, meanwhile they'll keep us posted."
The Lunarian colony was not totally isolated from the inner planets. Neither side desired it. Curt but regular beamcasts went to and fro. Proserpina relayed news to Dagny. At those distances and with her high, rapidly changing velocity, attenuation and Doppler shift became significant. But she was equipped to hear across interstellar gulfs.
The code was being broken, the secret coming out, piece by piece. Thus far there was little or no turmoil. Fenn imagined a hush instead, a quietude of shock, while people tried to grasp what this was and what it portended. He didn't know what would happen after they began to react more emotionally. Maybe panic, even riots, but only in a few places for a short while. Maybe a certain amount of increased religious, social, and individual craziness, including some new versions. But probably the great majority would just carry on in the lives they had always known.
Reassurances from the cybercosm ought to help. Spokespeople for the Synesis in general were expressing profound regret at this untimely revelation. It had been left for private parties to work out for themselves, rather than being immediately described in full, precisely so that it could break over them with some degree of gradual-ness. The spokespeople urged patience, restraint, and promised a zealous investigation of whatever crimes had been committed in the release. The trustees and councillors would soon have prepared a program for action, for adjustment, which they would offer for the polities to consider. Meanwhile, they reminded humankind that the galactic machines were astronomically far off. No interaction with them would occur for centuries, perhaps for millennia. Nor would it ever be in any way malignant.
The spokespeople emphasized the cybercosm's idea that rich organic civilizations coexisted and cooperated with the sophotects—that once contact was made, it was those with which humans would deal, an exchange that would surely bring a flowering on the planets of Sol more wonderful than anything yet seen in all history.
Two daycycles later, the audio reported that an ad hoc committee of scientis
ts declared the solar lenses should be opened, the databases in them made accessible to everybody. They might well hold more than had been stored on Mars, important additional clues for our guidance.
The next daycycle, Fenn and Guthrie heard summarized a lengthy response by the Science Council of the Synesis. The Pavonis Mons Station, and others like it, elsewhere, had hitherto received regular updatings. Under the new circumstances, those transmissions had been stopped. At present, as in the immediate future, the situation was too precarious. Disorders could too easily start, with injuries and deaths. True, it was improbable that anything fundamentally different would soon be observed. But to take the slightest risk of unleashing some wild variable that could upset the equilibrium would be irresponsible, and scientifically unnecessary. The data al-! ready out were ample to keep minds busy for the next several years. After that, it should be safe to open the lenses and their findings.
At present, downloads from them would be into robots that went out to them and brought physical records back to the appropriate centers. Other robots would, in due course, make the modifications needed for human visits. Right now, such an operation would require shutting down the lens, and restart could not be done instantly. Furthermore, the instruments could be damaged by unskilled handling.
On these accounts, the lenses would remain interdicted and guarded for some time to come. Every person of good will and common sense would approve.
"The technical angle is reasonably close to the truth," Guthrie said. "I've been poring over the plans Milady Luaine gave me. You'd better do likewise. And still you might well bollix up the apparatus a bit. But as for the political angle to this claim—hm."
A subsequent newsbeam related that the scientists were satisfied with the explanation they had been given.
"Good Lord!" exclaimed Guthrie. "Are you the only Terran alive who doesn't meekly swallow whatever he's fed?"
"No," Fenn said. "I've met others." Though most were eccentrics, misfits. Well, so was he. "I do seem to be the only one who's in a position to do anything about it at the moment, maybe ever." He looked into the portrait-face. "And that'll depend on you."
Guthrie nodded. "The more I think and learn about this, the more I think we should carry on if we can. Just too damn many loose ends. You took the junta by surprise and it didn't have its package all neatly wrapped. The Mars Station could've been impenetrable from the first. Why wasn't it? The galactic observations can't have amounted to one amazed epiphany. The data would've trickled in and wanted interpreting; even to the Teramind, I doubt the meaning would be obvious right off the bat. So why weren't they published as they arrived, in proper scientific style? Why did we need protection anyway, till the city fathers could comfort us with the word that there are also meat people out in the galaxy? What is so dire about a great machine civilization?
"Yeah, no doubt that Chuan hombre was right, and this will upset the applecart your Lahui hoped would take them to Mars. The uncertainties, the, uh, spiritual reevaluations—the momentum will be lost. I hardly imagine the honchos of the Synesis mind that. However, they can't have been counting on it.
"Well, maybe the cybercosm misjudged us, like a mother hen not understanding that the ducklings she fosters can swim if you put them in water. It's not human, in spite of its synnoionts. But I suspect it's smarter than that. I've got a hunch about this whole business."
"What is it?" asked Fenn. He had gained a little familiarity with his companion's archaisms.
"No importe. Only a hunch."
"Ha!" Fenn chuckled. "Now you're being the silent wise one."
Guthrie gave him back a wry smile. "Okay. Though it's more that I think I see general principles operating than that I have any specific ideas.
"I've gathered that for a long time you've been bragging here in the Solar System about how you don't have government any more because your societies have outgrown such a thing. Your tribal councils and republican parliaments and whatnot discuss your few matters of general concern and work to develop a consensus. Police protect life, health, property. Courts, or whatever you call them these days, settle disputes and process wrongdoers. That's all. The Synesis only coordinates things, keeps the whole social-cybenretic machine running smoothly and productively."
"Huh," he grunted. "Think again. True, the Synesis and its members refrain from the most obvious activities that traditional government claimed were its reasons and justification for existence. They don't extort taxes, make war, or tramp into people's personal lives. Or do they? I'd call the birth restriction on Earth and Luna pretty drastic. Machinery turns out your necessities of life, essentially for free, but this makes your lives depend on the machinery and whoever or whatever administers it. That includes the computations, and out of the computations come the policy decisions. And then, as you pointed out once, a lot of other things don't have to be forbidden, because they've become impossible.
"I'd call the Synesis a government, reigning over lesser governments and over individuals everywhere. Therefore it acts, always has and always will, according to the nature of the beast.
"Maybe you've reached one of those whens in the course of human events. Our business at the lens could show whether that's right or wrong."
Ardor blossomed in Fenn. "By glory, we'll do it!"
"We can try," Guthrie said quietly. "If you want to."
"Why the death shouldn't I?"
"You're the man I had to have to carry out a raid. But it is kind of a forlorn hope. We can very well die trying. That doesn't faze me too much, the way I am."
"What? You've got a future too."
"Yes, of course I'm interested in things and in what I do, and I look forward to being alive again, genuinely alive. But this present body of mine doesn't have feelings quite like yours. Survival is a fairly abstract incentive for me. You're alive right now."
Fenn's heart knocked. "Alive for a purpose," he said. A part of him was surprised at his calm. "A reason. At last." His gaze sought the overhead view of the stars.
"And afterward," Guthrie murmured, "you won't have to be angry."
On the forty-seventh nightwatch of their journey, Dagny's instruments caught the first sign of hostile vessels closing in.
30
A VIEWSCREEN IN the command cabin reproduced the stars outside, but for this moment they had become a mere show, Reality lay in the instruments, readings, readouts, displays enigmatic to Fenn, once in a while a few low words exchanged between Guthrie and Dagny.
"Two of 'em," the download said at length. "Field drive. Converging on us from points far apart. They must have coordinated their flight plans across light-minutes, maybe a light-hour or more at first. I'd guess there are detectors scattered around these purlieus, primed to send the alarm if they pick up anything suspicious, like a trail of neutrino emissions bound toward the lens. They wouldn't have to keep in close touch with the guard ships, just know approximately where they'll be at a given time. A fairly broad beam can carry the report."
"They?" asked Fenn, roused out of his forebodings.
"Guard ships, I said. Mainly against the Proserpinans."
"Oh, yes." Recollection came, what Guthrie had told him during the voyage. A host of other preoccupations had driven it largely out of his mind. "But why haven't they made for us earlier?"
"Well, surveillance of Proserpina should give ample advance notice of any third attempt on a lens from there, but we've come out of left field. Those aren't c-ships, you know. So, first, they'd have to be warned by the detectors, which can only be limited through a largish distance from the lens they're watching over. Then they'd have to meet us when we've shed most of our velocity, or we'd zip right on past."
"I do know!" Fenn snapped. His nerves quivered bowstring-taut. "You told me you were hoping we wouldn't meet them at all."
"You're letting excitement interfere with your memory. Hark back. What I said was that they probably wouldn't be near the lens, but out ranging the Kuiper Belt. My guess was that they'd ser
ve as mother ships for little eavesdropper scoutcraft trying to keep tabs on the widespread cometeers. I hoped they'd be too far away to get back here in time, if they did get word of us. Well, evidently they've been more cautious than that, staying closer to home base, at least to the extent of these two."
Fenn sighed. "I'm sorry. I did forget. Now what can we do?"
"Continue."
"But they're armed. Aren't they?"
"For their purposes, they'd better be. However, we've also discussed this, you recall. They are just two. Everything else that could help them is scattered from hell to breakfast across the Solar System or out of it entirely, doing whatever it is the cybercosm has them doing.
We've only this pair to worry about." Guthrie clapped his companion's shoulder. "Go snug yourself down. You can't be of any use in this, and we'll want you in shape for action later."
Fenn looked into the specter-face, which smiled, and said through the hammering in his ears, "Do you really believe—you can—"
"Hen," Guthrie said. "We talked about it, but when the chips are down, everything seems different. Right? Not that you're a coward. You're having the usual human reaction to imminent combat. Yes, Proserpinan intelligence has worked out a fair-to-middling idea of what those guard ships carry and what they're capable of, and I think Dagny and I between us should have a fair-to-middling chance against them." The smile became a grin. "We've got one very big advantage. I go way back, I'm not quite civilized, I've known war."
A chill passed through Fenn. Suddenly amiable, drawling Anson Guthrie was as alien as any machine, or more so. Fenn had encountered violence too, he had been violent himself, but at this instant he saw that he had never unconditionally—Guthrie's phrase—meant business. He thought he now understood how Chuan felt.
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