The Starfarers Quartet Omnibus
Page 125
“Look,” she said to Kolya. “You can see where it hit.”
Kolya, too, wore his spacesuit, and held his helmet in one hand. He bent down to inspect the pockmarks on the outer surface of the window: tiny pits and scratches.
“The Representative should have landed at a greater distance,” he said. He knit his stripy eyebrows. “I suppose we should be grateful he didn’t land on top of us.”
“Would have solved some of his problems,” Esther said. “I’ll be real glad when the cavalry gets here. J.D., I mean.”
“In the meantime,” Kolya said, “we had better go out and... hold the fort.”
She glanced at him quizzically.
“American culture is all over,” Kolya said. “Even in guerrilla outposts.”
Esther plopped her helmet on.
They loped toward the strange, organic-looking spacecraft. As they approached, it settled, an oblate, three-legged sphere.
“Baba Yaga,” Kolya said.
“What’s that?”
“A fairy tale. Baba Yaga had a house that stood on legs like chicken feet. It crouched to let you in. It was a popular story, when I was a child.”
“I never heard it.”
“I doubt it’s told much anymore. Even back home. It isn’t the same if you can’t tell it in Russian.”
They were only twenty meters from the Baba Yaga boat when a cloud of gas and vapor spit suddenly from a tiny orifice.
o0o
J.D. was astonished when Griffith moved the transport from its threatening position. She sent him a message of thanks, but he did not reply, he did not acknowledge. Her message bounced back to her. She had no time or attention to spend wondering about his motives.
Nautilus grew from a point to a tiny disk as the Chi powered toward it. J.D. urged the explorer craft onward, willing it to outstrip the limitations of its fuel and its orbit.
Zev fidgeted in his acceleration couch, and frowned at the transmission from the surface of Nautilus.
“Where’s the Representative going to go?” Zev asked. “He can’t fit in the tent, and underground isn’t beautiful the way it was when Nemo was alive.”
“He wants to retrofit the starship,” J.D. said. The center of Nautilus held captive a quantum black hole, the source of the starship’s gravity and power. “Change its controls. Remember what Europa said? She was going to pith it.”
J.D. could not get the image out of her mind: a long, sharp needle, probing into a brain, scrambling the complex planes and angles of Nemo’s ghost. If Europa could replace Nemo’s controls, the Representative could do it, too.
“I’m sure the Representative can’t take over your starship,” Victoria said. “If he could, Androgeos probably could have, eh?”
Unhappily, J.D. shrugged her shoulders within the safety straps of her couch. “Gerald says I have to turn it over to EarthSpace, and Senator Derjaguin says I have to give it to the United States. Maybe Civilization will say I have to turn it over to the Four Worlds.” The one material thing I ever really wanted, J.D. thought, and everybody else wants it, too.
“It’s yours fair and square,” Stephen Thomas said. “Even if Nemo hadn’t willed it to you, you were there to salvage it. The same as anybody in Civilization would have.”
“But we aren’t members of Civilization yet,” Satoshi said. “They might have different rules to apply to their clients.”
“I don’t want the Representative anywhere near the core,” J.D. said. “The knowledge surface is all that’s left of Nemo.”
“Have you figured out a way inside it?” Satoshi asked.
“There isn’t a way. I mean,” she said quickly, “the way is a progression. I get a little farther every time. I’m like a baby, taking first steps. Or maybe just babbling and kicking, who knows?”
“You took Nautilus through transition!” Zev said. “When Andro threatened you, you made it spin.”
“Pretty good babbling and kicking,” Satoshi said.
“But that’s what the starship was built to do,” J.D. said. “Moving the starship is like breathing.” She sighed. “What I can make it do is rudimentary. And I don’t doubt that Civilization’s controls for it are easier and more efficient than Nemo’s. But I can’t bear to give up the knowledge surface. Even if I never figure out how to get inside it.” Her response to the knowledge surface was emotional, not rational. She knew it; she had made a conscious decision to keep an old-fashioned interface with the starship so she could also keep her final connection with the squidmoth.
“It’d be a big mistake to lose everything Nemo had collected for a million years,” Victoria said. “You have plenty of time to figure out how to gain access to the information.”
“Maybe the squidmoth baby will tell you,” Zev said.
“I’m afraid to go anywhere near the squidmoth baby. It’s so different from Nemo.”
“It’s different from the sides of Nemo you saw,” Stephen Thomas said. “The sides I saw were rougher.”
“Yes.” J.D. had watched the LTM recordings of what Nemo had shown to Stephen Thomas, an acidic pond of attendants ripping each other to shreds. But that had been during the last few days of Nemo’s life, when the deterioration of impending death had begun.
“There’s something weird about squidmoths,” Stephen Thomas said.
Satoshi laughed, and after a moment everyone else joined in.
“Weird, huh?” Satoshi said. “Unlike anybody else we’ve met?”
“Not to mention what they think about us,” J.D. added.
“I mean it —”
“You’re only annoyed because you haven’t figure out how their molecular genetics work yet,” Victoria said.
“You don’t have any idea why I’m annoyed,” Stephen Thomas said.
Victoria tensed and Satoshi frowned at the tone of Stephen Thomas’s voice. He startled J.D., too.
“I can imagine ways for the dendritic molecules to code for enzymes and structural molecules and that kind of crap.” Stephen Thomas continued the discussion as if he had not just snapped at his partner. “What I can’t figure out... is how the molecules can evolve.”
During an awkward pause, no one said anything. J.D. decided the only thing she could do was pretend she had not noticed the interchange.
“It evolves the way everything does,” J.D. said. “By mistakes. By sloppy goopy imprecise biological processes.”
“Nope. Not with squidmoths. No mutations. No variation. They’ve got different types of dendritic molecules, but within each type, all the molecules are identical.”
“That is strange.”
“Fucking right. So if you do figure out how to get into the knowledge surface, do me a favor and look up `mutation rate’ in whatever Nemo used as an index. Look up `squidmoth evolution.’”
“I hope there is an index.”
“There’d have to be!” Victoria said.
“Would there?” J.D. asked. “I don’t know why Nemo collected observations and information. Maybe squidmoths are packrats. Maybe they pick up stuff indiscriminately — obsessively — and store it away. Maybe the knowledge surface is Nemo’s equivalent of a dusty attic.”
“J.D.’s got a point,” Satoshi said. “Everybody in Civilization agrees the squidmoths never do anything with what they learn. They don’t apply it to their environment. They just float around and watch.”
“I can see myself,” J.D. said, “wandering through Nemo’s collection. I’d be fascinated and I’d probably never come out. But the attic could be stuffed with moldering newspapers and the last millennium’s math books.”
“Nemo lived for a million years,” Victoria said. “Hard to imagine, in that long, not picking up a few diamonds.”
“Hidden,” Stephen Thomas said, “under the mattress.”
Outside, the disk of Nautilus had grown large enough to reveal its craters and irregularities.
J.D. glanced anxiously at the Chi’s holographic display of speed, orbit, acceleration.
“Beats the hell out of running out of fuel and then landing,” Stephen Thomas said.
J.D. wished he would leave the edge out of his voice, or shut up, even if he was right.
“I just don’t know how far the Representative will go,” she said. “He’s risking a lot to move around so much. Years of his life.”
“If worse comes to worst,” Satoshi said, “if he tries to force his way past them, Kolya and Esther can probably pick him up and carry him back to his starship.”
“Or tie his legs in knots,” Stephen Thomas said. “That would be some sculpture. I bet Crimson would appreciate it.”
“What if he has weapons?” Victoria asked J.D.
“You sound like Griffith!”
“Mr. Griffith has a tendency toward paranoia,” Victoria said. “That doesn’t mean he’s always wrong.”
“He must have decided he was this time,” J.D. said.
They heard nothing from the transport. It orbited Nautilus at a distance, silent and still. Griffith still could choose to act.
“Civilization wants a lot from us,” Satoshi said. “They want Nautilus, they want Victoria’s algorithm, they even want Crimson’s fossils.”
“I’d be willing to give them the algorithm,” Victoria said. “Or trade it. I’d like something in return. Some answers.”
“I think Europa was right,” J.D. said. “We’ll find examples to follow. But we have to choose our own answers.”
“The point is,” Satoshi said, “they haven’t offered to take any of it by force.”
“Maybe they’ve kept the big guns in reserve,” Stephen Thomas said. “Until now.”
“Or they’ve created a society in which force isn’t an acceptable choice,” J.D. said. “I wonder if that’s as strange to them as it is to us?”
o0o
The Representative braced his leg tips against the walls. Their softness cushioned him from fractures, but the acceleration of landing pulled at him terribly.
You had better get used to the gravity, the Representative told himself. If you succeed, you will stay here and earn your line’s future life.
He would earn their life, but spend his own.
Worth it, he said to himself. Worth it.
The boat sank toward the surface of the starship. The starship.
Worth even the risk of failure, he thought.
The acceleration of the engines eased, then ceased, dropping him abruptly into the faint gravity of Nautilus. The Representative waited for the boat to ground itself. Outside, the two humans left their shelter and approached him. He wondered how far they would go to stop him. The Representative cared little if the humans had to be taught lessons, but he did not want to be the martyred reason.
He felt out his new metamorphosis, admiring himself. A flawless opaline shell protected his vital organs and his several clusters of compound eyes. The hair had dropped from his legs, which projected from joints in the opaline shell. He was even more beautiful than before, all jewels and semiprecious stones.
The Representative walked himself down the interior walls of the boat, till he perched, stilt-legged, on his leg tips. The tips had not had time to solidify; he balanced on bundles of sharp bright fibers, half-formed jewels held together by nerve tissue and organic matrix. When he stepped, the fibers fractured and split.
He ordered the boat to pierce itself. A tiny opening appeared.
The air whined out; the whine receded to silence. The vacuum’s coldness touched the raw nerve endings of the Representative’s legs. He gave another command; the boat split open. For the first time in centuries, he faced the surface of a world. He touched the ancient dust gingerly with the tip of one leg.
The Representative tottered outside.
o0o
Esther waited for the Representative, amazed and entranced and apprehensive. He emerged from the space boat like a spider from an egg case, stood still and watchful, then unfolded his legs to their full length.
J.D.’s encounter with him, in the cave, had not given Esther any impression of his great size. His body, no longer hairy but iridescent, translucent, was rather small, but his crystalline legs were several meters long. He probably did not mass more than a human being, yet he stood much taller than Esther, taller even than Kolya.
Like a giant spider, the Representative picked his way across the tumbled plain.
Besides the jointed legs of ebony and amethyst and turquoise that had been visible to J.D. and her LTMs, he strode on legs of emerald, ruby, and diamond. His legs were solid near his body, only partly fused near their tips.
He hesitated before each step, as if he were footsore.
Behind him he left footprints of precious stones, a shining trail of uncut jewels and broken crystalline fibers.
As he walked, his leg tips cracked and shattered.
“Representative!” Esther ran toward him. “Stop, you’re breaking!”
“Esther!”
She bounded past Kolya toward the Representative. He loomed over her; she had to lean back and look up to see him. He tilted his body, orienting himself toward her. She thought she could see eyes beyond the opalescent shell. He poised spraddle-legged and frozen above her.
Slowly he bent the joints in his legs, lowering his body to her level.
Kolya bounded to her side. They stood together, facing an alien representative of the interstellar civilization.
Esther trembled, so deeply and so hard that the steadiness of her own voice shocked her.
“Pieces of you are falling off!” she said. She glanced sidelong at Kolya. He set his jaw so hard his mustache bristled. He caught her gaze and looked away fast.
He isn’t angry, Esther thought — he’s trying not to laugh. Oh — oh, shit! That’s probably exactly what the Representative is doing, taking a dump, and I just called the whole star system’s attention to it.
Esther almost burst out laughing, too.
If I’m careful not to look at Kolya, she thought, both of us might pull off this meeting with a shred of dignity left. On the other hand, if the Representative pulls out the particle-beam guns...
“Is your shedding a normal function — er, activity?” Kolya asked.
Esther let her eyelids flicker just long enough to send code to the Chi and to Starfarer: What’s going on, J.D.? Europa, help me out, would you?
A silent reply flashed before her.
You’re doing fine, J.D. said.
I can’t help, Esther, I’m sorry, Europa told her. No elder of the Representative’s stature has walked free since I’ve known the Smallerfarthings.
“Great,” Esther muttered to herself, and thought, He doesn’t take a walk for four thousand years, and he has to pick Nautilus — !
She said to herself, He wants J.D.’s starship bad.
“It is a natural result of my venturing into gravity,” the Representative said to Kolya. “But not, precisely, normal.”
“Does it hurt?” Esther asked.
The opalescent sphere bounced a handsbreadth up, then sank again.
“Of course it hurts,” the Representative said. “Can you lose parts of your legs without causing pain?”
“Only my toenail clippings,” Esther said.
“We’ll help you back to your boat,” Kolya said. The quaver of amusement in his voice nearly pushed Esther over the edge.
“But I’ve just arrived,” the Representative said. “The pain is not as unbearable as the rudeness of leaving so soon.”
“Then we’ll wait here with you,” Kolya said firmly. “Until J.D. arrives and can greet you properly.”
“But J.D. already greeted me.”
“I thought you were returning her house call,” Esther said.
“I came for that reason, and to give you a gift.”
“The Farther worlds already gave J.D. guest water,” Kolya said. “And the Nearer worlds gave her
rainbow-fins. We couldn’t take anything else, it would be greedy.”
The Representative bent his jointed amethyst leg, held it a handsbreadth above the ground, placed it gingerly down.
“Mine is a rare and valuable gift,” the Representative said. “My own substance, given at great cost, which to you is precious jewels. Precious and rare.”
His emerald leg gestured toward the trail of broken precious stones.
“We cannot possibly accept your toenail clippings,” Kolya said.
“You mustn’t injure yourself to give us presents,” Esther said, controlling herself with more will power than she knew she had. “Besides, we don’t have anything for you.”
“My pain isn’t important,” the Representative said. “Only a free exchange of gifts and friendship and knowledge. Haven’t I offered you a rich enough gift?”
He raised his emerald leg, let it hover, tapped it hard on a stone. Emerald segments fell away and bounced, glittering. The Representative jerked his legtip from the ground.
Esther’s laughter vanished. She hated to see anyone hurt that much. It must be in my damned genes, she thought dryly. Next I’ll be trying to feed him chicken soup.
She found herself craning her neck to see him, and she took a backwards step.
Wait a minute, she thought.
Instead of letting herself be distracted by sympathy, Esther watched carefully. As the Representative put his leg down, he stretched forward. He shifted, balancing himself. When he stilled, his body hung closer to Esther.
He was edging toward her, entering her social distance till she backed away from him. He was herding her and Kolya toward one of the craters.
What? she thought. Does he think he can push us in?
Even if they fell, in the gravity of Nautilus they could scramble out again. They could probably jump out again. They would have to be tremendously unlucky to fall badly enough to get hurt.
She flashed a message to J.D., to Kolya.
I see what you mean. J.D.’s code appeared in Esther’s visual field. Esther, Kolya, if you can, please don’t let the Representative into the center of Nautilus! Don’t endanger yourselves... but I’m afraid he’ll destroy the knowledge surface. I’ll be there soon.